CSI: New York
The Innocent Soldier
By A. Rhea King

Chapter 1

It was still dark of the early morning when Adam parked his car behind Mac's Avalanche near a small clearing in Central Park, snatched up his kit from the passenger seat, and hurried out. He jogged to the back of a line of park workers that blocked him from the crime scene, and started elbowing his way through. Their foreman had called in the body, and at the moment they were more interested in the dead body than fixing the sidewalk on the other side of the hill.

He came through and saw Mac and Hawkes standing together while three officers set up work lights around the crime scene. Mac looked back at him with a dark, cross look. Adam realized he looked like he had just climbed out of bed – which he had – but he didn't notice his shirt was buttoned wrong and inside out. He avoided Mac's dark glare as he walked in front of him to stand on the other side of Hawkes.

"You asked for to have your shift start at five thirty this month, Adam. I started calling you at five thirty and you tell me you're just waking up when you do answer, take forty-five minutes to get here, and you show up looking like you just climbed out of bed?"

Mac's lips thinned when Adam looked at him.

"I… I'm sorry, Boss."

Hawkes slowly moved out of the line of fire and pretended to be adjusting a work light.

"Morning boss," Adam said as he stopped next to him. He avoided eye contact with him.

"Fix your shirt, use the comb in the door pocket of my Avalanche, and then come back to the scene ready to work." As Adam passed back in front of him, Mac added sternly, "Quickly."

Adam jogged off to obey. When he returned, the two CSI had moved to stand at the edge of a bloody spot on the dry brown spring grass.

"The police found a baseball bat over there," Mac told Hawkes.

"You think the killer left it?" Hawkes asked.

"Okay, boys, back to work," the park worker's foreman said. "You're not being paid to rubber neck."

The officers, CSI, and Adam glanced back. The foreman was herding his workers back to their job on the other side of the hill.

"Hard to say. Adam, start on the perimeter while we work on the body. Work the tree line down to that wall and back up."

Adam sat his kit down, took out a stack of markers and his camera, and started walking. He paused to place markers over evidence or snap a photograph. His heart leapt into his throat when a jackhammer started thumping and turned. Mac and Hawkes were still talking despite the noise. Adam turned around and kept working.

He reached the wall and started along it, looking for more evidence. The wall stopped at the edge of a thickly wooded spot of the park. He spotted something lying in the brown grass, almost hidden by the tiny green shoots coming up through it. He walked over and stared at it. It was a ring and from the size and shape he judged it was a man's class ring.

Behind him the jackhammer stopped and the birds singing to announce the morning filled the silence.

Adam pulled his flashlight off his vest, the Velcro holding it making a soft ripping sound. He turned it on and shined it on the ring.

"You got something?" Mac asked.

"I don't know. Maybe," Adam called back.

He glanced back when Mac didn't say anything else. He and Hawkes were talking over the body again. He'd come to understand that when Mac micro-managed his work in the field, it meant he was angry with Adam. Since he was leaving Adam to work, it was a good sign Mac was no longer angry with him.

Adam crouched down and examined the ring visually. He didn't see any blood but that didn't mean much. The ring had an emerald in it – his birthstone. He laid a measurement ruler next to it and focused his camera on the ring.

The jackhammer was turned back on. It seemed like there was always work being done in Central Park, but did they have to do it at five in the morning?

A hand with a cloth snaked between Adam's arm and face and came back fast to firmly press the cloth against his mouth and nose. Another arm whipped around his abdomen, slamming back so hard it almost took Adam's breath away.

The person caught him so off guard that by the time Adam realized he was caught he was already at a disadvantage. It didn't stop him from struggling and trying to get the attention of Mac, Hawkes, or the two officers. But it was too dark by the wall for them to see the struggle and the jackhammer blotted out his muffled cries for help.

A voice said into his ear. "Everything is going to be okay. I'm here now."

He knew the voice and his surprise became fear driven panic, turning his fight violent. He kicked, clawed, and punched at the person holding him. He tried to twist around, to fight them face to face, but the person was stronger than he was. The person had always been stronger than Adam. As he began having a harder time keeping his eyes open, Adam realized there was something on the cloth and he going to lose the battle. If he was ever going to escape what was coming, he had to find a way to tell Mac and Hawkes know who kidnapped him.

With one hand he grabbed his camera and held down the shutter button. It started snapping photograph after photograph. With his other hand he reached back in the air in search of contact with skin or hair. His hand found the person's head. He grabbed as much hair as he could and yanked. His arm fell away, now too heavy for him to even move. His finger relaxed on the shutter button. Slowly he grew still, and his fingers uncurled to let the tuft of hair drift into the grass.

A struggle that had felt like minutes to Adam had only taken seconds. The person roughly pulled the camera from Adam's neck and threw it away. They dug through his pockets and tossed his cell phone. The person pulled his police radio off his belt and threw it against a tree. The jackhammer silenced it shattering.

The person picked Adam up, slung him over his shoulder, and disappeared into the thick wooded area.

#

Mac and Hawkes crouched on the same side of the body. The jackhammer made it hard to hear each other talk.

"Look at this," Hawkes said, lifting up the man's hand. "It doesn't look like he put up a fight. Who takes a beating with a baseball bat and doesn't fight?" Hawkes looked up at Mac's face.

Mac looked up the hill.

The officers were gathered around a patrol car eating heart-burn burritos and coffee. The sun had finally broken the horizon and was lighting up the area. Mac looked down as one of the officers turned, looking down at the two.

He swallowed the bite in his mouth and stood up, setting the burrito on the car. He looked around the clearing and then said something to the other two. They looked up. They put their breakfast down, starting to look as worried as the first officer. He said something to them and started down the hill toward the CSI.

Mac shook his head, and started to yell back, "No wah—" The jackhammer stopped. He said at a normal tone, "No one."

At the same time an officer nearby started to yell, "Detective Taylor, where—" The CSI looked up at him and his neck flushed. He stopped walking and started again, "Where did you send Adam?"

Mac hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "Over there."

"Over where?"

"Over there to search—" Mac stood and turned as he continued. "The…" Adam was nowhere in sight. "Tree line."

His lab tech was nowhere in sight.

"Adam," Mac called. He waited, expecting to hear Adam call back from the trees. But no reply came. Mac yelled, "Adam!"

There was no response.

Hawkes echoed, "Adam!"

There was no answer.

The jackhammer started again.

"Go tell them to stop," Mac commanded the officer.

He left at a run to obey.

"Stay with the body Hawkes," Mac yelled over the jackhammer.

Mac started down the hill toward the wall, the last place he'd seen Adam. The jackhammer stopped.

"Adam!" Mac started calling over and over, even as he continued toward the last spot he'd seen him.

Behind him Hawkes and the officers began calling for Adam. Soon even the park workers were calling for him.

Mac stopped yelling in the middle of Adam's name when he stepped on plastic. He looked down, seeing Adam's shattered police radio. And then his camera and cell phone. He turned.

"Call for backup! Adam's been taken!"

Mac turned back to the new crime scene, visually going over it. The camera's strap wasn't bloody, so it hadn't been used to kill Adam. It wasn't cut either, meaning the kidnapper had time to remove it while they were only a few yards away. The discarded cell phone meant his kidnapper may have known his phone had GPS locator turned on. The shattered radio might mean the kidnapper knew it too had a GPS locator and if it wasn't upright for more than ten minutes, an emergency signal automatically went out.

Hawkes joined Mac. "Police were a few blocks. They're searching the park."

"I told you to stay with the body."

"I put one of the officers on it."

"You mean one of the officers that didn't notice Adam being kidnapped?" Mac said, glaring at him.

Hawkes started to answer.

"I'm sorry," Mac quickly said. "That's fine. We need to process this crime scene first."

Hawkes nodded. "Adam's markers aren't scattered. He had time to set them down."

"His ruler is over there next to a ring, it looks like," Mac pointed at it. Something out of the corner of Mac's eye caught his attention. He walked over and crouched down.

"I have hair."

Sheldon joined him. He pulled on gloves and took a small evidence envelope from a pocket. He picked up the tuft of hair and held it just left of the rising sun. "Most have tags. This was ripped out. It's the same color as Adam's hair."

Mac looked over the crime scene. "It's his kidnapper's."

"How do you know?"

Because he was trying to get our attention and we ignored him." Mac frowned, looking down at the discarded camera. Mac put on a glove and picked it up. "And maybe he even tried showing us who it was." Mac pulled out the memory card, looking at it.

#

Adam woke slowly. He felt something around his wrists, holding them up, and was fairly certain he was lying on a bed. He swallowed. His mouth had a bitter taste. He moved his shoulder but his wrists didn't move far. A chain jangled with the movement.

"Adam," someone said.

He hadn't heard the voice for so long that his foggy mind couldn't put a name to it.

The bed moved and someone laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Are you awake, son?"

Son? That meant…

Adam immediately came out of his fog and looked up at the man sitting next to him. His entire body went cold, almost to the point he was numb. He broke out in a light sweat and he could hear his heart beating in his ears.

His father, Charles Ross, smiled at him, but to Adam knew not to trust it.

"Dad," Adam said. "What are… You're supposed to be in jail."

"You haven't seen me in ten years and that's all you have to say?"

Adam hesitated. "Yeah."

"I was so good they let me out," Charles explained. "Why didn't you ever come see me, Adam?"

Adam's pent up anger made him try to bolt. But his flight was stopped by something snagging his wrists and pulling him back. He looked up at the handcuffs holding his wrists to the headboard. His eyes went to the padding on the wall, then around the room. The entire room was padded to muffle his screams. There were no windows and a small bathroom with a green door. Another door opened into the hall and had two deadbolts on it. His father had thought this kidnapping through.

"Why am I handcuffed, dad?" Adam looked back at his father.

"That's for your own protection. I remember the last time you woke up, after I'd come for you, and I had to keep disciplining you until you were almost dead. Remember that?"

Adam didn't want to remember that. Why had they let this evil man out?

Charles patted Adam's cheek. "This beard makes you look like a little kid."

Adam wanted to cry and scream at the same time, but he kept silent.

"I'll take care of it," Charles told him. "Tomorrow we'll shave it off. And you'll get to meet your mother."

"Mom's dead, dad. She died two years ago from cancer."

"I'm talking about Lillian."

"Who the hell is Lillian?"

"Your new mother. Every boy needs a mother and father, so I started looking for one while I was in jail. I found her on the Internet, and I know you'll like her. She can't cook, but she's got other benefits no man could complain about." Charles laughed at the unspoken triple X rated joke. When Adam didn't join him he stopped and said, "Guess you're not into women. Are you into men?"

"No."

"It was a good joke."

"I don't know this woman. Did you marry her?"

"Of course! She's family now. The girl knows her guns! Maybe, later, when you prove I can trust you again, we'll go shooting."

"I don't like guns."

"Every man likes guns."

Adam started to argue, but there really wasn't any point. "Dad… I didn't come to see you in jail because… I didn't want to. I don't want to meet Lillian. I just want to go home. Let me go, we'll pretend this kidnapping never happened, and you and Lillian can go live a happy life."

"You are my son. You're living with me. And I didn't kidnap you. You can't kidnap your own child."

"Yes, dad, you can, and you did. You—"

Charles punched Adam in the face making him bite his lip. Pain seared behind his eye and into his jaw.

"IF YOU CRY I'LL GIVE YOU DAMNED GOOD REASON TO KEEP CRYING!"

Adam knew his father meant it. If he showed any signs of pain or fear, the man had always been quick to beat Adam. He doubted prison had made his father less vicious.

"Please let me leave, dad," Adam whispered, looking up at him. "Please."

"You are my son, Adam. I am keeping my family together, come hell or high water, boy. Got that?"

Adam didn't respond.

His father laid his hand on Adam's head, running his hand down to his swelling cheek. "I love you, Adam. I really do. Get some sleep, son. It's late. Tomorrow we'll get this damned beard shaved off and make you look like a man."

Adam had to bite his tongue, literally, to stop from telling his dad no. That would only get him punched again.

Charles walked around the bed, toward a door. "Good night, Adam."

Adam heard the door shut.

He prayed Mac would find him and soon, because if he had to kill his father to escape him this time, he felt like he could do just that.