Sotto copertura

Chapter Nine: Emozione (That Screws With Your Mind)

By LoveAnimeForever

"Adam. You own a phone. This should have come to me directly. Immediately."

"Look, boss, I thought, since Sid would be heading down anyway… And-and-"

Stella chuckled at the lab tech's clumsy explanation. "Sid said to leave it to him, right?"

Vehement nod.

"Alright, show me."

Adam pushed his swivel chair to the computer and pulled up the files.

"It was really annoying getting past the Japanese firewalls. You know how they love their compu-"

"Sid told us, Adam." Mac smiled, amused.

"R-right. H-here. Yamamoto Kousuke and Kawasaki Yuusuke. Trace back a few years, and there are no records for these names in America, Japan, or anywhere else in the world. See? But, in Japan, about two years back, we have a Yamazaki Kousuke and Yuusuke, who disappear just like that."

"A legal name change."

Adam nodded.

"So, the question is, why?"

Back at home, Danny headed straight for the fridge the moment he and Don got the door open. He pulled out a few beers – more than "a few, really – and tossed some of them at his partner on the sofa. Half-hearted, lazy, catches received them, and he carried the rest of the cans in his arms. They popped one open each.

"Here's to misery loves company, Mess," Don muttered, and gulped down half the contents of the can at one go.

Danny joined him. "It's just too damn bad alcohol don't contain cyanide."

"That'd be making the killer's job too easy."

A dry laugh. "No, it'd be making our jobs too easy."

It wasn't often that Don saw his best friend so cynical. Sure, living in New York tended to make a person sarcastic, and if you got away with just that, most people considered you lucky. But maybe this had been the tipping point; hell, it was driving him up the wall, too. Maybe – probably – if they'd argued hard enough, Mac wouldn't have arranged the parole meeting. It was all so roundabout in his head, around the shock, that Don didn't know why this was so important. He only knew that it was somehow crucial, somehow the heaviest weight in his instincts and in Danny's as well.

Drifting through the absently gathering haze of his third or fourth beer, things started to order themselves into some semblance of reason. The parole meeting. They'd started investigating Herring in earnest only after that, hadn't they? So, maybe Herring knew about the meeting (Hays hadn't exactly kept it a secret, after all) and thought the couple had ratted on him. So, he killed them; to shut them up, to take revenge. Was that it? Would it make sense outside of his currently convoluted logic?

Beside him, Danny slumped a little deeper into the couch.

"It's not our fault," Don murmured, patting his partner on the shoulder.

It was a pointless attempt at comforting him, with a statement he didn't even wholly believe in, himself.

And then, callous as it sounded, because seeing Danny so beaten was just too unnatural to bear, "The killer probably targeted them even before we were in the picture, anyway."

His partner shook his head weakly. "We could've protected them. We could've… told… them. We could've been there, Don."

There was nothing Don could say to that, especially when it rang so perfectly true despite Danny's half-drunk slurring.

"We were takin' it too easy… We… gotta be… more careful… from now on…"

And there was nothing the cop could say to that, either; he nodded mutely.

On the one hand, if the most quick-tempered CSI had just determined to be more careful, there was obviously more than enough alcohol in their bloodstreams. Yet, the way Danny looked at it, if he could still think about responsibility, and the pain and guilt – and since Don was suffering, too – they obviously hadn't had enough beer. More, then, was in order. To drown it all out. All of it.

Eventually, they drank their way through all the beer in their fridge, and then they were well and truly drunk. But it was still there, and it had actually become clearer with the alcohol, that there was something else; they were guilty about something else, they were angry about something other than letting the killer get to Hays and McLean. But it was hard to get at, and even harder to understand. So they blocked it out, and pretended it was just the killer.

…Pretending was something that came all too easily nowadays.

"Bed," Danny grunted, and he got up, stumbled toward the bedroom.

He didn't make it far, barely catching himself against the wall when his foot dragged just enough against the carpet to make him lose his balance. A familiar warmth behind him, and the smell of even more alcohol; Don, trying to help him up, and then both of them just giving up and sliding down onto the floor against the wall. Tangle of limbs, both of them somehow sprawled against each other, but they managed to rearrange themselves into semblances of sitting positions.

As the dizziness started to clear, Danny vaguely began to remember the lab mourning together for Aiden after closing her case – Mac lending him a shoulder to cry on when Louie was hospitalized – sleeping with Rikki to blank out the image of Reuben in Sid's lab… Comfort came in so many forms, and none of them were available to either him or his partner right now. He slammed his head backwards into the wall in frustration, let out a quiet snarl.

…Touch, firm yet gentle, the same as when Dominick held Deyon around the hips.

Danny turned, and glazed met glassy. So different than the paternal warmth that Mac sometimes showed, here was something that was actually taking the pain away, instead of just being there as it drained on its own.

"Easy, Da-nny… It's- not… your f-ault…"

Danny shook his head slowly, careful not to upset the already dizzy world spinning in his blurring vision. Tears. "…Is."

Don's hand tightened unsteadily around his partner's shoulders. His brain was as much of a addled mess as his friend's; it was simply that his father had never encouraged any emotions other than temper and stubborn will, whereas - from what he knew about Danny - his family had been an ideal cooking pot for fierce, passionate emotions. Or maybe Danny was just like that.

And even though Don's thoughts made it sound like emotions were a bad thing, it was only because the police force, especially, required its officers to learn to detach themselves, whereas Mac and his labs encouraged instinct to a certain extent. They needed their instincts to figure out the kind of ridiculously difficult puzzles they were thrown, after all. And emotions and Danny didn't clash at all. But Don really had absolutely no idea what to do to comfort his friend, and that was on a normal basis; drunk, he didn't even want to think about it, for fear of making things worse. Thankfully, Danny seemed to get the message.

Sighing, he leaned into his friend's side. "S-o what, are we jus'… gonna… pass out here…?"

"I th-ink so."

They did.

The next morning, possibly the most memorable "morning after" either detective had had, started with Danny waking up, and finding himself curled against his partners chest, on the floor, with a pounding headache.

"Oh god, my head… Shit, Don, what the hell?"

Don started at the too-loud voice by his ear that triggered a similar throbbing in his temples. "Not so loud, Messer… Ugh. I think I was going to tell you the bed was mine."

"To hell with that." Danny scrambled up, nearly losing his balance just that many times. "Aspirin."

Like an undead risen from his grave, he staggered to the kitchen and ran through cupboard after cupboard until he found the pills he was hoping would rid them of their hangovers. Beside him, Don pulled glasses from their drawers and filled them with water. Automatically – because they both knew enough of drinking and mornings-after – they downed the aspirins and the water, then slunk back to the living room sofas to rest their disoriented bodies.

"I'm never doing that again."

Don chuckled. "You know you don't mean it, Mess. Feeling any better?"

"Ever so slightly… Thanks," – pause – "Flack."

What was this, now? Suddenly there was a vague ache, somehow there, something other than the still-strong, though receding, headache that rattled his brains. The loss of familiarity, of the comfort that had blanked out the panic of last night. His thoughts slowly righted themselves, clawing away at the diminishing drunk's haze, the image of Hays and McLean suddenly assaulting his vision. Suffocating. He turned to look at his partner, half-conscious beside him. Suffocating.

"Don."

"Yeah?"

Blue eyes met blue. Don looked up at the sound of his name, startled by how haggard his partner suddenly looked. Five minutes ago, the man had been fine – a little hung over, a little grouchy, but fine. Now… He wanted to discard his own uncertainty, if only to support his friend; and now he saw something of the same question in those blue eyes. Who knew that the way you addressed someone could have so much impact? Of course, there was something underneath that, too, but Don didn't like to look under rocks he couldn't lift with his own strength, and neither did Danny.

"…Nothing."

"Danny?"

The slight relief returning to those eyes. "It's nothing, Don. Nothing Danny Messer can't handle."

In quite a different morning atmosphere, Mac and Stella had caught Yamamoto and Kawasaki – now, they knew, the Yamazaki brothers – at the neighbourhood archery range. It had been part of Don and Danny's first report on their cell group, with the undercover detectives asking about interests and hence gleaning some information about habits. We do kyuudo, the brothers had told them, at the range every morning. It's a ritual for us.

Luckily for the CSIs, that ritual didn't change despite four murders in the cell group.

"Yamamoto Kousuke and Kawasaki Yuusuke?"

The two Japanese men, dressed in their traditional archer's garb, turned and greeted them with elegant bows. "Good morning. Is there something we can do to help you?"

"Yes, actually." Stella held out the printed copies of their name-change documents. "Could you tell us more about these?"

The brothers paled, yet managed to hold their ground. "We have never seen these documents before."

Mac flashed his badge.

Resignation. "Can we talk somewhere… more… ah…" Yamamoto looked askance at his brother. "Uchi tte iu no ha…"

Kawasaki rested a reassuring hand on his elder sibling's arm. "More, private."

The detectives allowed themselves to be led to the reception room of the archery range, and Stella waited there while Mac kept tabs on the brothers as they changed back into civilian wear. The four then headed for the Yamazakis' apartment, a few blocks down, and it was only after they'd settled in the living room that they were willing to talk.

"Do you like green tea?" Kawasaki, voice surprisingly serene, no doubt from the meditation during their earlier archery practice.

"No preference," Stella returned shrugging. "Why?"

But he'd already disappeared into the kitchen.

"I suppose you can always trust Japanese hospitality."

A wry smile from Yamamoto. "Certainly."

"Well then, I hope we can count on your answers as well." Mac placed the documents from earlier on the table.

Yamamoto slid them closer to him, inspecting. "Perhaps."

He sounded… Not guilty, per se, as most people did when confronted with this kind of situation. Instead, just – sad. Fearful, slightly, but mostly sad.

Kawasaki returned shortly with a tray bearing the promised green tea – and not the instant type, quite apparently, judging from the heavy aroma. He set the traditional tea pot and ceramic cups on the table, served it gracefully. He was slender, of a build Stella didn't see too often here in America, and she was struck with the image of a lady, really, in a kimono –

"Chado," he murmured reverently, as he sat beside his brother, "the tea ceremony. Perhaps the only thing I can do better than Kousuke."

"It's far too feminine for me, Yuusuke, you know that. Now, detectives, please. While we give you your answers."

"Honest answers, I hope."

Half-shrugs. Their culture was one that favoured white lies over blunt truth, after all. It was what had indirectly led to their being found out, too.

"Yuusuke and I are brothers, yes. Our parents separated when we were children, though- It wasn't a divorce, because it would've upset their parents… In any case, we were brought up separately, we didn't know… And now you're going to arrest us, I expect?"

"That's not why we're here, but why don't you count that as incentive?"

Quiet sigh, and the younger picked up, taking the documents from his brother to examine and occupy his fidgeting hands. "We actually met quite recently, at our dojo in Japan… We didn't think much of our shared surnames – Yamazaki is quite a common surname – and, well."

"You fell in love."

"…Whichever way you wish to put it, our parents wouldn't have it, of course. Thankfully, we were both past twenty, so we changed our names and came here."

"We heard people here are more lenient. Less judging."

"You heard correctly. We won't be bringing you in, but we do need you to answer a few more questions."

"Regarding?"

"Well, we'd thought your name changes might have some sort of link to the murders…?"

And it would have been beyond insensitive to continue. Both brothers averted their eyes, and Kawasaki replaced the documents on the table.

"We realise how it must look. Four people in our cell group, already, and we're still keeping to our routines… Not to mention we still had that to hide; but now we have nothing that could possibly help you."

"At a point in time, I would've mentioned… Jonathan-san and Randal-san got into a fight… But that's old news by now, huh."

"His parole officer contacted us."

"Expectedly."

"Well, thank you for your time, and for the tea." Stella offered the brothers a smile. "Our condolences, and…"

Mac finished the sentence for her; the words were generic, and not at all what she'd had in mind, but the tone was just about right. "Have a nice day."

Slightly disoriented by the greeting, the Japanese couple barely had the time to bow the detectives out before they were out of the door.

Author's Note:
Back from hiatus~ Thanks to all who waiter; hopefully this is still up to standard? ^.^"

Notes:
Louie getting hospitalized reference to CSI:NY 220, Run Silent, Run Deep.
Sleeping with Rikki reference to CSI:NY 411, Child's Play.