Disclaimer I own very little, especially not CSI NY.
Notes Chapter 27: THANK YOU for all reviews! Really hope you enjoy this chapter. Please continue, reviews are welcome at any time, for any chapter and always replied to if logged. Thanks for all alerts and favourites. Thanks for the reviews: Fat Kat, Shadow Fox and autumngold (thanks also for reviewing 'Perfect Symmetry')sorry I couldn't send a proper reply. Thank you to marialisa for reading, and to chrysalis escapist for extra thoughts.
Lost Letters: Chapter 27
28th July
… We went to visit Joe's mom today; the first time in weeks. I'd been nagging about it for days and finally managed to persuade him, even though I really don't like going there myself. I can understand his reluctance, it can't be easy for him the way she is and it always makes me feel uncomfortable whenever we go. She was no different from our last visit so we didn't stay long. It's put Joe in a bad mood for the day though, and I so wanted to talk to him about our apartment. Tomorrow will do, but I don't like putting things off in case tomorrow doesn't arrive…
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Rich felt the vibration of the folder hitting the table travel through his forearms and cheekbones. Curiosity and a sting of apprehension brought his head up off his arms and made him look at the man in front of him. He had already assessed the female occupants of the room. One in uniform who he did not know; one of many milling about the precinct who had raked their eyes over him as he sleep-walked through their procedures, taking pieces of him; photographs; saliva; blood from his hand. They had violated him; him. He had thought he was untouchable, inviolate. Another wrong.
The other woman he knew and felt a knife of hatred twist in his belly. She was responsible for where he was now; one of several responsible. There were others to blame too, not least Rita and her mistakes; if she hadn't made them, he would not, under TJ's orders, have had to kill her. It was the other female detective's fault; if she had not fought back, he would not have had to shoot her. Jake's fault too; if he hadn't argued with him, he would not have had to shoot him.
It was all their fault.
The list of culpability went forward to the woman standing watching him at the side of the room. And back to Irene and his father. Rich looked through the years to the halcyon days before his stepmother had appeared and slurried his life. He knew the people who were to blame. Never himself. Never his fault.
Always their fault.
He looked at the man in front of him. Another familiar face. Rich never forgot a face. He was not afraid of any of the people in the room; they knew too little. He would give nothing away here; would say nothing, no matter what they said.
The man's eyes though… they made Rich begin to doubt himself just a fraction, and put a hairline fracture in his confidence. He was suddenly aware of the size of the room and the proximity of the man in front of him, and the fury filling the lack of space between them. Rich ground his teeth together and swallowed a whisper of fear in his throat.
Say nothing; they know nothing; say nothing…
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The sound of the file hitting the table was the defining of the moment. Angell stayed where she was, letting Mac begin what they all wanted finished. She had interviewed suspects with him before, and had already made a calculated guess at the steps of the dance he wanted to lead in these circumstances.
Already the room was hot and fuggy and she could feel the iritation of every thread of the light cotton blouse she wore. Her limbs were locked into place, her back against the wall feeling the osmosis of heat from the bricks; still suffering a formication of insects over her skin as another silence bloated in the close space.
Mac's eyes were clouded panes of glass in a face that had taken on the colour of putty. He had become a damaged structure, and Angell was afraid it would take very little for him to demolish himself from the inside out. The cracks that had started at the crime scene were spreading across him at first sight of the man that had wreaked destruction like a wrecking ball into his team. The CSI stared in undisguised repulsion.
Finally, as he shoved a photograph across the table, Mac's voice rasped, "Remember her?"
The edge of the photograph crumpled as it hit the man's arm. He blinked, looking away at a point on the far wall, staying hunched over the table; a puppet with his strings cut. Angell remembered the other man who had been with him at the hospital. The one they had not caught yet or identified. Her suspicion that they did not have the operator of the crimes in the room surfaced again. They would find him though; she had confidence in herself and her colleagues.
She took her cue and stepped into the gap, "I'll remind you of her name; Rita Franklin. You put a bullet into her head and then returned to the scene to take the evidence of what you'd done. Except you didn't manage to remove every trace of yourself."
A glance at Mac and Angell continued, "You know why you're here. I'll credit you with enough intelligence to know that; three counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, assaults on two officers and a civilian. And that's just for starters. Let's start with Rita though. Why'd you kill her? She someone else who tried to fight back?"
All she had read in Stella's statement only a few hours before fuelled Angell's last question. She knew men like the one in front of her, and every time they slithered across her path with the same story, she felt the same pit of loathing at their actions, "Nice bruise you got there. Want to tell us how you got it?"
Silence, even as she bent into his space, and got the reek of unwashed skin from his face and saw sand coloured stubble graining his face, not quite disguising the fading bruise, "Lost your voice, huh? I'll remind you about that as well. That was where Detective Bonasera hit you wasn't it? Before you hit her back and shot her. How'd that feel? Make you feel good did it?"
His response was an insolent sigh. It choked in her lungs and she had to step away and draw a deep breath of composure.
A look at her, and Mac brought his palms down onto the table, face inches from the man, "I'm going to remind you of Rita again. Take a good look and tell me what you see."
The man said nothing, glanced at the clock and back to the wall..
Mac picked up the photograph with a snap as it quivered in his fingers, "I'll tell you what I see: a young woman in her twenties, the rest of her life to lead. A life you cut short!"
Not a glint of life in eyes like stagnant river water, set too close together in an insipid face. Nameless. Or so he would think. But since his arrest in the early morning, the machines of investigation and identification had whirred into overdrive, delving deep into records and cases long gone cold, turning over the dry soil of evidence. They had found accretions of history and deeds done that they could undo him with. As long as Mac was not undone first.
He held the photograph of Rita in steady hands now. Too steady. She knew, she could see, across the façade of his control there were cracks mazing, and she wondered how long he could hold on.
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Of course he remembered how he got the bruise. Of course he recognised Rita, having had the impression of her face as he held the gun and fired drawn into his mind for the rest of his life. Rich remembered the face of every person whose life he had ended and their portraits hung in his memory; watching him sometimes in the darkest hours when he lay in whatever bed was his for the night, cluttering his dreams. Rita's face was there; Joe's too, along with Jake's and all the others. The last look of horror and shock forever caught, whether he wanted it or not.
And hanging in the duskiest corner of all he tried to forget was Irene's face the last time he had seen it in a terrified backwards glance as he ran from the first life he had taken; Irene's glassing over eyes looking through his and remaining forever. He could see her now and an involuntary shiver raised the hairs on his arms. He could see all of them, including the faces of the two detectives he had not succeeded in killing, forming phantoms in the corners of the room. The room that was taking on the claustrophobia and fust of a mausoleum.
Say nothing. Say nothing. Say nothing…
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The man's arms twitched but his gaze remained fixed in the far corner. Angell could not keep the disgust out of her face as she picked up the photograph of the second victim; the young man in the lake.
Smacking it down in front of him, the image of the body recovered from the water with all the colour from his skin washed away filled her with anger, "Remember this guy? In case you don't, I'll remind you of his name: Joe Delaney, twenty five years old, found in the lake in Central Park, also with a bullet in his head. So what happened, you shoot him first, then head out to find Rita? All in a day's work was it?"
The man's eyes drifted briefly to Angell, and then back to the corner. No more than that. No remorse. No pleasure either, which was something Angell had seen before too many times. The grim satisfaction of the killer, delight taken in the undertaking of death and desire.
From this man there was nothing.
Mac stood breathing deeply. He undid the buttons on his cuffs and in slow deliberate movements, folded over his sleeves. Angell walked around the table. Noting as she passed the uniform the rough breathing of a smoker and a whiff of tobacco.
Spinning on her heels, she stopped suddenly and grabbed the shoulder of the man in the chair, "You killed him, same as you killed Rita. Your bullets, your gun. See, we got a lot of equipment here that can match these things up. Bet you didn't know that did you? I'll tell you what else we found; all those bullets you left matched up: Rita, Joe, your buddy in the car, remember him? We matched them with the bullet you shot Detective Bonasera with, and the one you almost hit Detective Monroe and Detective Flack with. You weren't as smart as you thought, were you? Sooner or later you slip up, get too confident, get careless. And then, bang, we got you!"
Her fist smashed onto the table and she enjoyed the surge of adrenaline, and the miniscule muscular reaction from the suspect.
She stepped back and Mac swung into place, crashing into Angell's last words, wielding another photograph from the file which was rupturing evidence over the table.
"You thought you'd done enough to get rid of all the evidence; killed your partner; burnt up any trace of what we'd collected from the scene; burned his body…"
Angell remained where she was, breathing hard, watching Mac, feeling her pulse beating against her chest. She knew where he was going to go next.
The man sat unmoved.
She pulled in another breath; the air was thickening, the light darkening and clothing the room in subfusc.
Mac's voice was like a lathe across wood, "You thought you'd burned my partner to death in that car too, didn't you? Thinking you could silence her. We know what you did, the evidence you left told us what we needed to know, and Detective Bonasera herself told us the rest. We got it all here in her statement; what you did, what you tried to do. Because she got out!"
A flare this time in the man's eyes, but fire behind Mac's, even as the cracks in him spread a little more into fissures. Angell glanced at the mirrored glass, feeling Flack's eyes burning behind there. Knowing how close they all still were to the moment they found the car on the wasteland with the body inside they had thought was Stella's. Then she swung her head back round to face the man, seeing for a second flames rippling around him and then the illusion was gone.
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Ignoring the basilisk glare of the woman, Rich's memory fell back to the day on the waste ground and the minute he realised the woman with them was still alive. He felt his mouth twist at the mistakes made. Some of his own, he had to acknowledge. He should have made more sure of death. Same with the other detective, the one he had driven the car into. His foot twitched, as it had that day. He should have pressed a little harder on the gas pedal, swerved a little more and hit the other man too…
Too late now though. He had not succeeded in killing either of them; on both attempts. TJ had also failed; the wrong choice of acolyte. He remembered the fury exploding inside the apartment when TJ found out through the lines of communication he had wired through the entire city that the girl in the hospital had failed at death. Rich, not wanting it to be turned on himself, had walked out and left his companion to his rage. It had led him to a night on a couch belonging to an associate who did not ask questions, and then to the events of the morning.
The woman was watching him; the man was watching him. And in the corners, the confines of the room shrank a little more towards him and the faces of the dead and the living moved a little closer.
Say nothing. Say nothing…
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Angell intercepted Mac, challenging the suspect again, anything to provoke some reaction, "We found your shoe print at the scene, matches with the ones you're wearing today, places you there along with the memories of Detective Taylor, Detective Bonasera and myself. Remember the place? Eight days ago?"
No reaction; the man's eyes appeared to have glazed over and had not moved from the corners. But she noticed a glitter of sweat on his top lip, and one hand balled into a fist.
"Come on, don't tell me you've forgotten that day? Must've been pretty memorable, with what, three murders and two attempted murders in less than twenty four hours?" She shook her head, and her hair itched the back of her neck, "Got to be some kind of record. Feel good did it; stealing a police vehicle, abducting and shooting an officer, running another one down, both of whom were just doing their job. Bet you felt a real man didn't you?"
For only a few seconds as she let her breath heave and her eyes bore into the man, Angell slipped into a memory more than twenty years old: she was back in the yard of her elementary school catching sight of a fifth grade classmate held up against the climbing frame by two sixth graders. The terror in the younger boy's eyes reached hers and before she knew it, she was racing across the asphalt, dragging them off, screaming and landing kicks to ankles and punches to noses while her knuckles burned and it felt like she was swallowing glass with every scream, until she was aware of hands pulling her away and back into the school, down the corridor to the principal's office. Then she was sitting amidst the floor polish and pencil lead smell of authority, facing the gaze of Mrs Janowitz who patiently explained to Jessie Angell what she should have done in the circumstances; how she should have called for help; how she should have let someone who was authorised take care of things in the proper way.
Fast forward, and here was Detective Jessica Angell now herself the authorised person; defender of the city, and those who defended it alongside her. All she could see as she looked at the man in the chair were the despicable crimes clinging to his shadow and the face of a friend overshadowing the years she had left behind her.
And all she could feel was the satisfaction and the justice that had coursed through her veins when she had hurt those who had hurt her friend.
Angell looked at Mac, and then she looked through the glass to the invisible eyes of Flack and knew he had seen her. She felt the rage of all them as it skirled round the thickened air and contaminated them. The crime scene rattled through her head again: the silence of Stella's voice; the shriek of tyres; the shouts of Danny.
The silence.
Mac stood over the man; his skin had become marmoreal, veined and pale, "Did that feel good when you drove into him? You like the feel of power as you kept on driving? You want to know what you did to Detective Messer?"
Lids closed over dead eyes and blinked open again. If she looked too closely, Angell had a sudden dread she would fall into treacherous depths. She stepped back; following the steps Mac and she were carefully coordinating; letting him step forward and pick up another photograph, flip it towards the man. It was hard to suppress a flinch at the rawness of Danny's injuries in the harsh flash of a crime image. Mac, she knew, had let no one but himself undertake the task; similarly for Stella's injuries.
The man looked at what was in front of him, and then away.
Mac's breathing was ragged as he moved behind the man and pulled the back of the chair, dragging it away from the table and round so its legs squealed in friction over the floor. The man blinked and a corner of his eye jumped. Angell watched.
"Take a good look! You perpetrated a calculated act of violence against Detective Messer. You could have stopped, but you didn't…" Mac was closing in, his voice granite, "You kept on driving!"
His exterior was crumbling. She did not know how long Mac could keep his construction intact. Foundations shaken with the seismic shifts of the last eight days; rifts spreading uncontrollably. Angell waited and saw Mac reaching for the next photograph.
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Rich's bones juddered as the detective pulled his chair away from the table. The faces inside and outside his head were becoming harder to ignore; eyes and blood from the long dead swarmed in front of his vision and they began to reach him with insubstantial hands.
No way out. They were pushing their fingers inside him, feeling blindly, groping for the words they wanted him to say; stroking his larynx and squeezing his tongue.
He gulped; his lips spasmed, but he fought it.
Say nothing…
But Irene's face was in front of him… It was her fault, all of it, he had only done what he had to, she got what she deserved, got what was coming…
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Angell watched the man's lips move as Mac brought out another image, banged it onto the table, spun the man round again towards it. Stella. The injuries this man had inflicted on her.
Mac's voice was hewn from centuries of injustice as he spoke, "I'll show you what else you did to my detectives. What you did to my partner…"
The man's lips cracked open.
"Her… fault."
Mac moved in a heartbeat and dragged the man to his feet, yanking him up by his collar, his voice devastating, "Don't you dare tell me this was her fault! Every single injury my detectives suffered is your fault! And I'm going to make sure you pay for every single crime you have committed and every single act of violence you have perpetrated against your victims. You hear me? Do you hear me?"
He shook him, and Angell could not move. She was watching the inevitable. He was falling. She could not stop it.
The man's lips moved again, distorting into a grimace even as Mac's hands tightened, "She got… what she deserved…"
She could not stop him.
"Mac!"
"You worthless son of a bitch!"
The roar that erupted from his throat was bricks and mortar crashing down. Mac hurled the suspect against the wall even as Angell and the uniform lunged towards him. Somewhere she heard a door slam.
"No! Mac! Let him go! Let him go!"
Hands were round the man's throat; his feet were dangling off the ground; choking and gurgling were all that could be heard. Angell heard herself shouting; her hands clawing ineffectually at Mac. He was shouting, but she could not hear what he was saying; all she could hear was the sound of a man losing the fight for breath; and the sound of another man losing the fight for justice.
I'd really love to know what you thought of this chapter. Please review and tell me what you think, even if you didn't like it, but equally if you liked it I'd love to know! Thanks, Lily x