Fic - The Game (csi bigbang)
Written for csi_bigbang, I hope you guys enjoy it and feedback is loved.
Title: The Game
Word Count: 15,450
Pairing: Flack/Angell, Danny/Lindsay, Mac/Stella
Warnings: Violence
Summary: When the team are called to the body of a young woman they find themselves forced to play a game, find the next victim in time or they die. With evidence scarce, the rules changing and the consequences of failure getting worse, will the team be able to stop the killer and hold themselves together?
Chapter 4
The call had been brief but it had given them what they needed, the voice on the other end had been distorted and the call hadn’t lasted long enough to trace it. Don and Jess drove to the address the voice had given, squad cars following and a black SUV visible in the rear view mirror that contained a few of the CSI’s. Sirens cut through the air as the cars weaved their way through the afternoon traffic.
Jess’s phone rang as Don continued to drive, Mac informing her that Adam knew where the shipping container they’d been given the number for would be. Someone would meet them when they arrived to direct them to it and Jess relayed the information to Don. It was another few minutes before the cars came to a stop, cops, detectives and CSI’s pouring from the vehicle. A middle aged man, heavy built and wearing a helmet called for them to follow him. They were led through the maze of shipping containers to the one the voice on the phone had directed them to and it was quickly opened.
Laura Hendel was curled up in the back corner of the container, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs and tear tracks cutting a path through the dirt on her face. Next to her was the body of her sister, Jodi Hendel was dead, because they’d chosen her.
“It’s alright,” Jess assured the young girl who stood up and tried to press herself further into the corner, looking at the police with terror rather than relief. “I’m Detective Angell, you’re safe now.”
She held her hand out to the girl who looked at it warily before all but collapsing into Jess’s arms, fresh tears coming in sobs as she held onto Jess as though her life depended on it. Jess led her out of the container, taking her away from her sister’s body and into the waiting hands of paramedics.
“She’s dead,” Laura said quietly, looking back at the shipping container. “He killed her.”
Jess was pretty sure the girl was slipping into shock, paramedics had her hurried into the back of the ambulance and Jess opted to go with them knowing Don would call her if they found anything here. She held Laura’s hand, the young girl refused to let go of her and the paramedic was forced to work around it as the siren came on and the vehicle began to move, carrying Laura away from the container and the body of her sister.
At the hospital Laura was forced to let go of Jess and was taken away by a crowd of doctors and nurses. After making sure she would be informed of the girls status Jess went to take a seat in the waiting area, sighing as she leaned back in the chair, trying to take comfort from the knowledge that they had saved a life but unable to get passed the image of Laura curled up next to the body of her dead sister. It seemed like forever before a doctor came to speak to her.
“She doesn’t appear to have been hurt, there’s no sign of sexual assault, in fact the only mark on her is an injection point at the base of her neck. We’re waiting on the results of her blood tests but my guess is they’ll come back as some kind of sedative. She’s a little dehydrated so we have her on some fluids, other than that and the need for a decent meal she’s physically fine. Mentally and emotionally is a whole different story,” the doctor explained.
“Is it possible to speak with her?” Jess asked.
“It’s possible but I wouldn’t recommend it. She needs to rest, she’s in no fit state to answer any questions at the moment, we can give you her clothes but I suggest you wait before you try to speak to her,” the doctor replied and Jess nodded.
“I’ll take the clothes, I’ll also have an officer stationed outside her door,” Jess said as Laura’s parents came running in and the doctor turned her attention to them.
- - -
“What have you got Sid,” Danny questioned as he and Don walked into autopsy. Sid had called them down there to see something he said was ‘probably very important’ and even though Don didn’t like autopsy the two of them had come straight here.
“A very pretty young lady who met her end far before her time, there’s nothing worse than seeing the young or helpless on my table,” Sid replied as he gestured them over to where Jodi Hendel’s body was laid on the table waiting to be autopsied. “You know there was one time when...”
“Sid,” Danny cut in before Sid could get anywhere near his creepy place, he wasn’t in the mood for it at the moment. “You said you found something?”
“Right, of course,” Sid replied pulling back the sheet covering the body. “Given the killer’s propensity for leaving clues on his victims I thought that perhaps this might be of some importance.”
“No kidding,” Danny said as he saw what Sid was talking about. The word ‘Failure’ was written across Jodi’s stomach in black ink. “Failure?” he questioned. “That supposed to add insult to injury?”
“Who knows, at this point it could mean anything,” Don stated. “With this guy though, I’d be willing to bet it’s more than just an insult, everything he’s done has been carefully planned, I doubt this is any different. Do you have anything else for us Sid?”
“Not until after I’ve done the autopsy, I will tell you the body is in the same condition as Melissa Connell. No outward signs of trauma, not a mark on her,” Sid replied and Danny took a picture of the writing on Jodi’s stomach before the two of them left. “Any word on Laura yet?”
Don shook his head as the two of them stepped onto the elevator. “Jess went to the hospital with her, if something had happened she would have called.”
“Speak of the devil,” Danny said as the doors opened to reveal Jess and Lindsay standing in the corridor. “How’s Laura?”
“Dehydrated but physically fine, she had a puncture on her neck, probably from an injection. I’ve handed her clothes over to Hawkes, Stella and I are going to head back down to the hospital in a couple of hours to talk to her,” Jess explained.
- - -
Stella walked into the hospital with Jess, the two of them were directed to the room Laura had been moved to. Her parents were still there and the atmosphere in the room was subdued, relief at having one daughter back overshadowed by the loss of the other. Stella felt bad, intruding on their grieving but it was the only way to ensure justice for Jodi, Laura and the other victims, to stop the killer from doing it again.
“Mr and Mrs Hendel,” Jess greeted and the three occupants of the room looked up. “I know this is a bad time but we need to ask Laura some questions.”
“Hasn’t she been through enough,” Mrs Hendel said, grasping her daughter’s hand.
“It’s okay, if it’ll help, I’ll answer your questions,” Laura cut in, seeming far calmer than she had when she was taken away from the crime scene.
“Okay Laura,” Jess began. “I need you to tell us everything you remember, starting from when you were taken.”
Laura nodded and took a breath. “Jodi and I were on our way back to the apartment, we’d just rented some DVD’s to watch. We were just walking along the street, there was a man walking the opposite way, we didn’t think anything of it but as he passed us he grabbed me and put something over my face. I think he had a knife or something, I felt it on my neck and I could hear him talking to Jodi. Then everything kind of went blank.”
“You’re doing great,” Stella encouraged when Laura paused, looking down and gripping her mother’s hand tighter as she attempted to hold back tears.
“When I woke up I was a room, it had concrete walls and a metal door, no windows. There was a camera in one corner and a box with a little food and water in it,” Laura told them, losing the battle she was fighting against her tears. “I don’t know where I was, it felt like was there forever. Then a man came in, he had a mask over his face and the hood of his jacket was up over his head. He walked over to me and grabbed me, I think he injected something in my neck. The next thing I knew I was waking up in that container with Jodi, she was dead and...”
Tears flowing freely and unable to talk Laura allowed herself to be wrapped up in her mother’s arms. Stella and Jess waited patiently for Laura to calm down enough to talk. She turned back to the two detectives, wiping her eyes and taking a shaky breath.
“Before he injected me he said something,” Laura told them. “He said ‘tell the police ‘I wasn’t good enough for you, now you’re not good enough for me. Play my game, I’m still winning.”
Jess wrote the words down as Stella asked a few more questions, getting what little details she could before leaving Laura and her parents alone to grieve. They were quiet as they left, nodding to the uniform by the door as they passed him and remaining silent until they reached the car.
“If there was any doubt before there isn’t now, he’s not done yet, he has more planned,” Jess said as she started the car and pulled out of the hospital parking lot.
“And we can be sure whatever comes next is going to be worse than what he’s already done,” Stella added.
- - -
“Alright, we’ve got cotton and polyester fibres, dust, dirt, chalk and dye, the word failure and now this message from the killer,” Hawkes said putting a piece of paper with the killers message on it on the desk. He, Lindsay and Adam were gathered around a computer, the site still inactive on another computer in the room but under watchful eyes, none of them believed for a second this was over. “Let’s put it all together and see what we can come up with.”
“Well we think the fibres and the dye might have something to do with clothes,” Lindsay pointed out. “But I’m not sure how failure and chalk fit into that.”
“And then there’s the message,” Adam stated. “That could be connected to failures. ‘I wasn’t good enough for you’, sounds like he failed something or someone. Maybe the word failure is referring to him.”
“That makes sense,” Hawkes replied, picking up the piece of paper. “Laura said the killer told her to ‘tell the police’ so the message was directed at us. ‘I wasn’t good enough for you’ could mean he wasn’t good enough for the police, we might be looking at someone who tried out for the police but didn’t make it.”
“Or someone who was fired, forced to quit, that still leaves a lot of potential suspects,” Lindsay said and Hawkes nodded.
“It’s a start though.”
“I’ll get a list of names,” Adam said, already tapping away on his keyboard. “It’s probably going to be a big list; it might take me a while.”
“Meanwhile, I’ll try and follow up this clothes angle and see where the chalk gets me,” Lindsay stated, standing up and leaving the room.
“And I’m going to go through all the evidence again, make sure we didn’t miss anything the first time around,” Hawkes added as he too got up and left the room. He saw Mac in the corridor and stopped to fill him in on their latest theory.
“It makes sense, keep at it,” Mac offered his support. “Stella and I are off to the street Jodi and Laura were kidnapped from, see if the killer left anything behind.”
“You don’t sound too hopeful,” Hawkes commented.
“This guy hasn’t made any mistakes yet,” he replied and hurried to catch up with Stella who was standing down by the elevator. It was getting late now, it would be dark before long and officially all their shifts had ended but Hawkes doubted anyone would be getting much, if any, sleep tonight.
- - -
Jess and Don walked into the lab hoping one of the CSI’s had miraculously produced something over night. The theory that they were dealing with a police drop out seemed to have become the main theory and Adam had emailed a list of names out to everyone at around 2am. Jess had gotten it right before she went home for a few hours of restless sleep. It wasn’t much but it felt like a step in the right direction. She and Don had spent the morning making phone calls and reading reports but the truth was, their killer might not even be on the list, which considering the number of names already on the list didn’t offer Jess much hope.
They found Adam in his lab, he was wearing different clothes to yesterday which suggested he’d gone home at some point but she couldn’t rule out him having a change of clothes at work, most of them did.
“Hey guys,” Adam greeted sounding as tired as Jess felt. “Did you get the email I sent?”
“Yeah, at 2am, did you sleep at all?” Don asked.
“I went home about 4am, got back at eight, didn’t really sleep much in the middle but some is better than none right?” Adam replied just as the computer screen behind Adam flickered into life.
“Adam, was that the computer with the website on it?” Jess questioned and Adam followed her gaze to the computer.
Adam’s face paled answering the question for him. “Can you get Mac; I think he’s in his office?”
Don left without a word and Jess joined Adam at his computer as the website came back with a similar message to last time, telling them they’d lost and the stakes were going to be higher for this round. She should probably have been expecting what she saw when the live feeds came back on but she hadn’t been, and the shock of it silenced both her and Adam until Don and Mac came running in.
“Three screens,” Adam stated. “Three people.”
Two men and one woman, all of them in different rooms, all of them with the same set up, a couple of bottles of water and little food. The countdown clock came on delivering yet another shock when it started at 24 hours instead of 48.
“He’s only given us 24 hours,” Adam exclaimed needlessly. Mac was already on the phone to Stella, telling her to find the rest of the CSI’s. “How are we supposed to find them in 24 hours. We don’t have enough evidence?”
Jess wished she had an answer for him.
- - -
It had taken longer than he would have liked but they had ID’s on all three of the victims. Don and Jess were on their way to speak to one of the families, Jess in the passenger seat going through files. They had less than twenty hours to find the three new victims and Don dreaded to think what the forfeit would be if they failed this time.
“Don, they were all born in the same year, 1988,” Jess told him. “Caroline Sanders and Joseph Harmon are both 22 and David Smith turns 22 next month.”
“That can’t be a coincidence, it has to mean something,” Don replied, nothing this guy did was a coincidence.
“It’s probably another clue,” Jess said, taking out her phone and calling Mac, informing him of her discovery just as they came to a stop outside Joseph Harmon’s home. They got out of the car, knocking on the door of the small house and waiting until the door was opened by an obviously pregnant woman.
“Mrs Harmon?” Don questioned, showing his badge and the woman nodded.
“This is about Joe isn’t it?” she asked gesturing for them to come in and walking slowly over to the couch, sitting down and resting her hands over her stomach. A little boy came running in, he couldn’t be more than three years old. He showed his dinosaurs to his mother, telling her that they were going to go eat the spider in the kitchen before running off again. “I told him his father had to work late and he left early this morning but he’s already asked me three times when daddy will be home, they’re almost inseparable. Where is he?”
Mrs Harmon sounded terrified of the answer. “We believe your husband was kidnapped.”
“What?” Mrs Harmon questioned, one hand going to her mouth, the other wrapping around her stomach protectively. “Why, by who?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out, he was kidnapped along with two other people,” Jess told her handing her pictures of Caroline Sanders and David Smith. “Do you recognise either of them?”
“No, I’ve never seen either of them before,” Mrs Harmon replied giving the photographs back. “Wait, is this the same as the kidnappings I saw in the news, is it the same person, the one who sends you videos of the people?”
Jess glanced at Don. “I’m afraid it is.”
“Then he’s definitely still alive, you have 48 hours to find him right?” Mrs Harmon questioned.
“We actually don’t have that long, we were only given 24 hours,” Jess informed her as gently as she could and Mrs Harmon looked on the verge of panic.
“Well how long has it been, how long does he have left?” she asked them.
“Mrs Harmon, we need you to keep calm, we’re doing everything we can to find your husband,” Jess said, moving to sit next to the woman on the couch, placing a hand on her shoulder for comfort and support. “When was the last time you saw Joseph?
“When he left for work yesterday morning,” Mrs Harmon replied. “I knew something was wrong when he didn’t come home from work, I’m due in a few weeks and this has been a difficult pregnancy. He’s made every effort to be home whenever he can, he wouldn’t be late and not call me. When it got to midnight I called the police, I just knew something terrible had happened to him.”
They asked the rest of their questions slowly, not wanting to upset her anymore than they had to. She was stronger than she was probably given credit for, answering all of their questions despite the tears threatening to fall.
“It’s a girl,” she told them as they were leaving. “He doesn’t know yet but we were both really hoping for a girl. We weren’t going to find out but then my curiosity got the better of me and I asked. He still doesn’t know.”
“We’re going to do everything we can to give him the chance to find out,” Jess told her, knowing she couldn’t promise any more than that.
- - -
“I can’t believe he’s won again,” Lindsay said as they all found themselves gathered around the computer once more, waiting for the consequences of not finding the victims in the allotted time. It was almost an unspoken agreement that if it came down to it, they would all be here when time ran out. “How can he do this to people?”
“Or they,” Hawkes stated. “I think we’ve all agreed there’s got to be more than one person, they’ve kidnapped three people in less than 24 hours which would be pretty hard to do on your own, especially when you’ve already been at it all week.”
“Alright guys, this is it,” Stella stated drawing everyone’s attention to screen as the final few seconds ticked by and a message came up telling them they’d lost. “The cost of your failure this time is three lives however you have a choice to make, you can allow them all to die or take their place. One cop for each person, two men, one woman. Your decision, will it be your lives or theirs?”
“I wasn’t expecting that,” Danny said as they all looked at the screen in silence, a new countdown ticking away their time to decide.
TBC