Hard Sell - Chapter 15; T
Title: Hard Sell, Chapter 15
Author: Zelda Ophelia (zeldaophelia)
Fandom/Character: CSI:NY; girl!Flack (Dawn Flack), Stella, Mac
General info: Genderbender; Not mine; T
Notes: A huge thank you to eternal_sadist, significantowl, avidbeader, and the wonderful ladies at postonthursday who helped make this fic happen.
Summary: Pre-series. Dawn Flack (not a junior, though everyone wants to add that on) is finally getting her first solo case, without her training partner to tag along. But when one death becomes three with little evidence, she's needs all the help Mac and Stella can give her to find this guy.
Dawn was almost to the precinct when she spotted the coffee cup on the floor of the car and groaned. She'd meant to take that up with her and throw it away last night; it had just slipped her mind when she'd gotten home. Mentally reminding herself to throw it away when she got to the precinct, she paused.
He'd left it in her car, so there shouldn't be any chain of custody questions, and he had been at both bars. Maka may have had a point about her having a hard time asking for help, but she didn't think that was entirely the reason Gagnon gave her the creeps. There was just something off about him. It was probably nothing, but it wouldn't hurt to at least check it out.
Decision made, she turned her car toward the lab.
Dr. Jane Parsons was just getting in for the day when she got to the DNA lab. "Hello, Detective Flack."
"Hi, Dr. Parsons. I-" She stopped, closing and opening her mouth a couple of times, trying to come up with a way to put this. "I need a favor."
"Is this for the quadruple murder case you're working?" Jane asked.
"It's probably nothing; it's probably just because the guy is a former used car salesman or something like that. But if nothing else, we can eliminate him as a suspect, right?"
"I think you need to back up a bit."
She held out the coffee cup she carried, the little bit of liquid at the bottom sloshing a bit. "Can you run this for DNA?"
"It's from a suspect?" Jane took the cup as she asked.
Dawn threw up her hands in frustration. "At this point, I don't really know. It's from the conference organizer who's been helping us; he left it in my car yesterday. He--something about him bugs me. It could be nothing. It probably is nothing. But he was at two of the bars on nights when our victims were murdered, which I guess does make him a potential suspect. One of around thirty."
"But if it is nothing, like you said we could eliminate him if we compare his DNA to our sample from Ms. Rowe."
"Right. And I'm getting tired of second-guessing myself on him, you know? I just want to know what's up."
"I'll start on it now. The process normally takes quite a while." Jane hesitated when Dawn frowned. "But there's a way that I can speed it up. While usually just as accurate, it isn't an accepted standard, so it may not hold up in court. We'd have to rerun it later according to the FBI standards."
"Do it. I need to be able to give something to the brass, even if it is just that we've eliminated people as suspects. That shows some progress."
"It'll be about three hours. Do you want me to call you, or do you want to stick around and wait?"
Dawn looked at her, slightly stunned. "Someone actually waits? Just call me; I'm going to be out tracking down more of our nameless men."
"Mac does on occasion." Jane grinned. "I think he's just too impatient for me to call. He wants the results immediately."
"I have too many other leads to follow right now," Dawn said. "Thanks, Dr. Parsons. I'll be waiting for your call."
::
Thanks to her side trip to the lab, Dawn got to the precinct a bit later than she'd planned, but she hadn't counted on Maka not being there yet, instead expecting her partner to be waiting and wondering where she was.
"Hey, Flack," Marks called her over to the front desk. "Maka wanted me to let you know that she got called out."
"The Hubert case?" Dawn asked with a frown.
"The Hubert case," he nodded. "There was a hit to CODIS last night, just added from another case in Philly. She ended up driving down to talk with the detectives on that one to see if together they had enough to narrow in on a suspect."
"It's good she's got the case moving again," Dawn said, brushing her hair behind her ear.
It would have been helpful to have Maka around, but at the same time, it was going to be more of the same from yesterday. She glanced at her watch; they were supposed to meet up again with Gagnon to work on further identifying their mystery men. The lab was also running the pictures through facial recognition software, trying to identify them through driver's license and state ID photos. But since they had to compare to more than just the New York State database, it was taking far longer than they wanted. The more they identified this way, the fewer they had to run against the databases.
Still, she wasn't supposed to meet Gagnon for another hour. She could stay here and do paperwork, or go and wear a hole in the tile outside Dr. Parson's office waiting for the results. Or, she quickly realized, she could go and talk with someone else she knew had seen their murderer. "I'm going to be out the rest of the day, trying to track down the identities of our potential suspects. If she gets back, let her know where I am. And have her call me so we can meet up and go over things."
Dawn had gotten Nicole Webb's number and address when they first met at Porter's, ostensibly in case she needed to get any more information later. (She hadn't really planned to use it for anything else, even though a certain offer was still fresh in her mind.) She called on her way back to the car, making arrangements to meet for coffee just down the street from where Nicole lived.
"Hi, Detective," Nicole said, giving her a shy smile as she sat down. "You wanted me to look at something?"
"We have some photos that may include the man you saw leaving with Kelli Rowe. Do you mind taking a look at them?"
"I can try. I'm not certain how good of a look I got at him."
"Trying is good."
Though hopefully she'd get more here. Maxine Rowe had already looked at the photos the day before and hadn't been able to pick out any one definitively. She had apologized profusely, trying her hardest not to cry as she admitted she had been too drunk to be able to recognize her sister's killer. Nicole hadn't been drunk, however, and might be able to give them a better idea of who their killer was. And if he was one of the men they'd already managed to identify, even better.
Nicole nodded, opening the folder to look through the pictures. "Here, this is him," she said, finding one that looked right. She was about to hand it to Dawn when she saw the picture behind it. "Wait, maybe this is. Oh..." She ran her hand down the back of her head. "This is going to be harder than I thought."
As Dawn waited, she looked closely at every single picture in the folder, pulling photos out every now and then to add to a small, but growing, pile by her coffee cup. Finally, she handed the folder back to Dawn, looking through the stack one last time before giving it over as well.
"He's one of those. I can't be certain - we were pretty busy - but I do at least know the men in that pile were in the bar that night. I think he's one of the top three in that stack, but I'm not positive on which one."
"This is great, thanks," Dawn said as she took the stack and started to look through it.
The picture on top was someone they hadn't identified yet, but the second was familiar enough that she was unexpectedly pleased she made that unplanned stop this morning. Of the other four, two others had already been identified - and questioned, with their alibis seeming fairly good - and the other two hadn't. She wrote down which Nicole had singled out, before moving the unidentified three from her stack to the top. Those were the ones she wanted to start with.
She continued as she stood to leave, "You've given us more than we had before I got here."
"I'm glad I could help," Nicole said, looking a little relieved. "Oh, and detective?" Her cheeks grew pink when Dawn turned back to her. "Um, that offer from earlier still stands."
This time Dawn blushed, ducking her head. "Thanks. I'll keep that in mind."
She meant it, too. She had spent most of the past week telling herself she needed to get out more with people who weren't from work. And if Nicole seemed to be interested in something more than just hanging out, that would be a nice bonus.
First, however, she had a killer to catch and a case with a deadline. After Monday, if they didn't have him, their case was probably going to end up cold. He'd be in another city, probably in another state. It was more likely that the rest of her weekend was going to be spent working to try to bring him in than out club hopping.
That didn't mean it wouldn't be nice to have something to look forward to, she thought to herself as she walked back to her car. Yeah, getting this guy behind bars would be its own reward, but a treat would be fun as well.
Monday. If she found him by Monday, she'd take Nicole up on the offer. Or at least plan a night out. Do something other than staying home over the weekend with casefiles. She'd had enough of that for a while.
::
Thanks to the extra stop, Dawn was a few minutes late getting to the Greenwich Building. It was worth it in her opinion, having called back to the lab to ask them to concentrate on identifying the three men that Nicole had picked out. She'd ask Gagnon, too, to see if he had any ideas how to find them. But the two identified men Nicole had picked out were men they hadn't spoken with yet, which put them at the top of her list for the morning.
Gagnon was waiting in the lobby, looking a bit worried, when the elevator opened. He frowned at her. "No Detective Maka today?"
"She was called out on another case," Dawn explained, trying to study him closely without him noticing as they walked back to the conference room. He seemed rather agitated, which was fairly normal for him - or so she thought. Now she wasn't quite so certain.
"That's unfortunate. It was a pleasure to meet her yesterday." He paused, as if trying to decide whether or not to continue. "Oh, and I wanted to apologize."
"For what?" Dawn said, frowning at him. "You haven't done anything wrong, have you?"
"I left my trash in your vehicle last night," he said, flushing in embarrassment. "I really should have known better."
"Don't worry about it. I took care of it." Dawn pulled the images out again as she sat down, flipping through them before pulling out the two she wanted to start with. Gagnon leaned over to watch as she did so.
"You rearranged them," he noticed as she flipped past the still that was taken of him.
"Hm? Oh, yes. I spoke with one of the bartenders about who they remembered being at the bar." She deliberately kept her response vague.
He nodded, pushing the briefcase he'd set on the table aside. "That makes perfect sense. Of course, I was at the Russell to meet with the presenters to go over our preparations for the next day."
"Of course." She smiled at him. "You explained that yesterday. Now, this one-" She picked up the picture of one of the identified men. "-he wasn't answering his phone yesterday, but you said he'll likely be at a particular session this afternoon. Correct?"
"Yes; I can make arrangements for us to meet him there."
"Thank you."
::
"Mac!" Jane called out as she hurried down the lab's hallway, waving him and Stella over.
She still couldn't quite believe it, had even already set it up to run again to double check her results. But if it was right, then the fact that Dawn wasn't answering her phone wasn't something she could ignore.
"Jane," he said when they reached her. "Is something wrong?"
"She figured it out," Jane said, pausing to catch her breath. "Detective Flack figured out who your murderer is. Only she doesn't know and I can't reach her and I think that she might be with him right now."
"With him?" Mac asked, reaching for the cell phone on his belt. He dialed Dawn's number, concern growing as it rang through to voicemail.
"The man from the conference who is helping with the case--he left his coffee cup in her car, and she asked me to run it. I don't think she expected anything to come of it, just wanted to be able to exclude him from the investigation if nothing else."
"She's mentioned that there was something about him that seemed off," Stella said. "We discounted it because he's one of the conference organizers and had an alibi. Well, more like a reason to be at the places where the women were taken from. And he's been so cooperative with the investigation."
"Serial killers like to insert themselves in investigations," Mac reminded them both as he dialed another number. "They want to know how much we have and try to influence the outcome. We should have realized that."
"And she's alone. Maka went to Philadelphia on the Hubert case."
"I know," Mac said, putting his hand up to cut off anything else she was about to say as there was an answer on the phone. "Officer Marks, did Flack say where she was going to be today?"
"Back working the conference angle again with your suspect list," Marks said over the phone.
"She's not answering her phone. If she calls, in tell her to contact either myself or Detective Bonasera immediately." Mac hung up before Marks could ask anything else, turning back to Jane. "Thank you for finding us."
"You know where to find her?"
"I think so, but I'd like for you to keep trying to get through to her. She's working with the conference again, so she may have turned her phone down to avoid interrupting a session. She may answer it or call back when she gets out."
"Meaning she's with him." Stella pursed her lips. "Mac, that's in Midtown, near that cell phone dead zone around the Empire State Building. And she fits-"
"I know, Stella. We just have to trust that she'll be okay until we get there," he said as they both hurried to the elevator. "She's a good detective, and if this man was bugging her enough to ask Jane to run his DNA, then she's considering him a suspect."
"Still, I'll feel better when we get there."
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Author: Zelda Ophelia (zeldaophelia)
Fandom/Character: CSI:NY; girl!Flack (Dawn Flack), Stella, Mac
General info: Genderbender; Not mine; T
Notes: A huge thank you to eternal_sadist, significantowl, avidbeader, and the wonderful ladies at postonthursday who helped make this fic happen.
Summary: Pre-series. Dawn Flack (not a junior, though everyone wants to add that on) is finally getting her first solo case, without her training partner to tag along. But when one death becomes three with little evidence, she's needs all the help Mac and Stella can give her to find this guy.
Dawn was almost to the precinct when she spotted the coffee cup on the floor of the car and groaned. She'd meant to take that up with her and throw it away last night; it had just slipped her mind when she'd gotten home. Mentally reminding herself to throw it away when she got to the precinct, she paused.
He'd left it in her car, so there shouldn't be any chain of custody questions, and he had been at both bars. Maka may have had a point about her having a hard time asking for help, but she didn't think that was entirely the reason Gagnon gave her the creeps. There was just something off about him. It was probably nothing, but it wouldn't hurt to at least check it out.
Decision made, she turned her car toward the lab.
Dr. Jane Parsons was just getting in for the day when she got to the DNA lab. "Hello, Detective Flack."
"Hi, Dr. Parsons. I-" She stopped, closing and opening her mouth a couple of times, trying to come up with a way to put this. "I need a favor."
"Is this for the quadruple murder case you're working?" Jane asked.
"It's probably nothing; it's probably just because the guy is a former used car salesman or something like that. But if nothing else, we can eliminate him as a suspect, right?"
"I think you need to back up a bit."
She held out the coffee cup she carried, the little bit of liquid at the bottom sloshing a bit. "Can you run this for DNA?"
"It's from a suspect?" Jane took the cup as she asked.
Dawn threw up her hands in frustration. "At this point, I don't really know. It's from the conference organizer who's been helping us; he left it in my car yesterday. He--something about him bugs me. It could be nothing. It probably is nothing. But he was at two of the bars on nights when our victims were murdered, which I guess does make him a potential suspect. One of around thirty."
"But if it is nothing, like you said we could eliminate him if we compare his DNA to our sample from Ms. Rowe."
"Right. And I'm getting tired of second-guessing myself on him, you know? I just want to know what's up."
"I'll start on it now. The process normally takes quite a while." Jane hesitated when Dawn frowned. "But there's a way that I can speed it up. While usually just as accurate, it isn't an accepted standard, so it may not hold up in court. We'd have to rerun it later according to the FBI standards."
"Do it. I need to be able to give something to the brass, even if it is just that we've eliminated people as suspects. That shows some progress."
"It'll be about three hours. Do you want me to call you, or do you want to stick around and wait?"
Dawn looked at her, slightly stunned. "Someone actually waits? Just call me; I'm going to be out tracking down more of our nameless men."
"Mac does on occasion." Jane grinned. "I think he's just too impatient for me to call. He wants the results immediately."
"I have too many other leads to follow right now," Dawn said. "Thanks, Dr. Parsons. I'll be waiting for your call."
::
Thanks to her side trip to the lab, Dawn got to the precinct a bit later than she'd planned, but she hadn't counted on Maka not being there yet, instead expecting her partner to be waiting and wondering where she was.
"Hey, Flack," Marks called her over to the front desk. "Maka wanted me to let you know that she got called out."
"The Hubert case?" Dawn asked with a frown.
"The Hubert case," he nodded. "There was a hit to CODIS last night, just added from another case in Philly. She ended up driving down to talk with the detectives on that one to see if together they had enough to narrow in on a suspect."
"It's good she's got the case moving again," Dawn said, brushing her hair behind her ear.
It would have been helpful to have Maka around, but at the same time, it was going to be more of the same from yesterday. She glanced at her watch; they were supposed to meet up again with Gagnon to work on further identifying their mystery men. The lab was also running the pictures through facial recognition software, trying to identify them through driver's license and state ID photos. But since they had to compare to more than just the New York State database, it was taking far longer than they wanted. The more they identified this way, the fewer they had to run against the databases.
Still, she wasn't supposed to meet Gagnon for another hour. She could stay here and do paperwork, or go and wear a hole in the tile outside Dr. Parson's office waiting for the results. Or, she quickly realized, she could go and talk with someone else she knew had seen their murderer. "I'm going to be out the rest of the day, trying to track down the identities of our potential suspects. If she gets back, let her know where I am. And have her call me so we can meet up and go over things."
Dawn had gotten Nicole Webb's number and address when they first met at Porter's, ostensibly in case she needed to get any more information later. (She hadn't really planned to use it for anything else, even though a certain offer was still fresh in her mind.) She called on her way back to the car, making arrangements to meet for coffee just down the street from where Nicole lived.
"Hi, Detective," Nicole said, giving her a shy smile as she sat down. "You wanted me to look at something?"
"We have some photos that may include the man you saw leaving with Kelli Rowe. Do you mind taking a look at them?"
"I can try. I'm not certain how good of a look I got at him."
"Trying is good."
Though hopefully she'd get more here. Maxine Rowe had already looked at the photos the day before and hadn't been able to pick out any one definitively. She had apologized profusely, trying her hardest not to cry as she admitted she had been too drunk to be able to recognize her sister's killer. Nicole hadn't been drunk, however, and might be able to give them a better idea of who their killer was. And if he was one of the men they'd already managed to identify, even better.
Nicole nodded, opening the folder to look through the pictures. "Here, this is him," she said, finding one that looked right. She was about to hand it to Dawn when she saw the picture behind it. "Wait, maybe this is. Oh..." She ran her hand down the back of her head. "This is going to be harder than I thought."
As Dawn waited, she looked closely at every single picture in the folder, pulling photos out every now and then to add to a small, but growing, pile by her coffee cup. Finally, she handed the folder back to Dawn, looking through the stack one last time before giving it over as well.
"He's one of those. I can't be certain - we were pretty busy - but I do at least know the men in that pile were in the bar that night. I think he's one of the top three in that stack, but I'm not positive on which one."
"This is great, thanks," Dawn said as she took the stack and started to look through it.
The picture on top was someone they hadn't identified yet, but the second was familiar enough that she was unexpectedly pleased she made that unplanned stop this morning. Of the other four, two others had already been identified - and questioned, with their alibis seeming fairly good - and the other two hadn't. She wrote down which Nicole had singled out, before moving the unidentified three from her stack to the top. Those were the ones she wanted to start with.
She continued as she stood to leave, "You've given us more than we had before I got here."
"I'm glad I could help," Nicole said, looking a little relieved. "Oh, and detective?" Her cheeks grew pink when Dawn turned back to her. "Um, that offer from earlier still stands."
This time Dawn blushed, ducking her head. "Thanks. I'll keep that in mind."
She meant it, too. She had spent most of the past week telling herself she needed to get out more with people who weren't from work. And if Nicole seemed to be interested in something more than just hanging out, that would be a nice bonus.
First, however, she had a killer to catch and a case with a deadline. After Monday, if they didn't have him, their case was probably going to end up cold. He'd be in another city, probably in another state. It was more likely that the rest of her weekend was going to be spent working to try to bring him in than out club hopping.
That didn't mean it wouldn't be nice to have something to look forward to, she thought to herself as she walked back to her car. Yeah, getting this guy behind bars would be its own reward, but a treat would be fun as well.
Monday. If she found him by Monday, she'd take Nicole up on the offer. Or at least plan a night out. Do something other than staying home over the weekend with casefiles. She'd had enough of that for a while.
::
Thanks to the extra stop, Dawn was a few minutes late getting to the Greenwich Building. It was worth it in her opinion, having called back to the lab to ask them to concentrate on identifying the three men that Nicole had picked out. She'd ask Gagnon, too, to see if he had any ideas how to find them. But the two identified men Nicole had picked out were men they hadn't spoken with yet, which put them at the top of her list for the morning.
Gagnon was waiting in the lobby, looking a bit worried, when the elevator opened. He frowned at her. "No Detective Maka today?"
"She was called out on another case," Dawn explained, trying to study him closely without him noticing as they walked back to the conference room. He seemed rather agitated, which was fairly normal for him - or so she thought. Now she wasn't quite so certain.
"That's unfortunate. It was a pleasure to meet her yesterday." He paused, as if trying to decide whether or not to continue. "Oh, and I wanted to apologize."
"For what?" Dawn said, frowning at him. "You haven't done anything wrong, have you?"
"I left my trash in your vehicle last night," he said, flushing in embarrassment. "I really should have known better."
"Don't worry about it. I took care of it." Dawn pulled the images out again as she sat down, flipping through them before pulling out the two she wanted to start with. Gagnon leaned over to watch as she did so.
"You rearranged them," he noticed as she flipped past the still that was taken of him.
"Hm? Oh, yes. I spoke with one of the bartenders about who they remembered being at the bar." She deliberately kept her response vague.
He nodded, pushing the briefcase he'd set on the table aside. "That makes perfect sense. Of course, I was at the Russell to meet with the presenters to go over our preparations for the next day."
"Of course." She smiled at him. "You explained that yesterday. Now, this one-" She picked up the picture of one of the identified men. "-he wasn't answering his phone yesterday, but you said he'll likely be at a particular session this afternoon. Correct?"
"Yes; I can make arrangements for us to meet him there."
"Thank you."
::
"Mac!" Jane called out as she hurried down the lab's hallway, waving him and Stella over.
She still couldn't quite believe it, had even already set it up to run again to double check her results. But if it was right, then the fact that Dawn wasn't answering her phone wasn't something she could ignore.
"Jane," he said when they reached her. "Is something wrong?"
"She figured it out," Jane said, pausing to catch her breath. "Detective Flack figured out who your murderer is. Only she doesn't know and I can't reach her and I think that she might be with him right now."
"With him?" Mac asked, reaching for the cell phone on his belt. He dialed Dawn's number, concern growing as it rang through to voicemail.
"The man from the conference who is helping with the case--he left his coffee cup in her car, and she asked me to run it. I don't think she expected anything to come of it, just wanted to be able to exclude him from the investigation if nothing else."
"She's mentioned that there was something about him that seemed off," Stella said. "We discounted it because he's one of the conference organizers and had an alibi. Well, more like a reason to be at the places where the women were taken from. And he's been so cooperative with the investigation."
"Serial killers like to insert themselves in investigations," Mac reminded them both as he dialed another number. "They want to know how much we have and try to influence the outcome. We should have realized that."
"And she's alone. Maka went to Philadelphia on the Hubert case."
"I know," Mac said, putting his hand up to cut off anything else she was about to say as there was an answer on the phone. "Officer Marks, did Flack say where she was going to be today?"
"Back working the conference angle again with your suspect list," Marks said over the phone.
"She's not answering her phone. If she calls, in tell her to contact either myself or Detective Bonasera immediately." Mac hung up before Marks could ask anything else, turning back to Jane. "Thank you for finding us."
"You know where to find her?"
"I think so, but I'd like for you to keep trying to get through to her. She's working with the conference again, so she may have turned her phone down to avoid interrupting a session. She may answer it or call back when she gets out."
"Meaning she's with him." Stella pursed her lips. "Mac, that's in Midtown, near that cell phone dead zone around the Empire State Building. And she fits-"
"I know, Stella. We just have to trust that she'll be okay until we get there," he said as they both hurried to the elevator. "She's a good detective, and if this man was bugging her enough to ask Jane to run his DNA, then she's considering him a suspect."
"Still, I'll feel better when we get there."
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