A/N: Surprise! I have an unhealthy obsession with CSI: NY. There, I admitted it. The science is garbage, the timelines are impossibly fast (oh if we could solve two murders a day!), and most irritatingly, their solve rate is near 100%. And I don't really care. I will not disclose how many full season rewatches I have done. Instead, we can talk about how it takes me more than a year to write a short story. Snail's pace is apparently my only writing pace.

This story doesn't go the way of a typical episode, so if you are here for that I suggest you turn back now. I have no background in medicine or law so I apologize if I have made glaring errors. My (inaccurate) knowledge of medicine and law comes entirely from the CSI franchise, so in reading this you may need to extend the same forgiveness you do to the shows. For one, I didn't really manage to let go of the lightning fast timeline that is typical of the show. *sigh* Dates are at the top of each chapter to help give a sense of time. I love all the characters, but this one is for Detective Don Flack. His cannon-established personal life has a little gap in it that I wanted to fill in. This story goes in the romance direction, and is posted in its entirety for your binge reading pleasure.

[Saturday, February 13, 2010, 23:30]

It had been a tranquil night so far. The box at the top left of her screen flashed red. Incoming call. Her thoughts had jinxed it. Exhaling, she calmed herself. It was her job to be calm, no matter what. She tapped a button on her headset. "911. What is your emergency?" the operator asked. The timer ticked on, keeping track of how long the call had been connected. Her monitors displayed a familiar array of boxes and buttons in jarring old school colours. The means to contact every emergency response provider she could possibly need, from patrol cops to Homeland Security, lay at her fingertips. Another screen showed a green and black map of New York City. Little labelled dots moved around, the squad cars, ambulances, and fire trucks that were out and about tonight.

"Um... There's a lady in an alley." He was whispering, even though no one else was home. His mom was out, working the late shift, but it didn't seem right to talk about such things at a normal volume. Everyone knew you whispered in libraries and churches. And at funerals. "I think... I think she's dead," he said softly.

She sat up straight in her chair. A child's voice. 12, maybe. 14 at the most. She wondered briefly if it was a prank his friends had put him up to, but he wasn't trying to keep from snickering. He sounded nervous. The call was coming from a landline in the Bronx. Thank God for landlines. She pulled up the address associated with the phone number on a map. Hunt's Point, arguably the worst neighbourhood in the city. Murder? Typical. "You've been a brave young man to call 911. What's your name?"

He paused. He didn't really want to tell the police his name, but the lady sounded nice. "Michael." Surely there were too many Michaels in the city for them to find him.

"Okay, Michael. My computer says you're in the Bronx. Is that right?" she asked gently. Her fingers flew over her keyboard, starting to record the information that the responding officers would need. Hunt's Point, possible DOA. Female, alley.

"How did you know?" he asked wide-eyed, pushing his fingers between the blinds and peering out the window. The rain on the glass made it hard to see, but there was no one standing outside in a dark trench coat and hat like he'd been expecting.

"When you use a house phone to call me, I can see the house the phone company visited," she explained. "Do you know your address, Michael? Can you find a piece of mail?" Phone companies didn't always keep accurate records and she had to verify location before sending out the cars on a wild goose chase.

"I know it, but the lady isn't here," he said worriedly, twisting the phone cord in his fingers. He had thought he was doing the right thing. "I- I don't have a cell so I had to come home to use the phone. I didn't know I was supposed to stay. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was just-"

"No, no, it's alright, Michael. You didn't have to stay," she reassured him. "Don't hang up, okay? You did the right thing." Her experience had rewarded her with a sixth sense of when people were about to end calls.

"O-okay." He heaved a sigh of relief. His mom would have been so mad if he'd managed to get himself into trouble with the police.

"Do you remember where the lady is?" She waited with bated breath. Children couldn't be expected to be as useful as adults in these situations, but they sometimes surprised her with their resilience.

The image flashed across the back of his eyelids as he blinked. The rain coming down. The last working streetlight before the alley was on his left. About halfway down, the lady was lying on the ground. He thought she was passed out, at first. Drunks were common on Saturday night. "She was in the alley. Beside Milly's Corner on Longwood. It's the alley I use to get home. It's shorter than taking the streets," he rambled. Even in the middle of the night, he knew the alleys perfectly. They were his most used paths, his kingdom.

She exhaled and her fingers launched into another typing spree. "That's a good memory you have, Michael. That's M-I-L-L-Y for 'Milly'?"

"Yeah, yeah. Milly's Corner on Longwood." Him and his mom always went there when they could afford it. She said their arroz con calamares tasted like home.

A few more keystrokes and she had located the little restaurant. It wasn't too far from Michael's location. "Longwood Avenue, is that right?"

"Yeah. I- I wasn't out late being bad, I promise. I was just helping clean at Rozzo's," he blurted.

She could see a building labeled F Rozzo & Sons a short distance away on the map. "It's okay, you're not in trouble for being out late, Michael." Everyone always wanted to tell her why, and that was the part that mattered the least. "Can you tell me what you saw?"

He looked down at his shoes, once worn-in white, now dead red. "...Blood. Blood everywhere."