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, and especially to the 'wenches' who are keeping me sane!
Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".
Family Portraits
Birth is a happy accident.
The odds of a single egg being reached
Penetrated
Fertilized,
By a specific sperm
Are astronomical.
Babies are not planned;
Only timing can be predicted.
Families are equally
Haphazard
Volatile
Random acts of procreation.
Couples meet, marry,
Live together,
Sleep together,
Make love and fight and make children
Together
Make family
Together
In a perfect world
Together
But what is the ideal is not what is the norm
And the family given at birth may not hold for a lifetime.
And a person may choose a new family,
Or be chosen by a new family,
But the chains linked around the ankles
The bindings around the wrists,
The noose around the neck
May compel a return,
May compel a renewal.
Like a dog to its vomit
The child returns to the home.
Chapter 27: Going to the Source
Stella stood over the stove, stirring the sauce bubbling in the pan. Don had handed her the tomatoes with a tight grin, accepting her kiss with pleasure. Then he had told her that he had been put in charge of Gerrard's new Organized Crime Unit.
Stella shuddered. With new players joining the ranks of the various mobs in the city, a high profile job like that would place Flack on the promotion fast-track. He was already one of the youngest detectives to be in charge of his own team.
However, it would also make him a target, not only for the Italian 'families' who had long ago carved up New York City and to some extent the rest of the country as well, but also the infamous Westies, the Irish mob with ties throughout the continent, and newer, even more vicious mobs like the Russians, Asians, or the Columbian drug cartels, whose webs stretched even farther.
Crime was not only a growth industry in the States, it was one of its biggest imports.
And Flack was standing tall against it. "The tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut down by the lawnmower,' she muttered to herself, as she stabbed a particularly juicy tomato.
She sighed. After dropping that worrying little bomb on her, he had told her he had to go talk to Tony Reagan and then to his dad, and he would be a while. She had offered, naturally, to go with him. If she hadn't been watching him so closely, she might not have noticed the flare of alarm in his eyes, the slight paling of the skin.
But of course, she was watching him. More, she was observing him with all the knowledge, instinct, and training of an investigator. She couldn't help it. After missing danger signs Frankie Mala must have been putting out like solar flares, she had second-guessed her instincts to the point that she was paranoid. She watched all the time for clues to how people were feeling, thinking, reacting. Flack's reaction to her offer screamed uncertainty.
She stabbed another tomato.
He was the one who had pursued her. He had made the first move, given the first invitation. Sure, she had taken him up on it a little faster than he may have expected, but he certainly didn't seem to have been complaining.
The smell of the tomato sauce teased her senses, bringing back more than memories of great meals. She may never be able to make pasta without tasting him, smelling him, feeling his skin against hers again.
If those tomatoes had been people, Sid would have characterized it a frenzied stabbing.
-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-
"Mr. Garrett. May I come in? I need to speak to your wife and Reed, please."
Peter Garrett opened the door, welcoming Mac with a smile. "Of course you can, Mac. Please, call me Peter. Thank you again. I'm not sure we really said that in the hospital."
"No need. Is Reed recovering?" Mac took off his coat, which Peter hung up in the hall closest as he moved deeper into the house, calling for his wife and son as he went.
"Well, he's eating everything that's not tacked down, but that's pretty normal. You know teenage boys!"
Mac couldn't help but smile when Reed came down the stairs with an apple in one hand and a can of pop in the other. The young man dropped them on the hall table before reaching out a hand to Mac.
"I didn't really say thank you properly. I knew if I called you, you'd come."
Mac shook the offered hand, and was only a little surprised this time when Reed pulled him closer into a hug. He returned it easily, tightening his grip for just a second when he thought about what could have happened.
"Miranda, Mac Taylor's here." Peter announced as he ushered Mac into the pleasant living room. Mac took a quick inventory of the worn furniture, the signs of active family life, the general sense of people who were comfortable with each other, living well together, and sent a quick heart's message to Claire: her son had had a good life.
Peter sat down beside his wife, who smiled stiffly at Mac while gesturing to the chair opposite. Reed sprawled at their feet, finishing off the apple he had scooped off the table before following Mac and his dad.
"Mac," Miranda said, "Have you discovered anything about who took my son?'
Mac nodded his head, but before he could speak, she jumped in, "Have you arrested him? What explanation could he possibly have? I want him behind bars. I want to know what you are doing about this?"
Reed looked up at her with surprise, "Mom! Give him a minute. I'm okay. You need to relax." He took her hand.
Mac looked Miranda in the eyes. "We have evidence against a person who was involved: DNA on the duct tape which was used to secure Reed. It's enough for a warrant. We could pick the guy up and probably get him to trial on unlawful confinement."
Miranda burst out, "Unlawful confinement? Reed was kidnapped and held for two days! What the hell are you talking about?"
It was Peter's turn to try to calm her down, which he did with a hand on her arm and a gentle voice, "Miranda."
She twitched impatiently but subsided.
"Mrs. Garrett, I understand your frustration. But there was no ransom request, no evidence that Reed was hurt. They released him, or at least made it possible for us to find him. No ADA's going to do more than a deal on that." Mac turned to Reed. "You haven't remembered anything else? No one talked to you, told you what was going on?"
Reed shook his head, "I walked out of the Student Union building, and felt something go over my head. I blacked out, and woke up in the warehouse, hands and ankles bound and duct tape over my mouth. I guess I kept losing consciousness; all I can remember is being incredibly hungry and thirsty, peeing myself, more, then lying in it like a baby." He wrinkled his nose in shamed disgust, but was encouraged by Mac's casual acceptance of that reality of 48 hours confinement.
Reed felt his mother's hand tighten on his shoulder, and he bumped his head against her comfortingly. He frowned for a minute, trying to think back over a time that was pretty blank, seeking out the few flashes of consciousness. "I heard someone talking once, but it didn't make much sense."
Mac nodded encouragingly. "Do you remember anything he said?"
"Something about a mess? Things getting messy? That's all I can hear. Sorry, Mac."
Mac nodded. He hadn't expected much more. "Don't worry at it, Reed." He glanced at the boy's parents, then looked at him again. "You were drugged. They told you that in the hospital, didn't they?"
Reed nodded, lips tight.
"Common sedative, low risk of side effects. You were being kept out of the way for a reason, Reed. Two days is all they needed. What were you up to?"
Miranda leapt to her cub's defense, hackles bristling, "You dare! You dare to say that this was Reed's fault?" Both her men hushing her was not enough this time. "Get out. Get out of my house. I cannot believe that you would come in here and …"
"Mrs. Garrett," Mac broke in firmly, and for the first time, everyone in the room could hear the power that he controlled like a whip when necessary. "If you cannot be quiet, I will take Reed down to the station and continue this there."
She glared at him, but subsided.
"Reed, talk it out. Put things together here. What were you working on? Maybe for the paper?"
Reed stood up and moved away from his mother, though Mac noticed he gave her hand a squeeze before letting go.
"I was looking into the construction company doing work at the university. Four contracts out five had gone to one company: Messer and Sons …" his voice died off, and he frowned.
Mac waited patiently.
"Messer and Sons. You think that's what I heard: not messy or messed up. Messer."
Mac nodded, eyes on, not Reed, but Miranda. He watched as the colour drained from her face.
-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-
"Tell me about Maureen Messer, Dad." Flack's eyes were cool, interrogator's eyes, his father thought. And the voice, too – that fake intimacy coppers used on a suspect – trying to coax him into telling more than he had planned.
The Lieutenant hid a smile. Damn him, but it was a throwback to the past to have his little boy playing cops with him again. They used to do it all the time: 'walk a beat' after dinner to give Dora a chance to finish up the dinner dishes and tidy the kitchen, give the babies their baths. The Kim's Game he'd adapted from his own days as a Boy Scout: "Look at the street, Donnie. Now close your eyes and tell me what you see. Now open them and tell me what's changed."
Don Flack Sr. looked at his boy. Not a boy anymore: a detective in the NYPD, working with some of the best in the city. Shit, the best in the world. You didn't have to get the science to appreciate the nerd squad: they'd tied up some guys who'd slip through a briar patch like Brer Rabbit, you give them half a second. Now handpicked for a new Organized Crime Unit, a new attempt to clean up this raddled old hooker of a city.
The coughing bout caught him by surprise, and he choked on his own sputum, his thin hand shaking as he brought it up to cover his mouth, handkerchief at the ready to catch whatever gunk he spewed up this time. He hoped there was no blood this time; he didn't want Donnie to see that.
"Here, Dad. Have a sip of water," Flack passed the cup with the long hospital straw attached to the lid, like a kid's cup, Don Sr. always thought: those sippy cups his grandkids carried around instead of bottles like his own brood had. Couldn't see much difference really. All his kids had come out fine. Just fine.
"Better?" Flack's eyes remained cool on the surface, but deep at the core, his father could see the pain burning. Damn it! Why now? Why did this have to come up now? Another month, even a few weeks, and the whole thing could have died with him.
"Maureen Messer? What brought her to mind, Donnie?" Maybe he could prevaricate; he used to be a champion liar. Of course, when he did it on the job, it was called being a good cop. When he did it at home, it was called being a good husband.
"I got me a situation, here, L. T.," his son said, deliberately falling into old patterns, old games, old ways of connecting. "I have too many things pointing towards too few people. I need to clear the board a bit. Thought you could help me do that."
Don Sr. nodded. Even in the hospice, some people didn't forget their old friends. He had known about Donnie's move to the OCU before the kid did. He'd been hearing rumours about the Messer boy and that pretty little thing from the Wild West. He'd even heard rumours that his own kid was hooking up with Detective Bonasera, who he'd always thought was Mac Taylor's sidepiece. One look at Donnie told him he wouldn't find out anything about that the kid didn't want him to know.
That country girl Messer was involved with – he'd seen her pictures in the paper when the Montana case went bad. Messer's picture too, white as a sheet, but stubborn as shit at the funeral. In a box hidden under his hospice bed, he had copies of every picture published of his own son, even the most recent ones calling him "Super Cop" with the little boy in his arms. It was the closest he would ever come to seeing the next generation of Flack boys.
He laid his head back on the sterile white pillow, exhausted by the fit, lungs stretching painfully for their next inhalation. "Set me up, kid."
Briefly, Flack described some of the info Mouse had dropped. He could feel sticky spider strands clinging to the people around him. Something was up: the trouble at the church he'd grown up in, Reed's kidnapping, Danny being involved with Lindsay, whose brother was a Fed. Normally, he wouldn't have thought twice – just coincidences. Today, he was thinking. Like he told Mac, researching. And no one knew more about the strange and convoluted connections in a New York neighbourhood than Don Flack Sr.
He looked at his father, so painfully thin it seemed that his bones were overlaid on the outside of his skin. The cigarettes that had been so much a fixture in his hand had finally done their job; his sister Marie had phoned him last week to make arrangements for the funeral they all knew was around the corner. He'd agreed to talk to Father Tony at St Augustine's. It wasn't like Tony had been surprised when they met this afternoon. A little cool, at first, but Flack understood that.
As he talked, his father's eyes were closed, but he was nodding recognition of names and connections; the body may be halfway home to hell, but the mind hadn't given up yet. "So Tony Messer has finally scored the big time, that what you think?" he murmured. "I'd be surprised, Donnie. Strictly small potatoes, that one. No guts, no matter how you sliced him up. His kid was just like him: always wanted to run with the big boys, but shit himself the first time he tried."
"Maureen? Dad? Tell me about her."
"Oh, she was a looker, Donnie. So beautiful. Eyes a man could drown in, legs that went forever. And her mouth – ah, she could suck a man down to the gates of hell and hold him there a hundred years and he'd never blink." Don Sr.'s voice was so thready Flack had to bend forward to catch it.
At the next sound out of his father's mouth, though, Flack sat back and rubbed his hands over his face. The heavy breathing of morphine-induced sleep filled the room.