Sorry it took so long… :S

Nine: 2009

March 21st 2009

New York City

Stella spotted him from behind the glass doors of the lab, and she gave a wave and a smile before shrugging off her lab coat and leaving her goggles behind on the worktop. She stepped through the door, smiling, catching a glimpse of Mac coming out of the elevator, the first of the team to gradually filter through the doors at NYPD on a Sunday morning when they weren't on shift, but they had a case to solve.

"Valens!" she called, and he shook her hand warmly, that boyish smile on his face.

"Bonasera." He nodded, "This is my partner, Lilly Rush…"

She shook hands too. The woman he was with was small and blonde and there was something behind her smile, but Stella didn't have the time or the opportunity to try to read it.

"Our Lieutenant's just arrived." She nodded towards Mac's office… I'll show you through…"

She lead them through, and they saw immediately the familiar files and photographs they'd been sent from Emma Kranz's case, along with the one cadaver shot of Mary Beaumont, pinned to the board. Lindsay, from where she had been pinning something else to the board, turned and smiled at them.

"You must be Rush and Valens." She said, "Nice drive?"

"Got here about twenty minutes ago." Scotty half-growled, and Lindsay smiled slightly. Mac, Danny and Flack slipped into the room slowly, each making their appropriate introductions. When they all sat down around the table leaving Stella standing beside the board, she began.

"Ok… we have two victims. Mary Beaumont, age 16, 1976 and Emma Kranz, age 27, found two days ago. Emma was Mary's niece, so there could be a family tie… other than that the only similarity between the victims is that they were both eight months pregnant when they were murdered, shot through the head…"

"It's not overly personal." Lilly said slowly, "Not with an MO like that."

"We also have the possibility of a similar attack on Emma's mother, Anna, in 1982, but we have no evidence, as it was never reported, and the only account we have is from Anna Beaumont, who has Alzheimer's… so we have nothing concrete. She was also eight months pregnant at the time."

"We talked to Emma Kranz's husband Jason, they'd had a fight and she'd said she was going to stay with her father in Philly… who has actually turned out to be her step father, her real father walked out when she was just a kid… but it looks like she never made it to Philly."

Flack raised his hand slightly to get their attention. "I spoke to Albert Smart. Emma didn't let him know she was coming to visit… so either she was going somewhere else entirely that day, or she never even got the chance to call."

Mac nodded slowly. "We were following up a domestic complaint filed by the downstairs neighbour, Jonathan Vaugn, but he was very relaxed about the whole thing… said he'd got to know Emma and Jason afterwards and realised it was an honest mistake. From there, we've got nothing… the rain washed most of the trace evidence from the scene and from the body, though blood pooling under the head indicates that she was shot there, in the park, her body wasn't moved…"

"So whoever does this is into huntin' them down on their evening walks, that it?" Scotty started, and for a moment the word hunting stirred something in Lilly's heart. George Marks would never go away. Not entirely. But it was only for a second. Then she opened the Mary Beaumont file.

"We got a little more on our victim, figured that if we can catch 1976's doer…" she gave them all a small, strong smile. Scotty couldn't help one touching his lips at the same time. She'd come to New York with him, despite the fact that twenty four hours ago he would have put money on her hating him forever. She'd slept whilst he drove on the way down, and he'd slept whilst she drove, so they'd hardly had a chance to talk, but she was here, that was what mattered. "Mary Beaumont was your average teenage girl, youngest in her family, until her mother died when she was fourteen, and she went completely off the rails… hanging out on street corners, getting together with Dean Farrell…" Lilly laid his mugshot on the table, "Who's been doing time for her murder, because her blood was on his clothes, the night before."

"A right charmer, this one, punched a pregnant girl when she told him the baby wasn't his… led us to the father… who has an alibi, but wasn't the nicest guy himself back in '76. He was on the bottle after his wife died, and he had blacked Mary's eye the day he found out she was pregnant. But he was in Boston the night of her murder, and in a old people's home the night Emma Kranz died. He's pointed us in the direction of Josie Carmichael, Mary's best friend, and the girlfriend of the boy supposed to be the baby's father… Lyle Feltham."

Danny tapped on the table, leaning back in his chair. "Jeez… these cold ones sure get complicated…"

Lilly and Scotty found themselves both nodding knowingly.

"Anyway, it's Josie Carmichael that brings us here, along with Mary's brother Mark. They both live in New York City, and we're still trying to locate Lyle Feltham… but without any much luck."

Mac frowned, "Danny, try and locate a Lyle Feltham in any of our systems… Lindsay, if you and Flack take Detective Rush after Josie Carmichael, Detective Valens and Stella will go and look up the brother… I'm gonna go round to the apartment again, see if any of the other neighbours knew anything, and if Jason's got anything else to say. Hawkes, you got some spare time?"

The doctor nodded. They were all nodding, around the table. All of them were desperate to nail this guy.

*

Stella was driving. Mark Beaumont lived on the outskirts of the city in a nice suburban area, courtesy of having been a surgeon since 1975. Scotty'd offered to drive, but at the older detective's raised eyebrows he'd sat in the passenger seat sullenly, fastening his seatbelt across his chest.

They were five minutes into the journey, when she started.

"What's with you and Rush, then?" her eyebrows were raised again, giving her the image of being mildly interested, but not all that bothered. Scotty nearly swallowed the gum he was chewing.

"Nothing."

Stella's eyebrows tried as hard as they could to reach her hairline.

"Seriously, Valens. I'm not buying that."

He looked at her incredulously for a moment. "We hardly know each other, not really… am I that easy to read?"
Stella nodded, smiling, and Scotty sighed. "She's… I dunno… it's not normal…" he sighed, as if trying to start again, and a small smile touched Stella's lips. Valens was hell of an easy one to read, and she could tell, from that simple sigh, that he was way into this Detective Rush.

Scotty turned, glancing a look at the woman driving. "We… uh… she nearly died last year, and then we had a bit of a thing around Christmas… and, well, she's not exactly great with relationships… and then this guy she used to date turns up… freaking ADA…" Stella laughed, "… an' she's all cold with me, and I figure, maybe she'd rather be wit' him, wasn't like we were anything official anyway… and so I cleared my stuff outta her house… and the next thing I know, she's screamin' at me, tellin' me I 'left her' and didn't she understand this was why she didn't trust people anymore… an' I flipped out, cos' she's just impossible sometimes, an' apparently she was jus' figurin' stuff out with Kite, the ADA, an'-"

"Jeez, Scotty, take a breath." Stella muttered, but darting a quick glance at her friend she could see that his eyes were dark, his face set into a frown. He gave a bitter little laugh.

"An' before I knew it, she was gone… not talkin' to me, not sayin' anything… and I guess I kinda realised what I'd gon' an' screwed up."

There was a thick silence in the car as they both considered. Then Stella spoke, her voice low but assured.

"Uh… I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume you really care about Detective Rush…"

He looked for a second as if he was about to deny it, but then a regretful smile crept onto his face. "Sure… Lil's… she ain't quite like anyone else… don' get me wrong, I haven' been head over heels for her forever, or whatever… it's sorta crept up on me…"

Stella gave him a small smile, thinking back to how long she had know her boss, how long she'd been his friend, and how in the past couple of years, intensifying in the more recent months, she'd begun to long for something else, something more.

"I get it." She murmured, "But I think you freaked, when the ADA turned up… and you didn't really give her the credit she was worth, Valens. And then she bolted…"

He was shaking his head slowly. Stella couldn't help comparing their conversation to an interrogation. He was like a suspect, trying to deny every accusation but she could see in his eyes he was weakening, trying to hold off from making the final confession.

"I think… hell, I haven' got a clue why I'm tellin' you this, Bonasera…" he chuckled, but it was laced with regret. "I think I'm fallin' for Lilly Rush, an'… that terrifies me."

Stella had a hundred things on the tip of her tongue in that moment, but she had pulled up outside Mark Beaumont's quiet, tranquil slice of suburbia. She turned to the other detective, hoping she would say something comforting, or helpful, but before she had the chance he merely shook his head and climbed out of the car, slamming the door behind him.

There you go, hope it lived up to the rest of the story!! I'm trying for more regular updates, I promise, but believe it or not, despite it being summer, I'm still obscenely busy :P

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