Fic - One Of These Days Pts. 1-4 [CSI:NY]

[violet-indiana.livejournal.com]

Hi.

This is my first post to this forum, hope it's ok.

This fic has been quite a labour of love, and is becoming quite an epic, so please be gentle with it.

It's ongoing at the moment, so here are the first four parts, with more to follow soon, hopefully. 

Thanks go out to my beta on CSIfiles, never a promise, who has done a fantabulous job with the concrit and general support. Also to girl of aegean and others who were kind enough to comment even though my fic caused some problems with the pg-13 meter...

Also, have to give some credit to sleep_not, who paid me the compliment of saying my fic inspired her to abandon Grissom et al and watch NY for the very first time.

Title: One of These Days
Author: violet indiana (violet_indiana)
Category: CSI: NY, gen
Rating: R (Quite intense, warnings for violence and disturbing themes dealing with pregnancy. If anyone has any major issues with either of these, I really advise them not to read.)
Disclaimer: All characters are owned by Alliance Atlantis and were created by Anthony Zuiker, Carol Mendelsohn and Ann Donahoe. I mean them no harm. Title comes from Pink Floyd.
Summary: The race to find the killer, becomes the race to save a life. 
A/N: I can't work out how to link this fic back to my lj, so had to repost the whole thing again here. If anyone is able to share the secret of how to do this, I'd be eternally grateful. The FAQ's really don't seem to help...

1.

The last of the day's sunlight flittered through the gently swaying blinds of the classroom window, causing the horizontal shadows to dance over the empty desks before her. Evie Sutherland relished the peace of the room, drinking in the silence and solitude that the soft snick of the door closing had heralded. Allowing the mass of notes on the desk to slide out of focus, she gave herself a moment's grace to recover from the evening's various traumas. She hated meeting with parents, feeling torn between some sort of insane loyalty to the children to defend them, no matter what problems they had, yet feeling obliged to be as truthful as possible. Coupled with the argumentative parents who refused to believe anything negative about their child, it had been one of the most stressful Parent's Evenings she'd ever had to conduct. At least the ordeal was over for another year, the end of term drawing deliciously near. Through the glass partition at the end of the room, she could see Martha finishing up her appointments for the night, the couple seeming receptive to whatever spiel Martha was giving them. Sighing, Evie seized the opportunity and decided to get out of the school while she still could.

Grabbing her coat from the radiator where she'd hung it over twelve hours ago, she scooped up her bag and stood up, her back cracking satisfactorily at finally been relieved from being in the same position for too long. Surveying the papers that cluttered her desk, she swept them all into the folder, and carelessly added it to the things she needed to take with her. Smiling in satisfaction, she turned the lights out, realising for the first time how dark it actually was getting. Rapping on the window of Martha's room and waving goodbye, she stepped out into the corridor, and followed it to the entrance, already daydreaming about the ice cream waiting for her in the apartment.

The one flaw to her plan of the perfect getaway, she realised too late, was the small matter of the car keys, which were conspicuous in their absence. Dumping the contents of her bag on the ground next to the car, she sifted and searched, before resignedly acquiescing to her doomed fate never to leave this place. Kicking her car wheel in frustration, she gathered everything back up and went back into the school, nearly driven to a desperate scream as she forgot the entrance code in her frustration.

Striding down to her classroom, she slammed the door behind her making the glass partition wobble in its frame. Brought back to some semblance of normality by the guilt of been responsible for it's possible destruction, she checked the window, noticing for the first time the absence of anyone in Martha's class, yet seeing her colleague's coat and bag still on the coat hook where they were before. Assuming Martha had gone to the bathroom, Evie shrugged the mystery off, and resumed her search for the keys, slapping the lights on and pulling the drawers in her desk out and unceremoniously tipping them on the surface of the table. As she checked the floor around her chair, a glint of silver behind the radiator drew her attention. Grasping the blackboard ruler, she began to try and gradually pull them up. Finally victorious, she grabbed at the hot metal, wincing before moving to take the more temperate plastic fob. Looking at the clock, she saw with dismay that she was now half an hour behind schedule. Scowling, she double-checked everything and satisfied she could finally leave, set about doing that.

Yet Martha had yet to return to the classroom. Feeling that something was slightly amiss, she pulled the sliding glass door across and entered the room.

"Martha?"

The first thing she noticed was the claustrophobic smell that permeated every molecule in the room. It seemed to deaden the question before it even left her lips. Thick and cloying, it was disturbingly reminiscent of blood, and with her adrenaline pumping, Evie's imagination immediately leapt to the most horrific scenarios. None of them quite prepared her for what greeted her though.

Martha Bixler lay on her back, a great gash bisecting her pregnant stomach. Blood was pooled everywhere. Struggling to stifle her stomach, Evie couldn't help but think about the baby that had been growing inside her friend's womb for the last eight months. An attack like this had to cause a miscarriage, if it didn't kill Martha outright that is. That realisation sent her mind into blind panic, so much so that at first she didn't notice Martha's eyelids flutter briefly. Quickly bending she put her hand on her friend's neck, desperately trying to find a pulse. After several attempts, she finally felt one.

The realization that Martha wasn't dead motivated her legs to steady themselves enough for movement. With the smell chasing her from the terrible scene behind her, she was away. Running into the corridor, she raised her hand to her mouth in a vain attempt to stop her retching throat carrying out its threat. Pelting to the secretary's office, she grabbed the phone from the desk, though her hands were shaking so much she could barely dial. Stammering to the person on the other end of the line, she was unaware someone else was in the room until something sharp entered her back.

As her body slumped, she thought she could vaguely hear the muffled cry of a baby over the sounds of the operator coming from the now abandoned handset. With her last effort at consciousness, she turned her head in time to see a shadowy blur flicker briefly in the doorway, before closing her eyes.

2.

As Danny Messer drove up to the site of his latest assignment, he had a strange foreboding about the situation. Although he had been told very little in the brief phone call from Mac that had commanded him here, the fact that almost everyone available had been put straight onto the case made him think he wasn't going to have an early night tonight.

Today had been his day off, and he had made intricate plans to make it up to the friends he'd been unable to honour with his presence previously. Soon, he feared he'd have no friends left, and he had spent the drive over explaining to numerous voices that were at the very limits of their patience, why exactly tonight was suddenly no good, begging for a rain check. They eventually, wearily, conceded that his job came first. It always did. So rearrangements were made - rearrangements of rearrangements that would probably never be honoured.

In front of him sat Harrison Elementary School, one of the most exclusive schools on the Upper East Side. It was the kind of school that parents put their children on the waiting list for as soon as they were conceived. In fact, they were probably put on the list as soon as their parents got together just on the off chance they'd have kids, the competition to enrol was that fierce. Killing the engine, he noticed the numerous cars that filled the car park, most of them official vehicles. The flashing lights combined to illuminate the area so much it almost looked like daytime. Albeit one lit by a blue and red sun. Something very big happened here.

His mobile began to ring, persistently demanding his attention. Recognising it wasn't a ring tone he had ascribed to any of his colleagues he chose to ignore it, a task he was finding increasingly easy to do these days. He opened the door and let the cacophony of noise flood into his airspace. The fraught and tense atmosphere that shrouded the area jarringly juxtaposed the familiar banality of the car park. Entering the cool night air, he couldn't suppress a shiver. He was at a loss as to whether it was merely his body's reaction to the change in temperature, or one borne of the anticipation of starting the case. As he pulled his equipment bag from the passenger side of the car, he noticed movement out the corner of his eye.

"It's gonna be a hard day's night."

Danny smiled in greeting at the approaching figure of Detective Don Flack, who had his notepad out ready to fill the CSI in on the crime.

"Is it really that bad?"

Flack just smiled sardonically and began to read.

"Evangeline Sutherland. Twenty-five. Stabbed in the back in the school secretary's office. She's at the Emergency Room now. Looks like a collapsed lung at best. She was rushed into surgery, so when the docs find anything, we'll know about it. Stella's there, sitting it out."

Danny closed the car door.

"All this just for a stabbing? Mac made it sound like another Columbine."

He immediately regretted saying this as Flack's smile tightened into a grimace, the humour completely gone from his eyes.

"There's more isn't there?"

Flack flipped the page and finished his briefing.

"Martha Bixler. Thirty-one. She suffered massive blood loss and was DOA. She was eight months pregnant, Danny. The doctors couldn't find the baby. Preliminary report from the hospital is the foetus was forcibly taken from the womb."

As Danny absorbed this news, he let his eyes wander over to the entrance of the school, where a cluster of uniformed officers disconsolately stood guard, watching the growing crowd huddled at the school gates.

"Couldn't find the baby? Are you serious?"

Flack nodded, and followed Danny's gaze.

"Seems someone literally cut the baby from her stomach. Once the EMT's started to examine her…"

He trailed of, looking back to his notes as if to find less distressing information he could give. Danny couldn't find his voice as Flack's words started a vivid, nightmarish daydream of knives hacking into stomachs.

"Dispatch received a 911 call from the secretary's office at about quarter to nine, from a hysterical female who was cut off before they could ascertain what she was trying to report."

Danny switched back to Flack, studying the other man's face..

"You think Evangline Sutherland was the one to make that call?"

Meeting Danny's eyes, Flack nodded and sighed.

"Mac thinks she found the body and tried to raise the alarm. It had been Parent's Evening, and from what we can gather, they were pretty much the last teachers in the building."

Danny quickly thought of the implications, and saw the only possibility.

"So she could have seen the perp too? They could have stabbed her to shut her up."

A shout drew the two men's attention from any response Flack might have been about to give. From the entrance, Mac Taylor was making his way to where they still stood. Striding purposefully across the tarmac, his face was hardened and stoic. Danny had to admit that he was more than a little intimidated. He and Mac had had run-ins in the past, and Mac Taylor in a bad mood was not something to be faced lightly.

Mac appraised his two colleagues. Having spent half an hour at the scene already, he was anxious to get moving.

"Danny, I need you to get in there and start processing the main crime scene with Hawkes. We need to get as much evidence we can find as quickly as we can. There's a clock ticking on this one. We need to find the child before it's too late"

He began to lead the two back to the school entrance he had appeared from, and Danny immediately fell into step with his superior.

"You think the kid's still alive?"

Mac considered the question and stopped to look Danny in the eye.

"Martha Bixler was over 32 weeks. Babies born premature at that age are usually able to sustain themselves without much assistance. We are therefore going to assume the child survived the attack."

With that, Mac turned to nod at the uniforms that opened the door for them and proceeded into the building. Following, Danny's thoughts were a maelstrom as they churned over everything he'd been told. Ten minutes ago, he had been completely unaware of teachers stabbed in the back, and of babies missing from their mother's wombs. Now it was all he could think about. He felt an empathetic anger rise, attempting to overcome his rationality as he imagined the horrific and terrifying scene waiting for him. Flack moved closer to him and put a restraining arm on his own, as if sensing Danny's growing bewildered animosity at the crimes committed. As the warm heat of the building's central heating hit him, he managed to focus. This had become a case not about the end of a mother's life, but about the preserving the life of a baby.

3.

Popcorn crackled under Lindsay Monroe's feet as she made her way down the too narrow row of seats toward the prone corpse, which was her intended destination. Slumped unnaturally in his chair, his open mouth gaped open to reveal the red meat he had been chewing as he expired. The congealing tomato sauce on the hotdog clenched in his rigid hand gave off a faintly sickly sweet smell that made Lindsay wrinkle her nose slightly. A nervous cough behind her indicated the manager of the cinema was still present.

"How long do you anticipate you'll be, Detective Monroe?"

Focused entirely on the body, she didn't answer immediately, though she could hear him fidget with the clipboard he had been holding as he had shown her into the screen. For some reason, he irritated her beyond belief. She was eager to show Mac that she could handle a important scene like this on her own, especially given the fact that she had to handle it, whether she liked it or not. She knew how important it was the others got on with what they were doing. She would hate to be an interruption.

However, Paul Allison was making it as hard as possible for her. The cinema she had been called out to was a popular multiplex, and Mr. Allison wasn't someone who she thought should necessarily be in such a stressful place. He especially didn't take kindly to change, it seemed. It had taken him nearly 20 minutes to cancel the following performance of the film; with him failing to acknowledge someone dead in one of his screens was an adequate reason. Added to this his refusal to accept she needed to process the entire area, not just the corpse itself, meaning the screen was off limits to everyone. The words "crime scene" meant nothing to him if it messed up his game plan for the day. He had demanded at first that she keep to the turnover time between showings to do a complete assessment of the entire screen. A screen, she thought with grim humour that had been sold out its 250-seat capacity. She really didn't have the time to keep up appearances and at least pretend niceness to him. So she went with curt sarcasm instead.

"I'm not sure, Mr. Allison. It's really up to this gentleman here. How much he's able to tell me to help make finding out what happened to him easier."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves, snapping them on her hands while turning to face the man behind her.

"You could help the process by directing the officer outside to the usher who discovered the body, and by making the cinema as available to my investigation as I require. This is a crime scene now, remember?"

He opened his mouth to begin the argument she thought they had resolved all over again, but she fixed him with a challenging stare and he soon closed it again.

Sensing she was finished talking and that his presence was no longer required, he finally got the idea and scuttled out of the screen.

Breathing in the stale air that smelt of popcorn and musty seats to try and regain some sort of calm, she made her way back to her kit and got her torch out. With a long task ahead of her, she decided to return to body and begin there.

He was a odd looking man. He was massively overweight - and Lindsay noticed with disgust, had extremely pungent odour which she guessed to be a composite of his own natural smell, and the artificial body sprays he had used to attempt to cover it up. His face was pock marked and pinched - it was like facial parts from several different people had been randomly stuck on him, almost like a photo fit. He was also dressed in a garish luminous green tracksuit top. Noticing how the pockets of the jacket bulged, she decided to start her investigation there.

Carefully searching his pockets she immediately uncovered his wallet in the right. It was absolutely full of credit cards, the elastic band holding the worn leather together looking to be long since past its stretching point. She counted at least 10 different cards before giving up, all in different names, and all near expiration date. Looking further, she discovered his driving license, which proudly stated his name as Wallace Vizzini. The picture on the card however had to be at least a decade old, with the former Mr. Vizzini looking no near as lithe in the flesh. Or, she thought, it could be someone else entirely.

"You're a little enigma, aren't you, Wally?"

She looked up at the face in front of her and tried to fathom out who exactly this man was. Feeling the answer would only be found with further investigation, she looked through the torn bits of paper that filled his left pocket. Each one was handwritten in different handwriting and in different pens. All they had on them were a few random words, none of them seemingly connected to the others. She spent a good five minutes trying different combinations, but nothing screamed out her. It would have to wait till the lab. She bagged up the evidence and took photographs of everything. How could this man die and no one notice?

She carefully collected the popcorn at his feet and noticed two ticket stubs in the mix, both timed and dated for the performance he had been found in. As they were directly beneath his popcorn, she wondered if they were his. A quick dust revealed a couple of complete fingerprints. A one in two chance that one belonged to Wally's mysterious companion. At the very bottom, a series of initials indicated the cashier who had sold the tickets. Whoever it was might remember serving them. After all, Wally had already made a big impression on her, why not on someone else. Something to follow up, she told herself, mentally making a note.

The door to the screen opened a crack, and Detective Morrissey, who had been the first officer on the scene, entered quietly.

"If you're nearly finished here, you're welcome to sit in when I interview the staff. I've got a couple lined up who show promise and I thought you might be interested."

She had never worked with Morrissey before, and in a way, he reminded her of the officers she'd worked with back in Montana. He was as out of place here as she sometimes felt, with a thick Minnesotan accent identifying his otherness. He had shown a lot of patience with her tonight, and had managed to limit the damage her initial argument with Allison could have caused the team. He was like a less temperamental Flack or Danny, more willing to try and see the best in people. Even wearisome little idiots like Allison. Lindsay smiled at how Flack and Danny would have had the officious prick for lunch. Not Morrissey though, who seemed like a natural diplomat. He actually seemed to listen to Allison's complaints and was able to respond politely, not with his fist, something Lindsay herself had been on the verge of. Now he stood looking at her, waiting for a response.

"If you could label these for me, that would be great."

She stood stiffly and walked to him, handing over the stuff she'd already collected. She appraised the situation and figured for now she should get back to the lab and look through all she'd gathered before she returned with a better idea of what to look for. All she had to do was to ensure the screen remained sealed. It was a task she wasn't going to enjoy, as it would mean getting Allison to acquiesce and accept the screen was officially hers indefinitely, at least until she had answers. Perhaps she could leave Morrissey to persuade him.

Two men from the coroner's office entered loudly and abruptly, their trolley making the doors clatter as they forced it through. Hopefully, an autopsy would clear up some of the infuriating mysteries the murder appeared to have caused. Looking back toward the giant screen in front of her, she felt incredibly small, and helpless. For the first time, she was working a case completely alone in a city she didn't know. She hoped to god she could manage to do it.

4.

When Danny entered the classroom Martha Bixler had died in, he felt like his head had exploded. Every light in the room had been switched on, and had been augmented by powerful lamps which eradicated all shadow. Mac was clearly leaving nothing to chance. The room was crawling with people taking photographs and sorting through the mess the classroom had been left in. A squat figure near the blackboard looked up as he came closer, revealing itself to be Dr. Sheldon Hawkes. He was hunkered next to a dense and congealing pool of dark red blood, carefully taking samples and looking for any trace that the sticky liquid might have captured. Dressed in a dark blue coverall and wearing a mask, the strict formality of the rarely used uniform told Danny all he needed to know. Every little grain of trace had the potential to make or break the case. Danny could literally hear the clock ticking, as the one placed above the desk counted off the seconds. The serenity of Hawkes' slow and careful movements contrasted with the carnage the room insinuated, and Danny felt horribly disorientated by what he saw.

"Jesus Christ…"

He ran a sweaty hand through his hair and looked at Hawkes as if seeking answers from the man. Back at the open doorway where they had paused, he could hear the murmur of Flack and Mac's voices as they discussed what needed to be focused on while evidence was collated. The still silence of the room was affecting him, making him claustrophobic.

Hawkes regarded his colleague with a empathetic pity. Years in the morgue still hadn't really prepared him for this case, and he understood Danny, who rarely dealt directly with corpses - and blood on such a magnitude - was probably not able to cope very well when faced with such a grisly sight. He and Stella had gone to the hospital to be there when the ambulances had arrived, to collect the trace as soon as possible. He struggled to admit that a macabre sense of curiosity, rather than duty, had led him to volunteer, one that had unfortunately been rewarded more than he had expected. He and the hardened ER staff had at first been horrified when the blood had finally been removed enough for them to see her stomach clearly. Never had any of them witnessed the sight of a womb gaping open, without seeing the child inside waiting to be born. It was a sight Hawkes would probably never forget, and that arresting absence haunted him, making him determined to do all he could.

Now, dealing with the aftermath, it wasn't hard to believe Martha Bixler had not survived. Before him, was a mix of blood and the amniotic fluid that had recently cocooned the baby. The smell was uncomfortably familiar and yet at the same time horribly alien, ultimately from a human being. It seeped unstoppable through the cotton of his mask. He knew he'd still smell for days.

Danny surveyed the scene and squatted next to the doctor. He raised a hand to his nose and mouth to stop the gag reflex that he was unable to suppress. He started looking through the evidence bags that lay neatly next to Hawkes one-handed, superficially to ascertain what had already found, but mainly to distract himself from what he saw. Once he was more acclimatised, he was grateful when his professional inquisitiveness kicked in.

"Found a weapon, Doc?"

He rifled though the bags again to see if he could answer his own question. Hawkes sealed the swab he was collecting and looked at his colleague.

"Not yet. Could be the killer used a weapon of opportunity, so we might be lucky."

Danny looked around and noticed the door to the arts and crafts cupboard standing open, apparently ignored by the investigative team so far.

"Likely candidate?"

He gestured to towards it, and stood stiffly, his head briefly swimming with the seemingly endless red become a blur as his brain found it's equilibrium. Pulling some gloves from his kit, he picked up the camera Hawkes had discarded at some point in the evening and walked over to the storage unit. Carefully opening the door wider, he scrutinized the shelves, observing the various tools and materials that were haphazardly stored there, taking photographs as he went.

"Guess we can rule out the safety scissors."

He held up the block housing the round tipped implements and removed a pair to show to an observing Hawkes, who smiled half-heartedly at Danny's attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

"You see the body?"

Hawkes, not meeting Danny's eyes, was silent for a moment, leaning on his knee to write a label on the envelope which now housed a long dark hair which had been caught in the purpling mucus.

"Briefly. Stella and I was present when the EMT's brought them into the Emergency Room. It isn't an experience I'm keen to repeat, if I'm honest."

He resumed a quiet concentration as he gently and carefully looked at the surface of the blood for other foreign elements. Danny stood and watched Hawkes work, trying to image what it must have been like to see the body without knowing what you were letting yourself in for. He decided it must have been something to so obviously shake the normally unflappable Hawkes.

He remained that way, oblivious to the fact he was still holding the scissors in one hand until a cough from Flack disturbed his reverie.

"How's it going in here?"

Danny focused on the detective, whose eyes were fixed with a horrified fascination on the blood Hawkes was now carefully removing something from.

"It's going. That's bout all there is. What about you? You find any leads that might be useful?"

Flack gradually drew his attention to Danny.

"We got the itinerary for both teachers, and it seems to make sense to start at the end, as it were, and focus on the last parents Martha Bixler saw tonight."

Danny nodded in agreement. Mac had entered the room and was pulling on gloves while he walked over to Hawkes. Flack and Danny followed his movement before the detective broke silence.

"I'm gonna go and see if I can't round up the cleaning staff as well. They were around when the incident took place, so one of them may have unwittingly witnessed something."

His voice sounded tired, and he used his thumb and forefinger to rub his eyes, making them redden and water slightly.

"Think before I do anything though, I'm gonna get me some aspirin."

He gave a weak smile at Danny who returned it, slightly unsure what to say. They had already had a tense discussion about the speed with which Flack had returned to active duty. Danny had tried to reason it was far to early, but Flack simply accused him of hypocrisy and told him in no uncertain terms it had nothing to do with him. Danny hadn’t failed to notice a coolness slowly growing between them recently, not helped by his growing closeness to Lindsay, who Flack had never really interacted with. Now, looking at the weariness in his friends face, Danny struggled not to say anything to incur Flack’s ire. They all needed to work together on this one.

"What I would give for a holiday…"

Flack practically sighed this, shrugging with resignation before leaving the room, pausing briefly to speak to Hawkes and Mac. Danny barely heard this, and watched his retreating figure before turning back to the art supplies to put the block back where he had found it. As he stepped back he noticed a block similar to the scissors he'd just been holding slightly overhanging the edge of the shelf above the one he was looking at. Reaching up, he noticed the height of the shelf, as well as the stickers that covered the wood: DO NOT TOUCH. ASK FOR HELP.

Someone had struggled to get it back up there. Pulling it down carefully, he recognised noticed this one seemed to be used to house craft knives. And one was missing, very obviously missing.

Feeling it was too good to be true, Danny took a moment to assess the situation. The weight of the block was substantial. Notches had been cut in the wood and the blades of the knives had been inserted into them. The empty groove had recent nicks in its edges, the gash elongated as the knife had been hurriedly pulled out at the wrong angle, splintering the wood. Naturally, a responsible teacher wouldn't let a bunch of six year olds play with scalpels. So that would mean the prints on the block should be specific to the Martha Bixler and her teaching assistants. And possibly the killer, Danny added to this mental list.

Photographing the implements, he looked closely at each individual scalpel, and paid careful attention to the space the missing blade had recently occupied. Footsteps approached him and he looked up. Mac stood observing him work, and silently handed him a feather brush and a pot of powder.

"Thought these might be handy."

Danny put the block down on the table and took the objects from Mac with a look of thanks.

"So what have you got there? Possible weapon?"

Mac bent over the evidence and looked at it closely.

"I found it on the highest shelf. Was pretty roughly put up there, like whoever did it either couldn't reach properly, or was in a hurry."

"Hmm…"

Mac looked at the shelf Danny gestured toward, pulling a nearby chair over to the cupboard as he did so. Standing relatively uneasily on the plastic seat, he raised himself up to look down on the dusty surface. He could see where Danny had dragged the knives, the pale yellow of the wood showing dramatically through the grey coating of grime. At the very edge of the shelf, there was another disturbance: three distinctive slashes. Mac placed the fingers of his right hand carefully over them.

"Danny, when you've dusted there, you might want to come up here. Check the chairs for tread too. We'll just have to hope the one I'm stood on wasn't the one which was used."

Danny nodded and placed tape over several prints he had managed to reveal with the pink dust.

"I'm going to get the evidence we've already collected back to the lab, start things at that end. You and Hawkes stay here for now. Be ready in case the Feds come along. They've already been sniffing around, but I want to hold onto the case as long as possible."

Danny looked at Mac, who stepped down off the chair with a brief look of relief at being back on terra firma. Pleased at Mac's apparent trust in leaving him in charge of such a huge responsibility, he solemnly stood back to give Mac some room to descend.

"I want this scene processed thoroughly but quickly, Danny. We need to keep our heads about us. One false move…"

Danny nodded in understanding and Mac seemed satisfied that for now at least, his team, and specifically Danny, was going to get the job at hand completed.

The mobile phone in Mac's jacket pocket chose that moment to announce it's presence.

Mac answered it, speaking briefly to the anonymous person on the other end cryptically, at least to Danny's ears, which couldn't figure out what was being discussed. Once his conversation had been completed, he continued the speech as if the interruption had never happened.

"I need you to process the office too. I've had a brief look around but as this is the primary crime scene it takes precedence."

"Right you are. We'll let you know if we find anything."

Mac smiled and raised his eyebrows at this.

"I'm sure you will."

Danny met his superior's bemusement with a grin.

Hawkes moved over toward the other CSI's carrying the box of evidence. Danny carefully added the craft knife block and the fingerprints to the collection, and looked around at the room.

"You ready to go inch by inch, Hawkes?"

Hawkes smiled at Danny.

"Only if you mean processing the scene, Danny. If so, I'm with you all the way."

Danny laughed and clapped the Doctor on the back. Turning to start at the opposite end of the classroom, they left Mac stood holding the box, watching them go. He shook his head, part of him struggling to comprehend how they could joke at a time like this, while wanting to join in. All he knew though was the sound of his colleagues laughter, no matter how unfathomable was better than the eternally ticking clock of time running out that otherwise filled the silent room.