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chapter seven

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and my money is on anger
they say the form is good
they say the odds are stacked
and this side of birmingham's a good place to be
when they finally light the match
and i've seen it all before
-Thea Gilmore, "Seen it all Before"

xx

April 5, 2003
12:00 am

"Tell us about Shawn Aguilar and Justina Hobbs," Samantha demanded.

"I don't know nothin'!" the man called Viper insisted.

"If you want us to ignore your - activities - this evening," Samantha encouraged firmly, "I would suggest you tell us anything you can."

"So you don't care that I beat you up?"

"Well, no. You'll definitely be hearing from us about that. But in the spirit of being completely honest with each other, Agent Spade here beat you up." Danny was saying. "But, we can choose to ignore several of your other, uh, indiscretions."

"And why should I talk to you?"

"Because two little girls are missing." Samantha paused, inching closer to the suspect before she continued. "If you know something and you keep it from us - if anything happens to either one of those girls - you're going to be facing a lot worse than just assaulting a federal officer and drug charges."

Martin and his father watched from behind the tinted glass partition as Samantha and Danny interrogated the drug dealer, Nicky 'Viper' di Biasi. Martin was aware that families weren't often allowed to watch interrogations, but this was one instance where he appreciated his father's position in the Bureau - and his own status.

Looking more closely at Viper, Martin could see that Danny was right and Sam had absolutely kicked his ass. For someone who was only half of Viper's size, she had certainly given him quite a shiner.

"Thank you for coming, son," his father turned his eyes from the interrogation room and towards Martin.

"I can't imagine being anywhere else right now, dad."

"You don't regret it, do you?"

Oh, great. Let's re-evaluate my life decisions. Where is this coming from? Martin silently questioned. It's not like Dad to have personal conversations.

"I, uh, no. Things are going okay... aside from the obvious."

Yeah, Dad. Your only grandchildren are missing, and we're standing here talking about my political career.

This conversation is surreal. The fact that we're even having this conversation is surreal.

"I know I haven't always been clear on this, but - all your mother and I want is for you to - to be happy."

Martin had no idea how to respond to this, so he simply nodded. He would let his father talk, he obviously needed to get something off his chest.

"This is a good team. If anyone can find Kelsey and Bridget, it will be them."

It seemed like a complete non sequitur, but Martin was certain there were a few steps of his father's thought process that had been audibly omitted. But it was high praise coming from Victor Fitzgerald, a man who rarely did anything but mince words.

Martin and his father had so lost themselves in their own thoughts that they were not focusing on the interrogation that was unfolding before them. At least, not until Danny and Samantha practically jumped up from their chairs and hustled from the room at almost the same time that Vivian and Naomi came stepping quickly down the hallway towards where they stood.

"We have a woman upstairs who heard about the girls going missing on the 11:00 news and said she thought she might know something that would help" Martin heard Vivian say.

"Her name wouldn't happen to be Noreen Price, would it?" Samantha asked.

"How did you know?" Vivian inquired back.

"Our friend 'Viper' there seems to remember that up to about a year ago, Aguilar was always seen on the streets with his girlfriend Noreen. The last time Viper saw Noreen, she was pregnant. Then suddenly, Aguilar starts showing up without her. And by his highly observation calculations, she was nowhere near due at the time that she stopped showing up..."

"So we're thinking...?" Naomi prompted.

"We want to see if Dr. Byrne remembers Ms. Price," Samantha concluded.

Martin wasn't entirely certain of what had just happened, but by the looks on their faces as the team consulted with each other, things were falling into place.

He could feel their adrenaline course through his body.

Something in his gut told him they were getting close.

xx

Samantha sat down in the chair opposite from Tim Byrne, and Danny followed suit, taking the chair just next to hers.

"Dr. Byrne," Samantha started. "We know this is hard for you, but we need to ask you just a few more questions."

Tim simply nodded in affirmation.

"What do you remember about Noreen Price?"

"It was last March when I got called down to OB because a woman had come in, in active labor at 25 weeks..."

Tim moved briskly down the halls of the sixth floor of St. Michael's hospital, several nurses, one of his senior residents, and two third year medical students following quickly behind him.

They had received an urgent call from Labor and Delivery that a 25 weeker was going to be born any minute now.

"What do we have?" He called out to Dr. Mary-Ann Jenkins, a long-time friend who had been just a year ahead of him in medical school.

"Her name is Noreen Price, 25 year old white female. We haven't been able to get fetal heart tones -- I have Cindy booking an OR. She's not due for another 15 weeks, but her water broke and her membranes are close to 90 effaced. I don't think she even knows she's in active labor..."

"How do you not know you're in active labor?" Tim heard one med student ask the other. But the question hadn't been as quiet as its inquirer had intended it to be.

"You don't know you're in active labor," Mary-Ann spoke firmly, "when you are so high that you're lying in your own vomit, you don't even notice until hours later, and your neighbor finds you and calls the rescue squad."

"We had to take her up to the OR. The child -- it was a little girl. She was stillborn, never even had a chance. I was the one who made the call. I never even spoke to Noreen until about four months ago..."

It was a surprisingly quiet for early evening in the Neonatal ICU. Tim wasn't really needed, but he didn't want to go home to an empty house. The family had traveled to Washington DC for the weekend to be present at his brother-in-law's Inauguration, but Caroline and the girls had remained behind for a few days vacation time with Grandma and Grandpa, while he had Grand Rounds to attend first thing on Monday morning.

The house just seemed so empty without his girls there.

"Dr. Byrne?" He heard a young woman's voice call out his name, and he gladly tore his eyes away from the piles of dictations he had sitting in front of him. "I don't know if you remember me. I'm Noreen Price. I, uh, I gave birth about ten months ago..."

In truth, Tim remembers exactly who she is. But he doesn't tell her that, he simply decides to let her say whatever she came to say. He does notice, however, that she seems to have cleaned herself up significantly since the last time he saw her. Of course, anything is better than the woman who had passed out in her own vomit and hadn't noticed she was going into labor. The woman who had used so much during her pregnancy that her daughter hadn't even had a chance in hell.

And he suddenly felt all the more grateful for his own two beautiful daughters.

"I just... I wanted you to know that I've cleaned up my act. No drugs, no booze. I haven't even touched a cigarette in six months."

"That's great," he nodded.

"I... losing my daughter, when I finally was sober enough to realize what had happened... I had never imagined anything could hurt that bad. Do you -- have any children?" She choked up as she spoke, and he genuinely felt pity for the young woman. He wondered how she had gotten herself tangled up in drugs in the first place.

"I have two daughters. Kelsey is four, Bridget is two." There was a picture of his family attached to the tack board at the back of the desks that surrounded the physician desk area of the unit, and he handed it to her. "They're in DC right now with their mother, and I'm here because I can't stand to be at home without them."

"Someday," she said, smiling at him. "Someday, I'm going to have that too. When I'm ready."

"When you're ready," he nodded at her.

"That was the only other time I've ever seen her," he finished. "She seemed like she had really changed."

"Thank you, Dr. Byrne," Danny said. "I think that's all we need for now. We'll let you know if we have any more questions."

Once back in the bullpen, Samantha noticed that Jack was still in his office talking to the woman who must be Noreen Price. "I'm going to go see how that's going," she motioned towards the office.

"Okay, I'm going to go down to tech to see if Naomi's lead panned out." Off of Samantha's look, he added. "I swear, my intentions are nothing but honorable."

When he had walked away, she muttered to herself under her breath. "Yeah, right."

xx

Samantha knocked on the glass door of Jack's office, but let herself in without waiting on an answer. By the look on Jack's face, she guessed that Noreen was talking but wasn't actually saying much of anything.

"Hi, I'm sorry to interrupt," she started. "I'm Special Agent Spade, and I just got finished talking with Dr. Byrne."

"Dr. Byrne is here?" Noreen asked.

"His daughters are missing, of course he is."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Noreen was visibly flustered. "I don't know what's gotten into me. I've been so out of it since I visited Molly two weeks ago."

"It's alright, Noreen." Samantha soothed. "Molly was -- Molly was your daughter, right?"

Noreen nodded, unable to speak.

"What can you tell me about what happened with Shawn, after Molly... ?"

Noreen woke with a start, noticing that the clock next to her bed blared 4:17 AM back at her in bright red numbers.

She had been doing better since she'd been discharged from detox. The nightmares hadn't been coming nearly as often, and she was slowly making progress with the help of her therapist.

"Nor! Noreen, baby where are you?"

Noreen felt the panic rise up inside her instantly. She hadn't seen Shawn since before Molly, and from the sounds of it, he wasn't sober.

"Nor! Nor come out here right now."

She sighed, wanting nothing more than to get back to sleep before she had to be up in three hours. She was taking classes at community college, and she had a midterm in macro econ in the morning. But she slid out of bed, wrapping a robe around herself before padding quickly to the door of her apartment.

"Fuck, Shawn! Shut up! You're going to wake up everyone in the building!"

"You have to come with me, Nor! Viper hooked me up with this new shit that you've just got to try, baby."

"You need to leave, Shawn. Before I call the police."

Shawn looked around, and she thought he was going to go quietly.

"Hey Nor, where's the baby?"

"What, Shawn?"

"You ain't knocked up anymore, where's the baby?"

"Shawn, the baby... I had her months ago Shawn. Where the hell were you then?" She doesn't want to cry in front of him, so she yells instead.

"I was right where I always been."

"Well, if you'd been there, then you'd know. The baby died, Shawn. There was nothing Dr. Byrne could do, and there is no more baby. And you need to leave."

"You know, that was seven months after Molly..." Samantha leaned forward to rub Noreen's arm as she finished her story. "And it was the first time I'd heard from him since before I went into labor."

"Did you hear from him after that?" Samantha asked.

"He called, a couple of times. I never picked up the phone, and I deleted the messages. Never even listened to them. After a few weeks, he just ... stopped calling."

"Can you think of anywhere that he might go if he were in trouble? Family members he might confide in?" It was as though Jack wasn't even in the room anymore, and for all intents and purposes, he wasn't.

"I don't -- I don't know."

"What about places that might have had any kind of significance for him?"

"Well, there was this one place. In White Plains, this old farmhouse where we first met when we were teenagers. No one's lived there for five years, but we used to talk about buying it one day and fixing it up... You know, about a year ago, I'd have told you he was the love of my life. He told me how he was going to marry me, and how we'd be a perfect little family." She paused for a second, and Samantha realized she was holding her breath. "Of course, I guess it didn't mean anything. It was just like everything else he'd ever promised me."

"Thank you, Noreen. We'll be in touch if we need to ask you any more questions."

For the first time in several weeks, Samantha was grateful for Jack's presence. Although in this case, it didn't matter that it was Jack, it simply needed to be anyone else.

She left him to continue the usual post-interview platitudes and excused herself to the ladies room. She splashed cold water on her face to reassure herself that no vestiges of her dark makeup from earlier that evening remained, and she waited several minutes before finally pulling a paper towel out of the dispenser to wipe her face and hands before opening the door to head back to the bullpen.

xx

12:35 am

Martin found himself casually wandering the around the floor once again when he noticed a flurry of activity resume around the central conference table. He was going to go investigate when Samantha rushed past him, not noticing that she had nearly knocked him over in the process.

He stood there in a bit of a daze for a few minutes until he heard the bathroom door open again. She looked much more calm and collected than she had just minutes before.

"We think we've just caught a huge break in the case," she turned to face him. His heart fluttered with hope -- on several levels. "We don't know for sure, but we have an idea of where they might have gone with them."

"That's great news," he said, the understatement of the century as far as he was concerned.

He locked eyes with her for a few seconds, and missed the sensation instantly when he blinked. He wanted to do something, anything to prolong the moment.

He inhaled slowly, calming nerves he didn't know he had, and took a leap of faith.

"Samantha?"

"Yes?" She answered, much like she had when he bid her farewell two weeks ago.

"When this -" he motioned to the office that surrounded them "- is all over, I'd -- I'd really like to get to know you better."

The split second before she answered was torture.

"I'd like that, too."

He wanted to say something else in reply. But then she looked up at him and smiled, and the words died on the tip of his tongue.

He simply smiled back, instead.

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