Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".

A/N: They talked – yay! But the mystery is just beginning, and with teams working across the country on solutions, wouldn't you think it would be easy? Well, only if you all stop reviewing, commenting, and reading!

So, don't – okay?

Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. All characters originated with CSI:NY; all song lyrics are from The Beatles.

It's A Long Journey Home

Chapter 18: Where Do They Belong?

No-one was saved.

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

They talked.

That is, Lindsay talked and Danny sat in a warm glow of relief and joy, listening to her voice and trying to grasp the idea that she didn't hate him, that she hadn't been sitting in Montana hurt and angry, despising him or, worse, herself.

It took a few minutes for her words to penetrate through the haze, but suddenly the investigator in him caught something odd.

"Wait, say that again, Lindsay. Did you say that no one noticed until now that the bullets collected at the scene were from two different guns?"

Lindsay laughed, "Danny, I said that like five minutes ago. Weren't you listening to me?"

"No," he said with rare honesty. "Well, not your words, anyway. Just your voice." His tone changed, went husky with longing. "God, I miss you."

Lindsay's breath trembled through the phone line, "I miss you, too."

He shook himself when he realized the silence had gone on a bit too long, and said, "So. Bullets from two guns? How did that get missed?"

Lindsay took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly before answering.

He wished he could see her face, hold her hand as she went through this, but all he could offer her at the moment was the one thing he knew without a shadow of doubt he could do, and that was be an investigator.

"Forbes went outside carrying the gun, and was taken down by the officers who had answered the 911 call sent by the principal when the attack started. He was hit six times; one shot went through his spinal cord, leaving him paraplegic. Students and teachers had identified him going in to the school wearing a Drizabone…"

"Wait a minute," Danny interrupted, writing notes rapidly in his peculiar shorthand. "What's that?"

"A waxed cotton riding coat from Australia, very water-resistant. It's long, to cover your legs when you're riding through the brush, and split at the back so you can wear it on the horse. They were a brief fad here then; even kids who didn't ride wanted to have one."

"But they IDed him positively? It wasn't just any kid in a Drybone thing?"

Danny could hear Lindsay flipping through her own, much neater, notes. He could almost see her, eyes lighting up, biting her lip and pushing her hair back as she concentrated.

"I'm just checking. Danny," her voice rose in excitement. "No one saw his face. They just saw a kid walk in wearing the long coat, carrying something under his arm."

"So, what, we have a gang here? Like Jesse James and his boys?"

Lindsay snorted with laughter. "You just had to get a dig in, didn't you?"

Danny grinned, wanting fiercely to see her smile. "Yeah, well, it all feels a bit Wild Wild West to me. So, you have any clues about who the other shooter could be?"

Lindsay's bright voice dropped again, and he could hear the underlying exhaustion. "No. We're in a cold case situation here, and now we are realizing that not all the evidence was tracked, or even collected in the first place."

She seemed to take his silence as condemnation of the Montana State Police Department, and bristled slightly, "After all, the perp walked out, covered in blood, carrying the gun. Everything seemed pretty obvious. And then, there was an eyewitness…"

And now Danny heard it: regret and sorrow, but underlying it, caustic and destructive, guilt.

"Monroe, tell me you ain't blaming yourself here."

"Danny, whatever the investigators took from this scene, they took from me. I was the only eye-witness; I should have been able to tell them what happened. I should have at least known that there were two people. For thirteen years, someone I probably knew has been walking around free because I didn't tell the investigators what they needed to know."

"Lindsay, listen to yourself. You're blaming yourself for not doing the job a trained investigator couldn't do. You were sixteen – terrified, traumatized. They had a job to do and they failed. Not you." He could tell from the weight of her silence that she still did not believe him.

His voice dropped as he said the words that sliced through him like a knife, "If you had been killed too," if I had never met you, never known you, never felt your breath on my skin, "they would have processed the scene properly. They are to blame for missing evidence that could have changed the case. Not you, Lindsay. Are you listening to me? Never you."

And although hearing her cry tore him to pieces all over again, these were not the sobs that had kept him awake for nearly five days. He murmured her name softly, so she would know he was still there, but he could hear her let go of the idea that somehow she had been at fault, that she carried any responsibility for the actions of all those other people who had so affected her life.

When they finally said goodbye, and Lindsay had promised to phone him again to update him on the case, he sat for a minute looking at his hands, stretching them, feeling the strength in the muscles: these hands which could draw music from the strings of a guitar, could draw trace from the tiniest piece of evidence, could draw sighs of pleasure from a woman. They had hurt her – the sight of her bruises was imprinted on his brain. Forgiven or not, he still had been in the wrong. He knew he would cut them off himself before he ever allowed that to happen again.

He smiled a bit wryly at the thought that Lindsay may not give him a chance to take care of it himself. He was pretty sure her threat had been serious.

Stella knocked as she tentatively put her head around the door. "We're going to go eat, Danny. You coming?" In her eyes was a world of questions she would not ask.

He looked up with a clear gaze for the first time in days and smiled, a real Messer grin. "Let's go. I'm starvin'!"

This time, Flack and Hawkes had to be satisfied with eating only their own food. The team talked and laughed, telling stories and re-trying cases the way football fans will replay games. Stella, who was sitting beside Don Flack and across from Danny, watched his face change when they got to talking about a case he had worked with Lindsay a few months ago. It was coming up for trial, and Danny would be testifying. She was worried that he was thinking about Lindsay and slipping away from them again, but she had under-estimated him.

He looked up suddenly, and stared at Flack, "Why would cops deliberately NOT investigate a case properly?"

Flack bridled a little, "Why you asking me? You implying something here?"

Danny brushed that off, "Fine, oh sensitive one. Hypothetically, in a world far from any we know, why would a whole department not look into a multiple murder properly? We're talking pretty small place; everyone knows everyone else. Four kids dead. Most of the guys doing the investigation would have known at least one of them somehow. Why would they burke the investigation?"

"What are you talking about, Danny?" Stella asked, a little confused.

"Okay, Montana said they found bullets from two guns, right? So they take down one shooter, no problem. Turns out he did actually shoot two of the kids; she said they had forensic evidence of it."

"You two talked about the case?" Hawkes interjected, a little surprised. Really, people were a constant amazement to him.

Danny shrugged, and went on, "When she told us about the case the first time, we were focused on her, so we didn't really listen. At least I didn't. But she said there was new evidence: bullets from two guns. That couldn't really be new evidence, could it? Unless, for some reason, they re-processed the scene and found something that no teenager has found in a school which, as far as I know, has continued to operate for the past thirteen years."

Flack was still frowning, but now in concentration, "Yeah, I get you. The investigators had to have picked up the casings and whatever evidence they found at the time. They just ignored anything which didn't fit into the simplest theory, which was the lone gunman."

"Right," Stella agreed. "Bad enough to think one kid in your nice neighbourhood could do such a thing. Unthinkable to have two."

"The Jesse James gang," Danny muttered.

"What?" Hawkes had caught the undirected comment.

"Linds said that Forbes was wearing one of those Dribone things, a long riding coat from Australia or somewhere. It was a trend when she was in school; even kids who didn't ride wanted one."

Hawkes nodded, "You mean a Drizabone. I remember them; they were big in the 80s for a while, too."

Danny nodded, "Yeah, whatever they're called. So this happened in Bozeman in 1995? When was the Trench Coat Mafia in Columbine? In 1999, right?"

Hawkes jumped in again, "But that name – TCM – came from the movie Basketball Diaries, which came out in 1995. The lead character wears a long black trench coat and dreams about shooting up a school. Lots of media coverage about the link there."

Stella was frowning now, "Danny, from black trench coats to Australian riding coats seems a bit of a stretch."

"Nah, because they'd have been around," Danny argued. "Kids would have stolen them from older brothers or whatever, maybe even parents who had them in the 80s."

"These things last for ever, Stel. They get handed down for years," Hawkes agreed.

"Besides, there may not be any direct link. It's just a societal thing, you know? There was a rash of these incidences, and this may have been more similar than was originally thought," Danny continued.

Stella found she didn't really care about the details as long as Danny kept talking with that light in his eyes.

Flack was nodding in agreement as well, "If it's the ones I'm thinking of, those coats make sense too. Cool, a little menacing, completely unnecessary: fits the qualifications of gang gear."

"So, what now?" Stella looked around the table.

Danny turned to the cop at the table, "Same question, Flack. Why would a police force not look into the associates of a known killer, and find a gang-type affiliation there?"