The Warehouse Murder

-- -- -- -- --

Francis Lovett, a wealthy businessman, is found shot in an abandoned warehouse on the edge of the glades. Horatio and his team are assigned to the case, and quickly discover that the death is far more insidious than imaginable: Lovett was a "division leader" of an international child prostitution ring. He left behind a wife who mysteriously survived and a list of enemies ten miles long, and the only lead they have is one Mr. Nigel Townsend.

Hailing from Boston, Nigel flew down to Miami on a business trip and had the luck (or perhaps the lack thereof) of finding Mr. Lovett and his wife in the warehouse. Even though he swears that he's never seen either of them before, Nigel has much more to do with the case than he or anyone else realises. One of the darkest parts of Nigel's past comes back to haunt him when they discover that the head honcho of the prostitution ring is none other than the man who molested Nigel when he was only nine years old.

But that isn't the only conflict sprouting: Horatio can't seem to shake a strange connection he has with Nigel, and they are both quickly drawn to each others' presences. Before long, the amiability turns to passion and the passion turns to love, and now they have to deal with themselves and those around them. In the face of conflict, can their relationship last? Can they find the man who murdered Francis Lovett? And can they bring down the horrifying prostitution ring, saving the lives of hundreds of children and getting revenge on the man who made Nigel's life hell almost twenty years ago?

-- -- -- -- --

"Come on, come on, come on, Bug, you lazy piece of shit, pick up the bleeding phone…"

On the other side of the glass wall, the bustle of Miami Dade police centre was muted to a dull roar, punctured with the sound of his pacing. Nigel really couldn't help but wonder, with an enormous amount of resentment, why on earth Bug couldn't get to the cell phone that was practically attached to his hand.

"You know, talking at the receiver won't make him pick up any faster," said the voice from behind him. Nigel turned and sneered at the mocha-skinned police officer and tried to continue his pacing, only to find that his legs were hopelessly tangled in the cord, nearly making him topple onto the clean white tile. The officer laughed and Nigel had no qualms in giving him the one-finger salute, right as Nigel heard the heart-lifting click.

"Yeah."

"Bug! What the hell took you so long?"

"Nige, is that you?" asked Bug in disbelief.

"What do you think, you idiot? Yes, it's me!"

"You're supposed to be on an airplane!"

"Oh, thank you, Solomon; I'd forgotten!" he snapped. "I'm obviously not; I'm still in Miami." After successfully untangling himself from the cord, he continued pacing back and forth in front of the table.

"You hate Miami," Bug said flatly.

"Stop stating the obvious! I know I hate it; it's humid and dirty and full of homeless insane and get me out of here right now, you bastard!"

"Did you miss the plane or something?"

The exasperation was shot down with the simple question. "Err, well," faltered Nigel, "you could say that, I suppose," he said, glancing at the police officer, who was incredibly and infuriatingly smug.

"Okay, okay, calm down," Bug said. "Where in Mosquito City are you?"

"Err… a, uh… a police department," he mumbled.

"What?!"

Nigel heard a snort from behind him, which he pointedly ignored.

"Nigel, what the hell are you doing in a police station?"

"Look, I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said, pressing the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he clasped his hands together, even though he knew Bug couldn't see them. "I didn't do anything; I didn't kill anyone--"

"Kill anyone?" Bug's voice sounded very high. "Nigel, tell me you're not being held in Miami as the suspect of a murder."

He raked a hand through his hair. "I can if you want me to, but it wouldn't be true."

"Eric, what do we have, here?"

When Nigel heard the new voice, he turned around. Standing in the door was a tall, sturdy man with reddish-blond hair and a pair of intense blue eyes that stopped him in his repetitive tracks. There was noise in his ear and subconsciously he knew that he should have been listening, but the man had his attention on a short leash, and he couldn't have looked away if he tried.

"Well?"

His eyes were drawn away. "Sorry. Well, what?"

"I asked what you were doing at the scene."

-- -- -- -- --

The car door slammed behind him and Horatio Caine was already halfway to the door. As he moved into the shade of the pavilion that shadowed the entrance, he pulled off his sunglasses and slid them into his breast pocket, using his free hand to push through into the foyer. Cold air rushed past him and knocked his hair away from his brow. He had missed everything, and everyone knew it.

Calleigh, ever prudent, was already striding down the hall to meet him, a clipboard held loosely in one arm against her chest. She had a vague sort of smile on her face as she said, "The sky must have been falling for you to have missed this one, Horatio."

"Don't rub it in," he said. "What have I missed?"

She nodded once and then motioned him to follow back down the hallway towards the centre of the building. "A man by the name of Francis Lovett was found dead in an abandoned factory off the edge of the glades," she said as she walked. "He was shot. There was another with him -- a woman, his wife, named Eleanor Lovett -- who had also been shot but who was still alive. The wife is at the hospital, and Alexx is performing autopsy on the body of her husband as we speak."

"Right, okay," Horatio said, absorbing the information without a hitch. "And where are we going now?"

"To the third person at the crime scene," Calleigh said, stopping on the hallway side of a glass interrogation room. "Go on in. Eric's with him now."

"Thank you, Calleigh," he said, turning his head towards the door before entering.

A handsome man with black hair was pacing back and forth across the floor, visibly nervous. "I didn't do anything," he said to the phone against his cheek, a British accent slanting his voice, "I didn't kill anyone--"

From his position, Horatio could hear a voice on the other end of the phone; one that made the man cringe. After a few moments of silence, the man said:

"I can if you want me to, but it wouldn't be true."

Seizing the momentary pause, Horatio interjected with, "Eric, what do we have, here?"

Eric was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. He only spared one glance at him before returning his attention to the man, who seemed to be momentarily fixated on him. Horatio met the gaze unwaveringly, using the moment to do a basic personality analysis. He didn't falter under his stare, though his reaction was almost unreadable. Horatio had a difficult time discerning if the man was terrified or intrigued.

Suddenly, he looked away. "Sorry. Well, what?"

"He was at the scene. Did Calleigh fill you in?"

"She did," Horatio affirmed. "What do you make of him so far?"

"Not too sure," Eric said honestly. "He says his name is Nigel Townsend, from Boston. He claims to be here on a business trip, and that he got himself accidentally locked inside the crime scene where we found our victims."

"Indeed…"

-- -- -- -- --

"It's a long story," Nigel insisted emphatically. "Come on, don't you believe me?"

"I don't even know what I'm supposed to believe!" Bug said. "You had better start explaining whatever the hell mess you got yourself into, mate."

Sighing heavily, Nigel leaned against the cold metal table and rubbed his temples. "Okay, look," he said finally, relenting to the pressure. "The medical conference ended, and I had an hour before I had to be at the airport, so I figured that I'd get something to eat. I go to this weird little shop on the road to the airport and buy an ice cream cone, and when I come out, there were police surrounding my car!"

"Lord, Nigel, what did you do?"

"Nothing!" he cried defensively. "Well, I mean -- okay, I did do something, but it wasn't criminal!"

"You realise that Macy is going to eat you alive. What did you do?"

"I only--" He sighed out heavily. "Look, I just… I kind of -- forgot my green card in Boston."

"You what?" he demanded. "Nigel, how stupid can you get? How did you even get through airport security without it in the first place?"

"I can fake an American accent if I try!" he said.

"No, you can't!"

"Well, it worked, didn't it?" he snapped. "At least for the first bit. I thought that they'd done some weird security camera voodoo and figured out I was British by my clothing or something and so I just made a break for it. There was this broken down mill across the road so I just sort of snuck over there."

"With an ice cream cone."

"Yes, Bug, with a bloody ice cream cone!"

"That's very subtle," he said, "you'd do James Bond proud."

"Do you want me to tell this story or not, wise-arse?" he challenged, making Bug sigh and go quiet. "Anyway, the door was all kinds of barricaded, so I went around the side, and I saw blood dripping from a window, Bug -- fresh blood. And I mean, I have a conscience, don't I?"

"Debatably."

"So I broke open the window," Nigel continued, gracefully ignoring the comment, "and climbed inside. There was a dead guy next to the window with a gunshot wound right above the left temporal lobe, and there was this other lady who was sprawled out across the floor. The guy was dead," he said, "and I went to check on the lady and she was awake! I asked her if she was okay and she hit me!"

"I guess it must have something to do with the constant humidity," Bug reasoned.

"I don't know, but she knocked me pretty well. I was sort of disoriented and dizzy for a while, then the next thing I know, there were sirens and EMT's and the whole nine yards."

Bug sighed. Nigel could hear the familiar rushing and clattering of their morgue's hallways as he thought in otherwise silence.

"Okay," he said finally, "okay, we'll come and get you. And we'll also bring your green card, you forgetful ponce."

-- -- -- -- --

"The guy was dead," he said, "and I went to check on the lady and she was awake! I asked her if she was okay and she hit me!" Horatio waited through the pause. "I don't know, but she knocked me pretty well. I was sort of disoriented and dizzy for a while, then the next thing I know, there were sirens and EMT's and the whole nine yards."

Eric leaned over to him and murmured, "He sounds seasoned. He must be some sort of doctor." Horatio nodded and waited out the rest of the conversation.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you," he said a moment later, sighing. "Oh, and bring a lawyer. Better yet, bring Jordan." He paused. "Well, she's never studied law, but she has a PhD in kicking arse and taking names, and trust me, that's what I need right now." He paused again. "So talk her into it! Tell her I'm here; you'll persuade her soon enough." He paused once more, and then said: "Okay… okay, I'm at the Miami Dade police centre. Yeah. Thanks so much, Bug. See you soon, God willing. Bye."

"Friends in Boston?" Horatio asked the minute Nigel hung up.

"Yeah," he replied weakly, pushing a hand through his hair again and sinking down in one chair.

"I'd ask you to relay the story," Eric said, "but it seems you've already done that. So let's get right down to the nitty-gritty, shall we?"

"Let me guess," Nigel sighed. "You," (he pointed to Eric) "are the good cop, and you," (he pointed to Horatio) "are the bad cop."

"We don't need a confession quite that badly," said Horatio evenly. "What we do need are a few answers from you."

"Ask away," he said, leaning back in his chair.

"Do you know the couple?" asked Eric.

"No," Nigel said instantly. "I've never seen them before in my life."

"Tell us," Horatio said, "about what you saw at the scene. Anything specific?"

Nigel glanced to the side, sifting through his memory. "The angle of the shot was weird," he said finally. "On the man, I mean. It started at the left temple and had a sort of upward slant -- it was a through-and-through, right through the brain and out the top of the scalp."

"You seem to know what you're talking about," Eric said mildly. "Are you in this field?"

"As a matter of fact, I am," Nigel said. "I'm a criminologist for Boston P.D., and in my humble-yet-doctorate-backed opinion, I'd say that whoever killed this guy knew him personally. It was at close range. Even for a gun, that says something."

"Indeed, it does," Horatio mused aloud. "What else did you notice?"

"The wife has a solid left hook," he grumbled, rubbing his right cheek, across which was a fresh, purplish bruise, "and they'd been there for a while."

"How do you figure?" Eric asked as he sank down into the seat across from Nigel.

"Well, Livor Mortis had set in already," he said, "so that's -- what -- six hours, around about?"

"Something like that," Horatio said. "You do realise that we can't release you if you don't have your green card."

Sighing heavily, Nigel said, "Yeah, well, that'd be just my luck. But I reckon that Bug and Jordan will be here in a few hours. Doubtless they'll hop on the first plane to get me out of here." He smirked at Horatio, who gave him a thin sort of smile.

"Let's hope," he said.

The door opened again. A blonde woman had one hand on the door frame and a triumphant sparkle in her eye as she said, "H, we found our murder weapon."

-- -- -- -- --

Horatio took a moment to more closely study the man's face as he spoke. Mr. Townsend certainly was British; his speech patterns and vernacular were undeniably Londoner. His lank, black hair had a tendency to fall in his face, which he constantly pushed away. Sideburns ran down either side of his face, stopping just above his earlobe.

Perhaps even more interestingly, he had garnered one of Horatio's uncommonly sincere smiles. Though he'd never admit it out loud, he had a soft spot for English accents.

"Doubtless they'll hop on the first plane to get me out of here," he said to Horatio with a smirk.

"Let's hope," he replied.

The door behind him opened a split second later and he turned. Calleigh was standing in the threshold, smiling as she said, "H, we found our murder weapon."

"Have we, really?" he asked rhetorically. "That is excellent; take me to it. Eric," he said, "give this man back his personal effects and get his prints if you haven't already, okay?"

"You got it, H," he nodded.

"Thank you," he said before he headed back out the door, following Calleigh. "So, anything interesting about our gun?"

"You could say that," she replied as she strode down the hallway. "It's British make and model, thirty millimetre, manufactured in Liverpool."

"Indeed," Horatio said, mostly to himself, not missing the obvious connection between the weapon and the suspect. "Do we have any prints on it?"

"We do," she said, "and they're being run through the system as we speak."

"Excellent," he said as he followed Calleigh into one of the many labouratories. She walked around the counter and crouched down to produce a small plastic box, out of which she pulled a sleek, black gun.

"An officer found it in a garbage can out back of the factory," she explained.

"Not very clever," Horatio mused. "He left the weapon at the scene. Even if he was in a hurry, wouldn't it be easier to take it with him?"

"He could just be an idiot," Calleigh suggested.

"Or he could have an ulterior motive. Calleigh, swab it for epithelials and see if they match the fingerprints."

She studied him silently for a few moments. "You think the fingerprint was planted on the gun?"

"I think it's a possibility worth investigating," he replied. "Let me know of the results as soon as they're in, Cal, okay?"

"Will do," she said as Horatio turned and exited back into the hallway. "Where are you going?"

"Back to the crime scene," he answered right before the door closed.

-- -- -- -- --

"Well?" Nigel prompted. "You heard the kind man: give me back my effects."

Eric sneered. "Horatio is a lot of things, but I don't think 'kind' is the best term."

"Horatio?" he repeated, suddenly interested. "As in Horatio from Shakespeare's Hamlet?"

"The same. What about it?" he asked as he walked across the room to the small plastic bin that was waiting on the countertop. He grabbed it and walked back to Nigel.

"Horatio was the only character to survive the tragedy of Hamlet," Nigel said thoughtfully.

Eric paused, and then, slowly, a smile crept across his face. "Yeah," he said after a pause. "Yeah, that's Horatio, all right." He passed the bin over the table and Nigel caught it with one hand before he began to rummage through it and pull out his things. First his wallet, then his badge, and then his cell phone which went off the minute he picked it up.

He jumped at the suddenness of it, but picked it up. "Yeah?"

"Err, hi, Nigel… it's Bug. Look, I have good news and I have bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"

Nigel cringed. This wasn't going to end well. "Better tell me the good news first."

"Well, err… it's snowing!"