Sorry for the delay in posting. But, in compensation, I'll post two chapters today instead of just one. Please review. I really appreciate reading them.
CHAPTER 6
New York City, New York
Horatio arrived at the hospital, Mac by his side, and found Alexx waiting for them in Speedle's room, nervously pacing.
"Alexx." Horatio said as he entered the room. "What happened?" She was clearly distressed but her professionalism masked the undercurrent of emotions.
"He was sleeping so I went to get a coffee. When I came back - and it was literally no more than 15 minutes - he was gone." she said. "I asked his nurse where he'd gone and she said an orderly had arrived to take him to radiology just after I left. When he hadn't returned after an hour, his nurse called down to radiology and they had no record of him being there. His attending physician hadn't ordered any films. The nurse hadn't seen the orderly before but thats not unusual. She is checking the video surveillance from the hospital foyer but its going to take time."
Horatio frowned and gave a short nod.
"OK." he replied. "We need to get hold of that surveillance and see for ourselves. Can you find whoever is in charge here and get me a copy of that tape?"
Alexx nodded and headed out to the wards reception desk.
Horatio swung around and fixed Mac with a steely look.
"They've got him." he said simply.
Mac nodded.
"I'll get my team in to process the room. You and I can analyse the surveillance tape." Mac replied, quiet and solemn as he stood next to his Miami counterpart.
Horatio frowned. He hated relinquishing control - particularly when it came to protecting those he cared about - but he knew it was for the best.
Both Horatio and Mac waited patiently for the team to arrive. It was almost 20 minutes later when Danny and Lindsay walked in. Alexx had returned with a copy of the surveillance tape from the security department which she gave to Horatio. Thanking her, he took it and headed back to the lab with Mac.
It took Horatio and the AV lab tech, Adam Ross, less than a half hour to find the images they needed. It showed clearly a dark haired man with a beard and wearing a white janitorial coat pushing a wheel chair. Speedle was slumped to the side and offering no resistance. On a second angle, it was clear he was either asleep or unconscious. Horatio strongly suspected it was the latter.
The tape had been modified by the AV tech to remove superfluous frames and to focus solely on the main foyer from the elevators through to the main entrance. The foyer was a hub of activity throughout the day and in the morning hours that they were viewing on the tape, there were throngs of people entering and leaving. There were delivery people, families with small children running around, people carrying large balloons and flowers, doctors and nurses dressed in scrubs, orderlies wheeling patients to and from procedures and general visitors, stopping at the hospital's gift shop before heading to see their loved ones. No-one noticed the orderly wheeling Speedle through the foyer. No-one noticed as a vehicle pulled up outside the main glass entrance door, or noticed when the driver got out and helped manoeuvre Speed into the back seat. No-one noticed the wheelchair been discarded casually as the orderly climbed into the back as well.
"Adam, can you focus in on the vehicle more and clean up the image?" Horatio asked, leaning in closer to the screen.
Adam nodded and his fingers flitted across the computer's keyboard with ease. The image of the foyer was replaced with a larger image of a heavily pixelated, barely able to be made out image of a white 4 door sedan.
With several more key stroke, the computer program adjusted to compensate for the poor quality and cleaned up the pixelation to reveal a far more recognisable image.
"Now, can you play the tape of just the vehicle as it arrives and as it departs?" Horatio continued.
Again, Adam gave a nod and replayed the video.
The car could be seen pulling up to the main entrance. The men could be clearly seen, again, manoeuvring Speed into the vehicle, and then they watched as the car was driven away. Adam took screen shots of their faces and saved them to clean up later. He ran the video footage again.
"Freeze it there!" Horatio said - the urgency in his voice triggering Adam to pause the video with very little delay.
"Take it back to where the driver gets back into the vehicle and they drive off, then loop it." Horatio continued.
Adam complied and the handful of frames requested by Horatio looped back over and over and over.
"Ahhhh, what exactly are we looking for?" asked Adam, seeing nothing more than a basic image of a car.'
Horatio offered a small smile but did not take his gaze from the computer screen and pointed to a sharp reflection of winter sun at the rear of the car. It was clearly coming off the number plate but made it impossible to make out the letters and numbers.
"Can you clean that up?" Horatio asked. "If you can reduce the glare, we might be able to make out the plate. From the plate, we can get the registered owner."
Adam raised his eyebrows - impressed by the interloper's thinking - and made further adjustments to the program to remove the reflection. It was still difficult to make out, but another program added on top of the image gave them the much needed result.
CTR - 4792
The slightest of smiles passed briefly over Horatio's face - victory.
"And there we have it." he murmured quietly. "Adam, thank you very much." Punching the speed dial on his phone as he pushed himself to his feet, he put the cell to his ear and waited for his call to be answered. It took very little time.
"Mac." he said, avoiding preamble, "CTR-4792. We have their plate."
The victory was short-lived. Although the plates gave them a make and model - which was verified on the film - they also revealed that the vehicle had been stolen earlier in the week.
Although it wasn't altogether an unexpected result, it annoyed Horatio. He looked out the window and pursed his lips together. The light was starting to fade as they headed into a dreary evening. Tim Speedle was out there somewhere. He was in danger and it frustrated Horatio that there was nothing he could do to help him until they got a lead - and the longer it took to find the lead, the greater the danger Speedle was in.
Adam had managed to clean up the images of the two kidnappers and had run them through their database. One came back as a known accomplice of Daniel Neeson, the other was a mystery.
Mac listed a BOLO on the car and then joined Horatio in the lay out room to go through the limited amounts of evidence they had. It wasn't much.
Horatio cut the seal on the paper bag containing Speedle's clothes. He drew in an inaudible breath when he saw the state of the torn jeans and tattered top. They were covered in dirt and grime and there was dried blood sprayed liberally over all. The blood stains had already been tested and, unfortunately for Horatio, Speed had not been wearing shoes. The tread of shoes was always golden when looking for evidence of placement - the grooves often held important trace evidence. He pored over the clothes - analysing any errant fibres he came across, swabbing each of the blood stains independently. He was about to become the trace lab's worst nightmare. It would be time consuming, but he was determined to examine every single piece of evidence. Anything that might give them the lead that they needed.
It was several hours later, in the early hours of the morning, that the first ray of hope appeared. The BOLO had paid dividends. Officers had spotted the abandoned vehicle near Prospect Park in Brooklyn and had called it in. The CSI night shift had been called in to collect the car and to bring it back to the lab for processing which freed Horatio up to continue analysing the trace samples. He was exhausted mentally and physically but in time he found the first anomaly. One small dirt sample taken from Speedles jeans hem showed a different composition than the rest of the samples. On further investigation, the substance came back as having particles of pollen embedded in the dirt. Isolating the sample, Horatio analysed it even further to identify the species. It was not indigenous to the area. It was not even indigenous to the Americas.
Mac entered the trace lab as Horatio was reading the results and took a seat opposite his Miami counterpart.
"Any news?" he asked, casting his eye over the multiple sheets of paper piled up in front of him.
Horatio sighed and pulled his chair around to face Mac, holding the single sheet of paper out for him to take.
"There is one small sample of soil which I swabbed from inside the hem of his jeans." Horatio started. "It has spores of a pollen which is indigenous to China. It's not found growing in the United States. Somehow this pollen found its way onto Speed's clothes. And I don't know how."
Mac stared down at the paper.
"Lilium papilliferum." he stated before looking up at Horatio, a quizzical expression on his face. "I thought Lilium pollen was found worldwide." Horatio nodded towards the paper.
"The genus of Lilium pollens is found worldwide but the individual species are regionally specific. Lilium papilliferum is only found native in China."
"So," replied Mac, "where in New York City would we find a pollen from China? Airports? Docks?"
Horatio took a deep breath in and released it in a slow, measured sigh before pursing his lips and glancing back at Mac.
"At least we have a starting point." he replied. "Have we got anything off the car yet?"
Mac shook his head.
"It's only just arrived in the garage. It'll take a while."
Horatio was tired and frustrated. He pushed himself up from the chair and paced to the window.
"We don't have 'a while'" he muttered.
Mac ducked his head in empathy. He understood the bond that Horatio had with his team - it was the same for him. If it was Danny or Lindsay or Don Flack missing, he would do everything in his power to find them. He couldn't even imagine what it must be like to go through this with a colleague that had supposedly died two years earlier.
"Horatio, go get some rest. I'll call you if there's any development." Horatio frowned and rested his hands firmly on his hips.
"I'm OK." he replied, although the strain in his voice suggested otherwise. "I'll start processing the vehicle."
Mac took a steadying breath and pushed himself.
"Horatio, you are walking a fine line here. You understand that, right?" Horatio turned to fix the Detective with a steely gaze.
"I understand." he replied simply.
Mac sighed, resigned to the fact that his Miami colleague was as equally stubborn as himself.
"Well then," Mac continued, "This may interest you. I've called in an informer who's helped us out several times. He's worked as a seller for some of the main players in the New York drug dealing scene…..including Daniel Neeson. Don has just brought him in. You interested in asking him some questions?"
Horatio locked intense blue eyes with Mac. Was he interested in asking him some questions?!
"Absolutely." he replied.
The informer was identified only as Jimmy and was noticeably edgy. Detective Don Flack was sitting opposite him in the interrogation room, relaxed and confident and eyeing him as he waited for Mac and Horatio to arrive. When the door finally opened and the two men entered, Don stood up and positioned himself next to the doorway, allowing Horatio and Mac to take the two vacant seats.
"Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy." Mac clapped a hand on Jimmy's back before taking a seat opposite him. "It's been too long since we've had a chat."
Jimmy was uncomfortable. It was clear he would rather be anywhere else rather than sitting in the NYPD.
"Meet Horatio Caine. He's keen to ask you a few questions."
Jimmy cast cautious eyes across Horatio but didn't offer anything further than that. Horatio, for his part, kept eyes firmly planted on the man directly in front of him.
"Tell me about Daniel Neeson." said Horatio simply.
Jimmy looked utterly confused.
"This is about Neeson?" he asked puzzled. "That's why I'm here? Look, I'm not working for him anymore. I haven't for years. He's a nobody now." Horatio frowned.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked, "That he's a nobody?"
Jimmy looked straight back to the intense blue eyes. He had no idea who this red headed cop was.
"Daniel Neeson is an old man trying to keep up in a young mans world." Jimmy replied simply.
"Is he still involved in the drug scene?" Horatio asked patiently.
Jimmy shook his head and gave a humourless laugh.
"He likes to think he is." he replied. "Look, I don't want any trouble. I don't need this getting out that I'm here."
"Nobody's going to know you were here." Mac started, "We don't want to know anything about anyone other than Daniel Neeson. If he is as irrelevant as you say, you have nothing to worry about. Now tell us what you know about Neeson. Who works for him. Who deals with him. Where does he operate his business from nowadays."
He received a shrug of the shoulders in reply.
"No idea." Jimmy said. "He's always had the exterior of being an importer. My guess is he's still running the same game. Anywhere that will allow importing of bulk materials that can hide ice, amphetamines, even cannabis, that's where you'll find Daniel Neeson."
Jimmy shifted uncomfortably in his chair. The longer he stayed within the station, the more likely it was that he would be seen by someone who would report to others that scared him a lot more than Daniel Neeson.
"He has pissed off a lot of people over the years. After he got out of prison the last time - maybe about 2 or 3 years ago, the New York scene was a lot different to when he's been put away. His empire had been screwed over by Tony DiManzo. There were new faces getting better quality product at a cheaper price. His associates had either moved on or died and he's been trying to crawl his way back up the ladder ever since. Trust me when I say, no-one in New York gives a shit about Daniel Neeson." "Who's working with him then, if everyone supposedly hates him so much?" Horatio's voice was low and little more than a growl.
Jimmy leant forwards, fingers clenching and unclenching with a nervous tic.
"Look, Neeson's a goddamn psychopath! He's living in some sort of alternate universe if he thinks he's ever going to have power in this city again. The only people he's got working for him are those who haven't got anywhere else to go: Caskill, Rossi, McClement, Horton. They're loyal but none of them are players in the city anymore."
Horatio frowned and leant forwards too.
"What about children? Has Neeson got any family that you're away of?"
Jimmy shrugged.
"He talked about a son when I worked for him. But that was the early days. His boy was going to go through college on Daniel's dime and then he was going to be recruited into the family business. The kid disappeared before he'd finished college and got out of New York. Smart kid if you ask me. I'd get as far from that psycho as possible too."
The interview left Horatio more bewildered than ever. Things had certainly changed a lot since he'd been working there. During the years he'd spent as part of the NYPD team, Daniel Neeson had been one of the king pins of New York. How the mighty had fallen. He had sat in the interview room with Mac for nearly 20 minutes after Flack had escorted Jimmy out. One thing had become clear. Daniel Neeson could no longer buy a friend in New York city. With his former associates having left for greener pastures, he needed all the people on his side that he could muster. Including a reluctant son. If he wouldn't join his fathers business willingly then he would be forced to join. If he couldn't be forced to join, then he would be killed. That, Horatio was sure of.
Mac glanced over at Horatio who was in deep thought.
"Ready to start processing the car?" Mac asked quietly.
Horatio paused a moment more, eyebrows raised, before offering Mac a humourless smile.
"Let's go." he growled back.