Disclaimer: I am not Anthony Zuiker. I do not own the characters of CSI: NY. I do own anyone you don't recognize including victims, bad guys and random characters, so don't steal them! I will put the characters back where I found them, unharmed.
AN: Here's the next chapter! Thanks to all who read and reviewed! Please continue to R&R, it helps my muse! Many thanks to both Aphina and Axellia for finding the majority of my stupid mistakes! Anything else, is just me.
Chapter 3.
Frustration
When Danny and Lindsay got back to the lab, they started to process the evidence. Lindsay had just slipped into her lab coat when Adam walked into the lab. "Hey, Adam," she said calmly.
Adam was dancing in place as he smirked. "Hey. You've gotta see this. Your vic's computer? I've never seen anything so organized in my entire life. I found out what your vic does with the majority of her time."
Lindsay looked at him intrigued. "Really? So what does she do with the majority of the time?" Lindsay asked as she followed Adam back to the AV lab.
"FanFiction."
"What? What is that?" Lindsay asked in confusion.
Adam smirked again as Danny joined them. "It's a genre of writing. Basically, amateur writers take preexisting characters, say from TV, books, movies, and write a story with them."
Lindsay still looked a bit confused. "So they publish them?"
Adam shook his head. "Nope. They can't make any money from the stories, it would be a copywrite infringement if they did and that would open them up to lawsuits."
"So, how does this help us?" Danny asked.
Adam sat down in his chair. "It helps us because it seems like she has a cyber enemy," he said while pointing at the screen. "I spent hours, and I mean hours, going through all of her emails. Most of the ones that come from the fanfiction website look like reviews for her stories; she had four in progress. But I also discovered that this particular website has a private messaging service. Registered users can basically email other users through the website without having to give out their email address."
Lindsay shook her head. "So, basically you found something through the messages?"
Adam nodded as he pulled up an email. "It looks like she was having an argument with a writer over that writer's story." He glanced at both of them before continuing. "By the way, you guys owe me for this. Luckily, your vic had saved all of the messages and it turns out that the feud was going on for several months."
Lindsay and Danny watched in fascination as Adam pulled up another email.
"This is what started it," he said pointing to the screen.
Lindsay leaned over and read the email out loud. "You bitch," she began before stopping. "Dear Lord, can this person type? This looks like an instant message! Anyway, you bitch. How dare you criticize my story! This is the best story ever and if you'll bother to look at my other reviews, everyone else loves it too!"
Lindsay rolled her eyes and Adam laughed. "Yeah, it's that bad," Adam said. "I actually went to this person's story and I thought my eyes would fall out of my head. It's a story about Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and let's just say, I don't think she's ever seen an episode or a dictionary."
Danny was unable to suppress his laugh. "So how does this pinpoint our killer, Adam?"
Adam shook his head. "The latter tone of the messages is what might help. All of the most recent messages, within the last two weeks, she has been threatening your vic."
"But this is all anonymous, isn't it. How would this writer know how to find our vic?" Lindsay mused.
Adam shrugged. "That's for you guys to figure out. But I did find a couple other interesting things. She was emailing regularly with three people. Two she had listed in an email folder under their pen names and the other one was just a normal person."
"Ya got names?" Danny asked.
"Yup. The two with email folders are Cassie Jones and Erica Gilbert, the other one is Samantha Miller. I'm trying to track their IP address down, but it's going to take some time."
Danny smiled. "That's something that we can work with. Thanks, Adam," he said as they walked out of the room.
While they were walking back to the lab, Lindsay kept musing over the information that they had gotten. "Samantha Miller is the one that she was going to the club with. I wonder if Flack has found anything on her," she mused.
Danny nodded and he looked down the hallway, seeing Flack striding towards them. "I guess he found something, Montana," he replied with a smile. "Flack, man. Tell me you have some news."
Flack raised an eyebrow. "What kinda news do you want?" he returned snarkily.
Lindsay just looked at him before putting her hand on Danny's arm to prevent him from responding. "Really, Don. We have news, too. You tell us yours, I'll tell you ours," she shot back in a sweet voice.
Flack shook his head in defeat. "Fine. I found Samantha Miller. I'm heading out to the address now. Maybe we can find out what happened Friday night." He shot Lindsay a look. "So, what's your news?"
"Good news is that she has an enemy. Bad news is that it's a cyber enemy," Lindsay revealed. "Adam found a person that she was communicating with through a website, but now we get to try to track that person down. They could be anywhere in the world."
Danny nodded in agreement. "Also, she was emailing regularly with three people; one of them being Samantha Miller. Maybe you can get some information out of her."
Flack nodded. "Lindsay? Want to come with me?"
Lindsay nodded as she stripped off the lab coat. "Sure. Let's go."
The dark figure sighed in exasperation as the silhouette that they were looking for still had not appeared. Settling back into the shadows again, trying to get comfortable, the figures eyes roamed across the people walking in the street. Where is she? She is usually home by this time. Trying not to bring attention to themselves, the figure suppressed the urge to growl in frustration. About to give up in resignation, the figure had just leaned forward when a car pulled up in front of the building.
The figure stared with shocked eyes as they recognized the two people emerging from the car. Cops, the figure realized. Quickly, under the cover of a large group of people walking by, they slipped off into the bustling city.
Flack and Lindsay made their way up the four story walk-up with ease. Both had spent enough time in the city that stairs were no problem. Walking down the fourth story corridor, they arrived at Samantha's door.
Lindsay took the lead and knocked on the door. She waited a couple of seconds and with no response, knocked again. Still no response. "I guess she's not home," she muttered.
Flack shook his head. "Why does that not surprise me?"
"Do you have any other way to try to track her down?"
Flack thought for a moment. "I can try leaving a message," he said pulling out his cell phone and dialing the number that he scrawled in his memo pad. "This message is for Samantha Miller. This is Detective Flack of the NYPD; I need to speak to you in regards to Monica Jacobi. This is urgent, so please return this call as soon as possible." He ended the call by leaving his phone number.
Both feeling disappointed, they climbed back into the car, to drive back to the lab.
The stalker sighed in relief as the cops left. With eyes darting around, the person watched for the woman. The figure's patience was rewarded within thirty minutes as the striking blonde walked around the corner.
Totally lost in her thoughts, the woman paid no attention as the hooded figure slipped behind her. By the time she realized she was being followed, it was too late. The needle pricked her neck, as an arm wrapped around her. Blackness engulfed her as she began to fall to the floor in front of her door.
When Flack and Lindsay arrived back at the lab, they found both Adam and Danny grinning. Lindsay raised an eyebrow before stating, "You guys look like the cat that got into the cream. What did you find?"
Danny rubbed his hands together gleefully as Adam bounced lightly on the balls of his feet. "It was all Adam. He found address's on the other two girls on the first vic's email list."
Lindsay nodded. "Okay. Any thing we can go on?"
Adam shook his head. "Unfortunately, no. Both of them live overseas. One is in South America; she's some kind of a missionary. The other lives in Italy. Both of them are still in those countries, but that's not the exciting part." He glanced at Danny who was still smirking.
"The second vic's email also contained emails from the same fanfiction website. With private messages from the same author as the first vic's. Both of them, it appears, posted negative reviews for the author's story," Danny explained.
Flack raised both of his eyebrows. "So, ya got an address?"
Both Danny and Adam's faces fell at his simple question. "Not yet," Adam admitted. "All we have to go off of is her penname. CandiLovesWilliamTheBloody. And that is Candi with an 'I'." Adam rolled his eyes.
"Gawd," Flack muttered. "Why do I get the feeling that this girl is some thirteen year old idiot?"
Danny nodded his head in agreement. "Whoever this girl is, she is tech savvy. We haven't been able to track down her IP, yet. And the website is requiring a warrant to release their records. Mac tried a judge, but he wouldn't sign off. Not enough evidence yet."
All of them sighed in their frustration. Lindsay looked at them. "Okay. Let's go back to the vics. Let's find some other connection between them if we can. First vic, Monica Jacobi, was a shy, introverted girl. Talented writer. She lived alone in her apartment, no male company to speak of. Typical internet browser. She finds fanfiction by some miracle and starts posting on the site. Maybe to get approval for her stories?" Lindsay mused.
Flack nodded and picked up the thread, "Second vic, Candice Fitzgerald, from the looks of it was an insecure person. In her thirties, overweight, no male company to speak of as well. What else did you find on her computer, Adam?"
Adam sat in his chair and rolled over to the second laptop. "She also spent a lot of time on the internet. She was a registered user of several fanfiction sites, including the one that the first vic used. I did take the liberty to browse her author page. She wrote quite a bit. Some of her reviews were for the first vic's stories and the first vic also reviewed her stories. It showed no evidence that they talked beyond that."
Danny continued, "Both vic's posted critical reviews for the same author, who in turn took the criticism rather badly. Most of this girl's private messages were full of vulgar language. Other than that, I don't see any connection between them."
Lindsay sighed as she settled in a chair. "I just feel like we're missing something. Something important and I think that it has to do with the fanfiction. We need to find someone who knows this community."
Flack nodded his agreement. "But how?"
Adam cleared his throat. "I have a strange idea. We have the email addresses of the two authors that the first vic talked to the most. Why don't we try to contact them?"
The other three people in the room turned and stared at Adam in surprise, who immediately looked a little nervous. "Excellent idea," Flack said. "Get me their contact information and I'll see what we can do."
Adam nodded and rushed to comply with his request, knowing, along with the other three, that the more time that passed, the more time the killer had to take another life.
AN: Okay, so I sat on my muse until she gave me this...But I'm still really busy at work, so I don't know when the next chapter will be posted! Reviews help!
xdannyx - Thanks! I'm glad that I could grip you. That's what I love about CSI, is that it's always interesting, so I try to do them justice here!
Maddy - It will go somewhere, it might not go quickly, but it will go. I love this story too much to let it die! Thanks! I hate the stories that stuff the canon down your throat, so I never write that way. It defeats the purpose!
CSI junkie - The thrill of the chase was good, but it always ends. I like it better now that TPTB are not shoving it down our throats! That was starting to get annoying. I'm sorry you're hooked, but isn't fanfiction better than crack? You don't lose brain cells! (lol)
Aphina - I have no clue how you missed it! At least you get the chapters ahead of everyone else! I am going to send you my muse for a while. I can't handle her anymore. Too many ideas, too little time. I loved the old lady trying to hook Flack up! Heck, I'd be that old woman setting up my granddaughter! I was really trying to be true to the chars, so I'm glad I succeeded. I love Adam (I need my muse to get off her butt and write for my Adam story), so I insert him whenever I want! You know what the connection is!!