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

A/N: Thanks as always to everyone who takes so much time to review or PM, including some new people. If you're still reading, thank you!

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 56: It Took Me Years to Write

Dear sir or madam

Will you read my book?

It took me years to write,

Will you take a look?

Lindsay dug through the box until she found the notebooks she had started writing in the weeks after the shooting. Every time she had been interviewed by another officer, investigator, doctor, or psychiatrist, she had gone home and written up a report. There were pages and pages filled with her neat printing.

Danny sat in a chair across from her, waiting for her to tell him what to do. She was chief investigator here: he was just the sounding board.

"Read through that; it's the report of the investigator at the scene. What did they miss, Danny? How did we not get that there were two shooters?" Lindsay bit her lip, impatiently shoving her hair behind her ears as she dug through the box.

Danny glanced through the report, then scrabbled around looking for a pencil and paper to start keeping notes of anything that seemed odd. For an hour, they worked through the files independently, trading files and statements with hardly a word.

Finally Danny looked up to see Lindsay staring at him intently.

"What's up?"

"Danny, Evans was there."

"Yeah, you said you thought he had been."

"Why is there no report from him?"

"He woulda' been a pretty new detective. Maybe he had nothing to add?"

"He would still have written up a report, wouldn't he? For the record? I mean, paperwork isn't just a torture device made up by supervisors."

Danny quirked an eyebrow at her, "I'm not so sure, Montana! I mean, Mac does seem to kinda revel in loading it on…" his voice trailed off and his eyes grew wide.

Then, he hit his forehead in frustration. "What an idiot!" he said under his breath, and jumping up went over to the corner where he had piled all the supplies. "Fucking, fucking stupid!"

"What? Danny, what's up?" Lindsay watched in confusion as Danny dug around like a terrier searching for a rat.

"Your brother." Danny grunted, moving another box.

"John? What about him?"

"Not John, Jamie. Gave me a report from Mac," Danny was head down, searching through the boxes. "Didn't read it."

Lindsay stood up to help him look, when he gave a triumphant shout and pulled out the sheaf of paper Jamie Monroe had handed him in the parking lot back in Livingston.

"Okay, here it is. This is the word from Team Taylor, Linds. They'll have answers to questions we don't even have yet."

Quickly he started scanning the report Mac had put together, handing each page to Lindsay as he finished. He flinched when he looked at the schematic Stella had drawn up, swore softly at Mac's hypothesis that Lindsay had not been shot because she had looked the shooters in the face, and silently handed over the page where Mac summarized Evan's original statement.

Lindsay took each page eagerly, running through each scenario with the team. She could hear Mac's cool voice in her head, see Stella's competent hands on the computer keyboard. With a rush of homesickness, she swore she could almost smell the New York lab.

When she got to the part about Evans having seen a second shooter, she put down the papers in shock. "He was there! And he said nothing! We worked together for nearly a week, and he just looked at me with that smug smile, like he knew something I didn't know. And all the time …" She leapt to her feet, and began to pace, ignoring the pain in her ankle.

Danny put out a hand to stop her, but then shifted back into his seat and sighed. Nothing short of a tranquilizer dart would calm her down now.

"I can't believe it. He was there; he saw the second shooter. What the hell was he playing at? Why didn't he go after the person he saw?"

"Why did no one follow up on his report?" Danny's voice was soft.

Lindsay's knees gave out under her, and she sat down heavily. "It was a cover-up? But why? I just don't understand any of this. I worked with them for 3 years, Danny. How could they look me in the eyes?"

"Who you looking at for this, Monroe? Olafsen came in 2000, 2001, something like that, right?" Danny was riffling through papers. "Evans, now. You said you never worked with him? You knew who he was though?"

"Yeah, he was a hard-ass. Known as a real stickler: follow the rules and nothing can go wrong, you know? I think he'd been in the Army a few years before he went into the force."

Danny grabbed Mac's summary, "Yeah, says here he was a private in the infantry for two years. So basically a grunt without much ambition."

Lindsay was shaking her head, "Not how he played it in the police force. He was the coming man when I joined; everyone wanted on his team. Tough, uncompromising, good at getting the evidence. He had an impressive record of convictions." She looked at Danny speculatively, "Perhaps too good a record?"

"What're you thinking, Montana?" Danny's heart rejoiced at the light in her eyes. His country girl was on the hunt!

She jumped up again and started pacing, talking it out just as she always did, "So the Captain at the time of the shooting was basically eased out, according to what I heard. He'd been around forever: knew everybody, great at going out to the ranches and having coffee with the neighbours, you know? He got elected over and over. Then this happened, and people started grumbling. He fought it for a couple years, I guess, but then it just escalated, and he stepped down for an interim sheriff before Olafsen was headhunted and brought in. People said Graham should have known Forbes was a time bomb; he should have dealt with things better, you know the sort of thing. I didn't see it, but I guess the media was at the school before the cops were."

Danny shrugged; that was normal in New York City.

"They were on the scene when the cops took down Forbes. Ran on the news for weeks."

Danny sat back, hands clasped behind his head, "So if they had the footage, why did no one notice the final shot must have come from behind? Forbes would have pitched forward with the force of the blow."

"Captain Graham tried to confiscate it, stop it from playing. Most of the news stations played one clip over and over, not that my mother let me see it. I heard though. They just showed the first bullet hitting Forbes." She wrapped her arms around herself, and Danny had to physically hold onto the chair arms to keep from going to her.

"Graham wasn't able to control the media, didn't really get a handle on the investigation. I mean, Forbes had clearly been the shooter, and everyone wanted it cleared up quickly, so I guess it makes sense that no one really pushed any harder than they had to." Lindsay was on her feet and had started pacing again. Then she shook her head, "But Evans reported a second shooter. They found the bullet casings from two guns. They retrieved bullets from the scene, from the …" she cleared her throat, "… bodies. And why were the ballistics reports wrong?"

Danny looked at her in confusion, "What do you mean, wrong?"

She turned to the box and pulled out files, "Look here. The original report was not completed, only lists bullets from Forbes' weapon. Says here it was a Win94."

"Yeah, most common hunting rifle in the States."

Lindsay grabbed another file, "But look here. After Forbes claimed to have a partner, the ballistics report was looked at again. Here it says there were two rifles, both same caliber, both same make."

Danny nodded again.

Lindsay flipped through the pages of the report Mac had sent, "The files Hawkes looked at says that the second, unidentified shooter used a Win94, but that the other one, Forbes, used a Ruger 10/22. That was the gun they recovered at the scene, too, not a Win94. Why is every report different? They couldn't have mistaken a Ruger for a Winchester, not when it was right in front of them! And, really, ballistics is hardly rocket science."

"So do you think the original file was wrong?"

She stared at him a moment, considering. "That, or someone went in and changed the files. But why? What good did it do?"

She peered back into the case file box, looking for another file, one listing the original personnel working on the case. Instead, she pulled out the yearbook Danny had found in her room, and thrown in the box without thinking when he packed quickly to leave the Monroe ranch.

"What's this?" Her face paled to a bone white.

Danny came around the coffee table to see what she had in her hand. "Christ, Linds, I'm sorry. I just glanced through it; I must have tossed it in there without thinking."

She looked up at him with a hint of shock in her eyes. "I … I didn't even know I had one. I guess maybe Mom …"

Danny sat down and put out his hand for the book. "You don't have to look at it, you know. It won't help."

She pushed his hand away, but gently, and sat down on the other end of the couch. Her hands were shaking as she opened the book, and smoothed the first page.

Danny stood up and walked over to the stove. He couldn't sit there without wanting to put his arms around her, and he was pretty sure she would prefer he not do that. He seemed to have this habit of making her cry. He could, however, make her tea and give her time.

As he filled the coffeemaker and boiled the kettle, he could hear her turning over the pages in the book. What did she see, he wondered? Loss and death, or happy memories she had pushed away too long? Friends and classmates, or only the face of the boy who had changed her life forever?

He made her tea the way she liked it, doctored up his coffee, and turned back to the couch, not knowing if she would be ready to face him, assuming she had been crying. He sat down beside her, placed her teacup on the coffee table and brushed her hair behind her ear.

"Linds?"

She looked at him, her eyes blazing fiercely. If she had shed any tears, they had turned to steam long ago. "Did you look at this?"

She had the book open to the black-edged pages he had looked at in her bedroom. He was not going to tell her his sentimental gesture of thanks towards Cameron Johnston; she already knew far too much about him for his comfort. He contented himself with nodding.

She hissed, "What a load of maudlin crap. These two?" She stabbed an angry finger at two of the young people who had died in accidents. "They decided to snowboard outside of the boundaries, fell off a cliff. One died instantly; the other froze to death. Two Search and Rescue volunteers nearly died tried to get them out. But these two? Killed a little kid when they plowed into a family sedan street-racing." She sat back, her cheeks flushed with anger, and snapped the book shut.

"I hardly think they deserve the same memory as Cam, Tricia, Laura, and Mark."

Danny debated keeping his mouth closed, but spoke before the final judgment was in, "Their families do, though."

She spun around to argue, but stopped at the look in his eyes. She took a deep breath, picked up her hot tea and took a sip. "You're right. You're right." She put up one hand when he would have added something, "Just leave it at that, could you, please?"

Danny nodded and leaned back on the couch, drinking his coffee and watching her carefully. "Tell me about them."

She stared at him a moment, then picked up the yearbook, and turned the pages rapidly. "Here's Tricia. Grade 10, like me. Best friend, still. She would come out on the school bus with me and groom the horses, muck out the stable. Every day, no matter what else was going on. In exchange, we boarded Firefly, her gelding."

She brushed a hand over Tricia's picture, "Still so pretty."

She flipped a couple more pages showing him two pictures, "Laura and Mark. Started going out a couple of weeks before… the shooting. I'd known them since I started school, but she was a year older than me. She was going to be a pharmacist. Mark and Cameron were both in their graduation year, same as Mick. Mark was going to go to Canada, to a veterinary college up there, in Saskatchewan, I think. His mother wasn't pleased, but his dad was from there, so Mark had dual citizenship. And he could get away from his mom. Mrs. Sorensen was always … difficult."

That was the mother who had gone after her, Danny remembered. Then gone crazy, according to Diane Monroe. And the Collins, Tricia's parents, had split after their daughter's death.

She turned the pages again, slowly this time, until she came to a picture of Cameron and her. It was a candid shot, taken in the late fall, the two of them sitting under the big tree in the schoolyard, laughing. She brushed her fingers over his face, too, and sat silent.

Danny said nothing, but his heart broke for her.

"I was supposed to go to prom. Mick was so pissed off that his baby sister was crashing his prom! Cameron and I had been going out six months. He had been accepted to CalTech, but had changed his mind. He was going to stay in Montana, go to State. He was going to wait for me. He told me that day, under that tree. I told him I loved him."

She looked at Danny, her eyes filled with sorrow, but no tears. "I know now we were too young. It wouldn't have been the happily-ever-after it looked like. But for that morning, for that moment, it was perfect."

Danny reached out a hand and ran his finger down her cheek. "It will always be perfect, Lindsay: un momento di perfezione."

She turned her face into his hand, and moved around so that she was cradled in his arms. He handed her the tea he had made, and she started looking through the book, her heart a little eased.

She turned to the section on clubs, and Danny laughed at the rural nature of some of them: the Snowmobilers Club, 4-H Club, Young Farmers of America. She stopped when she came to the Biathlon Club and frowned.

"Montana? What is it?" Danny looked down at where her finger was pointing and read Justin Forbes' name. His fist clenched unconsciously. "Biathlon? What's that?"

"Combination cross-country skiing and marksmanship. We had a great team – nothing compared to when John McKim was on it, though. He was world-class."

Danny's other fist clenched, not so unconsciously this time. "And Forbes was on it?"

"I guess, though I don't remember ever hearing his name. He couldn't have been much good. But Danny, look who else was on the team." Her finger moved and pointed to another name under the team picture.

Danny double checked, then looked Lindsay in the eyes, startled. His lips moved, but she beat him to it.

"Boom!" She said softly.