Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".
A/N: Thanks to all the people who are reading the story every day – I'll try to keep updating daily-ish. To all the reviewers and those who send private messages – your input, interest, and enthusiasm are really keeping me going right now. Thank you so much.
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 20: Fool on the Hill
He never listens to them,
He knows that they're the fools
They don't like him.
Lindsay walked into the Bozeman Police Station and greeted the Desk Sergeant, "Hey, Frank! How are things going this morning?"
"Crazies out in full force, Monroe! How're your folks?" replied the man who had known her since she was a toddler living down the road from him.
She grinned over her shoulder, "Good! Working too hard, as always. Perils of the working rancher, though, as you know!"
Frank Bellingham chuckled and waved as she sped down the hall. Lindsay took in a deep breath; she'd forgotten how nice it was to work at a place where she hardly ever had to prove herself. She was a hometown girl made good – went away to the big bad city and came home safe to tell about it.
She breezed into the lab and greeted lab techs and a few investigators she knew as she went, looking for Detective Carl Evans. He was the lead detective on the Forbes case, and she had been assigned temporarily to his team. Her secondment from the New York City Police Department had been made official when Mac Taylor had sent the approval, faxing the form before mailing the hard copy.
Two days after she arrived in Montana, Sheriff Olafsen had warned her sternly about her role in this situation: she couldn't handle evidence; she couldn't do any actual processing; she couldn't talk to any suspects.
"What am I here for then, Bob?" she asked in frustration.
"Optics, my dear," he said in his deep, plummy voice. "As well as, of course, your eyewitness and now expert testimony. I can't afford for my evidence to be kicked because you were involved, but I also can't deny the value of having the sole surviving victim involved. That will play well with the jury."
Emotions raced across her face before she could school herself to be impassive: horror, disgust, anger. He watched her carefully, and smiled encouragingly when she had herself under control again.
"Good. You are a target in this case, Detective Monroe, just as you were thirteen years ago when you were the only survivor. Whatever happened in that school – whatever the investigators missed the first time around – is going to come back and bite us on the ass this time. So I have to keep you front and centre so that we can get the work done behind you. I know that's not fair, but it's the way it's going to be. You can whine about it, or you can deal with it."
Lindsay straightened up until she was at attention, and only just refrained from snapping off a salute. "Sir," was her only reply.
Olafsen's face softened for a moment. "Lindsay, I am sorry about this."
Lindsay did not look at him, simply stared straight ahead and said again, "Sir." After a moment, she asked, "Permission to be dismissed, sir?"
"Dismissed, Monroe."
Lindsay made it through the door and down the hall to an empty office before her legs gave out under her. She sat for a few minutes, shaking and struggling to get her stomach under control. So, she was stuck here for as long as it took, with no authority, no real role, nothing to do but stand around looking like a brave victim?
"Fuck that, Monroe." She heard the oddly truncated Staten Island drawl in her head, and had to smile.
Hence her search for Carl Evans and something to do in the investigation.
She had never worked with Evans when she was attached to the Crime Investigation Unit in Bozeman, although he was a legend even then. She had met him, of course, and been properly awed by the stories of his exploits. He was a real old-school Western lawman: took no shit, took no prisoners, had a deadly eye and a bite like a rattlesnake. Like Mac Taylor, he was a legend in his department, although his style was far different.
Lindsay swallowed a lump of homesickness at the thought of Mac. His military training had made him precise and detail-oriented, but underlying his stiff bearing was a man who cared deeply about his team. Before sending his permission for Lindsay's secondment, he had sent her a personal email, asking her feelings on the matter, and telling her if she needed anything, just to let him know. He closed the message, "Looking forward to your safe return to New York."
Lindsay had cried for an hour, then wrote back, accepting the secondment position. She ended her message, "Coming home as soon as possible. Give my love to everyone."
Her first meeting with Evans had not been promising. Unlike Mac, who had greeted her with a "Glove up and hold the tiger's head," Evans had barely glanced at her, pointed her to a desk, and grunted, "Go through those files and compile witness statements. Your original statements have been pulled. Note any inconsistencies."
That was the only instruction he had given her, not reacting at all when five hours later she had dropped a meticulously organized, cross-referenced compilation of statements on his desk. He had merely grunted again, flipped through it casually, tossed it in a pile of similar documents, and handed her another stack of files.
Lindsay had been in Montana six days, compiling files for four. It was time to take control of something in her life. She walked straight past the desk with a new pile of files on it, past the office chair that could not be adjusted to her petite frame no matter how many times she tried, past the office door of her supervisor and into the lab, where she grabbed the first tech she found and asked, "Ballistics? Where has it gone?"
Stuttering, the tech, who had a shock of reddish blond hair and a pathetic tuft of hair bobbing on a weak chin, pointed down another hallway and tried to give her directions, but she brushed him off impatiently. "Thanks, I'll find it."
She could hardly keep from running down the hall like a kid in school. She had sat back too long, let others tell her what to do and how to do it too often. In New York, she was allowed to run with scissors; no one told her it was too dangerous, or that she might get hurt, or infinitely worse, screw up a case. Mac trusted her instincts, Stella trusted her strength, Hawkes trusted her expertise; even Danny, who hadn't wanted her to go undercover, had only worried about her safety, not her competence. Her stomach clenched at the thought of Danny, but she pushed that away to deal with later. She was still trying to deal with the conversation they had had the day before.
She walked into the Ballistics Lab as if she herself had been propelled, and nearly ran into Detective Evans, who was talking with another tech. He turned around and frowned at her precipitate entry, only to meet her glare. He shrugged and turned back to the man who was explaining the ballistics results, but as he didn't tell Lindsay to go, she stayed, folding her arms across her chest and leaning against a counter.
"So, you see, sir," the young tech said, enthusiasm leaking out of his pores, "The bullets from the one gun were definitely from Forbes' gun …"
"We know that, Brendan, get on with it." The growl was evidently doled out indiscriminately, Lindsay noticed with a little relief.
The tech flushed, "Yes sir, we did know that. Forbes shot Cameron Johnston and Laura Phillips. Ballistics confirms that. But Mark Sorenson and Patricia Collins were shot by another gun: same caliber, same make, but different striations on the shells, see?" Brendan was looking through the eyepiece of a microscope, and turned it towards Evans invitingly, but the detective ignored it.
Trish, Laura, Mark, and Cameron. Lindsay closed her eyes for a moment, seeing flashes of them all: children playing through the endless days of summer, going to school. Cameron was the first boy who had ever kissed her: summer kisses sweet with the scent of hay, with lips lake-water cold. She shook off the memories as Evans growled again.
"You're not giving me anything new here, son. Speed this up – I have a case to solve."
The young man swung around and faced his boss, "This is new. Five of the bullets taken out of Forbes can be traced to police issue weapons. When he walked out of the school, the officers got him down and made sure he stayed there. Most of the bullets were peripheral – didn't hit body mass."
"He was running," Evans said quietly, and Lindsay looked at him in surprise. That sounded more like memory than supposition.
Had Evans been at the scene? She searched her own memory. She couldn't remember any of the officers who had spoken to her on that day; she only remembered being processed by a Crime Scene Unit investigator, who had spoken quietly and calmly, explaining everything she was doing before she did it. Lindsay had focused on her voice to keep from screaming.
"Yes, sir. But one of the bullets, the one that lodged in his spine and paralysed him, was not from a standard police issue weapon. In fact, the calibre and striations match the bullets which were recovered from Sorenson and Collins."
Lindsay had been keeping quiet so that Evans would not notice her, but she gasped at this news and blurted out, "You mean Forbes was shot by his own partner?"
Evans turned to look at her, his gaze cold and blank. Lindsay realized he wasn't seeing her at all, just responding to her comment. "Now, what possible reason could he have for wanting to kill his partner?"
Lindsay's brain was racing, "He could have wanted to finish the job, but then why not kill me? Most likely some kind of clean up though: he could have been trying to ensure that Forbes took all the blame, and that almost worked, didn't it?" She couldn't help the tinge of bitterness which coloured her voice.
Evans' gaze cleared, and he looked her full in the eyes. "Yes, why didn't he kill you, I wonder? Why didn't either of them finish the job?"
Lindsay's phone vibrated against her hip. Looking down, she saw Danny's number on the Call Display, and opened the phone with a sigh. She had promised herself not to cut him off again; his revelations about the night they had spent together had shaken her badly.
"Danny? Hi! Let me just move somewhere with better reception, okay?"