Chapter 19: Daniel

Daniel my brother you are older than me

Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won't heal?

Your eyes are blind, but you see more than I

Daniel, you're a star in the face of the sky.

"Messer! Hey, wait up!" Danny turned as Flack moved swiftly up the sidewalk behind him.

"What's up? I'm off-shift," Danny warned.

"Yeah, keep your pants on. So am I. Let's grab a beer, 'kay?"

"So, Stella stand you up?" The joke was only a little painful. Danny figured he'd have to get over it some time.

Flack blinked. "What? Hey, does everyone know?"

Danny smothered a grin. "Pretty sure, yeah. You've hardly been quiet about it, have you?" He looked at Flack's suddenly worried face. "Why? Everything okay?

"Yeah, yeah. It's all good. It's just …" Flack's voice dropped as they walked in the local bar, which was, of course, filled with cops, "Do you think Mac knows?"

Danny stifled his laughter, and answered in a low, serious tone, "I don't know, but I heard a rumour he's been checking out that mothering big bow and arrow from that art gallery killing a couple of months ago. Wonder why?" He nearly fell over laughing at the look of horror on Flack's face, as the detective remembered the lovers' bodies pierced at the crucial moment by the arrow. He picked up the beer that had been put in front of him and tried unsuccessfully to stop laughing by taking a swallow of beer.

Flack's face began to resume its natural colour when he realized it was just a joke, and swigged a healthy shot of his own brew before cracking a grin. "Ha, ha, Messer – very funny. Just wait; I'll get you."

Danny shrugged – there wasn't much Flack could do to him. "My life's an open book, man."

Flack sat back in the booth he'd steered Danny to when they'd come in. It was cards-on-the-table time, he figured. He'd sort of promised Stella it was, anyway.

"So who isn't an open book?"

Danny shifted in his seat, but just lifted an eyebrow in response.

"Monroe. Did you run her?"

It was Danny's turn to flush. His feelings about doing a search on Lindsay Monroe had not changed, but they hadn't kept him from digging a little harder, either. What else was he supposed to do when he couldn't sleep?

"I told you it was a breach of trust, Flack."

"Yeah. So you didn't find anything either, huh?" Flack took a sip of beer and signaled a server. "You want pizza?"

Danny sighed, but nodded. If this was going to go the way he thought it was, he was going to need food to get him through.

"Okay, so I couldn't hack into departmental records, obviously," Flack looked inquisitively at Danny, who mimed shock and dismay at the very thought. "I was going to try to contact Bozeman, and see if I could find a connection, but I thought that might send up too many red flags."

Danny closed his eyes in relief. The problem with being a detective, and having friends that were detectives, is that curiosity not only killed the cat, but everyone around would immediately start to investigate the COD and start building theories about why and what and how until the cat died all over again.

"I couldn't find out anything before about 2005, about 10 months before she showed up here. She was a speaker at a conference in California, speaking about forensic practices in communities without extensive lad equipment. She managed to pull a decent crowd – about 200 registrants. After that, she shows up mostly in New York papers in connection with cases we know about. Before that…"

"Nothing," Danny admitted. "So that means she changed her name before coming here. Which means something bad enough to have her feeling threatened must have happened. Which means that …" he held up a hand as Flack tried to interrupt, "We are going to respect her privacy here, Flack. I mean it. Say she's in a protection programme. Are you prepared to put her danger?"

"Protection, huh? Yeah, I thought of that. But let's face, man; people in protective custody don't become cops in New York. They go off to become boutique owners in Maine somewhere. No, there's got to be something else. Maybe she's on the run from an abusive ex?" Flack tried to keep a casual look at Danny's face as he took a bite of still bubbling pizza, then swallowed some beer to cool his tongue.

Danny, though, remained impassive at the comment. "You know, I thought about that." Perhaps a little too obsessively, he admitted privately. "But she doesn't act like a woman who's been abused." He looked Flack in the eyes. "You know; she doesn't pull away from a touch, or shrink when you get too close." He knew he was trusting Flack with a lot more information than he had planned to, but he had to head him off investigating Lindsay any further. "She's comfortable around men. When I carried her across the roof," and the ever-busy rumour mill had had a ball with that one, "She didn't tense up. And when we're in the lab, she doesn't try to avoid accidentally touching someone." At least, she hadn't until he had been so monumentally stupid as to push for more than she wanted. He cleared his throat uneasily.

"Yeah, okay, I can see that. But it would fit, don't you think? She'd change her name, move away?"

"Have you ever seen her tackle a suspect, Flack? She could take you down. She may be little, but damn she is one tough chick."

Flack almost laughed at the pained pride in Messer's voice again. This was just killing the tough, take-care-of-business Staten Island boy. When the lady in your life can out-think, out-draw, and even out-asskick you, it was a little bruising to the old male ego. Flack's grin deepened as he thought of his own tough chick, who, he had to admit, could beat him at most things on most days too. So why didn't it bother him?

Danny looked at his buddy's grin and knew that Flack was off in pink-cloud-land. He breathed a sigh of relief; at least this conversation was over for now. He just had to find a way to keep Flack distracted. Maybe Stella would help him there. She seemed to be pretty good at keeping Flack off kilter.