Danny wasn't finding anything in Gracie Sheridan's bedroom. No blood, no fibers, no hairs, nothing. Olivia had been more than thorough when she'd processed the little girls room the night before. He opened up the closet doors and began to shuffle through the rack of dresses and skirts, nothing out of the ordinary there. Turning on his flashlight he searched the shelf above that was piled high with games, dolls and toys. He wasn't expecting to find anything, but he knew Mac wouldn't be completely satisfied without another search. He then focused his light on the pile of shoes in the far left of the closet as he began to sort through them.
There was nothing.
He straightened up with a sigh just as his cell phone rang from inside his jacket pocket. With a gloved hand he took it out and answered. 'Messer.'
'It's Flack.'
'S'up?'
'We're at the hospital. Olivia's talking to little Gracie.'
'Hope she's having more luck than I am.'
'Could say that. You at the house?'
'Yeah,' Danny sighed. 'Mac's got me searching Gracie's bedroom, but I don't know what he's hoping for. Place is clean.'
'Don't be so sure,' Flack told him. 'Look in the closet.'
'I'm in there now.'
'Then I need you to look at the back wall.'
'Okay.' Danny frowned. 'You gonna tell me why?' He pushed aside the rack of dresses until the back panels of the closet were visible. They looked just like any other ordinary closet panel.
'Behind those panels is where Gracie was hiding.'
Danny nodded. 'Gracie had a hidey hole.' The pieces were beginning to fit. He began feeling the wall, the grooves of the panels, then began to gently tap his way down to the closet floor. Solid, solid...hollow.
Bingo.
'Got it. Gimme a sec.' He pushed against the hollow panel and it gave way, opening up. Danny trained his flashlight into the small, dark space and peered inside. To the left there was a length of cord and he pulled it once, the overhead light illuminated the windowless space that had been painted a bright, sunny yellow. 'Yeah, this is definitely where she was hiding,' he confirmed. There were dolls sitting on chairs at a small pink table, and books and teddy bears were strewn all across the floor.
'Anything out the ordinary?' Flack wanted to know.
'No.' Danny looked in all four corners of the space. Because there was no window, the only way in and out was through the panels. 'Our perp definitely didn't know about this.' He glanced at a pool of something beside the doll's tea party. It looked and smelled like urine. 'Ah, bless her,' Danny murmured.
'What's that?'
'She must've soiled herself.'
Flack's sigh ricocheted down the line. 'Gotta tell you, Danny, this little girl...she's one amazing kid.'
After Danny ended the call he swabbed the urine stain as extra evidence and eased himself out of the opening. Gathering up his equipment he left the room and made his way down the hallway towards the master bedroom.
Mac was standing over the blood pools where the family had been positioned. The last few hours had caused the blood to darken to almost black. It looked garish against the cream carpet. He looked up when Danny came inside.
'I know why Gracie was spared,' Danny said. 'Flack called from the hospital, asked me to check out the closet. Found a crawl space, a purpose built hidey hole. So even if our perp did open up the closet doors, he would've had no way of knowing she was behind the wall.'
'She must have been exceptionally quiet the entire time.'
'Must've heard it all, too,' Danny said, with a shake of his head. 'Begs the question though, why'd the family feel the need to build the little girl a hidey hole?'
Mac scraped his teeth over his bottom lip and nodded. 'It's worth looking into. Delve a little deeper into their family background.'
'Yeah. So, what about you? Find anything new?'
'Sometimes it's about what you don't find. There's no sign of a struggle.' Mac focused his eyes back to the blood stains. 'Not one.'
'Why would they not put up a fight, Mac? Doesn't make sense.'
'It does if they knew their killer.'
Danny slowly nodded. 'Just like the Rellis case.'
Mac prided himself on restricting any conclusions until all the evidence was gathered and processed. He hoped this case would be no different. As a CSI he was trained to treat each case differently. But this one was painfully different. An entire family had been slain in their own home and a terminally ill child had been left to die alone.
*
Olivia and Flack had since left Gracie's room and were now making their way back out of the hospital to the parking lot. After gathering as much information as she could, Olivia had also taken a swab of Gracie's DNA ready for processing. She hadn't said a word since leaving the little girl. In fact, Flack thought she looked even more tense than before they'd gone in. He could see the questions racing through her head, almost hear her thoughts. She was thinking about Gracie and the scumbag that had killed her family.
'How you doin'?' he asked.
Olivia blinked and gave him a look that made him think she'd forgotten he was even there. 'Oh, I'm fine. Just...the hidey hole thing.'
'Yeah.'
'She was in there over three hours. She must've been so quiet and so afraid,' she said, ending the sentence on a deep sigh.
Flack understood how connected she felt to Gracie. It was never easy when there were children involved in any case. This one was made all the more sensitive because Gracie was alone and she was sick. It had been patently obvious in that hospital room that Olivia was more involved than any cop or CSI was supposed to be. Which was why, Flack supposed, Mac had asked him to look out for her. During the entire visit though, Olivia had been nothing short of professional. Some people were naturally comfortable around children, while others felt awkward not knowing how to handle them or the situation. Not Olivia. She knew exactly how to talk to the little girl on her level, to get her to gently open up about what she had or hadn't heard, and all without being scrutinizing or aggressive. For some reason it reminded Flack about the box of photographs in her apartment and the smiles on the younger childrens faces. Kids had great instinct when it came to grown-ups, and little Gracie liked and trusted Olivia, that much had been obvious.
'How about we grab a coffee?' he offered, breaking into the silence. 'I think we both need to wind down a little, what d'you say?'
Olivia understood where he was coming from, and gave him an appreciative smile. 'I can't. Mac needs me back at the Lab. There's still so much evidence to work through.'
'Right. Yeah, of course. I understand.'
'Nice thought though, thanks.'
'Anytime,' Flack said, as they made their way towards his Denali. Anytime was something people said, along with 'rain check' which was always a good one to wheedle your way out of something you weren't keen on doing. But he meant it. 'Anytime' was not to be taken lightly, if she called him up at two AM and took him up on his offer of coffee that would be more than all right with him.
If Flack had ever given it more than a passing thought he would've said that he absolutely expected to fall in love at some indeterminate point in the future. But he hadn't really given it much thought, just assumed that by the time he hit his mid-thirties he'd be ready to settle down with the right girl and slip into a grown-up world of mortgages, PTA conferences and Christmases with the in-laws. That is, if the right girl ever came along. He'd never thought or worried about whether or not she would. Just assumed it would happen. Eventually.
What he hadn't expected was that it would be with a woman who, in many respects, was exactly like him. Or that it would become an all consuming, mind altering, life changing experience. No gentle fall, instead he'd found himself engulfed in a fire that had consumed all that he'd been before. The old Flack was gone. One night stands had never really been his thing, instead he'd fallen into a pattern of casual relationships that varied in length, but that all ended when the woman involved realised no real commitment was forthcoming. None of those women had made an impact on him. He had left them behind as easily as he'd discovered them.
Then along came Olivia.
Commitment-shy, workaholic, closed-off, untrusting. Unpredictable, challenging, enthralling, captivating. She'd gotten under his skin, crawled inside his head and burrowed deep into his heart. He wasn't going to take that lightly. In the brief time they'd been together she'd given him everything he hadn't realised he even needed. Just because it was over for her didn't mean it was for him. In the weeks they'd been apart he found instead of falling out of love, he was only falling deeper. It was crazy, he knew he was holding onto something that was gone, but as long as he kept holding on there was a chance.
He'd let her leave that night in his apartment, but he couldn't let go.
Not completely.
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Copyright © 2006 [Debra Jay] All Rights Reserved