Don't Be Hasty (2a/5)
CSI: NY - Don't Be Hasty
Part of the Last Best Place series.
Author's Notes: Between "Catch the Wind", "Canter", and this installment, I've spent so much time with these characters that I'm having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that my version of Lindsay's family is not, in fact, canon. Watching "Green Piece", the first thing I thought was "Oh, Stevie and Kenny are not gonna be happy about this."
I debated whether or not to follow the on-screen action exactly, worried it would feel like a re-hash, but at the same time I felt like skimming over it seemed lazy, especially if I would be fleshing out the in-between bits, so I went for broke. And let me tell you what a pain that was! Thank god for YouTube, as my DVD's are currently at home on the other side of the globe - there was lots of re-watching to get lines right. And I've probably spelled some stuff wrong, like names of bit characters or types of wine, but have some pity.
And re: the change in number of chapters, I decided to expand this to 5 parts instead of just 3 - same amount of material I originally had planned, just broken into more manageable chunks because I totally underestimated how much wordspace it was going to take up. This chapter was slow-going, but I've had this first half sitting uselessly on my hard drive for ages now - it's time to get it out there so I can focus on completing the second half. I know that I only post sporadically, and my interest in the fandom is waning, but I am very committed to this series, and I do try and work on it as regularly as I can. I've done a fair amount of research and I won't let it go to waste. And on that note, I would like to point out that the 27-foot-tall talking penguin? Totally exists. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.
~*~
Lindsay was pretty sure that Flack knew what was up. She didn't know whether Danny had told him, or he had figured it out on his own (she'd lay even odds on both), but when she climbed into the passenger's seat of his squad car he was grinning at her from behind the wheel.
"You smell nice today," he said offhandedly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Lindsay raised an eyebrow, hearing Danny snort from the backseat. Flack chuckled and cranked the motor.
"I'll let you borrow my perfume next time," she promised. Danny caught her eye in the rear-view mirror and she blushed, looking down at her hands.
She had a hunch that Mac had assigned them to a case together on purpose; she couldn't say that she minded. They would, of course, eventually have to work separately, but at the moment she didn't want to let him out of her sight for a minute. She was still trying not to pinch herself - this was happening. After all this time, the weight was off her shoulders, she and Danny were finally together, and happy, and seriously - who would have predicted that a year and a half ago?
The scene was just a few minutes from the lab; Lindsay hummed along with Flack's big band music until they pulled up to the curb in front of Alec Green's restaurant. The entrance was a veritable circus, swarming with media hounds, police officers, and curious onlookers. Flack keyed off the ignition and groaned audibly.
"Okay kids, back to the real world," he announced. "Who's questioning and who's photographing?" Lindsay looked over her shoulder at Danny.
"You go shoot," he said with a wave of his hand. "You've been through enough these last few days." Lindsay glared.
"Danny, I'm fine," she insisted, an edge to her voice. If he was going to start pulling the tough-guy act, this was going to be over before it had even really started. He at least had the decency to look sheepish.
"I know," he acknowledged softly. "But just this once, do it for me? Come on, Kenny would never let me live it down if I sent you into that madhouse your first day back." Through the window, Flack saw that one of the photogs had spotted him, and was headed for the car.
"Take the inside, Linds," he advised. "It's gonna be a nightmare out here." Unhooking his seat belt, he exited the car to greet the approaching journalist. Lindsay sighed, knowing he was right.
"Fine," she acquiesced. Danny nodded gratefully. They climbed out of their respective doors and met at the trunk, where Lindsay slung the straps of the camera case and both of their kits across her shoulders. Danny slammed the trunk closed and shoved her behind him as they elbowed their way through the crowd to the crime scene tape at the door. Lindsay shielded the equipment as best she could while he made a path. With all the commotion going on, she had to shout to be heard.
"Just so we're clear, I'm humoring you because you were so nice to me this weekend, and because it's easier to let you be annoying than to pay you back for your plane ticket. But after today, it stops. Having one of Kenny is bad enough, not to mention my mom, and Jack, and Dallas and Pablo." Danny ducked under the yellow plastic barrier, holding it up for Lindsay as well. She shrugged her shoulders to redistribute the weight of the cases she was carrying, glad to be clear of the crush of bodies. Danny was peering down at her.
"I got no interest in bein' your brother," he promised. The corner of his mouth quirked upwards into a smile, and Lindsay couldn't stop hers from doing the same.
"Fine. You're off the hook. Go keep Flack out of trouble." The smirk stretched into a full-blown grin, and he knocked his shoulder into hers as he headed back out into the fray.
A uniform showed Lindsay down a maze of hallways until they finally arrived at the stairs to the basement. She descended to the bottom, grateful for somewhere to dump all of the equipment. From the camera case she withdrew one of the lab's trusty Nikons and positioned the nylon strap at the back of her neck as she removed the lens cap. The basement cellar was dark and musty-smelling, but cleaner than a lot of crime scenes she'd encountered, so there was that to be thankful for. Lindsay started in the far corner, marking and photographing anything that looked the least bit suspicious. She had reached the corpse at the center of the room by the time she heard the chatter of police radio and the clickety-clack of shoes coming down the wooden stairs behind her.
"Meet the former future of the Manhattan foodie scene: Alec Green, 38 years old," Flack introduced them, Danny trailing close behind. "This was his third restaurant - he was considered one of the greatest chefs in the country under 40."
"Who found him?" Danny asked. He dug a pair of gloves out of his pocket and pulled them on, the sound of snapping latex echoing against the cement.
"Manager," Flack reported. "Today was the big opening day. Last night was invited dress - critics, wine distributors...mucky-mucks."
"Hey, I thought you caught the U.N. case," Lindsay blurted out, suddenly remembering the parts of the morning briefing that didn't involve studiously avoiding Danny's leering gaze.
"Oh, I did," he confirmed. "Saturday night in the city, Linds - you know how it is." Oh, she did. The rapid-fire pace of New York City was something that could never be duplicated in Bozeman, Montana and she was more than happy to let it scoop her back up into its momentum.
"Good to be back," she declared, risking a glance at Danny. He grinned, then ducked his head down to examine the body. Lindsay knelt to do the same. "The rigor shows he's been dead 12 hours at least," she reported.
"He may have been dead while the guests were still eatin' their creme brulee last night," Danny chimed in. Lindsay clicked on her flashlight, aiming it at the fatal wound in Green's chest while Danny continued bagging particulate samples.
"That's an odd corkscrew," she mused aloud when the light glinted off the murder weapon. "It's inscribed with something; looks like some kind of award."
"Flack, who's got access to the vault?" Danny called over his shoulder.
"No one." Flack had his own flashlight out, sweeping it across their victim's wares that lined the shelves of the room. "This vault was Alec's pride and joy, the only way in was through him."
"So this is where they house the million-dollar grape juice, huh?" Danny stood to load a fresh set of batteries into his flashlight, clearly not sharing his best friend's status as a wine connoisseur.
"Are you kidding me? This place is amazing," Flack murmured. "Molton Rothschild, Monterey, Barbaresco...the wine in this vault, Dan? Worth tens of thousands of dollars."
"What do you know?" Danny scoffed.
"Flack, I think Danny's kind of wine is the house Chianti," Lindsay teased. Flack laughed.
"See that's where you're wrong," Danny corrected. "My favorite kind of wine? Is beer." All three of them chuckled, knowing it to be true. And god, was Flack right - it was good to be back. Lindsay hadn't realized just how much she'd missed this - working, joking, laughing. All of the day-to-day things that she'd grown so accustomed to over the past 18 months.
"Alright, we've got lots of glass and wine spatter," Danny observed. "Looks like the bottle was open when it was broken. So it didn't come from the wine rack."
"Came from the table over here," Flack deducted.
"So we've got a glass of wine, a stoppered bottle...somebody opened a bottle to taste it. And then, maybe, it got dropped in a struggle," Lindsay guessed. Danny shook his head.
"From the diameter of the spatter, it looks like the bottle was thrown, and thrown hard."
"Okay, so there's a fight and somebody throws a wine bottle at our vic," Flack summed up.
"Then maybe Alec rushes the attacker," Lindsay suggested. She observed the mess, trying to picture it in her mind. Green in his chef's apron, his mystery assailant only a shadowy figure - they still didn't even know if they were looking for a man or a woman. So much of the evidence lay strewn across the cement floor, yet to be processed; they might as well have been working blind.
"And then he gets, uh...screwed to death," Danny concluded. Lindsay grinned, feeling ridiculous. It was a lame joke, which Flack seemed to agree with her on.
"6.5, Mess. Little shaky on the landing." And with that, he took off back upstairs and into the fray, leaving Danny still grinning proudly. Lindsay elbowed him on her way to retrieve the tweezers from her kit. God, it was like some sort of sickness - one weekend of making out with Danny Messer and she was going weak in the knees like a schoolgirl. How the hell was she ever going to be able to work once she actually slept with the guy?
They settled into a comfortable rhythm - one that was completely new to Lindsay. Most of her and Danny's professional careers had been spent dancing around what was between the two of them. But now that it was out in the open and resolved (if not yet consummated), there was an ease that they had never quite managed to obtain before. For once, Lindsay found herself flirting with Danny instead of the other way around, and he was only too happy to play along. He was so...happy today. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, joking with Flack, and dear lord, could that shirt be any tighter? She was glad that it was currently covered by his jacket, because the glimpse of it she had caught before they climbed into the car had been more than enough to set her libido aflame.
Flack had been glancing at them out of the corner of his eye all morning, like he was expecting them to jump each other as soon as his back was turned. Still, it was nice, working with him instead of Mac - Lindsay didn't feel like she had to hide her affection for Danny (which, to be honest, they'd never exactly been discrete about). Or maybe she was reading him wrong - maybe he was merely suspicious and didn't know anything for certain. Either way, she knew that Flack was on their side, and that was comforting. But if he kept shooting them that look, she was going to kill him.
She was happy to note that their status change hadn't affected their work. Despite the professionals she knew both herself and Danny to be, she had legitimately worried as to whether or not they could carry this off. But without all of the personal barriers between them, they had reached a whole new level of connectivity. There was this soaring feeling in Lindsay's chest that she knew was utterly ridiculous, yet at the same time...
She glanced over at Danny, swabbing at a blood drop on the ground and noting the gravitational pull. He looked up and smiled back, and her heart thumped just a bit louder.
Together, it felt like they could do anything.
~*~
Lindsay concentrated on the sliver of pink acrylic nail caught in her tweezers, desperate for something to get her mind off of Danny. She bagged and labeled it, the action so rote that she was fairly certain she could do it in her sleep. Next, she spotted a small section of silver chain. With this she repeated the process. She was just slipping the evidence bag into her pocket when Danny came up behind her. He called her name to get her attention and Lindsay followed his gaze to Green's body - more specifically, Green's mouth, which was...moving. They stared, confused, as a bulge grew in Green's cheek, then moved to his lips. From the seam crawled a large cockroach.
"What exactly was this chef cookin' last night?" Danny said in disgust. The roach broke away from the dead man's lips, but before it could get anywhere Lindsay grabbed a wineglass and upturned it on top of the offending insect.
"God I love my job," she muttered sarcastically. Shoving the glass a little, she shuddered in revulsion as the roach skittered around its invisible entrapment. "Okay, who gets roach detail?" she asked, sending pleading looks towards her partner. Danny held his hands up in the air and took a step backwards.
"Oh, no. He's all yours." Lindsay rolled her eyes.
"So all that macho crap goes out the window as soon as it gets gross? Way to be the white knight, Messer."
"Chain of evidence, Monroe," he shot back. "You found it, you process it." Lindsay glared, but only half-halfheartedly; to tell the truth, she'd much rather have him being stubborn than walking on eggshells around her.
"Fine," she said, rising to stand. She held out her fist. Danny nodded and extended his own. They shook once, twice, three times before Danny's paper covered her rock. Lindsay groaned, his hand still clasped around hers. She could feel the heat coming off his skin even through both of their gloves.
"Hey," he said, tugging her just a bit closer. "I promise I'll make it up to you." Lindsay kept her face neutral.
"Better be damn good, cowboy," she said sullenly. Danny leaned in, just as Flack clattered back down the stairs. He looked from one to the other, smirking.
"You two ready to go, or do you need to be alone for a minute?" he asked. Lindsay bent down and tore a section of cardboard from the back of her notepad, sliding it under the wineglass to make their suspect's cage portable. She lifted the glass in front of Flack's face.
"Look who's sharing the ride home with us," she announced sunnily. "Flack, meet our new friend Donnie. The resemblance is uncanny." Flack blanched visibly.
"You guys are sick," he stated. With that, he did an about-face and ran back up the steps like his feet were on fire. Lindsay laughed and carefully slid Donnie into the evidence container Danny had proffered, snapping the lid shut with a satisfying click. She frowned, observing the insect's limited range of movement.
"Do you think we should poke holes in the top?" she asked, slightly worried about the creature despite herself. Danny shook his head vehemently.
"Those things can survive a nuclear holocaust, I think it'll survive the car ride to the lab. But it's cute that you care." Lindsay glanced at him sidelong.
"That's sweet. But don't think you're off the hook."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Danny replied, closing his case and following her up the basement steps and back into the light of day.
~*~
By the time Flack and Danny had conducted their interview (a complete bust) and returned to the lab where they had dropped off Lindsay and the evidence just 45 minutes beforehand, Danny was feeling more than a little guilty for sticking his partner with their little critter friend. He hopped out of the car as soon as Flack pulled it into a parking spot, and his best friend rolled his eyes.
"Lindsay's a big girl Messer," he commented. "We haven't even been gone an hour, I think she probably managed to fend for herself." Danny scowled.
"You ever gonna get off my case about her?" he asked, fingers tightening around the edge of the car door.
"You gonna tell me what happened this weekend?" Flack countered. Danny narrowed his eyes and slammed the door shut. He heard Flack's chuckle follow him to the elevator even through the metal and glass. He stopped by autopsy to hear Sid's findings, and after a few minutes in the older man's presence, he felt himself begin to calm down. It was stupid, getting annoyed with Flack for asking questions that he himself would undoubtedly be asking were the situations reversed. And it wasn't that he didn't trust Flack - quite the opposite. Plus, the guy totally owed him for that time that Danny had caught him making out with Aiden and hadn't breathed a word. It was just that this thing with Lindsay was so new, so private. He knew he didn't have to keep it a secret, but he didn't want to gossip about it either - Lindsay was more to him than the locker room details he'd shared about his previous girlfriends.
God, he really had it bad, didn't he? Danny took the file folder from Sid's hands and headed eagerly towards Trace. He read as he walked, head still buried in the case file as he strode through the door to the lab.
"Sid confirmed COD," he reported. "Aortic tear and esophageal trauma due to corkscrew impalement." When he looked up, he caught the twinkle in Lindsay's eye. Oh, she had found something good.
"Did you get anything off the corkscrew?" she asked. She was going to make him work for it. It was one of the most adorable quirks about her - the pure excitement she got from showing off her knowledge. So he played along. Curiosity - a criminalist's downfall.
"Yeah, male epithelials on the handle. Unknown donor though, no hits in CODIS. But that pink trace we found? Was composed of resin and acrylic - it's a fake nail. The end was jagged, broken off...could be related to the signs of struggle at the scene." The way her eyebrow rose at his declaration made him fairly sure that she had already figured out the plastic's origin. Damn, she was good.
"Did Adam get anything off the bottle?" she asked innocently. Danny checked the notations he'd made in the file as he followed her over to the table.
"Nothing off the bottle, but he's looking at the ball bearing I found to see what it's made of, help us get a.....get an idea of what it is...." Danny trailed off as he finally spotted Donnie the cockroach. Washed clean of blood, the insect's back glistened with...rhinestones? What the hell? "Is that the creature we pulled from the vic's mouth?" he asked in disbelief. Lindsay grinned.
"Mm-hm," she answered calmly. "Madagascar hissing cockroach." She handed him the dish. Danny gave her a sidelong glance before inspecting their newest piece of evidence. She didn't at all appear to be affected by the bug, and he kind of loved that she was totally not a typical girl in situations like these. Not that he'd ever tell her that - "You're strange" rarely went over well with females, even when the sentiment was complimentary.
"Get this," she added. "This one is covered in three karats of cushion-cut emeralds and rubies. It's worth over a hundred thousand dollars." And the case just kept getting stranger.
"Get outta here," Danny muttered. "These are real stones?"
"Uh-huh. And I'm thinking that this chain was attached. Which makes this roach...jewelery. Or a pet. Or a jeweled pet." It was official now: he'd heard everything.
"A roach brooch," he proclaimed. Lindsay smiled.
"Hey, it could be the next thing," she suggested as she moved to check one of the machines on the other side of the room. As she passed him, her hand trailed across his back. Danny didn't know if she was doing it on purpose or on instinct, but the heat from her tiny palm seared right through his shirt. "I mean isn't the cockroach kind of the unofficial mascot of New York?" she continued.
"Yeah, that's funny. Take it easy there, Mon-tana," he warned, exaggerating the accent. He knew that she was joking - New York was her home too, now more than ever. Danny cleared his throat and forced himself to concentrate on work - now was most definitely not the time to wax poetic. "So how'd this thing end up in the chef's mouth?" he wondered.
"I don't know." She sounded so defeated when she said it, as if despite what little evidence they had she was still upset that there was something she couldn't figure out. "But it's worth a lot of money. Maybe somebody lost it, or maybe it was stolen."
"And Alec Green had something to do with it."
"Well to answer that, we need to know who that roach brooch belonged to." Danny shrugged.
"Well, you know, it shouldn't be too hard - how many people out there put this much bling on a bug?"
He was right, as it turned out - a simple Google search turned up the website of Gavin Bridge, jeweler to the stars. Complete with a graphic of a cockroach scurrying across the screen.
"What is wrong with this town?" Danny muttered. Lindsay jotted down the address from the screen and grabbed the car keys.
"Don't ask me - where I'm from people drive hours to see a 27-foot-tall talking penguin. Roach jewelery is just a different level of strange." She dangled the keys in front of his nose. "Also? I'm driving." Danny made a face at her back as she sped down the halls of the lab, leaving him with no choice but to follow.
Part of the Last Best Place series.
Author's Notes: Between "Catch the Wind", "Canter", and this installment, I've spent so much time with these characters that I'm having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that my version of Lindsay's family is not, in fact, canon. Watching "Green Piece", the first thing I thought was "Oh, Stevie and Kenny are not gonna be happy about this."
I debated whether or not to follow the on-screen action exactly, worried it would feel like a re-hash, but at the same time I felt like skimming over it seemed lazy, especially if I would be fleshing out the in-between bits, so I went for broke. And let me tell you what a pain that was! Thank god for YouTube, as my DVD's are currently at home on the other side of the globe - there was lots of re-watching to get lines right. And I've probably spelled some stuff wrong, like names of bit characters or types of wine, but have some pity.
And re: the change in number of chapters, I decided to expand this to 5 parts instead of just 3 - same amount of material I originally had planned, just broken into more manageable chunks because I totally underestimated how much wordspace it was going to take up. This chapter was slow-going, but I've had this first half sitting uselessly on my hard drive for ages now - it's time to get it out there so I can focus on completing the second half. I know that I only post sporadically, and my interest in the fandom is waning, but I am very committed to this series, and I do try and work on it as regularly as I can. I've done a fair amount of research and I won't let it go to waste. And on that note, I would like to point out that the 27-foot-tall talking penguin? Totally exists. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.
~*~
Lindsay was pretty sure that Flack knew what was up. She didn't know whether Danny had told him, or he had figured it out on his own (she'd lay even odds on both), but when she climbed into the passenger's seat of his squad car he was grinning at her from behind the wheel.
"You smell nice today," he said offhandedly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Lindsay raised an eyebrow, hearing Danny snort from the backseat. Flack chuckled and cranked the motor.
"I'll let you borrow my perfume next time," she promised. Danny caught her eye in the rear-view mirror and she blushed, looking down at her hands.
She had a hunch that Mac had assigned them to a case together on purpose; she couldn't say that she minded. They would, of course, eventually have to work separately, but at the moment she didn't want to let him out of her sight for a minute. She was still trying not to pinch herself - this was happening. After all this time, the weight was off her shoulders, she and Danny were finally together, and happy, and seriously - who would have predicted that a year and a half ago?
The scene was just a few minutes from the lab; Lindsay hummed along with Flack's big band music until they pulled up to the curb in front of Alec Green's restaurant. The entrance was a veritable circus, swarming with media hounds, police officers, and curious onlookers. Flack keyed off the ignition and groaned audibly.
"Okay kids, back to the real world," he announced. "Who's questioning and who's photographing?" Lindsay looked over her shoulder at Danny.
"You go shoot," he said with a wave of his hand. "You've been through enough these last few days." Lindsay glared.
"Danny, I'm fine," she insisted, an edge to her voice. If he was going to start pulling the tough-guy act, this was going to be over before it had even really started. He at least had the decency to look sheepish.
"I know," he acknowledged softly. "But just this once, do it for me? Come on, Kenny would never let me live it down if I sent you into that madhouse your first day back." Through the window, Flack saw that one of the photogs had spotted him, and was headed for the car.
"Take the inside, Linds," he advised. "It's gonna be a nightmare out here." Unhooking his seat belt, he exited the car to greet the approaching journalist. Lindsay sighed, knowing he was right.
"Fine," she acquiesced. Danny nodded gratefully. They climbed out of their respective doors and met at the trunk, where Lindsay slung the straps of the camera case and both of their kits across her shoulders. Danny slammed the trunk closed and shoved her behind him as they elbowed their way through the crowd to the crime scene tape at the door. Lindsay shielded the equipment as best she could while he made a path. With all the commotion going on, she had to shout to be heard.
"Just so we're clear, I'm humoring you because you were so nice to me this weekend, and because it's easier to let you be annoying than to pay you back for your plane ticket. But after today, it stops. Having one of Kenny is bad enough, not to mention my mom, and Jack, and Dallas and Pablo." Danny ducked under the yellow plastic barrier, holding it up for Lindsay as well. She shrugged her shoulders to redistribute the weight of the cases she was carrying, glad to be clear of the crush of bodies. Danny was peering down at her.
"I got no interest in bein' your brother," he promised. The corner of his mouth quirked upwards into a smile, and Lindsay couldn't stop hers from doing the same.
"Fine. You're off the hook. Go keep Flack out of trouble." The smirk stretched into a full-blown grin, and he knocked his shoulder into hers as he headed back out into the fray.
A uniform showed Lindsay down a maze of hallways until they finally arrived at the stairs to the basement. She descended to the bottom, grateful for somewhere to dump all of the equipment. From the camera case she withdrew one of the lab's trusty Nikons and positioned the nylon strap at the back of her neck as she removed the lens cap. The basement cellar was dark and musty-smelling, but cleaner than a lot of crime scenes she'd encountered, so there was that to be thankful for. Lindsay started in the far corner, marking and photographing anything that looked the least bit suspicious. She had reached the corpse at the center of the room by the time she heard the chatter of police radio and the clickety-clack of shoes coming down the wooden stairs behind her.
"Meet the former future of the Manhattan foodie scene: Alec Green, 38 years old," Flack introduced them, Danny trailing close behind. "This was his third restaurant - he was considered one of the greatest chefs in the country under 40."
"Who found him?" Danny asked. He dug a pair of gloves out of his pocket and pulled them on, the sound of snapping latex echoing against the cement.
"Manager," Flack reported. "Today was the big opening day. Last night was invited dress - critics, wine distributors...mucky-mucks."
"Hey, I thought you caught the U.N. case," Lindsay blurted out, suddenly remembering the parts of the morning briefing that didn't involve studiously avoiding Danny's leering gaze.
"Oh, I did," he confirmed. "Saturday night in the city, Linds - you know how it is." Oh, she did. The rapid-fire pace of New York City was something that could never be duplicated in Bozeman, Montana and she was more than happy to let it scoop her back up into its momentum.
"Good to be back," she declared, risking a glance at Danny. He grinned, then ducked his head down to examine the body. Lindsay knelt to do the same. "The rigor shows he's been dead 12 hours at least," she reported.
"He may have been dead while the guests were still eatin' their creme brulee last night," Danny chimed in. Lindsay clicked on her flashlight, aiming it at the fatal wound in Green's chest while Danny continued bagging particulate samples.
"That's an odd corkscrew," she mused aloud when the light glinted off the murder weapon. "It's inscribed with something; looks like some kind of award."
"Flack, who's got access to the vault?" Danny called over his shoulder.
"No one." Flack had his own flashlight out, sweeping it across their victim's wares that lined the shelves of the room. "This vault was Alec's pride and joy, the only way in was through him."
"So this is where they house the million-dollar grape juice, huh?" Danny stood to load a fresh set of batteries into his flashlight, clearly not sharing his best friend's status as a wine connoisseur.
"Are you kidding me? This place is amazing," Flack murmured. "Molton Rothschild, Monterey, Barbaresco...the wine in this vault, Dan? Worth tens of thousands of dollars."
"What do you know?" Danny scoffed.
"Flack, I think Danny's kind of wine is the house Chianti," Lindsay teased. Flack laughed.
"See that's where you're wrong," Danny corrected. "My favorite kind of wine? Is beer." All three of them chuckled, knowing it to be true. And god, was Flack right - it was good to be back. Lindsay hadn't realized just how much she'd missed this - working, joking, laughing. All of the day-to-day things that she'd grown so accustomed to over the past 18 months.
"Alright, we've got lots of glass and wine spatter," Danny observed. "Looks like the bottle was open when it was broken. So it didn't come from the wine rack."
"Came from the table over here," Flack deducted.
"So we've got a glass of wine, a stoppered bottle...somebody opened a bottle to taste it. And then, maybe, it got dropped in a struggle," Lindsay guessed. Danny shook his head.
"From the diameter of the spatter, it looks like the bottle was thrown, and thrown hard."
"Okay, so there's a fight and somebody throws a wine bottle at our vic," Flack summed up.
"Then maybe Alec rushes the attacker," Lindsay suggested. She observed the mess, trying to picture it in her mind. Green in his chef's apron, his mystery assailant only a shadowy figure - they still didn't even know if they were looking for a man or a woman. So much of the evidence lay strewn across the cement floor, yet to be processed; they might as well have been working blind.
"And then he gets, uh...screwed to death," Danny concluded. Lindsay grinned, feeling ridiculous. It was a lame joke, which Flack seemed to agree with her on.
"6.5, Mess. Little shaky on the landing." And with that, he took off back upstairs and into the fray, leaving Danny still grinning proudly. Lindsay elbowed him on her way to retrieve the tweezers from her kit. God, it was like some sort of sickness - one weekend of making out with Danny Messer and she was going weak in the knees like a schoolgirl. How the hell was she ever going to be able to work once she actually slept with the guy?
They settled into a comfortable rhythm - one that was completely new to Lindsay. Most of her and Danny's professional careers had been spent dancing around what was between the two of them. But now that it was out in the open and resolved (if not yet consummated), there was an ease that they had never quite managed to obtain before. For once, Lindsay found herself flirting with Danny instead of the other way around, and he was only too happy to play along. He was so...happy today. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, joking with Flack, and dear lord, could that shirt be any tighter? She was glad that it was currently covered by his jacket, because the glimpse of it she had caught before they climbed into the car had been more than enough to set her libido aflame.
Flack had been glancing at them out of the corner of his eye all morning, like he was expecting them to jump each other as soon as his back was turned. Still, it was nice, working with him instead of Mac - Lindsay didn't feel like she had to hide her affection for Danny (which, to be honest, they'd never exactly been discrete about). Or maybe she was reading him wrong - maybe he was merely suspicious and didn't know anything for certain. Either way, she knew that Flack was on their side, and that was comforting. But if he kept shooting them that look, she was going to kill him.
She was happy to note that their status change hadn't affected their work. Despite the professionals she knew both herself and Danny to be, she had legitimately worried as to whether or not they could carry this off. But without all of the personal barriers between them, they had reached a whole new level of connectivity. There was this soaring feeling in Lindsay's chest that she knew was utterly ridiculous, yet at the same time...
She glanced over at Danny, swabbing at a blood drop on the ground and noting the gravitational pull. He looked up and smiled back, and her heart thumped just a bit louder.
Together, it felt like they could do anything.
~*~
Lindsay concentrated on the sliver of pink acrylic nail caught in her tweezers, desperate for something to get her mind off of Danny. She bagged and labeled it, the action so rote that she was fairly certain she could do it in her sleep. Next, she spotted a small section of silver chain. With this she repeated the process. She was just slipping the evidence bag into her pocket when Danny came up behind her. He called her name to get her attention and Lindsay followed his gaze to Green's body - more specifically, Green's mouth, which was...moving. They stared, confused, as a bulge grew in Green's cheek, then moved to his lips. From the seam crawled a large cockroach.
"What exactly was this chef cookin' last night?" Danny said in disgust. The roach broke away from the dead man's lips, but before it could get anywhere Lindsay grabbed a wineglass and upturned it on top of the offending insect.
"God I love my job," she muttered sarcastically. Shoving the glass a little, she shuddered in revulsion as the roach skittered around its invisible entrapment. "Okay, who gets roach detail?" she asked, sending pleading looks towards her partner. Danny held his hands up in the air and took a step backwards.
"Oh, no. He's all yours." Lindsay rolled her eyes.
"So all that macho crap goes out the window as soon as it gets gross? Way to be the white knight, Messer."
"Chain of evidence, Monroe," he shot back. "You found it, you process it." Lindsay glared, but only half-halfheartedly; to tell the truth, she'd much rather have him being stubborn than walking on eggshells around her.
"Fine," she said, rising to stand. She held out her fist. Danny nodded and extended his own. They shook once, twice, three times before Danny's paper covered her rock. Lindsay groaned, his hand still clasped around hers. She could feel the heat coming off his skin even through both of their gloves.
"Hey," he said, tugging her just a bit closer. "I promise I'll make it up to you." Lindsay kept her face neutral.
"Better be damn good, cowboy," she said sullenly. Danny leaned in, just as Flack clattered back down the stairs. He looked from one to the other, smirking.
"You two ready to go, or do you need to be alone for a minute?" he asked. Lindsay bent down and tore a section of cardboard from the back of her notepad, sliding it under the wineglass to make their suspect's cage portable. She lifted the glass in front of Flack's face.
"Look who's sharing the ride home with us," she announced sunnily. "Flack, meet our new friend Donnie. The resemblance is uncanny." Flack blanched visibly.
"You guys are sick," he stated. With that, he did an about-face and ran back up the steps like his feet were on fire. Lindsay laughed and carefully slid Donnie into the evidence container Danny had proffered, snapping the lid shut with a satisfying click. She frowned, observing the insect's limited range of movement.
"Do you think we should poke holes in the top?" she asked, slightly worried about the creature despite herself. Danny shook his head vehemently.
"Those things can survive a nuclear holocaust, I think it'll survive the car ride to the lab. But it's cute that you care." Lindsay glanced at him sidelong.
"That's sweet. But don't think you're off the hook."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Danny replied, closing his case and following her up the basement steps and back into the light of day.
~*~
By the time Flack and Danny had conducted their interview (a complete bust) and returned to the lab where they had dropped off Lindsay and the evidence just 45 minutes beforehand, Danny was feeling more than a little guilty for sticking his partner with their little critter friend. He hopped out of the car as soon as Flack pulled it into a parking spot, and his best friend rolled his eyes.
"Lindsay's a big girl Messer," he commented. "We haven't even been gone an hour, I think she probably managed to fend for herself." Danny scowled.
"You ever gonna get off my case about her?" he asked, fingers tightening around the edge of the car door.
"You gonna tell me what happened this weekend?" Flack countered. Danny narrowed his eyes and slammed the door shut. He heard Flack's chuckle follow him to the elevator even through the metal and glass. He stopped by autopsy to hear Sid's findings, and after a few minutes in the older man's presence, he felt himself begin to calm down. It was stupid, getting annoyed with Flack for asking questions that he himself would undoubtedly be asking were the situations reversed. And it wasn't that he didn't trust Flack - quite the opposite. Plus, the guy totally owed him for that time that Danny had caught him making out with Aiden and hadn't breathed a word. It was just that this thing with Lindsay was so new, so private. He knew he didn't have to keep it a secret, but he didn't want to gossip about it either - Lindsay was more to him than the locker room details he'd shared about his previous girlfriends.
God, he really had it bad, didn't he? Danny took the file folder from Sid's hands and headed eagerly towards Trace. He read as he walked, head still buried in the case file as he strode through the door to the lab.
"Sid confirmed COD," he reported. "Aortic tear and esophageal trauma due to corkscrew impalement." When he looked up, he caught the twinkle in Lindsay's eye. Oh, she had found something good.
"Did you get anything off the corkscrew?" she asked. She was going to make him work for it. It was one of the most adorable quirks about her - the pure excitement she got from showing off her knowledge. So he played along. Curiosity - a criminalist's downfall.
"Yeah, male epithelials on the handle. Unknown donor though, no hits in CODIS. But that pink trace we found? Was composed of resin and acrylic - it's a fake nail. The end was jagged, broken off...could be related to the signs of struggle at the scene." The way her eyebrow rose at his declaration made him fairly sure that she had already figured out the plastic's origin. Damn, she was good.
"Did Adam get anything off the bottle?" she asked innocently. Danny checked the notations he'd made in the file as he followed her over to the table.
"Nothing off the bottle, but he's looking at the ball bearing I found to see what it's made of, help us get a.....get an idea of what it is...." Danny trailed off as he finally spotted Donnie the cockroach. Washed clean of blood, the insect's back glistened with...rhinestones? What the hell? "Is that the creature we pulled from the vic's mouth?" he asked in disbelief. Lindsay grinned.
"Mm-hm," she answered calmly. "Madagascar hissing cockroach." She handed him the dish. Danny gave her a sidelong glance before inspecting their newest piece of evidence. She didn't at all appear to be affected by the bug, and he kind of loved that she was totally not a typical girl in situations like these. Not that he'd ever tell her that - "You're strange" rarely went over well with females, even when the sentiment was complimentary.
"Get this," she added. "This one is covered in three karats of cushion-cut emeralds and rubies. It's worth over a hundred thousand dollars." And the case just kept getting stranger.
"Get outta here," Danny muttered. "These are real stones?"
"Uh-huh. And I'm thinking that this chain was attached. Which makes this roach...jewelery. Or a pet. Or a jeweled pet." It was official now: he'd heard everything.
"A roach brooch," he proclaimed. Lindsay smiled.
"Hey, it could be the next thing," she suggested as she moved to check one of the machines on the other side of the room. As she passed him, her hand trailed across his back. Danny didn't know if she was doing it on purpose or on instinct, but the heat from her tiny palm seared right through his shirt. "I mean isn't the cockroach kind of the unofficial mascot of New York?" she continued.
"Yeah, that's funny. Take it easy there, Mon-tana," he warned, exaggerating the accent. He knew that she was joking - New York was her home too, now more than ever. Danny cleared his throat and forced himself to concentrate on work - now was most definitely not the time to wax poetic. "So how'd this thing end up in the chef's mouth?" he wondered.
"I don't know." She sounded so defeated when she said it, as if despite what little evidence they had she was still upset that there was something she couldn't figure out. "But it's worth a lot of money. Maybe somebody lost it, or maybe it was stolen."
"And Alec Green had something to do with it."
"Well to answer that, we need to know who that roach brooch belonged to." Danny shrugged.
"Well, you know, it shouldn't be too hard - how many people out there put this much bling on a bug?"
He was right, as it turned out - a simple Google search turned up the website of Gavin Bridge, jeweler to the stars. Complete with a graphic of a cockroach scurrying across the screen.
"What is wrong with this town?" Danny muttered. Lindsay jotted down the address from the screen and grabbed the car keys.
"Don't ask me - where I'm from people drive hours to see a 27-foot-tall talking penguin. Roach jewelery is just a different level of strange." She dangled the keys in front of his nose. "Also? I'm driving." Danny made a face at her back as she sped down the halls of the lab, leaving him with no choice but to follow.