Chapter 6

"Gone. She's de….." Danny stumbled to a nearby chair, unable to complete the sentence.

Realization dawned on Mac, and he quickly stated, "No, Danny. She's not dead. She's missing." Mac took a steadying breath. "Officer Schwartz said that her door was slightly ajar when he approached. When he entered, he said it looked as if a tornado had hit. He checked every room, but she wasn't there." Mac struggled to get out the last few words. He looked at Danny and said. "We will get her back. First things first, we need our team and we need to get to Lindsay's place. Do you think that you can do this?" Mac asked gently.

"Don't ask me to recuse myself from this case Mac. Not now." Danny pleaded.

Mac slowly nodded, "Okay. If I feel that you could jeopardize the case in any way, you WILL be reassigned. Is that clear?" Danny nodded.

"Good. Now let's get our team together and get Lindsay back. We need to go to her apartment. We need to process the scene."

The ride up the elevator was suffocating. Danny couldn't get his breath and struggled to focus on what Mac was telling the team about assignments for them once they entered the apartment.

She was gone. She was missing. He had her. These phrases played in repeat in his mind.

The elevator doors finally opened and one by one they all filed out. Danny was the third one out, but her had somehow gained the lead in the line that walked down the hallway. As he reached her door, it opened and Meathead walked out.

Before Danny knew what had happened, he had Meathead by the throat up against the wall. "You were supposed to protect her. What the hell happened?" Danny yelled in his face. Danny could feel hands on his back and arms, trying to pry his hands from the man's neck. He could hear, distantly, others calling his name.

Finally, hands successfully pried Danny's hands away from the other officer's neck. Danny turned to look into Flack's eyes. Danny did not put up a fight. Flack did not lessen his hold on Danny's right arm, however.

"What the hell was that for? I want him brought up on charges for what he just did. Hey. HEY! Isn't anyone listening to me? I'm the victim here." Said Officer Schwartz as he looked around the hall at the group of CSI's.

Mac was the first and only one to answer, "I'm not sure what you're talking about officer. We are here to investigate out colleague's disappearance. We will have to talk with you about the events of this afternoon, so stay put." Mac dismissed the officer without another word. "Stella, you and Hawkes will enter the scene first. I will be in soon. Flack, I would like for you to question Officer Schwartz, here. Danny, I want you to look at all possible entry and exits for this floor. I want to know how he got her out of here. Lindsay would have put up one hell of a fight. I want to understand how Officer Schwartz missed her abduction."

"I want to go inside. I have to see, I need to know." Danny pleaded.

"No. If you are going to remain on this case, I want you to do as I asked. Knowing how and when, will help us identify that piece. It's just as important. You know this place better than anyone else here. You know what to look for. You might, might get to see it later. For now, let us do this." Mac stated this with steel in his voice. He meant business. "We love her too." He added.

Danny nodded and set off down the hall, albeit reluctantly. Mac watched until he was certain that Danny would follow his orders, then he turned and walked to Lindsay's door. He looked through the open doorway and his heart shattered. Before he could enter though, he heard the officer giving Flack a hard time.

"This is totally unfair. I was assaulted and you people act as though it didn't happen. You can be sure that I will be reporting this incident to my superiors. It's not my fault your friend is gone. Maybe she left on her own. She got herself into this situation to begin with." It was too much for Mac. He marched the ten feet to where they were standing and grabbed the man's arm. Yanking it to start moving, Mac all but drug the officer to the doorway.

"Tell me, Officer, what do you see?" Mac waited, not releasing his vice-like grip of the man's forearm.

"Come on, you can see as well as I can."

"Tell me, Officer, and I do use that term very loosely, what do you see?"

"The hall rack is knocked over right here." He stated and then stopped.

Mac was quickly loosing patience and pulled the officer further into the apartment, "what else?"

"The recliner is knocked over in the living room, the coffee table has been smashed, there is glass on the carpet and sofa. " He stopped again, swallowing hard.

"Is glass the only thing that is on the ground?"

"Oh, come on. You know…" Mac sent him a glare that stated he would broker no more arguments from this man, so the officer continued, "blood. A lot of blood. That is what is on the floor." Mac forcefully threw Officer Schwartz's arm away from his hand.

"Yes, Officer, blood. So when you said to Detective Flack that you thought Lindsay had simply walked out of here, it pissed me off. " Both Flack and the officer looked at Mac, shocked. Mac continued, however, "Go outside and wait for the other officers to arrive to secure the scene. Make no mistake I will be talking with your superiors! Get out of my sight." Mac turned and walked away, not even waiting to see if the officer complied. Officer Schwartz looked like he was going to say something, but Flack interrupted that thought by escorting the officer back out the door to get the rest of his statement.

Danny slowly descended the stairs in a fog. He had wanted to fight with Mac, demand that he be allowed into the apartment. He knew it better than anyone, he would know if anything was missing. He stopped with his foot hovering over the next step. Something was missing, Lindsay. He wanted to punch something, Meathead was the likely target, but he knew that someone would stop him. Danny looked down at the floor, that's when he saw it. To the right of where he was going to put his foot, was a small droplet of what appeared to be blood.

Danny pulled a marker out of his kit and took another step down, eyes peeled. Two more steps down and there was another droplet. Another marker went down here too. He continued to descend, cautiously so that he didn't miss anything. By the time that he reached the bottom, he had marked eleven steps and one smudge on the wall. He prayed that it wasn't Lindsay's blood, that somehow she had hurt her attacker and they would have his DNA now. Danny decided that he should follow the trail out to the parking garage. He depressed the bar and pushed the door open, walking into the chilly garage.

Mac walked quietly through the apartment, making sure that he didn't tread where the blood was. He hated wearing the sterile booties, but he knew that they would leave trace evidence if he didn't. He came upon Stella in the kitchen. She turned as he walked in and there were unshed tears in her eyes.

"I know, not a very hardened officer type thing to do. Cry. I can't help it. This is horrible. Poor Lindsay." She said.

Mac nodded, "What do you have?"

Stella nodded once and sniffled, "It looks like he interrupted her cooking lunch. The oven was on when we got here, the door hanging half open. Almost like he came through the door just as she opened it. The cookie sheet with her lunch is on the ground here." She pointed to the spot a few feet away where the cookie sheet lay upside down on the floor.

"It looks like she put up one heck of a fight." Stella said as she looked over the coffee nook into the living room, her eyes focused on the large bloodstain on the floor. As Mac walked through the scene, he noticed that there was blood splatter on the walls, floor, and even ceiling in a few places. He didn't want to think of what shape Lindsay's body was in. He had to remain as detached as possible or he wouldn't make it through this.

"This is bad, Mac." Stella said. Before Mac to respond, Hawkes came in from the other room.

"The other rooms seem to be untouched, but I don't know if anything is missing or out of place." He said. "Maybe Danny could inspect the apartment to help with that."

"Right now, I have Danny doing what he needs to be doing. He's not ready to see this yet. I don't think that the combined strength of all of us could keep him from killing that officer out there." Mac said. "I agree that he should walk through and check, but right now it would be counter-productive. He's only hanging on to his sanity by a thread. Are you done taking pictures, Hawkes?"

"Yep, just took the last ones. I also did a walk through with the hand-held so that we have video if we need it." Hawkes reported.

"Good thinking. I have a feeling that we are going to need everything in our arsenal to get her back." Mac stopped as Flack donned his booties and entered the room again.

"He didn't know anything, didn't see anything, and wants his union rep contacted." Flack said with derision.

"Of course he does. " Mac said, then he turned to Hawkes, "would you go see if you can find Danny and help him with the possible entry and exits from the building. He'll need pictures of anything he finds as well. Don't leave his side and don't tell him about this yet," Mac pointed to the blood and broken furniture.

"Sure thing. Any idea where he went?"

"I saw him go to the stairs down the hall, I presume that he's still there investigating." Mac said.

"Okay, I'll let you know if we find anything." Hawkes said and then walked toward the door, vanishing from sight as he quickly turned to the left into the hallway.

"I want it all brought back to the lab. The table, the glass, the carpet where there is blood. I want this to be thorough. Somewhere in this apartment is the only lead that we will have. Flack , I would like for another BOLO on the picture of this guy. There's something wrong here. No one came forward with a possible lead on it the first time that it was run. Something's off, we need to find out what. " Mac was frustrated. He was worried and he was angry. This happened on his watch, to one of his team, and he felt guilty.

Flack said, "I can organize the BOLO again, Lindsay is one of our own. If nothing else, that will spur the officers on to find this creep."

Mac didn't want to say anything, but he feared that no matter how much fire was lit under their butts, they had to hope that the perp had made a mistake. Lindsay's life depended on it.

Danny looked up as Hawkes walked through the doorway leading to the garage.

"Hey man, Mac wanted me to help you. He thought that you might want to have photographs taken for any evidence that you find." Hawkes said as he approached Danny. He looked like hell, Hawkes thought. Danny's eyes were rimmed with red and he was slumped over like he didn't have enough strength to hold himself upright.

"Thanks Hawkes. All's I've found so far is the blood in the stairwell. I've marked them all, but didn't have a camera with me. How does it look upstairs? Could she have simply slipped her detail and be sitting somewhere drinking coffee oblivious to what is happening here?" Danny asked hopefully.

All hope was lost when Hawkes shook his head and said, "No man, that's not possible." Hawkes didn't want to say too much, heeding Mac's prior request that Danny not know how bad it looks.

Danny took a deep breath and said, "You're not going to tell me about it, are you? How bad it is. You're not going to say." Danny looked into Hawkes' eyes as he said this.

"No. I'm not," was the reply.

"Mac?"

"Yep. Look Danny, to be honest this is the best place for you. We don't have anything on this guy. We need a lead. We will either get it from the apartment of the escape route. If you said that there is blood on the stairs, then this is the most logical escape route. Let's see if we can help get Lindsay back."

Danny had looked away from Hawkes while he was speaking and had gone silent. Danny was just about to say something, when he noticed a few blood splatters about ten feet away. Danny became excited, because right next to the blood, was a set of tire tracks that looked to have been driven over a small puddle of blood about twenty feet from there. Danny took off at a run, Hawkes at his heels.

"Hawkes, take a picture of that. I want high resolution shots and they need to be clear and clear. This may be our lead." Danny said, his earlier weariness leaving him.

"You got it!" Hawkes said, excitement lacing his tone.

Three hours later, the entire crew had returned to the lab and converged on Mac's office for the first official discussion of the case. Danny was excited about the tire marks and was eager to return to the lab so that he could learn as much as he could. If Mac was going to keep aspects away from him, he was going to be damn sure that he was pulling his weight on what he was allowed to work on. He had to be on this case and didn't want to give Mac any reasons to pull him from it.

Just as Mac was beginning to brief the team on what was found in the apartment, Adam came dashing into the office. His face was white and he looked scared, or shocked. Danny couldn't tell which one.

"Adam, what's wrong?" Came Mac's voice after Adam burst into the room.

"It's Lindsay." Adam reported.

"Yes, I know this is hard because she is one of our own, but…" Mac started patiently.

Adam interrupted Mac, "NO! It's Lindsay. On my computer. I'm not sure how, but someone is streaming a live feed."

Silence followed this announcement, Stella recovered first, "Show me," was all she said.

Adam turned on a dime and jogged from the room, Stella following first, then Danny, Mac, Flack, and Hawkes. No one said a thing as they hurried down the hall to Adam's office.

He sat down behind his desk, with the others squeezing in behind. They all stared, silently because, there on the screen was Lindsay. She was being suspended from the ceiling by manacles clasped to her wrists and rope that ascended out of camera shot. The left side of her face appeared to have dried blood covering it and bruises had appeared across her left cheekbone. She was not conscious.