Collateral Damage

"I wasn't freaking out that bad," Antonio said in his own defense.

Nicole laughed, "You were so freaking out. I thought you were going to faint."

They were driving Jess's scratched jeep to the hospital to pick her up. It had been eleven hours since she had given birth to a son that she still hadn't seen yet.

"I have to get back to work, but as soon as I get a chance I'll be back to see him," Jess told Rachel as she wheeled her out to the front of the hospital.

"Have you seen him at all yet," Rachel asked, her tone making it known she thought it odd that Jess hadn't bothered to visit her baby in the nicu.

"Yeah. Twice," she lied.

Pollock came by the hospital to say goodbye to Jess, and congratulate her on her child—whom he never found out was probably conceived through crime.

"That guy that came to see you this morning was up there too. And I've seen him a few times. He looks good."

"Mhmm," she replied not interested.

Soon after they reached the ambulance bay Antonio pulled up in the car that he scratched up.

"Look at what he did to my car."

Antonio must have known what his friend was thinking because as soon as he got out of the car he had a defense.

"You were giving birth. I had no other choice."

"I didn't say anything," Jess said.

"Yeah, but you were thinking."

After Antonio and Nicole took her home they went to start their first day of work under the new Assistant Director.

They walked off the elevator to Pollock's old office anticipating meeting their new boss.

"So, you think we're gonna like this guy?" Antonio asked.

"He couldn't be any worse than Pollock—at least I hope not."

"Come in," he called from his office when Antonio knocked.

Nicole opened the door to see a man in his fifties with silver hair sitting behind the desk. He stood up and shook their hands.

"Nice to meet you, Agent Cortez, Agent Scott. I'll be your new Assistant Director Thomas Kemyss. I understand you have a partner…" he looked down at a sheet paper "…Jess Mastriani?"

"She is on maternity leave," Nicole explained. "The doctors don't recommend that she return to work until at least a month from now, but if I know Jess she will be trying to get back through the doors in a week or two."

"I might take her up on that. I read her solve average. I've never been one that believes in paranormal things, but I think she might change that."

"That she will."

"I don't have anything for you to work on now, so I guess you have some free time. What did Pollock usually have you do when there were no cases?"

"Busy work," Nicole said.

"Keeping files straight," Antonio elaborated, "perfecting expense reports we rushed, that kinda thing."

"All right. You can do that, and I'll let you know when we have something."

Jess patiently stayed home for three days doing nothing, but anticipating going back to work. Even when she actually did something it was related to her getting back to work—finding childcare, so she wouldn't have to take any more time off when the baby came home. But enough was enough. She'd allowed her body time to heal. She had been working out, and although she wasn't close to her old weight yet she was ready to be in the office again.

Antonio was looking into a microscope at D.N.A. when Jess came in.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Oh please, like you didn't expect to see me soon. The only reason it took me this long to get back was because I was interviewing sitters for…the baby."

"You still haven't found a name yet, huh?"

"I haven't even thought about it," her honesty surprised even her. "Where's Nicole?"

"In the field. Have you met the new boss?"

"No."

"Thomas Kemyss. He is so much better than Pollock. Very easygoing. I don't think he'll give you any trouble about coming back early."

Nicole came in just in time to hear the end of that. "Go home."

"But she will," he said.

"Nicole-"

"You just gave birth three days ago."

"And I'm fine. It's not like I had surgery or anything. Don't worry I'm not going to do any field work. It's not like I could even if I wanted to. Now I'm going to go meet the new boss."

Jess almost collided with Thomas as she was going through the doorway.

"I was just coming to see you," Jess said as she shook the hand of the man who introduced himself.

"I thought you weren't coming back for weeks."

"I'm ready."

"Good to know. Because we have a case, and we need all the help we can get. This one's a baby."

Thomas's new team was in tow as he walked to the bull pen where there was a photo of a young child, a girl with blond hair and blue eyes.

"She's cute," Nicole said with a smile. "What happened to her?"

"Kidnapped—as far as we know," Kemyss said. "Last night her mother, Melissa Murphy, nineteen, left her with her regular sitter, twelve year old Chelsea Tomlin. When Melissa came back she went in Sarah's room to check on her, and the two year old was gone."

"I assume you are at least planning on staying in while you're here," Nicole said to Jess.

"Deal."

"Then I will go talk to Chelsea, and you can speak with Melissa when she comes in."

Antonio went to investigate baby Sarah's bedroom. Since the babysitter lived in the same apartment building as Melissa and Sarah Nicole rode with him to talk to Chelsea.

"I'll tell you what I've been telling you for three days," Nicole said in response of his inquiring if she'd made a decision about moving in together, "I will think about it. It's a big decision, and I can't just make it in a day."

"I just asked if you're leaning one way or another."

"I'm not. I will tell you as soon as I find out what I want."

Neither one of them said anything outside of business talk all the way to the apartments.

Nicole talked to Melissa in the parking lot for a few seconds. They met as she was on her way to go to the office for questioning. Afterwards Nicole headed to the apartment down the hall—Chelsea Tomlin's.

Chelsea's mother opened the door, and saw Nicole in.

"Hello, Chelsea. I'm Nicole. I'd like to ask you a few questions about Sarah and her mom. Is that okay?"

Chelsea smiled acceptingly.

"Tell me what happened last night."

"Melissa called me like she always does, and asked me if I could watch Sarah. I said yes, so I came over. Sarah was already in bed, so I just watched T.V. until Melissa got back."

"How long was she gone?"

"A few hours, I guess. She wasn't working. She said she just wanted to go out."

"Do you take care of Sarah a lot?"

"Almost every night. Melissa works six nights a week. She's a waitress."

"And you take care of the baby? Don't you go to school?"

"Yeah, but Sarah is always in bed when I come. Melissa just needs someone there, so Sarah isn't alone. I come over at eight, watch T.V. for about an hour, and fall asleep on the couch. Then when Melissa gets home at four I go home. Since we live right down the hall my mom doesn't mind."

"I mind now," Chelsea's mom cut in. "If we've got someone in this neighborhood who can just take a child from their own bedroom running around here I'm certainly not going to have her out of the apartment at four in the morning."

"That's probably a good idea," Nicole said. "So, Chelsea, you never actually saw Sarah last night?"

"No."

"And the windows were unlocked?" Antonio asked a fellow forensic.

"That's what the mother said."

Antonio looked down from the second story window assuming if it was a kidnapper he or she would have had to climb a latter up to the baby's window, take the child, and climb back down with her. It seemed like a long shot.

Jess and Melissa got comfortable in the questioning room, and began to discuss Melissa and her child.

"And where is Sarah's father?"

"I don't know."

"What's his name?"

"I don't know. I met him, slept with him, I never got his number, and he never got mine. I never saw him again, and nine months later I had a daughter."

Throughout the interview Melissa registered reasonable grief, but not as much as Jess thought she should or would.

Melissa's story was about the same as Chelsea's. The questioning took fifty-five minutes, then Jess left her alone in the room.

Jess closed the door from the outside, and suddenly heard crying. It was a child's crying. She looked around her to see where it was coming from when she realized it was only her that heard it. And just as suddenly as it started it stopped.

Antonio left the Murphy apartment with Nicole—she went over there when she was done talking to Chelsea.

"So you don't think she was taken out her bedroom window?" Nicole asked him.

"That's unlikely. The sitter would have heard the girl wake up. You can't climb out a window with a two year old without the kid making some noise."

"So either the mother killed her or Chelsea is lying and knows more—or both."

Jess let Melissa go, and went to her office to write down her findings. Nicole and Antonio got back soon after.

"How'd it go?" Thomas was waiting to ask. He was anxious about his first case in his new position, and with the victim being a child the outcome would reflect twice as strong on him.

Nicole told him that Chelsea never saw Sarah. Antonio told him that he thought it was not likely that the girl was taken through the window. Jess talked about her vision, and said she couldn't tell if Melissa was a grieving mother or responsible for her child's disappearance.

"Okay," Kemyss said trying to maintain a hopeful attitude. "What do we do now?" He had to ask that because he never worked missing person cases as an agent, so everything was new to him.

"Now is the time that we usually think up a theory or theories, and roll with it until it's proven out of the question. In this case it's easy. Our first theory—and so far only one—is Melissa killed her," Nicole said.

"So now we bring her back in for some odd number hours of questioning," Jess added.

Melissa finished her story for the fifteenth time. "And when I came back I gave Chelsea her money, and she left. Then I turned the T.V. off, and went to check on Sarah. That's when I saw she was gone."

Jess heard the crying again, and stepped out of the room. Nicole continued grilling Melissa. Jess made it all the way to Antonio's office before the crying of the child that was only heard by her stopped, and the vision started. She was seeing that same little blond boy in the field.

"I'm glad you have something," Antonio said to her. He could tell she'd come out of a vision.

"I don't think I do. I just saw that same boy I was seeing when I found out I was pregnant. I don't think that has something to do with Sarah. This morning the hospital called me to tell me the baby has jaundice, and asking where I've been. I think I've just been thinking too much about it." Jess brushed off her vision, and went back to the questioning. Antonio took it more seriously than she did, and started looking into it.

"And if you can't even tell me where you went," Nicole was saying to Melissa when Jess came in, "when you went out that sounds bad to me, Melissa. How do I know that baby wasn't already dead, and in your trunk when you called Chelsea?"

"I told you it was some club I've never been at before. I don't remember the name."

"What street is it on?"

"It was dark," Melissa said in gritted teeth. "I don't know."

After several more reruns of her story Antonio popped his head in, and called out Jess and Nicole.

"What's up?"

"I looked into Jess's vision," Antonio said then he looked at Jess. "I think it did mean something. Three years ago the cops questioned Melissa. They suspected she was raped by a kid in her school. One of her friends reported it, and when asked Melissa denied it."

"Wait," Nicole said, "how old is Sarah?"

"Two," Antonio said.

"I know, but how many months?"

"Thirty-three. And the alleged assault took place in March of two-thousand and four."

"That's the exact time Sarah had to have been conceived."

Nicole took the paper Antonio had and she and Jess went back in the questioning room.

"What?" Melissa asked when Nicole and Jess sat down, and didn't say anything.

Nicole slid the paper across the table, and Melissa picked it up.

"So?" she said.

"So this happened right around the time your daughter was conceived," Nicole said.

"I already told you I don't know who Sarah's father is. And as for this, it never happened. It was all a stupid misunderstanding."

Melissa continued to deny she was ever raped, and Nicole and Jess gave up on getting anything out of her. She refused to take a lie detector test, and with no legal grounds to hold her they had to let her go.

Their next task was to bring in the then teenaged boy accused of raping Melissa three years ago. He adamantly denied having anything to do with Sarah, and passed a polygraph.

It was late, and Antonio and Nicole had gone home. Kemyss and Jess stayed behind working on deep backgrounds on Chelsea Tomlin and Melissa Murphy. Melissa was their main focus, but procedure dictated that they had to look into Chelsea's possible involvement also.

"So how'd you decide to join the bureau?" Thomas asked Jess.

She looked up from her computer and files. "It wasn't my idea that's for sure. I was just trying to help, and even after I became an agent I thought it was temporary. Sometimes I still have trouble believing this is my career forever."

"It doesn't have to be," he said closing one record, and opening another.

"I know, but I'd feel…I guess selfish if I ignored the visions, and knew people were in danger, but didn't do anything. I couldn't do that."

"Speaking of those visions, that is really something. How did that come about?"

"Long story," her drifted off tone told him she wasn't interested in talking about that. But not wanting to give him the impression that she wasn't interested in getting to know each other—which was so obviously what that was an attempt to do—she turned the tables on the conversation. "What about you? What made you become an agent, and now the Assistant Director? Congratulations, incidentally."

"Thank you. It's all I've wanted. Ever since I was a boy. And this…Assistant Director. It's almost surreal."

"Excuse me," Jess said.

She was experiencing what she called an audial vision—clues that are heard, but not seen. She had them often, but that was the first time she had three in the same day. She followed the sound of a child crying down the hall ways, and in to the bathroom. As soon as she looked in the mirror that's when she was taken totally into the vision. She saw the boy in the field. The grass around him was dying. Then in a flash she saw Melissa holding up a machete that came down on the child.

"Melissa killed her," Jess said to herself.

In the mirror there were carvings. Letters and numbers that Jess wrote down, and took to the nearest computer. They turned out to be the address to a city park.

It hadn't been easy for Nicole to fall asleep. Her mind was reeling with Antonio's offer, and what she was going to do next to find Sarah. Eventually she fell asleep, but her phone woke her minutes later.

"Hello."

"Hey it's me," Jess said. "I think I know where Sarah is. I'm on my way there now."

Jess gave her the address, and hung up.

The only sound that accompanied Jess's footsteps as she walked around the park was a hooting owl. She searched the perimeter, and all the areas Sarah could have gone unseen for a day. As she was walking past the bathrooms she came across multiple bushes all in a row. That was when she picked up that smell that every law enforcement official is so familiar with, but never gets used to.

She hesitantly combed the bushes with one hand until she saw the blond haired baby that the city had desperately been looking for for going on twenty-four hours.

Jess left as soon as the cops arrived to take over. Nicole was the one who identified Sarah as the child they were looking for officially to the medical examiner.

"How did she die?" the medical examiner was asked by Nicole.

"I can't be sure until I open her up, but it looks like blunt force trauma to the scull and abdomen. In other words, she was beaten to death."

Sarah was put in a body bag, and taken away.

"I guess that's it," Antonio said as they watched the van drive off.

"I guess so."

"You think Melissa did it?"

"I don't know. She had reason to be angry with Sarah, but after two years you would think she would have been able to look at Sarah as Sarah, not her father."

"I guess it doesn't always work like that."

They shared a look that didn't need any words. They both knew what the other was thinking.

While Nicole and Antonio were in their offices signing documents Jess—who had just spent ten minutes scrubbing her hands and putting on gloves and scrubs—was just walking into the nicu. She had never been there before. But it was almost exactly what she imagined it to be.

Almost every baby there had someone by his or her incubator—moms, dads, grandparents, doctors taking blood, and nurses feeding and changing diapers. Some of the parents were crying. Others were quietly reading children's books to their child.

A nurse drew Jess from her thoughts when she pointed her in the direction of her child. He was one of the only babies who was alone.

"His jaundice cleared up, so we took him out of the illumi light."

Jess walked up to the baby that she hadn't seen since the hour he was born. He hadn't grown at all, but looked completely different. He was hooked up to I.V.s. and machines. There was a feeding tube in his stomach.

She slid her hand in through one of the holes, and stroked his tiny hand with her index finger. He opened his eyes, and lifted his hand just enough to wrap it around her finger. The two of them stared at each other for the longest time. He seemed to know exactly who she was, and she couldn't help thinking that he was wondering where she had been. He had the bluest eyes, and when she looked in them she saw someone else. It wasn't James or Colin. It was her father. His blue eyes looked just like the dad she'd lost three years ago.

"Wow," she whispered to herself, "this is amazing."

That moment would mark the first time she ever felt love for her son. Her feelings were something she was unprepared for. Sarah's death was a sad occurrence, and she mourned for the child, but at the same time she felt just as sorry for Melissa too. While she stayed in that park looking at a child who was killed before she ever really got a chance to experience life, a child who was only collateral damage to a horrid crime, the only thing she had in her head was the baby she had given birth to. An innocent soul under the same circumstances as Sarah. Being blamed for something he had nothing to do with. Whether she was staring at the son of a man that she loved or a man who violated her was no fault of his. And she chose right then and there never to feel that it was.

"Jess," a voice from behind said. It was Nicole.

"How did you know I was here?"

"Lucky guess. I figured this is where you would go after seeing Sarah Murphy's body. How is he?"

"He's good. He had some set backs, but he's back on the road to recovery."

"He's not the only one."

It was the first time Nicole had seen Jess speak in reference to her son and smile. It was the first time she was present for a conversation about him, and not ignoring the topic or trying to change it. It was a relief to Nicole who—although she really doubted it—worried that her partner's baby would meet the same fate as Sarah—the victim of a mother who never dealt with her rape, and finally snapped; taking out all her anger on the product of it.

"I have a name for him. I'm naming him after my father," Jess said. "Joseph Michael Mastriani."

"That's a nice name, Jess."

"He has the same eyes. I was worried of what…or who I would see when I looked in his eyes, but this…I never expected this. I am so relieved."

Jess spent the night in the nicu holding the hand of her child. Upon coming to the hospital she didn't expect to fall in love with the baby she was visiting, but she had. And although she still opted against a paternity test, by morning she knew the results of it wouldn't matter anyway.