Chapter Thirty-Three

Emily

"Hey babe," I say walking out to the living room. "What do you think, this lettering or this one?" I show him two different fonts for Thomas's room. When my brother comes to New York when Thomas is born, he is going to paint Thomas in a fancy font on the wall above his crib.

"I like the second one. Why are you asking my opinion?"

"Because this is your son too."

"Except when he kicks too much, then he's just my son."

"And when he's sleeping like right now, he's mine," I say smiling. I bend over and I kiss Don. "I'm going to make dinner, what do you want?"

"I don't care." I shrug.

"Breakfast for dinner it is."

As I'm cooking, Don comes up and wraps his arms around me and he starts kissing my shoulder.

"Hey babe, are you still in that stage in your pregnancy where all you want to do it have sex?" He thrust his hips into me and I push back, getting hot.

"Mhmm," I say tipping my head to the side. His lips glide from my shoulder to my neck and to my ear lobe as he bites it softly.

"You are so sexy," he murmurs in my ear. "Hm, I love you," he says as his hand trails up to my breast to squeeze it then fidle with my nipple.

"Oh Don." I start to breath heavily, pushing my breasts into his hands. Then the phone rings. "...putain te moques de moi?" I say under my breath. He sighs and drops his hand.


I'm at the scene taking photos of where the body landed. And there's nothing there.

"Where's the body?" I say under my breath. There's a bunch of blood but no body.

"Flack said there were no reports of anyone running, walking, limping or even crawling away from the scene," Hawkes tells me.

"A guy falls 20 stories onto a public street and no one saw anything?"

"It's the middle of the night, Financial District- it's a ghost town." I chuckle. "So far, seems Dunbrook's our only witness." Hawkes bends down and picks up something. "It looks like we've got brain matter. So given the height of the fall, force of the impact, diameter of the spatter, there's no way the vic could have survived."

"So where is he?" I ask.


It's morning now and Hawkes and I are back out here. "Got a couple of teeth. A bicuspid, incisor."

"Our vic probably hit chin first, force knocked them right out. Now, the blood over here is inconsistent with the spatter pattern. There is a slight tread mark. Possibly from the toe of shoes. It's an odd angle, though. It's as if somebody tapped our vic's bloody feet onto the sidewalk." I say standing back up with Sheldon's help.

"First piece of evidence that someone removed the body; but why?"

"Maybe our vic's identity incriminated his accomplice. I-I just I don't see any drag marks, footprints there's no evidence to indicate somebody else was here."

"Yeah, but there's got to be. Officer Liu?" Hawkes says walking away. I stand there and I hear the subway and I see a garbage bag fill up with air, making it look like a polar bear and it's got blood on it. "You okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, hold on. You got to wait for it."

"For what?" Hawkes asks. It happens again. "A polar bear in the middle of New York City. Global warming's worse than I thought." I laugh.

"It's trash bag art. Basically, people create all kinds of creatures-dogs, giraffes. They tie them to the subway grates and passing trains fill them with life. This print here could be evidence of our accomplice."

"Maybe. Car could have driven up, got into the backseat, opened the passenger door, but as he dragged the body, got caught up on the bag, leaving the bloody print, loaded the body, and then drove off. You know what they say. One man's trash is another person's art."

"Or another woman's evidence," I say smiling.


We head back to the lab and I lay out the polar bear and I get the spray, confirming it's blood and scan it.

"So I hear our only witness is a polar bear?" Danny asks coming in with his evidence.

"Yeah, a very uncooperative polar bear. This hand print is fragmented. Fingerprints are smudged. It's going to take a little time."

"All right, well, I took a look at the box cutter from Dunbrook's office; found fabric fibers from his suit. So it looks like the attack weapon, no prints. But I did find traces of sucrose on the handle."

"Sugar, huh? What else you got?"

"Well, we got a biometric lock that smells like strawberries. I don't know, maybe Dunbrook pissed off a pastry chef?"

"Maybe. Because nothing in this case adds up. We've got a guy who gets into an ultra-secure building, bypasses a biometric lock and attacks Dunbrook with nothing more than a tool you can get at a hardware store."

"Well, maybe the box cutter was for something else."


A few hours later, a body surfaces and Hawkes calls me down to check it out.

"Hey, Harbor Division Police called it in. I think this might be the guy that attacked Dunbrook. Injuries are consistent with a significant fall."

"No chance he's a jumper, maybe from a bridge?"

"I don't think so. Glass fragments most likely came from him crashing through a window. The facial injuries suggest he collided with something hard."

"Subway grate."

"Looks like he hit face-first. This type of trauma indicates that he may have been slightly vertical when he fell. Since most dead bodies fall horizontally, he was must likely alive when he went through the window."

"Supports Dunbrook's version of the events. Suspect fell through the window during the struggle. Somebody did a pretty thorough job searching his clothes. I take it we didn't get an I.D. on him?"

"Pockets were already turned out when he was pulled from the water. Don't expect to get anything from fingerprints. Take a look." Hawkes pulls up the hand of the body after we crouch down and he shows me the fingers.

"It looks like his fingertips were snipped off."

"Whoever dumped him definitely wanted his I.D. to remain a mystery."


I'm back at the lab and I'm walking out of the locker room after using the bathroom when Sid comes to find me.

"Facial reconstruction will take some time, but I brought the vic's last meal. It was ingested very close to T.O.D."

"That could help us determine where he was before he broke into Dunbrook's office. Yeah, I'm not sure what they're made of, but they did give off a distinct strawberry scent." Sid hands me evidence and I put it under a magnifine glass.

"Danny mentioned smelling the same scent at Dunbrook's office."

"Maybe some type of candy?"

"I see ridge detail there. What kind of candy has a fingerprint?" I put the candy on and I scan them. It's a match to Ann Steele. I go straight to Mac with this.

"You found Ann Steele's fingerprints in the vic's stomach?" Mac asks.

I nod. "Our attacker's last meal was made up of gelatin, sugar, and strawberry flavor. All you'd need to do is get a good set of Ann Steele's prints, create a 3-D mold pour in the gelatin, let it harden and voila, an all-access pass."

"The chemical makeup of the gelatin would allow the intruder's body heat to seep through, but prevent any oils or epithelials from being left behind."

"Right, plus the sugar prints wouldn't have left any discernible ridge detail on the glass. And once the attacker gained access, he ate the evidence," I say.

"That explains why Danny smelled strawberry on the biometric locks and found sugar on the box cutter and how a dead woman opened that door."

"Seems to support Dunbrook's story that somebody broke into his office."

"The question is, where'd find Ann Steele's fingerprints to make a mold in the first place?" Someone comes in with a file and hands it to Mac.

"Here you go."

"Thanks."

"What is it?" I ask.

"Flack red-flagged Dunbrook's financials. Ann Steele used to be on his payroll," Mac tells me.

"Okay, that makes sense. She's a fixer, and Dunbrook's the type to pay someone like Steele. Maybe she was working with him to shut down somebody he had a problem with," I say.

"Or that person had a problem with Dunbrook and Steele never had a chance to finish her job." Mac's phone rings. "The chief."

"Good luck." My phone starts vibrating. "Hello?"

"Late lunch?" I hear Don ask.

"Yes please. Meet you downstairs in ten?"

"You got it. I also have some information for Mac."

"Kay, I'll take it and then give it to him. I love you."

"I love you too."


"Emily," I look up and Mac is coming towards me. "I need you to look at this. Determine what kind of gun it was." I nod and I take the evidence. I look at it.

"Bullets a .38. It's pretty damaged. May be able to find some usable stria."

"Any word from Flack?"

"Yeah. He's checking surveillance and running plates. It's very strange, nobody saw the shooter."

"Or convenient."

"Mac, Dunbrook may have thrown somebody out the window, but he certainly didn't shoot at himself."

"I know, but my gut tells me he's hiding something."

"Whatever his involvement, there's a very real possibility that whoever took that body may still want Dunbrook dead."

"We need I.D. on our vic."


About fifteen minutes later, Mac calls me, Danny, and Sheldon into the conference room to go over some evidence.

"Agents Walsh and Johnson approached me at the armored car heist six months ago. They wanted to know about Ann Steele's flash drive."

"Steele was killed over the information on that drive. When it was in our possession, I got a look at it."

"When we recovered the drive, it went into the property warehouse and was stolen."

"And the theft of the flash drive was an inside job. Kevin Cross, a property clerk, took it," I say, remember that.

"And then he turned up dead." Mac says. ".38 slug in his forehead. Ann Steel's flash drive nowhere to be found. Walsh and Johnson were across the street surveilling Cross' murder investigation."

"The FBI has the resources to get a hold of Ann Steele's prints and to engineer them out of gelatin, but why would they illegally break into Dunbrook's office and attack him?" I ask.

"The box cutter," Mac says. "Like you said, Danny, maybe it was for something else. I don't think Walsh went into Dunbrook's office to attack him. He and Johnson were looking for something; the same thing they were looking for when they picked me up."

"Ann Steele's flash drive. Why did the FBI think Dunbrook had it? And why do they want it?"

"Let's ask them," Mac says.


I continue looking at the bullet while Mac is away, until I have to use the ladies room again.

"Are you kidding me right now Thomas? I just went pee like an hour ago," I say to my stomach. I get my phone out.

'This kid needs to go. My bladder can't take it anymore.' I get a text back from Don when I walk into the stall.

'You just want to meet him now rather than later.'

'Well that too.' I wash my hands when I'm done and Don texted me back.

'What are you working on?'

'I was looking at a bullet but I didn't find anything. You?'

'Just researching at this point, got some unis watching Johnson's place. I'm leaving soon, I think. My day started early, it's getting cut early.'

'Lucky. Mac has me working so much.'

'Tell him you need a couple days off.'

'After this case, I just might.'

"Hey Emily, you get anything from the bullet I found at the press confence?" Mac asks as he starts to walk next to me when I walk out of the locker room.

"No, it's too damaged. No way to run it through IBIS."

"What about Johnson's location?"

"Don's got two unis on his house and an APB out on his car. You still think that Walsh and Johnson went after Dunbrook to get the flash drive?"

"Yeah, but why would Dunbrook want it?" He asks. I shrug. I should just stop because he's asking them rhetorically but wants an answer that I just don't have.

I walk into a lab where Danny is working. I sit.

"Hey, what you got there?"

"The future of Dunbrook Media." He slides the paper to me and I hold it up. "I recovered this at the crime scene in Dunbrook's office. The LCD is like an electronic billboard. You can have three advertisements where you only normally could have one. A real moneymaker, you know? So I pulled the evidence from the Kevin Cross file, our property clerk. Now,he was shot with a Smith & Wesson .38 Special. And look at the trace we collected from his wound."

"Battery acid, polyethylene, black dye, titanium dioxide. There's about a thousand uses for this stuff, right?" He nods.

"Make it a thousand and one. It's also used in electronic ink technology. E-Ink for short. Dunbrook's company's been doing the tech on this magazine cover for the last year. The LCD contains microcapsules, okay, that are filled with charged particles of either black dye or titanium oxide. Now, the trace that we collected from Kevin Cross' bullet wound's an exact match to the E-Ink I pulled from my test copy. I mean, how it got out of the magazine and onto Cross, I have no idea."

"What if our killer used the magazine to hide the gun? Then the bullet grazed it just before it went into Cross. And that's how the E-Ink trace transferred."

"I don't buy Dunbrook as the shooter. I mean, he'd definitely have somebody doing his dirty work for him."

"Unless it was personal. Let's say that Cross stole the flash drive for Dunbrook. Then he went to him for more money. Dunbrook refused, so Cross threatened to rat him out. The flash drive is the connection to all of this. We need to find it," I tell Danny. I get my phone out once more.

'Don't go home just yet babe. We may need you for a bit longer.'


"Emily, they found the missing FBI agent," Mac says stopping by my office. I look up and nod. I get up and I grab my coat to walk with Mac out the door.

"Hey babe," I say walking up to him when Mac and I get to the scene. He smiles briefly.

"Toll booth picked up Johnson's car headed across the Verrazano," Don says as we walk toward the body. "Couple of my guys gave chase, but backed off once he headed for the expressway. He asked for you, Mac. Em, come with me." I follow him and we go to his car. "Em, you are going home."

"Fine by me."

"I'm going to get your stuff out of the avalanche. He leans down and kisses me quickly. I get in.


The next morning I wake up and it's four in the morning. Seriously? I sit up and slip my silk robe on and I walk to the bathroom to see if I need to pee.

And that's not it.

I walk out after washing my hands and rinsing my face and I see Don laying on his stomach, his back exposed. Hot damn, my husband is so sexy. I sigh and I walk to the kitchen and I look in the fridge for something to drink. Nothing. Why oh why am I up so early?

That's when I feel cramps in my uterus, wait what?

I kneel over in pain. Oh thank God this isn't actual labor. This must have been what woke me up. Damn it. I go and I lay down on the couch when the cramps stop. It's like being on my period all over again. I turn on the TV and I go to one of the shows that Don and I watch and I start rewatching an episode.

I don't fall asleep because I can't sleep very well without Don. He's always pressed against me somehow and I always found comfort in that and that's why I don't take naps because he's not there. He's the same way. The heat of my body and the feeling of me on top of him or under his arm is comforting because even while we're sleeping we know the other is there and alive and safe.

I close my eyes and I start to drift off. I feel myself lifting off of the couch and I smell and feel Don's chest. I curl into him as much as I can.

"Don't run away from me like that," he tells me softly. "You know I can't sleep without you." I smile widely, his statement giving me that giddy feeling in my stomach.

"Sorry false contractions woke me up."

He stops walking and I feel his eyes on me. I look up at him in the dark. "You good?" He asks me.

"I'm good," I tell him. He starts walking back to bed and I drift to sleep in his arms when we are back under the covers.