SPOILERS: For "What You See Is What You See".
CHAPTER TWO: Empty Playground
May 14, 2005
"Hey!"
"Hey, you're late."
Stella squinted her eyes at Detective Don Flack. "You're starting to sound like Mac."
"But I'm with style, Stella. Take note of that." He winked like an old tycoon who won another million dollars from poker. She laughed at the mental image first, then at him.
He lifted the yellow crime scene tape (plastered from tree to tree) for her, and she stepped in gamely, hauling her seemingly heavier crime scene kit. She bit the insides of her cheek, wondering what the hell she mistakenly put in there during her haste to get to the scene.
The sounds of successive police and ambulance sirens, the pushy media, and the worried civilians began to drown out as they trudged up the secluded front lawn. Old dried leaves blanketing the pathway crunched beneath their footsteps, and as they drew forward, more leaves began to flutter through the wind. Stella struggled with a few that kept sticking to her hair. Meanwhile, Flack brushed some from his vinyl leather jacket.
A house sat atop the little hill, resplendently porcelain and inviting. It had two floors, Stella could see clearly, and an open porch that even had one of those war- era rocking chairs made infamous in movies. A crooked see- saw that kept creaking from the breeze was built beside the abode, together with a pair of swings and a sandbox.
She'd love to vacation at the place, she thought, then choked that notion dead when one more step brought her vision to the crime scene itself.
Mac was already at the spot, kneeling obsessively over the sprawled body of an elderly woman, and giving Danny Messer and Aiden Burn orders. The two huddled near him, trying to hear what he was saying above the howling wind.
Stella shivered slightly.
Flack coughed out, brushed a leaf from his front lapel, and nudged her, "The vic is a sixty- five year old widower … a billionaire of a widower, that is. Apparently, her husband is Bryan Seferhs. Sounds familiar?"
"The Greek land developer heir – he was known for his flamboyant parties during the eighties. So this is THE Mrs. Diana Seferhs. Her beauty is supposedly so captivating that being jealous of the men surrounding her during their parties, Mr. Seferhs died of heart failure."
"You sure know your rumor mill," he observed, obviously impressed. Stella let out a laugh.
"I make sure that I know everything about the popular New York Greek society," she said. "I also know that she lives alone. Who called it in?"
"Her gardener. He said that Mrs. Seferhs enlisted him for a three- day sweeping session of the whole yard - this is a pretty big yard - and she hasn't called him in at least six months. According to him, he found this unusual for she used to have her whole property done twice in one month."
"Maybe she was afraid of something."
"Or someone," Flack corrected, scratching an invisible spot on his chin. "I asked the gardener if Mrs. Seferhs lives with a kid," he pointed at the mini playground, "he told me that she always had a little girl over, but he never felt it was her kid. He was a father himself and he knew when it was someone's kid or not, you know?"
"The Seferhs never had kids either, so that couldn't be her grandchild. What if she adopted someone?"
"I had it checked, in case we need to be looking for another body here. There are no records."
"Well, to live in seclusion like this must mean you're hiding something OR someone. Maybe she's also protecting someone. Like the kid." By that time, Mac was staring at them. With just one beckon of his eyes, Stella directed Flack to near the body.
Stella scanned her eyes over the corpse. The once immortalized brunette hair of Mrs. Seferhs was now stained with the crimson splatter of blood, and to her dismay, even the woman's face was barely recognizable. The right side of her skull completely caved in, and she knew that through a much more direct examination, she'd probably see the insides. The thought made her stomach curl. Despite dealing with death for the past eight years almost everyday of her life, sometimes, the most random incidents could be the one to play with your mentality.
Mac leaned toward the vic's hand - where in between her index and middle finger, a few locks of dark hair were caught. He bagged it and set it aside in his kit.
"What do you, uhh, think happened here, Mac?" Stella inquired, crouching down beside him and also opening her kit.
Mac glanced up at her and gave her a wry smirk. "Where have you been?"
She wanted to roll her eyes, but she was afraid that if she did her stomach would give up on her.
"I was with … someone and I didn't have my kit with me, so I had to make him drive me back home – to get it. And so that I can also change." She grabbed a pair of latex gloves and snapped them on.
"Was he your date?" Mac muttered under his breath, then transferred his eyes down at the body. "You didn't tell me how your date went."
"Well, you didn't tell me how yours went either."
Flack, who was watching them work, let out a low wolf whistle. "She got you there, buddy," he spat out, much to Stella's delight. Mac ignored him, and her last comment.
After, Flack was happy enough to back out of the conversation, telling them that he had to keep the media at bay down the hill.
"So, what did happen here, Mac?" Stella asked, surveying the perimeter surrounding the dead. "What's your theory?"
"My theory?" he parroted, returning his attention to her. "Danny found a shovel that was discarded beside the swing, which has blood all over it. That's our murder weapon. And these brutal blows? It tells you that she wasn't just hit once. Probably a dozen times, if her skull was so fractured it collapsed inwardly."
"Crime of passion?"
"I'm guessing that it has something to do with money."
"Doesn't it always have something to do with money when it comes to THE Seferhs?" she sighed, making Mac smile.
Stella then spotted faint smudges of blood drops that were leading to the playground. She stood up and proceeded to the first drip.
"What's that?" Mac queried from behind her.
"Get me a swab, will you? I think I found blood."
He complied at once, and while he was browsing her items, she studied the nature of the drops. They were gravitational, definitely, and someone or something had defiled them before they arrived at the scene. Probably the gardener who didn't see them? Or the killer himself?
"Uhh, Stella?"
"Yeah?" she called out, lost in her thoughts.
"Is it really uhh, necessary, strictly as your boss only … to have your, ahem, underwear, umm, here? In your things?"
She froze.
"Holy fucking shit!"
Stella shot up from her stance - as if she was electrocuted - and jumped back to Mac and her kit. An intense crimson had settled on his cheekbones, and he was frozen between getting a cotton bud and looking down at what's underneath her evidence bags.
She also felt her face heating up. God dammitt, so that was what's making her case heavy. She must have tossed it there while she was dressing up and looking for new cotton swabs.
"I can take care of that NOW, Mac." She pushed him aside and pointed at the blood drops. She made sure that her hair was covering her unexpected flush, and that her underwear were tucked firmly and safely inside her pocket.
If someone could grant her a wish, right then and there, she'd wish that she could disappear and do the next tasks without having Mac see her. Ever again. And why, why did she have to wear that damn leather thong? Why?
"T- These drops are leading to the playground … but they stop near the sandbox," her partner pointed out, trying to keep the tone of awkwardness below their atmosphere.
Stella composed herself and clenched her fists tight before returning near him to examine the evidence she found. Silently, she took a sample of the first blood drop, confirmed that it indeed was blood, and sealed it.
"Yeah, who- who's out there in the playground?"
"Danny's there. We found tire tracks going to the back of the hill. If this blood is not the vic's, then they took someone with them."
"Does she have defensive wounds?"
"On both palms, and a bruise on her ankle."
"It could also be that she hit the perp, making him bleed all the way to his getaway car."
"Could be," Mac agreed. "All we know for now is that the blood leads us to an answer, whomever it came from."
"Yup." Stella got up and dusted her knees. She placed the evidence inside her kit and closed it. Mac watched her do this, and got up himself when he realized that she was heading inside the house.
"What are you doing?"
She looked back at him and smiled pettily. "I'm going to check the inside. Who do you have in there?"
"Aiden. After the playground, I've asked Danny to assist her."
"Tell him the assisting will be done by me, 'kay?"
"That should come as an order from me, Stella."
"So order me now."
They stared at each other for a minute. Then Mac began to crack with an intercepting eyebrow that was directed at her.
"Okay. You can go in there and process the house."
Stella held up her index finger excitedly and said, "Thanks, Mac. I owe you one."
It was a few steps and a few seconds before she heard his reply.
"I think you already paid me back."
She pretended to ignore that remark. She really did. But she couldn't help but mumble "bastard" under her breath.
She couldn't exactly believe her eyes when she set her foot inside Mrs. Seferhs' living room. There was barely anything inside of it.
She stood there for a minute, absorbing the sunken glory of who once were the grandest party- throwers in New York's history. She remembered seeing pictures of their mansion in Queens from the New York Times, including the lavish architecture and the fireplace that cost a heart- stopping two hundred thousand dollars.
And now, here it all dwindled down to: bare green walls, dusty chandeliers with busted bulbs, moth- eaten rugs, and … a computer in the middle of the dining room.
Shaking her head, she began to head to the machine. Now she had seen everything.
"Hey Stell," Aiden called out from the computer. She was already seating on the new AND oddly- placed rotating chair, intently browsing through the hard drive.
Approaching her colleague, she placed her kit down beside Aiden's and gawked from behind her. The screen was displaying a series of saved emails.
"Whatcha got?" she inquired.
"Death threats – and lots of them. But it must be cryptic, because they're so vague." She clicks at a random letter and points at a few words. "Look: 'Of the top of the world and your beloved Pink Spanish Heart, you will be taken and killed before the sun is down.' We have a regular Shakespeare, huh?"
"Or a regular Jack The Ripper," Stella remarked, making Aiden grin. "'Pink Spanish Heart'? Mrs. Seferhs is PURE Greek. I know that as a public fact."
"Exactly. And there's more, which leads me to believe that there's someone else we should be looking for." Aiden flipped her wavy hair out of the way as she browsed through piles and piles of email, then with an 'Aha!', she opened the one she was pertaining to. "Tell me what you make out of this: 'She owns your Pink Spanish Heart and your soul, but she will not escape our incurable toll. She will be ours, and you will return to where you belong.' It didn't EVEN rhyme."
"I don't know, I mean, what the hell is this 'Pink Spanish Heart', anyway?" Stella added. Aiden shrugged, then excused herself from their conversation to order the Crime Scene Technician for the seizure of the CPU.
While this was going on, Stella decided to peek at the staircase that led up to the second floor. "Aiden, did you process upstairs already?"
"Yeah, but there was nothing there at all. This house is empty, except for the computer and a picture I found tacked on the wall over there by a nail," she pointed at the bare space directly underneath the stairs. Then, to Stella's face, she held up a sealed photograph.
Gently taking it, Stella ran her eyes over the evidence.
A tear from the nail's intrusion ebbed the upper left hand corner of the photograph, but it didn't desecrate the featured image of a little girl. She had the most abundant curls that were twisted in a bun on the top of her head, and a few strands fell down to her face like chocolate tendrils. She was grinning excitedly, baring her missing front teeth, and hugging a beat- up old teddy bear to her stomach.
A warmth enveloped Stella as she further looked at it. She wondered if Mrs. Seferhs had adopted this girl, or if she was in anyway related to her. More importantly, she wondered if this beautiful child was still alive.
She certainly hoped so.
Noticing the scenery behind the child, she returned the picture to Aiden. "That kid was definitely here before. That's the swing set behind her."
"I believe that playground IS for her."
"Could be." Stella picked up her case and moved toward the kitchen. "This wasn't processed yet, right?"
"Yeah. I'll be there with you in a minute."
When she entered the kitchen, she wondered if the place needed to even be processed. There was absolutely nothing inside of it - like the rest of the house - and it was spick and span beyond belief. The counters were as white as snow, the walls seemingly glistening with newly- minted paint, and if it wasn't for the slightly leaking tap faucet, she'd get a camera crew and have it photographed for Better Homes.
"What the hell happened here?" she whispered under her breath, a million and one thoughts scampering through her head. The case, over- all, seemed overtly easy. But if they all looked at the big picture, there was just too much going on. There was the brutal killing, the news- whore media outside of the property, the possibility of another victim, a virtually empty house, and a playground. Somewhere there, it just didn't add up.
Her eyes scanned the tiled floors as she bent down to open each vacant drawer, then the walls, and then the expensive tables. After this, she dusted all the corners for fingerprints. Finding nothing in the said locations, she began to tear through the windows. With a loose profanity escaping her lips, she started strategizing how she was going to open the panes without scratching herself from the thorny bushes settled happily on the sills.
Carefully doting each of the windows, she still found herself hissing at the subtle, yet sharp pricks.
She was half- way thru when Aiden entered the kitchen together with Danny – who looked like he just saw Stella battling with Hulk Hogan (in the flesh) right before his very eyes.
"Ouch, that got to hurt," he commented, and at once neared her to offer some assistance. Stella gave him a half- smile, and had to roll her eyes. Danny Messer was one of her favorite co- workers, but he could be such an overprotective ass sometimes, even if she was older than him. This attitude she deemed as sweet sometimes, but Aiden also once confided to her how annoying it could get.
"Yo guys, Mac needs me outside for the body. I'm hitching a ride with him to the lab, too. What about you two?" Aiden inquired, hissing herself when she saw a particularly tricky thorn latching onto Stella's cuffs.
"We're going with Flack," Danny answered mindlessly, then his eyes unexpectedly brightened up.
"Wait, Stella, do you see that?" He waved his hand around the bottom half of the window pane. Stella squinted her eyes at the glass, only then seeing what he was seeing.
"A partial hand print! This just made my day." She gestured to Aiden, and her co- worker rapidly brought them a print lifter, together with her digital camera.
Stella took the print lifter with a 'thanks', then gave it to Danny. She knew that he was overwhelmed with the discovery, and he rightfully needed to get that print for his own.
He steadily stuck the lifter on the glass, and gently peeled it off to reveal another vital clue. Behind them, Aiden captured everything in her camera's memory card.
Stella moved away from the windows and inhaled deeply after they were sure that everything was handled. This was the start of another long haul.
She then looked at Danny and with a wink, saying, "Not so spick and span after all."
He pushed his glasses to the top of his nose and grinned. "It never always is."
END of CHAPTER TWO
C/N: Liz and Em get the Brownie points (great one!). Thanks to everyone who liked the first chapter. I know that this chapter is too clinical (in that sense), but I tried to make the most out of it. If I wasn't able to highlight the case rightfully, please forgive me. I'm still getting used to writing crime scene investigation. I hope that you like this one, though.