CSI:New York : Who Are You? (Don Flack/OFC fanfic)

We All Fall Down

Three hours later Danny and Olivia were on their way to Autopsy to see if Doc Hammerback was able to give them an official cause of death for their victim, Jason Tam. They had run Tam's clothes hoping to find something, but other than the victim's own blood and a few stray hairs, they were clean. Unless the Doc told them different, it was beginning to look like maybe the death had been accidental, after all.

Danny pushed open the swinging doors that lead into Autopsy; Olivia following him and both were greeted by a very different sound than the one they were used to hearing. It wasn't Chopin playing from the loudspeakers, but in fact a rather bittersweet, soulful female voice.

'Hey, Doc. You and Chopin have a fallout or something?' said Danny.

'There's a time and place for everything that is Chopin, Mr. Messer,' Sid replied, looking up from the chalk-white corpse of Jason Tam. Beside him was a mug of fresh coffee. 'Today is a day for reflection and who better to voice that than the dulcet tones of Miss. Norah Jones.'

'It's nice. I like it,' Olivia said nodding.

Sid beamed at her. 'I've come to a conclusion and I'm about to make another. The Rolling Stones are without a doubt the greatest rock band ever. I had a friend who almost went deaf at one of their concerts.'

Olivia and Danny shared a smile. They were used to Sid's random facts and quirks and his often-strange little anecdotes. 'Oh-kay,' said Danny, 'the Stones, yeah, the best, but I gotta say The Who, immortal.'

'No one can sing Pinball Wizard quite like Roger Daltrey,' Sid agreed, picking up his coffee and taking a quick sip. 'Anyhow, your victim.' He clipped the nose of his magnetic glasses together and selected a blue manila from the desk behind him. 'My preliminary autopsy supports your suspicions. His head wound was definitely sustained postmortem.'

Olivia leaned in to take a closer look at the contusion on Jason Tam's head. 'So the blow to the head didn't kill him.'

'Dead before it happened.'

'Any indication of COD?'

'The tox report came back,' Sid handed her the sheet of paper from the blue manila. 'Codeine metabolites were sky high.'

'Drug overdose?' voiced Danny.

'Precisely.'

'Then the contusion makes sense. If he was disorientated and fell,' Olivia pieced together.

'Except it isn't consistent with the way he fell,' Danny reminded her. She frowned and nodded. 'Doc, how was the codeine administered, pills...?'

'That was the odd thing,' Sid continued. 'I extracted the stomach contents, sent them for analysis. Normally in overdoses one would expect to find a quantity of undigested pills. Potential suicides, if they're serious, don't want to risk messing up, so they take more than is necessary and death often occurs before digestion is complete.'

'Like saturation levels,' Olivia said looking up from the paper. 'You put too much sugar in your coffee, after a while it doesn't dissolve.'

'Right,' said Sid. 'But I found only two codeine tablets, the easy-swallow kind, partially digested. The rest I assume must have been ground up and taken with food. Stomach contents were low viscosity; looked like he had soup for his last meal, and that might have made that kind of dose easier to swallow. Pardon the pun.'

'Two pills, that's the standard dose for headache, stomach-ache,' Olivia commented.

'So he took them not long before he died,' Danny put in.

'Why take two pills when you've just swallowed a whole bottle?' said Olivia.

'Maybe he didn't know he had.'

Olivia looked at Danny and he offered a shrug. 'So we're back on the possible murder track?'

'Or suicide,' suggested Sid.

Olivia shook her head. 'The guy was successful, he had a chain of retail stores and he was about to open another one. He had a beautiful home - '

'Seemingly loving wife,' Danny jumped in.

Olivia's frown turned thoughtful. 'Flack was getting a vibe off her,' she remembered.

Danny nodded. 'Maybe we need to do our own investigation into the grieving Mrs. Tam.'

'Or,' jumped in Sid, 'you could try your vic's psychiatrist.'

Both Olivia and Danny looked at him. 'He was seeing a shrink?' Danny asked.

'I have no idea. But he should have been. The dosage he was on.'

'He was taking something else?' Olivia said.

'He must have taken his last dose around the time he took the two codeine. I found two more pills, one Propranolol Hydrochloride and one Efexor capsule.'

'Efexor...that's the trade name for Venlafazine,' mused Danny. 'Guy was on anti-depressants?'

Sid nodded. 'They tend to be prescribed up to twice daily. Dosage levels depend on a number of factors. Height, weight, circumstance. Either way, your vic was obviously suffering from a fairly serious depression.'

'Efexor's only used in very extreme cases,' Olivia said nodding slowly. 'The guy must have been seriously messed up over something.' She could feel Danny's curious gaze upon her, but she wasn't about to divulge that the reason she knew that was because up until four years ago she had been taking the high-strength anti-d herself.

'And the Propranol is a beta-blocker,' Sid went on. 'Usually prescribed to aid with panic attacks.'

Danny was shaking his head, a frown splitting his brow as he folded his arms over his chest. 'Something's not adding up about all this.'

Sid nodded in agreement. 'The circumstances are odd, to say the least. But I don't think you should be ruling out suicide just yet. He's tried before.' Sid turned the victim's left wrist and there were telltale white scars.

Danny drew in a puzzled breath and let it go. 'Guy's on anti-d's,' he argued, 'why overdose on codeine? Why not the Efexor? And why bother taking the anti-d's if you're planning on killing yourself?'

'Habit. Not wanting to alert the family to any change of mood, perhaps,' Sid suggested. 'I can help you with something, though. Overdoses on anti-depressants can take a long time to take effect. With codeine, it's crucially quick, you lose consciousness within ten to fifteen minutes and death can occur within the hour.'

'So our vic OD's on codeine, stumbles from the bedroom, loses consciousness and falls down the stairs and he does all this without making a sound and with his wife in the house?' Danny said sounding unconvinced.

'She must have heard him. Plus, someone tries to kill themself and they're serious about it, they don't do it when they know someone's close by.'

'Unless it's a cry for help.' Danny nodded. 'So we not buying suicide?'

'Not me,' Olivia replied and then she turned and made her way out of the mortuary. 'I'm going back to the house.'

'And what about you, Detective Messer, do you share your partner's skepticism?' Sid asked Danny as he began following his partner out.

'Let me get back to you on that, Doc.'

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COPYRIGHT. © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. DebraJay. 2006