Tim Speedle seemed to be asleep sitting up: slouched back in his computer chair with his eyes closed in the middle of the dark lab, he seemed completely oblivious to everything around him. His face was illuminated by the glaring white of the computer screen, which was flashing the green word "MATCH" over and over again. He was even snoring softly, his shoulders moving to the rhythm of his breath.
Horatio glanced at Eric, who appeared to be thinking the same thing.
"Speed," Horatio said quietly. It didn't wake him.
"Yo, Speed," Eric said a bit louder, coming up from behind and shaking his left shoulder.
Speed awoke with a jerk and a garbled "hum" sound. "Wh-what?"
"Speed, what are you doing here?" Horatio asked.
"Do you have a life or what?"
"Huh? I uh--" He turned around in his chair, rubbing his eyes. "Oh. Uhm, hi. What time--?"
"Quarter past eleven," Horatio answered. "You should probably be home. I'm amazed no one bothered to wake you up sooner."
"I was just, uhm…" he began, turning back to face the screen, "I was doing a search -- oh. It's done."
"Well, when you fall asleep for four hours, the world doesn't stop turning," Eric said, glancing down at the screen. "AFIS?"
"Yeah. I printed the corpse on the Lovett case; the guy just doesn't sit right with me." He yawned as he reached to the mouse and opened up the file the match. "Let's see, here… Francis Lovett. Dual citizenship in America and Great Britain -- holy shit…"
"Look at that rap sheet," Eric said, eyeing it. "Scroll down."
Horatio watched as Speed moved down the long list. "Tax evasion, 1976; tax evasion, 1977; tax evasion, 1978; '79…"
"I'm sensing a subtle pattern," Speed mumbled.
"Tax evasion usually isn't just tax evasion," Eric pointed out. "Remember Al Capone? He was arrested for tax evasion, too, but that certainly wasn't his only crime."
"Indeed. Where was he arrested?" asked Horatio.
Speed tapped a few keys before replying with, "Daytona Beach, for everything up until last year. I guess they moved down to Miami in 2005."
"I have connections in Daytona," Horatio thought out loud. "I'll give her a call tomorrow morning. She might know something about this guy; it might give us a lead."
"Based on this rap sheet, I'd say every cop in Daytona Beach knows him," Speed said.
"Don't spend too long on the phone, H," Eric said, turning to him. "We're going to Mrs. Lovett's house tomorrow, remember?"
"How could I forget? Good work, Speed, now go home."
"Right."
Horatio clapped a hand on Speed's back as he rose from his seat. He shrugged off the lab coat and he headed across the room to hang it up on a hook as Eric opened and thumbed through the file in his hand. Just as Speed had his jacket in tow, he turned around again.
"Oh, and by the way, Horatio," he said, slinging his bag over his shoulder, "that guy, Nigel? He single-handedly avoided a major system meltdown that probably could have wiped out our database, and his tools of choice were a screwdriver and a paper clip, so…"
Horatio raised one eyebrow and couldn't help but spare a glance at Eric, who seemed hell-bent on looking at absolutely everything besides Horatio. He smiled to himself and turned back to Speed. "Yeah?"
"Yeah, so, can we, like… keep him or something?"
He smiled. "Believe it or not, Speed," he said, "you are not the first person to request that."
"It's just that our computer network has been sort of faulty lately, and, you know, it might be handy to have him around if he can pull a MacGyver like that."
Horatio looked down at the floor, his mind rolling over Speed's words. The same question was being presented to him over and over, and each time he heard it, the better it sounded. Nigel would be a fantastic asset to the MDPD, doubtless, but could he stay? Would he?
"I'll keep it in mind," he said, and he meant every word.
"'Kay. I'm out, then," he drawled. "Good night."
"Night, Speed," Horatio said as he heard the door swing open. A moment later, it closed and the lab was thrown into temporary silence.
"So," Eric said after a moment, "was I the only one who didn't like him off the bat?"
Horatio just patted him on the shoulder. "Are you going to scan the sketch into the system?"
"Yeah. It's a good thing we found a francophone sketch artist who also happened to have a chronic case of insomnia, huh?"
"Don't question it, just go with it," Horatio said, watching as Eric pulled the sketch from the folder with one hand and opened the scanner with the other. "So what do you think; will we get a hit on this?"
"Your guess is as good as mine," Eric sighed as he positioned the sketch on the bed of the scanner. "If there's any justice in this world, we'll get his address, phone number and the time he usually takes a shower."
Horatio smiled.
"I'm serious, H," he said, "this freak is straight-up evil. After working in crime for this long, there are only a few things that really get to me. Child prostitution is one of them." He closed the scanner and hit a few buttons, making the narrow dimension of it light up and slowly drag down the length.
"I know," Horatio said, "I feel the same way. We'll get him, Eric, as soon as we can."
He watched as the image scrolled slowly down the screen. A moment later, it beeped, and the sketch was staring back at them. The face on the screen was square-ish, with a pair of deep-set eyes and a flat nose. The lines around his mouth were long, making it look like he'd spent too much time frowning.
"I'll put this into the crime database," Eric said as he turned the keyboard and began to type rapidly, the clicking echoless in the half-dark of the lab. "Guess we don't have much information on him, other than an alias." Horatio watched Eric enter 'LA HIRE' in the appropriate text box. A moment later, he hit the submit button. The CPU clicked and whirred softly for a few minutes, and then it flashed the words 'Successfully submitted to database' on the screen.
"Right," he said, "I guess that's it for now."
"For now," agreed Horatio. "Let's both go home."
-- -- -- -- --
"Okay, stop halfway down," said the voice in Nigel's ear. "Do you see what I see?"
"What? Where?"
"Number twenty-seven."
Nigel had to hit the down arrow key a few more times before he saw the twenty-seventh search result on the Google page. "Oh, yeah, now I see it… what's that website URL?"
"Something on a blogging Site," Jordan said, and a second later he heard the clicking of a mouse from her end of the line. "Yeah. It's J-dash-Gables-dot-Blogworld-dot-com."
Keeping the cell phone between his ear and his shoulder, Nigel shifted his hands and quickly typed in the URL. The modem whirred for a few seconds before the website loaded, the different shades of blue on the background lighting up the keyboard of the laptop.
"'Musings on the profound and the mundane,'" Jordan read, "'from Average Joe.' Sounds absolutely riveting."
"Mhm. It's such a shame that I really don't give a damn." Nigel held the down arrow key and scrolled quickly through the seemingly endless stream. "Where's the entry that came up on Google? Because that's the only one I'm interested in."
"Wait-wait-wait," she said suddenly, "there it is, about three-quarters of the way down. The article is titled 'My Tête-à-Tête With Unlawfulness.'"
It took Nigel a minute to find what Jordan was talking about, but when he finally found it, the subject couldn't have been more apparent:
Today was as interesting as it was frightening. I made the mistake of walking home through the darker sides of town, and trust me, I won't forget what I saw.
As I was cutting through a back alley, I realised that I was lost. Seeing a glowing yellow rectangle of light against the side of a large brick building that looked like some sort of shop, I decided to throw my inherent male instincts and ask for directions.
I walked into the room and the scent of blood and semen overwhelmed me. It was a small, dirty room lined with tattered folding chairs. Against one wall was a tall man dressed all in black, complete with a Humphrey Bogart-style fedora and long trench coat. He looked up when I entered and his beady eyes scanned me.
"Are you here to see La Hire?" he asked. His voice was slanted with a thick Cockney accent, and his speech was slurred; he sounded drunk.
"Err," I began, "no, I'm not, I--"
"Right," he cut me off, stumbling across to the corner of the room. He grabbed the end of a curtain that hung in front of a doorway, and through it I saw children.
Dozens of them, at least, boys and girls, all of them dirty and not one of them a day over fifteen years old. They looked scared, pale, thin and shaky, and when the light from the lobby flooded into the back room, they all simultaneously looked up and recoiled.
I was horrified, to say the least, and not to mention terrified. This couldn't be what I thought it was, could it? I'd heard the rumours of course, but I always thought they were nothing more than just that: rumours. But when I looked upon the scared, ashen faces of all those children, my mind couldn't think of any other reason they could all be there together.
"Pick whichever one you like," the man grunted, interrupting my thoughts. "Your charge is based on how much time you spend with them. No snuffing and nothing that leaves permanent scars, hear me?"
I felt queasy. This was it -- this was the child prostitution ring I'd read about. This was the dangerous one, too, the one run by some mafia lord who was known to assassinate those it didn't approve of. If I didn't play along, I would probably die. If I did play along, I would never be able to live with myself.
So, I did the next best thing: I lied.
"You, err," I said, "you don't have the type I'm looking for."
The man raised his eyebrow at me challengingly. "We got boys, girls, black, white and Latino, what is 'your type?'"
"Not here," I said finally. "I'll look elsewhere. Thank you."
And then I left, without looking back. I didn't call the cops; my hands were shaking too much, and my paranoia convinced me that they would somehow find me if I did.
Nigel shivered. "Jesus," he said after finishing the article, "this is disgusting. Did all of this happen in Miami?"
He heard Jordan swallow and click a few times. "The guy says he lives in Miami, yes."
"Magnificent," he mumbled into his hand. "God, I feel sick."
"Me, too," Jordan said softly. "I hope you guys find the twisted bastard behind this, lock him up and throw away the key."
He sighed. "As do I."
Of course, this sort of story struck a very personal chord with Nigel; a very personal chord. It was a memory he would have liked to forget, but one that, every now and then, would wake him up at two in the morning, the memories of that man's face dark and fierce in his mind's eye.
His face. The fierce eyes, the ragged beard, the gritted teeth.
Oh, God.
He shut his eyes tightly and blocked out the memory. Not now, not here. He didn't want to remember.
"Nigel? Are you there?"
He opened his eyes again. "I, uh -- yes. I'm here."
"You okay?"
"Fine," he lied. "I'm fine."