FIC: Titania Falling (CSI:NY; ensemble; T) 4/17
Title: Titania Falling
Chapter: Come now, for a roundel and a fairy song 4/17
Author: Zelda Ophelia (zeldaophelia)
Fandom/Character: CSI:NY, ensemble (Flack/Angell, hints of Danny/Lindsay and Mac/Stella)
General info: Not mine; T
Words: 1886
Summary: When a dead fairy is found within Central Park's urban forest, Flack and the CSIs race to solve the mystery of who she is and how she died. Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, an unidentified man appears to have fallen to his death. Previous chapters here.
Rock music blasted through the lab as Adam carefully sorted through the evidence at hand. Adding the last evidence bag to its proper stack, he stepped back to survey his work. The sheer amount of evidence was still almost overwhelming. Where to start? Actually, he knew the answer to that, the biologicals. A sample from the Jane Doe had already been sent to DNA, but it looked like there had been a bunch of people at that party. Maybe one of them was in the system. That would make their jobs a lot easier.
Moving his other stacks carefully out of the way, Adam began processing the cups. When Lindsay and Stella had processed them at the scene, they had been very careful to take a sample of the remaining liquid. Those samples, in small glass jars, had then been paired with the cups they'd come from in an evidence bag. He started with those by taking a sample of that liquid to prep. It could be run through the GC-MS - mass spectrometer - to determine just what everyone had been imbibing. He then swabbed the rim of the cup, hoping for DNA that could be tracked through the system - if they didn't get a hit on Titania, maybe they would on one of her guests. Then he dusted for prints that he could run through AFIS - the Automated Fingerprint Information System. It was more likely they'd find someone that way than with DNA, more were in the system, but it was best to save the prints for last. That powder got everywhere and could risk a false reading on some of the other tests.
He was just finishing the stack of cups when Lindsay returned, carry several evidence bags containing little fairy dolls. "Aw, man, don't tell me I have to do those, too."
"No," Lindsay said, laughing, "I'll do them. We've still trying to get them off that arbor without damaging them or any evidence that may be on them - they were well secured. But I told Stella I'd get a start on processing what we've removed so far."
"Good." Adam sighed in relief. "I've got enough with all this evidence here and --" He trailed off, muttering something under his breath with a shudder.
"What was that?" Lindsay asked, glancing his way as she set the bags down at her station.
"Hmm? What?" Adam looked at her, trying to pretend he hadn't heard her. She just raised an eyebrow, and he sighed; he needed a better poker face. "Those things are creepy."
"No they're no-" She glanced down at the light table as she spoke, looking at the small porcelain dolls lined up in a row, their big round eyes shining up at her, unblinking. She suppressed a shudder and said, "Maybe they are."
"You could help with this," Adam offered. "I'll be working on these cups for a while still. The silverware - err, utensils, I guess, since they aren't silver - is what I was going to work on next."
"Nah, I told Stella I'd get started on these. Some of these dolls are pretty unique, we might be able to get more information about what happened from them."
Lindsay opened the first bag, removing a tiny, intricate, ceramic fairy doll. She was dressed in a wispy, green silk tunic and over tunic with matching translucent wings. Like their victim, the doll also wore a tiny crown of flowers and ribbon. It was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, yet every tiny detail was present, including a small speck of something metallic caught in her hair. Lindsay carefully removed and bagged the trace evidence, setting it aside as she continued her examination.
As Adam bopped around to his rock music, Lindsay carefully removed the fairy costume from the doll, piece by piece. Each article of clothing was carefully examined for trace evidence, like the hair had been, as well as fingerprints. She found a greasy smear on the doll's back and, unwrapping a swab, took a sample that would also be sent to trace. Finishing up her examination, she started processing the next doll.
Slowly she made her way through the pile of evidence, knowing that Stella would soon have more dolls from the arbor. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Adam finish processing the cups and begin with the utensils. Just as she started the last of her dolls, one of the techs came in with another batch. She handed him the trace samples, while Adam added a set of swabs to take down to DNA. Then, blaring rock music aside, the lab became quiet again as they both returned to their work.
::
Hawkes always felt a bit of nostalgia when he entered the autopsy lab. Oh, he loved his job as a CSI and wouldn't give it up, but part of him did miss it down here. Sid looked up from the x-rays he had been studying as the doors closed behind Hawkes and waved him over to a sheet-covered body.
"I just finished your John Doe. As opposed to the Jane Doe that came in earlier. Odd, having two unidentified corpses coming in back to back. You know, it reminds me of that time when--"
"Sid," Hawkes interrupted. "No offense, but we don't really have time for the creepy place."
"Why, Hawkes, whatever makes you think that I was--" Sid stopped, looked up at his old colleague, and grinned. "Well, I guess it could have been considered slightly inappropriate. Anyway, your victim died as a result of severe trauma to the head and upper neck. His skull was cracked in several places, and his spine was fractured between the C-1 and C-2 vertebrae. There was also significant fracturing to his both his radius and ulna, humerus, and scapula. In some ways, Danny has been rather correct in referring to your vic as 'pancake guy': there were very few bones in his upper body that weren't fractured in some way. Given the severity of the injuries, either he or what he hit was moving at a formidable speed."
"How formidable?"
"By my calculations? 40 miles per hour. At least."
Hawkes raised his eyebrows, impressed. "That's a good amount of speed for a fall."
"Lividity also suggests he died in the position he was found," Sid continued, pointing to where the blood had pooled in the body. "I found some flecks of dried blood and skin under his nails, which I've already sent up to DNA for Dr. Parsons. There were no antemortem scratches on the body that suggested it belong to him."
"There was no sign he had been moved at the scene, or that there had been a struggle." Hawkes added, shifting back on his heels to think. "You know, that isn't necessarily fatal impact speed."
"It is when you're going head first, which is what his injuries suggest." Sid handed him the folder with the autopsy report. "There are copies of the x-rays in there, in case you need to look over them. I also found evidence of past retinal and vitreous humor disease in his eyes. And some evidence of drug abuse."
"Yeah, that'll be helpful." Hawkes took the file, still mulling over the questions their DB raised as he left autopsy. "Thanks, Sid."
::
Danny was setting up at the light table when Hawkes reached the lab, going over what little evidence they already had. This included the clothing that Sid had already sent up - the spandex biking shorts and shirt their John Doe had been wearing when he died. He glanced up at Hawkes as he entered.
"I still don't get why they have special clothes for diving. What's the difference?"
"It's about the aerodynamics of the dive," he explained, pulling out an evidence bag Danny hadn't opened yet. "It's the same reason they shave off their body hair, to remove the added drag in order to try to execute a more perfect dive. What?"
He shot an amused glare over at Danny, who was shaking with laughter.
"How do you know so much about all of this?"
"I had a girlfriend who was a big fan of competitive diving. We watched quite a few televised diving meets together. It's actually a rather interesting sport; it has the grace of ballet and gymnastics, but in a very different medium."
"Yeah, yeah," Danny joked while he pulled the shorts closer to take a better look - there was something on them. "You were just trying to impress your girl. Ya know, I think I got something."
He dropped the trace - a small grey fiber - onto a slide and took it over to the microscope. "Here, take a look. Now that definitely doesn't match the clothes he was wearing."
"No, it doesn't," Hawkes said, using a pair of tweezers to turn it over. "It's triangular, suggesting a synthetic."
"Pretty much everything he was wearing was synthetic."
"But not grey; his clothes are black. Maybe he picked it up somewhere on his way in?"
"Please tell me you have something," Angell cut in from the doorway to the lab, looking more than a little frazzled for running around on such a hot day. "Because I've got jack."
"Nothing? Really?" Danny groaned, leaning against the lab bench.
"Every single key is accounted for. I spoke with everyone who has either worked at or been a member of the club in the past three years. No one recognized the description of our vic. Nothing. It's like he came out of thin air."
"Well, he was definitely real, as were his injuries," Hawkes said, then explained what Sid told him about the injuries down in autopsy.
"Great. So we have a John Doe, still, and we're not certain how he ended up there, still."
"At least we have time of death, likely sometime around 11 o'clock last night," Hawkes interjected. "You heard Mac; Sid couldn't even give him that much on his victim."
"Well, then we've got something," Danny groused.
"And we have our grey fiber." Pulling said fiber out from under the microscope, Hawkes took it back to the lab bench and carefully cut a small section off of it. "I'll run it through the mass spec to see exactly what it is. If we know what it was used for, we might find out where he got it."
"And I'm going to start in on missing persons," Angell said with a sigh. "There's a possibility that he's already been reported and we can get an ID."
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Chapter: Come now, for a roundel and a fairy song 4/17
Author: Zelda Ophelia (zeldaophelia)
Fandom/Character: CSI:NY, ensemble (Flack/Angell, hints of Danny/Lindsay and Mac/Stella)
General info: Not mine; T
Words: 1886
Summary: When a dead fairy is found within Central Park's urban forest, Flack and the CSIs race to solve the mystery of who she is and how she died. Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, an unidentified man appears to have fallen to his death. Previous chapters here.
Rock music blasted through the lab as Adam carefully sorted through the evidence at hand. Adding the last evidence bag to its proper stack, he stepped back to survey his work. The sheer amount of evidence was still almost overwhelming. Where to start? Actually, he knew the answer to that, the biologicals. A sample from the Jane Doe had already been sent to DNA, but it looked like there had been a bunch of people at that party. Maybe one of them was in the system. That would make their jobs a lot easier.
Moving his other stacks carefully out of the way, Adam began processing the cups. When Lindsay and Stella had processed them at the scene, they had been very careful to take a sample of the remaining liquid. Those samples, in small glass jars, had then been paired with the cups they'd come from in an evidence bag. He started with those by taking a sample of that liquid to prep. It could be run through the GC-MS - mass spectrometer - to determine just what everyone had been imbibing. He then swabbed the rim of the cup, hoping for DNA that could be tracked through the system - if they didn't get a hit on Titania, maybe they would on one of her guests. Then he dusted for prints that he could run through AFIS - the Automated Fingerprint Information System. It was more likely they'd find someone that way than with DNA, more were in the system, but it was best to save the prints for last. That powder got everywhere and could risk a false reading on some of the other tests.
He was just finishing the stack of cups when Lindsay returned, carry several evidence bags containing little fairy dolls. "Aw, man, don't tell me I have to do those, too."
"No," Lindsay said, laughing, "I'll do them. We've still trying to get them off that arbor without damaging them or any evidence that may be on them - they were well secured. But I told Stella I'd get a start on processing what we've removed so far."
"Good." Adam sighed in relief. "I've got enough with all this evidence here and --" He trailed off, muttering something under his breath with a shudder.
"What was that?" Lindsay asked, glancing his way as she set the bags down at her station.
"Hmm? What?" Adam looked at her, trying to pretend he hadn't heard her. She just raised an eyebrow, and he sighed; he needed a better poker face. "Those things are creepy."
"No they're no-" She glanced down at the light table as she spoke, looking at the small porcelain dolls lined up in a row, their big round eyes shining up at her, unblinking. She suppressed a shudder and said, "Maybe they are."
"You could help with this," Adam offered. "I'll be working on these cups for a while still. The silverware - err, utensils, I guess, since they aren't silver - is what I was going to work on next."
"Nah, I told Stella I'd get started on these. Some of these dolls are pretty unique, we might be able to get more information about what happened from them."
Lindsay opened the first bag, removing a tiny, intricate, ceramic fairy doll. She was dressed in a wispy, green silk tunic and over tunic with matching translucent wings. Like their victim, the doll also wore a tiny crown of flowers and ribbon. It was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, yet every tiny detail was present, including a small speck of something metallic caught in her hair. Lindsay carefully removed and bagged the trace evidence, setting it aside as she continued her examination.
As Adam bopped around to his rock music, Lindsay carefully removed the fairy costume from the doll, piece by piece. Each article of clothing was carefully examined for trace evidence, like the hair had been, as well as fingerprints. She found a greasy smear on the doll's back and, unwrapping a swab, took a sample that would also be sent to trace. Finishing up her examination, she started processing the next doll.
Slowly she made her way through the pile of evidence, knowing that Stella would soon have more dolls from the arbor. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Adam finish processing the cups and begin with the utensils. Just as she started the last of her dolls, one of the techs came in with another batch. She handed him the trace samples, while Adam added a set of swabs to take down to DNA. Then, blaring rock music aside, the lab became quiet again as they both returned to their work.
::
Hawkes always felt a bit of nostalgia when he entered the autopsy lab. Oh, he loved his job as a CSI and wouldn't give it up, but part of him did miss it down here. Sid looked up from the x-rays he had been studying as the doors closed behind Hawkes and waved him over to a sheet-covered body.
"I just finished your John Doe. As opposed to the Jane Doe that came in earlier. Odd, having two unidentified corpses coming in back to back. You know, it reminds me of that time when--"
"Sid," Hawkes interrupted. "No offense, but we don't really have time for the creepy place."
"Why, Hawkes, whatever makes you think that I was--" Sid stopped, looked up at his old colleague, and grinned. "Well, I guess it could have been considered slightly inappropriate. Anyway, your victim died as a result of severe trauma to the head and upper neck. His skull was cracked in several places, and his spine was fractured between the C-1 and C-2 vertebrae. There was also significant fracturing to his both his radius and ulna, humerus, and scapula. In some ways, Danny has been rather correct in referring to your vic as 'pancake guy': there were very few bones in his upper body that weren't fractured in some way. Given the severity of the injuries, either he or what he hit was moving at a formidable speed."
"How formidable?"
"By my calculations? 40 miles per hour. At least."
Hawkes raised his eyebrows, impressed. "That's a good amount of speed for a fall."
"Lividity also suggests he died in the position he was found," Sid continued, pointing to where the blood had pooled in the body. "I found some flecks of dried blood and skin under his nails, which I've already sent up to DNA for Dr. Parsons. There were no antemortem scratches on the body that suggested it belong to him."
"There was no sign he had been moved at the scene, or that there had been a struggle." Hawkes added, shifting back on his heels to think. "You know, that isn't necessarily fatal impact speed."
"It is when you're going head first, which is what his injuries suggest." Sid handed him the folder with the autopsy report. "There are copies of the x-rays in there, in case you need to look over them. I also found evidence of past retinal and vitreous humor disease in his eyes. And some evidence of drug abuse."
"Yeah, that'll be helpful." Hawkes took the file, still mulling over the questions their DB raised as he left autopsy. "Thanks, Sid."
::
Danny was setting up at the light table when Hawkes reached the lab, going over what little evidence they already had. This included the clothing that Sid had already sent up - the spandex biking shorts and shirt their John Doe had been wearing when he died. He glanced up at Hawkes as he entered.
"I still don't get why they have special clothes for diving. What's the difference?"
"It's about the aerodynamics of the dive," he explained, pulling out an evidence bag Danny hadn't opened yet. "It's the same reason they shave off their body hair, to remove the added drag in order to try to execute a more perfect dive. What?"
He shot an amused glare over at Danny, who was shaking with laughter.
"How do you know so much about all of this?"
"I had a girlfriend who was a big fan of competitive diving. We watched quite a few televised diving meets together. It's actually a rather interesting sport; it has the grace of ballet and gymnastics, but in a very different medium."
"Yeah, yeah," Danny joked while he pulled the shorts closer to take a better look - there was something on them. "You were just trying to impress your girl. Ya know, I think I got something."
He dropped the trace - a small grey fiber - onto a slide and took it over to the microscope. "Here, take a look. Now that definitely doesn't match the clothes he was wearing."
"No, it doesn't," Hawkes said, using a pair of tweezers to turn it over. "It's triangular, suggesting a synthetic."
"Pretty much everything he was wearing was synthetic."
"But not grey; his clothes are black. Maybe he picked it up somewhere on his way in?"
"Please tell me you have something," Angell cut in from the doorway to the lab, looking more than a little frazzled for running around on such a hot day. "Because I've got jack."
"Nothing? Really?" Danny groaned, leaning against the lab bench.
"Every single key is accounted for. I spoke with everyone who has either worked at or been a member of the club in the past three years. No one recognized the description of our vic. Nothing. It's like he came out of thin air."
"Well, he was definitely real, as were his injuries," Hawkes said, then explained what Sid told him about the injuries down in autopsy.
"Great. So we have a John Doe, still, and we're not certain how he ended up there, still."
"At least we have time of death, likely sometime around 11 o'clock last night," Hawkes interjected. "You heard Mac; Sid couldn't even give him that much on his victim."
"Well, then we've got something," Danny groused.
"And we have our grey fiber." Pulling said fiber out from under the microscope, Hawkes took it back to the lab bench and carefully cut a small section off of it. "I'll run it through the mass spec to see exactly what it is. If we know what it was used for, we might find out where he got it."
"And I'm going to start in on missing persons," Angell said with a sigh. "There's a possibility that he's already been reported and we can get an ID."
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