History Repeats: Chapter 2
The day started just like any other day. On that perfectly warm spring morning, the sun was shining, and the birds were chirping. Kids were running around and screaming with excitement. A girl of thirteen was staying with her friends since her father was serving overseas and her mother was killed. Her red hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Her bright green eyes were dancing with anticipation for she had been looking forward to this day for weeks. Wearing her black cotton t-shirt, army green camouflage cargo pants, and black combat boots, she was quite a tomboy. She and her best friend Max Mason were meeting some other kids down at the local paintball course at 9 A.M, so they left Max's house at 8:30 A.M to get there early, riding their bikes down the street together. The two of them wanted to get down to the course before anyone else to set up her sniper's nest. You see her father was a sniper with the United States Marines and he taught her not merely to shoot but be a dead shot. The position that she chose was up at the top of four cargo containers. This location had the perfect advantage point because she could see the entire property. The paintball course on one side and the firing range on the other. They were separated by a row of cargo containers. She was on the highest one. The bottom containers were filled with concrete, which made them essentially bulletproof.
The owner of the course gave the girl carte blanche of the paintball half of the property since her father saved his life in Kabul. She had spent the last two weeks creating the perfect urban ghillie suit just like her daddy had. Hers was blue to match the color of the containers at the course. She wanted to be invisible to everyone and pick the other kids off one by one with her friends help. His task was to lure the others close enough for her to take out. From her spot, she could see over the rows of containers that were only one high, which made up the courses maze-like floor plan.
It was about 8:50 in the morning by the time she gets to the top of the containers. She just places her bright pink backpack on the roof of the container and begins to take out her supplies for the day. Her blue Ghillie suit, which was more of a blanket than a suit, was laid out on the roof along with her bright pink paintball ammo. Finally, she starts to get settled down when someone that she had neither seen nor heard knocks her down. This person violently turns her over, bringing her face to face with a muzzle of a handgun.
Grabbing for the gun, she tries to get away from him. Biting and scratching at her attacker's arms than bang the girl is shot in the abdomen.
She clutches at her stomach with her right hand and falls first to her knees then to her stomach. The girl is laying on the roof bleeding when she attempts to crawl away, dragging her body behind her. While her attacker was walking around trying to figure out what to do with her and talking to himself, she reaches for a piece of metal that she holds close to her wound so her attacker wouldn't see and she holds on to it for dear life. Her assailant kicks her off the containers causing her to slam into the ground with a loud thud. The girls left forearm snaps when she tries to break her fall with it. Her right hand was we still holding her stomach. Her shooter then disappears as rapidly as he had appeared.
It was a little after 9 when Lucas McGraw, William Lewis, Maize Monroe, and Sarah Rossi had all showed up, and heard the gunshot. Her best friend Max led the others to investigate where the sound had come from. Watching his friend laying there bleeding Max could just stare at her. He said I needed to call 9-1-1.
"9-1-1 Emergency what's your emergency?"
"My friends and I are over at the McGraw's Paintball and Gun Range at Flagler and Mayfield. We heard a gunshot, and I found my friend. I think they shot her. She's not moving."
"Is she breathing."
"I don't believe so; I don't see her breathing."
"Does she have a pulse?"
"I don't know; I don't think so."
"Don't move an officer is en route."
Miami Dade Police Department Lieutenant Horatio Caine was heading in to work for his first day back to work since he almost overdosed on Fantanyl when he heard over the police radio about the possible 10-71 shots fired over at McGraw's Paintball and Gun Range on Flagler and Mayfield. He had just passed it half a block behind him, then he radioed his location and sped up. Pulling a fast 180, he races to the scene.
One of the kids Maize Monroe was waiting in the parking lot to take the arriving officer to her friend. Upon arrival, Horatio had to push the kids back to grant himself more room to check on the girl.
Getting the other kids back, he quickly returns to the girl. Starting on the assumption that she was dead Horatio radios, Frank Tripp to ask his friend to bring him his kit from inside the Hummer. Tripp was just pulling into the paintball courses parking lot. Right after Tripp places the kit on the ground near Horatio, he slowly puts on a pair of latex gloves, and while he is kneeling down, he gently turns her over since she had landed on her stomach. With his hands gloved, he carefully unclips the girl's protective vest to check her. Slowly and gently, he moves her black t-shirt out of the way and wipes away the blood with a clean white handkerchief to get a better look at her injury. Quickly the blood just covers the wound again.
Thinking to himself, "She shouldn't be still bleeding, unless..." With this realization, he turns around to face the other kids.
"Did any of you check her for a pulse?" Max answered the question with a quiet "no, but she wasn't moving, and she fell so far we just assumed that she was dead. Why?"
With that answer, Horatio moves up to check for a carotid pulse. Not only did Horatio feel a barely palpable pulse, but he noticed that her head was actively bleeding. He screams at the team's homicide detective Sergeant Frank Tripp, "She's alive, get me a medic." Pulling out the penlight that he keeps in his pocket, he shines it in her eyes to check for possible brain damage.
"Fixed, dilated and unresponsive to light," Horatio makes a mental note. This was not good news he told himself.
At this point, Horatio noticed her medical alert bracelet.
Horatio read the inscription to himself; "My name is Piper O'Shae. I'm mute".
"That explains why nobody heard her cry for help," he told himself.
"Piper sweetheart hang on, help is coming, stay with me, just stay with me" he gently tells her all while holding her head in his hands.
"The Ambulance is ten minutes out." Tripp didn't need to relay the message to Horatio since he heard the dispatch. Horatio said, "she doesn't have ten minutes" to nobody in particular. With his training as a Palliative care nurse, he knew that she didn't have any time to spare. He also knew it would take the ambulance a lot longer than ten minutes to get her to the hospital, they were ten minutes out, plus five minutes getting her ready to transport and an additional ten minutes driving back to the hospital. Horatio asks Tripp to help him get her to the Hummer. He was going to take her. He could get her to the hospital in five minutes with his sirens on and taking the side streets. As carefully as he could, he gathers her up into his arms and resting her head on his shoulder so it wouldn't hang backward since she was unconscious and unresponsive. Horatio carries her to his Hummer where Tripp opens the black door and helps Horatio lay her across the backseat.
"Piper sweetie don't worry I'll get you to the hospital just stay with me." He pleads with the girl as he rushes her to the hospital. Driving to the hospital, Horatio thought back to what her friend had told him. Her friend said that her father was a Marine and that she witnessed her mother's murder when she was just two and a half and that the girl never spoke since the day of her mother's death. On the way to the hospital, he calls Eric Delko, Calleigh Duquesne, Natalia Boa Vista, Ryan Wolfe, and Walter Simmons to process the scene and collect the evidence. With Tripp already on the scene since he was closer to the scene than Horatio's team was. The team was not able to talk to Horatio since he was with Piper at the hospital.
Tripp had stayed back to secure the scene and wait for Horatio's team.
Slowly and carefully, Eric and Calleigh climb up the caged ladder to where the girl fell. When they get to the top, they see her sniper's perch and her pink paintball gun with bright pink ammo ready for a fun day of paintball wars.
"This is high; I'm shocked that the girl is alive," Calleigh tells Eric as she looks down at the ground 3.5 stories below.
"She's strong and a bit too stubborn to die, kinda reminds me of someone we know," Eric chimes in with a subdued chuckle. Indeed Calleigh knew he was talking about Horatio. Their boss had been shot and injured too many times to count. By all accords, he should have died a long time ago; only he's too stubborn to die.
Calleigh was still looking for the bullets shell casing, but it was nowhere to be found. The suspect was not good at covering their tracks. Evidence was everywhere on the top of the container, but essentially they had two crime scenes- One crime scene at the top and one crime scene at the bottom. The scene at the bottom of the containers was not much. Two small pools of blood, one where her head hit the ground and one where her body had impacted the ground.
Horatio had left the girls protective vest where he had taken it off to assess her injuries. The last piece of evidence at the bottom was the shell casing that C.S.I.'s had no idea how the casing ended up where it did. She was shot at the top, and the casing was found thirty-five feet away from the containers on the ground level.
Eric had noticed the footprints from a couple of men's combat boots in the dirt up on top of the containers. He calls Calleigh over to take some swabs of the blood also found at the scene, and some samples of the dirt while Eric took casts of the boot prints in the hopes of identifying the shooter that way. The shoe prints did have very distinctive wear patterns on them.
Ryan and Natalia were gathering evidence on the ground at the bottom of the containers. While scanning for anything that shouldn't be there when he noticed something shiny in the ground close to where the young girl had landed, he found a shell casing, so he grabbed a small scale and took several photos of the evidence. A close range, mid-range, and far range photo. All before he picked up the casing with his latex gloves and put it into an evidence bag and sealed it up, noting it was a 357. Nobody knew how the bullet casing had ended up on the ground, so they just processed the scene. Walter interviewed the kids that were there. Not one of the kids saw anything, and they only heard a single gunshot but nothing else.
So the kids didn't have any relevant information to the case, but the property owner did have something very interesting to add. When Eric and Tripp were interviewing him, he told them that "I've known that family since before her mother was killed. In fact, she and my wife were very close friends. Her dad and I were both in the Marines together. We were on an assignment in Kabul when we were ambushed by a suicide bomber, and I was hit with shrapnel in the back. Her dad was the team's sniper who was supposed to keep us safe, but the bomber was just a six-year-old little girl. Who would have thought that she would be strapped with a bomb? I certainly don't blame her or her father, in fact, her dad protected the team until reinforcements arrived. He saved my life that day. When I got back, I told him that his daughter would have full run of the paintball course when she turned 13. Her birthday was last month. She could do anything she wanted and go anywhere she wanted. I even put up a caged ladder up to the top of the containers since that was her favorite place to hang out. I am beyond devastated by what happened. My family is going to the hospital to see her when we are done here. If we are through, he turns his wheelchair to go out of the interrogation room door. Both Eric and Tripp agreed that this man couldn't possibly have climbed up to the top of the containers to shoot her. They felt comfortable checking him off as a suspect.
When they get to the hospital, Horatio was met with Dr. Alexx Woods. He told her about the incident and everything that happened at the scene. Alexx just smiled, while saying, "Baby everything is going to be okay your safe now' Alexx had hoped that the girl could hear her even though she was comatose.
"She has an intracranial hemorrhage we have to take her into surgery now, or we will lose her," Alexx tells Horatio. His heart sinks since he knows the girl's survival chances were less than 50%, and about 20% have a complete recovery.
Horatio could just wait and pray that she survives this. Piper was in surgery for four hours. When Alexx finally comes out to speak to him, he was a nervous wreck.
Waiting for Piper to get out of surgery Horatio had thought that her name and story sounded familiar, so he had Ryan do a background check while he stayed at the hospital. He didn't want to leave the girl alone for even a minute until she came out of surgery. It took a while, but Horatio finally remembered why the girl's name was so familiar. Her mother, McKinzie who was a beautiful young woman with flaming red hair and dark green eyes, had been murdered ten years before on a cold rainy Christmas Day at home, and her two and a half-year-old daughter was left hiding behind the couch. Horatio was the one who found little Piper cowering in the corner behind the family sofa covered in her mom's blood. The woman's husband was overseas with the United States Marine Corps. The case went cold, and they never found the killer. Her attacker had broken a back bedroom window and had crept up on the mother. Piper was hiding because she didn't want to take a bath. That was the only conclusion that they could make since the water was still running when Horatio got on the scene. They never figured out what the mom was doing and why the little girl was not in the bath. They knew that her killer had grabbed her. He raped her, then shot her point blank with a SIG Sauer. Little Piper had seen the whole thing. Luckily for Piper, the killer didn't know that she was there, so she was spared. The forensic evidence was practically nonexistent just a few drops of foreign blood and a single fingerprint. Both the fingerprint and the blood came back as unknown, and with no suspect, the case went cold.
When the surgeon relieved the pressure in her brain by drilling a borehole in the back of her skull, he also removed the bullet lodged in her intestines. After surgery, Alexx ordered full X-rays of her head and body since she had fallen nearly 4 stories, to be on the safe side. X-rays showed several skull fractures, a partially collapsed lung and an incomplete spinal fracture, as well as at least three broken ribs and her left forearm, was snapped on impact. Falling about 38 feet the equivalent of 3.5 stories, Piper had landed so hard on the ground that she fractured her back despite landing on her abdomen. The skull fractures were caused by striking her head on the ground on impact. Her body hit first snapping her left forearm then her head which had initially landed on her arm bounced off of it and landed on the ground very hard. It was a secondary impact. Taking her back into surgery, they stabilize her spinal fracture and set her arm with plates and pins as well as re-inflating her partially collapsed lung.
"She's lucky to be alive, but the next 48 hours will be critical. If she survives the next two days, she will probably survive," Alexx says to Horatio.
When Horatio tries to notify her father about what happened, he was told: "Sergeant James O' shea is out on a mission and couldn't be contacted until the mission was complete." Piper was alone for the foreseeable future.
The next 48 hours seemed to go at a snail's pace. The doctors would come in every few hours to check her vitals. Otherwise, it was just Horatio and the girl alone in the room.
"She looks just so peaceful right now. Horatio thought to himself. After about 42 hours, Horatio felt safe enough to leave her for a few minutes while the nurses checked her vitals, he was quite hungry.
Horatio had just arrived at the Cafeteria at the hospital to get his lunch. He calls his team to get an update on the young girl's case; he couldn't fail the girl again. Horatio was not going to let Piper's shooting go cold since he feels like he failed her all those years before when he allowed her mother's brutal murder go unsolved. When he gets a hold of Eric, he learns that the team was able to get blood and trace evidence at the scene, including palm prints, shoe impressions, some bloody fingerprints with ridge details. Eric asked his brother and boss if the victim had any blood or skin under her fingernails. Horatio was dumbstruck; he was so busy trying to save her life; he never checked under her nails to find trace evidence.
Rushing back to her hospital room Horatio asks for a piece of paper and a sterile tongue depressor, he needed to gently scrape under the nail of the still unconscious girl to remove any foreign tissue in hopes of identifying the perpetrator. When he found some foreign tissue, Horatio wanted to rush the results through CODIS. He just had to solve the case.
After he had handed the bindles with the samples to Eric in the hospital hallway and Eric had already left the hospital, Horatio hears the sounds of Piper's monitors all going off at the same time. She was crashing and seizing from her head trauma. He was losing her, and he was powerless to do anything about it. He couldn't will her to live, and he couldn't force her to live. Piper was not responding to anything that Alexx was trying. She was actually dying. Trying for half an hour the doctor's tried everything, including shocking her heart countless times and injecting both epinephrine, and atropine into her I.V., but with no response, she was going to have to call time of death if Piper didn't respond in the next five minutes. With time for one last Hail Mary, Alexx injects intracardiac adrenaline directly into Piper's heart, but with no response, Alexx was forced to make the call that she was dreading but had to make. "Time of Death 7:54 A.M. Alexx says to the room of dejected nurses. Nurses and doctors alike have a hard time accepting having to call T.O.D. on a child.
Now Alexx had to tell Horatio that she was gone, Alexx just knew that Horatio would be devastated by failing the family a second time. Alexx tells Horatio that Tom Loman the county Medical Examiner would be up in an hour to take Piper. "I'll just stay here till Tom comes if that's okay Alexx," Horatio tells his old friend. Alexx didn't have the heart to tell him no, so she allowed it.
Horatio just sits in Piper's room looking at the little girl in front of him. With his head in his hands, he just quietly cries. No more than half an hour after the time of death is called Horatio could swear that he heard someone else breathing in the room, but who it was just him and the body of a thirteen-year-old girl who was declared dead- looking closely at her chest only to see a slight rise in it. "How can that be she's been dead for half an hour," Horatio thinks to himself. Coming closer Horatio just sits there quietly watching her breathe, without taking his eyes off her slowly and steadily rising and falling chest he calls Alexx on his cellphone but not before he clips the heart monitor to her finger and turning the machine on. He was quickly reassured that he wasn't crazy by the steady beeping of a normal heart rate.
When Horatio get through to Alexx, he yells, "Alexx, she's alive. Piper's breathing and her heart is beating."
Alexx couldn't believe what she was hearing, so she comes running in and checks Piper's vitals before quickly leaving them alone again, Alexx couldn't explain it, but the little girl was back. Piper finally opens her eyes and her bright green eyes meets his ocean blue eyes. She just lays there, blinking at her hero before they smile at each other. She doesn't stay awake very long. Waking up from a coma and death is exhausting.
Horatio lets her sleep through the night before he attempts to ask her some questions. She doesn't talk but effectively lets Horatio know that she wants a piece of paper to write on. "What happened, where am I?" She writes. Horatio answers as best as he could. "Sweetheart you were shot and fell 3.5 stories. You're in the hospital. Try not to move; you broke a couple of ribs, your left arm you, partially collapsed a lung, and you also fractured your skull and your spine." When Piper heard that she started to panic. "I can't feel my legs," she wrote to Horatio. He quickly presses the nurse call button on her bed.
When the doctor comes in, Horatio tells her what Piper wrote. The doctor calmly tells her that she had an incomplete spinal fracture and only time will tell if she would regain use of her legs, but they could bring her bed up a little so she could sit up for a while. They didn't need to worry since she could still move her legs. She regained feeling in her legs within a week.
"Sweetheart, what happened to you, can you remember anything?"
Horatio asks her. Piper quickly recounts what happened at the top of the container and what she remembers. "Well I was on top of the containers getting my sniper perch ready when someone knocked me down, they force me to face them. We wrestle over the gun. It was a SIG Sauer, My dad taught me to recognize handguns by sight, and I know it was a SIG Sauer. Anyway, we fight over the gun. I scratch him, and he shots me in the stomach. I fall to my knees then to my stomach. He walks around on the top of the container talking to himself. I couldn't understand what he was saying it sounded all muffled. When his back was to me, a grabbed the bullets shell casing that had landed near my head. Daddy and I watch Forensic Files, and I know the importance of the casing and I didn't want him to take the casing with him. I think he kicked me off the containers. I remember the ground coming. I tried to break my fall with my arm. I remember you talking to me. You were telling me to hold on. Your voice was very grounding to me. I remember you shining a light in my eyes. The next thing I remember is you watching me when I opened my eyes. You look to familiar." Piper finishes the recounting of her shooting.
Horatio tells her that her named sounded familiar too, so he had a coworker look into it. I was the homicide detective investigating your mother's murder. I was the one who found you. I picked you up and carried you outside. I didn't want you to have to see it. I'm so sorry that I couldn't solve her case. "That's okay I don't blame you," she writes to him on her little note pad.
While they waited for the analysis of evidence to come back, Horatio and Piper had time to kill at the hospital. She was finally able to tell him some personal things. Without batting an eye, she calmly writes him something, "when I was dead, I saw some people that I didn't know, but they knew you. A very pretty lady told me to tell you that she loves you and misses you. I think Marisol was her name. Someone with a funny name told me that you need to stop blaming yourself for his shooting death. I think it was your brother who said he's sorry. He didn't tell me why he was sorry just that he was." When she finished and handed him the piece of paper, Horatio just looked at her with his mouth open.
"What are you saying, did you see my wife?" "Was the funny name Speed?" he asks her. She just answers with a nod and writes yes and yes.
That first night out of the coma Piper was too exhausted to dream, but the next night Horatio had noticed that her eyelids were twitching relentlessly. Her body didn't move that first night just her eyelids. The following nights slowly got worse and worse. At first, it was only her hands that were twitching, but it didn't stay isolated for very long. By the fourth night, her whole body was thrashing in her hospital bed. Horatio was asleep on the chair that the nurses had brought in for him only to be awakened by a blood-curdling scream. Jumping up in an instant, Horatio sits on the side of her bed. When he attempts to reach out and touch her arm in her horror-stricken panic, she strikes the side of his face. Instinctively he recoils when he feels blood trickling down his cheek. Wiping the blood away with the back of his hand, he lovingly looks up at her and realizes that she is still in a dream state and was fighting for her life. Her eyes were so wild with fear he could see only terror in her green eyes. He knows what she needed and what he needs to do. Slowly but firmly, he draws her close despite her fighting him. Then he just holds her close with his left hand gently behind her head, and she slowly calms down until she eventually she just collapses into his arms and just sobs.
When she finally relaxes he reassures her "Piper, sweetheart, you're safe it's alright, Sweetie are you okay?" Horatio lovingly asked her, she answered with a silent nod. With lots of gentle reassurance, Piper was able to fall back to sleep. That night went by without any more added excitement.
The two of them would spend the next week playing card games and talking about nothing in particular. Horatio was impressed with the girl's penmanship. The fact that she never spoke meant that she had to have impeccable writing skills. When she was in school, her teachers just loved her, and she was a straight-A student. She would sit front and center. If she had a question, she would write it down on her pad of paper and raise her hand. The teacher would come over read her question and answer it to the whole class without singling her out. Everyday Horatio would ask Piper if she wanted to talk about her nightly dreams, but every day she said no. Horatio was getting worried about her since Piper didn't feel safe going to sleep because she knew what would come soon after she fell asleep. After five nights of this, he left Piper in her room and stops Alexx in the hall.
"Do you have someone who could come and talk with Piper, she's been having night terrors every night and refuses to talk about them. I'm getting a little worried. She said that she doesn't feel safe falling asleep." Alexx responds to Horatio's question with a quiet nod, yes. Alexx sent a friend who specialized with kids who have night terrors. The lady came to talk with Piper when Horatio left for about an hour and a half to go to the lab and check in with everybody in his team. The nice woman came and just talked to the little girl and asked her if she would draw her dreams in an attempt to help the girl understand what was happening in them. After the lady left Piper, she ran into Horatio at the elevator door.
When he glanced down at Piper's drawings, he immediately recognized what he was seeing. "It was pictures of her mother's brutal murder," telling the lady that those are drawing of Piper's mother's murder. That is what she was dreaming about no wonder she would wake up screaming and didn't want to talk about it," Horatio finished talking with the lady and promptly returned to Piper's room. He had brought her back some lunch from the Cafeteria. The little girl was so young when her mother was murdered; she couldn't remember the details. The events of the last week had brought up long-buried memories. Her mind remembered what she had seen, but it just couldn't process it until now. When the lady explained to her what she was drawing was her mother's killing, it helped the girl understand, and her night terrors faded away. When Piper's testimony corroborated the evidence, Horatio and his team all felt confident that they would catch her shooter soon.
The evidence showed that Piper had climbed up the containers without anyone knowing exactly what she was going to do. She was taking out her Ghillie suit and her extra paintball ammo when someone knocked her down. The shoe-prints show that her attacker violently turned her onto her back, where she came face to face with a handgun. Definite signs of a struggle before her attacker pulled the trigger, shooting her in the stomach. Leaving her holding her stomach when she saw the bullet casing and grabbed it. Her shooter was trying to figure out what to do with her before he kicked her off the containers causing her to land on the dirt with a painful thud.
By the time her friends found her, she had been on the ground for about 5 minutes. It hurt to breathe, so she kept her breathing shallow. Horatio shows up two minutes later, and Tripp was there two minutes after that. If it weren't for the blood dripping down the top container, no one would have known she had fallen about 38 feet to the ground below. If she had not been wearing the protective gear for paintball, she might not have survived the fall. She was a mute from the trauma of witnessing her mother's brutal murder. No one would have known that she was in danger. Not saying a word for close to a decade, no one would have recognized her voice anyway. Her head had impacted the ground after her body but with enough force to cause a brain bleed and blown pupils. If Horatio hadn't carried her to the Hummer and driven her to the hospital like a maniac, she wouldn't have survived. She did suffer a couple of broken ribs, skull fractures, an incomplete spinal fracture, a fractured left arm, and she partially collapsed a lung when she hit the ground.
Calleigh ran Ballistics, and they came back to a cold case of a homicide of a decade ago. Her mother was shot and killed with the same gun as was used on her. How can that be?
What are the odds of that happening? This realization caused the leam to run the blood from Piper's shooting against the blood from her mother's shooting. The results were not quite what they had thought. It came back that her mother was killed by a familiar match to her shooting. Not directly related but a distant male relative.
With Horatio staying at the hospital with Piper, Eric took charge of the case. He was filling in his brother and boss several times a day. Natalia was in charge of the D.N.A. tests.
Calleigh was in charge of Ballistics. Eric had trace evidence, and Ryan had fingerprints. The newest member of the team, Walter, was in charge of going back and forth to the crime scene to gather more evidence and interview witnesses.
When Natalia ran the blood evidence of Piper's shooting through CODIS, which took several days, she got a hit to a cold case. Pulling up the file, she was floored. Handing Eric the results, she waited to see his reaction. Without saying a word, he called Horatio. He had to know the results; he had to know that the cases are connected. This was his chance to solve a cold case and bring this family closure from a decade old trauma. The team simply needs to follow the new evidence since the forensic field had changed so much since her mother's homicide.
Horatio's gut instincts tell him to run the D.N.A. through the military D.N.A. database. This database was made to identify military dead, but someone in the D.O.D. owned him a favor, and he was going to call the favor in. When the results came in, Horatio was shocked. The shooters in both cases are distant male relatives to someone that they had already interviewed.
It took about a week, but the D.N.A. swabs that Ryan put through D.O.D. database came back related to Gunnery Sergeant Tobias McGraw, the owner of the paintball facility who they had already interviewed, so Tripp brought Tobias back in for further questioning.
As soon as Eric told Tobias the evidence, he stopped talking to the police and demanded to speak to a Judge Advocate General lawyer. When the J.A.G. lawyer finally arrived, Eric was allowed to ask questions. The C.S.I. team just wanted to know if Tobias had a son and another male relative. Tobias's J.A.G. told him he should answer the questions since none of the evidence pointed directly to him. Tobias also felt that he should answer the question since he owed the family of the victim that much. Piper's father had saved his life in Kabul about twelve years ago.
"I have three sons and a brother, but I will not help you arrest them," he tells Eric. Figuring out his son's names was easy enough. The team just put his last name into the school district's registry of students and got the names. His sons were living with his ex-wife.
Eric and Tripp brought in each son one at a time to ask them questions. The youngest son was Piper's age. They were in the same class, and he was at the scene of Piper's shooting. He did, however, have a rock solid alibi. He was with all the other kids the whole morning, and the other boys would vouch for him, which they did. Tobias' oldest son Jamison was twenty-two and was away at Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City; he was training to fly the F-22 Raptor. This was as solid of an alibi as you can get. The base is six hundred miles away. The only other person that it could be would be the middle child.
The team had enough evidence to get a warrant to search Tobias' business since the teen worked at the family business after school and at the time of Piper's shooting as well as his ex's house. The C.S.I. team had to split into two teams, one to search the business and another to search Tobias' ex's house. They did find the kid hiding at the paintball facility.
When the team apprehended the sixteen-year-old, whose name was Timothy, his father and the family lawyer met them at the police department. The lawyer advised him not to answer any questions, but he talked anyway. He wanted to tell his story and didn't want to lie anymore. He tells Eric and Tripp, "Her father got my dad paralyzed it's his fault my parents divorced, and I wanted to hurt him, but he's a Marine sniper who was on active duty and overseas. Piper was here I could hurt her, and that would just kill her father. When I shot her, I didn't want to leave her way up on the containers since they would never find her body, so I kicked her off the containers. Why did she not die, she should have died." Well, both Eric and Tripp were not expecting that. Now the father of suspect was shocked. "It wasn't his fault. It was no one's fault. The bomber was a six-year-old little girl. He couldn't shoot a child that young. I don't blame him. Your mom and I were barely holding it together long before my accident. How could you shoot Piper, she is a close friend of your brother, and her father actually saved my life by covering the team with gunfire preventing other insurgents from getting the rest of us, and he put his body over mine guarding me with his life." Tripp just looks at Eric stunned. The father continues, "I will not be bailing you out this time. You're on your own, before wheeling himself out the door. Eric and Tripp had no more questions to ask him. The evidence would speak for itself. They matched the boys boot prints to the prints at the scene. His hair and skin were found under the girl's fingernails, and her blood was found on the soles of his boots. The team didn't have the gun yet, but they had a signed confession, so they didn't need it, but it would help them with the case. The final nail in the kid's coffin was provided by Horatio. He showed Piper a photo array, and she picked the suspect out as her shooter.
Eric had handed his card to the kids who were at the scene of Piper's shooting and told them if they need anything or think of anything that they could call anytime. Lucas, a good friend of Piper's, whose father owned the property that the paintball course was on, called Eric. "I think my uncle George was involved in one of the shootings. I overheard him talking to my father about his gun being stolen from his house. Apparently, my uncle had shot Piper's mom, and he would have gotten away with it if my brother hadn't stolen the gun and used it to shoot Piper." He's going to the paintball property to get rid of the weapon."
Eric called Horatio about the tip and told H that he would meet him at the property. Horatio called Tripp to gather some of his most trusted officers to meet Horatio and Eric at the paintball course to apprehend the suspect. Horatio was eager to tell Piper that both cases where closed so he said to her that he needed to leave for a little while because they needed him at the lab. In reality, he was going to apprehend her mother's killer. Horatio got to the property before Eric, so he started to sweep the property. Gun drawn he began to clear the buildings of people. Eric had to be sure to call out his bosses name when he walked up behind Horatio; he didn't want to get accidentally shot by his boss. Tripp only brought a single canine unit to sweep the property since he knew that this officer and her canine could find anything. With Eric beside him, Horatio clears the rest of the buildings. They split to cover more ground. At the back of the property near the scene of Piper's shooting Eric walks into the suspect. The suspect pulls his gun on Eric and starts shooting. Horatio heard the shots and flanked the suspect. Before Horatio has a chance to shoot the suspect Horatio clearly hears the snark of a canine. The sound of the dog distracts the suspect long enough for Horatio to get the drop on the shooter. As Horatio pulls the trigger, the suspect drops but not before pulling the trigger one last time. The last shot from the suspect hits Eric in the right shoulder non fatally, and Eric falls onto his back. Witnessing Eric get shot Horatio has a momentary flashback to the last time Eric got shot. Flashing back to reality Horatio rushes to Eric's side. Eric didn't need an ambulance, but he did need a medic. With the suspect down Horatio can hear Tripp thank the canine unit for the help. As the officer walks away H looks up to see the back of a red haired female leave the scene with her blue and brown dog. With Eric stabilized Horatio drives them back to the hospital once Dr. Tom Loman, the M.E, arrived to take possession of the suspect's body. The bullet inside Eric's shoulder matched the bullet in Piper and the one that killed her mother. They had the murder weapon. George's and Timothy's prints were found on the gun, and George's DNA and both sets of fingerprints were found inside the magazine of the gun.
When Horatio starts to tell Piper that both cases are solved, he hears a loud confrontation at the reception area of the I.C.U. Going out in the hall, he tries to see who it is that is causing the commotion.
There standing in front of the nurse is a tall blonde man wearing his Marine uniform. That was the only proof that Horatio needed, he approaches the man and asks if he is looking for Piper.
Saying "Sergeant O'Shea over here, your daughter is in this room." Right as Horatio walks her dad into her room, they hear Piper speak for the first time in a decade. Her first words where "Daddy" her dad drops to his knees crying.
Both Horatio and her father were shocked that she spoke. When asked about it Piper responds "I was talking non stop the day mommy died. When I talked, too much mommy would say, "What was that." We made a game of it. She would say What was that and I'd be like all quiet like what was what. Mommy never told me it was safe to talk, so I never did. When I died, I saw mommy. She said to me that truth and justice always prevails. I didn't believe it since both cases weren't solved yet. You told me that you solved both cases right before daddy came pointing to Horatio. Extending his hand to Horatio her daddy just says, "thank you gave me my little girl back."
Sergeant O'Shea went and sat on the edge of her bed. With her daddy by her side, she whispered something in his ear. Standing up and walking over to Horatio, he says, "my little girl wants to tell you something."
"Sweetheart, what is it," Horatio asks her.
She motions for him to come closer before she whispers in his ear. Throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him on the cheek, she says, "thank you you've done more for me than you can imagine."
Before Horatio leaves the hospital, he tells her dad, "If you ever need anything to call him anytime."
Walking back to his Hummer Horatio was beyond relieved, "It took a decade to solve, and Piper had to get shot, but I solved the one case that I couldn't shake. His team is usually able to solve most cases, but this case was one that they couldn't solve until these last few weeks.
Horatio drives home finally after not being home for a few months. Eric and his team would bring Horatio a change of clothes every day, but Horatio himself had not been home since Piper got shot. He didn't want to leave the girl alone. When her dad got stateside, Horatio was able to go home.
Horatio went back to work and started to work on the team's new case, but it was an easy case since the killer made no attempt to cover his tracks. Solving this case in record time. Horatio was glad to be home until he got a phone call very early on a Friday morning.