The idea for Sloane and Company to add on the bright all-glass atrium between their two dull gray buildings resulted from one of the company’s managers going through a motivational course on employee relations. Giving the diligent worker ants a congregating spot, a place where they could socialize during their ten minute breaks and unpaid lunches, would increase employee morale several hundred percent. Or so went the sales pitch.

 What the atrium had actually become was more of a last minute limbo, a temporary haven in which workers snared by average pay and good benefits made personal phone calls, grabbed something from the coffee stand in the back, or caught the most up-to-the-minute news on the trio of six-by-nine foot screens before heading upstairs to take up their cog positions in the corporate machine.

 Morale had yet to increase.

 Balancing an extra large coffee from the cart, Morgan Levering stood in a group of employees waiting to cram into the next elevator up. Most days, Morgan was very much like the rest of them; bored, listless, completely lacking in individuality between the hours of nine and six, but this morning she was starting her workday out in a considerably more aggravated state than most of her colleagues.

 “Isn’t your boss back today?” Alice asked as she squeezed up beside Morgan, to the grumbles of the rest of the cluster. Alice was one of the few people that Morgan knew by name in the building, and the only one she spoke to on purpose. Though she worked with these people every day, she paid them about as much attention as any other stranger on the street. Sloane was known for being the best short-term, sale-enhancing advertising firm in the city, not for having unsurpassed camaraderie.

 “Yeah,” Morgan responded, with a frustrated sigh. “Two weeks isn’t long enough. The day before she left, she told me that I would be wise to arrive at six every day this week to help her catch up. I’ve been here three hours already. Guess who never showed.”

 “God what a bitch,” Alice responded, low enough as to not be overheard by any of the office’s opportunistic tattle tales.

 “I should have known,” Morgan shook her head. “It was totally just a power trip. I don’t know why I even put up with her crap.”

 “Because this is the best firm in San Francisco. Hopefully you’ll be promoted out of her department sooner than later.”

 “It can’t be soon enough,” Morgan responded sullenly. “Do me a favor. If you happen to find her before I do, call me and let me know where she is. I’m going to try to avoid her all day so I don’t say something that gives her cause to throw things at me.”

 “Sure thing,” Alice replied with a small laugh that could only come from someone who didn’t have to actually answer to the bitch.

 An elevator arrived before them, the doors parting to release the few people who’d ridden it down to the lobby. As if synchronized to the opening of the doors, there was a sudden surge of power. The people in the elevator rushed out, looking incredibly grateful that it hadn’t happened a moment earlier. The lights flickered rapidly, there was a noisy clatter in the middle of the room and several simultaneous screams from around it.

 Morgan spun to look, coffee sloshing with burning quickness down her arm. Trying to shake off the hot beverage and the resultant pain, she forgot about it completely when Alice’s hand grasped her forearm, squeezing with unrelenting force. Morgan followed her gaze up to the naked, battered body dangling from the rafters, frowning when it twirled in her direction and she instantly recognized Felicia.

 “Found her,” Alice announced from beside her.

 *****

 Twenty minutes after Felicia Watkins plummeted without warning from the ceiling of Sloane and Company, Lindsay stepped through the front doors and into the sunlit atrium. She glanced up at the naked, bound and broken body and she knew. She didn’t need scripture. She didn’t need hard evidence to tell her this wasn’t the product of just any murderer. This was the artwork of a sadistic madman, someone who felt spiritually inspired to be as brutal as he wanted to be. And, as far as she knew, there was only one of those trolling her city at the moment.

*****

ACT I

 Claire preferred to think of her place as on the ground, not fifty feet up in a metal basket. If she had checked the “levitate in the air while trying to perform a detailed job” box on her career day quiz, she would have been working for Cirque du Soleil, not the medical examiners’ office.

 “Shouldn’t we get her down?” a voice asked too close to her shoulder.

 Claire turned and stared her young protégé a step backwards, before returning to the task at hand. The new intern at the M.E.’s office, Paul, asked all of his questions in a voice that was half morbid curiosity and half repugnance. Claire had yet to determine if he was going to be an excellent M.E. or a sociopath.

 “If we move her, we may lose any physical evidence,” Claire responded, glancing down for the hundredth time at the distant floor below. “We’re probably losing evidence now. We’ll get her down when I’m done.”

 “How do you know those will hold?” he asked, looking over the straps of leather dangling Felicia Watkins’ body precariously from the ceiling.

 “We’ll get her down when I’m done,” Claire repeated more forcefully and the M.E.-in-training nodded and shut up.

 “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Paul unnecessarily stated. Claire had several long years under her belt, and she’d never seen anything like it. “Her body is completely mutilated, but her face barely has a scratch on it.”

 “Except for what’s missing,” Claire swallowed. But other than the gaping hole where she’d once had a right ear, and the bloody streaks stained beneath her left eye, those things didn’t show. “All the other marks on her face are defensive wounds.”

 “How can you tell?” Paul asked.

 “They’re very shallow,” Claire explained. “If he’d wanted to cut her face, they would be gashes, not just nicks. She probably leaned into the blows trying to protect some other part of her body.”

 “What part could he have been going for where she’d rather take it in the face?”

 Claire knew a few of the answers to that question, but not all of them. She wasn’t sure that she really wanted to.

 “I don’t know,” she murmured, “but I do know he didn’t mean to get her face. He wanted her recognizable.”

 “For who?” Paul questioned. “Us?”

“For everyone down there I suspect. All the people she worked with,” Claire responded, eyes drifting up to the pallid face angling down above her. “Okay, I can be done. We’ll let them get her down. I can do the rest on the table.”

 With a nod, Paul turned to the controls, and slowly lowered the basket of the mechanical lift.

 Pacing the floor by the food stand at the back of the lobby, Jill monitored Claire’s descent, doing everything in her power to avoid looking at the decimated body or the specks of blood that dotted the marble floor beneath it.

 “It should be, at most, a couple of hours,” she stated into her cell.

 “Are they sure it’s him?” Denise returned, voice breaking up slightly.

 “Yeah, it’s him,” Jill whispered.

 Jill heard Denise’s heavy sigh across the line, but Denise didn’t continue the thought with words. Jill couldn’t think of much to say either. She was just infinitely grateful that Denise wasn’t feeling the need to comment on her commitment to the Hallelujah Man or to the club. If she kept this reasonable attempt at civil behavior up, Jill might have to buy her something decent come Boss’ Day.

 With neither of them speaking, the hush in the room became deafening. Despite the number of cops in the glass-enclosed space, silence reigned supreme, as if everyone knew what they were up against and none of them wanted to discuss it. Despite the recent slayings in their city, San Franciscans were going about their daily business. The fact that there was a serial killer amongst them was one of the most poorly kept secrets ever, but it hadn’t changed much. It wasn’t exactly the city’s first brush with such renown. But now a few hundred civilians had gotten a really good look at exactly how they could end up if the fanatic disciple got his hands on them. It was going to make everyone that much more uneasy, and the pressure on the police department that much more intense.

 “Just fill me in when you get here,” Denise finally dismissed Jill.

 “Will do,” Jill said shortly, snapping her phone closed and glancing over at Lindsay, who had been hovering in the shadows off to the side of the room ever since Jill arrived.

 Lindsay watched a couple of guys from forensics cut the leather straps binding Felicia Watkins’ body in midair, and lower her slowly onto a simple stretcher. They balanced it between them in the small metal basket of the lift and brought the victim down. Intent on her study of the process, and lost somewhere inside her own mind, Lindsay didn’t hear Jacobi’s not-particularly-stealthy approach.

 “According to the CEO,” Jacobi started, pausing when Lindsay startled at his voice. “Sorry.”

 Trying to look unruffled, Lindsay dropped her eyes to the floor and turned to face Jacobi, arms crossed over her chest.

 “According to the CEO,” she prompted.

 “She left for a two-week vacation on the fifth of November,” Jacobi informed her. “We called the airline. She never got on that flight. Today was supposed to be her first day back.”

 “He had her the whole time,” Lindsay deduced.

 “Looks that way,” Jacobi said with a solemn nod.

 “We’re not going to want to hear what Claire has to tell us.” Lindsay stated, looking back at their victim’s body, finally at ground level and being zipped into a body bag.

 “I can’t see how it’s going to be pleasant,” Jacobi acknowledged.

 “To have staged this, he had to have gotten in here,” Lindsay said, studying the thick glass, of which all the panes were still perfectly intact, before trailing her eyes to the high tech security system wired around the door. “That couldn’t have been easy.”

 “He had to know someone,” Jacobi assumed. “There are six hundred people working in this building. It could take a while to find out who he made friends with. Even if we do, they won’t know to tell us. Whoever it is couldn’t possibly have known they were making friends with the Devil.”

 “No,” Lindsay agreed. “And whoever he used to get access must be pretty clean. Or at least look that way. If they were anything less than pure, he would have killed them. I really don’t see him letting one sinner slip through his fingers just because they’ve given him a way into a building. ”

 “So we start with the most boring, least-likely-to-sin-in-the-open people,” Jacobi suggested. “Accounting?”

 While the attempt at levity was appreciated, it fell flat in the dismal ambiance.

 “How is he finding these people?” Lindsay wondered aloud. “What is the link between them?”

 “Maybe there is no link between them. Maybe they’re all just…”

 “Sinners,” Lindsay filled in.

 Jacobi gravely nodded.

 The hush and gloom pressed in on them like physical entities, and Lindsay felt suddenly claustrophobic.

 “I’ve gotta get some air,” she said, heading for the door without waiting for a response.

 *****

 The irritable staff of Sloane and Company was imprisoned on premises by yards of bright yellow police tape and a dozen unsympathetic uniformed officers. None of them particularly wanted to be there either, but considering a woman was slaughtered and dropped into their midst on an otherwise perfectly tolerable weekday morning, no one had any choice in the matter.

 Pen at the ready in her right hand and a fresh notebook clutched in her left, Cindy weaved through the masses, trying to be inconspicuous. Ducking the tape was surprisingly easy with that many anonymous people already standing on the other side of it. With any luck, she’d be able to work her way to the front of the building, and with the right distraction, slip past the officer guarding the door.

 Most of the comments Cindy caught pieces of as she moved through the cranky employees were of the expected variety: complaints about being held hostage by the police department, concerns over when bathrooms would be made available to them, the occasional disturbed utterance indicating that some of these people could really use a sedative. But then there were those that were staggering.

 “All the blood was kind of gross, but I was impressed by the outfit,” Morgan was joking to Alice as Cindy happened by them.

 More or less aware of what had transpired in front of these people not that long ago, and knowing the unfortunate likelihood that this was more than just some random crime, to Cindy the statement sounded exceedingly vulgar. She should have let it go, it would have been the wise thing to do, but wisdom being one of her weaker attributes, she turned a sharp about-face and backtracked.

 “Did you have something you wanted to offer about the victim?” Cindy questioned, pad and pen moving to note-taking position.

 “Who are you?” Morgan returned, giving Cindy a rather unappreciative glower.

 “Cindy Thomas. San Francisco Register. What’s your name? I’d love to quote you.”

 Morgan opened her mouth, and Cindy knew by the snarl of the woman’s thin lips that she was about to get blasted with a snarky retort. Which gave her that much more motivation. If they were going to engage in a war of words, she was well-armed and had no doubts as to who would emerge victorious.

 “Thomas,” a familiar voice interjected sharply from behind her.

 Unsure whether to wince or to swoon, Cindy turned to find Lindsay standing there looking intensely authoritative and infinitely sexy. One hand rested on her hip, just above her gun, revealing her badge, which had the beneficial effect of frightening the other woman into withholding her comeback.

 “What are you doing?” Lindsay’s voice gentled, lulling Cindy into a considerably more Zen state.

 “Just doing my job,” Cindy replied.

 “She was harassing us, Officer,” Morgan asserted.

 Temporary calm dissipating as rapidly as it had come on, Cindy rotated back to her momentary nemesis.

 “That was not harassing you,” she heatedly stated. “I can if you want to see the difference.”

 The full sentence barely made it out of her mouth before she felt Lindsay’s fingers in the crook of her elbow, dragging her away from the woman. Morgan gave Cindy a triumphant smirk and a little wave, increasing Cindy’s ire tenfold.

 “You just waltz onto the crime scene and then try to draw attention to yourself by picking a fight?” Lindsay questioned disbelievingly, hauling Cindy across the landscaped courtyard. As if she possessed the power of Moses, the sea of employees parted before her.

 “I wasn’t trying to pick a fight,” Cindy corrected, her feet moving with unnatural rapidity to try and keep up with Lindsay’s determined gait. “She was being so freaking disrespectful. Who would say that about someone who’d just…”

 Pulled around the curved corner of the atrium and into a passageway almost too small for the two of them, Cindy shut up at once as she was pushed back, somewhat roughly, against a dull gray wall. She might have protested the unnecessary manhandling if not for Lindsay’s lips capturing hers a split second later much more softly than her demeanor up until that point would have implied.

 Dropping the impediments, Cindy slid her hands up the soft leather to fist in Lindsay’s jacket, giving consent instead, and hung on as Lindsay kissed the fight out of her.

 “What was that for?” Cindy asked breathlessly when Lindsay finally pulled away.

 “For me,” Lindsay replied.

 It would have been sickeningly romantic if not for the firm set of Lindsay’s jaw, the dread darkening her eyes.

 “Bad?” Cindy softly questioned.

 “Yeah,” Lindsay rasped harshly.

 “It’s him, isn’t it?”

 Lindsay gave a slight nod, wishing she didn’t have to confirm that particular deduction, and stared wantonly at Cindy’s lips. If there was one thing that could make her forget about everything, even if only for a minute… But before Lindsay could commandeer Cindy’s mouth again, Cindy was stepping forward into her arms, her head dropping down on Lindsay’s shoulder and her arms closing tightly around her waist.

It was nothing that Lindsay wanted and everything that she needed. As weak as it made her feel to require such comfort, she indulged in it nonetheless, because once her arms clasped across Cindy’s shoulders, she simply couldn’t let her go.

 Lindsay had no idea how long they’d been standing that way when she heard her name being called, in clear bewilderment, from the front of the building. She slowly opened her eyes, sending a displeased expression toward the passageway’s opening. Cindy retreated from her arms and inspected the inspector. She reached up to turn down the collar of Lindsay’s jacket where she’d accidentally popped it, assuming that Lindsay didn’t want to appear before her colleagues looking her 1980’s best.

 “To be continued?” Lindsay softly inquired.

 Cindy gave a head bob in the affirmative. “So, should I wait ten seconds before following you out?”

 Without verbal response, Lindsay tugged on Cindy’s sleeve, Cindy bent down for her dropped note-taking tools, and they walked out of the narrow passageway together.

 Officer Cho had made it to their side of the courtyard, and was instantly relieved when he spotted Lindsay emerging.

 “Inspector Boxer. They’re waiting for you,” he said, sending a friendly smile in Cindy’s direction. “Hey Cindy.”

 “Hey Cho,” Cindy returned quietly, but Lindsay didn’t miss the way that Cindy instinctively stepped behind her.

 Much like Lindsay, Cindy had a tendency to say that she was perfect when in fact she was only adequate, or maybe didn’t even reach that level. Though she had played off Kyle Graham’s menacing attempt at courtship, Lindsay hadn’t been blind to the effects. Cindy had been a little more guarded, abnormally wary in the presence of anyone who showed her any kind of attention outside of club members, and, oddly enough, Jacobi, who’d been behaving in a rather fatherly fashion ever since finding Cindy in Jill’s office much too close to something that could have turned really ugly really fast. There were plenty of strangers with a fifty-fifty chance of being dangerous walking the streets. The last thing that Cindy had needed was a blow to her trust in the people who had always been nice to her.

 “They ready?” Lindsay asked to draw Cho’s attention away from Cindy’s rather obvious reaction.

 “Yeah,” Cho replied. “We’re all set up.

 Lindsay nodded at him, and Cho led them to the door, holding it open. Fleetingly wishing that her job belonged to someone else, Lindsay stepped past him into the atrium. She’d only made it five steps when she heard Cho clear his throat.

 “Um, Inspector Boxer?” he hesitantly queried.

 Lindsay turned back to him. On another day, she might have gotten a good laugh out of Cho’s uncertainty as to whether or not Cindy was supposed to be trailing them inside, manifested in one long arm blocking the entrance. For her part, Cindy looked ready to limbo beneath his outstretched appendage.

 “It’s alright,” Lindsay husked. “Let her in.”

 “Sorry,” Cho shrugged to Cindy, moving well out of her way so that she could walk inside.

 Cindy didn’t offer much of a response, barely meeting his eyes as she walked by and followed Lindsay to Jill, Claire and Jacobi.

 “How’s it goin’?” Jacobi asked lightly.

 “I could take being on a beach right about now,” Cindy responded.

 “Ain’t that the truth,” Jacobi replied.

 Tom finished giving orders to a flock of uniformed officers and joined the group, less than enthused to have returned from vacation and back into this mess. Clearly surprised to see Cindy not just pushing in a little closer on the sidelines but right smack in the middle of a crime scene, he did them the courtesy of not saying anything about it.

 “Ready?” Cho asked Tom, who nodded roughly.

 “8:53 a.m.,” Cho began, reading from a small notepad, “sixty percent of the company’s employees are in the lobby. According to the head of security, that’s an average number. At the exact moment the clock ticks over to 8:54, Felicia Watkins body drops from the ceiling. Ten seconds later, this video tape starts rolling on all of the screens around the building.”

 Cho gave a nod to a man at the security desk, who pressed something on his panel, and white lines rolled down the three oversized screens around the atrium. From the corner of her eye, Lindsay saw Cindy produce a small digital recorder from her bag, tossing her a nervous sidelong glance before pressing record.

 A small flash of light, and the screens switched to a live image. Or at least what had been a live image at some point.

 Felicia Watkins stared out at them, completely naked but for the blood and bruises covering her body. A leather collar matching the leather leashes that had been used to suspend Felicia from the ceiling was wrapped around her throat, chains from all sides holding her in place like a dog. The same graphic image that might have been a turn-on for some of the people in the room if staged for the purpose of fantasy was, as reality, turning their stomachs.

 Felicia’s hands were almost black, her fingers unable to grasp the white sheet of paper she held. Instead, the page was just pressed between her two shaking hands down by her abdomen, as if she didn’t have the strength to lift it any higher. The ear was already gone, Claire noted, but she still had both eyes at the time that the video was made.

 “My name is Felicia Watkins,” she started, her trembling wisp of a voice resounding like a bellow in the still room. “I have been imprisoned in this church for two weeks so that I may atone for my sins.”

Tears falling from her eyes, Felicia was plainly struggling to read the words through them, the movement of the paper in her unsteady grip no help to matters. When her efforts persisted without success for well over a minute, the sudden appearance of what looked like a fireplace poker flashed into the side of the screen. The tip plunged into Felicia’s side, and the voice that had up until that point been notably feeble produced a startlingly loud scream. All spectators flinched in unison at the sudden display of brutality.

 Crying only amplified as a result of the vicious prodding she’d been given, Felicia exerted more of an effort. She bent as far as her binds allowed to retrieve the paper she’d dropped on the floor, her useless limbs making the process more difficult. When she rose back up, the paper once again pressed between her blackened hands, it was through pure will that she forced out the words.

 “Stop judging, that you may not be judged,” Felicia read from the paper. “For as you judge so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.”

 She paused too long and the poker made another appearance, burying itself through two ribs. Felicia’s scream was just as real, but more subdued, as if she was expecting it this time. And, as if they too were already anesthetized to the violence, there wasn’t a flinch to be found amongst the audience.

 “Matthew, chapter seven, verses one and two,” Felicia sobbed, looking up from the paper, her eyes focused upward, as if in silent appeal for some kind of intervention. “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

 Felicia dropped her head with the same resignation with which the paper fluttered from her wrecked hands. Resigned to a certain fate. She had to know that, even after following all given instruction, she would never walk out of there alive. If she still retained the ability to walk at all. Felicia’s weeping face grew larger on the screen, the focus moving in for a tragic close-up. For a moment, it seemed a dénouement.

 Then rapidly shuffling footsteps drew Felicia’s gaze up and she tried to back away. But there was nowhere to go. When the backdrop behind Felicia changed suddenly, everyone knew that they were getting their first glimpse of the Hallelujah Man, mere millimeters of torso, clad in all black, around the edges of Felicia’s head.

 There was movement in the room, cops and other concerned parties pressing in closer as if they could identify the unidentifiable. This perpetrator knew exactly how to be seen and not be seen, his victim a shield to hide behind. For all of his bold decrees about other peoples’ transgressions, it was the modus operandi of a coward.

 His arms, concealed in black, came around Felicia’s head. Felicia’s mouth opened at once in a gasping sound that could only be described as a pre-scream, as if she knew that the Hallelujah Man was about to give her good reason to release one that curdled the blood.

 One black-gloved hand palmed Felicia’s face, the thumb and index finger spreading Felicia’s left eye. The other brought the fireplace poker back into the picture. Felicia struggled against the threat. She gave it everything that she had, shaking his hand off once, but simply didn’t have the energy left to resist his intentions. The gloved hand returned to its position, spreading Felicia’s eye open even wider.

 “No,” Felicia begged as the poker moved in a slow, measured path toward her face. “Please God, no. I’ll do anything. Please. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything.”

 Lindsay knew how Jill and Claire would react without looking. Jill would concentrate somewhere else, eyes averted and ears as closed as they could be without sticking her fingers in them, trying not to throw up and spatter her own DNA in the middle of the crime scene. Claire wouldn’t want to watch, but, for the sake of being informed, she would. But Lindsay was almost positive that Cindy had never had to witness anything even close to this. She looked over to find Cindy staring up at the events unraveling on the screen, looking predictably disturbed in a way that Lindsay had never seen her. Cindy didn’t want to see what was about to transpire, but she couldn’t quite look away from it either.

 “Turn it off,” Lindsay ordered.

 When the image didn’t promptly disappear at the command, Lindsay shot a deadly look to the man at the security desk controls, who was almost as fixated as Cindy.

 “Turn it off,” she said more forcefully.

 The man snapped back to the moment, fumbling at the controls, and turned the image off just before the poker made contact with Felicia’s eye. Somewhere in Claire’s bag, the initial report already summarized the outcome.

 “Did these people watch this whole video?” Tom asked the question of no one in particular.

 “No,” Jacobi assured him. “Somebody had the good sense to hit the EPO before it got this far. It shut down the whole building.”

 Lindsay glanced at Tom’s blank expression and translated her partner’s shorthand.

 “Emergency power off button.”

 Appearing somewhat frozen, Tom belatedly nodded. “Good.”

Lindsay’s eyes tracked to Jill and Claire, the latter whose hand was resting on Jill’s back, ready to catch her should Jill decide to faint or comfort her should Jill decide to get sick, either of which looked highly possible at any moment.

 “You alright?”

 They both nodded in response, Jill’s a little less believable than Claire’s, and Lindsay returned her focus to Cindy. She was still staring up at the screen as if the show were still taking place. In reality, it was more than likely burned onto the back of her brain.

 “Cindy?” Lindsay questioned softly.

 Cindy’s eyes dropped down to hers, blinking slowly several times as if reorienting herself to her surroundings. A haunted soul stared out at Lindsay from a body that normally housed a positive, lively spirit. Lindsay barely refrained from throwing Cindy over her shoulder and hauling her out of the traumatic atmosphere. She couldn’t refrain, however, from raising her hand to Cindy’s cheek, thumb lightly brushing over her jaw line in a soothing gesture. Involved as all others in the room were in their own disquiet, no one even noticed.

 “I guess I was wrong about the pattern,” Cindy whispered.

 *****

 On the outskirts of the yellow tape, inside which Sloane and Company’s employees had grown rather vocal about being let go, an impromptu club meeting was in session. The quadrangle in which they often stood had become a line, stretching down the side of Lindsay’s SUV, where even Jill in her expensive black pantsuit wasn’t above leaning against the edge of the dirty vehicle for support.

 Comparing the four of them with the annoyed and lively people on the other side of the police tape perfectly illustrated the difference between people who’d only seen a little of that video and those who had seen too much.

“I can only guess as to the extent of it,” Claire broke the silence in a low voice. “I know for sure all of her fingers were broken. Pieces of her scalp are missing. Part of her tongue.”

 “We’ll go over it back at the hall,” Lindsay said quickly, casting her eyes to Cindy.

 Feeling that ‘never’ would be her ideal time to finish the conversation, Claire nodded in hasty agreement.

 “We’re definitely going to have no problem getting this guy the chair,” Jill offered with a shudder.

 “I’d love to help strap him down myself,” Lindsay declared. “The problem is getting him there.”

 Still focused on Cindy, who’d been abnormally subdued, Lindsay saw her take a deep breath and push away from the front of the car, the first one to stand on her own two feet since they’d made it outside.

 “What can I do?” she asked. That gritty determination was going to be the death of her.

 “We’re all going to be pretty busy for a while,” Lindsay responded, eyes traveling over Cindy’s face, trying to see everything that she was trying not to show. “I think you should just head back to the paper for now. We’ll keep you posted.”

 “When are you going over the evidence?” Cindy asked.

 “I’m not sure,” Lindsay said simply. Feeling caught in a lie, though she wasn’t actually telling one, since she really did have hundreds of witnesses to pick through, she looked away from Cindy’s overly attentive gaze.

 “Well, I could still work on something at the office,” Cindy volunteered.

 “I don’t know what you could do,” Lindsay replied, shaking her head. Looking into Cindy’s singularly-focused expression, she knew that answer wouldn’t suffice. “I’ll try to come up with something.”

 “When are you going to watch the rest of the video?” Cindy questioned softly.

 “No one needs to watch the rest of that video,” Lindsay swallowed, eyes dropping to the toe of her boot as she dislodged a piece of asphalt and kicked it away.

 Cindy looked down at Jill and Claire, both of whom met her eyes briefly before looking away.

 “Alright then,” Cindy said, gaze trailing back to Lindsay. “Anything you want withheld?”

 “Since there are hundreds of witnesses, withholding is kind of pointless.” Lindsay admitted. “I would appreciate if you would paraphrase instead of using a direct quote. People don’t need to know quite how much access you’ve been given to crime scenes.”

 That almost brought a smile to the group. Almost.

 “Okay,” Cindy conceded. “Just call me?”

 At Lindsay’s nod, Cindy hesitated as if she didn’t know quite how to walk away from her without more. She looked desperately in need of an extended hug that Lindsay wasn’t sure how to provide without being completely obvious. Finally deciding that she didn’t really care, Lindsay was beaten to standing by Claire, who tugged Cindy into her arms.

 “We’ll all talk later,” Claire promised as she released Cindy.

 “Thanks Claire,” Cindy returned, glancing at Lindsay before she walked away.

 Feeling fairly incompetent at everything important in her life at the moment, Lindsay at last made it to her feet as well, watching Cindy walk off before turning to face Jill and Claire.

 “Are you alright? Really?” Lindsay asked, motioning in the direction that Cindy had just gone. “I know that she isn’t. Are you?”

 “All in a day’s work,” Claire replied.

 “If I’m not, I’ll have to get over it before trial,” Jill answered. “Can you imagine how Denise would react if I ever lost a case because I demonstrated my weak stomach in the courtroom?”

 It was almost a hopeful moment. If Jill was facing this videotape in court, it would be because they had someone to prosecute. That seemed sort of far off considering they didn’t even have any suspects.

 “What about you?” Claire quietly questioned.

 Much more comfortable on the asking end, Lindsay shrugged self-consciously. “Is it terrible to say that I’m getting used to it?”

 “It’s a lie,” Jill countered.

 Lindsay shivered and crossed her arms. “I’m fine.”

 “I should get back to the lab,” Claire stated. “Obviously this will be bumped to the top of the caseload.”

 “I know you’re training right now, but -”

 “Don’t worry, Lindsay,” Claire promised. “I’m not going to let a newbie get his hands on this victim.”

 “Thanks.”

 “I should get back too, let Denise know what we’ve got,” Jill declared, pushing off the car and dusting off her slacks, before looking at Lindsay. “What are you going to need?”

“I’m not entirely sure yet. Jacobi and I will be here for a while, trying to decide who’s worth the trouble of dragging back to the station,” Lindsay said, scanning the corralled Sloane and Company employees and lighting on the girl that Cindy’d had her confrontation with in the restless crowd. “Starting with her.”

 *****

episode list   promotional graphics   credits   links   contact   downloads

disclaimer