Chapter 3, basically its some more set up, after this it promises to be lots of angst and pain and all that jazz.
Er, same disclaimers as always i guess, violence, language, content, more OC's, that kind of thing
Er, i had to mix with some things, basically i need for there to be a delay in some of the processing of evidence but not others so if that seems like its an error on my part, its not, its intentional fudging for narrative purposes.
Please Review.
xxx
The paramedics had set up shop in side the coffee house, sitting Danny down in one corner to examine him. They had insisted he remove his shirt and under shirt so they could look at his ribs and he sat now in just his jeans, hunched over on his uninjured side while one of the medics gently probed his ribs with one gloved hand, trying to feel for any kind of damage that might require x-rays.
Mac was standing just behind the medics, watching Danny's face as the he sat, staring at nothing.
"Just tell me when it hurts" The medic muttered as he pressed the darkening bruise over Danny's ribs. Danny had also managed to take off a layer of skin, grazing himself just enough to bleed.
Mac was troubled by how thin Danny seemed under his clothes. Danny took care of himself, working out regularly, and it showed, but even though the tone was still there, Danny seemed thinner, his ribs seemed more defined beneath his skin. The chain he never removed, a silver chain carrying a small sliver crucifix, a st Christopher medallion and a small ring Mac didn't know the origins of, hung down between collar bones that seemed more prominent, almost pressing against the skin. The tribal tattoo inked to his right shoulder seemed darker than usual against his skin.
"Any time you feel any pain, just, let me know" the medic, a guy named Ken who was often assigned to work on injured cops, said pointedly.
"Danny" Mac said firmly.
Danny blinked and glanced at him, then down at Ken "It's fine" he said quietly, having heard Ken's requests and simply not heeded them.
"Uh huh" Ken said doubtfully and went on working.
"I'll be over here" Mac pointed to the other end of the coffee bar where Nox had sat Ben and was talking to him.
Uniformed officers where talking to the other coffee house patrons as Mac passed them by.
"Ben you cant keep just going quiet, you assaulted a New York police officer, you're in a lot of trouble here. Why not help ya self out huh?" Nox was saying to the sullen faced man.
"I don't see how I can help you" Ben lied.
"According to my detectives you heard the words 'LibNoc' and ran like you had the devil on your ass" Mac put in, taking a seat beside Nox.
Ben glanced at him and shook his head, his thick braid sliding over the leather of his jacket "It's not even like I did anything wrong" he muttered sullenly.
"Before or after you attacked a cop?" Mac asked casually.
"Before-" Ben realised his mistake and bit his lip "I mean…I didn't run cos I hurt that girl…I ran because I…I got a record, I got picked up for weed, did some time for assault…I haven't called my P.O in a while" he finally admitted "That's all"
"It's always the P.O's" Nox shook his head "How stupid are you guys, if you just explain that you haven't called in, we'll usually ignore it but when you run and hit a cop, then we got problems"
"What can I do to fix it?" Ben was forcing the words out between clenched teeth.
"What's LibNoc, what does it have to do with Chelsea Harper and what was she doing here last night?" Mac asked.
"Chelsea was a member, like me, of a…support group…for insomniacs. We'd meet up at night, so we wheren't all spending time alone in our bedrooms or where ever. Insomnia can make you feel isolated, lonely. LibNoc…Liberi Noctus, was our group. Sometimes we'd just hang out in places like this, sometimes we'd go to the Park, or to an all night movie…sometimes we would go out, do stuff…pranks, graffiti…anything really. Immature shit, just to fill our time, stuff I haven't done since college you know? It was fun, acting like a kid again. But we didn't kill people" he seemed almost embarrassed admitting about the groups activities " We wouldn't hurt Chelsea. We didn't call her Chelsea though. She called herself Dis when she was at a meeting…I go by Night Owl" he slumped in his seat "No body knew any body's real name, that was part of it…we only existed to one another at night" he almost whispered the last.
"Liberi…Night Children" Nox stated.
"You speak Latin?" Ben glanced up at him, seeming surprised.
"I was raised a catholic, I had it beaten into me" Nox stated, making Ben chuckle until he saw Nox's un amused face. "How did you hear about this group?"
"Email.They have some kind of…I don't know, roving programme, finds people who are frequently on line at like, four or five am…they send emails to you from forums you're on or what ever, explaining that they're a group for people who don't sleep who meet up sometimes, they invite you along. You don't have to go" he shrugged.
"But you did? And Chelsea, Dis, she did too?" Nox was taking those careful, detailed notes again.
"Yeah…Chelsea started coming about six months ago" Ben nodded "She fit in real well, she was friendly, she was fun…she was a sweet kid" he said sadly.
"You ever see her as more than just a sweet kid?" Mac asked the obvious question.
"No!" Ben snapped "I'd never look at these kids like that!"
"How many kids?" Nox asked sharply.
"Not kids they're, college students a lot of em…but even if, they where older, I'm married" he shook his head "look no one in the group would have hurt Chelsea" Ben stressed.
"You say no one knows each others real name…you only keep in touch through emails?" Mac asked.
"Yeah" Ben nodded "Like I said…in the day time, we didn't exist to one another…"
"If you saw one of your members…in a newspaper, reported missing, or found dead…would you react? Would you call the cops if you though you had information that could help?"
"Honestly? We wouldn't have any information to give. We didn't know anything about each other…I don't know how to make that clearer" he shrugged.
"Chelsea told her sister she was seeing some kind of therapist, some one helping her to sleep?" Nox asked.
Ben pressed his lips together, looking off to the side in his refusal to answer.
"We'll come back to that. Who is 'The Guide' he was mentioned in the emails" Nox tried.
Once again, Ben refused to answer.
"Who's this?" Danny asked making Mac and Nox jump as he seemed to materialise out of now where.
He set down the picture he had taken from Chelsea's room on the table infront of Ben.
The big man glanced up at him.
Danny had slipped on a spare scrubs shirt Ken had given him, the dark blue colour making his eyes, skin and hair seeming paler than normal. He had a cut over his right ear, closed with butterfly stitches, blood staining his light hair, that which hadn't been washed away by the rain, and by Ken, still staining his skin. He still hugged his side.
"I don't know" Ben lied.
"Mac I'm gonna want to make a statement" Danny said blankly, keeping his eyes on Ben.
"Aw come on man!" Ben whined "I cant tell you anything useful anyway" he stated.
"Let us decide what's useful" Nox told him.
"I don't know her" Ben shrugged "I mean less than I know the others, she calls herself Pixie, I don't know how anybody who calls her any different, I don't know where she comes from, where she goes…she always arrives alone, and depending on what we end up doing, sometimes she'll leave with some one but she'll always…arrive alone"
"That unusual?" Nox frowned.
"Yes and no…most of us, if we don't wanna be walking along alone, we'll send a group email, asking if any one is going to be coming from a certain neighbourhood…we'd meet up some where and come together. I met Chelsea a couple times, she met some of the other girls, it was just for safety ya know? But Pixie, always came alone" Ben shrugged again.
"What happened last night?" Danny asked as Mac rose from his seat, letting Danny take it.
"The usual, we met up, upstairs. This is my coffee joint, so I said we could meet here. Harry was my dad, passed away a few years back" Ben shifted in his seat "It was just normal. We met, we where talking, Fitz had found out that he could get a few hours of sleep by switching the T.V channel to snow, turning up the volume and covering the screen, the noise…lulled him…no one else had really come up with anything new so we decided to go out. We decided what we where gonna do, Chelsea and Pixie…they went off together some where, the rest of us broke up…that was it. That's how it goes" he shrugged.
"When she left with Pixie was the last time you saw her?" Nox clarified.
"Yeah" Ben nodded.
"Who's runs the site?" Nox asked "Or the meetings, who sends the emails?"
"I couldn't give you any real name" Ben sighed "there are three people who are the guys running it, but I don't know their real names, they call themselves Louis, Claudia and Lestat" he actually did roll his eyes "From Interview With a Vampire" he clarified.
"What's the group called again?" Danny asked.
"Liberi Noctus, Night Children…vampires" Ben explained.
"Wrong" Danny mumbled.
"Uh, I'm not" Ben sniffed.
"You sort of are, when Dracula says 'listen to the children of the night' he's talking about wolves howling outside the castle" Danny said offhandedly "lets get to The Guide, who or what is that? Is it a person, is it drugs?" he asked.
As Ben reluctantly started talking, Mac walked away from the group, over to where Ken was packing away his things. There where a few bloody bandages on the table that Ken scooped up to dispose of casually. The sight of them gave Mac brief pause. He was sick of seeing his detectives blood on bandages, their broken bodies held closed with stitches. He still couldn't get the image of Aidan Burns corpse out of his mind, nor the sensation of Flack's blood oozing from a torn artery in his chest after the bombing. He recalled seeing Stella, battered and bloody in a hospital after Frankie attacked her, Danny's haunted face after he may have shot an undercover police officer, the cut on his head from the fleeing suspects attack. Mac didn't like to see his people hurt and even though today had been minor, Danny was still in pain, still bloodied. "How is he Ken, it's not as if he's gonna tell me?" Mac glanced at the medic.
Ken sighed, shrugging "His head wound isn't too deep, and he didn't seem disoriented or dizzy, nothing to make me think he's concussed. I told him to go ahead and go the hospital if he thinks he might be feeling funny. The ribs, are the same, I gave him something for the pain but I don't think it's more than a bad bruise, at worst a slight crack, nothing I can help with unless he wants to go to the hospital. What he's best doing is going home, getting himself some ice and relaxing for the rest of the day" he explained.
"Right, like that's gonna happen" Mac smirked.
"I figured as much" Ken returned the smirk "What I'm more concerned about is how he looked under his clothes"
Mac raised an eye brow "Ken I know you prefer men but, is that really appropriate?" he grinned.
Ken laughed, shrugging again "look, you guys played against us in the softball games a few months ago…I might have checked him out when he was changing his shirt between innings…he's a good looking guy" Ken murmured a little dreamily.
"Ken" Mac nudged his friend.
"Right…I don't like how much weight he seems to have lost between then, and now…how's he been lately, how has he seemed to you?" Ken glanced over at where Danny and Nox where still talking to Ben.
"Honestly? I'm worried, really worried. I don't think he's sleeping. I haven't actually seen him eat in a while…to be honest, it's only lately I've noticed anything wrong…the way things have been, all I've seen of him his has been his work, his reports at the end of a case, which have been excellent as usual, so I didn't think anything. But now…" Mac shrugged helplessly "I think I know what's behind it but there's nothing I can do to fix it"
"What do you think it is?" Ken asked.
"His brother, Aidan, Flack…I think it's all just gotten to him" Mac sighed "And I cant just tell him everything's going to be okay because, I don't know that it is. Aidan was his best friend and she died. She died painfully and alone…and he cant go to Flack with his problems which he normally would…and…no one likes to say it, but the doctors aren't sure Louie Messer is gonna wake up" he lowered his voice for the last.
"Jesus" Ken breathed "Well look…all I can say is, keep your eye on him, if he seems to be getting worse…refer him to the department head shrinker…if he seems to be losing any more weight…hold him down and force feed him a hamburger" Ken shrugged "I doubt he's intentionally starving himself, maybe just get him in a situation where he has to eat, in a restaurant or something…I wish I could tell you more…keep an eye on his head" Ken pointed over his own ear, meaning Danny's new wound "He seems more than just bumped around…"
"We'll bring him in, thanks Ken" Mac gave the man a wave as he and his young partner left.
Danny and Nox approached, leaving a now un cuffed Ben at the table "he told us everything he knew and he's said we can poke around the upstairs room, apparently it's where the group hangs out. He also agreed to contact the other group members and try and get them to come in and talk to us" Nox explained "I called his PO, guy didn't even know Ben hadn't called in, asked us not to press charges cos it could mean his ass as much as Bens"
Danny spoke up "Apparently the Guide and this therapist, are one and the same, but he's Doctor Constantine Guide been at the groups since before Ben joined a year ago, he thinks maybe three or four years" he was glancing around as he spoke "Apparently, Ben hasn't tried it out but the guy has…sessions, with over half the members, of whom, at last count, there a twenty, but the number rises and falls as people stop coming or new members turn up. There is a core group, the founders with the vampire names, a few others, and that one girl 'Pixie' but not even the founders know her beyond the meetings"
"And you saw her with the vic… Well I don't like the sound of this 'Doctor Guide'…if he's as mysterious as she is…are she and the Guide in cahoots?" Mac asked.
"Not that Ben knows, he doubts it though, she doesn't seem to like him" Nox stated "Ben agreed to come to the station later and take a look at some pictures of the other victims, see if any of them are former members…I guess we're gonna have to see if we can link them to LibNoc huh?" Nox asked.
"Seems that way" Mac sighed "You okay?" he asked Danny.
"Yeah" Danny said dully.
Mac bit the inside of his cheek. "You guys go upstairs, see what you can see…I'll go make a start on the other victims histories" he told them, turning away from them.
He heard Nox call out a good bye but heard nothing from Danny as he walked toward the door, heading for his car.
Nox raised an eye brow at the sight of the roaches in an ashtray, set upon a table which was pushed against one wall of the room. "Yeah, they definitely go for the herbal route in an attempting to get to sleep" he shook his head, turning back to the main room.
The floor was covered in deep, old carpets and cushions while more sofas and arm chairs where scattered around the small room, creating a kind of "It actually is a den" Danny noted.
"Stinks of grass in here" Nox wrinkled his nose.
"I'd be surprised if it hadn't" Danny said "Check this out" he was shining a U.V light on one of the couches, causing a stain to glow.
"Oh my" Nox raised an eye brow "Our little gang of non sleepers sure are busy at night" he joked.
Danny swabbed the stain "Could be from consensual sex…could be from a rape…" he sprayed luminol around the room.
"You think this could be where she died?" Nox stepped aside as Danny shone his light around the room.
Danny winced as he had to lift his arm, hesitating briefly before seeming to just push through it "It's a place to start at least" he stated. The luminol showed up some blood, but no where near enough to have come from a cut throat, no matter how shallow the cut was.
There where one or two drops that probably came from a small cut or nose bleed, which Danny swabbed, but the room didn't turn up much else.
There was a shred of paper dropped near the door, a small scattering of some kind of dry leaf or herb, all of which Danny bagged, but the room was otherwise empty of anything Danny felt he could use.
"So what do we have"? Nox asked.
"Okay…Chelsea was meeting with a…support group…of fellow insomniacs at night slash early morning, they would either hang out here or places like here, obviously smoking weed and probably drinking, or they would go out on the streets and screw around, either way, they where almost always in groups or at least pairs" Danny became more vocal as he slipped into work mode.
"So this kid Pixie goes off with Chelsea and that's the last anyone sees of her" Nox stated "Which would seem to say Pixie's our killer"
"Except…from what I saw of her, I'm not convinced she could physically hold Chelsea down to smother her, and there's no way she killed the last victim, the Queen had close to two feet of height and probably a hundred and fifty pounds on her, all muscle" Danny frowned "I guess he could have been drugged but there was nothing more in his system than a little booze, nothing that coulda put him clean out"
"So…what, Pixie either left her alone or she's working with the killer?" Nox guessed.
"Yep…or she herself is in trouble" Danny suggested.
Nox nodded.
"So we know…Chelsea had been meeting Doctor Guide…who just seems weird and I haven't even met him" Danny said "So we need to talk to him, to Pixie, to the people who run the site" he listed.
"We need to get complete autopsy report on Chelsea" Nox put in.
Danny nodded.
"You need to get some sleep" Nox added and Danny shot him a dark look.
Nox held up his hands in a 'backing off' gesture "We should go back to lab, you geeks can geek while I go through the files on the other vics" he stated.
Danny picked up his kit, wincing, audibly gasping as it strained his ribs. He walked past Nox, heading for the stairs, fuming silently.
"How are Sheldon and Lindsay enjoying the conference?" Stella Bonasera smiled at Mac as she walked into the room, tucking her curling hair back behind her ears and securing it with a band even as she drifted over to his side to look at what he was working on.
"Lindsay got sunburned and Sheldon met a very nice ME from Chicago named Matilda" Mac chuckled "Sending them seems to have worked out okay though, they're learning a lot"
"Well you or I couldn't have gone, and I think Danny would have murdered you just for suggesting it" Stella stated.
Mac couldn't help but smile. "So it what are you up to?" Stella picked up one on the files, thumbing through it with a frown,
Mac explained about the case, the potential link between all the victims
"I heard Danny took a couple lumps?" Stella sat down, automatically scanning the files to help Mac out.
"Takin down a runner, nothing too bad, or so he'd have you believe" Mac shrugged "He's playing tough guy"
"As usual" Stella mused "So what are he and Detective Miles doing?" she glanced up.
"Haranguing Sid for the autopsy, I expect his irate call any minute" Mac told her.
Chelsea had been stripped, the heavy, water stained make up cleaned from her face, leaving her pale, her hair swept back leaving her features open and very obviously pretty. She looked younger than her twenty three years, even with her tall build and athletic frame, the way her head was crooked by the head rest, the way her lips where pursed together. She looked like a petulant child.
Sid Hammerback was inches away from her naked chest, leaning over the neat stitches he had used to close her body up after the autopsy. To any one who didn't know Sid, it would seem perverted, as if he was doing something wrong to the girls corpse, but Danny knew Sid and knew he took nothing sexual away from being so close to the bare breast.
"There is a smudge here that I fear I may be responsible for…" Sid murmured "I had blood on my gloves as I stitched her up. Don't want to send her to her parents looking messy now" he raised a damp sponge and wiped the small, bloody smudge away, putting the sponge with the other swabs and rags he had used and taken from the body, making a note that he had left the bloody mark during the autopsy, that he had removed it.
He turned back to her pale body and raised the sheet up to her shoulders, settling it in place gently with a resigned sigh.
"COD was smothering" the grey haired ME said, indicating the large, hand shaped bruise over Chelsea's nose and mouth "Unusually, looking at the bruise, the thumb is closer to the chin, beneath the lips, meaning the killer held her like this…" he stepped closer to the bed, crooking his arm some what uncomfortably, holding his hand over her nose and mouth with his pinky finger and ring finger covering her nose, the main part of his palm over her mouth, his thumb on her chin, matching the bruise perfectly, even down to size.
"You got something you want to tell us Doc?" Nox raised an eyebrow.
Sid spared him a minute smile "I do have an alibi" he said cryptically "But what I'm trying to show you is, this is a position that would be easier to achieve if I could get…on top of her, or stand in front of her…it's a position I would almost call casual, if I was in the right position in front of her it would enable to to stand quite comfortably for some time"
"She died slowly" Danny said grimly.
"More than that…while I stood slowly suffocating her, I could, with my free hand" he raised a scalpel and held it over the wound across her throat, drawing it left to right slowly "I could cut her throat" he explained "The victim…was smothered slowly, I can tell you that from looking at her lungs. There was barely enough petichial haemorrhaging to indicate she strained all that much…if the smothering had been more violent, there would be more signs. I would say that he smothered her but would release his hand every now and then, let her breath a little…it would have been torture for her, thinking she would be able to breath only to have it cut off again. He probably did this repeatedly, giving her less and less air each time" he explained.
"Shit" Nox shook his head angrily "What about her throat?"
"As you accurately reported Danny, the wound was deep enough to bleed but it wouldn't have been fatal, even if she had not been suffocated, this wound wouldn't have ended her, life, she would have been able to stem the bleeding herself, may not even need stitches…it's an interesting wound, other than causing the victim a great deal of pain, it would have no bearing on her death" Sid looked up at them both "The wound to her throat was about causing her pain, and probably part of the gratification the killer felt…she…was raped, or at least molested, there was no DNA, also, and I found signs of on going physical and sexual assault, but nothing…major…the cuts, you spotted on her arm, are the same as the throat wound, shallow…they're also much thinner…as if made by a different type of blade…her wrist, something very thin, her neck…nothing other than it's depth stood out. Right to left indicating the killer is right handed which matches the bruising on her mouth. Tox already came back and told us sweet F A" Sid glanced up at them "She had been drinking, some cannabis, not enough to render her defenceless" he held their gaze briefly, as if waiting for something.
"Where there any signs she was restrained or tied down?" Danny asked suddenly, frowning.
Sid smiled that grim smile "I was waiting for some one to ask. No" he looked at their faces, judging their reactions.
"Doc, if some one smothered her, slowly, and cut her throat…what did she just lay there and let him?" Nox shook his head as if unable to comprehend the thought.
"It looks that way" Sid shrugged.
"Some one's smothering you…that can be sexual, you might lay there and take it and not realise they where killing you, its…what's it called, autoerotic asphyxiation…some one cuts you with a knife, I don't care how shallow it is, you don't take that, not on your throat" Nox said the last in a quiet, un compromising tone and Sid glanced toward that scar on his neck, that started toward his throat before jerking so suddenly back, as if who ever had done it had tried to cut his throat and he had reacted, pulling himself away from the blade.
"So she was…she had to be drugged, or restrained in some way we cant see" Danny exclaimed.
"There's no sign of it, no sign she fought back other than those faint bruises on her arms but even they would indicate only the feeblest of physical protests" Sid shrugged.
"Doc, it's human reaction, if there is a knife at your throat, you fight" Nox stated again.
"I understand that gentlemen, I'm just telling you what I found" Sid said quietly.
"Is there any way she can have been tied down in some way that wouldn't leave a mark?" Danny asked.
"Well, Detective Miles here is correct, if she was capable, our victim would have fought back, even soft restraints would have left some tell tale sign" Sid told them "There are drugs that can become untraceable" Danny noted "Remedies that could knock her out"
"Her TOD was not long before she was found, there aren't a lot of drugs or remedies that degrade very quickly, even less that degrade as quickly as that, even less again in a dead body that isn't metabolising it…unless we're dealing with something rarely or never before seen, I don't know of anything that could be strong enough to subdue a strong young woman completely enough that she couldn't fight back at all" Sid gave a half shrug "I have, how ever, emailed some colleagues of mine who deal with…native and aboriginal medicines and hypnotic techniques"
"Hypnotism?" Danny asked.
"Not as in a shrink with a pocket watch, a lot of tribes use…well essentially drugs, to induce trances…peyote buttons used by native Americans to induce vision quests, that sort of thing…some, did little more than put people to sleep or paralyse them…I've asked my colleagues about anything that would disappear from the body as quickly our time frame of a few hours…" he gave another shrug.
"What about stomach contents?" Nox asked.
"Alcohol, the remains of a veggie burger and some fries and water" Sid told them "No pills, no peyote buttons" he said by way of example.
"There's a cut, behind her ear?" Danny asked.
"That did confuse me, there was some rust in it, I sent it to the lab, seems like she was…pushed against something, maybe a rusted nail or jagged edge of something…it wouldn't have knocked her unconscious before you ask, the wound was, just the skin, but it's oddly positioned…going on my theory she was standing or sitting upright when she was smothered, I would say this was in the wall, or head rest behind her, like I say, its not deep, so even if she was pushed against it, it wasn't with a lot of force, I would say it happened while she was being smothered" Sid explained.
"So all in all…she didn't fight, our killer's fucking psychotic and there's nothing that might explain why she didn't fight back" Danny summarised.
"So….shit" Nox took it further.
"We got…really…nothing" Danny lipped his lower lip, his habitual reaction to bad news.
He looked down at Chelsea, shaking his head angrily "This guy has killed six more people, that we even know of" he took a breath "We have to find the Guide"
Hours scouring the case files brought nothing more than what was already suspected, that the victims had been members of Liberi Noctus. It was a start, but it had taken hours to find the signs, the statements from the victims neighbours and families that they had been going out at night.
Danny and Stella left Mac and Nox to the files while they worked on the trace evidence picked up at Harry's, and from Chelsea's body.
They had started on what had come from Chelsea, the fingernails scrapings, the combings from her hair, what little Hammerback had taken from her groin to attest to the rape.
"You got anything?" Stella asked.
Danny was analysing dirt which had come from Chelsea's shoes "Nope" he muttered, glaring at the dirt through a microscope "Generic dirt, she probably walked through some muddy puddle and it dried on her shoes" he shrugged "I'm moving onto what I got from the coffee house, those weird ass herbs" he shrugged.
Stella, working on the rust from the wound on Chelsea's neck sighed "Well the rust is fresh, what ever it came off've only recently became expose to the air" she read from a computer "It came off something steel…what!" She looked up in alarm at the 'whoah' that had come from Danny.
"They dissolved" Danny stated.
"What did?" Stella moved to Danny's side.
"The herbs, I put some of em in a test tube and added some water, sterile water and they dissolved completely" he spoke slowly as if he was running over something in his head.
"That mean something?" Stella frowned.
"I don't know yet…maybe" Danny shook his head, "I'll just…test this" he held up the test tube.
"Might take a little while, they've been having some problems with some of the equipment" Stella explained, "tag it and leave it for a tech for now"
Danny nodded, doing what she had told him and retuning to the evidence they had collected "The DNA and blood we swabbed from the coffee house" he said half to himself "Gimme a name" he muttered as he leaned forward to begin work.
Nothing. Danny was back on his windows seat, one hand reaching out of the window, feeling the rain fall against his skin in a steady thrumming beat. The blood and DNA had matched one another, but brought no names in any DNA databases, and the trace evidence, the herbs, where being very slowly analysed.
Mac had sent everyone home after hours had turned up plenty of evidence, but nothing to lead them anywhere new until they could talk to either the founders of Liberi Noctus, or to the Guide.
Danny had tried to stay late, hoping he could get some extra work in but Mac had all but escorted him from the building, insisting he go home and sleep off the injuries he had sustained.
Danny had, grudgingly, after a shower had caused the pain in his ribs to flare up again, popped two pain killers, part of him hoping he would be drowsy enough to sleep. He had even lain in bed, feeling himself beginning to drift. He had been imagining himself teetering over the edge of a canyon of sleep, balancing precariously on the lip, hoping he would lose the natural fight for balance and tip forward. He even felt himself begin to fall over that lip, feel the soothing caress of sleep washing over his mind but then his eyes opened.
There was no reason for it, he didn't hear anything or sense something may be wrong, he simply blinked and he was wide awake.
He had not been in pain, so he knew the pain killers where working, his mind and body simply didn't want to sleep, and so he sat. He had made himself a mug of hot chocolate, nursing it in one hand while he felt the rain with his other. The cats where curled up in their baskets across the room, so Danny was totally alone.
He half expected to see Pixie again but he was still surprised when she rounded that same corner as the night before, alone, seeming unconcerned by the rain.
She wore that same tight black t with a hood, a jeans, sneakers.
Danny threw off the blanket he'd had over his knees, grabbing his keys, his badge and his cell phone and running for the door.
