Title: When the Rain Falls

Author: Sadie

Summary: A woman is dead and there are no suspects. Then one of their own is gunned down as well.

A/N: This is my first L&O story. I don't know the characters real well because I can't find a decent L&O website and the show doesn't describe their personal lives much.

Also, I've never been to New York so the street names might not make sense. And despite what the show does, I don't intend to use their last names first except in the case of Briscoe and Green, it just makes more sense that way. I still don't know Eames' first name on L&O CI because of it.

If you haven't read Dead Line, the new L&O novel, read it! It is really good!

Disclaimer: Law & Order is a Wolf Films production in association with Universal Network Television. In other words, it doesn't belong to me which I'm sure you already guessed because if it did, I probably would not be writing fanfiction.

wandering shadow- Thanks so much! I'll try not to give up too soon on this one!

Animaltalker- Thanks, I did find one!

Kelly - If you don't like the story don't read it. I didn't kill Serena and I don't intend to.

Jennifer - I know Serena isn't really "one of their own", but since they sort of work together I did it anyway. Besides, I thought it would be interesting to write how they react to having "one of their own" affected by a murderer. I was kinda writing quickly so that's the reason for the cheezy ending. That and too many crime shows/books :).

Chapter Two

Busily working over the paperwork he had brought home from the office, Jack McCoy was startled to hear the phone ring. "Hello?" he said when he picked it up.

"My name is Samantha Rodriguez. I'm a nurse at New York Memorial. Do you know a Serena Southerlyn?" A woman's voice answered.

"Dear God. Has something happened?" Jack exclaimed. He wasn't very close to Serena but still, getting a phone call in the middle of the night asking if you knew someone was enough to shock anyone.

"She came in about three hours ago, with two gunshot wounds. I found a card in her purse with your name on it, and it's my job to notify the emergency contacts."

"I'm her boss, not next of kin. I don't know her parents' number." Come to think of it, he didn't even know if Serena had parents that were still alive.

"Well, you could still come down if you wanted, it might be nice for her to see a familiar face when she comes out of surgery." Samantha persisted.

The nurse had a point. Jack sighed. "I'll come down as soon as possible. Tell her that if she wakes up before I get there." He hung the phone up.

Peter Simeon still sat in the interrogation room at the police station. While the police now knew he wasn't the shooter, they hadn't yet got the full story out of him.

Lt. Anita van Buren walked into the interrogation room. "Listen to me, all right? I know, and you know, that you are not the shooter. I know that because someone else was shot while you were in custody. What I don't know is what you saw during the murder of Charlotte East. You need to tell me before the killer strikes again and kills a third woman." The police had decided it would be best to keep Serena Southerlyn's name and the fact she was alive out of the press so the killer didn't come after her again, for whatever reason he had gone after her in the first place.

"I want a lawyer." Peter's sullen voice answered.

"Why? Why in the name of heaven does a witness need a lawyer unless he is guilty of something?" van Buren had had enough with the sullen Goth teenager.

"Because of what I saw. That's why." For the first time, Peter looked like who he really was, just a scared teenager who had witnessed a terrible crime. "Because I don't want to be blamed for something I didn't do."

"Okay. Well, it's 1:00 in the morning and you might have to wait a few hours for a lawyer. If you had been cooperative five hours ago when they brought you in, we'd have had a better chance of getting a lawyer right away." van Buren really didn't think this kid was guilty but if he was, he sure was putting on a quite a show.

"No! If you guys had cooperated with me five hours ago I could be at home already!" Peter stood up, knocking his chair over. "My dad is gonna sue you guys for this!"

"He'll do nothing of the sort. We've already spoken to your father, he told us to deal with you however we saw fit even if meant putting you in a jail cell for the night. In fact, your father's exact words to me were, and I quote, "Put him in a cell if you need to.". van Buren explained.

Peter sighed and sat down again. "Get me my lawyer and I'll talk."

"Although serious, the wounds inflicted on Miss Southerlyn are not life threatening. She will be all right." A doctor by the name of Sheryl Brass explained to Jack as they walked through a hallway in the hospital. "She will need some physical therapy but other then that, it'll be like it never happened."

"Except she'll always remember." Jack did know something about Serena, she had an awfully good memory and probably wasn't going to forget this night anytime soon.

"Yeah. Other then that. Now, she just came out of surgery and ordinarily I wouldn't allow anyone but family inside her room right now..."

Jack cut her off, "But since I'm a DA, I'll be allowed. Thank you. Anything else I should know right now?"

"She's gonna be really groggy once she is awake. Now, I don't know about you but I wouldn't want my boss to see me like that. Get my point?"

Jack grinned. Serena would never forgive him if he saw her like that. "Yeah, I see your point." He went into the room which was lit with a dim lamp in one corner. The bed was covered in a pink bedspread. Under it lay Serena, looking paler then she ever had even in mid winter. She was hooked up to an IV and a grey machine that monitered her heartbeat as well as another machine Jack didn't recogonize. He assumed it was for the pain when she woke up.

He took a seat in the purple covered chair to the right of her bed, away from the machines and IV tube, and leaned his head back against the chair. Mercifully, this hospital had been smart enough to choose high backed chairs for the patients' rooms. It had been a long day and an even longer night and soon Jack dozed off.

Briscoe and Green had gone back to the Southerlyn crime scene with CSU to check out the differences and similarities of the two crimes. "I hate overtime." Green said. "Not the money part, the working all night part."

"You know as well as I do that if it hadn't been an ADA that had been hit, we wouldn't be out here." Briscoe replied.

"All too true, man, all too true."

"Hey, look over here!" A young CSI called out suddenly. "Here's two casings. I don't think we found any casings at the other scene, did we?"

Another CSI answered him, "Nope. Bag'em, Chris. We'll test them back at the lab."

"With any luck those casings will match another crime." Green commented.

"Here's a couple of theorys for you, A. the killer is already making mistakes or B. the casings were planted." Briscoe said. "I'm going to go with B, at least for now."

"Going with A, I don't think this is his second murder, I think there's been others possibly not in the city so we didn't hear of them. Killers only get sloppy when they think they can't be caught." Green explained, thoughtfully.

"Didn't Southerlyn say something to the EMTs?" Briscoe asked.

"Yeah, something about seeing someone run away." Green remembered.

"I'm going to call the hospital, see if she's awake yet and ready for questioning." Briscoe pulled out his cell phone and began dialing.

"All right, Mr. Simeon. Here at last is your lawyer. This is Whitney Mayes. She'll be your lawyer until this whole thing is over." van Buren brought the young lawyer into the interrogation room to meet Peter.

"Thanks a whole lot." Sleeping in a police station hadn't improved the teenager's attitude one bit.

"All right, well, I'll leave the two of you to get acquainted, then I'll come back in about an hour for the interrogation, okay?"

"That'll be great, thank you." Whitney Mayes answered.

"So? What am I suppose to do now?" Peter sat up a little straighter now that they had brought him an actual lawyer.

"Tell me what you saw. Did you see anyone running away from the victim, a Miss East I believe the name was?"

"Well, uh, yeah."

"So what would have been so hard about telling the Lt. van Buren or the detectives Briscoe and Green about this?" Whitney really couldn't believed she'd been pulled out of bed even before the crack of dawn to talk to some snotty teenager.

"I was afraid to. I didn't want them to think I had done it."

"Well, by refusing to give your statement you only placed yourself under suspection."

"I did?" Peter asked, incredulous. "But I thought, but, but, that's not fair!"

"You did the right thing in asking for a lawyer if you felt a little intimated and scared you might be thought of as guilty. But by asking for a lawyer you also made it look and sound like you are guilty. Now I need you to tell me exactly what you saw and don't leave anything out."

Yippee! I got reviews! OK, that's out of my system now. Next up is what Peter Simeon really saw and Serena wakes up. Please read and reviews, all reviews are welcome. And to answer to anyone who might ask, I am not going to kill Serena off at all in this story (or in any other story I write). There is a reason why she was chosen as a victim which will probably be revealed later. Sadie