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FSU/MSW-94
martine
begonia9508
marteloise
Emz80m
LegalAlien
Chapter 7
Prompt as always, Max pulled into the parking lot of Sultan’s Hide Away Motel at exactly five o’clock. Since Liz had no idea how long she and Max would be at the school, she dressed for comfort in a pair of old blue jeans and a long sleeved red t-shirt that had ‘Stanford’ emblazoned across her chest in bold white letters. “So that’s where you went to school?” Max inquired once Liz had climbed inside the jeep.
He waited until she fastened her seatbelt and then pulled out onto the street.
Liz had received early acceptance to several universities, including Harvard which had been her first choice. The couple hadn’t been sure what they were going to do about their relationship but they loved one another too much to worry about distance while Liz was still in high school. Max had graduated the previous year and was already attending UNM but he was also prepared to transfer anywhere on the east coast if necessary.
To him, school was something that needed to be done in order to succeed later on in life. The location didn’t matter to him but he knew Harvard mattered to Liz. It had been her dream since she was old enough to understand what college was.
When everything fell apart and Liz fled, she had somehow ended up in California. After deferring Harvard for a year, she figured she’d eventually make her way east but it hadn’t worked out that way. Instead, after a semester of bumming around had passed, she was accepted into Berkley where she majored in Biology.
Like she told Kyle, by the time she graduated, she had no idea what she wanted to do with her degree. Then she met Letty, the woman on a San Franciscan cable car who originally gave Liz the idea to try and become a Private Investigator. The idea, unfortunately, went sour fast and after spending some more time working, she got acceptance into Stanford Medical School. Her undergrad grades had been nearly flawless, even if she hadn’t really enjoyed her coursework there.
After med school, she ended up with a job working for the NYPD and finally moved out east, eight years after she had originally planned to.
“It’s where I went to med school” Liz answered and turned her attention out the window at the passing landscape. She was scared of what Max would ask next but even more afraid that he wouldn’t ask anything at all. No matter how difficult they might be to answer, if he had questions, she would know that he at least cared enough to ask.
“So how much work do you have to do tonight?” he wondered after several minutes of empty silence. Liz was well aware that he had changed over the years but she still recognized the nervousness in his voice. She recognized the way he fidgeted and scratched at his eyebrow the same way he used to back in high school when he made her mad and had no idea how to proceed.
He was just as unsure about everything as she was, or at least it seemed that way to her.
“I have a bunch of reports to scan and e-mail, plus those bullet photos to print out” Liz replied, mentally ticking off a list of everything she needed to accomplish that night. “There’s actually a lot I can’t do here without all the proper equipment and chemicals. I’m basically just analyzing, comparing data and relaying it to Pace and Kat.” It had seemed like a good idea when Liz agreed to fly down to Roswell to help work on the case from there. She hadn’t realized that the town’s technology was still stuck in a time warp.
The department didn’t have much of crime lab and Liz suspected even the high school’s biology class would be better equipped to help her analyze information than the station house was.
“So tell me about what you and the detective talked about earlier. The copycat and bullets not matching” Max requested next. His gaze remained planted on the road in front of him but there were brief moments where Liz could see his eyes dart towards her.
“We were… Jesse and I… shot… within seconds of each other. At least it felt that way, but Pace said that the bullets they pulled out of Jesse didn’t match the one they pulled out of me” Liz stated, mind already reeling with possibilities. If it hadn’t been for the fact that it was the same type of gun as used on all the victims, Liz might have even believed the two incidents were unrelated.
No evidence before had ever suggested more than one person had been involved in the murders. The recent find made her question everything they knew about each killing, including whether or not Triple Threat and Pamela Troy’s murderer was one in the same.
The only thing Liz could say with absolute uncertainty was that whoever was killing these women, whether it was one person or ten, needed to found… the sooner the better.
“As for the copycat, that could have been the person who shot at me or the person who killed Pam” Liz mused aloud, wondering what the odds were that it had been the same person, yet still a different shooter than the one who killed the first seven girls. “We won’t know until we can match up all the bullets.”
“Do you specialize in ballistics?” was the next logical question to come from Max’s mouth. Despite everything he had already seen, he was still having some trouble wrapping his mind around the fact that Liz dealt with dead bodies and criminals for a living. To say that it had been a surprise would be a large understatement, he thought.
“No… that was Jesse’s thing” Liz shook her head, managing a small smile when Max turned his gaze on her. “I’m just a regular CSI training to become a pathologist. Today was actually the first autopsy I single handedly performed. Usually I have Kat standing over my shoulder muttering under her breath about what I’m doing.” She realized she was rambling and felt a blush stain her cheeks. She couldn’t help it, she was nervous.
Liz was so used to keeping almost everything personal inside that now it felt strange to sit there playing Q&A with her former boyfriend. In other ways, it was most natural thing she had done in years.
Max opened his mouth to retort then promptly snapped it shut again. She saw the corners of his lips twitch upwards and knew he was barely holding back some sort of remark about her babbling. Liz was grateful when he seemed to decide against it and simply offered her a quiet “That’s interesting.” Liz rolled her eyes and went back to staring outside.
Winter, though you wouldn’t know that based on the temperature, had already set in. The leaves had begun to turn a shade of brown that was only a hint darker than the desert sand. There seemed to be a constant breeze in the air that hinted at colder temperatures but one could easily go outside without a jacket of any kind. Back in New York it was probably close to snowing and Liz doubted there was a single person there who didn’t wear either a coat, a scarf or a hat.
Even after five years of living there, Liz still detested the bitter winters that seemed to show up every year like clockwork. Snow lost its appeal and novelty after the first time Liz took a walk outside and ended up with wet jeans and what she swore was frostbite on her hands. Of course it hadn’t really been frostbite but her hands were so numb that Liz wondered whether she’d ever feel anything again.
Growing up in a desert, she had always believed there was something magical about snow covered streets and falling flakes. Actually experiencing it was another thing entirely. Sure it looked pretty, at least sometimes, but on cheesy Christmas movies like “It’s a Wonderful Life” you never saw the slush that was more mud than ice or worse… alleys lined with yellow snow.
When they finally pulled up to the community college Max taught at, Liz realized it had already begun to grow dark. “Come on… I’ll show you where the computer labs are before I head over to my classroom” Max stated once he’d shifted into neutral and cut the engine. Liz watched him step down on the parking break and found herself momentarily struck by one of those time warps again.
How many times had she seem him do that after parking in the West Roswell student lot? A hundred? Maybe more?
“Hmm? Oh, right… lab… classroom… got it” Liz rushed out and quickly pushed open the passenger side door. She pretended not to notice the strange look Max shot in her direction and marveled in wonderment that Max already had her bumbling like an idiot after only 36 hours.
“Some things never change, I guess” she muttered to herself and plastered a smile to her face when she met up with Max in front of the jeep. “Lead the way” she added and gestured ahead.
Max shook his head in confusion but listened to her instruction none the less. He still wore the same slacks and shirt from earlier but Liz watched him pull a rumpled tie from within his pocket. Now she was the one who shook her head as he placed it around his neck, wrinkles and all.
“There are two main labs and then two smaller ones. This one here should have a scanner and anything else you need but it requires a password” Max explained and walked straight into the largest of the four computer labs. He picked one in the very back and Liz watched as he leaned over and quickly keyed in a username and password. “Just don’t forget to log out when you’re done” he added. “I’ll be in room 226 if you need anything. Just knock first.”
“Yes sir” Liz mumbled sarcastically but Max heard anyway and grinned. Then he seemed to catch himself and straightened his expression. Without so much as a ‘See ya later’ he walked out, leaving Liz to her work.
Since everything she needed was organized for easy access, Liz reached into her briefcase to retrieve the folder that contained all the information she wanted Pace to look over. Next, she went to the Central Park precinct’s website and logged into her .gov mail. She ignored the precinct newsletter and all the memos from Carmine Asher, the head of the department. He still believed she was on sick leave so Liz didn’t think anything he had to say to her would be all that important.
The message from one Detective Pacer was near the top and Liz quickly clicked on his name. A series of photo files were attached first followed by a brief message in which he demanded she hurry her ass up and e-mail whatever he needed to see.
While she printed out the photographs, Liz scanned the rest of her messages and found one from Kathleen who said she’d be credited with three additional hours for the autopsy she performed. “Only forty two more to go” she muttered, thinking about all the bodies she still had to perform autopsies on before she had completed her necessary hour quota.
After the colored pictures had been printed, Liz scanned all the photos and forms she had been given, into the computer. She added her own note to Pace about learning the definition of the word ‘patience’ and then hit the send button. Before even glancing at the photos, she logged onto her messenger since Kat was usually online whenever she was at home. Then in the corner of the homepage, Liz noticed Max’s username and couldn’t help but smile ruefully.
I8APRP4DNNR@teachermail.NMCC.edu
Liz remembered seeing a similar phrase on a department t-shirt once before. She had studied it for at least an hour before Pace rolled his eyes and said, in a superior tone “It means I ate a perp for dinner.” At the time, Liz told him cops should concentrate more on solving crimes than coming up with silly sayings to put on the fronts of t-shirts. But looking back on it now, Liz finally saw the humor in it.
A quick check showed that Kat wasn’t online but Liz left the window open anyway.
From everything Pace sent, it was obvious that everything remained consistent up until the shooting in Central Park. He mentioned that after more digging, he couldn’t come up with any information on the Khivar guy he’d mentioned the day before. He planned on going back to see the parents in hopes of getting something more out of them but they had also disappeared. According to a neighbor, the grieving parents left on a reclusive get away to avoid the paparazzi who were constantly badgering them because they believed Serena Cooper’s murder was the beginning of another crime wave. They’d left no number or address with anyone and while Pace sympathized, he was aggravated that they skipped out in the middle of an investigation.
It seemed that everything was conspiring against them what with all the blanks they kept drawing up. The mayor was breathing down the chief’s neck who in turn breathed down Pacer’s to name a suspect before another murder could take place. It almost sounded, to Liz, like the mayor didn’t care who the name was as long as someone went down for the murders.
As for Pamela Troy… well Liz had hoped the killer would slip up now that he was operating on unfamiliar territory. To her knowledge, serial killers didn’t like to deviate from their normal routine and flying across the country would have qualified as a definite deviation. This should have made him angry and with anger clouding emotions, he may not have been as careful.
Yet there was no DNA or fingerprints. The victims all had leather fibers on their clothing and skin so they knew he wore gloves and since there had never been any hair left behind, they assumed he wore a mask or hat of some sort. Everything with Pamela had been consistent with the previous seven women except for the clincher, she hadn’t been sexually assaulted. The question was why. Was this case different or had the killer just ran out of time?
The autopsy revealed that Pamela Troy had died at approximately 20 after midnight. The deputies had been called about an hour later when an angry neighbor got aggravated by the loud music blasting from within in the house. Had she turned the music on, thus making it impossible to hear the killer or had he done it to drown out any sounds made? Liz didn’t know, especially since they’d never been able to figure out where the victims were killed before being dropped off in the middle of Central Park.
Because there had been no significant amounts of blood found or bullet casings, it was safe to conclude that Pamela was shot somewhere else, bled out and then returned to her home.
So was the music a way of drawing attention to the fact that something was wrong? Had he done it because the Roswell City Park was too open and visible to drop the body off there, Liz wondered.
As they came to her, Liz jotted down all her questions along with a wide range of possible answers. Unfortunately, she had to depend on everyone else to get her the information she needed, like interviews with the neighbors.
Liz was well aware that her constant reminder and demand to remain in the shadows might seem like overkill but if Pam’s murderer had tried to lure Liz back to Roswell with the intention of getting rid of her while she was vulnerable, it was important that he didn’t know whether or not she had fallen into that trap. Liz was willing to bet her savings that after the murder, he had returned to the city rather than lingering behind to wait and see if his plan worked.
Liz guessed that the killer would assume she’d dive right into the investigation because of her personal stake in the matter. If she had, then Liz might have spoken to the press in order to put heat on the killer and would have told every deputy and citizen what to watch out for. Her name would have gotten around and he would have seen it.
Thankfully, no one outside of her team had any clue where she had gone after being released from the hospital and unless someone actually was watching, then her whereabouts were still unknown.
The one thing she did wonder about was how long she could play this game of cat and mouse with Ava before her blonde friend demanded answers. As it was, Liz dodged her calls all day long because she didn’t have an explanation for leaving without notice the night before. Ava was only so patient and then she got angry which was about as scary as coming face to face with a mugger in a dark alley.
“You about ready?” Liz was proud of herself for not jumping when Max’s voice sounded just beside her ear. She hadn’t even noticed how much time past until she glanced at the right hand corner of the screen and realized nearly an hour had gone by.
“Yeah… just a sec” Liz replied and logged out of every program she had opened. Max stood back and watched as she then emptied the temp folder and cleared out her cache and cookies before finally signing off the computer. She had a new stack of pages to stuff into her worn looking folder, and Max noticed the spine had already begun to tear as Liz maneuvered the handful into her briefcase again. The same yellow notepad from before rested just beside the mouse but he was unable to tell what it was due to all the messy scribbling and lines crossing things out.
“You write like a doctor” he commented, gesturing at her notes.
Liz blinked a couple times as though he’d just said something incredibly stupid and pointedly made a grab for the notebook. This time Max didn’t catch himself in time and smiled down at her for a brief moment. Silently, the two strolled out of the building and were each surprised to find it had begun raining in the span of an hour. Quickly, the two made a run for it and nearly slipped twice before they reached the jeep. Max pulled open the driver side door and pushed Liz inside before climbing in right behind her.
Both were laughing and completely soaked by the time he turned the key in the ignition. A short blast of hot air assaulted them as he cranked up the heat and rubbed his palms together.
Several wisps of hair had escaped Liz’s ponytail and wetly framed her face. Her red shirt had turned a shade darker and stuck to her skin uncomfortably while her lace bra did nothing to hide her puckered nipples. Liz couldn’t help but grimace at the feel of wet jeans sticking to her legs, emphasizing every curve of her lower body. The rain had also molded Max’s shirt against his torso, perfectly outlining each muscle. His chest was broad, his shoulders wide and his arms were thick with muscle. He had narrow hips and a washboard stomach that Liz clearly remembered. Max had always had an athlete’s body and it seemed that time had managed to defined each one of those muscles.
Each took deep breaths as the jeep slowly flooded with warmth. “Hang on… I think I have a towel or shirt or something back here” Max said as he remembered the bag still sitting on the back floorboard from his recent visit to see his sister, Isabel and her husband, Alex. “Jackpot” he stated and produced an oversized grey sweatshirt, at least it seemed oversized to Liz, and a faded green t-shirt. “Which do you want?” he offered and finally settled his gaze on Liz.
She couldn’t have looked anywhere close to attractive, she thought as he stared down at her. Yet even in the state she was in, she noticed his eyes slowly flick down to the slow rise and fall of her chest. Liz had a difficult time trying not to do the same until their eyes finally met. His hazel gaze had darkened, the only outward sign that he was in any way affected by her.
