A/N 1: Here's the next chapter, many thanks to afrozenheart412 for the review, and to the others who put this on alert. :) Apologies for the *huge* delay, mostly due to moving house and a lack of internet. I hope you enjoy it ^_^
Ill-fated choices
Ch2 – Completely Unprofessional
The two black SUVs pulled up next to a line of squad cars, lights still flashing. It was quite late, and seeing anything from the crime scene was next to impossible – the spider-web cracks all across the plate-glass window made sure of that.
Five Crime Scene Investigators climbed out of the cars, kits in hand, surveying the scene. Flack quickly briefed them.
"Anonymous 911 call, from an untraced cell phone. There are at least 4 bodies, possibly more. My guys are canvassing the area, see if we can find anyone who may have seen what happened. It's not pretty in there, I can tell you. Several of my guys – old timers, too – couldn't stay. I think one nearly fainted." All five nodded, aware that whatever they were expecting probably wasn't as bad as the actual scene.
"Everyone ready?" asked Mac.
More nodding, then Danny pushed open the door and stepped inside. He almost stopped in his tracks, but moved enough to let the others in.
"Dear God. What happened here?" Sheldon asked no one in particular.
No one replied, too busy trying to mentally process the carnage.
The scene before them appeared to come straight out of a sick twisted, horror movie, except much more real. Mac glanced first to his right, to see how Stella was coping, then to his left, to see Danny and Hawkes. All of them were stunned, completely speechless at the brutality before them.
Three girls, about 15 years old, lay in various spread-eagled positions across the benches and floor. Each had been shot several times in the chest, and once in the head. Each body was lying in a pool of their mingling blood, Beside the counter lay another girl, this one about 18, wearing a uniform and bloodstained name tag. She, too, had been shot multiple times. A trail of bloody footprints led to the restroom door and back, and a trickle of blood was seeping under the door.
The cloying, rusty smell of blood hung in the air, suffocating them. Stella heard a retching sound behind her, followed by shallow, rapid breathing. She turned around, taking a moment to spot Lindsay crouched on the floor, leaning on her hands with too-bright eyes and tear-tracks down her face. She looked clammy, and her skin had turned a pasty grey-green colour.
"Hawkes," Stella whispered, "can you take Lindsay outside, make sure she's okay?" As she mentioned it, Mac and Danny turned around too, noticing Lindsay's state for the first time, stretching their shocked expressions further.
"There's a bucket in the trunk of my car," Mac told Sheldon quietly.
Hawkes led Lindsay outside, quickly retrieving the bucket then leading Lindsay down a side alley towards the delivery entrance of the diner, away from the prying eyes of the crowd that had gathered.
Unable to keep control any longer, Lindsay collapsed to her knees, leaning on the edge of the bucket, and threw up until there was nothing left in her stomach. As she retched and sobbed, Hawkes held her hair away from her face, changing into professional mode. He said nothing, merely watching (and trying not to inhale) as Lindsay reacted to whatever had set her off.
After she finished throwing up and her dry-heaving had ceased, she simply curled into a ball, ignoring the state of the alley, and its effect on her clothes: the small space looked bad, and smelled worse. Gently, the doc checked her vitals, noting the elevated heart rate, quick, shallow breathing and slower responses to stimuli. As she started to calm down a bit, Hawkes worked on a course of action.
"Lindsay, I'm going to ask Flack to take you to the hospital, get them to check you over, and treat you for shock. Is that alright?" She nodded, aware that she was being talked to like a child, but not caring anyway; she didn't feel very grown up at all; she'd just been knocked straight back to fifteen years old, the pain raw and fresh again, and the old wounds and scars ripping open.
"I've been there before, you know," she told Hawkes. "Just... not there."
He looked at her, wanting to press her, but deciding against it – she was too fragile to deal with difficult questions.
Hawkes took her back to the brightly lit street and scanned the area within the cordon, searching for Flack. When Don saw them, he hurried over. Noting Lindsay's state, he addressed his questions to Hawkes instead.
"Hey, Doc, what's going on?"
"I wish I knew, Don. But I have a... favour to ask. Could you take Lindsay to a hospital? I want them to check her over and treat her for shock. I'd go myself, but I suspect I'm needed here."
"Sure. I'll text when something happens, and I'll tell you what they say," Flack reassured him.
"Thanks Don, I owe you one." Sheldon smiled tiredly, aware that it would probably be a while before he slept again, and took Lindsay over to a parked squad car. "Hang in there, Linds," he told her as Flack started the car.
He turned to go back to the crime scene.
The door chimes tinkled as he entered, alerting everyone else to his reappearance. Stella looked up from the evidence she was bagging in her position near one of the bodies.
"How is she?" Stella asked.
"She'll be okay, but I sent her to a hospital with Flack to get treated for shock, just in case." He turned to Mac. "What do you want me to do?"
"Well, no one has investigated the restroom yet, and it looks like there's another body. Can you deal with that?"
Sheldon nodded, pushing his worry, anger and disgust to the back of his mind as he picked his way across the floor to the bathrooms. Cautiously, he opened the door, trying to avoid compromising any evidence, and rapidly discovered that Mac was right: there was another body. Another young, teenage girl, black haired and with just one bullet hole, straight between her eyes. The body was awkwardly positioned – curled roughly into the foetal position, but twisted and strained, as if the only things holding the body in its position were luck and the onset of rigor mortis.
Danny's voice broke the carefully maintained silence.
"Mac? You might want to come and have a look at this." Everyone finished with the piece of evidence they were dealing with and joined him near the deliveries entrance in the store room. Danny handed Mac what looked like a shoe box, at first glance. "Open it. You'll want to see what's inside," he urged. Mac complied, lifting the lid carefully so he didn't damage anything. A phone beeped twice, ruining the tense atmosphere – Sheldon checked his, apologised to everyone else, and put it back in his pocket.
Inside the shoebox was a model of what was clearly another diner. Four small female dolls lay in pools of dried red paint: three around a table, one by the register. A fifth was in the bathroom, curled up under the sink, but there was no pseudo-blood. By everyone's reckoning, she was alive.
"Past crime or future crime?" Stella asked.
"No idea," Danny replied, as Hawkes and Mac continued to stare at the box like it might contain the answers to life, the universe and everything, if only they could think at it enough. There was a short pause while everyone considered it again, until Stella broke the silence.
"There has to be a connection somewhere, to something," she began, before Flack interrupted by walking in.
"Playing with a dolls house. Really?" he asked, with just the barest hint of a grin.
"Nope, we're playing with evidence. Come see this," Danny told him.
Flack picked his way over, trying to avoid disturbing anything. He looked carefully for a minute, then at Mac.
"What are the main differences between this crime scene that puzzle?" he asked, pointing at the dolls.
"As far as we can tell, most of the décor, and the girl in the restroom – in this puzzle, she seems to be alive. Here, she's dead." He thought for a moment, his mind running through possibilities like a chess grandmaster. "That has to be our clue. We need to find out if anything like this has happened before: a diner shooting, quadruple homicide. Exact circumstances are necessary for this to work. If we can't find anything, then it's a dead end until we get new evidence. If it works, then we need to find that girl and see what she can tell us." The team nodded and dispersed, ready to finish processing the scene.
"Hawkes, could I have a word?" Mac asked.
"Sure," he answered. Mac led him to a quiet corner of the diner, away from everyone as the bodies were moved to the coroner's van and Danny and Stella packed up their kits and the evidence.
"How's Lindsay?" It was clear that Mac was truly interested, not just asking out of courtesy or professional interest.
"Well, Flack told me they've treated her for shock, and that they're keeping her in overnight for observation. From what he could tell them, they decided that she shouldn't be left alone tonight. Well, I think that was actually a psychologist's decision, but that doesn't make much of a difference."
"Ah. I see." His reply was short and to the point. "I also want to ask your advice, both as a medical professional and personally. Do you think I should take Lindsay off the case? There's no protocol that deals with this sort of thing, so I'd like your advice." Sheldon thought for a few moments.
"Yes and no. I'd advise that you don't take her off the case completely, but take her out of the front-line bits – processing evidence is one thing, but talking to parents, witnesses or suspects is another thing entirely, and we can't be certain of how she'd react in those circumstances."
"Alright. Thanks." Mac smiled briefly at Hawkes, before turning to go back to his kit.
"No problem," Hawkes told him.
As Stella and Danny left, Mac's cell phone beeped. He took it out and looked at it – it was a text from Lindsay. "Sorry for being completely unprofessional today." Mac looked at it for a moment, then put his cell straight back into his pocket..
He and Hawkes left the diner in silence, the prospect of triple shifts ahead of them silencing any conversation and negating any relief that leaving such a prison afforded.
Back at the lab, Mac sent Stella and Danny home to rest – it would be a long case, and they needed a few people to be fresh and alert in the morning. Before he and Hawkes started on the evidence, he replied to Lindsay's text. "Glad to hear you're doing well. Will you be in in the morning?"
A/N 2: So, here's where everything actually begins. Like I'm sure I said before, I've never written for CSI:NY before, so I'm hoping I've got them all in character.
The plan that I have suggests that there will be approximately 6 chapters, including the prologue, so 4 more to go :) I have a good feeling about finishing this one, despite my previous record with multi-chapter fics.
Comments and criticisms are welcomed, and anything which isn't American might be British, or might be a mistake – feel free to tell me about any of this.
Word count:1840ish