A/N It's taken some time to get this up, even though it's been the holidays. I've been stuck for inspiration recently, but hopefully this fic will be finished sooner rather than later. Hope this chapters okay and I apologise in advance for typos!
Thank you for all the reviews.
Chapter 12 – Darkening
On an average day approximately 1,800 thunderstorms occur, each a combination of humidity and heat, warm air rising and then cooling again, and then the air moving violently, causing water droplets and ice to knock against each other with charged electrons falling off the latter.
These electrons then build up a static electrical charge, the energy producing thunder and lightning, a mesmerising display of light and sound that illuminates the sky, resulting in both damage and awe. No thunderstorm is ever safe.
Stella knew that people could create thunderstorms. She knew that when certain people met, they could produce such an electrical charge they damaged whatever they came into contact with. That was what he knew was happening now as she looked into the crammed space that Danny had discovered under the floorboards. She reached down with a gloved hand and pulled up a bundle of notes, one of several piles of cash.
"Used notes," she said to Danny, who was watching intently. "And," she shone her flashlight further along. "Two guns and what looks like a knife."
"This puts Murphy even more in the picture now," Danny said. "Not that he hadn't implicated himself already."
"Mac hasn't been in touch?" Stella said with some surprise as she began to bag up the cash for analysis back up the lab. The weapons were only just visible and would require another floorboard being lifted in order to reach them.
"Not heard from him since he said he was on his way here," Danny said, pulling more evidence bags from his kit and passing them to Stella. "Then you turned up so I just assumed Mac was on his way to another crime scene."
Stella nodded. In the heat of what was happening it wasn't surprising that communication would go AWOL at some point. "I had a call from Mac as I parked up. He's at LaGuardia. Adam had a call an hour or so ago that Paul Murphy was booked onto three separate flights. Flack and Angell and whoever else went there and found Murphy's body in a suitcase in the unclaimed office. Mac's there now. He was stuck in traffic and didn't get there until the body was found."
Danny nodded, his brain clearly working through the events. "Bet Mac was pissed with that!" he said. "So Murphy's clearly not the king chief, which leaves us with the question 'who is'?"
"We've got David Rostow…" Stella began.
"Only on Murphy's say so. The whole reason Rostow was brought into this is because Murphy IDed him in a coffee shop," Danny said.
Stella's camera clicked, taking more pictures of the space's content. "He was recognised by one of the girls in their too. That's how Murphy got caught out lying."
"So what if Rostow figured Murphy was a liability and whacked him off. This isn't proving to be some small town money ciphering job here, Stell, the body count's now up to five and we don't have anyone in custody. Any luck finding the girl?" Danny said.
"She's well and truly off the grid. Adam's been trying to search for her all day. I left him muttering something about social networking sites – I swear he's becoming surgically attached to the computer," Stella said, reaching an arm under the next floorboard and pulling out another wad of cash.
Danny laughed, taking a screwdriver he'd found and using it to help prise up the next floorboard, hopefully giving them easy access to the rest of the stash. "What about the girlfriend of one of the vic's?"
"Shoshanna Sullivan?" Stella said as she ignored a spider that ran over her hand. "We've had uniform trying to locate her, but they've found nothing. Her dorm room is pretty much empty, her parents haven't heard from her in about three days – although that doesn't concern them as she's been out of touch for longer – and her last exam was over a week ago, so she's not expected to turn up at college."
"No part-time job? College is an expensive thing," Danny said, looking at the remainder of the cash.
Stella shook her head. "No need. Mommy and Daddy are rich enough to let their little girl avoid such life-experiences."
"The bitter tone to your voice tells me you had plenty of those life-experiences," Danny said, glad of something that had some humour to it.
Stella laughed wryly. "I worked in bars. I mix a mean Cosmopolitan."
"No Sex on the Beach then?"
"I never had time." She knew her voice lacked the humour it should have contained. College had not been easy. For some, it had been about partying, meeting people and doing a bit of studying on the side. For Stella, it had been about hard work to get the best grades and working more or less full time – in vacations double full time – to try and make ends meet. She'd met people, and had one or two relationships along the way and yes; there had been the times she had partied until dawn. But not everything in her garden had been rosy, certainly not the way it had been for some of their missing persons. "And New York doesn't have a beach."
Danny laughed at the after thought and then let the topic drop as the moved out the rest of the money and weapons.
"The guns couldn't have been the one that shot Goddard," Stella said. "These are almost out of the ark." She stood up and stretched, the wooden floor had not been kind to her knees. "Get these back to the lab and see what they show. If we're lucky, we'll be able to trace back the numbers on the bills."
"Which will give Adam something else to do on his computer," Danny said. "If Facebook's not eaten him by now."
Footsteps pounded along the corridor and into the study, ones Stella recognised as belonging to Hawkes. He was holding something small in his hand; small, and made of plastic.
"What you got?" Stella said, knowing the look on Hawkes' face to mean he'd found something interesting.
"I was just about to call it quits when I found this," he stepped closer and showed them what he had in his hand. "David Rostow's credit card."
Stella raised her eyebrows. "And where there's a credit card there must be a billing address."
Hawkes nodded. "And, hopefully, where there's a billing address there will be some way to find David Rostow."
-&-
Mac watched as Sid performed his rituals with the body of Paul Murphy. He was just finishing stitching the Y-incision; small, neat stitches, unlike the clumsy, careless ones that he had seem some pathologists make in his time. For Sid – and Hawkes and Peyton – attention still needed to be given to all details, even though there would never be any scarring.
"In summary," Sid said, looking up and pulling off his latex gloves. "He was shot in the back of the neck. The bullet remains this time and no, there is no tattooed number."
"Poisoning?" Mac said.
Sid shook his head. "That seems to be reserved for a particular type of person. Now, was Murphy a victim or a perp turned victim?"
"I'd say he was the latter, Sid. Unfortunately, we don't have anyone in a position to confirm. All we know is he was planning to escape. The best person to tell us about that is his wife, who is also dead," Mac said, his voice hard, not showing the frustration he felt.
Sid nodded. "I did her autopsy earlier, before her husband arrived on my table. Beautiful woman, but held together with an awful lot of surgery. Gastric bands, breast implants, cheek implants… Poor Sam had his illusions shattered completely!" Sid looked at his morgue assistant whom Mac thought was looking a little under the weather. He wondered if Sam was coming down with the virus that had decimated their workforce over the past few days.
"I don't suppose she had a tattoo of any kind?" Mac said.
Sid shook his head. "I doubt she would have done anything that would have made her body less that what she saw as perfect. One interesting thing though; she had herpes simplex type 2, and was clearly showing signs of it."
"Murphy? You would assume that if they were married he would have contracted the virus also," Mac said, wondering why Sid was finding this so curious. He wasn't surprised that an actress such as Diana Merchant had contracted an STD. At the peak of her career she had been on the arm of every pin up male soap star he could name. Or rather, who Stella could name.
"Paul Murphy shows no symptoms of the virus," Sid said. "Which, is not unusual if he's between outbreaks. I've sent his bloods to be screen for the virus, as well as the usual things." He looked up at Mac. "Do you know how long the Murphys have been married for?"
Mac shook his head.
"Less than two years. Previously Diana Merchant was in a relationship with Luke Carter, " Sid's eyes twinkled. "Whom I very much doubt you've ever heard of. Carter was much younger than her. They were in the same soap – Nights of Our Lives – it was a spin off that didn't live very long. He had a drug habit, and she, probably wanting to keep him, paid his various debts with dealers and bail a couple of times. She split from him when she reached the verge of bankruptcy. Six months later she married Murphy. The wedding photographs were sold to OK! Magazine," Sid's eyes seemed glazed over as if he was recalling those very pictures. Mac was mildly amused. "Why would someone like Diana Merchant marry a professor of Law, who isn't a celebrity, isn't particularly attractive and can't in any way further her career?"
"Maybe they fell in love," Mac said.
Sid shook his head. "For people like Diana Merchant, love isn't in the equation. My guess is she was after money. And if you're wondering, the reason I happen to know all that, it occurred at the same time my wife was recuperating from a hysterectomy. She needed something to fill her days and celebrity was just the object."
Mac looked at him quizzically.
"One has to take an interest in one's spouse," Sid said with a knowing smile. He looked to the body laid out on the metal table, his eyes scanning the pale skin, its whiteness marred by signs of the post-mortem, the stitches black spiders of unnatural death.
"Any thoughts on the bullet?" Mac asked, letting the conversation about celebrity drop.
Sid shook his head. "That's up to ballistics. Small calibre, and his was shot at close range. The amount of GSR around the skin suggests that the barrel was almost certainly pressed up to the skin. I should have my reports done on both Diana Merchant and her husband done in the next hour. There really isn't a great deal to write, and Sam has already begun Diana's," Sid gestured to the morgue assistant who was absorbed in what he was keying into the computer. His demeanour was different than usual. The bright enthusiasm that hung about him had dwindled down to a worried, shocked darkness.
"Is Sam okay?" Mac asked in an undertone, the clanging of another pathologist reducing the chances of Sam overhearing him.
Sid shrugged. "He seemed to have quite a shock when he saw Diana Merchant. Your first celebrity can be a bit strange."
Mac nodded. Sid was probably right.
-&-
"I've got smudged fingerprints," Danny said, pushing his glasses further up him nose. He knew when he bought them that they weren't the right pair for him; too big, too irritating. What was even more irritating was that a good chunk of this month's salary would now have to be spent on buying a new pair. There was always the option of laser surgery of course; but that involved being awake while people fiddled with your eyes, something he did not wish to endure.
"How smudged?" Flack said. "As in not smudged enough to be able to identify them, or as in too smudged to do jack-shit with them?"
"You been getting much sleep recently, Flack?" Danny said, eyeing his colleague and friend. "Your temper is shorter than the chairs at a little people's convention."
"You jealous, Messer?" Flack said.
Danny chuckled. He guessed he was. No Lindsay, no Rikki; life was somewhat lonely in the evenings at chez Messer. "So why am I dusting the door of a room that hasn't been opened?"
"Note the handle and the missing screws – or have too many nights without the company of a good woman slowly turning you blind?" Flack said, crouching down and looking at where the screws had been removed from. "This is too much of a coincidence for my liking. Fifteen metres down the corridor we have a room with a body dump."
"You wondering if someone got the wrong room to begin with?"
Flack nodded. "According to Miss Velasquez this used to be the left luggage room. Then policy changed and they didn't need as big a space so they switched rooms to one that was closer to the carousels. The new room's nearly always locked – today being the execption."
"Any sign of tampering on that door?" Danny said. Hawkes was there at present combing through the left luggage room. Stella had taken the money back to the lab after Mac had called Danny and Hawkes out to LaGuardia.
"Nothing of note. Velasquez thinks it may have been unlocked as there were three of them on duty. The boss – John Waters – was doing his paperwork in the office just off the luggage collection zone. He'd forgotten his keys so asked Velasquez and Richard Tommero to leave the room unlocked. Easy entry for our body dumper," Flack said as Danny stood up. He had seen all he needed to of the lock.
"Any CCTV?" Danny said.
"Not down this corridor. There's a camera over the exit but it's not been working properly for about eighteen months. Today's been one of those days when it's been on and off sporadically. The time frame we have just shows black snow on film," Flack said. "These are clever people, Danny."
"You say people. You convinced it's a group?" Danny said as they began to walk back up the corridor to rejoin Hawkes.
"I'm with Mac on this. I think it's a cult and we're up against more than one person. The MOs are all over the place for a start. I don't doubt we're dealing with psychopaths – I just think we've got more than one," Flack looked serious.
"We've dealt with psychos before, Flack," Danny said, unused to Flack's more serious side.
"But none like this. The death of Paul Murphy and his body found in a suitcase will be plastered over the evening editions of every paper. That's six bodies – not counting Joel Jones. The city's going descend into panic," Flack said, his face a thunderstorm in the making.
"The victims are all connected though," Danny said. "This isn't someone targeting random people. We have a link between all of them." They reached the left luggage room. Hawkes was crouched down, scraping something into an evidence bag and looking doubtful. "Nothing?"
"Nothing," Hawkes echoed. "Big fat nothing everywhere. We have to get a break on this soon. Find David Rostow or Rachael McKinsey, or where ever it is they hang out."
"We need something soon," Flack said. "Otherwise we'll have the Feds involved."
-&-
"You shouldn't have killed him, Rachael," the man said. If he'd been able to, he'd have been pacing up and down the room. Life had given him the short straw, however, and he was now wheelchair bound. It wasn't as much of a hindrance as he'd thought it would be, in fact members of his group seemed to have more respect for him now than ever before. Including Rachael. Most of the time.
"If I had let him live he may have worked out what we were after," she said, her eyes glinting dangerously. "No one's come as close as he has with his questions. For all we know he could have been some undercover stooge."
Rostow shook his head. "He was who he said he was. His parents are multi millionaires and we could have done with the cash after Diana's recent spending spree."
"She's dead now, anyway, and not a moment too soon," Rachael said, smiling. Rostow looked at her warily. Her boundaries were widening.
"It needs to stop. The cop and the girl, Maxwell. It finishes here," he said.
She turned to him, like a petulant child. "But what about what you've done. Goddard, Raimo and now Paul? Don't they count?"
"That was survival," he turned from her, knowing what her next actions would be.
A bit of FA fluff may help the next chapter…
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