What The Eyes Can't See

Chapter 145: You're always there like a ghost in my dreams

Taylor awoke the following morning with a groan. She hadn't slept well at all.

'Nightmares?' Flack asked as if reading her mind.

Taylor rolled over and found him with his head propped up, watching her. 'How did you know?'

'When you can't sleep, I can't sleep,' he shrugged.

Taylor frowned, wondering when he had started knowing her so well. And how long had he been watching her sleep

'Relax,' he told her, again, as if knowing what she was thinking. 'You tossed and turned so much, you kept me awake all night.'

'Oh,' Taylor mouthed, suddenly feeling silly.

'So what were you dreaming about?' he asked her.

Taylor sighed. 'I was being chased by a ghost who was calling me Mary Sue. I don't even know who Mary Sue is, but I can tell you, I don't like her,' she admitted. The rest of the dreams she kept to herself. For some reason she couldn't share that she spent the rest of the night having the same, reoccurring dream she'd been having for weeks – of being chased down a black, endless corridor. 'It seems silly now.'

Flack leant over and kissed her forehead. 'Well, if it makes you feel any better, should you ever meet this Mary Sue character, I'll lock her up for you.'

Taylor smiled up at him, stretching her arms around his torso, and then, feeling the chill set in, shut her eyes, snuggling her head under Flack's chin.

'Not that I'm complaining, but where's the affection suddenly coming from?'

'Can't a girl snuggle with her boyfriend in a morning?'

'Nothing to do with the fact there's a couple of ghosts in the room?'

Taylor peeked an eye open and glanced up. 'I forget you can see them,' she grumbled. 'It makes it harder to ignore them,' she added, raising her head and glaring at Maddy and Michelle. 'How did you know there were two of them?'

Flack rolled his eyes and sat up, 'Morning, Maddy.' He looked back at Taylor after Maddy had smiled brightly at him. 'I can see Maddy. And you're being asked for help by someone who keeps calling you Mary Sue. I put two and two together.' He shrugged, 'there is a reason I'm a detective, you know.'

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'Morning, Kendall,' Taylor greeted the lab tech automatically, lost in thought.

'You alright, Taylor?' Kendall asked her.

'I was looking for Sheldon,' Taylor muttered. She stopped and looked thoughtfully at Kendall. 'How did you know what FanFiction was?'

Kendall shrugged. 'I'm a member. I write stories for Xena: Warrior Princess. I love that show.'

Taylor cocked her head. 'Really?'

Kendall nodded. 'I got introduced to FanFiction back in,' she frowned, ''04.'

'What does OC stand for?'

Kendall grinned. 'Original character. The author will create a character and interject them into the cast.'

'Why would you do that?' Taylor asked, taking mental notes.

Kendall shrugged. 'Lots of reasons. You've just got to be careful he or she doesn't become a Mary Sue. Or…' Kendal frowned, 'there's a male version of it – a Stu, rather than a Sue, but I can't… Why are you looking at me like that?'

Taylor took a step back as she caught her expression in the glass wall opposite – she looked like she was about to pounce on Kendall. 'No reason. Sorry. But I could hug you! So, where did you say Sheldon was?'

Still looking slightly worried, Kendall pointed down the corridor. 'The morgue, the last time I checked. The autopsy results had come in.'

Taylor smiled and headed downstairs. She poked her head around the door and spotted Hawkes deep in conversation with Sid… over Michelle's open chest… and figured it was something she didn't need a close up of. Instead she headed outside to the loading bay – the heat hitting her as soon as she left the cool refuge of the morgue – and found Louie, smoking.

'You're never actually going to quit that, are you?' she smiled at him, dropping down beside him.

Louie exhaled slowly, blowing a cloud of smoke into the air. 'Nope.'

'How's your class going?' she asked, leaning back against the wall.

'Fine. How's Sonny?' Louie shot back at her, looking straight ahead.

Taylor pursed her lips. 'You know, I only saw him the once and I've not heard from since.'

Louie took a final drag of his cigarette and flicked it away. 'Yet.'

Taylor frowned. 'I don't see why he'd contact me again. It's not like I can do anything for him.'

Louie finally turned his head and looked at her. 'He asked you to see him. He wouldn't have done that if he didn't think he could get something from you.'

'You're wrong, Louie,' Taylor told him, still frowning. 'There's no reason for either of us to have any contact again.'

Louie sighed and got to his feet. 'I really hope I'm wrong Taylor, but leopards don't change their spots, and Sonny won't change his contacts.'

Taylor watched him go with a frown.

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'What are you doing out here?'

Hawkes' voice broke Taylor from her thoughts and she looked up to see the CSI staring down at her, amusement tugging at the corners of his lips.

Taylor smiled up at him. 'I came down to see you, but I didn't want to witness the autopsy.'

'The ghost give you something new?' Hawkes asked, sitting down beside her.

Taylor shook her head. 'Nope, but Kendall did.'

Hawkes stared at her waiting patiently for her to develop the statement further.

'An original character is someone that the author makes up. And a Mary Sue is a character who is portrayed in overly idealized ways, lacked noteworthy or realistic flaws, and primarily functioned as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors.'

Hawkes blinked. 'Did you learn that to heart?'

Taylor rolled her eyes. 'Michelle combined the two in her story. And killed her. Only instead of a coat hanger, it was a Manolo… a shoe. A boot, actually.'

'So how does that help?'

Taylor took a deep breath and then shrugged. 'Not a clue. I was hoping you could develop the theory.'

Hawkes grinned, ready to respond but was cut short by his pager. 'That's Adam,' he told her, reading the screen. 'I guess he has something.'

He got to his feet, holding out a hand to help Taylor up, which she accepted, and the pair headed up to the lab.

'What do you have?' Hawkes asked as the two walked into the lab and found Adam and Kendall pouring over a computer.

'So, I hacked into Michelle's FanFiction-'

'Ahem,' said Kendall loudly, pretending to clear her throat.

Adam flushed. 'So, Kendall hacked into Michelle's FanFiction account.'

'And?' Taylor asked.

Adam shrugged. 'Nothing.'

Kendall pushed Adam out of the way so that the chair rolled to the other side of the room. 'I also read a lot more of her emails.' She brought up the web page. 'I skipped over the review alerts. It's the PM's that are interesting. Especially the ones from iluvmr.big.'

Taylor frowned. 'Hang on. The same iluvmr.big who wrote Carrie's Little Sister.'

Kendall and Adam both stared at Taylor with raised eyebrows. 'Huh?' Adam asked.

Taylor shook her head. 'Never mind. I don't want to make your eyes bleed.'

Adam and Hawkes shared a look of confusion while Kendall grinned. 'That bad?' she asked Taylor.

Taylor nodded solemnly. 'Sadly, yes.'

'I take it by PM, you mean private messages – it's not some FanFiction code for something else?' Hawkes asked, thoughtfully.

Kendall nodded.

'So what's in these private messages?' Hawkes asked.

Kendall clicked on one of the highlighted ones and brought it up. 'Thankfully, it has the message conversation in it.'

Hawkes and Taylor leant in to read the message.

'She says that this iluvmr.big was plagiarizing her work,' Hawkes said as he read her work.

'May I?' Taylor asked Kendall. Kendall nodded and moved aside. 'So, I spent the majority of the night on this FanFiction website, and let me tell you, it's addictive,' Taylor explained as she pulled up said website and finding Michelle's bio page. 'Michelle has been writing a Sex and the City fiction under the pen name Manolos In The City. It's actually really good,' she added as she pulled up the page.

'You read it all?' Hawkes asked, surprised.

'Like I said, I was on this virtually all night,' Taylor nodded. 'Anyway, the story is really good up until chapter 77. Not that it goes bad, but that's where she starts talking about someone stealing her work. At which point she brings in a new character, and this character, "Helen", who eventually Carrie kills because she tries to steal both Big and her job away from her. Oh, and Carrie gets away with it.'

'That makes sense, because at first, the PM's from iluvmr.big are about how wonderful Helen is,' said Adam, bringing up one of the emails.

'Yeah, but this is what I don't get. This Helen is, well,' Taylor frowned. 'Perfect. She's graduated from a top college, top of her class, she's gorgeous, all of Carrie's friends love her, her editor loves her, Big loves her!' Taylor sat back, scrolling up and down the chapter page without reading it. 'I mean, judging from the emails, Helen is actually a dig at Helena in iluvmr.big's story. So why would she make her perfect?'

Kendal grinned. 'I can answer that. She made her a Mary Sue.'

'But a Mary Sue is perfect?' Taylor shrugged, still not understanding.

'Exactly,' Kendall agreed. 'Well, perfect apart from her tragic past. But calling a character a Mary Sue is not a good thing. It's insulting.'

'So this Mary Sue called Helen is actually a dig at her?' Hawkes asked.

'Yup,' Kendall clarified.

'But even so,' Hawkes frowned, 'surely the there would be more motive for Michelle to kill her plagiarizer?'

Taylor shrugged. 'I'd be pissed if someone stole my work, but I wouldn't go so far as to stab her in the eye with a coat hanger.' She cocked her head and stared at the ceiling in thought. 'Actually, I wouldn't stab someone with a coat hanger if they based a character on me and turned her into a Mary Sue… I'd be a little upset. But I wouldn't kill someone.'

'Well that's reassuring to know,' Angell laughed as she joined them in the lab. 'What's a Mary Sue?'

Hawkes quickly filled Angell in on what Kendall, Adam and Taylor had put together. Angell pulled out her notebook. 'What did you say iluvmr.big was called?'

'Roxanne,' Taylor responded.

Angell frowned. 'No surname?'

Kendall shrugged at her. 'The internet is full of wierdos. I don't put my full information on there.'

Jen glanced at her. 'It's not that. There's a Roxanne Helena Anderson who works at Nu Style Magazine where Michelle used to work.'

Taylor quickly flicked back to iluvmr.big's bio page. 'It says here that she's working at a fashion magazine.'

Angell nodded. 'I'll bring her in.' She quickly turned an left.

Taylor was about to leave herself when the two ghosts reappeared.

'Mary Sue.'

Taylor forced a smile at the newly dead (adding a scowl at Maddy, who was all but drooling over Sheldon) and pulled said CSI out of the room.

'What's the matter?' Sheldon asked her.

'It's this Roxanne girl – Michelle's killer,' Taylor told the doctor. 'But it's not going to seem like it.' She sighed. 'I know that I haven't explained it well, but I know it's Roxanne.'

Sheldon nodded. 'Okay.'

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Taylor sat staring in disbelief at the woman in the interview room. If Sex and the City was ever going to use iluvmr.big… Roxanne's… story in the show (assuming they were ever going to bring it back to the screen), it was clear who Roxanne saw as playing herself.

Five feet, probably seven inches, brown hair with blonde highlights, and what could possibly be considered "aguamarine" eyes – Roxanne, was, without a doubt, Helena.

And Taylor was pretty certain Helena was also Helen.

The more she thought about it, the mores she didn't like Mary Sues.

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