Author's Note:
Thanks so much for all the encouraging reviews! This fic has been a lot of fun for me, and I love knowing that other people are enjoying it just as much. Keep it coming; I love everything I can get. =)
This is turning into something a little darker in this chapter, but I wanted to be able to show Stella's humor even when dealing with the more unpleasant aspects of her job. This isn't really a casefic, but I wanted to throw it in.
Chapter Two
"The World Flies By"
I love how the world seems to fly by when you're trapped behind a desk all day. This time, and it's probably the one and only time, I don't mind. I'd shared lunch with Hawkes around noon and then retreated back to my office to take another stab at ridding myself of the mess. I've had roughly a gallon of coffee today and I'm starting to feel the more negative side effects of caffeine, the more noticeable of which being the mild trembling in my hands and the inevitable crash I feel hovering on the horizon.
It's now six o'clock and I'm almost positive I'm the only one left in the lab, if not the whole building. Strangely, the thought doesn't bother me. There's safety in solitude. The rest of the team is probably out enjoying themselves; I hope so, at least. Danny and Lindsay are most likely out having a night on the town, and Hawkes had shyly mentioned a date earlier over lunch. Flack—well, I had no idea what Flack would be doing. Him or Adam. It's for the best, I suppose. They don't know I'm still at the lab at six o'clock on a Saturday night. On Valentine's Day, no less.
Like that matters, I scoff. I'd be just as alone if it were next Saturday or last.
In better news, I've made a serious dent in the war zone that is my desk. Over half the files that had littered it this morning were now in boxes, waiting to be taken away. As far as I'm concerned, I didn't do too badly. The slight ache in my shoulder convinces me that I've done a good day's work, even if it did bore me to death. Tomorrow is my day off, and I fully intend to enjoy in guilt-free. Before I get there, though, I have to finish the remainder. If I kept at it and had another cup of performance-enhancing coffee I'd be out of here by eight, tops. I'll be having heart palpitations, but freedom is freedom no matter the state I'm in when I get it.
Resigning myself to fate, I swallow the last dregs of coffee in my mug and pick up my pen. Picking up where I left off, I sign the first syllable of my name when a knock on my door forces me to look up and find a familiar face studying me.
It's Mac, and I wave him in. The interruption is a welcome one; I haven't seen him since he dropped off a few of his files this morning. The rest of the day he was in the field with Danny and Flack. His eyes are tired and I can tell by the way he moves that his arm is bothering him. I give him a genuine smile and hope I don't look as exhausted as I feel.
"How's it going?" I ask while he looks around the room.
"Douglas Stach is in custody," he replies, referring to the case that's been keeping him up lately, and I'm mildly relieved. Little Doug Stach was a fourteen-year-old boy who beat his twenty-year-old stepbrother to death with his little league baseball bat.
"Good," I finally say, and I mean it. I spare a quick moment to wish the best for Stach's parents before turning my attention back to Mac.
"It looks like you got a lot done yourself," he says, looking at the boxes of finished files that I have yet to dispose of. "I wish I worked this fast."
"Don't be so sure," I warn him. "After the second box I'm not even sure I wrote in English."
"Are all of these yours?"
I see right through the question. He's asking if I finished his.
"No, not all of them," I say, getting up from the desk to pick up a stack of files I'd set aside to return to him. "I just finished these."
That was a complete lie. I'd done his first.
"Thank you, Stella," he says and I'm reminded of just how much I love my name when he's the one that says it.
"No problem."
"Why don't you call it a night?" he suggests. "I'm sure you have plans you can get away to."
I'm not entirely sure how to react to this.
"Um… no, not especially."
I catch the look of incredulity on his face before he can cover it up and my Mediterranean temperament contemplates making something of the look before I remember that I'm tired and don't feel like an interrogation. For a moment I think he's going to apologize, but he doesn't. I'm glad; I wouldn't have been responsible for my actions.
He's about to say something when the cell phone on his hip starts to ring. His eyes apologize for the interruption and he takes the call while I look on. I can see his personality shift from friend to forensic scientist as the voice on the other line begins to talk. He frowns and I have a feeling that I know what's coming next.
"Where?"
The one-word question solidifies my theory and I'm back around the desk in a flash, reaching for my coat. I hear an address being read off, and Mac disconnects the call after the promise of his arrival in a few minutes. He replaces the cell phone on his belt and gives me a pained expression when he notices that I'm ready to go with him.
"You don't have to," he says and I look at him like he's crazy.
"Don't be ridiculous," I say, shrugging the coat over my shoulders. "Everyone else is gone for the night. What are you going to do, work the entire scene by yourself?"
The look on his face says that I've won the debate and I savor the victory; I don't often have the opportunity.
"Come on," I say, ushering him out the door. "I'll even let you drive."
-----
I'm not too surprised to find out that our body is in a bar. Most crime scenes are pretty common-place; apartments and other homes, alleys, dumpsters. Statistically people's homes and obvious body dumps are where we find most of our victims. Every now and then, we get a crazy one that doesn't make sense until we put all the pieces together. Bars aren't in the top five body discovery sites, but they're nowhere near unheard of.
Mac pulls up to the curb and parks next to the police cruiser and the ambulance designated for transportation of the body. We climb out and instantly we're in investigator mode, trading the comfortable silence of the car for the sirens and uproar of the bar crowd that's been quarantined outside. Snow is starting to fall and I pull my coat a little tighter around me, wondering if any of it will stick. Mac walks beside me, his arm barely an inch from mine. This kind of closeness is so natural now that I barely notice. As a team, we function well together.
There's a natural division of labor between Mac and me that's almost as dependable as taxes and traffic. I do the talking, and he does the evidence. Every now and then the dynamic changes according to who needs to be handled, but we know what works. Strangely enough, that's comforting in and of itself.
A uniform finds us right of the bat and leads us into the bar. The air smells like stale smoke and cheap cologne, and somehow I get the impression that Mickey's Bar isn't the classiest joint in town. I look over at Mac and his eyes are scanning the room for anything his analytical mind can translate into evidence later. It amazes me to watch him work and if I'm not careful it can get in the way of my own. In this environment, though, I know this should be the least of my concerns. It doesn't take much to shake the thought and get back to the task at hand.
Wordlessly we wander to the back of the darkened room to what I suppose is meant to pass for a ladies' room. Pale legs in modest heels peek out from the stall at the end of the row, leaving me to believe it was the location of our victim. Mac pulls the stall door open and the air that rushes to meet us smells worse than the air outside. We both instinctively cover our mouths with our sleeves. Death isn't a new smell for either of us, but there are some things even forensic scientists never get used to.
The woman is small and has short blonde hair that hangs in a bob near her jaw. She's slumped over the toilet like she wants to be sick. The bowl is clean, though, and there's no water anywhere on the floor that would suggest she'd been drowned. Her face is incredibly pale, but that happens when blood stops moving. We study the victim for a few seconds more, but then Mac motions for a camera and I leave him to the scene, seeking out the owner.
Michael "Mickey" Battaglia also happens to be the bartender, weighing in at a solid 250 pounds that look more like muscle than fat. Graying black hair falls in messy waves around his ears and the look in his eyes tells me that he may have been a killer at some point, but not tonight. I step up to him and realize he's over a foot taller than me. It doesn't really matter; being a woman in a man's profession teaches you how to compensate for size.
"Mickey?" I ask and he spares me a curious glance before nodding his head. I show him my badge. "I'm Detective Bonasera with the New York crime lab. You're the one that called the police, correct?"
He examines my shield for a second and finally looks back into my eyes.
"Yeah," he admits slowly. "One of the women said that another woman had been in there for a long time, and I sent one of my waitresses back there to check on her. Kim came back up to the front screaming about a dead body."
I nod, writing it down. "Did you notice the woman when she came in?"
"Yeah, she was my first customer of the night," he answers. "She came in when I opened the doors at two o'clock and took a seat at the back booth over there." He points to a tattered green booth near the back of the room and I make a mental note to look over it. "She ordered rum and cokes all night. She just sat there with her book, and I lost track of her after everybody else started coming in."
"Was anyone with her?"
He shakes his head. "No, nobody. As far as I could tell, anyway. Like I said, I lost track of her. You can talk to Kim, though. She catches a lot of stuff that I don't. I made her stay in case you wanted to talk to her."
"Thank you," I say and I mean it. Witnesses have a tendency of getting away from you. "I'll talk to Kim in a little bit. Where is she?"
"That's her over there," he says and gestures toward a short forty-something woman with over-processed hair and a rose tattoo on her wrist. The crumbled up tissue in her hand tells me that she's not handling her discovery very well.
I hand him a card with my name and number on it and express my thanks for his help. He agrees to call me if he thinks of anything else, and I'm mildly surprised when he doesn't ask when he can invite people back inside for business. As far as witnesses go, I could have gotten a lot worse.
I approach Kim, who is standing just outside the radius of another group of people. Most look like middle-aged singles looking to get lucky, but tonight they're going to be disappointed. The reason they're being held is so I can question them. I'll go through them one-by-one until they've convinced me that they have nothing to offer our investigation. Most of them will have nothing to give me, and that's a fact I've grown to accept over the last few years.
"Kim?" I ask and give her my best unobtrusive smile. She sniffles and nods her head. "Hi, I'm Stella. I work for the crime lab. I was hoping I could talk to you for just a few minutes."
She nods her head and follows me away from the mass of people standing just beside her. Her blue eyes are a little bloodshot from crying and her nose has turned bright pink at the tip; I feel sorry for her. Not everyone can handle that kind of thing. Sensing her need for reassurance, I stand close enough to be comforting but not close enough to seem invasive.
"Mickey tells me that you're the one who found her," I start slowly, giving her time to adjust to the circumstances.
She takes a deep breath and nods her head.
"Yeah, I did," she says. "She's been here all night, and she was a real sweet lady so I kept an eye on her for most of it. She just sat there with the same sad smile, reading her book and drinking." She choked a sob and I lay a hand on her arm. "I should have noticed how much she was drinking, but I didn't think about it because she seemed so calm."
"Did she drink a lot?"
Kim nods. "More than I'm used to seeing for a woman her size," she says. "But I just figured, 'Hell, let her.' Singles' Depression Day and all. And it wasn't like she was being rowdy like the other guys who decide to come in and get hammered. She was real quiet, you know? Always said please and thank you."
I make a note of this. Part of me is starting to wonder if this is a murder after all.
"Did you see anyone with her?
"No, no one but me was ever over at that table," she says. "Which I thought was weird, to tell you the truth. She was a nice-looking lady, you know? Usually the guys in here swoop down on women by themselves."
I nod, looking over at the crowd waiting to go home.
"Did she say anything to you?" I ask. "Anything that sounded strange?"
"Not a thing. She said she was cold once, but that was it."
"Did you notice when she went into the bathroom?" I ask her.
"No. I took her another drink and I didn't go back to check on her until a few minutes later, and she'd left her book on the table so I thought she'd gone to the bathroom," she tells me and sniffles again. "I didn't think anything of it until one of the other girls came out of the bathroom saying that someone had been in there a long time.
"I knew it was her, because she hadn't come back to her table yet and she didn't seem like the type to stiff a person, you know? So I go in to check on her, thinking all that booze had finally caught up with her, and I open the stall door. And she's… there," Kim says, motioning frantically with her hand and tearing up again. "I didn't touch her or anything, I swear. It scared me so bad I ran out of there yelling at the top of my lungs. It surprised me, you know? I've never seen a dead body that close before."
"It must have been incredibly hard for you," I say with the utmost honesty. "You did the right thing calling us, Kim."
She sniffles again and nods her head.
"Here's my card," I offer and hand her another from my pocket. "If you remember anything else, or even if you just need someone to talk to, you can call me anytime."
She spares me a teary smile. "Thanks. That's sweet."
I tell Kim goodbye and walk over to the booth that our victim had occupied the entire evening. I feel a pang of sadness that a woman would feel the need to start drinking at two in the afternoon, but I have no idea what's going on in her life. Who am I to judge? Taking my thoughts from that, I pick up the book that still rests on the table. It's a worn paperback romance with crinkles in the cover and dog-eared pages. The inside flap reads Cindy Larson in small, neat, and decidedly feminine letters. The thought I'd had earlier occurs to me again and I decide to go check on Mac.
He's done with photographing the scene when I walk in the door and two coroner's assistants are prepping the body to be transported back to the lab. Mac is holding a small brown leather bag in his hand, looking at a driver's license.
"Cindy Larson?" I ask and he looks up with a question in his eyes.
"Yeah," he says, handing me the small card. "Find someone who knew her?"
"Close," I say and hand him the paperback. "She told me herself."
He takes a look on the inside cover and reads the same name that I found on her driver's license. Looking at the picture, my first impression was how nice she looked. Her eyes were wide set and brown and her lips curved up in the just the littlest bit of a smile. As far as driver's license pictures went, I'm pretty sure this is one of the best I've ever seen. The woman looking up at me from the picture is thirty-eight and an organ donor, and I have to wonder who would want her dead.
When I bring my eyes up, Mac is studying me harder than a he would a fiber under a microscope. The emotion I find there isn't familiar, but I find myself clearing my throat to clear the tension anyway. I never feel as transparent as I do when he looks at me like that. It's moments like these that I remember just how close we really are and wonder how close we could be.
"What are you thinking, Stel?" he asks me, knowing that the wheels in my mind work just as fast as his.
"I don't think she was murdered," I say, convinced even more after I say it.
"I think you're right," he replies, taking her driver's license back to put it in her wallet for transportation back to the lab.
"You do?"
He nods. "Her body temperature was incredibly low, and she had a bluish tint to her skin. It didn't look like she'd been sick."
Taking Kim's words into account, I make a tentative suggestion.
"Alcohol poisoning?"
"Looks like," he confirms and we both turn to watch as the black body bag is wheeled out of the bathroom. He sets the brown purse in an evidence bag and turns back to me. "We'll know more when Sid takes a look at her tomorrow."
"I just hope we're not brushing it off too fast," I comment, helping him take the very few evidence bags collected out of the building. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mickey wrapping his arms around Kim. She's shaking in his arms and I give him an encouraging glance. He gives me a brief nod of his head and I walk out the front of the bar into the snow that was starting to come down harder around us. I feel Mac's hand against the small of my back, leading me toward the car that we'd left parked at the curb. The gesture isn't new to us, but I found myself leaning into its warmth anyway.
"There was almost no trace evidence to collect," he tells me as he opens the car door for me. Every now and then his gentleman-like behavior catches me by surprise. When he climbs in the driver's seat he continues, "There was no sign of a struggle or any defensive wounds on her hands. Her purse was still on her shoulder."
"I know, I know," I say as we pull away from the bar. I notice that we're going away from the lab, though, and turn to him. "Where are we going?"
"I'm taking you home."
"Why?" I ask. "We have a body, and we have evidence. We should go back to the lab and check it out."
"Not tonight," he says with some finality and it shocks me almost into silence. When Mac refuses to work, something's going on.
"We should at least go back to her apartment, Mac," I say earnestly. "What if she has a family? Kids?"
"That haven't noticed she's been out drinking since two this afternoon?"
A give an annoyed sigh even though I know he's playing devil's advocate to my vaguely workaholic rants.
"Fine, okay," he says and turns at the nearest light. "We'll go to her apartment."
A/N: I know there wasn't a terrible amount of Mac in this chapter, but I swear that's going to change soon. Stick with me! Oh. And review.