CHAPTER FOUR: Following His Orders
May 15, 2005
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
- taken from "Ulysses", by Alfred Lord Tennyson
With squinted eyes, Stella raised her head toward the appalling rays of the morning sun. As the yellow jagged lines pierced her skin, she realized with a quiver that it was going to be one of those hot summer days --- those days wherein you'd have to check the news every hour just to see if the temperature had not hit a hundred yet.
She opened the top two buttons of her suit and resisted the assertive urge to kick the darn thing on the curb - and then waltz into the crime lab with only her sleeveless racer- back tank top. She heard that the CSIs from Las Vegas could actually do that, but within Taylor's jurisdiction, that was second to Donald Flack being a macho dancer in impossibility.
Upon entering, she immediately spotted Mac seated on the receiving area. He had two cups of iced coffee settled on the nondescript table in front of him, a crooked brow, and a stern lip line. She also saw that his tailored jacket was discarded into a neatly folded pile beside him, accompanied by folded sleeves, and a slightly disheveled striped blue- green tie.
The first thing that came into her mind was that Mac obviously didn't have enough sleep again, judging from the dark circles cradling his troubled eyes. The next thing was that he clearly was also feeling the heat. She wondered if he'd allow her to saunter with her skin- tone top next to him.
Remembering the incident yesterday, during their crime scene processing, Stella was putting her bet on him not minding. She could've sworn that he was a little entertained with what he found inside her kit.
"Good morning, handsome." She gleefully watched as Mac was momentarily jolted out of his skin by her voice, and then as a consolation, she graced him with one of her biggest smiles when he looked up at her. He immediately relaxed in her presence, patting the bare space beside him for her.
Following his orders (this was something she was so fucking good at that she should get a medal for it), she squeezed her ass in between Mac and the piles of folders that a random CSI left there for some weird reason. Looking at the musty pile, she stuck her tongue out and tapped her partner on the shoulder.
"What are these?" she inquired, motioning to the collection of yellowing folders and grabbing one of the iced coffees. Taking a sip, she let a sigh escape her throat when she tasted the hint of cinnamon in the drink. She wouldn't know what she'd do without a partner like Mac, who had known her for so long now that he even knew what she preferred in her branded coffee drinks. Well, she would never know what she'd do without iced coffee with a sprinkle of cinnamon (it was hot coffee with a sprinkle of chocolate AND cinnamon during colder days) every morning, period.
Mac wiped a trickle of sweat from his brow. "Those are some old, old case files that Detective Dixon stumbled upon. He found them in his new office and realized that some were already logged into the new database, so he's throwing them out. He's asking me to guard them while I'm waiting for you."
"I don't think they're going anywhere, Mac." She cocked the coffee's straw toward him knowingly. "Speaking of which, you should do the same. Let Danny log some of our older, closed cases into the new database and throw them out. Hell, you need some room in that office."
"I like to read them sometimes, without having to haul a huge ass machine with me. And the only reason I need some space in my office is because of you." He laughed a little, hunching down and resting his elbows on his thighs. "Remember when I told you how you could fill up a whole baseball stadium with just your mere presence?"
Stella squirmed a little, remembering what he meant all too well. "Yeah, I, uhh, kind of do. Vaguely," she answered, placing substantial emphasis on the last word. Before Mac could say anything more, she quickly changed the subject. "Did you talk to Hawkes already? About his findings?"
He intricately studied her façade for a minute, but before she could start giving it some thought, Mac started talking, "I checked up on the urgency of his text message. He told me that he found an important piece of our puzzle inside the vic's clothing. He was really interested in what he could find in Mrs. Seferhs' body –"
"- Or simply interested in Mrs. Seferhs herself?"
"Yeah, that too," Mac agreed, with eyebrows raised. "He finished the autopsy just before the end of his shift last night. He sent us all a message this morning."
"All of us," Stella reiterated objectively. "So where's Aiden and Danny?"
"I assigned Aiden to the fingerprint you found inside the immaculately conceived kitchen. Danny's still a no show, probably partied too hard last night," Mac chuckled, bringing Stella's sense of humor back in front of the reigns, too. "But I've asked Aiden to tell him what I've said. He's in charge of everything that's connected with blood."
"Ah, being a junior is a bitch," Stella commented with a smile, then stood up, making sure that she's cradling her drink close to her lips. "So its just you and me to the morgue, huh?"
"Not yet, impatient one," Mac absentmindedly tugged her arm back down, while savoring his own coffee. "We still need Dixon to come and take his trash."
She paused before resuming her seat back down beside him. While she chewed on her green straw, she studied her partner intently; taking invisible notes about the way his eyebrows crinkled, the slip of sweat from the back of his neck and to his collar, the rigid tightening of his lips, and the continuous tapping of his feet on the tiled floor.
Of course, how could she miss that? Mac wasn't exactly her poster boy for patience too. Though this virtue was something they always had debated upon; when the case was hot, it was also hot for Mac. He had the aphrodisiac tenacity of a vampire bat upon the sight of an interesting case file, no matter how much he denied it.
"Okay, Mr. Let's-Wait, spill."
Mac raised an eyebrow in her direction, but didn't exactly second guess her familiar demanding demeanor.
"I researched a bit about Mrs. Seferhs' remaining wealth in the internet last night, to see what's public and what's not."
"So which is which?"
"I learned," he started, pausing to take a sip of his iced coffee and to leave it half- empty, "that after her husband died, Mrs. Seferhs started going to auctions, trying to find things that are beyond worth. She probably saw it as a replacement for her husband's company, these beautiful things. She's bought so many precious items – not to mention very pricey - that I lost track of them. But there is a very prominent object that caught my eye."
"Uh- huh, I'm still listening," Stella encouraged through her straw and the remaining contents of her refreshing drink. She realized (with a hint of embarrassment), that she had polished most of her coffee and that Mac had actually only just began with his. She gave the plastic container a condemning eye, then decided that hell, she'd deal with the calories later.
"Does a certain Pink Spanish Heart alert your memory?"
Almost choking on the liquid that was cascading through her throat, she swallowed it all in one rather painful gulp, then stared dead straight at her partner, as if she was seeing him through a sniper's crosshair.
"Dammitt, Mac, next time you make 'discoveries' like that, PLEASE wait for me to finish my drink!" She regained control of her esophagus and pushed the container down on the table. At her peripheral vision, she could see Mac trying to contain a fit of chuckles. "So what exactly is this infamous Pink Spanish Heart?"
"A diamond that supposedly follows the Hope Diamond. If the Hope Diamond is 45.52 carats, the approximation for the Pink Spanish Heart is 39 carats." He raised an eyebrow in her direction, then as if on cue, she let out a low wolf whistle at the mental image of how huge that piece of rock might be. And of how valuable it could be for diamond whores.
"So that means that the death threats are not all riddles --- the perps are really asking for this Pink Spanish Heart, and I wouldn't blame them. The problem is to find out whether she already had given them the diamond, or if its still somewhere in her assets."
"She liquidated all her important and irreplaceable assets to a bank account in Greece just two months ago," Mac inserted at once, and Stella's eyes grew tens of proportions at the revelation. Her partner cleared his throat confidently, "I double checked with her bank and with government documents – at least with what's public. Mrs. Seferhs was going to move back home in Greece."
"After, after being the toast of the town for God-only-knows how long? I wonder what prompted this? They're practically a New York staple."
"And if there's one thing I know, I know that you CAN'T liquidate THE Pink Spanish Heart. Not a diamond that valuable. Or as important to her, it seems."
At the exact moment that Stella was going to ask him something that had been bothering her during the course of their conversation (and revelations), Detective Dixon arrived. He was a tall, gangly man with the darkest of dark hair, and bushy eyebrows that always gave Stella compulsions to jerk out a blade and make something out of them, or at least make his eyes visible. He also had a certain reputation among the female CSIs, more because of his good looks than his bedroom prowess.
He had repeatedly tried to date her during their rookie years, but he somehow stopped when Stella approached her problem to Mac. She once caught them talking intently, and after that, it was all over; she never had to worry about him again. Now, he was happily married to a fellow CSI at the midday shift.
"Hey Stella," Dixon greeted, toothily teasing her with a grin. "It's been sometime since I last saw you. You look great."
"Uhh, you too." She awkwardly gave Mac an eye, one that screamed that she wanted to get the hell out of there before the consummated man could force the coffee she just ingested out of her abdomen. "Well Mac, I think we better go and meet Hawkes now."
"Oh yeah." Mac stood up and shook Dixon's hand. While he said something to the Detective, he winked at her direction. Just to spite her, deliberately.
Stella squinted her eyes at him, as lethal as possible. She also made sure that Mac saw that.
A few minutes later, as they were on their way towards the morgue, Stella curiously looked at the man beside her. For some reason that was beyond her critical thinking, Mac appeared to be pleased with himself now as compared to their first meeting of the day.
Taking a huge breath that refreshed her lungs, she voiced out a little nag at the back of her head:
"I never thanked you for telling Dixon to buzz off a few years ago." When Mac tried to catch her eyes on him, she immediately withdrew her gaze. "I don't know why I never did --- I think it's because you never really told me what you told him."
Mac's steps slowed down a little to match her shorter ones, and he shrugged, "I only told him what he already knows. You don't need to thank me for that."
He placed a hand on the small of her back to lead her, like he had done so many times before. And as cryptic as his answer sounded, Stella felt as if it was all she needed to know.
"She died of a very, very blunt force trauma."
At the sound of Hawkes' words and his final diagnosis, Stella suddenly felt uncomfortable. She pushed the sensation down the pit of her stomach by crossing her arms above her ribs.
Mac shook his head, peering at the lifeless body that was laid out before them on the cold steel table. "I don't think we needed anyone to tell us that. How did it happen?"
"Blow-by-blow, huh?" Hawkes kidded, making Stella and Mac both sigh at the pun that WAS intended. Their Medical Examiner sheepishly scratched the top of his smooth head. "I can't estimate how many blows she took, but a particular blow …" He paused to adjust the florescent light right above the severed face. "Whacked her right zygomatic bone – the cheekbones. Then the blows strengthened on her frontal bone," he pointed at the forehead, "this bone particularly supports the foremost portions of the brain. After that, it was pretty much a downhill spiral. Her brain looks like mush, literally. I couldn't determine which nerve or artery gave up first."
"She did fight back, right?" Stella piped up, a little more hopeful than she wanted herself to sound. Hawkes gazed up at her and nodded. He lifted up a dainty arm and revealed the circular wound that Mac had told Stella about yesterday in the crime scene.
"Tell- tale signs, one each on both palms … but the bruise on her ankle seems to be five days old. It is not singularly related to the incident."
"What do you think caused those defensive wounds?" Mac asked, leaning forward to get a better look at the deep, red marks.
"It looks like something sharp had embedded itself into her skin. I looked into the tissue to get some samples, but found nothing." Hawkes gently released the hand on the table and raised a finger in the air teasingly. "But I DID find something that I'm sure you two are going to kill for." He turned his back to them to begin digging through his supplies at a nearby table.
With piqued interest, Stella stood up straighter and huddled in closer with Mac as Hawkes finished his rummaging and faced them. He revealed a plastic container with a piece of weathered paper inside of it.
"Ta- dah." Hawkes exclaimed with a stealthy monotone, as if he was afraid that his little 'magic trick' would disrupt the dead that were surrounding them. He handed the container over to Mac, who took it carefully, lifting it up to his eye- level and examining what was inside.
"It's a … piece of paper?" he tried, and she couldn't help giving him a look that said 'do we need to even know that?'. The supervisor ignored her.
"Of course I had the chance to read it when I found it inside her breast pocket. I sent her clothes to Aiden already for processing, by the way." Hawkes waited for Mac to acknowledge this information before proceeding, "It's a ransom note. Asking for the Pink Spanish Heart in return of a little girl … called 'Little E'."
"What is wrong with these perps? They keep on labeling everyone and everything as if they have THE poetic license," Stella sighed loudly, placing a hand on her hip. Mac agreed with a grunt, then handed her the plastic. She raised an eyebrow in question.
He tapped on the container that was splayed on her hand thoughtfully. "Why don't you process that and check on Danny too, see what he finds out about the blood?" her partner said, leaning away and rubbing his nose bridge. "I need to check on the official records of the Seferhs, see if there's something I missed about the Pink Spanish Heart. I'll also check on Aiden, see what she made out of that fingerprint."
Stella's grip on her hip bone tightened. For a concept that she couldn't fathom, she didn't want to be apart from Mac on this case. There was a persistent little voice inside of her that kept on telling her that she should work closely with him --- every waking second of the whole investigation. Not that it was THAT particular time of the month or anything, but she was feeling rather utilitarian towards him.
Needless to say, this new "checking up on the juniors" thing pissing the hell out of her. She felt that they could do much more than just "check up" on their very capable co- workers. Doing something more about it, like digging into the picture of that girl that they found inside Mrs. Seferhs' house.
"Fine," she answered, and irrationally walked out of their conference and out of the morgue. She didn't even think of opening her auditory sense to hear what Mac was telling her as she, once again, followed his orders to the very hilt.
Danny peered into the lens of the microscope and sighed deeply, "The blood from the bloody shovel matches our vic's." He pushed himself away from the florescent- lighted counters and rolled his chair over closer to Stella's, where he had set the shovel aside.
She removed her attention from the ransom note, - unintentionally studying the caking mixture of blood and flesh on the murder weapon, then the bloodshot red eyes that her friend was donning on. Not to mention the scratchy, throaty voice.
"You okay, Danny?" she said, removing the Night Vision Binoculars and shutting off the Alternative Light Source that she was using to scan the paper with. "I'm beginning to think that Mac's prognosis of you 'partying too hard' last night is right on the dot."
"You probably don't need to know about it, Stell," he coughed out, after clearing his throat. He dragged himself to where his cellular phone was stashed and punched in a number. After a few tries, someone finally picked up.
"Chad, where's, uhh, the results of my blood drops? Oh, okay. You know where to find me. No, I'm not going anywhere at all. Tell Flack he's an ass." He ended his call and removed his eyeglasses, tucking them inside his breast pocket.
Stella stood up and loomed over Danny. She placed a hand in between his shoulder blades. "Hey, Flack's an ass? Did you two have a too-good time?"
"Basically, NOT a too-good time," he replied, resting his head on a hand and coughing. "I think I pushed Hedonism way too much last night: 'Eat, drink, be merry for tomorrow we die'. Only I embarrassed myself by hitting on a married woman – and almost throwing myself all over her."
"Oooh," Stella winced, gritting her teeth. "What? Did she press charges or anything?"
"No, of course not. I just … kind of threw up all over her."
"Yuck Danny." She couldn't help but punctuate that with a stolen giggle. She waited for him to react with one of his piercing stares, but he didn't, and she attributed that to his current state of inebriation. Collecting herself, she continued, "So if she didn't press charges, I'm guessing she got even."
Her friend soughed heavily. "Yeah. Women and their purses --- who knew what you females keep in them? Flack said that I was attacked by a 10- pound Louis Vuitton handbag." He tapped on his stomach tenderly, and even with such precision, Stella saw his face contort in pain. "I have bruises here that'll last for days. I wasted the night away puking out my intestines."
"So with the scratchy throat," she took notice, with an outpouring of affectation spilling from her vocal chords. She really felt for him - she knew what it was to be embarrassed about something stupid that you have done. "Flack's spreading the good news all over the lab now?"
He bent over excruciatingly, squeezing his abdomen in and circling an arm around the area. Before her, his bleached blonde hair stuck out in wrong places under the striking white lights, revealing roots that were ravaged with gel.
"I'm still trying to find ways to blackmail him and his ass."
She allowed herself to snort out a laugh. There was a passive familiarity about this encounter, about Danny's 'rookie' embarrassment (as Mac would have probably termed it if he was in her place right then and there), and about her being the advisor-slash-therapist. Somehow, it reminded her of her earlier days in the laboratory: Everything was new and foreign – every turn was adventurous, mistakes were tolerable-, and there was only one familiar face she felt comfortable to look at.
It brought her to her current irritability toward Mac, of all people, in this case. Now that she had thought it over while going through the damn ransom note, she supposed that maybe her degree of dependency on him in this case was due to his incessant silent plea of being depended upon --- he DID have that tendency, she firmly believed. He liked to take the reigns and drive to whichever direction, and oftentimes, without even consulting her. She felt that it was comparable to before – when her ideas were based on street smarts alone and not on empirical experience, and his were from the highest of high education. He outdebated her without a hitch; it was only a few years ago when she was able to kill him in their arguments.
For no apparent reason, or maybe she saw too much of her old self in Danny Messer at that moment, that she spilled out a portion of her thoughts in the open:
"Mac … is so overpowering sometimes." Stella twirled a lock of hair on her fingertip absentmindedly, directing her eyes down on the sprawled ransom note, as if she was somewhat afraid of getting Danny's reaction to this confession.
"What do you mean?" he deadpanned, face still partly stuck on the table, his eyes closed in reverie. She allowed herself to awkwardly smile.
"He just … has this tendency to think that he can control everything. He underestimates people, me." She scrunched her face up, turning slightly away from her friend. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe I'm just being a bitch about it."
"Well, Mac DOES do that. But I think he does it for a reason," Danny replied. "I know for a fact that he thinks highly of your opinions. He almost uses them like a basis, like textbook data."
"That's because I usually have the witty comebacks," she smirked, then turned serious. "The way he delegated assignments this morning didn't sit well with me. I've been following this man's orders for almost a decade now and I'm suddenly revolting … and God, it kills me that I'm not apt to obeying."
"You've been obeying for almost a decade now, Stella. Someone has a turning point somewhere, a little tick sometimes. It's normal to be annoyed from time-to-time." He lifted his head from the table and stared at her straight in the eyes. "I know that YOU know that he cares a lot for you, probably more than what's intended for professionalism (but I mean that in a good way) … and whatever he does will always be conducive towards you. Probably more conducive for you THAN me and Aiden." He inquisitively scratched on his chin. "Hmm … that just opens another can of worms."
"Oh Messer, you're being a hung- over ass now." She smacked him on the bicep good- naturedly, a crystal smile tainting her lips. "You know that he cares for you a–"
"What did you get off of that blood, Danny?"
At the sound of his voice, they both snapped their heads in the door's direction so fast that Stella swore she heard her spinal column creak. Of course, as she expected, Mac stood there in all of his glory, with a bunch of printed paper on one hand and a cell phone on the other. His eyebrows were knitted so intricately it was as if they were in a tourniquet for the whole morning, and his stance was as impatient as a District Attorney wanting a closed investigation in less then a day.
As Danny scampered for his glasses and his findings, Stella rolled her eyes discretely.
God, Mac could be so anal sometimes.
The aforementioned man strode over to Danny and listened intently to what he had about the blood. Specifics like diseases or ailments were also given, as with the necessary alleles they might need later on in case they needed to establish a match.
Seeing that they were now both busy in their discussion, Stella reluctantly returned to her ransom note. She was sure that 'Big Brother' was going to interrogate her next on her findings after poor Danny.
She was about to turn on the ALS when Aiden suddenly burst into the laboratory. Her hair was in disarray, as if she ran from one room to another to find where they were, her laboratory gown was almost bunching on her forearms, and she was obviously carrying a series of results.
Mac gazed at Aiden questioningly. "What's up?"
She flipped a thick layer of hair behind her and waved the paper before them. It was the partial fingerprint they found at the also anally- cleaned kitchen.
"We're not looking for someone in this case," she said breathlessly, flashing them all a gratuitous smile. "We're looking for something. This is a print of man's closest relation to the animal kingdom … and not just ANY close relation. These are the type we see commonly in zoos and are white in color, normally found in the jungles of the Amazon. Anyone still remembers the Lagothrix lagothrica?"
Stella quickly breathed out the answer to that one: "The Wooly Monkeys?"
Aiden made a ding-ding-ding sound. "Yup! That's what we're looking for now." She slid the piece of paper towards the trio, and Mac quickly took it before anyone else had their paws on it.
At that instance, Stella didn't mind anymore. For all that was going on in her mind was how this case was getting stranger and stranger. She was afraid that by the time they finished, they might be dealing with extraterrestrial poachers or worst: anal jewelry thieves.
She shivered in disgust.
END of CHAPTER FOUR
C/N: No, I haven't abandoned this story. I got caught up with RL way too much that I forgot to write in this, and before I knew it, time was bonking me on the head. The Muse wasn't helping much either. Thanks to everyone who responded and who urged me to continue this, they really awakened the Muse out of her skivvies. Ah, the glory of Feedback.