Burned at the Edge
by Rusty Nail
Chapter One: What's Sleep?
"You still here?" It was a stupid question and she knew it, the unusually quiet shift was steadily approaching its end and Stella getting ready to head home after wrapping up a case with a solid arrest. Mac however seemed ensconced in his office, papers and photographs had over taken his desk, he showed no sign whatsoever of going home within the next few hours.
He looked up when she spoke and saw her leaning into his office, poking her head around the doorway, "I'm still here." He nodded.
"What're you looking at?"
Mac offered a brown folder to Stella as she had crossed his office to face his desk within the space of those for simple words. He folded his hands on his desk thoughtfully, his brows knitted into a deep frown as he watched her read over the file.
"The Gibson murder again?" Stella nodded. There was nothing out of the ordinary about this particular case, not in New York anyway; a regular shooting, two dead bodies and a handful of suspects but no leads, nothing solid enough to convict on. It was obviously bothering Mac though, he couldn't seem to let go of this one, not even for a few days to come back to it with fresh eyes.
"I can't see it Stella."
She looked up, "See what?"
"The connection; I know I'm missing something."
"We didn't miss anything at the scene, we got the bullets, we got the victims, the eye witness reports and every piece of trace there was to get-"
"But we didn't get the guy."
"No, we didn't." She set the folder down on the desk again and rested her fingertips on top of it, "The bullets weren't in the system Mac, when that gun is used again we'll hear about it and we'll pick the guy up. You know as well as I do that we can't get a conviction on every case..."
Mac leant back in his chair. She was right; of course, Stella Bonasera was always right to a certain degree. But as much as he knew she was right in general something about this case specifically felt off to him, there was something bigger behind it and something missing. Six bullets, six wounds divided equally between two bodies, two men. Both were middle aged, both were white. There was no trace of their murderer, rather the traces of the perp they did have, finger prints and hairs, were dead ends. No name was attached to them.
"Look," Stella was forging on, "How about I take a second look at it? If anything stands out to me I'll bring it to you and in the mean time you can maybe, you know go home? That place where normal people sleep?"
Mac smiled, "Sleep?"
"Yes. Sleep."
Something in Stella's serious tone connected with Mac, he nodded dully, the words had all begun to start to blur on the report pages he had been reading, coffee wasn't making as much of a difference to his concentration levels as it had at the start of his shift either. He conceded to her, nodding as he stood up and started shuffling the pages together back into their brown jackets.
Stella frowned slightly, "Mac."
He looked up.
"There'll be a new case next shift you know..."
"Yeah, I know."
Stella cocked her head to the side as she watched Mac settle his files into a stack on his desk. She wanted to tell him that no one expected him to have all the answers, no one but him. She knew what his reaction would be, stoic silence and a rueful smile, so instead she shifted backwards slightly,
"I was going to pick up dinner on the way home," she said, "you hungry?"
Mac looked up. He wanted to say yes, he wanted to say a lot of things but the phone on his desk rang. He looked at Stella for a moment and she shrugged, gesturing for him to answer it. He did so and Stella watched him, her frown deepening when she registered his grim expression. When he hung up he straightened his jacket.
"Should I go get my kit?" she asked.
"We both should."
Half an hour later Mac and Stella cast their eyes around grimly. They were in the alleyway at the back of a southern New York Bus Depot, red and blue police lights tossed shadows in every direction as they crossed the crime scene tape at the street end of the alley. One body lay on its own amidst an urban forest of boxes, newspapers and industrial garbage cans. The two CSIs crossed directly to the body, a call had come in to the NYPD from the manager of the depot, saying one of his men had been taking out some trash and found a dead woman.
Her eyes were wide, staring up at the sky but clouded over, where once they would have been a bright, lively blue they were cold and blank. Blonde hair, matted with globules of drying blood sprawled out like a halo. Stella crouched down with her camera.
"She can't be older than seventeen." She said gravely. She clicked the camera, immortalising the girl's terror stricken pose and the surrounding lumps of paper and plastic.
Mac pointed to the wall he was examining, "I've got a bloody hand print over here..." Stella turned to look.
The hand print was smudged severely, Stella photographed it and Mac swabbed it, already suspecting it was the victim's blood going on how much residue there was. He looked at it for a moment cocking his head to the side then looking over at the body, he had a feeling they had the killer's escape route.
"Ok. Let's get this processed." He said shortly, motioning to the dead end at the other end of the alley, "Meet in the middle?"
Stella just nodded, unable to take her eyes from the petite blonde for a heartbeat. Mac watched her with a tight frown, "Stella?"
"Yeah, Mac, I'm on it."
The young ones were always the hardest for Stella, Mac thought, young girls, largely defenceless in the big bad city. There was no one to look out for them and no one to care of something happened to them. And by the time it got to the people who did care it was too late; they were a case file, a crime scene and a dead body. Mac tried not to think about the 'what if's' that seemed to swarm around cases like this, what had happened had happened and as horrible as it was there was no changing it and no amount of wishful thinking helped.
He and Stella worked into the middle of the scene from opposite ends of the alley, finishing up with the void where the body had been. After the crime scene photos had all been taken they had sent her straight to the MEs office, straight to Hawkes. Two hours and three coffee's later Mac found himself once again in the dimly lit mortuary, reunited with the body and talking Hawkes.
"She was bludgeoned to death; something blunt and heavy with a lot of force behind it." Mac blinked at Hawkes for a moment, it was as he and Stella had suspected when they had arrived at the scene. There had been a lot of blood around the girls head, matted into her hair, and no other visible trauma.
"Defence wounds?" he asked.
Hawkes shook his head, "None. Not a scratch on her apart from the death blow. I did find this though..." he smiled slightly, Mac knew that expression. He had found something interesting about the corpse and had waited right to the end of the show and tell to reveal it.
He folded back the white sheet to reveal the girls left arm and lifted it up, gesturing to the skin with his smallest finger, he looked expectantly at Mac.
"Bruising?"
"Bingo. These bruises had already started to heal at time of death; she has the same pattern around her ankles too. It looks like she was tied up for at least a week by the depth of the bruising, maybe more. With rope too, the bruises are misty at the edges." Hawkes set the hand down again gently and covered it up with the sheet, "and she was raped..."
Mac sighed, frowning, "Did you get a kit?"
"It's on its way to DNA as we speak." He looked at Mac, "You get and ID on her yet?"
"No wallet, no anything. Can we check dental records?"
"Consider it done."
"Good. Thanks, Hawkes." Mac said, nodding his head slightly as he turned to leave. He was heading back to his office to look at the crime scene photos again and see if he couldn't put some of this together.
To Be Continued
