Author's Notes: Though I'm not new to CSI: New York, I am a new writer to this fandom. Please forgive me any technical errors, as science was never my forte. Anyway, the main reason this section is here is because I need to ask a favor: this story needs one thing quite desperately. That is a Beta Reader. I would really appreciate someone going over my work and making suggestions, and catching any errors I inevitably miss. Please don't hesitate to email me if you're interested!
Disclaimer: Anything you recognize is the property of Anthony Zuiker and CBS. Anything you don't more than likely belongs to me.
Pairings: Perhaps an allusion to Mac/Lindsay sparking conflict with Danny/Lindsay, as well as Mac/Stella.
Bleeding Hearts
Chapter One
New York City, New York
Detective First Grade Mac Taylor stared down at the body, his expression unreadable as the wind ripped through the alley. The stench was incredible, but the body was truly gruesome. The young woman had been sliced open from neck to navel, the ribcage cracked open, her internal organs exposed to nature. All but one, one essential to life, and Mac frowned slightly -- the removal had not been done with much finesse. Beside him, Doctor Sheldon Hawkes had already knelt beside the body, examining the incision, the ribcage, the woman's butchered chest cavity.
"Heartless," Mac muttered to himself. Hawkes, who'd caught the comment though it wasn't really meant for his ears, glanced up. His eyes asked what his lips wouldn't: the vic, or the person who did it? Mac didn't bother to answer. It was clear there was a third unspoken option: both.
"Whoever removed her heart wasn't interested in the kind of surgical precision we might expect from someone intending to sell the organ on the black market. It was torn from her."
"Ripped out of her chest." Mac also knelt, turning the woman's head so he could get a better look at her face. "Personal."
The ex-surgeon sat back on his heels, his brown eyes tired, his face lined with something that might have been regret -- regret that they couldn't save her? Mac knew how hard the switch from the operating room to the Medical Examiner's Office had been. The doctor was a force to be reckoned with in the field as an investigator, and he'd come a long way in a short amount of time. Even his manner of dress had changed, changes the whole team had been grateful to see.
From behind the two men, Detective Third Grade Daniel Messer was carefully putting away the camera he'd been using to take crime scene photographs. He'd been first of the CSIs on the scene, and he looked as though he'd been torn from a restless nap. His hair was slightly messier than normal, his clothes a little disheveled. He'd probably pulled them on as he was heading for the door. Mac passed a critical eye over the younger detective -- Danny was trying hard, especially since the shooting, but he wondered if maybe the Bronx native was trying too hard. He couldn't remember the last time he'd heard the kid mention his girlfriend, or even going out for drinks after a shift. As if realizing he was under scrutiny, Danny glanced over at his boss and co-worker, his blue eyes flicking past them to the girl discarded so callously in the trash of the alley.
"Vic's unidentified, my guess is mid-twenties. Latina, you can see that. No jewelry or purse. Guy who found her was shooting up at the time, he's over there with the uniforms if you wanna talk to him. His story's a little…" He shook his head. "He was high, I'm sure you get the picture."
Mac glanced over at the man, who was dressed in a clean but rumpled uniform from a fast food restaurant. At the distance, Mac couldn't say for sure, but it looked like a Carl's Jr. uniform. He looked shaken and shaky all at once, and his appearance was scruffy and unkempt. The senior detective shook his head and turned back to the body.
"Have him brought in for questioning, but I don't think he's going to help us much," he said. Danny nodded -- he'd already given those instructions to the uniformed police officers questioning the guy at the moment.
Hawkes was examining the exposed ribs, and he looked over as Mac leaned in for a better glimpse. "Rats got to her," the doctor informed him, gesturing with his magnifying glass. "Some of the damage to her chest cavity are caused by their incisors. But the ribs are another manner. She wasn't cracked open with any medical tool. I can't say for sure, but this damage all seems to be post-mortem."
"Right, right." Danny strode over, glancing over the shoulders of the other two men. "She was murdered, then they took her heart. Very mobster."
Mac straightened, meeting Danny's clear blue gaze. "You think this was meant as a message."
"Wah, don't you watch mob movies, Mac?" The smallest curl of the corner of Danny's lip betrayed an urge to smirk, but he controlled it. "My guess is, she pissed off the wrong people, maybe cheated on the wrong guy. So he and his boys got back at her."
"By killing her?" Mac lifted a brow. Danny lifted a shoulder.
"Crime of passion."
Hawkes stood and took a deep breath. It wasn't so far-fetched, he'd seen such cases pass through the ME's office before. And more recently, he'd been CSI for a few of them. Mac paused, then looked over his shoulder at the woman's body.
"Right. Danny, you take the body. Hawkes, I want you here to process. I'm going to check Missing Persons and see if I can't find an identity for our Jane Doe. In the meantime, keep me posted." With that, Mac was striding away, back toward the silver SUV he'd used to get to the scene. Danny watched him go, then shifted his attention to Hawkes as the coroner and his assistant approached to prepare the body for transport.
"Think that guy ever sleeps?"
Hawkes smiled. "What do you think?"
"Right." Danny smirked. "I'll take that as a no. So how come I always get the body when we work together, Doc?"
The Harlem native glanced up and gave Danny a full-blown smile. "Hey, I did my time. It's your turn. Just be thankful you're not going to be extracting the stomach contents."
"Yeah yeah yeah." Danny waved that off with a grin, turning to head out of the alley as the coroner moved the body onto a gurney and secured it, making it ready to be moved. "I'll see ya back at the labs, Doc."
"See ya." Hawkes turned, glancing over his scene. The biggest challenge was deciding where to start, but in this case, he decided to start with the area the body had occupied and work outward, down the alley.
Meticulously, covering all of his bases, Hawkes began branching out from the spot where the woman's body had been discovered. He knew he'd have to go through the dumpster -- why did cases with Danny always include a damn dumpster? -- but he took his time getting there. Along the way, stamped subtly on the gravel was a partial shoeprint in blood. He grabbed the camera Danny had left behind, knowing that the other had probably already photographed the print already, but to be doubly certain, Hawkes grabbed the ruler and dropped it near the partial, then snapped a couple more. Then he swabbed the blood, placed his sample in an evidence envelope, then continued canvassing the alley. Slowly, he made his way to the dumpster, then sighed. No more putting it off.
Retrieving his CSI jumpsuit, Hawkes zipped himself up, replaced his gloves, and prayed to God that there weren't any constipated three-month-olds in the building. Then he climbed into the dumpster and began carefully pawing through the trash.
It didn't take him long to discover that the killer or killers had been quite stupid about removing the evidence, or at least quite careless. Frowning, Hawkes held up a torn, bloodied blouse. One with a particularly interesting characteristic -- a bullet hole. Thoughtfully, he glanced down the alley. Was it possible that the woman had been shot and then had her chest sliced open and her heart ripped out?
---
Upon his arrival at the labs, Hawkes immediately went in search of Mac and Danny. He spotted the former quickly. Danny had his nose buried in a file, standing in the hall outside of Mac's office. Jogging, Hawkes hurried to his side.
"Hey, when Hammerback inspected the body, did he find --"
"A bullet?" Danny didn't bother to look up for a long moment.
Hawkes blinked. "Yeah…so she was shot."
"Yeah, Hammerback dug it out of her chest. It was such a mess in there he had a hard time finding it." Danny's face contorted in remembered disgust for a moment before he continued. "He confirms it as our COD. Thirty-eight caliber. Stella helped me run ballistics, put it through IBIS. Turns out it was used in an armed robbery here in the Bronx a couple years back, never caught the guy. But it's registered to a Bryson Wallace, primary residence listed as San Diego, California."
"And that's not the only thing in San Diego." Mac joined them, materializing from out of nowhere, although it was more than possible that he'd come up the hall behind Hawkes without him noticing. "San Diego PD just found our heart. It was hand-delivered to the house of one Mariabella Rodriguez."
"You thinkin' our killer ended up there, too?" Danny accepted the file Mac handed him, giving it a cursory glance before passing it along to Hawkes.
"It's a possibility. Delivery had to have been made by either our killer or someone associated with him."
"How did this guy get a heart past airport security?" Hawkes sounded slightly shocked, and he handed the file back to Mac with wide brown eyes.
"One of the questions we still haven't answered, although the fact that he wasn't trying to preserve it probably helped." Mac eyed them both. "Pack your bags."
Both men looked surprised, but Danny beat Hawkes to the obvious question: "We're going?"
"I want to make sure that we get this guy, not SDPD. There is to be no question about jurisdiction -- we've got the body, the crime scene, and we're going to get the killer." Mac looked firm, his eyes steady as he met their gazes. "They're not going to want to turn the guy over when they catch him, so you two are going out there to make sure he comes back to New York for prosecution. And I want you to stay on the investigation. You're going to be my eyes and ears out there, I don't want to hear anything second-hand."
Danny glanced at Hawkes. He'd worked with other police departments before, including Miami PD the year before, but Hawkes was new to all of this. Still, Danny didn't doubt the doctor was fully capable of handling this. And he could think of worse places to be flying to than San Diego in the spring.
"So whaddaya say, doc? Sun, surf, babes…" Danny grinned. "Sounds good to me, where's my ticket?"
Hawkes laughed. "Well, if it's to help the investigation…"
Mac's lips curved into a smile. He clapped the doctor on the back. "I expect you to keep Danny here out of trouble."
Danny looked indignant. "Wah, are you kiddin' me with that talk, Mac? I'm a regular boy scout, come on!"
"You got it, Mac. I won't let him leave my sight," Hawkes said, smirking and shooting the Bronx-native an amused glance. Danny shook his head.
"No respect, no respect at all," he muttered, then accepted the plane ticket Mac held out to him. Hawkes took the other one, examining the route.
"You leave tomorrow morning. SDPD should have someone waiting at the airport to pick you up. I'll get back to you when we ID the vic, although Ms. Rodriguez might be able to help you out with that. And remember, don't let them lean on you out there. Keep me posted."
The two men nodded, then watched as Mac turned on his heel and strode away down the hall toward Ballistics. Only then did Danny truly let a smile grace his lips. He turned to Hawkes.
"San Diego, are you kiddin' me? We're going to California!"
"To work," the doctor reminded him, but he was grinning right back.
"Yeah, in sandals," the other replied, and then he reached out and clapped Hawkes on the back. "God, I love my job. We'd better get packin', eh doc?"
---
Detective Don Flack's icy blue gaze ran over the dress, the veil, the elegant train, no doubt all hand-embroidered with care and attention. The slightly smudged makeup -- she had been crying -- and the long gloves that ran up to delicate elbows. This was a day of excitement and joy, a day for celebration.
Doctor Evan Zao shook his head, then straightened. "Blunt force trauma to the back of her head."
Flack stirred, tore his gaze from the bride's face. "That what killed her?"
The ME shrugged, tugged uncomfortably on his sleeve, and averted his own gaze. "I won't know for sure until I examine her."
Detective Lindsay Monroe circled around from behind Flack, her flashlight out and on as she examined the perimeter of the room. She was frowning slightly, and she wasn't looking at the body. Flack noted this was interest. He didn't know much about this latest addition to Mac's team, but he liked her alright. She was thorough, decisive. But there was something about this scene that bothered her. It didn't take years of experience to tell the detective that much. He cocked his head slightly.
"Victim's Rosa Masterson. Her Matron of Honor says this is the room where she was getting ready to walk the aisle. Tons of people had access to it. And she couldn't imagine anybody would want to harm Rosa," he told her. Lindsay glanced his way, her brown eyes troubled.
"Somebody had to have hated her enough to kill her."
Flack bristled slightly, defensive. "Yeah, we're still taking statements. There are over a hundred and fifty guests we've gotta interview, it's a slow process."
She didn't rise to the bait. "Anybody standing out so far?"
"Nothin' too noteworthy. Turns out one of the groomsmen used to date her, and there are a couple of old college boyfriends on the guest list." Flack made a face. "Seriously, why would you ask your exes to show up? One last slap in the face?"
Lindsay smirked. "Motive?"
"Provin' it is your job. I'm gonna go out and help my guys question the guests." Flack waved vaguely and slipped out of the room just as Detective Stella Bonasera entered.
"What, you're not staying for the party, Flack?"
"Oh, I'll be here. Heard it's a real bang," he called back before disappearing around a corner. Stella shook her head and smiled, then set her kit down and pulled her gloves on.
"Doctor Zao, it's good to see you," she said. The doctor tipped his head and smiled at the senior detective.
"Good to be out. Shall I go tell the coroners that we're ready for transport?"
"Sure." As Evan headed out of the room, Stella turned to Lindsay. "Sorry I'm late. Danny needed some help."
"You are the ballistics expert around here. Is it true he's going to California?" Lindsay was carefully checking the curtains, running her flashlight over the material slowly. Stella blinked as she walked over to the ornate ivory candlesticks on the mantle. The room was part of the hotel's deluxe wedding package, a place provided to the bride to prepare. It was elegantly decorated in whites an roses, and the candlesticks were no exception. It came to Stella's immediate attention that one of the candles had not been lit, while the rest melted slowly, offering soothing light to the room.
"News travels fast around here," she commented as she picked up the candlestick. It was heavy. Heavy enough to take out the bride? "Mac's sending Danny and Sheldon to San Diego to track down their Heartless guy."
"Heartless?" Lindsay lifted a brow.
"Yeah, it's what they've nicknamed their killer. He tore the heart out of the body."
The women lapsed into silence as they worked, Lindsay canvassing the room slowly, Stella turning the candlestick over. Finally, the older woman grabbed the Luminol she carried in her kit and delicately sprayed down the candlestick. It took seconds for the thing to be glowing a vibrant purple. Stella pursed her lips.
"I may have just found the killer's weapon of choice," she said, her eyes on the candlestick.
"And I may have just found his bowtie." Lindsay held the garment up in her gloved hands. Stella looked over and shook her head slightly. "I'll tell Flack -- someone out there in the reception area is missing a bowtie."
"Someone who may have killed our vic."