⋆° დ ༄ UNTIL THERE WAS FOREVER
chapter fourteen. I remember her now.

"Multiple contusions, fractures, damage to the skull" Erin says, as she and the team are gathered around a female victim who is laying face down on top of an old styled elevator, "The M.E says some of this might've come from the fall, but not most."

"She isn't bleeding. She's leaking. We got dual lividity." Al says, kneeling next to the body.

"I think she was beaten and died face down. she was probably dumped here after. There's asphalt, dirt in her wounds. No ID yet, doesn't match any missing persons." Jay says.

"Clothes are clean. Hairs washed. Doubt she's homeless" Al states.

"Well, someone should be looking for her" Hank says.

"K-9 unit and patrol did a top to bottom search. There's no one here but her" Kenny says.

"She can't be more than..." Kim cuts off Voight walking over to the team and says, "fifteen. It was outside in a dumpster. ID looked like a match"

Voight takes the evidence bag to read the ID and says, "Sam Wells"

"I ran it through the system. She's a resident at Brady"

"Currently?" Porter asks.

"Yeah, and hasn't been reported missing"

Voight scoffs and says, "Brady" before walking away.

"Am I the only one who doesn't know what Brady is?" Rixton asks.

"It's in 21. A home for troubled girls. Wards of the state." Sam says.

"It's the kind of place you don't forget responding to" Burgess says.

"Yeah, and they're supposed to keep their doors locked 24/7" Jay says.

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"Look, our DOA has been a resident at Brady for six months." Hank tells commander Crowley, sitting at his desk, with Trudy sitting next to Crowley and Jay and Sam standing behind Voight, "We found cash, a toothbrush, change of clothes in her bag. A receipt from a convenience store stamped 28 hours ago. It looks like she ran away. No one from Brady ever reported her gone"

"In 2015, my officers responded to Brady 185 times." Trudy says looking at a file, "Habitual runaways, ODs, suicide attempts, violence. In the past 80 days my officers have been called to Brady just four times"

"They were about two police reports away from getting shut down, losing all that funding, so they came up with a solution. Stop calling the police. Brady didn't suddenly clean up. They just got a little better at being dirty"

"You want my permission to break down their door?" Crowley asks.

"No, I want the exact opposite"

~~~

"Hey Sarg, you got a minute?" Sam asks, walking over to Trudys desk.

"For you, but if you see Burgess, the nod and go policy is still in effect. My desk is not a coffee klatch" Platt says.

"A what?"

"Somebody said that to me, that my desk had turned into a coffee klatch. A chit chat coffee klatch. What's up?"

Sam looks at the sergeant a bit longer in confusion then says, opening a file, "I just wanted to know if you remembered anything about our DOA, Sam Wells"

"Remember from what?"

"When you had her last year"

"She wasn't here"

"You filled out her general offense case report. She got popped for vandalism, and then you put in the notes she waited behind the front desk for four hours before her case worker picked her up"

"Can I see that copy?"

"Yeah" Sam says, handing Trudy the piece of paper she just read from.

"I'm sorry, but no. I don't remember her at all"

"Yo, Sammy. 911 call just came in. OEMC just dispatched a vehicle over to Brady for a missing. It's probably Sam, so I told 2116 me and you can take care of it, if you wanna get changed and ride out" Kevin says, opening the caged door of the intelligence unit.

"Yeah. They're only 36 hours late" Sam says, jogging up the stairs.

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"Around 2 o'clock, did a sweep and realized that she was no longer here, called you" the guy in charge, Michael says, through the glass to Sam and Kevin who are pretending to be patrol officers.

"Okay, so you have any video of her leaving?" Kevin asks.

"Uh, no, girls who want to run learn our dark spots"

"And Sam was one of those girls?" Sam asks.

"Yeah, she had a few infractions. She usually comes back on her own though"

"Do you know if she'd go to visit anyone in particular? Hit any one spot?"

"What my polite partners asking is if she was going to score drugs" Kevin says.

"I understood the question." Michael says, "I'm not trying to give you the runaround, but Sam has a certain privilege to privacy as..." Sam cuts the man off and says. "As a juvenile. Yeah, we know. Look man. I know that sometimes when these girls go AWOL, the staff does them a favor, doesn't report them missing right away so they don't lose their beds. We get it. We're just trying to figure out if we need to spend the next 8 hours looking for this girl in parks, or if she's halfway to her boyfriend's house in California, ya know? Our shifts almost over, man. We'd love to go home."

"No, Sam couldn't have gone far. She was checked in during her rounds at 7 a.m."

"All staff, report to a fight immediately. Fight in the cafeteria, all staff, please report" someone says over the loudspeaker, when Jay jogs past and makes eye contact with this fiancé but quickly looks away so it didn't look suspicious.

"Uh, we good? I gotta get back"

"Yeah, do your thing" Kevin says, as the man runs outta the room, "How the hell does a girl get checked in for rounds 24 hours after she died?"

"Somebody's lying their ass off" Sam states.

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"The way this girl Ellie approached me, this is standard practice. I think they're trading in sexual favors" Jay tells the team, leaning on his desk.

"Trading for what?" Atwater asks.

"Could be stat drugs." Al suggests.

"Yeah, Sam's tox showed she had Benzodiazepine in her system. It's the kind of thing you would find inside of Brady" Kim says.

"These girls could also be trading for access out" Sam says, "I mean, we know that Sam was signed in at 7 a.m., so somebody is covering for her"

"Alright, let's build a larger profile for every employee. So financials, online foot prints." Hank says, then turns to look at the whiteboard, "Okay, where we at with Sam?"

"I mean, there is this, Sarg. Sam's been picked up three times by patrol at the north shore station in grant park" Kevin says.

"Okay, well, check it out" Hank says, as Kevin and Kim grab their jackets and head out.

🌙🌙🌙

Sam sits on the couch, her legs lifted onto the coffee table with Gracie sitting on her lap, and they're just staring at each other. Erin walks out of the kitchen with two beers in her hand and a sippy cup and says, "What on earth are you two doing?"

"Staring contest"

Erin chuckles, sitting on the couch next to the brunette and says, "Really, who's winning?"

"Gracie. She's really good" Sam says, all serious. Gracie giggles, making her blink and Sam stands up, lifting her daughter up with her and breathes out, "Ahhhh, and the crowd goes wild"

"You guys are crazy" Erin laughs, as Sam puts her daughter down on the carpet to play with her toys, and gives her, her sippy cup then hands her friend a beer when she sits back on the couch, "did you imagine our lives being like this when we met?"

"Hell no" Sam says, taking a sip of her beer, "do you ever want kids?"

Erin shrugs and says, "I mean, maybe one day, I don't know if I'd want to bring a life into the world knowing how my life turned out"

"I think you'd be a great mom, E" Sam smiles.

"Thanks, Sammy. So, how you think Jays doing at Brady?"

Sam sighs and says, "He can definitely handle himself" then she sees Erin's facial expression turn into pure shock, "what, you don't think he can?"

"No, look" Erin smiles, pointing behind them. Sam turns around to see Gracie standing up by herself and taking small steps towards the two detectives and making it to the coffee table, and placing her hands on the glass and smiles.

"Oh, my god" Sam says, getting up and picking up her daughter and kissing her cheek. Erin gets up as well and says, "I just watched my god daughter take her first steps before Kelly, I can't wait to rub it in his face"

"Is that all you care about? Rubbing it in his face?"

"Uhm, no?" Erin says in more of a question than a statement. Sam laughs, while Gracie looks between the two and smiles.

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After invading Brady, Hank and Jay bring Ellie back to question her about Sam's death and she confesses that Tonya is the one who killed her, so, Kevin and Kenny bring her to district to be questioned.

Sam leaves the watch room from having seen both interviews to tell Hank and Jay that they got something.

"Crime labs been sweeping the entire facility. Olinsky and Burgess just tested with luminol. They found trace evidence of Sam's blood in Ellie's belongings" Kenny says.

"So what? That could be planted." Jay says.

"There's also footage" Erin says, leaning her arms in her desk, "Ellie goes into Tonya's room at 7 p.m., doesn't come out until midnight, so she was in there for the time of death"

~~~

After taking with Ellie again, Jay walks back to his desk and sits down, sighing and says, "I don't know, okay? I'm out. I believed her and now...let's get one thing clear. Nothing happened between me and that girl. Are we in agreement on that?"

"No one here is accusing you" Al says.

"It also doesn't sound like anybody is defending me"

Sam puts her hand on her fiancés shoulder, giving it a squeeze and says, "that's not true"

"Stop" Hank says, "it's a pair of 17 year old girls. They're not gonna play our investigation. One of them is lying. We find out who. It's that simple."

"Ellie's not on any camera in a four block radius. If she left, there is no proof" Porter says.

"What about the scene?"

"Well, the scenes gonna have DNA from all three girls. They lived together. They shared clothes"

"We have the car that Sam was driven in. Things soaked with blood, but all the girls from Brady have been in that car" Kim says.

"It's not just a murder. This is a ring" Al says.

"Well, then where's the cash, the phone?" Hank questions.

"We scoured every dorm room, nothing" Erin says.

Jay leans forward thinking, then looks over at his fiancé and nods, grabbing his coat, and Sam doing the same thing, following in suit.

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Jay and Sam walk into a classroom at Brady and Jay says, "I saw tonya come out of here twice. Wasn't a reason for her to be here. Room was empty"

"Alright" Sam says, as the couple both take their jackets off and searches literally the whole classroom, from top to bottom.

And after finding a stake of money, they knew they had tonya.

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Sam walks into interrogation where tonya is being held and she sighs, sitting down in front of her and says, "I gotta hand it to you. You were smart. You forgot one thing" then she places an evidence bag with a phone in it, in front of her.

"Am I supposed to call my mom with that.." Sam cuts tonya off and says. "That's your phone"

"No, it's not. Ellie must have..."

"Tonya, we are way past all that. This is linked to accounts that, even with fake names, are clearly your social media. Your data, your call logs, we have your fingerprints. It's your phone, and you used it to run Ellie and Sam. We recovered all of your deleted text messages." Sam says, opening a file and says, "this one from Vince Dalton might be my favorite. 'Your bitch Sam is threatening to spill. Says she and Ellie are gonna stop with me and all of it', your reply, 'I'll take care of it'"

After a minute of staring at each other and Tonya still not saying anything, Sam scoffs and says, "you don't have to say anything. We have enough. I know that you had Vince signing you in and out in exchange for sex and cash. And I guarantee you, when he's charged with statutory rape, his loyalty to you is gonna disappear real quick. You're going in for first degree murder. Even if you get the minimum sentence, your parole officer has not been born yet."

"You think your Nobel? You all make the effort now, Hmm? You and your little Boy Scout cop. You know, six months ago, those girls were street trash to you. I cared before! I helped! And you know what's worse than Brady? Aging out at 18 with nothing"

"You didn't think Sam was grateful."

Tonya leans forward and says, "She knew the deal going in. Do what you gotta do"

~~~

As Jay went to go arrest Vince, Sam goes to the next room over to talk with Ellie.

"That's it?"

"Yup. Tonyas getting charged and DCFS is gonna shut Brady down. Everybody there's gonna get an alternate placement. We found a really good family for you in libertyville, the Melnicks. They're coming here to pick you up" Sam says, as Jay walks to the door and leans against it, "hey, I'll give you a minute." Then she walks over to Jay, placing her hand on his arm and says, "I'll see you at home" before leaving to grab her coat from her desk.

"Is that your girlfriend?" Ellie asks. Jay smiles and nods saying, "fiancé"

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Sam walks into the bedroom and sees her fiancé sitting on the edge of the bed, with his head in his hands, and she goes over to sit next to him, placing her hand on his shoulder and says, "I know this was a tough case, baby. But think about all the other lives we save by getting Brady shut down"

"You're right." Jay says, leaning his head on Sam's shoulder, who then wraps her arms around him in a hug.

"If it makes you feel better, Gracie walked on her own yesterday, no help" Sam says.

"Really?" Jay asks, sitting up. Sam nods her head and says, "Yup and we had a staring contest and I won"

Jay laughs and says, "Well, if I know one thing for sure, Gracie is gonna grow up competitive just like her mom"

Sam laughs and says, "let's hope not"

a/n:

Gracie needs to stop growing up 😭
That's it, that's all I have to say!!