AN: Thanks so much for all the welcome back messages, I really appreciate every one of them. I want to say a special thank you to those who leave anonymous reviews because I don't reply directly to them, but I appreciate them just the same. It's just a matter of being prudent about who I reveal my e-mail address to, which I don't have to worry about with non-anonymous reviews when I can directly reply using FF's system.
Thanks as always to my awesome beta, Kerry Blue, without whom this latest chapter could not have gotten up so quickly. Disclaimers, as always, can be found in the first chapter. Enjoy!
What in the world was their family being dragged into? As Ella laid out all the information that they now had about the case, Don became more and more worried that they were all being drawn into yet another dangerous situation. It had been one thing when it was him and Mac and Danny and Lindsay and Stella and to a lesser degree Sheldon taking on these kinds of risks, but it was a whole other ballgame now that their kids were involved. And they had already taken a few hits this year with Ella and Kaile's serious injuries. Don was starting to wonder how much more their family could take.
He looked around Lindsay's office as the others discussed the case. With the growing size of their family they were really going to need to find a different place for these kinds of meetings, but for now they could still all fit into the space at least somewhat comfortably. In addition to all the family in the room, there was Jack and JD and Jack's mother. Shayna had even come which had surprised Flack a little. It was somewhat hard to accept that the babies of the family weren't really babies anymore. But beyond her age, Shayna had never really been interested in law enforcement in any way and didn't get involved in these types of family meetings. Don wondered if her sudden interest had anything to do with Devon and his thing for the FBI ballistics tech that had done so much for the case. Shayna may not have chosen law enforcement for a career, but she was just as protective as the rest of them when it came to the family, especially Devon. Those two had been nearly inseparable growing up.
Speaking of, where was Devon? Flack had shown up a little late, so he probably missed the explanation for his nephew's absence. Devon might not be law enforcement, but that hadn't stopped Dominic or Shayna from coming to the gathering, and besides, the meeting was mostly about trying to figure out who had a grudge against one or more members of the family and Devon could have ideas on that subject.
Something was giving Don an uneasy feeling. It started in his gut, right around the faded but still visible scar from his explosion experience all those decades ago. He knew it was likely just psychosomatic stuff, but rather than changes in weather causing an ache there, it was usually a bad feeling about something that was going on. He had felt the ache when he looked through the two-way mirror at the guy that would eventually murder Stella, had felt it again after Ella was shot this past summer and then when Kaile got tangled up in that serial murder case. It was a feeling he never ignored, but it rarely gave him clear direction on what was causing the alarms bells to go off in his subconscious.
Crossing his arms and leaning more fully against the wall, Don looked down at Shayna sitting on the couch next to him. She was going through a report which piqued his interest. "Whatcha got there, kid?" She didn't answer him, staring absently at the floor in front of her feet. Don lightly touched her shoulder. "Shayna."
She looked up, slightly startled. "Sorry, Uncle Don. I guess I zoned out there for a second."
"Care to tell me what's got you so distracted?"
"It's this list of people who have fingerprints that could fit the partial that Brandy found on one of the weapons," she said.
"Something catch your eye?" She might not be in law enforcement or trained as a forensic scientist, but Shayna was a smart woman and Don wouldn't put it past her to pick up on something that others had missed. She had good instincts and could have easily followed in her father's footsteps to the morgue or her aunts' and uncles' to the lab, but she had found her true love in treating animals and Flack couldn't begrudge her that.
"I think so, but I can't figure out what it is yet." She looked up at him, the frustration clear on her face. "You know that feeling when you just know you have the answer staring you in the face, but you can't grasp it?"
Don snorted. "Every day, kid." Detectives had to learn to live with that sensation early on in their careers or they would burn out from the seemingly endless frustration they encountered at times.
"So, anybody got anyone who could be this pissed off at them?" Don tuned back into the wider discussion going on in the room as Ella asked the question. He had to resist the urge to smirk. The better question for this group would be who didn't have someone who could be this pissed off at them.
"I'm thinking this has to be contained to the older generation," Jack spoke up. Flack was happy the man fit so easily into even these kinds of family situations. He would make a good addition to their group. "This had to have taken years of planning and execution. None of the second generation of this family have been in law enforcement long enough to engender that kind of hate with someone who has had enough time to pull off this extensive of an operation."
It was a good point, but Don was ready to play devil's advocate. "Then why would the tips come in to Ella and Kaile? And why would one of the weapons lead back to your father's death?"
"Any number of reasons," Ana stated, subtly backing up her fiancé. Flack succeeded in containing his smile at her tone, but others in the family didn't fare as well and had to cover as best they could. "One, it could be that someone is ticked at one of you guys but decided to get at you with your kids. Two, it could just be that you don't fit what he needs. Uncle Sheldon has never been a street cop who would do busts and find guns like this, Mom and Dad and Uncle Mac haven't been on the street since the early part of their careers, and even you Uncle Don haven't been on the street in a long time. Sending them to you guys directly would have given you all too much to work with, so he hides them somewhere and then gives anonymous tips about other illegal actions going on in those locations so that we just stumble across the guns and can't trace how they got there."
"Okay, that all makes sense," Mac agreed. "So who have we ticked off that has the resources to accomplish something like this? It has to be someone we didn't manage to put away or who is out on parole because I don't think anyone could pull something off this well from behind bars."
"I don't know, Mac," Danny disagreed. "We've seen cons pull off some impressive stuff from inside. Remember that guy who got a girl to fake a crime similar to his so that he could claim that the real perp was still loose?"
Don snorted. "Yeah, and I remember a case where a guy was using his wife to run his drug operation while he was behind bars. It was hard to nail them for it, too, what with the whole spousal privilege issue."
"Can we stop the trip down memory lane and return to the case at hand?" Don raised an eyebrow at Ella's tone. He could guess what had her on edge and that kept him from commenting on her attitude. Her twin sister on the other hand had no problem calling her on it.
"Calm down, Ella. I know the Palmer thing has gotten you all agitated, but that doesn't mean you should take it out on-"
"Oh God, that's it!" Shayna suddenly stood from the couch, one piece of paper in her hands and the rest falling from her lap to the floor.
Sheldon looked questioningly at his oldest child. "What's 'it,' honey?"
Shayna walked around behind Lindsay's desk. "May I?" she asked Ella who had been standing behind the desk while giving her layout of the case.
"Have at it," Ella replied, stepping away as Shayna sat down in Lindsay's chair and began furiously typing away at the computer.
"I was staring at these printouts trying to figure out what was bothering me," Shayna started as she continued to type and manipulate the mouse, oblivious to the bemused/intrigued/worried looks she was receiving from everyone else in the room. "And everything you guys were saying was running through my head and suddenly it all just clicked," she said, simultaneously punching a button that brought up what she had on the computer onto the large screen Lindsay had near her desk.
Shayna had brought up a newspaper article. Don's stomach clenched as he read the headline and realized what the article was about. He glanced at the date. What did a twenty-year-old article about Stella's death have to do with what they were discussing?
Everyone else obviously had the same question running through their minds and Don saw more than one person stiffen and visibly withdraw from the pain that evoking these memories inevitably caused. Flack knew he must look much the same way and worked at not clenching his jaw tight enough to break his teeth.
"Look, it all fits," Shayna explained. "You all were figuring it had to be someone ticked off at the first generation of our family, but for some reason using the second generation to get back at you. But what if this psycho is ticked at both generations?" She pointed at the screen. "Aunt Stella's death directly involved both generations. Stella was the one who arrested Maurice Palmer to begin with and Ella's testimony put him on death row."
"Whoa, hold on, Palmer? Like you just said, he's on death row, Shay. As much as I wouldn't put it past that scumbag, the restrictions are even tighter for death row inmates and I just don't see him being able to pull it off," Don protested. But his gut was telling him that his niece was on to something. He just really, really didn't want her to be right because that would mean bringing up all kinds of horrible memories for all of them.
"I don't know how much Palmer is involved or if he's even involved at all, but it does ultimately go back to him. Think about it, the guns are significant because they are all weapons that were used to kill cops or agents but weren't found after the crime was committed. Aunt Stella was a cop killed with a gun that was never recovered." Shayna slapped the paper she still had onto a digital reader and put the image up on the screen alongside the newspaper article. "But this was what did it." She highlighted a name and brought it forward, one Carter Milton. "His name on that report of fingerprint matches was pinging something in my head and then when Ana mentioned Palmer it all came together. Over the years I've read many accounts of the events around Aunt Stella's death so that I could understand what happened without having to ask you guys to relive it."
Don winced. They probably should have all talked about things more with the kids, but emotional availability wasn't exactly the strong suit of any of them. Sheldon and Tessa were probably the best at it, but their kids had been so young when Stella died, Carla not even born yet, that it was likely something they didn't want to burden them with since they didn't actually remember it. Flack could totally buy that Shayna would do some of her own digging and wondered if Devon had done much the same or if he had pulled details from his parents.
He was brought back to the present as Shayna continued. "I was rereading some of them not that long ago and for some reason the name stuck in my head." This time she highlighted a portion of the newspaper article and brought that forward and there it was in black and white. Carter Milton. In a flash Don was thrust back into his memories, the face of an angry kid staring at him from across the courtroom. Normally he might have had sympathy for the family of a criminal if they had been innocent bystanders, but Flack had been too consumed by his grief over Stella's death to feel much of anything else. He had endured questions later from unscrupulous reporters wondering how Don felt about being part of putting a boy's father on death row, and it had been all that he could do to keep from yelling at them that maybe they should ask if that piece of shit felt anything about killing not only a good cop, but someone who a lot of people loved as a family member and as a friend. The last thing Flack remembered hearing about the kid was that he had moved away with his mother some time ago. She had already been divorced from Palmer, hence the son's different last name, and Don seemed to recall that she had actually been a witness for the prosecution in Stella's case.
You could have cut the tension in Lindsay's office with a knife, though it may have needed to be a heavy-duty steak knife to make it through the pain that was building. No one had even questioned Shayna's conclusions. What were the odds that it would just be coincidence that the fingerprint of the son of the man that killed Stella would show up on a gun that was used to kill a cop and then dropped in their family's lap?
The silence was finally broken by a ringing phone. Ella reached down and flipped it open, her face a stone mask. Don didn't envy whoever was on the other end of that phone. Out of all them, Ella had to be taking this the hardest considering she actually lived through the shooting firsthand. He wouldn't doubt she could still hear the shots that had killed Stella.
"Messer." She listened, her face darkening even more which Don wouldn't have thought possible. "Put him on the phone." A moment passed before Ella spoke again. "Don't 'hey' me. I'm putting you on speaker so you can explain your stupidity to the entire family." She brought the phone away from her ear and pressed a button. "Go ahead, Devon, explain to everyone where you are."
"New Jersey." Flack thought he might have needed to clean out his ears. Did Devon really say he was in New Jersey?
Evidently he had because Danny was all over his youngest son. "What the hell are you doing in New Jersey?"
"Following a lead. Look, I had Brandy call because I think I found something that could be useful and I thought Ella should know sooner rather than later. Can we save the lectures for another time?"
"No, we can't, because you haven't been here and you've missed some pretty important developments," Ella bit out. "This case has just blown up in our faces and it is most assuredly not the time for you to be out on your own with just a lab tech when you can barely walk!" Her voice rose as she talked, the end of her rant ending in a shout. When Devon didn't respond she spoke again in only a slightly lower tone of voice. "Devon, did you hear me?"
"Yeah, I heard you. Look, I gotta go, sis." Don was incredulous. He had to go? What the hell? "Tell Aunt Claire I'll see her soon. Love ya, bye." He hung up and there was a stunned silence in the room for about two whole seconds before everyone started bolting for the door and the elevator beyond.
JD was obviously bewildered, but he followed Ella without comment. Deborah Dent wasn't as willing to go quietly. "Okay, what the hell did I miss?" she asked as she and Don squeezed onto the elevator with everyone else and the doors started to close.
"Claire was Mac's wife a lifetime ago. She died September 11, 2001. Something happened and Devon was telling us that he was in danger and that he thinks he could be meeting Mac's wife in the afterlife soon." Don looked around at the grim faces of his family that confirmed they had all reached the same conclusion. Lindsay was on her phone to have someone trace where Devon had been calling from while Mac called for transportation and backup. Flack just tried to breathe through the pain in his chest. He hated being right, he knew the ache under his scar had meant something. Damnit, how much was their family expected to go through?
P.S. No one tried to guess the secret song after the last chapter, so I'll give a hint now. The song felt perfect to me as an influence partly because of the fact that Devon is a sailor. :) (See the author's note in the previous chapter if you have no clue what I'm talking about.)