Thank you all for your kind words! You have no idea how good it feels to read that someone likes one's writing. It allows us to exorcise demons, mentally hygienise, de-stress from VERY hard days and find an outflow for one's creativity. My orchids are all either dying or giving out the most pathetic, minuscule flowers, this year, so this allows me to compensate for the feelings of inadequacy I've been experiencing! Stay safe and PLEASE double mask!
February 3rd, Sunday
McGarrett Home
0830 Hours
Sunday dawns beautifully, daybreak tearing through the darkness, but Steve just lies in bed, listless, devoid of any wish to face the ocean, aware it has become his daily taunt. Everything seems to have faded in colour; food tastes bland, these days, music aggressive, sleep provokes him with its cruelly elusive nature. Even his work, which he normally finds challenging, has lost its appeal. Why is he feeling like this, so strongly and with such finality? Why can't he just go back to how things were, before Joe had died and he had felt compelled to call her? Why had he done it, for that matter? Why? Angry, but mostly unwilling to keep thinking of Catherine and her incomprehensible behaviour, Steve forces himself from the bed, to start some kind of day. This is getting him nowhere.
As he gets downstairs, Lou is standing in his living room, answering cryptically to someone on his mobile phone. If he had to venture a guess, he'd bet it is Danny. When Lou sees Steve, he smiles, and gives him an obviously pre-prepared excuse about coming to see Eddie and taking him out for a walk – something he's never done before. Junior smiles to himself at Lou's incompetent lie; as Steve's about to offer him a beer, his phone rings. It's Duke. A woman's body has been found gagged and bound in Ewa Forest.
Danny's suggestion of late lunch at Kamekona's is met by Steve's less than enthusiastic acquiescence. By mid-afternoon, the autopsy at the M.E.'s office and the processing of the evidence by the crime lab are ongoing, leaving the team to their background checks and witness questioning. Steve delegates and goes back to his crime reports, in the solitude of his office. Although aware of the team's concern for whatever is going on with him, at the moment he just can't be bothered to justify himself. His anger has abated somewhat since arriving home, and he's slowly realising he'll eventually have to go back to living his life without her – once again – but events are still too fresh in his mind for him to accept that thought willingly. Besides, after many hours tossing and turning in his empty bed, another option presented itself to him as much more palatable – finding out the reason for her behaviour. Throughout the day, that little thought has insidiously taken residence in his mind, unwittingly allowing him to soothe his aching heart. One clear option comes to mind: Elizabeth Rollins. It's obvious she's very fond of him, and hopes he and Catherine would just get together already – so maybe she can help him make sense of Catherine's reaction to his barely-there suggestion.
Lost in his thoughts, as he contemplates his next move, Steve hears a knock on the door: Danny - round 13. This time, however, he simply enters, without uttering a word, and silently sits on the couch, as if trying to decide how to express what he wants to say. Steve waits patiently, but no words come out of his friend's mouth, unnerving him. A quiet Danny is a contemplative Danny, a far more dangerous prospect than the blabbermouth he's used to. Without looking up, Steve sighs and acknowledges him.
"What, Danny?"
From the corner of his eye, he can see Danny start to wave his arms about, is his usual manner, making him smile. Some things never change – at least, there's a consolation. "I really wish you'd open up to me, you know? At this point, every possibility is running wild in my head, and it's not a pretty place to be living in," he chuckles, trying to lighten the somber mood of the situation.
"I'm just tired, Danny, that's all." And finally, Steve faces him, trying to look as sincere as he possibly can.
"Look, I get that you may not want to talk about it. I guess that you may not have yet had the time to process it – whatever 'it' may be", and he makes air quotes. "Perhaps it happened to someone else and you were just affected by it. Perhaps you can't tell me about it, Navy 'if I tell you, I'll have to kill you' style…" and he leaves the joke midair, hoping Steve smiles, which he does. "But something definitely happened and, as your best friend - as your brother - as a person who's been through so much with you these last 9 years, I'd really like you to extend me the courtesy of acknowledging that something is indeed bothering you. That's all I'm asking. I won't pry, I won't try to get it out of you, but there has to be a reason for this change in behaviour, I'm not going crazy. Otherwise, I'm going to start thinking that someone did a personality transplant on you, and that's a seriously disturbing thought."
Steve smiles while considering Danny's request, and finally relents. "Fine, Danny, something did happen. I'm just not ready to talk about it yet. Don't really know if I ever will be, OK?" he concludes with finality, inwardly cringing at imagining what Danny's epic rant would be like, should he find out what happened. 'Besides,' Steve thinks, 'it's not just MY story to tell, so until I know why, it'll be my secret to keep'.
"Well, just know that I am here for you, if and when you do decide you need to talk about it. And consider, for a moment, how you'd feel if something this important was going on with me…" Steve looks up at him, surprised, "Yes, Steven, important - obviously - and I refused to talk about it? You'd at least be worried. Worse, you'd feel shunned. So that's how I feel."
Steve hangs his head low, feeling guilty for always dismissing Danny and his exaggerated antics. "You're right, Danny, I am sorry. I promise that when I do decide to talk about it, you'll be my first port of call. Deal?" He says getting up, ready for a hug.
"Deal." Danny leans in, but backs away slightly, looking Steve in the eye. "Just don't bottle it all up, OK? It does none of us no good." And he sways an arm between the two.
"Fine." The two men hug, but one of them is not a happy camper. For reasons entirely different, neither is the other.
Noelani is finishing up the woman's autopsy by the time Steve and Danny come round. No matter how many times they enter her office, the associations are always unpleasant.
"Noelani, hi."
"Commander, hello! Didn't know you were back, welcome."
"Thank you, Noelani," Steve says, genuinely happy to see a familiar face. "What have we got?"
"Well, the prints came back to Alani Kealoha, 27, resident of Wahiawa. Cause of death: gunshot wound to the back. Caused a catastrophic injury to the lungs and heart, killed her in seconds."
Steve winces, remembering his own "catastrophic" injury to the liver. "Shot? As well as gagged and bound?"
"Overkill, wouldn't you say? The gunshot was definitely what killed her."
"So… whoever shot her, she may not have expected it?" Danny asks, thinking aloud. "But why gag and bind her, if the intention was to kill her?"
"Maybe she was bound first, then shot? Is there any way of knowing if she was standing or lying down, when she died?"
Noelani smiles. "Yes, Commander, there was stasis in her chest and abdomen, meaning she died lying face down and stayed in that position for a few hours. The blood then pooled in the direction of gravity."
"So… she was killed and left in the same position for hours? So she's gagged and bound before being shot and someone, we don't know if it was the same person as the one who shot her, then takes the body and dumps it on the beach during the night?" Steve asks, mulling over the thought.
Danny goes with it. "Makes sense, but it still doesn't explain why they killed a woman they had taken the trouble of gagging and tying up. Was there an issue with noise? They didn't want her to move… OR scream?"
Noelani continues. "There's more, unfortunately. She was tortured while in captivity, there were injuries as old as two weeks. Broken fingers, bruises, severe injury to the spleen. She must've suffered a lot."
Half an hour later, Danny and Steve enter the bullpen and head for the smart table, where Quinn and Tani are busy looking for information on the dead woman.
"OK, so Alani had a rap sheet a mile long. Solicitation, prostitution, drug smuggling, petty thefts, burglary and shoplifting. She was 15 when she was booked for theft for the first time. That's awfully young," Quinn adds.
"Not for Wahiawa," Steve mumbles, sorry for the woman. "Unfortunately, crime rates in that neighbourhood are some of the highest on O'ahu. Single-parent families, low income, school dropout rates extremely high, people resort to crime to make ends meet."
Quinn is still busy typing away and a photo of Alani's last mug shot comes up. She can't weigh more than 100 pounds.
"Unfortunately, she also seems to have fallen prey to the drugs she sold. Three ER visits in the last five years, overdose. Last time, it nearly killed her."
"But why gag and bind her, if the intention was to kill her anyway?" Steve asks, puzzled. His thoughts are interrupted by an incoming call.
"Fong?"
"Commander, nice to hear your voice. Didn't know you were back."
"Yes, back at work. You, uh… you have anything for us?"
"Well, the victim's clothes had trace amounts of GSR."
"On the back?"
"Exactly, only found on the back."
"But for there to be trace, she had to be shot at close range, right?"
"Exactly, Commander. The nozzle of the gun must've been close."
"Anything else?"
"Trace amounts of dirt laced with tar, which is consistent with the area where she lived…"
Danny chimes in. "So, maybe she was imprisoned in her own neighbourhood? Which is next to the airport? Hence the tar?"
"I'd say that's a definite possibility, Detective." Fong says.
"What else?", Steve asks, impatient at the scarcity of clues to go on.
"We're looking into a few more things, I'll let you know as soon as we do."
Quinn and Tani leave to go to Wahiawa, to chase down a lead suggested by Duke. Leaving Danny in charge, Steve retreats to his office to catch up on the million and one crime reports and prepare his next meeting with the Governor.
By the time he finishes, it's midnight. He has tried not to think about the option of calling Elizabeth Rollins for the rest of the day, but now that the work is done and his idle mind has ample time to roam, he starts to entertain the idea, once again. On the way home, as he grips the wheel, he alternates between wanting to stop the car right where he is and pick up the phone, to thinking that rash decisions are never good. He ultimately decides that he's not even sure what time it is, in Washington D.C., and that seems a good enough cowardly excuse, at least for now.
But being a slight coward does nothing to ease the edge of pain that he constantly feels, ever since he returned from Washington; it's like a constantly open wound that won't heal. He has stopped being content with his life, and he misses the feeling he used to get, every time he woke up, that despite all his personal losses, he was slowly managing to cope with what the days threw at him, with tranquility and hope for the future. He made plans, he was as happy as he could ever remember having been. But now… the numb grinding is there, from the moment he wakes up to the moment he lays his head on his pillow. He misses Catherine so much, he actually has an out-of-body experience, where he sees himself getting on a plane and showing up at her door, again, to demand an explanation and perhaps beg her to come back to him. Every free moment he's been having, he has replayed what happened in Washington; even when he is engrossed in his work, moments of their time together invade his mind in momentary flashes and make his heart pound faster, adrenaline hitting him in waves. At times, knowing that he had her and lost her, again, becomes unbearable, making him regret having given in to his desire, as though he could've really helped himself. He has known real happiness, the kind that only comes along once in ten lifetimes, and he let it slip through his fingers. Steve feels both angry at himself and at her, because they still haven't learnt to communicate, and this time, the loss is more than he can obviously cope with. He swears to himself that, if given one more chance, he won't make the same mistake again, but he really doubts it'll come to pass.