Casualty

[Disasterfreak]

Thanks for the encouragement, guys! I'll do my best to update soon but, as I said, I'd rather not make any promises ;D.

[Disasterfreak]

Short chapter up! Longer one coming soon. Hopefully.

www.fanfiction.net/s/2349893/16/

[samanda]

WOW!!! I like what you did with the antagonist's thoughts. Keep 'em coming please.

[TVFan]

Another intriguing chapter disasterfreak!! I really liked how you took us into the mind of Lilly's antagonist. This guy is really sick! I'm really looking forward to seeing how all of this ties together.

[Jen]

I've just finished reading it, it is brilliant! My eyes didn't leave the screen until I had read it all! Well done!

[eurache]

disasterfreak said:

Well, as Eurache says: DAYUM! Can't believe I finally updated this thing. I know that's the story of my life LOL.

Anyway, here it is and thank you all so much for being so loyal. Seven weeks! Yikes! I don't dare make any promises for next chapter either.

www.fanfiction.net/s/2349893/15/

well, Dayum... now I gotta read your story and find out what's going on :smile79:

[Disasterfreak]

Hehe, you do that, Eurache. But be sure to tell me what you think. Jen, thanks for tuning in!

Well, this took me longer than most, but here goes...

www.fanfiction.net/s/2349893/17/

It's not really a good excuse, but ff.net was acting up and I couldn't upload it.

[Disasterfreak]

CRAP!! Something is very very wrong with ff.net. Gonna see if I can fix it. Anyone able to make the link work?

[ruda]

nope
this link doesn't work DF

[Disasterfreak]

Stupid ff.net 2#%@#%@#%@#%@#%@ And it took me FOREVER to write this chapter...

[sonny]

Can you post it here in the meantime I'm dying to read it??

[ruda]

yeah, post it here!!!

[Disasterfreak]

For Sonny and Ruda, I'm temporarily posting the new chapter here. If anyone new tunes in, the rest of the story is at www.fanfiction.net/s/2349893/1/

Chapter 16

It didn’t matter how many times they questioned Alice O’Donohue. She was staunchly bent on denying the whole thing. After a couple of hours no one was really sure whether she was conversive or just plain stubborn. They even called Frannie in for assessment, but after a few minutes she quickly informed them she was into forensics, not head shrinking.

“You got me beat with that one,” were her exact words.

Lilly was at loss as to what ploy to use on her. She’d pretty much exhausted all her arsenal. Reasoning was no good, threatening and “bad cop” were fruitless, pretend understanding worked no better…

She really felt for the girl. Regan was disturbed, but at least she had a right to be so. Her babies had died in a horrible way. Sure enough maybe she was partly to blame—but hopelessness and ignorance accounted for most of it. And her sweet aunt, Alice O’Donohue—her own flesh and blood—had made a generous contribution by abandoning her the way she had. None of these was likely to make Lilly too sympathetic toward her.

“Alice,” she began for the umpteenth time, leaning over the table, pale eyebrows drawn menacingly. “We know you gave Regan Erica Bailey’s driver’s license. What we wanna know is why. Why did you have it? Where did you meet her? Where is she now?”

Alice’s lips remained obstinately set. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“Alice, Regan told us you gave her the ID.”

Alice snorted. “Regan! You can’t believe anything that girl says. Next thing you know she’ll be telling you she was pregnant when she’s a virgin. Ask anyone. They’ll tell you. She’s delusional.”

Or you are, Lilly huffed to herself, barely resisting the urge to slam the door on her way out—preferably in the witness’s face.

“Detective Rush?” came the irrepressible voice from inside, cynically good-natured and innocent. “Could you please stop wasting my time once and for all? I really have to be at work tomorrow.”

“Lil, we can’t keep her here,” Stillman alerted her. “We have no grounds. The DA won’t let us. Just release her.”

Lilly could hardly keep herself from stamping her feet in frustration. Alice was such an obvious link and now they’d be forced to let her go. Could the damn justice department be any less understanding? Next thing she knew she’d be back in bed with Kite if only for the sake of getting warrants on time. “Fine,” she snapped at Alice. “You wanna go? Go. Get outta here.”

Smugly, Alice O’Donohue set her long skirts in place and got up, gliding down the hall in a manner worthy of a homecoming queen. To Lilly’s disbelief, she had the nerve of singing out, “Regan, honey, let’s go home!”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Vera said, cutting in before Lilly exploded and tore the woman to shreds. “You can go. But Regan’s staying with us. She’s not a minor and you have no hold over her.”

Lilly had never felt more grateful of Vera than at that moment. Not only did he keep his own temper, but he’d caught the danger signs and forced her to keep hers as well. And his words brought the most gratifying flash of anger and helplessness to Alice’s eyes.

Smells like an all-nighter, an inner voice warned her. And what the hell. There was no point going home anyway, not with Willie the baby bodyguard hanging around. She’d just give him a call and tell him to look after her cats. They’d be all right this one time.

What is the link, she wondered, sinking into her chair and pressing her fists to her temples. There’s gotta be a link somewhere. Why should Erica Bailey’s ID turn up in Regan’s hand? Why should Alice O’Donohue give it to her? What’s the connection? C’mon, Rush—you can do this. Concentrate!

With the tenacity of one who has spent all too many sleepless nights, she unflinchingly dug into Alice O’Donohue and Erica Bailey’s past history for common ground.

[Disasterfreak]

Morning found Jeffries gawking at a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle: the stately, energetic Lilly Rush sprawled face down across her desk, one hand draped loosely around her pet blue coffee mug, the other sandwiched between a mass of old files. Her hair had come down off its clip, obscuring her face. At least one third of it was inside the coffee mug.

Damn, Jeffries thought, trying to keep a straight face. Better rouse her before she becomes the laughing stock of the place—whoops, too late. Scotty and Vera had just trudged in together, stopped short at the sight, and snickered.

“Rough night, Rush?” taunted Vera, shaking her shoulder.

“Hmmm? Oh… yeah. Damn, I must’ve fallen asleep,” Lilly murmured, straightening up. A pencil was stuck to her face. Jeffries couldn’t suppress a grin, though he felt more compassion than anything else. Vera and Valens—they’d never let her live this down.

“Come on, Lil,” Scotty told her at long last, once he was done guffawing. “We gotta get over to Kemp’s garage. Pull yourself together, will ya?”

Lilly shot them a dirty look as she sped away, probably to the ladies’ room. When she re-emerged she was almost good as new. Jeffries sometimes wondered how she did it. Sure he wasn’t as young as he used to be—certainly not as young as she was—but had he ever had the stamina to pull so many all-nighters in a row? Sometimes it seemed Lilly Rush lived, breathed and dreamed cold cases. Yeah, he wasn’t kidding himself—it was all in a day’s work when you were in Homicide. But how long would she be able to endure it? There wasn’t much else in Jeffries’ life now, but in his youth there had always been Mary—his family. Lilly had nothing but her handicapped cats; kid sister had long since deserted her for Scotty, and mommy dearest, wherever she was, seemed to be only concerned with drinking herself into an early grave. She didn’t even have any hobbies, or—

Come on, Will, he shook himself. She’s a big girl. She knows what she’s doing—she can handle it. Get off her case already.

Best way to help would be contributing to the investigation. It wasn’t like there was much else to do anyway. No new cases had come up, Regan had been turned over to the DA’s office, the twins would receive a proper burial at last…

Only Erica Bailey left.

By the time Lilly and Scotty returned, he’d arrived to the same conclusion Lilly must’ve undoubtedly reached overnight—there was nothing in Erica Bailey’s past to justify Alice O’Donohue’s having her driver’s permit. There were no records of Erica ever having been in Virginia—no records of Alice having visited Philadelphia. No common friends. No common schools. Nothing.

poo poo, he grumbled inwardly. And his optimism only increased when he caught sight of Lilly and Scotty’s newest addition. “List?” he enquired somberly.

“Yup.”

“Anything?”

“Kemp recognized her. Nothing else.”

Wonderful. Well… at least there was a faint hope of Jason Bailey’s story turning out more than mere bull. He turned to make an acid comment just in time to see Lilly stumble over her chair. “Okay, that’s it,” he said firmly. “Go take a nap, Lil.”

“Nah, Will, that’s okay—” she began.

“You heard Will,” Stillman broke in, his tone dead final. “Go take a nap. You’re no good to any of us like this. Scotty, Vera and Jeffries will be glad to look over those papers for you.”

“Speak for yourself,” Vera muttered darkly. But he meekly grabbed part of the records before going back to his desk.

“That girl gives the word ‘workaholic’ a whole new meaning,” Scotty remarked, gazing after her in awe.

Jeffries blinked. “Seems like you two are back on good terms,” he mused. And Scotty seems awfully happy too. So Christina couldn’t have left him…Could Lil have had a change of heart?

“Yeah, sorta.”

“Well, don’t push your luck,” Jeffries flatly reminded him. “Wipe that smirk off your face or you’re gonna find yourself back on her bad side real fast.”

Browsing through Kemp’s chaotic records was probably one of the most frustrating, sleep-inducing tasks he had ever come across. It was like looking for a damn needle in a haystack. After all, jotting down important personnel facts like “currently dating married woman” wasn’t exactly routine. They didn’t even have a proper physical description to go on. What was that the kid had said? “Too tall and too much hair,” according to Vera. That could be anyone. Best they could do was try to match up ages—any male 25-50 years of age could be the culprit. That narrowed it down to… 16. Now they had only to visit them and cast off the runts and the bald ones—

Jeffries was just about to toss the whole thing as useless when something jumped out at him.

“Hey, Scotty, Nick—take a look at this.”

Scotty, eyes red-rimmed and stifling a yawn, Vera stifling a curse, roamed lifelessly over. “What?”

“Kemp had these guys write their names by hand. This handwriting look familiar to you?”

[Disasterfreak]

“What’s all the commotion?” Lilly asked, drifting back into the main room only slightly refreshed. She’d crashed for nearly 3 hours but it felt like 3 minutes. When she’d left them, all had been quiet. What was everyone so hyper about now?

“Lil, come here,” Stillman called her. “We’ve had the handwriting experts over. You saw Erica Bailey’s letter to her husband—what do you make of this?”

Trying desperately to blink her leaden inertia away, Lilly studied the two papers in front of her. One was the list of 1995 employees they’d recovered from Kemp’s garage earlier that day. The other was Erica Bailey’s letter, the one that had been half-forged. Automatically her brain began searching for patterns in the counterfeit handwriting. No doubt about it—the similarities were there.

“Oh my God,” she articulated. “It’s the same person.”

Stillman nodded excitedly. “The experts agree. Vera and Scotty are on their way to pick up this guy right now.”

Wow, Lilly thought half-dazedly. Things are sure moving fast.

Morgan Newton.

That sure didn’t ring a bell.

Hehe, I know it seems like I'm going at a snail's pace... but I really do plan to go somewhere with this. Really!

[ruda]

hmm...
AWESOME!!!

love this quote: “Hmmm? Oh… yeah. Damn, I must’ve fallen asleep,” Lilly murmured, straightening up. A pencil was stuck to her face. it's soooo funny! pencil stuck to her face... muahh!

[sonny]

Love the pencil stuck on the face bit too. Awesome DF!

[TVFan]

Things just keep getting more and more interesting. I'm dying to know how it's all connected. I loved the pencil on the face as well. Great description with that scene, BTW. I could completely picture the zonked out Lilly, hair in coffee cup and pencil on her face. :smile81:

I thought I'd share with you that while I was reading this latest chapter, I got to the part where the boys are working through suspects based on the description, which narrowed it down to 16. During this part of the story, I thought to myself:

"This is what I love about CC. They totally show the detective work process that goes into solving a case."

Then I realized that I was reading your story and not watching an actual episode. I completely forgot becuase it was just so spot on! Great job! :smile91:

[Disasterfreak]

:smile34: I think that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about my story. Thank you, TVFan. :smile84: **crushes TVFan to pieces in monster hug**

[ruda]

add more soon, please!! ;D