OOOO

See part 1 for disclaimer.

Part 4…

Once they got the preliminary autopsy report, they went back to their accommodation. Even though they had an office that had been cleared for their use in their time there, they both decided that they would work better if they changed into some civvies and got comfortable. They crashed on the sofa in Mac's room.

"You want to go over the autopsy report first or the cellphone records?" Harm asked, holding the two documents up.

"Why don't you take one and I take the other?" Mac asked then took the autopsy report from Harm, leaving him with the phone records.

Harm just watched her as she flipped it open and began scanning through.

"So, what does it say?" he asked.

"As we thought; asphyxiation," Mac replied, "although the gunshot wound was inflicted soon before and probably slowed her down quite a bit…Bruising to the back suggests that someone pinned her face down. Her wrists, judging by more bruising, were held down too, so she couldn't have put up much of a struggle. Before she died, her lungs collapsed and she died from lack of oxygen."

"What a terrible way to die," Harm shuddered then got to reading from the document in his own hands.

"Yeah," Mac nodded as she continued to read through the details.

"This is interesting," she spoke up again, a few minutes later, "It says here that something was also forced inside her mouth, probably to keep her from shouting out…a fibre of synthetic leather was found wedged between two of her back teeth…She must have been biting down on it."

"What could that have been?" Harm asked, "The sleeve of a jacket, something like that?"

"Maybe," Mac nodded, "nothing fitting the description was left at the scene, so the killer must have taken it with them."

"Who on earth could hurt a fifteen-year-old child? Who would want to?" Harm pondered aloud.

"Another teenager?" Mac suggested, "The teenage years are fraught with troubles."

"But the Admiral said that Cassandra was well-liked by the kids at her school…Still, we won't know that for sure until we can speak to some of her friends and teachers, tomorrow…"

"But how did her killer get onto the base?" Mac asked.

"The same way that Cassandra did, through influence with officers on the base."

"How about the officers on the base? Maybe Cassandra was involved with one of them?"

Harm nodded, "Yeah, Kruger already told us that she was a real friendly kid. Maybe she had a closer relationship with one of the officers? We'll need to secure some search warrants for their belongings. Maybe that might turn up an item consistent with the traces of material in Cassandra's teeth."

Mac paused for a minute.

"What would you do if you found out that Mattie was taking an interest in older officers on a military base in Virginia?"

"Kill those officers with my bare hands and lock her in her bedroom until she was thirty…"

Mac laughed at his answer, but Harm continued.

"I'm serious, kids that age shouldn't be left unsupervised on a military base. Besides all of the obvious dangers, I know what it's like to be young and drunk on the power of being in the military…I wouldn't want my own kids exposed to that, even if they were 21."

"Okay," Mac joked, "I'm sorry I even brought that up, now…Harm?…Harm?"

Harm had switched off and was now in his own little world, gazing at the records for Cassandra Drake's cellphone.

"What, do you not think that teenagers should own cellphones, either? How long is that thing…"

She cut her words off when a look of horror disbelief Harm's face.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph…" Harm gasped, cursing proficiently.

Mac snatched the records from him and began to scan the details. She paused when she came to a very familiar one. She didn't at first believe her eyes.

"It's her, Mac…" Harm muttered, the shock very apparent in his eyes.

OOOO

"It is her," Mac breathed softly, "She called me for help, Harm."

"You couldn't have possibly done anything for her, Mac. She was clear across the country," Harm moved to reassure her.

"I know," Mac nodded, "But she sounded so scared…I wish I could have given her some kind of comfort in her final moments. Like when AJ or Jimmy fall down and scrape their knees…Sometimes kids just want to know that you care, that you're sharing their pain with them. It makes all of the difference in the world."

"I'm sure that she did get some comfort from your voice, Mac," Harm squeezed her shoulder, "I wonder how she managed to get your number…weird coincidence…"

But Mac didn't believe in coincidences anymore, not after the experiences she'd had.

'Or was it fate?' a little voice spoke up, inside her head.

"She sounded so scared, without any hope," Mac whispered, aloud, "I think she had resigned herself to her fate."

OOOO

The coroner told them as much when they went to see him that evening, with some unanswered questions.

"This is the nastiest thing I've ever seen," he told them, "Sure, I've seen blood and guts in the middle of a war zone, but not here. This is malicious, evil. Our girl was shot through the chest…you want me to actually show you? She's just in the back…"

"No," Harm and Mac both told him, quickly, a shudder passing through them both, "Just describe it to us, that'll be enough."

"Well, it's a wonder she could move at all," the man continued, "I don't know where she was shot, the blood trail leads right up to the fence around the base, but I'm surprised that she managed to get as far as she did. The bullet pierced her left lung and it had all but collapsed on her, sometime before. She was surviving mainly on what the right one could provide her with. She's pretty torn up too, I assume from trying to get away from her attacker. She's absolutely covered with bruises, mostly sustained before her death. Her right hand was stamped on, I'm told that a shattered cellphone was found in her hand. Her attacker must have wanted to stop her from calling for help. Whoever it was who did this had to have a huge amount of rage inside them. Our girl had something shoved inside her mouth, as I mentioned on the autopsy report. But not just to silence her. Actually, physically shoved in. I found a fragment of this material lodged in the space between two of her back molars. I've identified it as some kind of faux-leather.

Finally, there are bruises on her back, which look like knee marks. That is consistent with someone kneeling on her. She was struggling for breath so much that her pleural membrane ruptured, fluid poured into the pleural cavity and rendered her one good lung useless. Death followed within ten to twenty minutes, I'd say. "

"What an awful way to die," Mac muttered quietly, to herself.

"We were hoping that you could clear a couple of things up for us," Harm took the lead, "We weren't certain about a few details."

"I talked with the first investigator, I'll try to be as much help as possible," the man nodded.

OOOO

Over the next few minutes, Harm and Mac learned that it had been the first investigating officer at the scene who had left the sample of vomit behind. Harm and Mac couldn't say that they blamed him, it must have been a gruesome scene, when the body was still there and when the whole case touched a little too close to home for comfort as well. No wonder the man had asked to be removed from the case. Still, he had done a first-class job of making sure what little he had accomplished before his departure was all sorted and ready for them to review, together with little notes scribbled on the documents in question.

Also, it seemed that Cassandra Drake had not entered the base via the main security gate. They already knew that the officers on duty had not recorded her in the log-book.

"The blood trail led to a small gap in the fence around the base," the coroner informed them, "She obviously knew it was there, maybe she'd been through that way before."

"But why?" Harm questioned, aloud, "If she was friendly with a lot of people on the base, surely she could have gotten in through the main gate and gotten help from the officers on guard. Why go through a hole in the fence, when help is so nearby?"

"She might have been panicked," the coroner suggested.

"Or maybe the gap in the fence was closer?" Mac added, "If her attacker was close behind her, maybe she thought she could escape him that way…I wonder how big that gap is."

"We should check that out," Harm made a mental note, "But first of all, I want to speak to her father, Colonel Drake."

"He's not likely to be of much use to you," the coroner spoke up.

OOOO

Harm and Mac only found out exactly what he meant when they arrived at the commander's large, Victorian mansion on Brookfield Drive. They were greeted at the door by a tall, skinny man in a suit that suggested him to be the butler.

When they had showed him their id, he ushered them inside.

"I'm sorry, if you could just give me a couple of minutes, I'm afraid I must go and perform some urgent duties. Please excuse me, I'll be right back."

After that, he disappeared upstairs, presumably to take care of some household task or chore.

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