Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. All characters originated with CSI:NY. Poetry not otherwise referenced is original.
A/N: As always, thanks to my reviewers – I appreciate the time and thought you put into your responses. Every one of you has some effect on what happens in the story.
Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".
Vernal Equinox
Spring comes to the mountains in a flash
A raging flood of runoff and melt
Ice to water in the space of a breath –
The earth breathes in winter
Blows out spring in a gusty sigh.
Coiled tight under frosty grip,
Waiting for the signal,
Trees shake off the cover of snow
To reveal blossom already set,
Grass blanketing the ground
Where snow had tucked itself in only days before.
But spring comes to the city in achingly small increments
Like a banker counting out coin
Tallying the take for the day.
Air warms,
then cools
Trees stand stark
And bare
Then blush into green haze.
Mud turns to grass,
To snowdrops
To tulips
To roses flushed red against a brick wall.
SMT 2007
Chapter 16: Springing Forward
By the time Hawkes made it to the address Stella had texted him, it was mid-morning. There was a small knot of men standing outside the glass doors of what he now realized was a health centre, talking quietly among themselves, but throwing smouldering looks at the innocuous building. A discreet sign in the window had a caduceus, a symbol internationally recognized for healing, beside the name "Sister's Centre for Wellness" written first in English, then in several other languages underneath.
Flack and Stella stood at the curb, waiting for him. Stella was watching the street with her usual enthusiasm, smiling at the small children running through the crowded sidewalks. Flack was watching the street as well: the flat dedicated stare of a cop on the beat, waiting for trouble. While Stella was relaxed, leaning up again the car, Flack was obviously on guard, specifically guarding her.
Hawkes swung out of the SUV, and paused, wondering whether he needed his kit or not. The message hadn't told him why they were meeting at the Sisters' Centre. He glanced over at Stella again; she didn't seem to have her kit nearby, so he decided to leave it for now. He strolled over to where the two detectives waited, grinning as a small boy nearly ran into him, chasing a little girl.
"'Morning, Doc," Flack glanced at him as he continued to scan the street. Stella smiled at him brightly, as if to soften Flack's brusqueness, but Hawkes didn't mind. One of the jobs of the officers on duty was to protect the CSIs; he found it hard to argue with.
"What have we got?"
"We just need to question the staff about a patient who may have been in; she had a business card from this centre in her pocket. She was the one with the bee pollen?" Stella tipped her head inquisitively, checking to see if Hawkes had heard about it.
He nodded, "Six weeks pregnant, manually strangled, face covered in enough bee pollen to fill a couple dozen hives? I looked over the files last night." He often accessed files from home when he couldn't sleep; one more reason he needed a new hobby. "So what do you need from me? Surely Flack and you could handle asking questions?"
Flack looked down on the shorter man with a smirk, "We can do the questioning, Doctor. You're here to translate the answers."
Stella pushed herself off the hood of the car, laughing. "We did think that you might get some answers we wouldn't, Hawkes. That okay?"
Hawkes nodded casually. It would be interesting to see what was going on, and maybe he could reclaim some ground with Lissa if he told her what he thought of the centre, showed her that he had paid attention to what she had said.
As they walked through the doors, Hawkes glanced back over his shoulder at the group of men still standing on the street. They were not talking now: just standing watching the three NYPD officers walk in. There was never any question, Hawkes though, that Don Flack was a cop. He breathed it out like CO2, without even noticing. Stella and Hawkes himself, he knew, may be presenting the watchers with a little less obvious profile, especially without their kits.
Flack reached the door first and held it open for the CSIs. He still managed to get in front of them to the receptionist's desk and flipped open his badge, asking to speak to one of the administrators.
"Hawkes? Sheldon Hawkes?" It was an unexpectedly deep voice that boomed at him from down the hall, and he turned quickly to answer it.
"Miriam Beniamin?" He had remembered accurately, he now thought, but nearly 15 years on, the person had changed. She was still intense, but no longer thin, having rounded out into a comfortable matronliness that she carried with dignity. The once bushy hair was cut extremely short, shaped closely around her head, and the once casual jeans and sweats had been changed for a well-cut suit in a neutral gray, covered by a traditional white doctor's coat.
"Good to see you," she took his hand and kissed him on the cheek. "Lissa Willette was just talking about you last week. How are you doing? Coming back to private practice?" Her eyes sparkled mischievously, and he smiled back as he showed her his NYPD badge.
"Not yet, Miriam. This is Detective Don Flack of the NYPD and Detective Stella Bonasera of the Crime Scene Lab. I'm here in that capacity as well."
"Well, I suppose I should be glad you are not here as an ME," Miriam sighed. "Come into the lounge; I assume you have some questions."
Flack waited until they were in a more private space before pulling out the morgue picture of their victim. "Doctor, have you seen this woman before? She had a card from this centre in her pocket."
"She's not one of mine, no. But we have several doctors on staff. She's dead?" The doctor's voice was flat.
"Found in the park on Saturday: strangled. No one is looking for her yet." Flack didn't mention the pollen. Always keep something back for later was his policy, even when he had no reason to believe the person he was interrogating was a suspect.
Dr. Beniamin sighed, clucking her tongue in sorrow. "She looks young. Let me see if anyone else knows her. May I take the picture?"
"Why don't we go with you?" Flack suggested.
"Yes, of course. I'll have to see who is in today. Maybe we'll start with Dr. O'Conal; she's our counselor, and many of the women see her first, before seeking out medical help." She led them down a corridor to a bright atrium leading to a courtyard. She smiled at their surprised faces. "Pretty, isn't it? People often forget that these small places still exist in New York – remnants of a more leisured time."
A small woman was sitting on a bench surrounded by children, her red hair flashing even in the weak sunlight which filtered through the tall buildings. She shooed them off when she saw Dr. Beniamin coming, "Off with you now, go on! You need to find something to do for a few minutes." She reached out a hand to Stella first when the detectives reached her, "Dr Kathleen O'Conal. This looks like a delegation of some sort."
Dr. Beniamin introduced all the detectives, and explained why they were there. Dr. O'Conal sighed at the pretty face now dulled in death, and handed the picture back to Flack. "She was in. She didn't come to see me, so I don't know her name. She went to Nasreen," she explained to her partner.
"You recognize her even though you didn't speak with her yourself?" Hawkes questioned.
"I have a good eye. I watch the people who come in, try to figure out what kind of trouble they are likely to bring behind them." Dr. O'Conal's voice was dry, but Hawkes was impressed by her stance.
She certainly looked like she could handle most kinds of trouble. Although not tall, she carried herself lightly on balanced feet, as if ready to move in any direction. She'd been trained in martial arts, Hawkes was sure. He wondered how often she had been forced to employ them. Her stance went oddly with the sweet round face with its dusting of freckles, and the prayer beads with a small crucifix attached prominently hanging from her belt, which she fingered when thinking.
Flack was writing in his notebook. "Nasreen? That would be Dr. Nasreen Suq?"
Dr. Beniamin nodded her head, "Yes. She's the third partner in the clinic. I'll have her come out here." She signaled to one of the smaller children still hanging around Dr. O'Conal, and sent her off running to find the final member of the team.
Hawkes said, "Miriam, you said you had several doctors on staff. Should we talk to some of the others?"
She shook her head, "If they saw a doctor, Nasreen will have supervised. Most of the doctors who work here are not licensed in America. They come from other countries with medical degrees, but cannot be hired as doctors. We hire them under various programmes: internships and the like. They can keep their skills up while they go through the accreditation process."
"A little risky, isn't it? Letting people who aren't doctors practice medicine? In fact, it's illegal," Flack's raised eyebrow was the first step in what could become an escalating argument.
"Not at all, Detective," a cool voice broke through the conversation. "It is like a teaching hospital; students' actions must be signed off by a licensed physician. I assure you that we put no one in danger here in this clinic."
-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-
To: Aisha Blanco
From: Adam Ross
Subject: Saturday night
So what happened that was so much more important than meeting me Sat? Yeah, sure I ended up with some other people. That's usually what happens at a club. You don't want that to happen, you show up.
How do you know what happened anyway? If you were there, why didn't you come over?
I don't get the game, A. Give me some hint, at least, about the rules I'm playing by. Every time I work them out, you change them on me.
A
-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-
"Hey – I'm not in. Either that or I'm screening my calls (just kidding Mom!). You know what to do!"
BEEP!
"Hi Reed. It's Mac. Mac Taylor. I just wanted to see if you were all right. Call me when you get this, okay? You have the cell number."
Mac put down the receiver with a little frown. He hadn't heard from Reed since he'd dropped him off at Chelsea U Saturday morning. It wasn't like he was checking up on him, Mac assured himself. The kid had managed quite well without Mac Taylor in his life this long, after all. He was just a little concerned.
He had meant to call him earlier, but his weekend had taken an unexpected, if pleasant, turn on Saturday evening. It had taken Peyton and him about ten hours to make their way back out of the bed they had fallen into when he finally managed to get his door unlocked. For a moment there, he had had a superstitious feeling that the very house was locking her out, but that had left him the minute they had stepped over the threshold.
He indulged himself in a grin and a little shiver at the memory, then did his best to push it away for contemplation at a more appropriate time.
He swung around to look out the window at the bridge, crowded as always with early afternoon traffic. Stella, Flack, and Hawkes were trying to get an ID on the dead body from the park; Adam was working on trace from a robbery; ten other cases had come in since he had booked in that morning. He could give Stella and her team another few hours grace; then he had to pull her off to deal with any one of several pending cases.
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. Danny would be out for at least a month, according to Dr. Martens, who had phoned him after filing a report with the Duty Captain's office. Dr. Martens said he just wanted to make sure that there was no confusion; if Danny returned to work earlier than the month, he may never recover properly. And Lindsay, her childhood friend had pointed out in an equally determined voice, was neither physically nor mentally prepared to return to work yet either.
Mac swung back to his desk; there was no help for it. He was going to have to shuffle more teams and try to pull people in from other shifts. He hated doing that. People worked their own routines; adding new team members always slowed things down. They had more or less successfully integrated Detective Jillian Penn from the day shift, plus Detective Rob Fischer. More than that was going to put a strain on all of the existing teams.
Mac sighed and glanced at his cell phone lying on the desk beside him. Why didn't the kid call him back? Then at least he could put him in the back of his mind, along with Danny and Lindsay still in Montana, with the Messer family history, with his own involvement in that, with Stella and Flack as a couple…
Mac gave up and went to the break room to get coffee – the universal cure for a headache brought on by having too many people in his life, on his heart.
Behind the closed door of his office, his cell phone rang twice, then went to voice mail.