Hi everybody! Welcome to Seamus Zeesley´s death and the aftermath.
Hope, you´re still enjoying it, though the cookie jar´s still not opened ... It will be soon, promise.
Thanks for the reviews.
Disclaimers still the same. Don´t own anything, ´cept the dead guy.
There was always something awkward about seeing a guy you knew, lying in a puddle of his own blood. And though you always knew he´d had a brain, you never wanted to know how it looked like.
Steve Sloan had seen a lot of dead guys, at least 50 percent of them being shot in the head, but still he hadn´t got used to face a known shot-through head.
He approached Seamus Zeesley´s body, sprawled over a chair in an odd angle, his arms hanging limply over the backrest, the remainings of his head between them.
Blood covered Charles Dicken´s "Christmas Carol" and "Oliver Twist" behind the corpse.
Sloan swalloed once, twice, draw in a deep breath, then continued his way towards the dead shop-owner.
"Who´d ever do something like that?!" an agitated voice next to him suddenly enquired.
Steve jumped, but whirled around in the motion, so that the intruder didn´t notice his tension.
"What´re you doing here?" the detective hissed, still working on regrouping himself. He really needed to work on this jumpiness of his, he decided.
"You called me," the small man next to him answered, innocence on feet.
"Not to come here."
Jesse eyed him questioningly.
"I called you to ..." Steve hushed, feeling slightly embarrassed. "I´m a cop. When I find a dead guy, I call someone. It´s a reflex-thing. That doesn´t mean this someone has to come over. Shouldn´t you be at work?"
"You want a hungover man to treat people?"
Being reminded of his own pounding head only helped in increasing the detective´s anger, but before he could explode in a satisfying way, the doctor, who was standing next to the corpse now, asked: "D´you know who did it yet?"
Steve sighed. "No." He made a careful step forwards. If Jesse could face a dead Shay Zeesley, he could, too.
"I just arrived. I didn´t even ..." He made a pause to bend down a little. " ... see him over yet."
Jess shot him a look. "Oh."
That "oh"´d have been enough to rise up all of Sloan´s anger again at any other time and place, but being eye to dead one with Shay now, realization kicked in too sudden for him to hide it. "He was a nice guy. Huh?"
A simple nod was all he got as a response, but knowing Jesse, he hadn´t expected more.
"So," the doctor asked, feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the situation, "somebody called his wife yet?"
"No. We couldn´t locate her. She´s not at home. Probably at work. You remember what it was she´s doing?"
"Ahm ... Uh-oh. I do." Without further explanations, Jesse stormed out of the shop again. Outside he scanned the crowd, which had naturally began to form around the police block.
It took a while till he saw her.
She was standing next to a group of teenage girls, whose high-pitched voice revealed their excitment about what was going on.
She just stared, didn´t notice them, didn´t notice him approaching her, either. Didn´t response when he spoke to her. Didn´t react, when he touched her shoulder gently. Stared. Blinked. Stared.
"Mrs Zeesley?" Jesse tried once more. Still he got no response.
Gently, he forced the woman´s head to face him, but her gaze drifted away, back to the shop.
"Mrs Zeesley, my name is Jesse Travis. I´m a doctor. Do you understand me?"
Though she´d never shift her gaze, she nodded, ever so slightly.
"Good. Listen to me, you´re in shock. I´m going to drive you to a hospital now so that I can take a look at you there. Okay?"
"My husband´s in there," she said. Her voice was calm and clear, no trembling, just words. Seemingly meaningless.
"I know. I´m sorry."
"You´ll have to take him to the hospital, too. He´s been hurt." Still, she wasn´t looking at him, but at the shop.
Jesse winced, then nodded at her. "Yes. We´ll take Shay, too. My colleague will pick him up later. Don´t worry, we´ll take good care of him."
"I won´t go without him. He´s been hurt."
Fear of having to sedate and carry this woman to CG crawled up the doctor´s back, when Steve left the shop, spotted his friend talking to the palest woman he´d ever seen among the living, and approached them, frowning.
"Mrs Zeesley?" he asked and was greeted with a fierce head-shaking from his friend. The woman continued staring at the shop.
"Mrs Zeesley, I´m ..."
"This," Jesse interrupted him with an irritated glance, "is my colleague. He will take care of Shay. Steve, this is Mrs Zeesley. I´m going to drive her to CG now. Come on," he encouraged her, but she didn´t move.
"I need to see my husband," she said, now lifting her head to look into the doctor´s eyes. "He´s been hurt. I need to make sure he´s okay."
"He´ll be fine," Jesse assured and tried his best to ignore Steve´s stern look. "You´ll see him at the hospital. I ... I promise."
Ever so gentle, he laid his arm around the woman´s shoulders, which had started to tremble now, and led her to his car, slowly, as he would with an old woman.
They had reached the car, when Mrs Zeesley suddenly turned back to the shop again.
Jesse, who´d had opened the door for her, rushed back to her side.
"Come," he ordered her softly. "You´ll need to be treated at the hospital."
"No, I think I´ll stay with Shay. Make sure he´s all right. Wouldn´t wanna leave him here." She smiled at the young doctor friendlyly. "Shay´s my husband."
"I know. We met."
"Ah. Yes. He´s been hurt."
Jesse closed his eyes and draw in a deep breath. This was going to become hell pretty soon, he could feel it getting hotter every second `round here.
"Mrs Zeesley, you really need to be checked over. It won´t take long, I promise. But you have to come with me now."
The next objection was about to come, when Steve, who´d still been in ear- range, stepped closer, calling out: "`kay, Jess, Mr. Zeesley´s off to CG. You can take Mrs Zeesley now."
With that he bowed down to face the woman´s glassy eyes, smiling assuringly. "Don´t worry, you´ll be fine. Jesse´s our best doctor."
Without a further word, the woman turned and entered the car.
"Thanks, pal. A minute more and I´d have to sedate her," Jesse sighed and ran a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking out at all angles.
"Don´t mention it. You okay? You look like you´re in shock yourself," Steve teased with sympathy.
"You´re one to talk," his friend replied, smiling back with the same emotion. At least he wouldn´t be around Shay´s body all day, they both knew.
"See you in the hospital."
"Yeah," Jesse nodded, gazing at the woman in his car. Giving Steve a parting smile, he opened the door to get in, but stopped in midway.
"Steve."
"Yeah?" the detective turned around.
"Ahm ... It can wait." He winked.
"What?"
"Call me when you get to CG. It might be important." With that he entered the car and drove off.
Steve watched the car till it was out of sight, then turned towards "Moriaty´s" again and sighed. Suddenly he wished, the doctor hadn´t left ...
The drive proved torture for the young doctor, though Mrs Zeesley didn´t say a single word, just started out of the window on her side.
Jesse wondered if it had been the same direction the shop had been when she´d stood outside.
"So tell me about you," he suddenly said, smiling despite his urge to simply stare out of the window himself. "Shay told me you recently moved here. You like LA?"
The woman blinked once ... "Shay." ... twice. "Shay´s been hurt."
Tension got the better of Jesse and he increased their speed against every regulation. If any cop thought he needed to follow them cause of that, he´d have to drive all the way to CG, too, Jess decided, then tried again: "You like LA?"
"He´s been ... shot," she whispered, her eyes darting around now.
Uh-oh ... "Ahm ... ah ... We´re almost there." Just hang on a little longer, please. "Just a few minutes more then we´ll be at Community General and I´ll take a look at you."
"There was blood everywhere and ... Shay ..." Though she was still whispering, the words were coming out with much more force behind them now. Her breathing hastened.
"Almost there, Mrs Zeesley. Hang on." Please don´t get hysterical now. Not in a car. Please.
They were on the driveway to the emergency room now, even there breaking the speed regulation. Nurses better had to watch out before going outside for a smoke that day.
"I saw a man, and, and Shay and ... blood. All this blood and ..." Suddenly her head jerked around, her gaze met his - and she started to scream. "Shay! Seamus!"
"There!" Squeezing brakes made every nurse and doctor whirl around, when the car finally came to a halt.
Within a second, Jesse was out of it, opening the passenger´s door. But when he reached inside, to help her out, she kicked out for him. "No! Let me go! I gotta help him! Let go off me!"
It took what felt like an eternity to get Mrs Zeesley to the ER. She was in hysterics, throwing in everything she had to free herself from Jesse´s grip. Two nurses had to help get her on a gurney and into the building, where she was giving a sedative and fell asleep immediately.
Panting, Jesse stood at her side and rubbed his face. He felt his legs tremble benath him and sat down in a chair next to her bed.
Throughout all his time in the ER, he´d had a lot of hysterical people to observe and train himself on, but either this special case moved him more than he´d been aware of, or he simply wasn´t the right man for this particual part of the job. Whatever reason there was for it, he was an absolute wreck and almost close to tears out of pure exhaustion.
"Hey," a soft voice suddenly said next to him, and he literally fell off his chair.
"Sorry," Mark Sloan apologized, giving the younger man a hand to get back on his feet, "I didn´t mean to startle you."
"`sokay, I´m kinda jumpy." He smiled, and rubbed a hand over his face again.
"Steve called and told me what happened," Mark continued. "I´m sorry."
"Oh, I didn´t actually ... We just met the guy yesterday." He made a pause, then added: "He seemed to be nice, though. Funny." Lifting his gaze to face the other one´s, he smiled again, then bowed his head.
Mark´d seen this gesture a lot of times before. At times Jesse couldn´t or didn´t want to talk about what was going on inside his head.
It was the one of all his smiles the older doctor loathed, because one could almost feel how hard the young man tried to not let anyone see what he was feeling. It hurt Mark each time he saw it on Jesse, and it hurt now, too.
But still, he respected it as he always had, and turned to look at the sleeping patient.
"Mrs Zeesley, I suppose. I heard you had a rough time bringing her here."
"Wasn´t that hard. She freaked out when we got here, so we could treat her pretty soon. I just wanna make sure somebody´s at her side when she wakes up. I understood she and Shay didn´t have any family or friends living in LA. They just moved here."
Mark smiled encouragingly and put a hand on his colleague´s shoulder. "Call me if you need help."
"I won´t. She knows her husband´s dead and she´ll be out of shock, when she wakes up."
Mark frowned. "Why´re you so sure she knows? Steve said you found her outside the shop."
"I think she saw the murder."
"You sure?" Steve asked, when the four of them sat in the Doctor´s Lounge an hour later.
They´d had to persuade Jesse to join them, for he´d rather have stayed with Mrs Zeesley in case she woke up. It wasn´t likely for her to wake up within the next hour, though.
"Fairly sure," Jesse replied after a moment´s thought. "Her reaction was ..." He paused. " ... too ... Yes, I´m sure," he finally concluded, avoiding their looks.
Steve frowned. "If you´re right, she must´ve been in the shop when it happened. You can´t see the place where the body´s been found from outside the window. So how comes the killer didn´t shoot her, too?"
There was a short silence, till Jesse noticed every look was on him.
"Oh, you want me to answer this one," he said sarcastically, then looked up the ceiling in thoughts for a second and shrugged. "Hmmm ... Dunno. Next question."
It took him a split-second to bow his head, ashamed. "I´m sorry. I didn´t mean to."
When he looked up again, sheer exhaustion was written on his face, as if dark shadows had dug their way up to the surface of his skin this very moment. "I´m tired. I don´t know why the murderer didn´t see her," he turned to Steve, "but I´m certain she saw him."
After a short while of staring into the air, he slowly got to his feed and headed for the door. "I have a patient to care for. I´ll call you once she wakes up."
The three remaining friends exchanged knowing glances, and sighed simultaniously.
"We should have locked the door," Steve murmured sarcastically, but felt a comforting hand on his shoulder the second he´d said it. He gave his father a grateful smile, nodded and stood to follow his friend outside.
"It was a good thing you remembered her being Shay´s business-partner," Steve announced from the door of Mrs Zeesley´s room. "We wouldn´t have found her in time."
"She´d have gone into hysterics some time," Jesse replied without facing the detective. "Someone probably´d notice that."
"That´s what I meant when I said "in time"."
"Thought so."
A short silence followed, before Steve finally stepped into the room to stand behind his friend.
"Come on, Jess, she´s not gonna wake up within the next 50 minutes. You´re not planning on sitting here the entire time, do ya?"
"You think she´ll ever recover?" Jesse asked instead of an answer.
No. "Dunno. Some people do."
"I don´t think she will," the younger man sighed and whirled his chair around to look at Steve. "You didn´t see her in my car. She was ..." His head sank, as if the image drew his gaze to the floor, then lifted again, a humorless smile spreading over his lips. "Next time we´ll lock the door."
Steve smiled and opened his mouth, but didn´t know what to say and closed it again.
An awkward silence settled, the evil twin to the one of the two friends in the bar. This one was thick and foul, seperating them instead of stressing the bond.
The noise of Steve´s cell-phone cut through it like a knive, making each one´s head jerk up.
"Sloan here," Steve said, turning to leave the room, as he always did when he recieved official calls. But he stopped in midway and frowned.
"Yes. Okay, I´ll stay here, just bring him in. `kay, thanks." He tucked his phone away and looked at his friend, who eyed him questioningly.
"They found another body in an alley right next to the shop. A guy named Pinter. Shot himself in the head." His gaze drifted to the still sleeping Mrs Zeesley. "He had a copy of "For Whom the Bell Rings" with him, definately from the shop."
"That could be the killer," Jesse heard himself say, though he hadn´t inteted to.
Steve nodded absent-mindedly. "He shot himself through the book."
"Found something?" Steve asked as he entered Amanda´s lab a few hours later. She´d just finished the autopsy on Maron Pinter.
"Nothing you wouldn´t have expected," she replied, drawing the cover back over the dead man´s head. "No doubt about suicide, and of course there was a lot of paper in the wound, too."
Recalling the picture of Pinter´s body when he´d been carried in, Steve couldn´t resist the urge to gulp at this. "Yuck."
"He surely knew his Hemingway," the pathologist said dryly, then continued: "I also found blood on his shirt and hands that doesn´t match his type. I bet once I´ve done the autopsy on your friend, I´ll find out it´s his."
Steve nodded sadly. "Think so, too. Did you find any drugs or medication in his system? Some kind of a hint that he´s had a nervous breakdown?"
"No."
A deep sigh of frustration excaped the detective. "I don´t get this. I checked this guy all the way to his birth and back. Neither did he knew Seamus Zeesley, nor did he ever show any signs of insanity or aggression or whatever. He was a completely normal guy."
Amanda shrugged. "People freak out for many reasons," she stated. "No one can actually point a finger at one special reason. It happens all the time."
"To a museum´s director? With a family? Just like," he snipped his fingers, "that?! No, there´s definately something going on here, and I´ll find out what it is."
Determinded, the police officer headed for the door, but felt a soothing touch his shoulder to hold him back.
"Steve, I know you liked that man, but there is no sense in digging into this. Like I said, things like that happen. No one could have forseen that. Not even you."
"It´s not about that," he shot back angrily, "even if I hadn´t known Shay - it´s my job."
"It was your job to find the murderer, and you did. The case is solved. Leave it alone."
Steve opened his mouth to object, but found that there was nothing to say against this, and dropped his head.
"You´re right. It´s just ..." He sighed, rubbed a hand over his eyes, mumbling: "This sucks. - I´m sorry I yelled at you."
She smiled understandingly.
"`kay, I´m gonna show our witness the picture, so that we can close the file."
"You do that. And then you´ll drive home and get some sleep. - Oh, and when you go see Mrs Zeesley," she added when he´d already reached the door, "send Jesse over here, so that I can talk some sense into him, too."
"He´s still with her?" Steve asked, surprised.
"You two have very much in common," she simply answered, and turned back to her work.
Wondering what that was supposed to mean, the detective left.
He stopped in the doorway of Mrs Zeesle´s room and sighed, taking in the scenery in front of him.
The patient was obviously asleep in her bed, her features a little less drawn than they´d been the last time he´d seen her, and her doctor was curled up on his chair, knees stucked under his nose, sound aslepp as well.
Carefull not to wake the patient, Steve approached the chair and reached out for his friend.
"Don´t," a whisper kept him from waking the young man. Surprised, he looked up to find the woman awake and smiling slightly. "He´s only had twenty minutes or so."
Studying his friend a little closer, Steve decided to listen to her and walked to the other side of the bed, where he sat down on another chair next to it.
"Mrs Zeesley," he began, raising his voice just a bit, "my name is Steve Sloan, do you remember me?"
"No," she answered. It surprised the detective how calm she was now, the complete opposite to how she´d behaved in front of the shop.
"But Dr. Travis told me you´d come sooner or later to ask some questions."
"Yes, I´m afraid I have to do that," he said, real sympathy in his voice. "But it doesn´t have to be right now, if you don´t feel up to it."
"It´s okay," she replied and smiled again. She seemed to smile a lot, though it never reached her eyes. It probably never would again. "They gave me sedatives. I probably needed them," she added, obviously embarrassed.
"You were in shock," he tried to comfort her, "which is quite understanding after ..." He hushed himself and looked down. "I´m very sorry, Mrs Zeesley." He suddenly realized he hadn´t said it yet. "I know what a great loss this is for you, and I am sorry."
"Thank you, detective. I´m sorry, too, after all, you probably lost a regular. Dr. Travis told me," she explained as he eyed her questioningly. "Shay was too hungover to tell me this morning - which I believe was your fault."
She smiled again, but it faded soon. "He was cranky because of his head, and I was cranky, because he came home drunk yesterday, and we had an argument ... Stupid one." Tears welled up in her eyes, and she sighed deeply to keep heself from sheding them.
"Then he left to open the shop, I went to buy a knew coffee-machine for it, cause the old one was broken, and ..."
With discomfort Steve noticed her speaking speed up incredibly, and out of a reflex, he tried to soothe her down. "It´s okay, Mrs Zeesley," he interrupted her softly. "It´s all right, you don´t have to tell all this. It´s okay."
She looked up at him blankly, then smiled a smile which made Steve unconsciously glance at his sleeping friend, and swept a hand over her eyes.
"Oh, I´m sorry, detective. I didn´t mean to bother you with all this. I know you´re busy and you have to ask your questions, and I´m getting all whiny here."
Her smile even brightened. "You probably hear stuff like that every day. Please, ask your questions."
It cringed his heart to hear her say this stupid sentence with such obvious ease, but he fought the urge to just hug her and produced a photograph which he´d taken from Maron Pinter´s record in the museum.
"I just have to ask you if this is the man you saw," he told her before letting her look at the picture.
Her reaction couldn´t be misunderstood, and he quickly stashed it in his pocket again. Yet, he heard himself say: "I need you to say yes to make it an offical proof."
She nodded once, twice. It looked as if she had to rock her head to make it slip out.
"Y-yes," it finally came out, a mere whisper. "Yes, that´s him."
He laid a comforting hand on her shoulder and felt it trembling. "That´s all I needed to know. You won´t have to answer any more questions, I promise."
"Did you get him? What´s his name?"
"Maron Pinter. He´s dead, he killed himself right after ... it."
Mrs Zeesley stared right into his eyes. Steve felt as if he´d witnessed every single symptom of shock a human being could show on this single woman. He inwardly braced himself against the question he knew was to follow.
"Why?"
There it was. He shook his head, bowed it, looked up again. He found it hard to stand her gaze. "I don´t know."
"What do you think?" she enquired desperately.
"I think we´ll never know," he said and felt like he´d hit her right in the face. "I know it´s hard to accept. I´m sorry."
"Huh," she laughed softly, her expression changing from pure shock to bitterness. "I guess sometimes people just do this sort of thing."
She was crying now and made no attempt to stop the tears from running down her cheeks. But still there was a smile frozen on her lips. "They just go crazy, don´t they? They walk around, normal people like you and me, and then bang, they just go crazy and shoot somebody. Happens," she sobbed. "Saw it in a movie just yesterday evening. Happens all the time."
"Hey," a soft voice startled Steve, who was about to soothe the crying woman down, and he looked up to find Jesse awake, more or less, and beginning to crawl of his chair.
"Hey," he repeated and handed her a hanky. "It´s okay."
She took the hanky gratefully, and Jesse watched her blow her nose without another word.
He gently stroke her shoulder and shot Steve a glance that send a huge wave of guilt through the poor detective, who couldn´t do anything but stare.
It didn´t take Mrs Zeesley long to get a grip on herself again, and she looked up at the two men - again smiling. "I´m sorry."
"Don´t be," Jesse said assuringly. "There´s nothing to be sorry for."
Her smile cringed skeptically at one side, then a yawn destroyed it.
"You rest now," the doctor suggested. "Okay? Come on, Steve."
The detective nodded. "Yeah, all right. I´m sorry," he told her as he shook her hand goodbye. "I didn´t mean to agitate you like this."
"I know," she assured him and - he almost couldn´t bear to see it - smiled.
Relieved, he left.
Jesse gave her hand a final squeeze. She smiled, but couldn´t betray the expression in her eyes.
He frowned slightly. "Can I leave you alone for a few minutes?"
"Sure," she replied hastily. "Course. I mean, hey, you look terrible, doctor."
He nodded. "Yeah. - I´ll be right back."
With that he left the room.
"I´m," Steve started the second Jesse joined him on the hallway, "sorry. I know I shouldn´t have said that."
"Huh?" The doctor looked up at his friend.
Frowning, the detective stopped in mid-step. "What you mean, "huh"? Weren´t you going to snap at me for being a rude scoundrel, cause I made that woman cry?"
The doctor sighed. "Steve, this woman saw her husband being shot this morning. You could have told her today´s weather report to make her cry."
He smiled as if ashamed of this comment. "She´s pretty out of it. - I could snap at you for being an idiot, cause you didn´t notice that, if that makes you feel better."
Steve grimaced behind Jesse´s back, but swalloed the reply he had in mind. "You look pretty out of it, too," he stated instead. "Why don´t you go home and get some sleep?"
"Why don´t you? So, you got the killer?"
Steve decided to leave it alone for now and nodded, detective-mode kicking in as he began to fill his friend in on what he´d found out over the past few hours.
"That sucks," Jesse said afterwards.
"That´s what I said."
"People just don´t freak out like that. There has to be ... something. Even if it´s in his childhood or wherever."
"We´re going to check on that," Steve said, "but - it doesn´t really matter, does it?"
There was a short silence, before Jesse let out a deep breath and turned to enter Mrs Zeesley´s room again.
"That sucks," he repeated.
Hope, you´re still enjoying it, though the cookie jar´s still not opened ... It will be soon, promise.
Thanks for the reviews.
Disclaimers still the same. Don´t own anything, ´cept the dead guy.
There was always something awkward about seeing a guy you knew, lying in a puddle of his own blood. And though you always knew he´d had a brain, you never wanted to know how it looked like.
Steve Sloan had seen a lot of dead guys, at least 50 percent of them being shot in the head, but still he hadn´t got used to face a known shot-through head.
He approached Seamus Zeesley´s body, sprawled over a chair in an odd angle, his arms hanging limply over the backrest, the remainings of his head between them.
Blood covered Charles Dicken´s "Christmas Carol" and "Oliver Twist" behind the corpse.
Sloan swalloed once, twice, draw in a deep breath, then continued his way towards the dead shop-owner.
"Who´d ever do something like that?!" an agitated voice next to him suddenly enquired.
Steve jumped, but whirled around in the motion, so that the intruder didn´t notice his tension.
"What´re you doing here?" the detective hissed, still working on regrouping himself. He really needed to work on this jumpiness of his, he decided.
"You called me," the small man next to him answered, innocence on feet.
"Not to come here."
Jesse eyed him questioningly.
"I called you to ..." Steve hushed, feeling slightly embarrassed. "I´m a cop. When I find a dead guy, I call someone. It´s a reflex-thing. That doesn´t mean this someone has to come over. Shouldn´t you be at work?"
"You want a hungover man to treat people?"
Being reminded of his own pounding head only helped in increasing the detective´s anger, but before he could explode in a satisfying way, the doctor, who was standing next to the corpse now, asked: "D´you know who did it yet?"
Steve sighed. "No." He made a careful step forwards. If Jesse could face a dead Shay Zeesley, he could, too.
"I just arrived. I didn´t even ..." He made a pause to bend down a little. " ... see him over yet."
Jess shot him a look. "Oh."
That "oh"´d have been enough to rise up all of Sloan´s anger again at any other time and place, but being eye to dead one with Shay now, realization kicked in too sudden for him to hide it. "He was a nice guy. Huh?"
A simple nod was all he got as a response, but knowing Jesse, he hadn´t expected more.
"So," the doctor asked, feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the situation, "somebody called his wife yet?"
"No. We couldn´t locate her. She´s not at home. Probably at work. You remember what it was she´s doing?"
"Ahm ... Uh-oh. I do." Without further explanations, Jesse stormed out of the shop again. Outside he scanned the crowd, which had naturally began to form around the police block.
It took a while till he saw her.
She was standing next to a group of teenage girls, whose high-pitched voice revealed their excitment about what was going on.
She just stared, didn´t notice them, didn´t notice him approaching her, either. Didn´t response when he spoke to her. Didn´t react, when he touched her shoulder gently. Stared. Blinked. Stared.
"Mrs Zeesley?" Jesse tried once more. Still he got no response.
Gently, he forced the woman´s head to face him, but her gaze drifted away, back to the shop.
"Mrs Zeesley, my name is Jesse Travis. I´m a doctor. Do you understand me?"
Though she´d never shift her gaze, she nodded, ever so slightly.
"Good. Listen to me, you´re in shock. I´m going to drive you to a hospital now so that I can take a look at you there. Okay?"
"My husband´s in there," she said. Her voice was calm and clear, no trembling, just words. Seemingly meaningless.
"I know. I´m sorry."
"You´ll have to take him to the hospital, too. He´s been hurt." Still, she wasn´t looking at him, but at the shop.
Jesse winced, then nodded at her. "Yes. We´ll take Shay, too. My colleague will pick him up later. Don´t worry, we´ll take good care of him."
"I won´t go without him. He´s been hurt."
Fear of having to sedate and carry this woman to CG crawled up the doctor´s back, when Steve left the shop, spotted his friend talking to the palest woman he´d ever seen among the living, and approached them, frowning.
"Mrs Zeesley?" he asked and was greeted with a fierce head-shaking from his friend. The woman continued staring at the shop.
"Mrs Zeesley, I´m ..."
"This," Jesse interrupted him with an irritated glance, "is my colleague. He will take care of Shay. Steve, this is Mrs Zeesley. I´m going to drive her to CG now. Come on," he encouraged her, but she didn´t move.
"I need to see my husband," she said, now lifting her head to look into the doctor´s eyes. "He´s been hurt. I need to make sure he´s okay."
"He´ll be fine," Jesse assured and tried his best to ignore Steve´s stern look. "You´ll see him at the hospital. I ... I promise."
Ever so gentle, he laid his arm around the woman´s shoulders, which had started to tremble now, and led her to his car, slowly, as he would with an old woman.
They had reached the car, when Mrs Zeesley suddenly turned back to the shop again.
Jesse, who´d had opened the door for her, rushed back to her side.
"Come," he ordered her softly. "You´ll need to be treated at the hospital."
"No, I think I´ll stay with Shay. Make sure he´s all right. Wouldn´t wanna leave him here." She smiled at the young doctor friendlyly. "Shay´s my husband."
"I know. We met."
"Ah. Yes. He´s been hurt."
Jesse closed his eyes and draw in a deep breath. This was going to become hell pretty soon, he could feel it getting hotter every second `round here.
"Mrs Zeesley, you really need to be checked over. It won´t take long, I promise. But you have to come with me now."
The next objection was about to come, when Steve, who´d still been in ear- range, stepped closer, calling out: "`kay, Jess, Mr. Zeesley´s off to CG. You can take Mrs Zeesley now."
With that he bowed down to face the woman´s glassy eyes, smiling assuringly. "Don´t worry, you´ll be fine. Jesse´s our best doctor."
Without a further word, the woman turned and entered the car.
"Thanks, pal. A minute more and I´d have to sedate her," Jesse sighed and ran a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking out at all angles.
"Don´t mention it. You okay? You look like you´re in shock yourself," Steve teased with sympathy.
"You´re one to talk," his friend replied, smiling back with the same emotion. At least he wouldn´t be around Shay´s body all day, they both knew.
"See you in the hospital."
"Yeah," Jesse nodded, gazing at the woman in his car. Giving Steve a parting smile, he opened the door to get in, but stopped in midway.
"Steve."
"Yeah?" the detective turned around.
"Ahm ... It can wait." He winked.
"What?"
"Call me when you get to CG. It might be important." With that he entered the car and drove off.
Steve watched the car till it was out of sight, then turned towards "Moriaty´s" again and sighed. Suddenly he wished, the doctor hadn´t left ...
The drive proved torture for the young doctor, though Mrs Zeesley didn´t say a single word, just started out of the window on her side.
Jesse wondered if it had been the same direction the shop had been when she´d stood outside.
"So tell me about you," he suddenly said, smiling despite his urge to simply stare out of the window himself. "Shay told me you recently moved here. You like LA?"
The woman blinked once ... "Shay." ... twice. "Shay´s been hurt."
Tension got the better of Jesse and he increased their speed against every regulation. If any cop thought he needed to follow them cause of that, he´d have to drive all the way to CG, too, Jess decided, then tried again: "You like LA?"
"He´s been ... shot," she whispered, her eyes darting around now.
Uh-oh ... "Ahm ... ah ... We´re almost there." Just hang on a little longer, please. "Just a few minutes more then we´ll be at Community General and I´ll take a look at you."
"There was blood everywhere and ... Shay ..." Though she was still whispering, the words were coming out with much more force behind them now. Her breathing hastened.
"Almost there, Mrs Zeesley. Hang on." Please don´t get hysterical now. Not in a car. Please.
They were on the driveway to the emergency room now, even there breaking the speed regulation. Nurses better had to watch out before going outside for a smoke that day.
"I saw a man, and, and Shay and ... blood. All this blood and ..." Suddenly her head jerked around, her gaze met his - and she started to scream. "Shay! Seamus!"
"There!" Squeezing brakes made every nurse and doctor whirl around, when the car finally came to a halt.
Within a second, Jesse was out of it, opening the passenger´s door. But when he reached inside, to help her out, she kicked out for him. "No! Let me go! I gotta help him! Let go off me!"
It took what felt like an eternity to get Mrs Zeesley to the ER. She was in hysterics, throwing in everything she had to free herself from Jesse´s grip. Two nurses had to help get her on a gurney and into the building, where she was giving a sedative and fell asleep immediately.
Panting, Jesse stood at her side and rubbed his face. He felt his legs tremble benath him and sat down in a chair next to her bed.
Throughout all his time in the ER, he´d had a lot of hysterical people to observe and train himself on, but either this special case moved him more than he´d been aware of, or he simply wasn´t the right man for this particual part of the job. Whatever reason there was for it, he was an absolute wreck and almost close to tears out of pure exhaustion.
"Hey," a soft voice suddenly said next to him, and he literally fell off his chair.
"Sorry," Mark Sloan apologized, giving the younger man a hand to get back on his feet, "I didn´t mean to startle you."
"`sokay, I´m kinda jumpy." He smiled, and rubbed a hand over his face again.
"Steve called and told me what happened," Mark continued. "I´m sorry."
"Oh, I didn´t actually ... We just met the guy yesterday." He made a pause, then added: "He seemed to be nice, though. Funny." Lifting his gaze to face the other one´s, he smiled again, then bowed his head.
Mark´d seen this gesture a lot of times before. At times Jesse couldn´t or didn´t want to talk about what was going on inside his head.
It was the one of all his smiles the older doctor loathed, because one could almost feel how hard the young man tried to not let anyone see what he was feeling. It hurt Mark each time he saw it on Jesse, and it hurt now, too.
But still, he respected it as he always had, and turned to look at the sleeping patient.
"Mrs Zeesley, I suppose. I heard you had a rough time bringing her here."
"Wasn´t that hard. She freaked out when we got here, so we could treat her pretty soon. I just wanna make sure somebody´s at her side when she wakes up. I understood she and Shay didn´t have any family or friends living in LA. They just moved here."
Mark smiled encouragingly and put a hand on his colleague´s shoulder. "Call me if you need help."
"I won´t. She knows her husband´s dead and she´ll be out of shock, when she wakes up."
Mark frowned. "Why´re you so sure she knows? Steve said you found her outside the shop."
"I think she saw the murder."
"You sure?" Steve asked, when the four of them sat in the Doctor´s Lounge an hour later.
They´d had to persuade Jesse to join them, for he´d rather have stayed with Mrs Zeesley in case she woke up. It wasn´t likely for her to wake up within the next hour, though.
"Fairly sure," Jesse replied after a moment´s thought. "Her reaction was ..." He paused. " ... too ... Yes, I´m sure," he finally concluded, avoiding their looks.
Steve frowned. "If you´re right, she must´ve been in the shop when it happened. You can´t see the place where the body´s been found from outside the window. So how comes the killer didn´t shoot her, too?"
There was a short silence, till Jesse noticed every look was on him.
"Oh, you want me to answer this one," he said sarcastically, then looked up the ceiling in thoughts for a second and shrugged. "Hmmm ... Dunno. Next question."
It took him a split-second to bow his head, ashamed. "I´m sorry. I didn´t mean to."
When he looked up again, sheer exhaustion was written on his face, as if dark shadows had dug their way up to the surface of his skin this very moment. "I´m tired. I don´t know why the murderer didn´t see her," he turned to Steve, "but I´m certain she saw him."
After a short while of staring into the air, he slowly got to his feed and headed for the door. "I have a patient to care for. I´ll call you once she wakes up."
The three remaining friends exchanged knowing glances, and sighed simultaniously.
"We should have locked the door," Steve murmured sarcastically, but felt a comforting hand on his shoulder the second he´d said it. He gave his father a grateful smile, nodded and stood to follow his friend outside.
"It was a good thing you remembered her being Shay´s business-partner," Steve announced from the door of Mrs Zeesley´s room. "We wouldn´t have found her in time."
"She´d have gone into hysterics some time," Jesse replied without facing the detective. "Someone probably´d notice that."
"That´s what I meant when I said "in time"."
"Thought so."
A short silence followed, before Steve finally stepped into the room to stand behind his friend.
"Come on, Jess, she´s not gonna wake up within the next 50 minutes. You´re not planning on sitting here the entire time, do ya?"
"You think she´ll ever recover?" Jesse asked instead of an answer.
No. "Dunno. Some people do."
"I don´t think she will," the younger man sighed and whirled his chair around to look at Steve. "You didn´t see her in my car. She was ..." His head sank, as if the image drew his gaze to the floor, then lifted again, a humorless smile spreading over his lips. "Next time we´ll lock the door."
Steve smiled and opened his mouth, but didn´t know what to say and closed it again.
An awkward silence settled, the evil twin to the one of the two friends in the bar. This one was thick and foul, seperating them instead of stressing the bond.
The noise of Steve´s cell-phone cut through it like a knive, making each one´s head jerk up.
"Sloan here," Steve said, turning to leave the room, as he always did when he recieved official calls. But he stopped in midway and frowned.
"Yes. Okay, I´ll stay here, just bring him in. `kay, thanks." He tucked his phone away and looked at his friend, who eyed him questioningly.
"They found another body in an alley right next to the shop. A guy named Pinter. Shot himself in the head." His gaze drifted to the still sleeping Mrs Zeesley. "He had a copy of "For Whom the Bell Rings" with him, definately from the shop."
"That could be the killer," Jesse heard himself say, though he hadn´t inteted to.
Steve nodded absent-mindedly. "He shot himself through the book."
"Found something?" Steve asked as he entered Amanda´s lab a few hours later. She´d just finished the autopsy on Maron Pinter.
"Nothing you wouldn´t have expected," she replied, drawing the cover back over the dead man´s head. "No doubt about suicide, and of course there was a lot of paper in the wound, too."
Recalling the picture of Pinter´s body when he´d been carried in, Steve couldn´t resist the urge to gulp at this. "Yuck."
"He surely knew his Hemingway," the pathologist said dryly, then continued: "I also found blood on his shirt and hands that doesn´t match his type. I bet once I´ve done the autopsy on your friend, I´ll find out it´s his."
Steve nodded sadly. "Think so, too. Did you find any drugs or medication in his system? Some kind of a hint that he´s had a nervous breakdown?"
"No."
A deep sigh of frustration excaped the detective. "I don´t get this. I checked this guy all the way to his birth and back. Neither did he knew Seamus Zeesley, nor did he ever show any signs of insanity or aggression or whatever. He was a completely normal guy."
Amanda shrugged. "People freak out for many reasons," she stated. "No one can actually point a finger at one special reason. It happens all the time."
"To a museum´s director? With a family? Just like," he snipped his fingers, "that?! No, there´s definately something going on here, and I´ll find out what it is."
Determinded, the police officer headed for the door, but felt a soothing touch his shoulder to hold him back.
"Steve, I know you liked that man, but there is no sense in digging into this. Like I said, things like that happen. No one could have forseen that. Not even you."
"It´s not about that," he shot back angrily, "even if I hadn´t known Shay - it´s my job."
"It was your job to find the murderer, and you did. The case is solved. Leave it alone."
Steve opened his mouth to object, but found that there was nothing to say against this, and dropped his head.
"You´re right. It´s just ..." He sighed, rubbed a hand over his eyes, mumbling: "This sucks. - I´m sorry I yelled at you."
She smiled understandingly.
"`kay, I´m gonna show our witness the picture, so that we can close the file."
"You do that. And then you´ll drive home and get some sleep. - Oh, and when you go see Mrs Zeesley," she added when he´d already reached the door, "send Jesse over here, so that I can talk some sense into him, too."
"He´s still with her?" Steve asked, surprised.
"You two have very much in common," she simply answered, and turned back to her work.
Wondering what that was supposed to mean, the detective left.
He stopped in the doorway of Mrs Zeesle´s room and sighed, taking in the scenery in front of him.
The patient was obviously asleep in her bed, her features a little less drawn than they´d been the last time he´d seen her, and her doctor was curled up on his chair, knees stucked under his nose, sound aslepp as well.
Carefull not to wake the patient, Steve approached the chair and reached out for his friend.
"Don´t," a whisper kept him from waking the young man. Surprised, he looked up to find the woman awake and smiling slightly. "He´s only had twenty minutes or so."
Studying his friend a little closer, Steve decided to listen to her and walked to the other side of the bed, where he sat down on another chair next to it.
"Mrs Zeesley," he began, raising his voice just a bit, "my name is Steve Sloan, do you remember me?"
"No," she answered. It surprised the detective how calm she was now, the complete opposite to how she´d behaved in front of the shop.
"But Dr. Travis told me you´d come sooner or later to ask some questions."
"Yes, I´m afraid I have to do that," he said, real sympathy in his voice. "But it doesn´t have to be right now, if you don´t feel up to it."
"It´s okay," she replied and smiled again. She seemed to smile a lot, though it never reached her eyes. It probably never would again. "They gave me sedatives. I probably needed them," she added, obviously embarrassed.
"You were in shock," he tried to comfort her, "which is quite understanding after ..." He hushed himself and looked down. "I´m very sorry, Mrs Zeesley." He suddenly realized he hadn´t said it yet. "I know what a great loss this is for you, and I am sorry."
"Thank you, detective. I´m sorry, too, after all, you probably lost a regular. Dr. Travis told me," she explained as he eyed her questioningly. "Shay was too hungover to tell me this morning - which I believe was your fault."
She smiled again, but it faded soon. "He was cranky because of his head, and I was cranky, because he came home drunk yesterday, and we had an argument ... Stupid one." Tears welled up in her eyes, and she sighed deeply to keep heself from sheding them.
"Then he left to open the shop, I went to buy a knew coffee-machine for it, cause the old one was broken, and ..."
With discomfort Steve noticed her speaking speed up incredibly, and out of a reflex, he tried to soothe her down. "It´s okay, Mrs Zeesley," he interrupted her softly. "It´s all right, you don´t have to tell all this. It´s okay."
She looked up at him blankly, then smiled a smile which made Steve unconsciously glance at his sleeping friend, and swept a hand over her eyes.
"Oh, I´m sorry, detective. I didn´t mean to bother you with all this. I know you´re busy and you have to ask your questions, and I´m getting all whiny here."
Her smile even brightened. "You probably hear stuff like that every day. Please, ask your questions."
It cringed his heart to hear her say this stupid sentence with such obvious ease, but he fought the urge to just hug her and produced a photograph which he´d taken from Maron Pinter´s record in the museum.
"I just have to ask you if this is the man you saw," he told her before letting her look at the picture.
Her reaction couldn´t be misunderstood, and he quickly stashed it in his pocket again. Yet, he heard himself say: "I need you to say yes to make it an offical proof."
She nodded once, twice. It looked as if she had to rock her head to make it slip out.
"Y-yes," it finally came out, a mere whisper. "Yes, that´s him."
He laid a comforting hand on her shoulder and felt it trembling. "That´s all I needed to know. You won´t have to answer any more questions, I promise."
"Did you get him? What´s his name?"
"Maron Pinter. He´s dead, he killed himself right after ... it."
Mrs Zeesley stared right into his eyes. Steve felt as if he´d witnessed every single symptom of shock a human being could show on this single woman. He inwardly braced himself against the question he knew was to follow.
"Why?"
There it was. He shook his head, bowed it, looked up again. He found it hard to stand her gaze. "I don´t know."
"What do you think?" she enquired desperately.
"I think we´ll never know," he said and felt like he´d hit her right in the face. "I know it´s hard to accept. I´m sorry."
"Huh," she laughed softly, her expression changing from pure shock to bitterness. "I guess sometimes people just do this sort of thing."
She was crying now and made no attempt to stop the tears from running down her cheeks. But still there was a smile frozen on her lips. "They just go crazy, don´t they? They walk around, normal people like you and me, and then bang, they just go crazy and shoot somebody. Happens," she sobbed. "Saw it in a movie just yesterday evening. Happens all the time."
"Hey," a soft voice startled Steve, who was about to soothe the crying woman down, and he looked up to find Jesse awake, more or less, and beginning to crawl of his chair.
"Hey," he repeated and handed her a hanky. "It´s okay."
She took the hanky gratefully, and Jesse watched her blow her nose without another word.
He gently stroke her shoulder and shot Steve a glance that send a huge wave of guilt through the poor detective, who couldn´t do anything but stare.
It didn´t take Mrs Zeesley long to get a grip on herself again, and she looked up at the two men - again smiling. "I´m sorry."
"Don´t be," Jesse said assuringly. "There´s nothing to be sorry for."
Her smile cringed skeptically at one side, then a yawn destroyed it.
"You rest now," the doctor suggested. "Okay? Come on, Steve."
The detective nodded. "Yeah, all right. I´m sorry," he told her as he shook her hand goodbye. "I didn´t mean to agitate you like this."
"I know," she assured him and - he almost couldn´t bear to see it - smiled.
Relieved, he left.
Jesse gave her hand a final squeeze. She smiled, but couldn´t betray the expression in her eyes.
He frowned slightly. "Can I leave you alone for a few minutes?"
"Sure," she replied hastily. "Course. I mean, hey, you look terrible, doctor."
He nodded. "Yeah. - I´ll be right back."
With that he left the room.
"I´m," Steve started the second Jesse joined him on the hallway, "sorry. I know I shouldn´t have said that."
"Huh?" The doctor looked up at his friend.
Frowning, the detective stopped in mid-step. "What you mean, "huh"? Weren´t you going to snap at me for being a rude scoundrel, cause I made that woman cry?"
The doctor sighed. "Steve, this woman saw her husband being shot this morning. You could have told her today´s weather report to make her cry."
He smiled as if ashamed of this comment. "She´s pretty out of it. - I could snap at you for being an idiot, cause you didn´t notice that, if that makes you feel better."
Steve grimaced behind Jesse´s back, but swalloed the reply he had in mind. "You look pretty out of it, too," he stated instead. "Why don´t you go home and get some sleep?"
"Why don´t you? So, you got the killer?"
Steve decided to leave it alone for now and nodded, detective-mode kicking in as he began to fill his friend in on what he´d found out over the past few hours.
"That sucks," Jesse said afterwards.
"That´s what I said."
"People just don´t freak out like that. There has to be ... something. Even if it´s in his childhood or wherever."
"We´re going to check on that," Steve said, "but - it doesn´t really matter, does it?"
There was a short silence, before Jesse let out a deep breath and turned to enter Mrs Zeesley´s room again.
"That sucks," he repeated.