A/N: Continued thanks for all the lovely reviews. Thanks for reading everyone!
O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O
Stella sat at the edge of the desk flipping through the pictures again. She grinned as Mac stepped into the office. He stopped and looked at her, waiting for whatever she was going to say. She didn't get that grin on her face without some accompanied ribbing. He'd known her long enough to recognize and accept it.
"Give up on the garbage already?" she asked. "Gives more proof that women are stronger than men, don't you think?" Mac rolled his eyes as he continued into his office.
"I gave that job to one of the newbies," he said.
"You trust a newbie with that?" she asked. Mac shrugged.
"I have a feeling that we won't find much of anything in there," he told her as he sat down behind his desk. "Besides, I'm having Danny check in on him once he finishes processing his vic's clothes." Stella sat back in her chair.
"So, do you think this was some sort of revenge thing?" she asked, tossing the pictures onto Mac's desk.
"Gain domination, rape, stab, then slit the throat when the party's over…" he stated matter-of-factly. "The brutality of it would indicate it was some sort of revenge. Either that or your initial thought was correct… Sadistic psychopath." Stella let out a sigh.
"I'm not sure what I'm hoping this to be," she commented. Mac leaned back away from the pictures.
"Revenge is easier to predict. And it leaves a better trail," he commented. Stella made a wry face.
"And neither is pretty. Okay, so I've got dental records running and the NYC Department of Motor Vehicles couldn't pull a match. Both are viable options until the national DMV database gets a hit or doesn't. I'm not holding my breath on dental records at this point," she said. Mac stood up.
"Neither am I," he said. She frowned.
"Where are you off to?"
"I'm going to take a page from Danny's book and take another look at the vic's clothes," he said. Stella's frown deepened.
"Green dress theory?" she asked. Mac held back a chuckle at his partner's usual candor.
"No. We already searched for biologicals. All we found was the vic's blood. But… we didn't focus on the other things that could be found on clothing," he said. Stella nodded.
"Maybe we can find the primary scene yet," she said.
"That's my thought," Mac said. Stella stood as well.
"Let's hop to it… anything's better than waiting," she said, leading the way out of the office.
"Find anything yet, Dan-o?" Aiden asked from the doorway of the trace lab. Danny looked up from his task and gave her a frown.
"Don't ever call me that again," he warned her. The woman just smirked as she pulled up a stool and watched him go over every inch of the shirt he held. "How 'bout you? Anything on the bullet…" His pause caused her to let out a small laugh.
"Can't think of an annoying nickname to call me?" she asked. Danny shook his head.
"Don't you worry, I'll find something," he told her. Aiden laughed again.
"Right… anyway, the lab's trying to match the striations in the database right now. They're going to page me when they have results. How about you?" she asked. Danny's head nodded to the microscope.
"I found a small trace of a substance under the collar of the shirt. It wasn't much, but I'm trying to search out to see if there's a better sample. I'm not finding one. Could you take that sample and start processing it while I finish up the shirt?" he asked.
"You're going to owe me one," she said as she took the slide from under the microscope.
"I can think of worse people to be in debt to," he said, still focused on his job. Aiden smiled.
"Like who?" she asked.
"The bank… the mob… Stella…" he said with a smirk. Aiden chuckled as she took a q-tip from the holder and dabbed at the slide, getting the sample where it needed to be. She then took a test tube and cut the swab into it. Danny raised his head to watch her put the tube into the appropriate machine. Hopefully, he'd have an answer in a few short minutes.
"Do you think that sample will bring back anything conclusive?" Aiden asked as Danny stuck the shirt back into the brown paper evidence bag.
"I'd rather be fifty percent certain than have zippo," he said. "Right now, until we get your bullet back, we've only got a name to our victim. And according to Detective Vicaro, everyone that we can connect him to thinks he was an 'alright guy'."
"Even 'alright guys' end up dead, Danny," Aiden pointed out.
"I know. And usually, there's a reason behind it. I'm just not good at being patient," he said.
"Everyone in the lab knows that," she said. Danny gave her a 'very funny' look before he turned back to the printer, waiting for the printout. It only took a few moments. Danny took the paper and read the results.
"Lanolin?" he asked with a frown.
"What else?" Aiden asked, knowing that there had to be more to it than that.
"There was a slight reading of petroleum, but not much, which isn't surprising considering the size of our sample. The pH also reads near 7…" he said.
"I can't think of anything off the top of my head that uses those ingredients with that pH level," Aiden said with a frown of her own.
"So…" Danny started, turning to her. "Do you want to research this, or go check in on the newbie?" Aiden's eyebrow rose.
"You want to owe me two that badly?" she asked. Danny shrugged.
"What can I say? I'm a fool for debt," he said. Aiden looked at him strangely.
"I think you've been stuck in here for too long. But I'll let you suffer a little longer, I'll go check on the rookie," she said. He watched her departing form for a moment before taking a seat in front of the computer.
It took him a while of searching the Internet and the substance databases that the crime labs usually kept, but he finally hit pay dirt.
"Leather conditioner…" he muttered to himself, trying to figure out how that fit in. Then it hit him. The murder wasn't some sort of random killing. It was done in execution style, which explained the clean crime scene. No fingerprints, not a speck of DNA or blatant trace, and a bullet hole that, on any other day, could have been overlooked. Danny grinned at the fact that this killer was anal enough to care for his gloves, but not anal enough to wait until the conditioner had set in…
"Gotta love it when they make a mistake," his grin widened. He pulled the paper from the printer.
"So? The verdict?" Aiden's voice asked from the door. Danny turned.
"Ridleys brand leather conditioner. It's pretty high end…" he informed her. Aiden gave a pleased smile.
"That should narrow down the search significantly," she said. He nodded and was about to say something when Aiden's pager went off.
"The bullet calls," she said.
"I'll finish this up. And when you're done, we may have a few house calls to make," Danny said. Aiden nodded.
"Don't forget to check up on your newbie again yourself sometime. Mac'll have your head if you don't. How is Mac paying you for that, anyway? Hourly or a flat rate?" she asked with a grin. Danny rolled his eyes.
"You remember being babysat… there's no other way to learn," he said.
"Oh, yeah, I remember. But I got off easy… I had Stella watching my back," she said with a wink as she departed. Danny shook his head with a smile. He may have learned at the feet of the tough operator, but he learned from the best. Not that he was saying Stella was any less competent of a CSI. In fact, she was one of the best as well – it was why she was Mac Taylor's partner. But Mac was supervisor for a reason. And Danny certainly wasn't going to argue with being part of a team like that.
Stella sighed. She had a feeling that this case was going to take a while. She hated having those feelings. The longer it took to put a murderer behind bars, the more stressed everything else became. And stress, well… She loved and respected Mac to death, but when he was stressed he didn't talk. And Stella knew that if he didn't talk, he didn't sleep. A Mac who didn't sleep was a Mac who wasn't at the top of his game. He was brilliant whether or not he was, but she had a feeling he was going to have to be sharp for this case. She'd been having a lot of 'feelings' since she woke up this morning, and it was something that she was beginning to get annoyed with. Stella was never one to follow her 'gut'. She always methodical and always followed the evidence. And so far, the evidence was telling her… Interesting things, she thought as she looked over the report.
"Hey Mac, take a look at this," Stella called to her partner. She handed him the piece of paper the printer had spit out.
"What is it?" he asked. Stella read the readout and then looked into the microscope again.
"It's a mixture of sawdust and varnish," she frowned as she stepped back and let Mac take a look at the sample.
"Brand?" he asked. She scoffed at him.
"I'm good, Mac, but not that good. To narrow down the brand is going to take a little more time." Mac nodded.
"Time isn't exactly something we can ignore, though. If this guy's a repeat, he may have already chosen his next victim," he told her. Stella's eyes went wide and she immediately spun in her chair to the computer.
"Why didn't I think of that?" she asked, typing furiously into the computer to tap into the New York Police Department database.
"Cold cases?" Mac asked, following her though process. Stella nodded.
"Yep. Whether or not this guy's a psychopath, killers usually stick to the same MO. If they don't, they have a tendency to panic and make mistakes," she murmured as she typed the appropriate words into the search areas. When she hit the enter key, the computer popped up a list of fifty or so unsolved cases with the same MO in the past fifteen years. It was actually a lower number than either CSI expected.
"I can go earlier, but at this point, I want to stay recent," she said. Mac leaned down next to her to get a closer look at the screen.
"Can you plot it out?" he asked. She hit a button and the screen went to an aerial shot of New York City. Another second later, all of the cases she'd found plotted themselves in the location that the bodies had been found. The plot was scattered all over the city, but there were five that caught Mac and Stella's attention. As the others were pretty much out of range, these five were fairly close together.
"The dates… they're all mid to late last year. No pattern to the dates, but they're too close together to be anything but connected," she said.
"But those bodies were found near High Bridge. Our DB was found in Long Island… Why would the killer vary so much?"
"Could be a variety of possibilities there. He could have killed spur of the moment, he could have killed at a different time in the day, he could have changed his dump site pattern, he could have moved… But… right now, this plot is the only lead we've got. It's worth a look. Flack can go question the detectives that were on the case and we can go take a look at the sites. Maybe, we'll find our connection there," she suggested. Mac nodded.
"Let's go then," he said. Stella smirked.
"You drive…"
"We got a hit off the bullet," Aiden said as she joined Danny. He looked up from the garbage and gave her a look that clearly said 'Thank God'. He threw down some unidentifiable object and stripped of the latex gloves.
"I don't know what Mac's looking for, but I don't think he's going to find it," he said. Aiden surveyed the mess.
"Well, I think Mac knows he's not going to find anything. Otherwise, he'd be in here doing this himself… not siccing a newbie – or you – on it," she commented.
"Like we don't have a case of our own," he grumbled. "Anyway, what's your news?"
"The bullet came from a semi-automatic sniper's rifle…" she said. Danny frowned.
"A sniper's rifle?" It fit his hitman theory. "No wonder the guy had no left side of his face," he commented. Aiden nodded.
"And what we thought was a small caliber silencer burn was actually a rifle barrel burn," she said.
"Close range with a sniper's rifle. The bruising and the barrel burn prove it," Danny muttered.
"Not to mention it explains why the bullet was lodged so deep in the brick… Do you think there was a different target in mind and Mr. Ricardo surprised our killer?" Aiden asked, following Danny's train of thought towards a hired man.
"That would be the best theory we've got so far. And the evidence seems to support it. Did you get a match to the gun?" he asked. Aiden smiled.
"Of course," she said, handing him a list. "The bullet was fairly specific to a gun that was just recently released to commercial sale rather than just military use. There were eleven of them sold in the area after its release - the majority of themto police S.W.A.T units. Chances are our killer is on that list."
"S.W.A.T or not... and that's assuming our killer got his gun the legal way," Danny said.
"The eternal cynic?" Aiden asked. Danny smiled.
"We covered this earlier… realist… I'm a realist…" he said. "Well, let's get started on our suspects."
"I've already called Det. Vicaro. He's on his way to get warrants for the firearms," she said with a smile.
Stella's cell phone rang just as they'd pulled out of the parking lot for the trek to High Bridge.
"Bonasera," she answered.
"Hot off the presses… your vic is one Whitney Patricia Howard, native of Crestone, Colorado. Mid-twenties, single, interior design student. Her roommate called her in as missing late last night and it went city-wide this morning," Flack's voice said. Stella could hear the busyness of the precinct that the detective was interrogating.
"That's great, Don. Do you have an address for the friend?" Stella asked.
"You'll want to head towards the Pratt Campus. The friend lives at 1100 St. James Place…" he told her. Stella nodded at Mac to pull over.
"I know where that is, it's my neighborhood. Meet us there," she told the detective. Her partner looked over at her sharply. Stella ignored the look and hung up her phone.
"Let's turn around. We have a hotter lead. Flack identified the vic for us," she told him.
"The victim's friend?" he asked. Stella nodded.
"Yep. Apparently, she called it in late last night," she said. Mac frowned.
"She called it in late last night, we found the body this morning, and Sheldon said the vic had been dead more than 24 hours…" he said. "The math doesn't add up…"
"For a roommate, no. Something's missing, but we'll find out when we get there," Stella said.
It took them a while to get there in the afternoon traffic, but Flack arrived just as they did.
"You did pretty well," Stella commented on his arrival time. Flack shrugged.
"Traffic by Yankee Stadium isn't so bad anymore since they lost the Series," he quipped. "But I bet it's a bitch in Boston…"
"And you were halfway here when you called," Stella grinned. Flack grinned back.
"Yeah, that too…" he said as he reached by Stella and rang their destination's buzzer.
"Who is it?" a feminine voice asked.
"NYPD ma'am. We're going to need to talk to you about Whitney Howard," the detective said into the intercom. There was a long pause. One that had the three of them looking between each other. And then finally, there was the unlocking buzz. Flack pulled the door open and Mac and Stella, field kits in hand, followed behind him.
The reached the third floor of the four story building and knocked on the apartment door. An attractive young female cautiously peered out the door as she opened it. Flack showed her the badge and Mac and Stella flashed their ID's.
"Are you Jennifer Lafferty?" Flack asked. The blond girl nodded as she opened the door wider for them to enter. Mac and Stella looked around the spacious living room area to see if there was anything eye catching or out of place. There was nothing they could see.
"You're here about Whitney?" she asked. "Have you found her?" Stella stepped forward and touched the girl's shoulder.
"We found her," Stella said gently. "We're so sorry. She's dead." Jennifer's hand came up to her mouth to cover the gasp that escaped. Tears quickly filled her eyes and a few spilled over.
"Was it an accident? Or… or…" the girl couldn't finish the thought.
"We think she was killed," Flack said. Jennifer swallowed and gave a single nod.
"Have you found who did it?" she asked.
"No, ma'am. That's why we are here," Mac said.
"Ms. Lafferty, when was the last time you saw Ms. Howard?" Flack asked. It took a few seconds for Jennifer to get control of her emotions.
"About two days ago. I sometimes stay over at my boyfriend's place. When I got home from work last night, there was a message from one of her instructors at Pratt saying she'd missed class the other day and a test…" the young woman swiped at a tear. "Whitney never misses tests. She was serious about her interior design…"
"Did she have a boyfriend at all?" Stella asked. Jennifer shook her head.
"No. Not here in New York. She said she'd had a serious boyfriend back home in Colorado, but they'd split up. She came here and he ended up in Vegas. Whitney never talked about him," she said. "I can't believe she's dead."
"How about people from school? Was there anyone that she didn't get along with? Anyone that she could have met elsewhere?" Flack asked. Jennifer shook her head again.
"No. Whit was really serious about her studies. She was paying for school with her own hard earned money. She really wanted to succeed at this. Nightlife wasn't really an interest of hers," she said.
"Would you mind if we took a look around the place to see if there's any clues as to who would do this to her?" Mac asked. Jennifer waved a hand.
"Do whatever you need to catch the bastard that did that to her," she said before going over to her couch and collapsing on it. Mac and Stella looked at each other and then picked up their kits. They immediately went to the bedroom that had been Whitney's.
"Start with the luminol?" Stella asked. Mac nodded as he set down his kit and opened it. Stella shut the shades and put on her glasses as Mac started spraying the luminescent spray over the carpet and the top of the neatly made bed. Not a thing stood out as they waited for the tell-tale glow of certain biologicals. Stella blew out a breath, the curls jumping away from her forehead.
"Okay… I'll take the rest of the bed. You want the closet?" she asked.
"That's a plan," he said, going to the walk-in closet. Stella set to her task. As easy as it had sounded, the task itself wasn't. She had to do each piece of material separately and completely unmake the bed. Then, with Mac's help and the experience from a past case, she had the mattress turned over and tested that as well. Mac didn't have an easy job either. He had all the clothes and shoes to deal with along with the carpet. Both of them came up empty.
"Well, what next?" Stella asked as the two of them convened in the bedroom doorway.
"Let's take a look in the living room, get prints off the doors and check drains. If those come up empty, then we'll have to count this out as the primary scene. It's just too clean. Flack's interviewing neighbors. Until he's done, work the apartment," he said. Stella frowned and reached out to stop him from leaving.
"We found sawdust and varnish on her," she started, thoughts piecing themselves together. "She was an interior designer. Maybe it came from somewhere in the school, or even a client of some sort?" Mac nodded at the theory.
"That sounds probable. Let's finish here and follow those leads…" he said. She smiled at him and then followed him out of the room.
O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O
A/N: Forgive my forensics ineptness… if there's obvious, horrendous mistakes please let me know (or if you know technical names for things that I don't), but otherwise, let me live in my world of ignorance… :P
