A.N. Thanks to Tenley, specialfrog, and mel60 for reviewing chapter 2! I really appreciate the feedback, guys. You're awesome.
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Walking into Brenda's work the next day with Angell felt awkward, but she'd met him that morning with her usual greeting and hadn't acted any differently than she had the morning before. Apparently, she was planning on treating last night like it had never happened.
Which was fine by him, but he still felt he owed her some sort of explanation. A hospice was certainly not the place for that sort of conversation, though, so Danny kept his mouth firmly shut.
When they checked in at the front desk, the receptionist informed them that the woman who ran the hospice, Evelyn Young, would come down to meet them. Nicole, as she'd introduced herself, spent most of the time the detectives were waiting trying to coerce Danny into flirting. As usual, he tried to be polite about it, but was feeling a little uncomfortable by the time Evelyn appeared.
"Unfortunately, I don't know if there's anything I can tell you that might help," Evelyn told them after she expressed her horror at the news of Brenda's murder. "I didn't have much contact with Brenda. Nurses are assigned to a particular wing of the hospice and answer directly to the Head Nurse of their wing. They never work outside of the same group and I rarely deal with the nurses directly. I step in when there's a problem, but…Brenda never popped up on my radar, so to speak."
Angell nodded while Danny glanced around the garden courtyard Evelyn had ushered them into before allowing conversation to begin.
"Do most of your nurses live close by?" Danny asked, still pondering the six block walk from Brenda's home.
"Some do, I believe," Evelyn said with a nod. "But I'd have to look it up for you. Is it important?"
Danny frowned and shook his head. "Not really."
"Could we talk to the nurses in Brenda's wing?" Angell asked, shoving her hands into the pockets of her coat.
"Of course," Evelyn said, leading them across the garden to a covered tile path. "She worked in the East wing, which we call the Gilbert wing after the family that donated the money to build it. The donators' grandfather lived out the remainder—" She stopped herself with a grimace. "I'm sorry. How terribly inappropriate. I tend to babble in stressful situations."
"Don't worry about it," Angell murmured, shaking her head.
Danny eyed the back of the woman's coiffed blond hair before turning back to the landscaping along the path. "Beautiful flowers."
He noticed Angell falter out of the corner of his eye as Evelyn glanced back at him. "Thank you. Another donation actually," she admitted, lifting a hand to her temple.
"The jasmine is beautiful," he added, gesturing to the lattices that created a semi-enclosed walkway next to the building. The jasmine trailed up the bare wood of the lattice, partially hanging into the walkway.
"Oh, yes," Evelyn answered distractedly. "We just had it transplanted around from the back of the complex. We're building a new physical therapy pool out there, but most of the residents love the smell of the jasmine. Here we are."
Danny nodded his head toward the lattice at the end of the row as they followed Evelyn through the open door to the building. The wood was old and splintering.
The nurses didn't have much to say about Brenda's life that Winnie Hughes hadn't already told them. Brenda didn't date much and when she did, she kept the men far away from her home. She sometimes went a year between dates. She was a devoted mother, who adored her daughter and sometimes brought her into work. She was particularly fond of Mr. Edgars in room 411, but he'd passed away several months back.
Danny nodded his head at the last of the nurses as she filed out of the break room. "Thank you for your time."
"Well that was a bust," Angell muttered as they stepped back into the jasmine lined corridor.
"Not exactly," Danny disagreed, stopping to pull a couple of evidence bags and a set of gloves from his pocket.
"What do we know?" Angell asked, rubbing her temple.
"We know that the killer handled dead wood and jasmine just before the murder," Danny said, stuffing some blooms into a pouch. "We know that three DNA samples were found at the scene. One belonging to the mother, another to the daughter and a third, male sample, from an unknown donor."
"We've been assuming all this time that the killer was male," Angell pointed out. "What says that it couldn't have been a woman?"
Danny sealed the evidence bag and stuffed it in his pocket. "The backdoor was basically pulled off its hinges. It was either a man, a very large woman, or a woman with a giant crowbar that she took with her when she left in addition to a third male body."
"Okay, so let's keep assuming it was a man. What proves that the third blood sample couldn't be his?"
Danny paused, tilting his head to the side thoughtfully. "Nothing. There's no way to determine how much of the blood is from each of the donors. There was too much mixing to test conclusively. But there was a lot of each, so we can assume the killer was near death when he ran."
"Detectives?"
Turning at the same time, Angell and Danny saw one of the nurses they'd spoken to coming towards them. Folding his arms over his chest, Danny ran his eyes over the small woman, wondering why, with her dark coloring and tiny frame, she didn't remind him of Montana.
"I just thought of something. It might be nothing," the brunette hedged.
"Anything might help," Angell assured her, reaching into her pocket for her notebook.
"A few months ago, I noticed Antonio spending a lot of time around Brenda. He's the landscaper," she explained when they stared at her blankly. "It didn't seem odd at first; I thought maybe they were dating. But a while later, she started avoiding him and when I asked Brenda about it, she said that she didn't date patients."
"The landscaper is a patient?" Angell asked, shaking her head in confusion.
The nurse shrugged. "I don't know what she meant. Except for the psyche ward over in the north wing, all we have are elderly patients waiting to die."
"The psyche ward?"
Danny let Angell handle to conversation, sidling away to gather some splinters from the broken lattice. Sealing that bag, he stepped closer to the next lattice to inspect it, but could see no damage to the wood.
"It was originally meant solely for the elderly suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's, any disease that might make them suddenly violent. But now there are maybe fifteen other patients. I don't know. We don't hear much about what goes on in the other wings."
"Thank you for your help," Angell muttered as the nurse scurried away again after apologizing profusely for not knowing more. "So, whaddya say we talk to Evelyn about this pesky psyche ward."
Danny raised an eyebrow. "I say we just ask for this Antonio right up front."
"Good idea."
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Lindsay felt Thumper's strong muscles moving beneath her in a soothing, fluid rhythm. The wind picked up a bit, stirring the curls off her neck. The tension was slowly easing away as it had always been prone to do when she rode.
He really was a gentle old horse underneath all his bluster. Lindsay wasn't sure why he refused to let anyone but her ride him.
She'd spent the day with yet another lawyer hammering her with questions. She knew they were just doing their jobs, but weren't they afraid of damaging her credibility if they pressed too hard? She'd nearly burst into tears twice during the practice cross-examinations.
She knew what the right words were. Knew that the right response was always to repeat what you knew to be the truth, no matter what the lawyer asked. Never say "I don't know." Nothing looked worse.
Sighing, she ran the reins through her fingers restlessly, making Thumper's ears quirk back for any directions she might want to give. She was content to let him wander, but she knew he wanted to run. Since he was too prickly to let anyone other than her get more than five feet from him when out of his stall, he didn't get to run very often anymore.
She gave him his head, and he took it. Springing into a gallop, Thumper raced across the meadow back towards the paddocks. Lindsay leaned in low, close to his head and watched the world streaking past her, her hair flying behind her. Almost too late, she felt Thumper veer towards the fallen tree trunk and gather his muscles to jump. Bracing at the last moment, they were up and over before she had a chance to think about it.
It amazed her that this still felt so natural. She supposed it always would. You can't shuck off your roots easily, particularly when you have a very loud, very demanding family who refused to let you even contemplate shucking.
Grumbling, she gently pulled on Thumper's reins and heard an answering snort from him. They were both reluctant to go back to the house, but they turned towards the paddocks and trotted in. Lindsay let him cool down then cleaned off both Thumper and his gear before leading him back to his stall and setting him up with fresh oats.
"Night," she called as his head partially disappeared into the bucket. He pointedly ignored her, and she rolled her eyes as she headed towards the ranch house.
The windows were lit up against the dark purple and pink sky of twilight, the house itself rising up like one of the distant mountains. As a girl, Lindsay had seen this house as a haven, a place where she could go and disappear into a noisy family who never judged her. Now it loomed menacingly, loud and full of questions she didn't want to answer.
Stepping inside the enclosed porch, she kicked off her boots and hung her jacket on a peg. When she pushed the door open, the smell of fried chicken and fresh bread drew her towards the kitchen.
"Mom?"
"There you are," Molly said from her place in front of the stove. "You're just in time to help me set the table." Glancing over her shoulder, she frowned at her daughter. "Did you want to change first?"
Lindsay shook her head and pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. "Let me just wash up."
Molly quickly pulled the biscuits out of the oven and closed the door. With a practiced hand, she shook the fluffy biscuits out of their pan and into a towel-lined bowl. "Connor's coming for dinner," she said as if it were an afterthought.
Lindsay winced as the hot water stung her palms, raw from the now unfamiliar reins. "Since when is that news? I was surprised he hadn't stopped by before," she admitted, minding her step in the conversation.
"Just mentioning it."
Satisfied she'd removed any visible dirt particles, Lindsay reached over and snagged the clean towel off of Molly's shoulder. "Okay."
Eyeing her mother's back uncomfortably, Lindsay pulled five plates out of the cupboard. "Any other company tonight?"
Molly shook her head and gestured to the table. "No, but they'll be here any minute, so get that table set."
"I'm doing it already." Taking five napkins out of the linen drawer, Lindsay hurried into the dining room.
"You expecting any more late night calls tonight?"
Wincing, Lindsay laid down the last plate and wandered back into the kitchen, trying to keep her expression bland. "Not expecting, no."
"I'm just saying, your father has to get up at four, Lindsay."
"I know, Mother," Lindsay answered calmly, despite the clenching her teeth yearned to do. "I did grow up on a ranch."
Her mother sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm just worried about you, and it's coming out all wrong."
"I know," Lindsay repeated, concentrating on pulling out the right number of forks and knives.
"Do they really need you there every day?" Molly snapped, stalking into the dining room and slamming the large ceramic bowl of biscuits onto the table. "Don't they realize the mental torture they're putting you through?"
Lindsay felt a surge of something akin to amusement as she watched her mother stalk to and from the dining room, muttering to herself. Following her on one of her trips, Lindsay began to set the silverware down.
"We still need glasses," she mentioned when she noticed her mother had stopped in the doorway. When Molly didn't move, Lindsay looked up to find her mother's eyes on her.
"What?" Lindsay asked after failing to decipher Molly's guarded expression.
"What happens after this?"
Straightening, Lindsay leaned her arm on the back of a chair and tilted her head to the side. "What do you mean?"
"After the trial. What happens then?"
Lindsay furrowed her brow. "Mom, you know I'm going back to New York."
Sighing, Molly disappeared around the corner, and Lindsay heard the clinking of glasses. "Get the sweet tea, would you?"
Lindsay hesitantly came into the kitchen and glanced at her mother balancing glasses on the serving tray. Molly gestured to the fridge. "Top shelf."
Opening the door, Lindsay took out the pitcher of tea and stared down at it for a moment. "You're going to let all the cold air out, Lindsay," she heard her mother call from the dining room.
Letting the door swing shut, she carried the pitcher out to the table. The noise of the old truck coming up the dirt lane hastened her into speaking. "What did you mean?"
Her mother sighed and began pouring tea into the glasses. "For ten years, you've let this…vendetta run your life. What happens when you've finally gotten what you want? He's behind bars, electrocuted, drawn and quartered, whatever, and you're free to live the rest of your life in peace. Debt paid. What then?"
Lindsay stared at her mother for a minute, unable to find any words. Her face softening, Molly reached out to touch Lindsay's arm then stopped halfway with a sigh. "Sweetheart, you've based your entire life around this. You even chose your career because of it. After this is over, can you look at any of it the same way? Will you still want to be faced with this every day?"
Lindsay felt her inner self start to shrink away from her mother's honest words, but merely let herself shrug. "I—"
The side door off the kitchen suddenly banged open. "Molly?" Gordon called, the noise of Brad and Connor right behind him.
"In the dining room with Lindsay," she called back calmly and turned back to filling the glasses as if the conversation had never happened, let alone been cut off in the middle. Lindsay left Molly's side, drifting to the opposite side of the room and bracing herself by clinging to the back of a chair.
The three tall men that filed through the doorway each dropped a kiss on Molly's cheek as they passed, bringing with them the scent of diesel engines, fresh dirt, and horses. Her father nodded to her with a slight smile as he walked in the direction of the washroom and her brother, Brad, gave her a playful push as he followed their father out.
Connor stayed across the room, almost as if the table was meant to be a barrier between them. He smiled the same wide, crooked smile he'd had ever since she could remember and turned his hat in his hands. "Hey, Lindsay."
"Hi, Connor," she answered, smiling back and trying to loosen her grip on the chair.
The water was running a few rooms away and the sound of muted conversation drifted in from the downstairs bathroom. Connor ran a hand through his thick black hair. "I'm sorry I haven't been able to come out and see you before tonight. The Murrays had a bit of a fire a couple of weeks ago, and I've been helping them raise a new barn."
A small, but genuine smile lit her face. "I heard in town that Oscar Murray finally got married."
"If I hadn't been at the damn thing, I might not have believed it," Connor said wryly.
Lindsay laughed. "How much did you lose on that one?"
Obviously embarrassed, Connor pretended to glare at her. "How do you know about that bet?"
"Mouse knows everything, remember?" her brother's voice reminded his best friend.
Glancing over her shoulder, Lindsay saw Brad coming back through the doorway, freshly washed, jacket and hat gone. He was rolling the sleeves up his forearms, and she was suddenly struck once again by how very much a man he was. Somehow while she'd been gone, her mind had transformed him back into a twelve year old with spindly arms who always tried to get her to jump off the highest rock.
"Don't call me that," she grumbled.
Brad ignored her and called out to their mother. "Do you need any help, Mom?"
"No, thanks. The chicken's just coming out. Connor, go wash up, you silly boy. Lindsay'll still be here when you come out."
Connor laughed easily as Molly shooed him away with a towel, but Lindsay could feel her cheeks burning. She knew she must have looked ridiculous even before her brother opened his mouth.
"Jeez, who knew anyone could turn that color purple? What would you say that is, Mom, plum?" His good-natured grin disarmed his words, but Lindsay glared at him anyway, which just made him chuckle more.
"Leave your sister alone," their father said, coming into the room and immediately sitting in his place at the head of the table.
Lindsay watched her father roll his sleeves up his forearms just like Brad had and she dropped into the chair adjacent to his across from Connor and Brad. Gordon glanced at her when she sat, and she smiled, but his eyes slid away to focus across the room.
Biting the inside of her lip, she glanced at her plate while her mother brought the platter of chicken to the table. When she looked up, Connor was coming into the room and Brad was shaking his head incredulously at their father, who didn't seem to notice.
Gordon said Grace, they all began dishing up, and it was exactly as Lindsay remembered nearly every dinner in her home being. Noisy, full of laughter and delicious. But Shelby was gone, and her father would barely look at her.
"So tell me about New York," Connor said, reaching for another roll.
Lindsay's eyes shot to her father, but he was calmly cutting a green bean with his fork. Swallowing her mouthful, she turned to Brad and he just shrugged, glancing hesitantly back towards their father.
"It's noisy," she said, her eyes straying to her mother this time, who merely looked on with an interested expression.
"You know, I kinda figured that part," Connor teased, breaking his roll in half. His eyes never left her face as he buttered the roll.
She shrugged uncomfortably and silence settled over the table. Finally, Molly jumped in with a new topic and the conversation rolled along without focus on Lindsay. While everyone was preoccupied and eyes were finally off her for the first time in weeks, Lindsay found she could even eat a few bites of chicken.
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Danny watched the ME zip up the body bag, shaking his head. It might not have been the weirdest case he'd ever worked on, but it was one of the more disturbing ones.
After talking to Evelyn again, they'd learned that Antonio, the landscaper, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. His case wasn't extreme and the medication kept the illness under control, allowing him to operate on an acceptable social level. His doctors told Danny that this the reason they let him basically roam free among the complex, acting as a groundskeeper.
A couple of months ago, out of the blue, he told his doctors he wanted to move out of the complex and into his own apartment. When asked why, he said he'd met someone he wanted to share his life with. The doctors explained that Antonio wasn't well enough to live outside the rigid structure of the complex, and he'd seemed disappointed but accepting.
Disappointed but accepting, the doctors deemed him.
They were fucking doctors. They were supposed to notice things like a patient suddenly going off his meds and disappearing for hours at a time. But Antonio had been given so much freedom he'd started sneaking off the grounds without ever being missed.
Apparently, Brenda Mueller hadn't known he was a patient when they struck up a conversation over the rose bushes he'd been trimming. And he certainly never mentioned it when they began having picnic lunches together once or twice a week. But when she found out, she cut the relationship off, telling Antonio that she could lose her job.
After seeing the stitches up and down Antonio's arms, Danny had asked for a DNA sample from Evelyn, who couldn't explain how Antonio had cut himself, just that he'd shown up in his room bleeding to death a few days before. Matching Antonio's DNA to the third donor in the kitchen had gotten the detectives practically an open warrant.
When Danny and Angell interrogated Antonio the day before, he'd willingly told them the whole story. He told them that he'd gone to her house to talk to Brenda. To beg her to reconsider ending their relationship. When she wouldn't let him in, he yanked the door off the hinges. So he could get her to listen, he insisted.
She'd been in the middle of making breakfast for her daughter and when medicine-free Antonio saw the knife in her hands, his mind turned her and the daughter she tried to protect into an immediate threat.
They'd arrested him on the spot and sent him to lock up. Somehow, twelve hours later, he'd managed to hang himself and now they had nothing left to do but fill out the paperwork.
Danny turned and walked out of the jail cell, Angell following closely behind. "This isn't one of the ones you forget in time, is it?" she muttered tiredly.
As they reached the doors to the bullpen, Danny slowed so she could step up beside him. "No. I don't think it is."
She nodded and pushed through the door. "See ya, Messer."
"Later."
He watched her walk away through the swinging door, a slight frown on his face. He'd never really apologized, but she didn't seem too keen on receiving an explanation. Besides, now really wasn't the time. Sighing, he turned to head back to the elevators, his desk, and way too much paperwork.
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When the phone vibrated on Danny's belt, he fumbled it out of its holster with one hand and continued writing with the other. Without looking at the screen—talking to anyone was better than paperwork—he hit send and tossed down his pen.
"Messer," he barked.
"Did you know that the Giants' first New York game was—"
"October 18, 1925 against the Yellow Jackets."
"Which Super Bowls have they won?" she asked, sounding a little piqued.
"Eleven and fifteen," he answered smoothly. "The country air keeping you out of trouble?"
"Hardly," Lindsay countered. He sensed a bit of bitterness behind the answer, but he didn't know how to ask without sounding nosy. "What about you? You following Mac's rules all right?"
"When haven't I? You implying something here?" He tried to sound indignant, but hearing her chuckle on the other end of the line made his sentence end in a laugh. "What's up, Montana?" he asked when they finally calmed down.
"Just calling to see how you were doing. You sounded a bit…strange last time we talked."
His stomach twisted until he realized she meant the case had thrown him. "Oh, yeah, I guess. Sorry about that." He smiled a little at the thought of her worrying about him.
She ignored his apology. "Did everything clear up in the end?"
Hearing a knock on his door, he looked up to find Angell standing on the other side of the glass holding a folder. "Yeah, it's all over. Hey, I gotta go. Call you later?"
"Uh, sure."
Too distracted to notice her surprise, Danny mumbled "Bye" and hung up as Angell pulled open the door.
She held out the folder with a shrug. "Thought you might want these for your report."
"Thanks, Angell," he said, flipping it open and scanning the contents of her paperwork.
"Jennifer."
He glanced up. "What?"
She shifted a shoulder casually. "It's weird hearing people call me Angell. That's my father. I'm Jennifer."
"Okay," he murmured as she tossed him a wave and strode down the hall. It wasn't quite a sashay, but she knew what she was doing. "Oh, boy."
He knew he should have explained everything to her.
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Tossing his keys on the hall table, Danny unwound his scarf from his neck and shrugged off his jacket. He'd left a desk full of paperwork behind, but Mac had warned him not to put in too much overtime while the lab was short staffed. Apparently, Mac was trying to keep Lindsay's sudden leave of absence off the radar of the powers that be.
Danny glanced at his watch, relieved to see it was only nine in Montana. He headed towards the kitchen as he pulled out his cell and hit Lindsay's speed dial. The phone rang in his ear as he stared at the contents of his refrigerator.
"Hey," Lindsay's voice said softly in his ear.
"Hey. Sorry about having to hang up on you." He could hear other voices in the background, but she seemed to be moving away from them.
"Don't worry about it. I shouldn't have called while you were at work."
Danny snorted. "You can interrupt my paperwork any time. Anything is better than filling that stuff out." He winced at the way it came out and shut the door to the fridge.
"Thanks. I think." Her voice was amused, so he didn't apologize for his poor choice of words. "I was on a break from the interrogation, so—"
"Interrogation?" Danny asked tightly, worry making his body tense. "What interrogation?"
Lindsay paused. "Oh. Sorry. That's just what I call it. It's really just the lawyers questioning me. As practice for the stand." She sighed when Danny remained silent, his confusion obvious even over the distance.
"It's…the reason I'm here," she explained hesitantly. "I have to testify."
"An old case?" he asked, knowing even as he did that wasn't the answer.
"Not exactly."
Her voice was still hesitant and he waited for her to continue, but all he could hear over the line was her drawing breath as if to speak then letting it out again. "It's all right, Montana. You don't have to tell me," he said gently.
"Thanks," she murmured, sounding relieved.
He smiled bitterly, but managed to keep it out of his tone. "So."
"So."
"When you get back, we'll have to get you some real pizza," he said casually, as if her admission had never happened.
"What?" She sounded so confused that he had to smile a little. "You do realize we have pizza here, right? This is Montana, not the North Pole."
"You trying to tell me you actually like that pizza? That it actually compares to genuine New York pizza?"
She was silent for a moment then sighed. "No. It's terrible."
He couldn't help but laugh at the dejected note in her voice. Remembering his conversation with Flack and Hawkes just days before, he had to ask. "Hey, have you ever had a cannoli?"
"A what?"
He let out a dramatic breath. "What are we going to do with you, Montana?"
