When Horatio made it back to the Miami-Dade Crime Lab, it was close to noon.
Walking up to the front desk he asked, "Paula, do I have any messages?" The petite, blonde patrol officer handed him over three slips of paper with a smile.
"That's not all, either," she said. "You've kinda got a visitor."
"Really," he said, curiosity peaked. If it had been someone from another agency, like the Feds, Paula would have warned him.
"Yeah, I sent her to wait in the atrium," Paula responded. "Teenager. She was starting to get a couple of stares. She wouldn't tell me her name, but asked for you by name, and said she would talk to only you. Although, she didn't seem to know that you were the dayshift supervisor for the lab. I finally got her to sign the visitor's log, sighting it as procedure." Paula showed him the log.
"Rosalind Franklin," Horatio chuckled, "the scientist who used crystallography to determine that DNA had a double helix structure, giving Watson and Crick the final insight into the true form of DNA."
"I wouldn't have known if I hadn't heard Valera and Delgado talking about a special on woman scientists on the Discovery Channel just the day before," Paula said.
"Well, I'll just have to see what Ms. Franklin has to say," H said, heading straight to the atrium. What he saw had him pausing just inside the door.
A girl between the ages of 14 and 17 sat on one of the black pleather benches. Like most teenagers he came in contact with, she wore jeans a light green T-shirt. But it was the hair the caught his attention. Auburn red locks, a shade of red darker than his own, yes, but her natural highlights were strawberry-blonde, his color indeed. Her hair was clipped in such a way that the ponytail fell forward, the locks becoming spiked. In the light, it appeared that she had a halo of fire.
Bright, pure blue eyes looked up at him, cutting across his soul. He almost wanted to take a step back. So much anguish and fear projected in a single moment. Then the walls came down, hiding it all away.
"Hi, I'm Horatio Caine. I've been told you need to speak to me." The teenager shot out of her seat.
"Yeah, yeah I-I--I need your h--he--help." Her voice was shaking with unshed tears. Horatio crossed the distance between them in less than a second.
"Hey, hey, hey. Whatever it is, I'm sure I can help." He whipped out a handkerchief and handed to her. She took it and rubbed her eyes.
"I nn-need to ss--show you something," the girl started fumbling at the satchel she was carrying, digging something out. "She said--she said you would recognize it."
She held up a necklace. It was a gold medallion with a woman dressed in a habit in the dead center, her hands folded in prayer. Above the small caricature was the lettering "Saint Monica." Below, "Is est impossible ut parvulus of tot lacrima pereo."
It took him a couple of moments for him to remember exactly where he had seen that particular necklace. Years ago, when he still was a new CSI with a background in narcotics.
Softly, "Where did you get this?"
"It was my mom's." A broken sob escaped her lips. "S-s-she said...she said that if anything should happen to her, to go to you. You would recognize it, you would help me."
He caught the verb tense. "Was?"
The girl wiped her eyes again. "She was murdered. Three days ago. I think the same people that killed her are still after me and...and I don't think they are the only people looking for me."
"Okay," Horatio said, trying to calm her down. "We're going to go to my office, okay? And we'll start from the beginning, and we'll figure out where to go from there." The girl shook her head rapidly.
Speed and Eric made it back to the lab together, with Calleigh heading to Yelina's B&E.
"I'll hand off the fingerprint samples we took to Joseph and log the letter opener into evidence," Eric said.
"I'll see what this substance on her shirt was and see if her clothes are dry enough to process for more evidence," Speed said.
"Killed with her own letter opener," Eric just shook his head. "Only to have the killer clean it and put it back in her desk. How does that make sense?"
"Makes as much sense as any of the violence in Miami does," Speed commented. "She hears a noise. She grabs something to defend herself and goes to investigate it. Some home owners get shot with their own guns during a home invasion. She got stabbed with her own weapon of choice."
"Speaking of the crime scene..." Eric trailed off. He found the floor fascinating for a moment and then at whatever the lab techs were doing behind Speed. If the older, scruffier CSI didn't know better, he would have thought his friend was nervous. Speed tried to patiently wait for Eric to finish, but when Eric still hadn't said anything and they were standing in the hall like idiots, he gave up.
"Spill it, Delko, we don't have all day."
"You made it to the crime scene pretty quick today," Eric said.
"You're clocking me when I make it to a crime scene?" He asked incredulously. This coming from the guy who, until a couple months ago, made it a toss up of whether he would get to the crime scene or not.
"No, it's just that your apartment is across town. I mean, in the morning rush hour, there's no way you would have been able to make it as early as you did." Speed knew what his friend was hinting at, but got a perverse pleasure out of making him spell it out.
"So you're accusing me of breaking numerous traffic laws to get to work? I'm not that invested in my paycheck."
Eric was exacerbated. "You practically showed up with Horatio. Is there something you want to tell me?" Speed gave him his best 'I don't know what the hell you're talking about' stare.
This was dangerous territory. Eric was implying that Speed got to crime scene early because he'd slept somewhere else besides his apartment. This conversation could go either one of two ways. One: Eric thought Speed was holding out on him about dating a new girl and wanted to know who she was. Two: Eric specifically thought that he was with Horatio at Horatio's apartment. That he and Horatio were together—as in a relationship. While the second option would have required a great leap in thinking, Speed knew the CSIs spent too much time together that Eric could have easily connected the dots.
It was true, and that was the problem. Once anyone found out that Horatio was in a relationship with not only a subordinate—because that was pretty bad to begin with—but a male subordinate no less, both of their careers would be over. Of course, nothing at the lab changed. Nothing was allowed to compromise the lab. That was Horatio's number one rule. But it wouldn't matter. IAB would have a field day—Stetler personally would be doing a jig around his office. Speed had to derail this line of thinking and fast.
It wasn't like no one at the lab knew. Keeping anything from Alexx was worse than trying to hide things from your mother. One look at him and she seemed to pick thoughts out of his head. Calleigh had stumbled on the truth over dinner one night. Tim had been cooking and had his back to her when she suddenly appeared with one of Horatio's shirts in her hands.
"I found this in the bathroom," Calleigh said with a smirk as she then proceeded to showcase the shirt. "Care to explain?"
"I let Horatio use my bathroom. So what?" had been his quick, almost too quick response. Calleigh raised her eyebrows.
"Why would he be changing in your bathroom when he could have easily done it at the lab, or his bathroom, huh?" And in that moment, Speed knew they had been caught.
Calleigh, he supposed, could have accidently let something slip, but that would be very uncharacteristic of the blonde. So either Eric was fishing or he had some solid proof and wanted Speed to explain it away.
"Uh, the man drives a big, shiny military vehicle with the words 'Crime Scene Investigation' on the side of it in big, bold letters, Eric. He's hard to miss speeding down the highway. Maybe I just tailed him to work." It wasn't technically lying, though it wasn't telling the truth either. It was letting Eric draw his own conclusions, manipulating the evidence in his favor. Wasn't there a term for it, even? Equivocal evidence. When the evidence could equally go for as well as against a suspect, they had to interpret the evidence in the suspect's favor.
"Besides," Speed added, suddenly thinking of that morning's arrival order, "you and Calleigh showed up practically joined at the hip. By your logic, you two could..." He stopped when he caught the shocked and guilty expression on Eric's face. "You and Calleigh?!"
"SSSHHH! Can you shout it any louder?!" Eric hissed.
"I thought she was dating Hagen." The name was spit out like Speed had just eaten something sour. It wasn't something Tim could pin down, but there was just something shady about the former Narcotics detective that made him uncomfortable on a scene. That he had tried to tamper with some of the evidence regarding a murder case by trying to convince Eric to ignore it, and on top of that yelled at Calleigh, didn't put him in the best light as well.
"Well, she isn't anymore," Eric said between gritted teeth. Apparently Eric, always the jealous type, wasn't too fond of the guy, either. Tim put up his hands in surrender.
"Hey, neither you nor Calleigh told me about you two, or that Hagen was a touchy subject."
"You're right," Eric agreed. "I'm sorry I snapped, it's just...complicated." Tim gauged his friend. Since he'd accidently just found out about his two friends dating each other, he guessed whatever happened was relatively new and, considering they were co-workers, complicated. It was something he could understand.
"I bet." Something on his face must have given him away because Eric's eyes held a hint of surprise.
"Hey, how about we go for drinks after work, the three of us? We haven't done that in awhile." An opportunity to grill him in private. Why would he pass that up?
"Sure, but not for long, and it will depend on whether or not we need to go back to the scene of the crime when we'll be leaving. Which means we've got to process the evidence we've got first."
"Right. Fingerprints, trace. I'll see you in an hour."
Speed walked into the trace lab and started processing. It wasn't until Eric came in that he realized an hour had past, and Horatio hadn't stopped by. He glanced up at Horatio's office. The redhead was standing by the window, but he was facing his office as if he was talking to someone. He hoped it wasn't IAB or the FBI. Stetler had an uncanny ability to piss his lover off, and Sackheim was no better. Why everyone thought keeping the Crime Lab out of the information loop helped them solve crimes was a mystery.
But whoever it was, whatever they were saying must be pretty serious because he could tell that Horatio was just getting tenser and tenser.