Author: hermiine
Summery: A mother disappears during the night and Mac can't help getting personally involved in the case.
Rating: 15 years and older
Spoilers: Takes place after Death at the Mosque so I say everything up until then just to be sure.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and with my current daily salary of about 7 dollars it will be a while until I can save up and buy them.
AN: I'm going to break every unofficial rule there is concerning fan fiction including some I made up for myself just a couple of months ago. First I start by apologizing for it. It hasn't be betad, I've only got this part written out so far (infrequent postings) and I haven't researched anything for it so there is bound to be several mistakes in it (from here on we'll refer to it as author's privilege, OK?). The truth is however that if I don't start posting it, I will never finish it and I hope this will be the less of two evils. So if I haven't discouraged everyone from reading the story yet and there's still someone left, I can only tell you feedback is very welcome and appreciated ...
Part 1"Hey, are you on your way out?" Harm had just entered the bullpen of JAG HQ when he almost walked into Mac who was walking in the other direction.
"Yeah," Mac nodded. She sounded rather stressed.
"Will you be back for lunch?" Harm asked hopefully.
"I have no idea when I'll be back. This could take all day," she looked at him. She always looked at him so attentively nowadays. Since he wasn't really talking to her about what was going on with Mattie and everything, she seemed to try to find out simply by watching him. "I'm so sorry, Harm, but I really have to go now. Bud is waiting downstairs." She reached out her hand towards him and slightly brushed by his arm before turning around and rushing out.
Mac had been called into General Cresswell's office as soon as she had entered the doors to the office. A Marine Captain hadn't showed up for duty in the morning and when they hadn't been able to catch her on the phone, her CO had decided to send some people over to her house to see what was going on. There they had found her five-year-old daughter alone in the house. Mac had been ordered to go over there and start investigating what had happened to the Captain and her husband who according to records also lived there.
Bud and Mac drove up in front of the house and got out of the car. As she waited for Bud to catch up with her, she took a thorough look at the green house. It looked like any other house in this lower middle-class neighborhood. On the lawn in front of the house there were some toys lying around and it was obvious that here lived a family.
They knocked on the door and was immediately let in by a corporal, who quickly introduced himself as Johnston. Mac could hear a child running around and screaming in the other room. She was surprised that the child didn't really seem upset. It sounded more like she was playing.
"Hasn't social services come yet?" Mac asked.
"No, we called them again just before you got here, but apparently they're totally backed up and they can't send anyone over for two hours at least."
Mac raised her eyebrows.
"Do you work with my mom too?" A little brown haired girl had come into the hallway as well. She was still in her nightgown and she was carrying a naked doll in her left hand.
Mac got down on her knees and started talking to the girl "No, I don't, but I've been sent here to see if I can try to find her for you." The color of the little girl's eyes were blue and Mac noticed some crumbs of what looked like chocolate cookies in the corner of her mouth.
"She had already gone to work when I woke up," she stated matter of factly, like it was quite normal for that to happen.
"Was she there when you went to bed last night?" Mac continued to ask.
"Yeah, she read me the story about the dinosaur."
"Ma'am, I'll go and check out the house," Bud suggested.
"This is Lieutenant Commander Bud Roberts," Mac introduced Bud. She didn't want to scare the girl by having strangers just walking around looking at her house. That was unpleasant for most adults and probably not that different for a child, she thought. "He has a son that's a little older than you are. Is it OK if he takes a look through your house?"
The little girl seemed to consider that for a while before she nodded a little. "It's OK, but you can't touch my toys."
"I promise I won't," Bud assured her.
"What's your name?" she turned back to Mac.
"I'm Sarah Mackenzie, but you can call me Mac. All of my friends do that. You're Andrea, right?"
"Everyone, except my mom, calls me Andy."
"So does your father call you Andy as well."
"I guess," Andy seemed very little interested in talking about her father. "I'm hungry."
"You haven't had breakfast yet, have you?" Mac said and Andy shook her hand in response.
"He gave me a cookie from the cookie jar," she pointed at the Corporal who looked a bit emarrassed.
"You think we can find something in the kitchen?" Mac asked.
"We've got corn flakes. You can have too if you want." She grabbed hold of Mac's hand and started rushing off to the kitchen.
Five minutes later she was sitting at the table with a bowl of cereals and milk that Mac had provided for her in front of her.
"Andy," Mac sat down in front of the girl. She had resisted to put all of the dirty dishes that was standing on the crowded counter and in the sink in the dishwasher. "Was your father there when you went to bed last night?"
She thought for a while before she shook her head "No."
"Do you know where he was?"
"He often doesn't come home before I've gone to bed."
"And he wasn't here this morning either?"
The girl had started to look more and more serious during the conversation. Mac could see that she was now a bit worried about where her parents were. "Is it true what that man says, that Mom isn't at work."
"Yeah, that's true," Mac said. She desperately tried to come up with some thing to say that would comfort her. "It will ... It will be alright, you'll see."
Mac continued to talk to the little girl until Bud came back down and into the kitchen. He motioned for Mac to step out so he could talk to her.
"I'll be right back," she told Andy before getting up from the chair.
"You found something?" Mac asked Bud.
"Well, the house is a bit untidy. There are things lying around pretty much everywhere, so it's hard to see if there's something different. What I did notice is that there seems to be no female civilian clothes here at all, just the uniforms, and there's no car in the garage. I called Coates and she's not quite done with all of the hospitals, but so far she hasn't found anything there. However it seems like Mr. Matthews spent the night sobering up in the brig. He got into a fight at a bar called The Rooster yesterday. Apparently he called his wife to get bailed out, but she never showed up at the station."
"OK," Mac thought about the new information "We need to talk to the husband and the people she worked with," Mac said. She knew Bud already knew this, but sometimes it helped to think aloud.
"The husband won't be available for another couple of hours. They've decided to charge him for the bar fight and right now he's talking to his lawyer."
"You think you can start the interviews without me?" Mac looked back towards the kitchen "I don't want to leave her before social services get here."
"I understand. It won't be a problem I can start without you. Call me when I should pick you up."
"Yeah, I will," Mac nodded.
"She's a pretty little girl, isn't she?"
Mac just nodded again.
After returning into the kitchen, Mac continued to talk to Andy. Sometimes asking her questions to try to find out more things that could help her in the search for Captain Matthews, but also just talking about normal everyday things. After about half an hour they went up to Andy's room and Andy showed Mac her toys and they read a few books together. Mac realized that Andy was a really smart girl, but she had definite troubles to concentrate on anything for a long time and the activities changed frequently.
Three hours later Mac had just decided that she was going to start making lunch for the two of them. She was enjoying her time spent with the little girl, but she couldn't help getting annoyed at social services for taking so long to come over there. What if Andy had been forced to wait with that marine that had found her alone in the house. He had obviously had a very little idea about how to handle the little girl and she had sent him back to Quantico saying she could wait alone with the girl.
Just as they were walking down the stairs there was a quick knock on the door before it was opened.
"Hello," they could both hear a strong female voice. "This is the Children Protection Services."
"Hello," Mac stepped out into the hallway closely followed by Andy now seemed rather shy, almost hiding behind Mac. "I'm Lieutenant Colonel Mackenzie and this is Andy."
"I'm Alexandra Rowings. Have you packed your things? We're in a real hurry now, you see," she said stressed at the same time as she took a look around the house and on her face the judgement the family who lived her had gotten was displayed on her face.
Andy shook her head slightly.
"Andy, go up and start picking out some toys to bring and I'll talk to Ms Rowings for a minute."
Andy seemed to want to protest, but Mac gave her a stern look and she started walking upstairs again.
"Why did it take so long for you to get here?" Mac started asking.
"We're busy."
"Too busy to make sure a five-year-old girl is alright?" Mac took a deep breath "So what's going to happen to her now."
"Let's just hope her mother reappears soon or that her father gets out of the troubles he's in, because right now there really isn't room for her anywhere," for a second the woman standing in front of her seemed utterly upset and sad to Mac, but after just a few seconds she had put her mask back in place. "So I'm taking her to our temporary housing downtown."
"An orphanage?"
"Well ..." Ms Rowings was at a loss for words and just looked down on her feet.
"I'm going to go upstairs and help her pack," Mac concluded and turned around.
Less than ten minutes later Mac was standing outside the house watching the car with Ms Rowings and Andy pull away. She picked up her cell phone and dialed Bud's number. She hadn't felt comfortable letting Andy leave with the social worker, but she knew she didn't have a choice.
Mac looked over at Bud and noticed him looking down on his watch for the seventh time in the last half-an-hour. It was much past normal office hours and sitting in her office still working on the case, they were now the last people there. Suddenly she felt really selfish having kept him there for so long, when he probably needed to go home to his family. Just because she didn't have anyone waiting for her didn't mean it was the same for everyone else.
"What do you say we call it a day?" Mac said and Bud couldn't help sighing slightly in relief.
Mac got up from her chair and started putting her things in order. She took the notes she had made during the day and put them in her briefcase. She doubted she'd be able to sleep much tonight and she could just as well continue to work on the case at home.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Colonel," Bud had taken a quick stop by his office before popping his head into Mac's again.
"Ehm Bud. Just blame it on me, OK?" Mac said referring to Harriet.
"Oh, I was already going to do that," Bud smiled.
"Good."
Together they walked out to the parking lot. Today had been a very nice day weather-wise. The sun had shone all day and even though it was a little past eight o'clock now it was still quite warm for the season.
On the drive home Mac thought about what they had learned today. Everything so far seemed to point to Captain Matthews having left voluntarily. Her car was gone, just like her clothes and they hadn't found any signs of forced entry on the house. The interviews with her colleagues hadn't been very helpful. They didn't seem to know all that much about her, but one of them had said he thought she'd never really seemed happy with her life and lately even less. Tomorrow they were finally going to interview her husband and hopefully they would learn more then.
But what made them all so puzzled was of course that in case she really had left voluntarily, it meant that she had abandoned her daughter all alone at the house. Mac wondered how the little girl was doing now. Mr. Matthews had been let out of the brig and she wasn't sure she should hope that he had gone to get Andy out of social services' care. Andy hadn't seemed to think her father cared a lot about her. In the afternoon Mac had been by Andy's kindergarten and the personnel there had in some ways affirmed there. The father had never been by and Andy also rarely spoke of him. No one there knew the mother well either and between the lines Mac had gotten the impression that they all thought she was a bit weird.
For dinner Mac warmed up some left-overs from yesterday and she sat down with her notes in front of her going over the things they knew over and over again without feeling like she was getting anywhere. She wrote down a list on actions to take tomorrow. Eventually she decided that she wasn't getting anywhere for now with the little information she had and instead she picked up the file of one of the other cases that were currently on her plate and she had neglected today.
About three hours after Mac had left JAG HQ there was a knock on her door. Getting late calls and visits rarely mean something good, she thought. Before opening the door, she carefully looked through the peephole. Standing outside her door was Harm and the sight of his exhaustion and sadness made her open up the door right away.
TBC