*** A visit to the crime scene and plan of action. No spoilers, gruesome discriptions of crime scenes and injuries...beware. ***

Thursday 5:20 am

Stan and Marshall parked a block away from Martin's house and regarded the silent, dark abode. On the way over, Marshall had asked Stan about the "hon" comment he had heard Stan utter over the phone to Eleanor. His boss gave him a dark look and challenged, "Do I ask about you and Mary?" Marshall, properly put in his place and understanding the subtle threat, smiled and said, "Point taken." The rest of the ride was spent determining a plan of attack for when they arrived at Martin's. Now they were both anticipating the various scenarios they may face inside the house. Nothing looked amiss.

"Mary may not be remembering correctly," began Stan, "he may just be tucked in bed sleeping like a baby."

"Well...let's go see what we see," said Marshall, "but keep it quiet."

The sky was just beginning to lighten in the east as the two men stealthily approached the house, watching for any movement in or around the property, and watching for nosy neighbors. As they climbed to the porch, they noticed the front door slightly ajar. All the curtains were pulled tightly over the windows. Game on, they knew, as they looked at each other and drew their weapons. They entered the house silently and the smell hit them. They had both witnessed enough crime scenes and traumas to know that smell…a particular mix of blood and urine that reeks of death. Marshall expected a bed scene, and knowing his duty to Mary's witness, shut the front door with his hip and flipped on the light switch with his sleeve.

It was hard for their brains to process what they were seeing. Stan felt as though he didn't know where to look first, and once his eyes landed on an object they immediately skipped to the next because of the unpleasantness. It took a few minutes for the whole tilted tableau to right itself his brain. Even in their line of work, having seen their fair share of dead bodies…freshly dead and mostly cured…both Stan and Marshall were shocked by the scene in front of them.

The blood was almost decorative…arcs and splatters covered walls and parts of the ceiling. The floor of the dining area was awash in a pool of blood that had begun to seep into the edges of the carpet, and a body lay in the middle of it. Part of that pool had been disturbed and smeared into a trail leading towards the door. There were smaller areas of blood stains on the carpet throughout the front room. The second body lay about eight feet from the first near the smeared blood trail and a large area of blood was soaked into the carpet surrounding it. Marshall noted quite a number of bloody boot prints leading to and from the dining area into the front room…and his eyes fell on three bloody barefoot prints starting at the end of the previously noticed smeared blood trail and leading to the front door. Mary's. He looked behind him at the front door and saw the hand prints on it and the jamb. She had escaped this…somehow. His gut twisted.

"Well, I think Martin is dead." understated Stan. "Yeah…." drawled Marshall, "dead all over the place." Martin's body was the one in the dining room, his throat had been cut so deeply that his head was barely attached to the rest of his body. That action was the likely cause of most of the artwork on the walls and ceiling in that room. The other man was unknown to them and Marshall gingerly picked his way over to the body, careful not to step in any evidence or leave any behind. They didn't necessarily want the cops to know they had been here. The man was wearing a ski mask and gloves and had a vicious looking stab wound to his throat. Judging by his contributions to the bloody scene, he had bled out while moving around. There were a number of blood pools leading up to where he lay. There was a wicked looking hunting knife on the ground at the very edge of the large pool of blood which Stan and Marshall assumed was the murder weapon for both victims. Knowing the unknown victim hadn't cut Martin's throat after being stabbed in the carotid himself...and knowing Martin didn't stab the unknown man after being nearly decapitated, they both concluded the same thing; Mary had been in that pool of blood and had stabbed the unknown man then left out the front door. They shared a look. Marshall pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, lightly stepped over to the knife and wiped the handle clean of prints. He then rolled it into the pool of blood and back out to where it had fallen. "They won't pull her prints off of that." he thought with satisfaction.

Marshall then moved back to the unknown man and a glint of metal caught his eye just under the edge of the man's jacket near his belt. He had an idea of what it was, and when he pulled back the jacket he hissed in a breath as he revealed a badge. FBI. "God dammit," whispered Marshall, as he noted the number and replaced the hem of the jacket, "not these frickin' guys again."

"This is bad, Marshall," stated Stan, "real bad. It looks like the feebs were the killers. I'm pretty sure there were more than just this guy, had to have been for Mary to look the way she does. They must not have known who she was or we'd looking at parts of her on the floor too, but when they find out she got away we're going to have some serious issues." He blew out a breath and made a decision. "Our best bet is to stay far away from this, even though we have a dead witness. We'll have to try to keep our prior knowledge of this to ourselves and let the PD notify us when they run the prints." He was looking around the scene for anymore obvious forensic evidence related to Mary. "They're going to find Mary's prints, no doubt, but hopefully the forensics will take a day or two. We have to delay her statement for as long as possible to give her time to get any memories back and for us to dig into this. If, by some miracle, they don't find any of her prints, it'll take at least a week for her DNA to hit their radar." Stan was smudging the hand prints on the door while wearing a pair of latex gloves he had pulled from his pocket. It left the print intact, but ruined any details on ridges and whorls that would identify the owner easily. He wasn't going to feed Mary to the CSI techs. Marshall quickly glanced around for Mary's shoes and socks, but didn't see them and wasn't going to chance leaving evidence behind to search for them. The objects wouldn't immediately appear significant, he hoped. They made sure they had not left any forensic clues behind, turned off the light and returned quietly to their car. Stan called in anonymously to 911 with a throwaway phone. They drove back to Mary's, both caught up in their own thoughts of how stupidly complicated and possibly dangerous this was going to get.

Thursday 7:30 am

Stan and Marshall walked into Mary's house wearily. They had not slept more than a few hours the night before, and after an emotionally draining night and stressful morning, were exhausted. Eleanor had made some coffee and she and Dr. Rekha were sitting at the kitchen table chatting quietly. She could tell by their faces that what they had found was not good. Stan silently cued Eleanor to not mention their morning errand, and she then made the introductions as they all sat around the table.

"So," asked Marshall, "is she going to be o.k.?"

"She is one tough woman," began the doc, "I've seen beatings half this bad end up in the ICU for a week." Her phone rang and she picked it up immediately, "What have you got, Gary?" Listening for a few moments, she then wrote down a few notes and hung up after thanking the caller. "Just what I thought." she murmured.

"Mary's hard to keep down," said Stan, "You probably already know that she doesn't remember how she got here. We discovered she had driven herself here from wherever this attack occurred. Looking the way she does and given her mental state...how is that possible?"

"First off," Dr. Rehka began, "she's a trained professional in survival situations, yes?" The men nodded. "Training and instinct do take over in many situations, and I'm sure we've all heard the stories of people doing amazing things when they are in life and death struggles. Eleanor gave me a basic rundown on her personality and she doesn't seem like one to panic when the chips are down."

"No," agreed Marshall, "she's been in similar situations before and kept her head." He was thinking about Spanky.

"Well, I think that may be the underlying cause of her ability to survive what she did and then escape in a way that brought her back here." Dr. Rehka sat up and filled in some of her background for the two men, "I don't know how much Eleanor told you about me, but I've been working with the federal government for twenty years. I specialize in combat and captive injuries. My subspecialty, though, is the study of injuries associated with traumatic interrogation techniques."

"You mean torture?" asked Stan, wondering why she was telling them this. He had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"They tell us not to call it that anymore...not politically correct." She obviously had little respect for "they", "but, yes, torture. I sent a sample of Miss Shannon's blood to the lab with a suspicion, and the results that just came in confirmed it. I think can give you an idea of what happened to Mary last night, but I can't hazard a guess on the why. That's your job."

Marshall was sure he didn't want to hear this...really didn't want to hear this. The words "Mary" and "torture" should not be used in the same conversation unless he was going to be stuck in a car with her for more than four hours. He looked up to see the people at the table staring at him. He knew they were waiting for him to make a decision as to whether the doc would relay the information she had for them. "We need to know what happened in order to find out who did this," he reluctantly said, and encouraged the doctor to continue, "please, let us know what you know."

She began, "There are two problems with interrogating a subject: one is that they fight back and the other is that they die too soon. Crude, but succinct. The plan is to always keep them non-combative and responsive to pain. This is usually done with a combination of drugs. When I examined Mary, I noticed two things that immediately struck me as odd. One: she has absolutely no memory of the attack. Her memories end at around eight last night and pick up around four this morning. She doesn't have a head wound that would be serious enough to cause that profound of memory loss, nor does her psychology lead me to believe she would forget something just because it was traumatic." The doctor was watching the reactions of the people around the table. She made a mental note that the tall Marshal was especially close to Mary...the emotions played out on his face were telling. She continued, "The second odd thing is that Mary has no defensive wounds. She never fought back."

"Are you saying she was unconscious for the whole thing?" Stan was confused.

"No," answered Rehka, "there wouldn't have been any point to her injuries if she'd been unconscious. The pattern and nature of her injuries point to a plan to inflict pain over a period of time. What I'm saying is that she was drugged in such a way to keep her awake enough to react to the pain, but not so awake as to be able to overpower her attacker. Her blood tox screen showed what I expected to find; a pair of drugs remaining in her system which would achieve this goal. It's a common pairing for this type of activity." She pulled out the paper she had put her notes on. "The victim is dosed with a hypnotic, in this case rohypnol. You may know it as GHB. Given orally, it's the longer acting drug and keeps a baseline of lethargy. This is then topped by intermittent, small doses of a powerful stimulant to bring the victim into states of hyperawareness when painful stimuli are applied. The professionals use cocaine. It's easy to administer and is very predictable. The subject never becomes unconscious from the hypnotic because of the stimulant dose, but they never become overly combative from the stimulant due to the underlying hypnotic in their system. An added bonus is the amnesiac effects of the hypnotic." The expressions on the faces of her listeners ranged from confusion to disbelief. She continued, "Mary's blood tox screen showed drug levels of rohypnol pointing towards a dose around eight last night, and drug levels of cocaine pointing towards the last dose around two this morning. I think, and this is just a theory, that the last dose of cocaine was too big and enabled her to overpower enough people to get away and left her alert enough to drive with a rote destination of her house. Unfortunately, people drive high on coke all the time...it's not that hard. Her injuries wouldn't have slowed her down in that state. Once she was home, the cocaine was wearing off and she became unconscious from the rohypnol until she awoke naturally...that was around four this morning."

Stan was rubbing his face and angrily said, "This doesn't make sense! Why would they torture Mary? What information could they've possibly wanted?"

Marshall spoke after a moment, "Stan, they didn't want information from Mary. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time and they didn't even know who she was...they used her to get information from...someone else." He remembered they weren't alone, "I bet they left thinking the last guy would clean up and Mary did what she does best...kicked somebody's ass." He got up from the table and moved to the couch. As if moving away from the source of information would make it less painful. He looked at the doctor with tired eyes, "So, all her injuries weren't inflicted at the same time. They occurred over a span of six to seven hours?"

"Yes," she went on, "the oldest injuries, her face and first taser burn, occurred about twelve hours ago. The freshest wounds, some of the ligature marks around her neck and two more taser burns, occurred about five hours ago. The other injuries were sustained between those two endpoints." She launched into the plan of care for Mary's injuries, "The laceration to her head required two stiches but will be fine, she has deep bruising to her face, left shoulder and clavicle, right ribs and thigh and right hip. I suspect the right iliac crest...the thin part of the pelvic bone we call the hip bone...is fractured. I'm sure the left hand and fingers are broken in multiple places. She needs to come in for an x-ray to confirm these either later today or tomorrow...just give me call when you want to come. Try to keep her off her feet for a few days. That pelvic fracture needs to get a head start on healing before she's moving around too much. She can walk short distances, but nothing crazy. I splinted the hand and it'll be a few days before I can cast it due to swelling." She took a deep breath and finished, "Do you have any questions? Is there anything else I can do for you all?"

The room was completely silent.

Eleanor had already heard about the injuries, but had thought they were all sustained during a single attack. She was stunned. No one should have to go through that.

Stan just shook his head and rubbed his face. "Jesus." he whispered and Eleanor layed her hand on his knee for comfort.

Marshall slowly stood up and softly said, "I'm just going to go sit with her for a little bit." and turned to walk to the back bedroom.

"I gave her a strong pain injection, Marshal," Dr. Rekha informed him, "she'll be asleep for a while."

"That's good." was all he could say. "Can I get one too?" he thought… "this hurts like a bitch."

He stood at the side of her bed and looked down at her, trying to find a patch of skin that wasn't tortured in some fashion. "Seven hours…with no one to help her…wondering if anyone was going to come for her…if she was going to die alone…" his thoughts swirled around and he suddenly noticed the feel of tears on his cheeks. He pulled a chair around to where he could sit and touch her. Taking her right hand between his two larger hands, he kissed her fingertips and murmured, "I'm so sorry, Mary…I'm so sorry I wasn't there to save you. You had to do it all alone again and it's making my heart break...Please forgive me." His murmurs were accompanied by silent tears. He worked on slowly pulling himself together and calmed, purpose in his mind and revenge in his heart. "I'm going to find who did this to you and destroy them with my bare hands…I swear that to you." He noted that she was wearing his tank top and it made his heart hurt just a little more. He gently leaned over and placed a soft, lingering kiss on her lips. She shifted slightly and muttered, "Marshall…don't leave…" not really awake, just a reflexive response to his kiss. "Never...You are mine and I will never leave you." he promised, and waited until she was back in a deep sleep before releasing her hand and walking back out to the living room to begin the hunt.

*** I rewrote this one a number of times and still don't thinks it's quite right...but I hope you like it! I love Marshall and Stan fudging the crime scene evidence...Not enough to cause suspicion, just give them some time to mount their defenses and protect Mary. Cases of torture in this fashion are documented in medical papers...I didn't even have to make it up! Can you imagine Mary jacked up on coke? yikes! Marshall made me cry at the end :( Please review and stay tuned...the hunt is on! ***