Xxxxx
"These people, they will go to the wall for you if you let them."
(Garret- Jump, Push, Fall).
xxxxx
Nigel was by nature not a violent man. That said, he was being pushed to the edge.
The test he was running was, well, a last resort. Something he'd made up after test after test had failed to tell him something that he hadn't known before he ran it. And going to Garret without anything new wasn't an option.
He was bent over with one hand on the worktable, the other occasionally ruffling his hair, or banging the table with the eraser of the pencil that he was currently chewing on. In reaction to the seriousness of his labor, and his devotion to finding answers, he had rolled up both his sleeves with typical Nigel flair. But that had been several hours ago. Before the forensics had failed him.
He had begged, pleaded, and provided the Boston PD crime lab with more than ample evidence of his brilliance to no avail. Jordan had finally gone in and came back with the note. The note that was resisting every kind of analysis Nigel knew.
The machine beeped at him, and the screen changed.
"Damn."
Xxxxxx
Kate's day wasn't going any better. She was at that moment trailing behind Jordan, past the crime scene tape, the reporters, and the cops. Her (new) car had broken down, and so she had been forced to ride with Jordan to the crime scene, an experience that had left her with a new appreciation of road rage. Kate had been known from time to time to exhibit some angry characteristics, yes, but she had never seen Jordan at full force. Unfortunately, Kate had good reason to fear that Jordan at full force added to morgue van was going to equal Medical Examiner Pancake.
Jordan was furious for unspecified reasons. Her anger manifested itself in her pointed steps, the sharp click of her heels on the cracking, pot-holed, and gray parking lot asphalt. She had pulled her hair back into a loose bun, and her bag was clutched in her hand and she identified herself to the police officers with a crisp voice that brooked no argument.
Jordan had never felt so useless in her life, the note was Nigel's business now (not that he had learned anything besides that the paper was HP and the pen, Bic), and as he failed to produce results it became apparent that the bullying she had done at the crime lab hadn't accomplished much besides relieving her anger. There was no body for her to find clues on, and more importantly, no way to help Garret.
Kate, who was used to being the angry one, was oddly silent as she followed in Jordan's wake.
The officer at the scene was Woody; he knelt beside the body of a young woman, warily watching Jordan's approach.
The woman had been stripped naked to reveal her well-proportioned body, and the pile of ash next to her seemed to answer the question of what had happened to her clothes. She was sprawled at an awkward angle across the faded yellow lines of the parking space, and the right side of her head lay in a puddle that had collected in one of the jagged potholes. Wet tendrils of hair stuck at odd angles across her eye and nose. She must have been wounded in that side of the head, because the puddle was now tinged red. Red-brown droplets led from the puddle to the girl's pale torso, across which was scrawled "Mad Max" in blood that had not yet dried.
Jordan crouched beside Woody, acknowledging his murmured "Hi" with a brief nod. Her face suffused momentarily with warmth and her posture had relaxed, but as she turned her attention again to the body her eyes and mouth hardened once more.
Kate had wasted no time in beginning to photograph the body, a task that she normally would have handed off to an underling, in this case Jordan. Something about Jordan's face warned her that this would not go well today. She mused that the baby was making her soft. She rationalized that pissing Jordan off would only lead to Jordan telling the entire morgue exactly where she had run into Kate, and therefore she was only being moderately considerate because Jordan held something over her.
Kate pointedly ignored the fact that she actually believed none of this.
Woody watched Jordan's anger mount as she surveyed the body. Wanting to get it over with he consulted his notes.
"Some kids who like to skate here found her about an hour ago. We assume her clothes are in that pile of ash there…"
Jordan had lifted the woman's head out of the puddle, and was gently probing a nasty wound on the side of her head with gloved fingers.
"Single shot. High caliber. Close range. Execution style. One entrance wound, and the bullet is probably still in there, because I don't see an exit wound. But that doesn't make sense, the bullet should have gone through and through at this range…." She paused to make a closer inspection. Kate came around and peered over the side of her shoulder.
"Those marks on the edge of the wound," Kate looked surprised, "It looks like the murderer, 'Mad Max' or whoever he is, dug in there with something. To get the bullet out probably. It didn't go through and through because it wasn't very high caliber at all, it just looks that way because the hole got enlarged."
xxxxx
Pleading a full bladder, Kate left trace at the earliest opportunity, followed by Jordan's knowing smile, and went searching for Nigel. She cornered him in the break room in front of Bug, Lily, and some new guy called Terrence (who was, Kate thought, the kind of man who should never have grown a beard) and called Nigel into her office. Seething at her presumption he followed her out of the room, down the hall, and into her office.
"What the hell?" He cried out when the door was finally closed behind them with a snap.
She refused to lose her cool, but she had put up with angry Jordan all morning. She was not about to put up with angry Nigel, too. For a moment she wavered, then she pressed her lips.
"Sit down."
"Why?"
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Just do it Nigel." It was a threat.
"No." Why must he always be so childish?
She did roll her eyes this time. "Nigel, just sit down."
"Why?"
She finally snapped. "Because I don't want to pick you up off the floor after I tell you I'm pregnant."
His voice was quiet. "You're…pregnant…" The question in his voice was barely audible over the shock.
"Yes." She searched his face for some sign of how he was going to react.
He didn't look at her, but twisted a pencil in his hands. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, Nigel." She responded slightly curtly, placing heavy emphasis on the first word. Softening a bit at his lost expression she walked over to him. He sat down on the edge of her desk with the air of a balloon that has been suddenly deflated.
"How long?"
"A little over a month."
The look he gave her was incredulous. "And you knew?"
She sighed patiently. "Look, Nigel, I realize that you aren't a doctor, but you must have realized by now that with ah unprotected sex there's bound to be…" she waved her hands a bit as she searched for the word "…consequences. I should have known it was bound to happen."
Nigel gaped at her. She may claim that it was a scientifically informed guess, but from that point forward he secretly considered it to be one more piece of evidence supporting the idea of "women's intuition."
xxxxx
Jordan's small bathroom was warm, steamy and smelled strongly of a mixture of bubbliscious and new shoes. This was the direct result of the pink foamy shaving cream she had smeared liberally over her legs. Something she had regretted instantly.
"Buy the cheapest shaving cream they sell," she had told Woody when he offered to grocery shop. "I don't need anything fancy."
It was a philosophy that had gotten her into trouble before; most memorably the juniper-scented, holiday-themed crap she had bought on sale sometime in January. But "Raspberry rain" had surpassed them all. Come to think of it, Jordan wasn't really sure she knew what raspberries were supposed to smell like. Not like this certainly.
In the safety and heat of her bathroom, seated on the edge of her bathtub, she allowed her mind to wander as she brought the razor in smooth straight strokes up her lower leg, and over her calf muscle, where it rasped slightly.
The body had been utterly without useable trace. Mainly because it appeared that someone had hosed her down, which explained the puddles in the parking lot. What remained unclear was how anyone could take a body to an abandoned parking lot, hose it down (the manner of hosing was also unclear, Bug suggested a self contained pressure sprayer), sign it "Mad Max" and then get the hell out without anyone noticing. The water used on her, Nigel determined, was from a nearby stream and had been stored in a plastic container. More useless knowledge that got them nowhere.
And they still had no idea who she was.
Jordan switched to the other leg.
Woody had left out several important facts about the skaters who had found the body, the most important of which was that they had an average age of eight. Woody had gently brought them in to the conference room of the morgue; it wasn't standard procedure, but he feared that the interrogation room down at the precinct would be a lot worse. Eight year old boys, he later explained, were not equipped to deal with bodies, let alone interrogation rooms, but had been delighted with the extra long ride in his squad car, and, though slightly traumatized, fascinated to see where "their" body had gone.
The most coherent of the boys was a sturdy dark haired boy named Avery. Seated in the leather chair in the conference room, legs dangling as he sipped from the hot chocolate Jordan had made him, he had explained that they often went to the lot to skate; their mother's couldn't see them there, and so they didn't have to wear helmets (Jordan had made a mental note to discuss head trauma with him at a later date).
He spoke with the whimsical punctuation of youth that places pauses where there would normally be flow and runs roughshod over such unimportant conventions as commas and periods, occasionally stopping briefly for a giant gulp of air and then continuing, undaunted, on. His style of speaking reflected in his body; he was restless in his chair and constantly shifting position.
During the part of the story where he described finding the body he was still, and the pauses were more frequent. They had nearly skated over her before they saw her.
They had seen no one at the scene. And when they had realized she was dead they had run like bats out of hell.
Jordan hummed softly as she showered off her legs and rinsed her razor.
Xxxx
Nigel was thoughtful the next day, twice he nearly ran into new-guy Terrence in the hallway, he clearly paid no attention in morning meeting, and he had lost a ballistics report. None of which pleased Garret at all. Already stressed from the lack of progress finding his daughter, he lost his patience in trace when Nigel inadvertently dropped a tray of instruments on Jordan, who was bending over "Mad Max's" body for what had to be the fiftieth time.
"Dammit, Nigel!" Garret roared, rubbing his scalp, "What the hell is going on with you?"
Jordan popped up from helping Nigel pick up the tools, Nigel's black haired head followed more slowly.
"I've just had a lot on my mind," he mumbled as he set down the tray of tools.
Jordan eyed him consideringly. "Have you had a talk with Kate recently?" She asked, amusement in her eyes.
"Yes!" He stared at her. "You knew? She told you? How did you know?"
Garret was staring at the two of them like they had both grown an extra head, "Is anyone going to tell me what's going on?" His voice held an edge.
"No." Nigel responded, still focused on Jordan. "How did you know?"
She smiled at him archly, "Women's intuition.".
