A/N – Thanks to all the reviewers… I appreciate your kind words. I'm glad you like it so far. As I told my best friend, confidant, all around good-egg of a person… this is a plot-driven story more than a character-driven story (but pairings may be evident as time goes on…). Considering I like the latter more than the former, I'd be best described as a fish out of water. I'm branching out in a way I normally don't. So, be cruel to be kind. If you don't like it, let me know!
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For a crime scene, it wasn't exactly the most desirable. Aiden took a look around the roof of the building. At eight stories, the apartment complexdidn't particularly'tower' over the New York cityscape. The two buildings standing next to it had about four stories on it. When she'd seen that, she had a few officers trek over to each building and poll the residents to see if they'd seen anything. Hopefully, they'd strike gold.
The witness had told them that she'd heard nothing but the body hit the ground. Aiden looked over the side of the edge of the building and saw the small form of her co-worker snapping the requisite photographs. It was conceivable that the witness couldn't hear a struggle… or a heated conversation… or a silenced gunshot. Dr. Sheldon Hawkes had confirmed a gunshot wound to the now-mangled body. A normal gunshot would have reverberated against the taller building, magnifying the sound slightly. Physics 101. With that thought, Aiden pulled out her cell phone and dialed Danny's number.
"Hey, Danny… before Sheldon carts off the body, look for a silencer burn and let me know what you find," she requested of him before she wished him happy hunting. Pocketing her phone, she turned to look at the brick again. The cement was too porous to lift any usable prints, not that Aiden was sold on the idea that they would get any from the killer.
There were spurts of blood from where the victim bled out before falling to the ground below. Taking a handful of q-tips from her kit, she took samples from each spot. They would all probably come back as the victim's, but the CSI unit was nothing if not thorough. And sometimes, they got lucky. As much as they all – Mac included – hated to admit, luck was always better than nothing.
Aiden's trained eye caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her vision. There, in the barrier where the roof met the brick was a hole. A bullet hole. But that wasn't what intrigued her the most. It was the fact that the hole didn't look pristine. It looked unnaturally distorted, as if someone tried to remove the bullet. Looking around, she didn't notice any casings. There wasn't any evidence of another person being with the victim except the bullet lodged in the building. Taking out her Maglite, she knelt down and looked into the hole. She couldn't see anything, but that wasn't unexpected.
Reaching into her kit, Aiden pulled out a red tracing rod used to distinguish a bullet's trajectory. She inserted it into the hold to find the depth of the bullet. The rod went in about halfway before it met resistance. A smile crossed her features as part of the scene became clearer in her mind.
The victim had been shot at a downward angle, only a few feet from the edge of the building. The victim, who had at least been on his knees at the time of the shooting, had gone over the side of the building in one of two ways – dumped over by the killer, or standing on his own and falling over as he bled out.
Aiden pulled out her phone again.
"Hey Danny… I need you and the camera up here… and bring a chisel and a hammer while you're at it," she said. "I've got a present for ballistics…"
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Stella entered one of the research rooms with a heavy heart. She'd drawn the short stick in her and Mac's little battle of wills against the unpleasant. Seven large bags of garbage sat waiting for her on the table.
"Ugggg…" she said. "Just what I wanted to be doing at lunchtime." With that, she took the first bag and unwound the tie around the opening. Holding her breath, she dumped the contents onto the light table. Making a face, she started picking through the items one by one, taking a look at each to make sure there were no miniscule drops of blood or strands of hair anywhere. If there were, there was a chance they would turn out a no match to the victim. But if there was a match then all the time, effort… and smell… would be worth it to finally give this case some legs.
So, she sat through almost an hour of garbage duty before the smell finally started to make her dizzier than she could deny. She'd only made it through one pile of trash. With a sigh, she started to bag up the garbage she'd finished looking through. As she put the items back in the bag, she took one more cursory look. The beeping of her pager startled her.
"At least I now have an excuse for cutting out of here," she muttered as she read Dr. Hawkes' message. With a smile, Stella closed the bag and placed it in the 'complete' corner of the room and walked out.
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The morgue…
"Cause of death… bullet to the head," Sheldon said as Danny and Aiden walked into the morgue. Danny held up his hands.
"Woa... let's not get carried away with all the technical mumbo-jumbo," he said. The medical examiner smiled.
"Actually, it was a single gunshot wound to the back of the neck. You already know that the vic was shot point blank due to the GSR and silencer burn on the skin. The bullet trajectory severed the spine and the carotid artery in one fell swoop. The bullet exited out the lower left cheek, just above the jawbone. Mr. Ricardo was not alive when he hit the ground eight floors below – which is a plus for him," the black man said while stripping off his latex gloves.
"I'd say," Aiden said as she watched Danny lean closer to get a better look at the exit wound.
"Skill or luck?" Danny asked of the shot.
"Both?" Aiden asked back. Her partner sighed.
"Of course… why rule things out to make it easier on us?"
"Before you run away, there was also bruising along Mr. Ricardo's back upper arms and the back of the neck. All consistent with being held down against the back. I've got your pictures here," Sheldon said as he opened the manila folder in his hand. Danny took one of the glossies and looked at the measurements.
"Well, once we get a suspect we have something to compare him or her too," he said.
"It's still early in the case yet. Now you kids move along…" Sheldon said. "I've gotta brief Mac and Stella on their DB." Danny looked at the toe tag of the body on the next table.
"Jane Doe?" he asked. Sheldon nodded.
"That's gotta suck," Danny said. Aiden slapped his hand away from the toe tag.
"Don't go trying to solve Mac's case for brownie points. We've got one of our own," she said. Danny looked to Sheldon and pointed to Aiden.
"This one's a slave driver," he said. "Don't let anyone tell you different." The doctor laughed as Aiden pulled Danny out of the morgue. Once in the hall, they fell into step with one another.
"Okay," Danny said, becoming serious once again. "The severing of the spinal cord tells us he could have only been dumped over the side of that building." Aiden nodded as they turned down the hallway that led to DNA.
"Maybe there's evidence on the victim that we're overlooking since there was an obvious struggle," she said.
"I hate to say it, but you could be right. Let's go over his clothes again," he said, opening the door to the lab.
"That's all you. I've got a date with a slab of brick," she said. Danny smiled.
"Is that what they're calling it these days?" he asked. Aiden smirked.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" she said back before letting him continue on to DNA.
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"Find anything, Stella?" Mac asked as he caught up with her on the way to the morgue.
"Other than a divine new scent… Not much. But I've only been through one bag. DNA is working on your piece of 'treasure'… but I've searched that garbage with a fine-toothed comb. Not a thing," she said, frustrated.
"You don't smell that bad," Mac commented. Stella gave him a level look.
"Your sweet talk is phenomenal," she told him. Mac shrugged.
"What can I say? It's an acquired smell," he deadpanned. The corner of Stella's mouth twitched.
"Has anyone told you that you should do stand-up?" she asked. He just shook his head.
"Chances are that blood will come back the victim's," Mac said, bringing them back to the case. Stella nodded as they turned to corner to the morgue.
"I just don't get it. That dump site was just way too clean. There's always something left behind," she said.
"Our search may not go through where we found her or what we find there. It may just have to go through our victim," Mac said as he reached forward and opened the door for her. Stella smiled her thanks.
"I hate it when cases start off like this," she commented. Mac smiled back as he followed her into the room.
"They've got to start somewhere," he said back as they made their way to where Sheldon stood. The man gave Stella a look as she settled in front of him.
"I spend day in and day out with dead bodies… and my eyes are still watering from how you smell right now…" he said. Stella sighed.
"Okay, ha ha. You're funny. A real jokester. Now, enough with the yammering, start with the 'splainin'…" she said. Sheldon smiled as he drew the sheet down from over their victim's face – but it was fleeting as he was all business as the sheet settled.
"No identification as of yet, so cause of death for Jane Doe… loss of blood," the doctor informed them. Stella shook her head.
"I should have bet you on it," she said with a look at Mac. Sheldon held up his hand.
"But… not just from the obvious wound. There were two other wounds as well…" he continued, reaching down to lift the towel from the dead woman's stomach. There were two other stab wounds in her torso. One in the stomach and one in the chest.
"The fatal wound, though, was in the neck," Sheldon concluded.
"There are two stab wounds there, but neither deep enough to kill?" Stella asked, a frown on her face. The medical examiner shook his head in agreement with her statement.
"And the interesting thing… her throat was slit from the front by a right handed person due to the impressions of the cut."
"There goes our surprise theory," Mac said. "She knew her killer."
"Or she saw it coming," Stella added. Mac nodded at the point before she continued. "Two stab wounds and a slit throat as a final hurrah? The killer was playing with her… and since there was virtually no blood at the dump site, the killer also watched her bleed to death wherever she was attacked."
"Any evidence of sexual assault?" Mac asked. Sheldon handed a piece of paper to him.
"That was my next agenda item. The kit came back positive. Peri-mordem…"
"Oh good…" Stella scoffed with a hint of bitterness. "Just what we need. A sadistic, sociopathic rapist. As if the world doesn't have enough of those…" Mac handed the paper back to Sheldon and leaned against the table.
"Okay… what next?" he asked, looking at his partner.
"Dental records and garbage duty," Stella said. Then she smiled. "You're on garbage duty…"
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A/N: Let me know what you think! I know it's a little short compared to my other posts… I'm aiming for an episode sort of feel here, so if it doesn't read like you were watching the show, let me know. I hate to fail horribly at something, but that doesn't mean readers should suffer in silence!
