Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".
A/N: Thanks to all the reviewers and readers. I know some of you thought the last chapter was a happy ending; unfortunately, it wasn't. I hope you'll go on reading anyway!
Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. All characters originated with CSI:NY; all song lyrics are from The Beatles.
Chapter 7: I Remember
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all
Sheldon Hawkes turned his back on Danny and Lindsay, trying to give them some privacy.
However, the building was walled with windows; in the repeated reflections he saw Danny's arms go round Lindsay tightly, her head buried against him. They stood perfectly still for a few minutes; then Lindsay took a deep breath and looked up into Danny's face, and he wordlessly dropped his arms and took a deliberate step back from her.
"Mac asked us to bring you back to the lab. Okay?" His voice was cool; all the heat was in his eyes. She could hardly look at him; when she risked a glance, all she could see was anger.
"I need to explain things. The lab is fine." Lindsay reached out to Sheldon and put her hand on his arm. "I'm sorry, Shel."
He turned to her quickly, "Don't be, Lindsay. As long as you are safe, that's all that matters." She walked beside him, leaving Danny to bring up the rear. Sheldon glanced at her and could see the signs of her ill-fated trip to Denver. "Did you get checked out? Do you need to see a doctor?"
She smiled at him, a shadow of her sweet grin coming through. "Just you. I had a bout of airsickness, maybe food poisoning. There's nothing left to come up. The First Aid Attendant gave me sleeping pills, but I dumped them. I just need to go home, Sheldon."
"Where's that, Lindsay?" Sheldon asked her quietly.
"I'll let you know when I figure it out," she said under her breath.
Sheldon and Danny sat in the front seat, leaving Lindsay in the back with a blanket Danny had found somewhere in the lab and brought with them. No one talked on the drive from the airport to the NYPD lab building. Lindsay wanted to ask why Danny's head was bandaged, but she wasn't sure she had any right to know. There had to be some good reason Danny wasn't driving; Shel was, perhaps surprisingly, a speed demon, and very few people had the guts to drive with him twice.
Lindsay closed her eyes in the back seat; it was easier than jumping every time a car came whistling towards them. That would be ironic; survive a plane crash by missing the plane, but die on the freeway into the city.
It didn't take much for her to fall asleep.
When the car stopped in front of the NYPD building, she opened her eyes, a little confused. Sheldon opened the door and held out a hand; Danny was already out of the car and up the stairs, moving fast on his feet the way he did when he could barely contain himself.
Lindsay had to lean up against the car a moment to regain her balance. Eight hours on a plane and two hours of vomiting had played hell with her system. She stared up the stairs with a hopeless feeling in the pit of her stomach. "He's mad at me," she said childishly.
Sheldon sighed. "I guess. Do you blame him?"
"I don't want him to be," she said slowly. "I didn't mean for this to happen, any of it."
"He's had a tough day. Give him a little time." Sheldon sighed again. How often were these two going to knock into each other? Someone was going to break eventually, and no one was taking bets on which one it would be. "Come on, there are people waiting to see you."
Lindsay held it together until she saw Stella's red eyes and Mac's worried ones. She sat down in the nearest chair and buried her face in her hands. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," she stammered. "I didn't mean to upset anyone."
Mac crouched beside her chair. "Well, we can hardly blame you for the plane going down, and you did let me know that you were going back to Montana, so don't feel too badly." He pulled her hands into his, and looked at her carefully. "I do think you need to tell us what's going on, though."
Lindsay looked around the room: Sheldon was sitting beside her, lending his silent support, Flack was leaning up against the wall behind Stella's chair, Mac was sitting on the edge of his desk. Danny, she knew, was behind her, standing in the doorway, ready, she thought bitterly, to make a quick getaway.
Her voice was uninflected as she outlined the incident which had changed her world. She described the ordinary day that shifted suddenly to unimaginable horror, the surreal moment of having the gun which had killed her friends pointed in her face, the expected shot which did not come, the almost gleeful demeanour of a boy she had seen around, but did not know. She remained quiet and unemotional until she described the mob scene outside the courtroom at the arraignment hearing.
"There were cameras and microphones. They kept asking how I felt – the reporters, I mean. My father was on one side of me, the District Attorney on the other. They were trying to move me through the crowd, but there were so many people. That's when I heard her – Mrs. Sorensen, Mark's mother – she was yelling, saying, "Why didn't you die too? What makes you so special?" She just kept yelling and crying, and the reporters moved away from me and – it was like watching scavengers on a dead body. They were all over her."
Lindsay had to stop; she could no longer control the shaking. Hawkes put one arm around her, rubbing her back soothingly.
"What brought all this back, Lindsay? It's been – what? Nearly thirteen years?" Mac couldn't let this go; she had told him very little when she had phoned earlier that day.
"I've been called back to Bozeman to testify at a hearing. The boy," she took a deep breath, "Justin Forbes is claiming that he was not the only shooter. In fact, he says that he didn't shoot anyone; that an accomplice who he hasn't named shot the four other students, and that he only pointed a gun at me."
Flack snorted, "Nice try thirteen years later. Why now?"
Lindsay closed her eyes for a minute, "He was shot several times by police when he exited the building. One shot severed his spine, leaving him paralyzed. He claims that the trauma also affected his memory of the whole event, and that his memory has only now started to come back. His lawyer is challenging the plea agreement on the basis of his recovered memory, and a piece of new evidence."
"And that new evidence…?" Stella asked.
"There were shell casings from two different guns," Lindsay admitted.
"Did you see someone else?" Flack's tone had automatically shifted to interrogation mode. Danny shot him a warning glare from the doorway, which Flack ignored.
Lindsay's brow furrowed in an honest attempt to answer fully. "I've thought about this every night for thirteen years. You know those cases on the corner of your desk, Mac?"
He nodded at her reference to the pile of cases which haunted him; the ones he returned to whenever he could, reading through them again to see if anything new stood out. Every so often, something did, and he was able to put another nightmare to rest.
"This has been my case on the corner. When I first came to the office in Bozeman, I requested copies of the entire file. I re-wrote my own statement unofficially, adding anything I could think of from the things I had learned in university, or through my training. I update the file monthly; at least, I did before I came to New York." She took a deep breath.
"One reason I came here was because I had to get away from Bozeman. No one could forget, or let me forget. Mrs. Sorensen, Mark's mother, never forgave me for surviving; every time she saw me, she would follow me, muttering. She never did anything, never said anything I could hear, but it was … creepy." Lindsay shrugged, embarrassed by her response to a mother's grief.
Stella's shudder reassured her that her own feelings had not been unreasonable.
"I was becoming dangerously obsessed, according to my partner. He said I had to get away or it was going to drag me under. I came here, and it worked for a while. And then things … started to remind me. The day of the Vodka case? With the ice?" The team nodded, except Danny who looked at his feet.
"I received a call that afternoon from the District Attorney, telling me the case was being re-opened and I was going to have to go home and testify again."
Her voice dropped again, until everyone had to strain to hear her. "I hadn't looked at the file in nearly three months. I read through it again that night, every word."
She looked up at each member of her team, all the friends she had in New York. The only one she needed to tell, the one whose eyes she most needed to see, was standing behind her, out of sight. She sighed and spoke to the others.
"I think he might be right. Given what I now know about trajectories and lines of fire, there could have been another shooter. And I have no idea who it could be."