Chapter Five

Last night I couldn't sleep
I found it hard to even breathe
Oh I'm in trouble deep...with you

Danny left Lindsay's apartment just before midnight. She was significantly happier and he was content that she had reciprocated his affection for her. He fell asleep with a big smile dreaming of the feel of her lips against his skin.

Today I stayed in bed
Can't shake these voices in my head
I've fallen off the edge...with you

Lindsay pulled the covers over her shoulders and found herself waiting eagerly for the next morning. She never knew giving into something she had denied for so long could feel so good. It was strange when Danny was around it was easier to shelve all the memories away.

"Hey," He greeted when Lindsay pulled open the door to her apartment and stepped aside to let him in.

She smiled, "I'm not complaining, but what are you doing here?"

"I figured I'd give you a lift so you don't have to take the subway." Danny smirked and pressed his lips against her forehead, "Slept well?"

"Great. You?" She rested her arms on his shoulders and clasped her hands behind his neck.

Danny laughed and pulled her closer, "Had the best dream ever."

"Oh?" She raised an eyebrow and leaned in, mocking disbelief.

"Yeah. Of this," He kissed her on the lips. It started off gentle but soon became increasingly passionate until Lindsay pulled away and laughed, "We're gonna be late for work."

Danny whined before letting go of her. She grabbed her coat and bag before linking arms with him. They left the apartment feeling completely at ease with each other.

"Remember, no touching." Lindsay waggled her index finger at him before kissing him on the cheek. They had agreed to keep their relationship away from the prying eyes of their co-workers.

Danny mocked sorrow but gave her his classic smirk which used to drive Lindsay nuts with irritation. Both stepped out of the car and made their way towards the elevator heading up to the labs. They collided into Stella who as usual, looked perky and perfectly coiffed.

"Hello," she greeted and sipped on the cup of coffee she was holding.

"Hi," Danny and Lindsay greeted back in unison, then turned to look at each other and started laughing.

Stella raised an eyebrow, "You two look happy today."

"Yup" "Uh-huh" The doors to the elevator opened and they stepped in after Stella, deliberately standing on either side of the taller woman.

"What happened? Solved a case?"

"Kinda," Danny replied and winked at Lindsay from behind Stella's hair.

"But not quite," Lindsay continued, smiling slightly.

Stella frowned, "Happy and cryptic. Well, I gotta go solve a case." The elevator bing-ed and all three moved out.

"See you." Danny said airily, waving his fingers as if to rush Stella down the hallway.

Stella didn't miss that Lindsay kicked his shin as soon as she turned around.

Lindsay shut the door to the lab, "Okay, okay. We have to focus and solve the Angela Cox case."

"Sure thing, I can do that." Danny said, more to convince himself than Lindsay.

She snapped a pair of gloves on and reached into the bag of items they had taken from the crime scene and went through them. Five pairs of shoes, part of the bloodied blanket, more bloodied clothes, pillowcases, kitchen knives. She grabbed the shoes and moved to another corner, preparing the materials she would need to get the prints.

Danny stared at the report that the lab techs down at DNA had compiled. Strange. He exited the lab in a hurry, coat flying behind him. Looking up, Lindsay shrugged, and bent down to work on the prints again.

After industriously rolling ink onto the soles of the shoes and pressing them onto paper for twenty minutes and getting no matches, Lindsay picked up the blood smeared shoe print she had photographed the day before. She took a closer look at the print and gasped when she realized what she was looking at.

He chose the exact moment to rush into the lab.

Lindsay looked at him, eyes still wide in shock and mouth slightly parted.

"You won't believe what Hawkes just told me."

"It's a woman." She interrupted him.

"Wait…how did you know?"

She took the blown up photograph and walked over to him. "Look at this, the shoe print belongs to a woman. Even if a man has feet that small, which is difficult to believe, we're talking size 6 to 7 here, the cutting is too narrow."

Danny nodded and picked up the DNA report lying on the table and flipped the pages rapidly, "Double X chromosomes. And Hawkes said he could not find any trace of semen. The bruises on the vic's arms are tiny and were inflicted most likely by a woman, or a man with very delicate fingers."

"I think we need a little chat with the roommate."

"It's not her, she was definitely in Wisconsin those two days. I've checked her traveling schedule with customs already."

"Maybe it's not her, but we still have to find out if Angela had any enemies or if anyone could have a motive behind killing her."

Danny nodded, "I'll get her down for questioning."

Lindsay lifted the brown address book she had found at the crime scene, "Personnel check."

"Call me if you find anything."

Lindsay smiled, ran her free hand along his arm and headed out in search of a free computer.

She sighed and threw the pen down on the table. She had gone through the whole address book and had found nothing significant. All she could do was copy down the names of all the females in the book.

"Hey." Her cell phone rang, it was Danny.

"I've got the roommate down in one of the questioning rooms."

"Okay, got it. I'm coming."

She rushed into the elevator and punched the button that would bring her down to the questioning rooms. As she stepped out, Lindsay saw Danny crossing his arms and leaning against a room door. He seemed deep in thought.

"Danny." She called out, waving the pieces of paper where she had recorded all the names and anything vaguely suspicious.

Danny looked up and smiled slightly before receiving the papers. "You ready?"

She nodded in affirmation and stepped into the room after him.

This is ridiculous. Lindsay thought to herself. She was getting tired of running down the lists of suspects, if you could even call them suspects, with Holly, the roommate. Holly was obviously in shock, and obviously not the murderer. Thankfully there were only ten more names to go. Lindsay refrained herself from yawning.

"Zanetta Bradley."

"Oh, yes!" Holly's eyes widened as soon as Danny read the name off the list.

Lindsay perked up and sat up straight.

"Zanetta is a world class bitch. She was Angela's college classmate and is still upset that her boyfriend dumped her for Angela."

She wanted to roll her eyes, Holly obviously wasn't the most righteous person around. But she couldn't deny the information was worth knowing.

"The last thing I heard," Holly's voice lowered as if she was telling a secret, "Zanetta joined an occult or something. Maybe she just went completely psycho and decided to kill Angela. I mean, it's just totally like her. Zan's always doing crazy stuff like painting her fingernails purple and yellow. God!"

Lindsay sighed. This girl was annoying.

"Right, uh, thank you very much." She interrupted before Holly could launch into a monologue of how sunhats did not go with evening gowns. "We'll investigate further into Zanetta and contact you if we need your help."

"Oh, sure. Anything for Angela, y'know? As much as I pity her being dead and all, but it's just so irritating because I have to go find a new roommate? And who is gonna wanna share an apartment where somebody died in."

Danny got up hurriedly from his seat and pushed the door open. "Well, Holly, have a good day."

"You too! Hey, are you free tonight? Wanna go for a drink?" She batted her eyelashes.

Danny shook his head, "Nope, not free. I've got a date."

"Awww, that's too bad. See ya around." Holly almost skipped down the aisle. It was hard to believe her best friend had died.

"Got a date, huh? With who?" Lindsay joked as she and Danny left the room and headed for the elevator.

"Some good lookin' girl I met at the zoo. I wonder if you know her."

She punched his side but laughed, "Well, Holly is really interesting, don't you think?" Sarcasm was dripping from her words.

"Yeah, I didn't know wearing purple and yellow nail polish meant you had psychotic tendencies." Danny chuckled and sighed, "Okay, let's go find out more about Zanetta Bradley."

"Agreed."

They worked for another two hours before looking at each other with bloodshot eyes from staring too long into the computer screen.

"I think we need to pay Zanetta Bradley a visit."

Lindsay nodded and rubbed her eyes.

Stella observed the pair from outside the room. Something weird was going on, but she couldn't quite put a finger on it yet. Knocking on the door, she entered and asked, "Mac sent me to ask how things were going."

"We don't have any real suspects yet, but there's one woman who seems to be in an occult."

"Yeah, so says the flaky roommate." Danny snorted.

Lindsay elbowed him, "You never know."

Stella frowned a little, they seemed awfully…strange. "Well?"

"We're going over to her apartment now."

Both got out of their seats and stretched.

"Okay. Good luck." Stella tilted her head slightly and walked out of the room, unable to shake off the feeling that Lindsay seemed too relaxed around Danny, and he appeared too casual. What had become of the tension between them?

They left Zanetta's house a half hour left. It turned out Holly wasn't wrong. The woman's apartment was adorned (or rather, defaced) with satanic drawings and sacrificial athames. After they had mentioned Angela's name, Zanetta went ballistic and waved a pocket knife in Lindsay's face.

Danny had moved forward to protect Lindsay but nearly got pierced by the knife. Lindsay's eyes widened and gave a swift kick to Zanetta's elbow, knocking the pocket knife across the wall. Before she could hiss and scratch at Lindsay, Danny had twisted her arms behind her back and Lindsay had slapped handcuffs across her wrists. They called Mac and breathed a sigh of relief when Zanetta was squeezed screaming and howling into the back of a NYPD car.

Mac turned around to give them both the rest of the day off, before driving back to the lab.

"I've got a hot date later, see ya." Danny said, earning himself a slap in the chest. "C'mon, let's go for lunch."

Lindsay laughed and let him sling an arm across her shoulders. Resting her head on the side of his shoulder, she spoke, "What about lunch, and then you give me the New York City tour that I haven't had."

"Okay." He chuckled and kissed the top of her head.

Oh it's a magical thing
When the sun is shinging down on me
And this is such a beautiful place
Don't wanna miss a minute of today it's
So magical

They had just descended the Statue of Liberty with faces flushed from the wind and hair tussled.

"Woah. That was breathtaking." Lindsay commented, clinging on to Danny's arm.

Danny smiled knowingly. She looked really cute up there, and he had never seen her so ebullient. He hadn't really been enjoying the NYC landscape; he had spent the whole time staring at her. In actual fact, Danny was amused by the fact that she had not noticed him observing her every move and expression. It was nice that they were doing something together out of work for once.

They entered Danny's car and strapped the seatbelts on.

"Where are we going now?" Lindsay asked like an over excited five year old.

"Take a nice long walk in The Village. Interested?"

She was practically bouncing in her seat, "Yeah!" Reaching over, she changed the radio channel to a country one, eliciting a groan from Danny. "Hey! It's a great channel, okay?"

Lindsay whipped her head around.

Danny turned back to see what she was looking at. "What?"

"I feel like we're being followed."

"Well, I don't see anyone suspicious." It was fairly deserted, the sky was clear and the trees were swaying slightly in the cool winter breeze.

"I'm probably being paranoid." She muttered and tugged at his sleeve, "C'mon."

Danny shrugged it off, and grinning, led Lindsay along to marvel at the sights.

"You tired yet?" He asked.

"Why? Tired?" She turned to face him and grinned.

Danny nodded, he was tired, they had covered almost half the city and it was near sunset.

"Aww, poor baby." Lindsay mocked and ruffled his hair teasingly.

"Argh! Not the hair!" He whined and pointed to a bench somewhere in the distant, "Go sit there, no moving about. I'm gonna get some of the best hotdogs you'll ever sink your teeth into."

She smirked and walked away from him, heading for the bench, situated in a nice private spot. Danny watched her sit before sighing happily and moved to fetch the hotdogs.