Title: Whoever Fights Monsters (2/?)
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters (including Maria. She's made it quite clear that she owns her own damn self, thank you very much.) I'm just borrowing them and will return them when I've had my fun, somewhat dazed and disheveled, but otherwise in their original condition. Also, Maria and I have decided to keep Eric for a while, and we're sending Tim to Yana...
Rating: Heavy R
Pairings: Eric/Maria, Tim/Calleigh, John/Yelina, Horatio/Adele
Feedback: Hey, you! Yeah, I'm talking to you! You're reading this, right? Well then review it! Come on, pretty pleeeeeease? It only takes a minute or two, and it makes my day. Besides, we both know you've got the time. What else are you going to do, work?
Dedication: Yana, for, as always, putting up with my crazy self. Jackie, Tina, Mel, Annie, Dorothy, Nonnie, and all my other loyal reviewers, what would I do without ya'll? I'll tell ya what; I'd stop writing! And that would suck. So, thanks!
Note: A few people have asked me about the stories that removed. muttermuttergrumble They aren't currently posted anywhere, but if you're interested in reading them (which I'd recommend since they are part of a series) my email can be found in my profile. Do keep in mind, they do contain graphic sex scenes, so let me know if you'd prefer to read an "edited" version.
"So, all we have to go on is Cassie's suspicions." Maria sighed.
"Not quite." Eric corrected her. "While you were outside throwing up in the bushes, I talked to the nurse who's in charge of dispensing medications to the students. I asked her if anyone knew what Mackenzie had a reaction to. She said she can get us a list of her allergies."
"And we can check that with things we find in the apartment." Maria finished. "You are brilliant. Of course, if no ones knows what she had a reaction to, Alexx will need to see the body to tell us, and it's already been released to the hospital for an autopsy. If we're going to get her, we need to find something that will get us a warrant."
"Excuse me." They looked up and saw a middle-aged man standing in the doorway. He was tall, with thinning gray hair and glasses. "I'm Michael McMannon, I'm the founder and director of the Dade Center. We're all devastated by this accident, Mackenzie was such a bright, lovely young woman."
"That's what we heard from Cassie Brody." Maria said.
"My staff and I will be happy to help you in any way we can, but I'm a little confused about why you're here." McMannon continued. "Mackenzie's death was an accident."
"Well, if that's the case, that's what we'll find out after we've gone over this apartment." Eric spoke up.
"What, exactly, are you people looking for?" McMannon asked.
"Evidence." Maria stated.
"Of what?"
Maria shrugged. "Murder."
"We've got a first aid kit here, open." Maria said. "A band aid wrapper, gauze pad, maybe she cut herself shaving." She pointed to a damp towel balled up on the floor, and a pair of cotton pajamas laid out on the bed. "Looks like she had just finished showering."
"Half-empty bottle of soda." Eric added, coming in from the kitchen. "Better take this back to the lab, see if someone spiked it with something."
"Detective?" A woman knocked on the door frame.
"Mrs. Lawrence, hi." Eric said. "This is my partner, Detective Maria Santiago."
"Nice to meet you." Mrs. Lawrence said. "Detective Delko, here's the list of Mackenzie's allergies."
"Thanks." Eric said, taking the print out. "Let's see...wow, a lot of them. Mangos, penicillin, cilantro, strawberries, tobacco...hey, Maria, what kind of band aids are those?"
"No-name brand." Maria shrugged.
"Latex free?" Eric asked. "She was allergic to latex."
"No, they don't appear to be..." Maria said. "Huh, okay, some of them are. The ones with blue printing on the wrapper are, the ones with the red printing aren't. Other than that, though, they're not really clearly marked. A latex allergy wouldn't be fatal though, would it?"
"In Mack's case, it very well could be." Mrs. Lawrence said. "Most of her non-food allergies were extremely severe. Smoking one cigarette would have killed her. But it doesn't make sense that she would have those band aids, she knew how serious her allergy to latex was."
"These first aid kits are provided by the school?" Eric suggested. "And refills?"
"Yes, those are in the medical office." Mrs. Lawrence replied. "But only Michael and I have keys to that cabinet, and the students have to get supplies from us."
Maria stood up slowly, rubbing her lower back. "Well, sounds like we're going to get that warrant."
"Hey, welcome back." Tim said when he saw Eric and Maria. "Eric, we've got a triple homicide at the marina, H needs you on that case. He said to grab your gear and head over there, I'm gonna be working with Maria."
"Damn." Maria pouted playfully. She leaned up and kissed Eric softly. "All right, you go ahead, I'll fill him in on the case."
Eric kissed her and patted her stomach gently. "Love you."
"Okay, so what do we know..." Tim's question trailed off when he saw Maria was watching Eric walk away with a dreamy smile on her face and both hands resting where his had been moments before. "Maria? You in there?" He waved one hand un front of her face.
"Yeah, right, sorry." Maria said quickly. "Uh, the dead girl at the school is Cassandra Brody's roommate. Mackenzie Matthews, twenty years old, a sophomore at the center. She's downstairs right now, we got a warrant and had her brought over. Alexx is working on her."
"Any suspects so far?" Tim asked.
"If her latex allergy was what killed her, the two most logical people to look at would be the director of the program and the medical director, since they have access to the supplies. But anyone could have switched those band aids. And, of course, there's still the possibility that it really was just an accident."
"But you don't think so." Tim observed.
Maria smiled a little. "I'm that easy to read, huh? No, I don't...something about this just seems off to me."
"Then something probably is." Tim said.
"What makes you say that?" Maria asked.
Tim shrugged. "I know you. And while you may be one of the most insane people I've ever seen on this side of the law, your instincts tend to be pretty sharp."
"Hey, I am plenty more insane than plenty of people on the other side of the law." Maria said, sticking out her tongue and shoving him playfully.
"Right, of course, my mistake." Tim smirked.
Maria's retort was cut off by her cell phone ringing. "Yeah? Hey, Alexx. Already? Damn, you are something else. We'll be right there." She put her phone away and turned to Tim. "She says there's something we need to see."
"Thought I'd better alert you as soon as I saw this." Alexx greeted the two CSIs. She motioned them over to the open body on the table. "She's got all the signs of anaphylaxis, but I don't think that's what killed her. Take a look at this."
Tim and Maria peered into the girl's open chest cavity. "Two broken ribs." Maria observed. "One in her heart, one in her liver."
"She bled out internally." Alexx confirmed. "Sternum's cracked, too. Like someone tried to do CPR, but didn't know what they were doing."
"Cassie was the one who found her." Tim recalled. "Maybe she panicked, tried to help."
Maria shook her head. "No, no way. She told us twice, told her parents, she came in, found Mackenzie, called the residential staff. If she'd done anything, even if she thought she ended up hurting Mackenzie trying to help her, she would have mentioned it. Cassandra's had her problems, but she's a good, honest kid."
"We need to talk to the residential staff." Tim said. He noticed that Maria was still staring at Mackenzie's body, pale and wavering. "You okay?"
"Yeah, I just...excuse me." She bolted out of the morgue. Tim followed her and found her doubled over a trash can, vomiting.
"Hey." He pulled her hair back. "It's okay."
"No, it's not." Maria mumbled. She shook his hands off of her and straightened up. "Don't." She turned away from him, covering her mouth. "What the hell is wrong with me?"
"You're pregnant." Tim stated the obvious.
"I see dead bodies every day." Maria snapped. "I've seen hundreds of things way more disgusting than an open chest since I got pregnant."
"How many of them were barely twenty years old?" Tim asked. "I've seen the way you've reacted to cases involving kids since you found out. You and Eric, you both try to hide it, but believe me, we've noticed."
Maria leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. "Damn it. I can't let this mess up how I do my job."
"It doesn't have to." Tim said. "It's just going to change it. And you're going to want to have a plastic bag or a bucket handy when you go into the morgue."
"Hey, don't mock my pain." Maria laughed through her tears. "Okay, come on, moment's over. We need to go back to the campus."
"Okay, we're going to need to take that back to the lab." Maria said, gesturing to Mackenzie's laptop. "The answering machine, too."
"All right." Tim agreed. "You gonna tell me your theory?"
"This was no accident." Maria told him. "But someone put a lot of effort into making it look like one. Whoever it was had to have had some kind of problem with her."
"Better talk to Cassandra and the other roommates, too." Tim said.
"There's twenty-six students at this center, we're going to need to interview all of them." Maria added. "The staff, too."
"You're really going hard at these folks." Tim observed. "How do we know it wasn't an outsider?"
"It could have been." Maria admitted, shrugging. "But we gotta start with what we know."
"How did Mackenzie get along with your other roommate?" Tim asked.
Cassandra shrugged. "Not bad, I mean we've both always been closer to each other than we were to Emily, and they fought about some shit, Em's kind of a neat freak, and she's super religious, and Mack wasn't either, but most of the time they got along okay."
"Other students here at the center?" Maria asked. "You think any of them might have had a problem with her?"
"Well, there was that Pakistani freak who kept hanging around her. He really creeped all of us out, actually showed up here at seven in the morning on a Saturday, he was pounding on the windows and shouting her name until my boyfriend went out there and told him to beat it." Cassandra said. "But he got expelled and then deported last month."
"So she had a stalker, but he's thousands of miles away." Maria said, sitting down across the table. "Cass, that's really not relevant. But I get the feeling there's someone else you're not telling us about.""No." Cassandra insisted, shaking her head rapidly.
"Who is he?" Tim asked. "Cassandra, we will make sure that whoever it is won't find out that you told us about him."
Cassandra looked helplessly at Maria. "His name's Don, he lives in the building across the driveway from us. Mack was really scared of him, he wouldn't leave her alone."
Maria nodded. "And you think he was obsessed with her? Enough to want to hurt her?"
"Yeah." Cassandra said softly, looking down at the table.
"Maria, what's this?" Eric asked, approaching his girlfriend at the front desk.
"Uh, my pill organizer." Maria said, shrugging.
"Right, what about these?" Eric opened two of the compartments in the plastic case. "You haven't taken your prenatal vitamins all week."
"So I forgot." Maria said. "Big deal."
"It is a big deal." Eric insisted. "Remember what Dr. Raeveska said? You're at risk for a miscarriage, is that really something you want to take chances with?"
"Eric, women have been going through pregnancy without taking those things for centuries." Maria sighed. "I swear to God, if you don't chill out and stop hovering..."
"I wouldn't have to if you would just take care of yourself." Eric shot back."I have been taking excellent care of myself, how can you even say something like that?" Maria snapped. She grabbed the pill case from him. "And why are you so obsessed with me taking these stupid vitamins?"
"Because it's not just affecting your health." Eric reminded her. "That's my baby, too, Maria. You'd better be taking care of it."
"Oh, so it's not about concern for me, but about protecting your precious seed." Maria said. "Don't be such a friggin' Neanderthal."
"Maria, you are acting like a child." Eric crossed his arms and stepped directly in front of her.
"Oh, I'm a child?" Maria hissed. "Guess that would make you a pedophile, and I am not gonna stand here and be lectured by a fucking pervert." With that, she turned on her heel and stormed off.
"Well, that was interesting." Tim said after a moment.
Eric muttered something under his breath as he pushed past his friend.
"I'll take care of her, you go after him." Calleigh said, having observed the entire exchange from across the corridor.
"Eric?" Tim called out as he entered the locker room. "You in here, man?"
"Right here." Eric replied. He was standing in front of his open locker.
"How bad is it?" Tim asked. "I mean, you just said her doctor told her she's at risk for a miscarriage. Is it really that serious?"
"I don't know." Eric admitted. "She's got a lot of scarring, a lot of internal injuries. The doctor's just being cautious, but it's hard not to get paranoid. That's my family, you know?" He finally found what he was looking for and closed his locker. "Anyway, I'm going for it." He held up a small black box and opened it."Is that real?" Tim asked, staring at the diamond ring. "No way you could afford that on a government paycheck."
"I've been saving for this since she came home." Eric confessed. "Even before she got pregnant, I knew...I guess I've always known. I've just been waiting for the right time."
Tim shook his head. "And you think it's now, after the way you two were just screaming at each other out there?"
"I've asked her three times." Eric said. "And I've always asked her when she's in a good mood. At this point, I'll try anything." He closed the ring box. "Besides, this time I can actually do it right."
"Yeah, when she sees that ring, she'll hesitate for at least a few seconds before she says no." Tim quipped.
The two men found their girlfriends standing at the front desk, speaking in hushed tones.
"Uh, Calleigh, I need to see you...over here." Tim said, taking Calleigh by the arm and leading her away.
Maria glared at Eric. "You know what else pisses me off? The way that-"
Eric held his hands up to silence her. "Maria, could you just shut up for one second? In fact, everybody just shut up!" The handful of people around them fell silent and stared at the couple. "Thank you."
"What the hell are you doing?" Maria asked."Maria, you drive me completely insane." Eric began, taking a deep breath. "You can argue with anyone about anything, you seem to love challenging people. And I love you for that. Because when you're screaming at me, that's when I realize just how perfect you are for me. Even when you are driving me out of my mind, even when you're being an incredible pain in my ass, there is still nowhere else on earth I would rather be, and no one else I would ever want to spend my life with. The way you challenge me, every day of my life, is one of the things that makes me fall more in love with you every day. And I know that it's still going to be like that when I'm seventy, and you're sixty-eight, and your face is forty, and your breasts are twenty-five..."
A smile crossed Maria's face even as a tear slid down her cheek. "My face will never be forty." She said, touching his cheek gently.
"Right, what was I thinking?" Eric chuckled. He wrapped one arm around her waist, while his other hand slid into his pocket and took out the ring. "Maria, I love you. Will you marry me?"
"Eric..." Maria gasped. For a moment, she just stared at him, and he braced himself for another rejection. Then a radiant smile crossed her face. "Yes." She said, almost too softly for him to hear. "Yes, yes, yes!" She kept saying it as he wrapped his arms around her waist and spun her around.
"It's about damn time!" The couple turned to Hagen and gave him a look, causing him to shrink back. "Sorry."
Looking around, they became aware that a small crowd had gathered, and was now watching them intently. But they didn't care. Eric slid the ring onto Maria's finger as he kissed her, then took her hand and pressed his lips against the diamond. "I love you so much."
"I love you, too." Maria whispered, now practically sobbing with joy. She looked at the ring. "It's perfect. You are perfect."
"Only because I've got you." Eric replied, kissing her again, tangling his fingers in her hair and holding her close as she moaned and wrapped her arms tightly around him.
"Ahem." A cough behind the couple made them break apart. They saw Horatio standing next to Calleigh and Tim. "So, Maria, you're finally making an honest man out of this guy?"
"No, just marrying him." Maria said, giggling as Eric pressed his lips against her throat.
"Congratulations." Horatio said. "Take it outside."
"Sorry." Maria laughed, taking Eric's hand and pulling him over to the elevators.
"You know, when H told us to 'take it outside,' I think he meant for us to take a walk or get some lunch." Maria said breathlessly, resting her forehead on Eric's shoulder.
Eric chuckled. "You mean you don't think he meant for us to consummate our engagement in the back seat of a Hummer? That's just crazy."
"No, this is crazy." Maria giggled. "We could get in a lot of trouble." She lifted herself off of him and lay panting beside him, with her skirt pushed up and her blouse unbuttoned. "God, if that's engaged sex, I can't wait to find out what married sex feels like." Her entire body was still humming, every nerve ending was on overload.
"What I can't believe is how you feel better every time I'm inside you." Eric said, pulling her back into his lap. "If that keeps up, I'm gonna have a damn heart attack."
"Oh, come on, you can handle it." Maria said, kissing him. In response, Eric turned her onto her back and moved over her. "Uh-uh, not now. We gotta get back to work before someone happens by and sees that the windows are all fogged up."
Groaning, Eric sat up and carefully pulled Maria's skirt back down, smoothing it, then adjusted his own clothing while she buttoned up her blouse. He took her left hand, smiling when he saw the ring catching the light. "I can't believe that you're really, finally going to be my wife."
Maria just smiled, too overcome to speak as they kissed once more, holding onto each other for another moment before Eric opened the door and climbed out of the vehicle, turning around to help Maria out. They both froze when they heard applause behind them. Slowly, they turned around and saw Calleigh and Tim grinning at them.
"Relax, Horatio thinks you two went for a drive, we told him we saw Maria's car leaving." Calleigh laughed. "But you'd better get back, he's gonna start paging you both any minute. Eric, we got a hit on those prints you pulled from that oxygen tank."
"Yeah, and we've got the director of the residential staff at the Dade Center coming in." Tim reminded Maria.
"Okay, just give us a minute." Eric said.
Calleigh and Tim looked at each other and shook their heads as they turned and walked away.
"A moment of silence for our dignity." Maria sighed and wrapped her arms around Eric's neck, burying her face against his chest.
"I love you." Eric chuckled, kissing her lightly.
Maria smiled at him, a pure, radiant smile. "I love you, too."
TBC...