Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".
A/N: Well, according to reviews, the last chapter made some of you cry. Let's see if this chapter makes you think. Opinions? Deductions?
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 39: I Want to Tell You
I want to tell you
My head is filled with things to say
When you're here
All those words, they seem to slip away
Flack had been waiting outside in his car for about fifteen minutes before Hawkes came running out of his apartment and tapped on the window. Flack unlocked the door and Hawkes got into the car, putting a computer bag in the back seat carefully, then rubbing his hands together.
"Pretty cold to be working off the clock," he remarked easily.
"Colder where Danny is. Temp could drop to the 30s out in the mountains, the news said. The spy who can't come in from the cold, you know? Did you call Stella?" Flack had argued with himself about whether to do that himself, or to get someone else to. In the end, he had decided to ask Hawkes to do it, to try and keep some things on a professional level.
"She's going to meet us there. Mac, too." Hawkes was still trying to warm his hands. "What's the betting Peyton will come with him?"
"Haven't you learned anything about sucker bets, Doc?" Flack grinned.
"It's nice to see Mac smile a little more," Hawkes said, easing back in the seat. He'd just gone off-shift when Flack called, but hadn't hesitated to come back in. This was Lindsay, after all.
"He deserves it," Flack said gruffly.
"Doesn't everyone," Hawkes put his head back and shut his eyes. Even this time of night, it would take several minutes to get to the station, and he might as well catch some Z-time before starting again.
Flack saw that Hawkes' eyes were closed and kept quiet, concentrating on getting safely and quickly to the station. Danny had said he had sent them all the information he could get his hands on, but there was more to come: the bullet the Monroes had dug carefully out of the frozen ground was being couriered to New York, and there were still statements and information neither Lindsay nor Danny had been able to get a hold of. John Monroe was supposed to get in touch with Mac after Danny and Lindsay were safely underground.
Flack chuckled a little at the thought of Danny shacking up with Lindsay, even temporarily, even under these circumstances. His buddy had been tied up in knots over this woman forever; he couldn't imagine how he was going to deal with being with her 24/7. A little "overwhelming" may be the best thing for both of them: burn it out of their systems.
"Hey, Doc. Here we are," Flack pulled into a parking space close to the doors, and saw Mac's sedan a few spaces over. "Mac's already here."
A dark figure detached itself from the wall near the door and came towards the car, moving a little slowly.
"So's Stella," Hawkes shot a look at Flack; he had his suspicions about the detective's feelings for her. Nothing to confirm those ideas here, though; Flack got out of the car and casually greeted the CSI the way he did every day.
"Hey, Stel. Glad you could make it. Everything okay?" His sharp eyes had noticed that she was biting her lip.
"What? Oh, yeah. Everything's fine. Let's go." She turned to smile at Hawkes. "You look like you could use some sleep."
"Had some." He yawned and pulled himself wearily out of the car.
"Could use some more, maybe?" Stella reached out and gave him a hand up.
"Naw, I'm fine. Let's go see what Danny's sent us." Hawkes turned to grab his computer from the back of Flack's car before gesturing for Stella to go ahead of him.
Flack had taken off up the stairs as soon as Stella had stopped to talk to Hawkes, and the two CSIs hurried to catch up to him. It was a silent ride up in the elevator, Hawkes blinking a little sleepily, Stella biting her lip, and Flack frowning a little. He had blown things; Stella kept avoiding his eyes. Shit.
"Oh well, if you never risk, you never get, right?" he tried to tell himself. "Thanks for playing: you lose. Move on."
He moved down the hallway when the elevator doors opened like a linebacker clearing a midfield. Stella and Hawkes were carried along in his wake, and the three swept into the conference room where Stella had begun an incident board the last time Danny had called. Mac was examining it, adding information from the file open on his computer, and Peyton was poring over the Bozeman ME's reports on the dead students.
Mac looked up with a quick smile, then returned to his board. "Grab a pen, Stella. I've uploaded the original case file Lindsay collected on the other computer over there. I thought we'd focus on the '95 case until we get more info from Agent Monroe. Do you want to take a look and see if we can map out the movements of the shooter?"
Flack moved in close to the board and started to go over the timeline, adding information Danny had given him during their late night phone call. Hawkes joined Peyton in looking at the autopsy reports. In no time, the team was working this case like any other, although there was a collective catching of breath when Mac printed off the picture of fifteen year old Lindsay at the scene. Her face was white, with the dark bruise blossoming evilly on her forehead. Her eyes were wide and stretched with a dull horror each investigator recognized: the blank stare of the traumatized victim.
Flack's lips tightened angrily. Stella and Peyton both turned their eyes away for a minute. Hawkes stared at the picture closely, looking at the bruising pattern especially, then uploaded the .jpg file to his own computer to see what he could find out about the injury.
Mac barely glanced at it. He had seen it before. He still saw a flash of it every time he sent Lindsay out to a scene. During the Darius case, he had been nearly blinded by it superimposed over the eager face of his newest recruit.
"Okay," Stella said as she opened a computer simulation programme. "The first one shot was Patricia Collins. Then Laura Phillips." Using the crime scene photos and sketches provided by the investigators, she first recreated the school's science lab, and then placed the bodies in the appropriate places.
"Any significance to it being two of the girls shot first?" Peyton wondered out loud.
"Not yet; we need more evidence," Mac explained.
Stella and Hawkes grinned at each other, and chorused, "Don't theorize ahead of the evidence."
Peyton looked at them in confusion, while Mac glared at the pair of them.
"From Chairman Mac's Little Red Book," Hawkes informed her, "Along with 'Give me evidence, not intuition'…"
"All right, all right, that's enough," Mac said hastily, as he could see everyone in the room was ready to jump in with another of his maxims. He had no idea he had become so predictable.
Flack looked over Stella's shoulder, careful not to get too close. "That ain't right. Linds said Forbes came in to the lab and was standing right over her. If she's right…"
Stella interrupted, "Even given the stress of the situation and the fear…"
"There's no way Forbes could have shot the Collins girl at that angle." Flack finished the thought. "So the second shooter must have been behind Lindsay in the beginning, and shot Patricia Collins as she lay on the floor." Begging for her life, he thought, as he read through the statement, and clenched his jaw against a wave of nausea.
"Okay, so let's assume the second shooter was over here," Stella placed an upright figure near the other door, an outdoor exit. "Does that mean he came in through this outside door?"
Mac looked over the schematics of the room. "Emergency door. It should have been alarmed."
"Which would be why no one looked at it – they assumed that it would have gone off if someone had gone in or out." Without thinking about it, Flack moved closer to the computer, and pointed over Stella's shoulder. "So Number 2 shoots first, killed Patricia Collins."
Stella pointed to Laura Phillips' body, "Laura and Mark were closer to the door in the first place. Why didn't Forbes shoot them first? Or why didn't they run out right away?"
"Third door." Mac pointed to the schematic again. "All the labs are built around a storage/prep room, with access through from one lab to another. Maybe Forbes came through that room. That would place him about here," he leaned over and pointed to a space about equidistant between the place the bodies had been found and the counter Lindsay had been in front of, "allowing him to cover both the room and the door."
"All right. So, all the kids hit the floor when told to: here, here, and two here," Flack indicated the locations of the bodies. "Number 2 shoots Tricia on the floor, killing her instantly."
"Do you think Forbes was originally targeting Laura Phillips? Because she was the one who replaced him on the team?" Stella wondered out loud.
"I think he swung around when the other rifle went off and shot at the first thing that moved," Mac said grimly.
"Wait a minute! Isn't that theorizing ahead of the evidence?" Peyton asked, confused.
"No," Mac told her patiently, "That's theorizing from the evidence."
Peyton shook her head, while Stella and Hawkes tried to hide their grins.
Ignoring the interruptions, Flack continued, "Then Mark Sorenson goes to Laura's aid, and …"
"Is shot by both rifles at once," Peyton supplied, going over to the computer and grabbing printed copies of the files. "Look. The autopsy report shows two bullets hitting at virtually the same time: head and back. No way to tell which was the kill shot. They didn't stop, though. He was hit at least two more times."
"Cameron goes to protect Lindsay," Stella's voice was low as she plotted Cameron's scrambled movement from behind the counter where he might have been safe to his deliberate placement in the line of fire. "Look, Forbes was blocked from shooting him by the counters. So was the second shooter, as long as he wasn't moving around too much. As long as she stayed there, Lindsay would have been out of Number 2's line of vision too." Stella showed the potential lines of fire from both shooters.
"So Forbes shoots Cameron in the head as he tries to push Lindsay out of the way …" Mac's voice was low and tight with loathing.
"And then Number 2 comes around the counter and hits Lindsay in the head with the butt of his rifle." Looking up from his computer screen, Hawkes completed the scenario. "I blew up the picture of Lindsay's injuries, and was able to get a pattern on the head injury. It's consistent with a rifle handle, but not a match to the rifle taken from Forbes after the police took him down."
"Forbes goes back out this door, to stage his suicide-by-cop," Mac followed the map.
"And Number 2 goes out the outside door, still without tripping the alarm," Flack added, "And shoots his partner in the back."
"Why? And why didn't they kill Lindsay?" Stella said under her breath. "Why was she the only one left alive?"
"Maybe Number 2 thought she was dead after he hit her?" Peyton speculated.
"But why not shoot her? They'd already shot four people. Why not her?" Mac held his frustration in, trying to make it work for him.
"They shot one in the back, two, three," Hawkes pointed to the screen. "Even Cameron was hit in the back of the head. Maybe they couldn't kill her …"
"Because she looked into their eyes." Stella breathed out.
"That means she saw him," Peyton said.
"That means she saw them," Flack said grimly.