Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".
A/N: My readers and reviewers are great! There seems to be a poll going about which of the Montana cops is dirty: so far it's a split between McKim and Evans, with one vote for Olafsen. Let me know what you think!
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 27: That's The End'a Little Girl
Well I know that I'm a wicked guy
And I was born with a jealous mind
And I can't spend my whole life
Trying just to make you toe the line
You better run for your life if you can, little girl
Hide your head in the sand little girl
Catch you with another man
That's the end'a little girl
"I did call, John. You weren't home." She repeated herself tonelessly, holding on to her patience and temper as hard as she could.
"I've processed the scene. Here are the bullet casings I found; here are the pictures showing their location. There were few discernable tracks from the car; the ground was frozen hard. I searched out to the road, but the snow was too thrashed up to get anything of much use." Lindsay was presenting her evidence crisply without sidebar, as Mac had taught her. She had the pictures placed on an incident board, and the physical evidence laid out on the table behind them.
The five men in the room stood silent, disapproval radiating off them in a wave of heat. Sheriff Olafsen, John McKim, Carl Evans, and a couple of techs watched the board shape up in front of their faces. But they didn't have to like it.
"You should have phoned the station, or at least called me on my cell, Linds. You should never have done this on your own." John's voice was studiously calm, but his clenched hands betrayed him.
Lindsay sighed. She was getting very tired of this. "You do know what I do for a living, don't you, McKim? This bastard was on my parent's property. He took a shot at me and nearly hit Dusty. Believe me, I processed the scene properly. Detective, if you want to waste your time, go out and re-process."
She turned, a little challengingly, to Evans, who had said nothing yet, leaning back against a table as if bored by the whole proceeding.
He raised his head and stared at her coolly. "I won't bother, Monroe. I'm quite sure you did the best job possible under the circumstances. However, the next time something like this happens, call the station."
McKim's head snapped up, "What do you mean, the next time? Why do you think this is going to happen again? Lindsay, did you find anything which indicated that this wasn't just some stupid drunken joke?"
Lindsay pointed to the only tracks she had been able to photograph, a clear shot of accelerating tires from the track out to the highway. "Smooth, easy, clean. No swerving or jerking. I'd say this guy knew he wasn't going to get caught, and wasn't the least bit worried about what had happened." She could feel herself getting angry all over again. "If he'd been drinking, you'd expect some indication here in the tracks."
Olafsen squinted at the photos, then shook his head. "So he just drove in on the trail, waited for a chance, took his shot and left?"
Lindsay pointed to another photograph, one which showed scuffed leaves and dirt under a tree. "He stood here for a while. You can see," she showed them another photo, "That he had a pretty good view of both the house and the barn from that spot. There were no good tracks, though; the ground is frozen solid and he was careful to stay off any area that was soft or had any snow cover."
"So, he knows how to avoid leaving tracks?" muttered one of the techs. Lindsay glanced up at Brendan and smiled.
"Yes, I would think so. Look where he came in on the trail, too. He was careful to stay on the high point. Also less likely to leave tracks there. And here?" She pointed to one picture. "He got out of the car and dragged something across any marks he had left."
She had been up for hours, first in the woods, then in the lab, developing theories along with pictures as she worked.
"He knows the woods around the Monroe ranch," she went on quietly. "He's either been there recently or has talked to someone in my family."
"Why recently?" Evans snapped out.
She didn't even look at him, "That track is new this winter. My brothers cut trail for it last year so my nephews could skidoo through there from Jamie's place." She put up a quick sketch map of the Monroe property, and across the highway from it, her brother's property, showing the trail from one to the other. "Even last winter, there's no way a truck could have got through the woods at that point to the meadow."
"Truck?" The other tech, whose name Lindsay didn't know, spoke up for the first time.
"Yeah," she answered without looking at him either, but pointing to the one picture of the tire tracks she had managed to get. "See the wheel base and tire width? Definitely a half-ton truck, probably domestic. Can't get enough definition on these machines to pull up a make, though." She bit her lip: the New York lab's equipment would be able to. A call seemed in order.
"A half-ton domestic truck in Montana ranch country. Well, that narrows it down." Brendan grumbled.
Lindsay smiled half-heartedly.
Olafsen stood up and rubbed his hands together. "Right, I'm assigning this case to Ron. Monroe, collect all the evidence and hand it over to him. Ross, grab those casings off the table and process them please."
She looked at him blankly, opening her mouth to protest. He put up one big hand before she could find words.
"Lindsay, you know you can't work on this case. Anything you touch is tainted by your position; even you having collected the evidence could cause us problems. Let us take care of it. Ron Jeffers is a good detective. We won't let you down. Carl and I will stay on this."
She did as she was told, labeling every picture in tight, precise printing, boxing up all her carefully prepared photos and evidence before dropping the whole thing on Jeffers' desk within the hour. She walked away, fuming, then suddenly wheeled back and leaned over the box to glare into the blank brown eyes of a man she had worked with two years ago and not been overly impressed by.
"This," she jabbed a finger at the box, "This is my father's life in this box. This is my mother's life in this box. I am handing them over to you. You fuck this up, and you won't have to worry about what will happen to your soul when you die, Jeffers. 'Cause I'll already have fed it, along with your worthless, stinking corpse, to the Devil himself. Got it?"
Jeffers only nodded, then pulled the evidence box towards him and opened it while Lindsay walked out of the station.
Stella would have been proud of her, she thought, a little gloomily. She'd added the 'worthless stinking corpse', but the rest had been directly cribbed from one of Stella's most famous outbursts in the office. Was it Mac she was yelling at that day? Lindsay couldn't remember.
Lindsay was moving fast down the street, the cold winter wind blowing through the sweater that was all she was wearing over a t-shirt and jeans. She hadn't stopped to grab her coat; in New York, no one would have let her get so far out of the station without stopping her. Even Adam, who was mildly afraid of her, would have sent someone after her at least.
She closed her eyes, wishing she could feel Danny behind her, reaching out to grab her arm as he had one day when she had left the interrogation room, checking on her, making sure she was okay.
"Checking on me. Not checking up on me." She muttered to herself as she paced further down the street, having no idea where she was going or why. All she knew was that this town, this place she had grown up in, was no longer home. She cursed the wind, wrapping her arms closer around herself, and finally stopped to look around her.
She had managed in a short time to get about five blocks from the station, and was standing in front of the local coffee shop, the Blue Rose, which had not yet succumbed to the seductive urban lure of the cappuccino or latte. Briefly, she considered grabbing a cup to go, but then realized she had walked out without her purse or any cash. She had got out of the habit of carrying money in New York; Danny usually paid without asking. She flushed a little; was she really so unaware of his casual care for her? She seemed to have been taking him for granted for a while.
She turned back to the station, chiding herself for throwing a temper tantrum. She knew Olafsen was right; this case was going to get national attention and any way Forbes' lawyers could attack the DA's case, including the collection and handling of evidence, would be great media fodder.
With a sigh, she wrapped her arms close around her now shivering body, put her head down, and trudged back to the station, a thousand thoughts running through her head. How could she help the case without contaminating the evidence in any way?
It happened so fast, it felt like one of her nightmares. There was a squeal of tires, a scream from an on-looker, a sensation of heat in her leg, and suddenly Lindsay was tumbling through the air like a child's doll, arms and legs flung out at impossible angles. She could feel the wind pulling at her, and for a moment thought it was going to pick her up and deposit her safely.
Then she hit the brick wall of the Big Sky Western Bank, and slumped to the ground. Through blurred eyes, she made out a green domestic half-ton truck careening down the road. Everything went black.