Unprocessed Evidence
1x12 - Entrance Wound
by Bookwormdragon
Disclaimer: Neither the CSI: Miami Universe nor any of the Characters in the CSI: Miami Universe belongs to me. No profit is made from this story on my part. No copyright infringement is intended.
Horatio wanted to scream in frustration. Why wouldn't anybody listen to him? First the District Attorney, and now Detective Christian.
Of the two, he found Detective Christian's rigidness to be far more irritating. He could at least understand the D.A.'s viewpoint - he didn't agree with it, necessarily, but he understood it.
Detective Christian, on the other hand, was supposed to evaluate the evidence, keep an open mind, follow all the leads and consider all the possible theories. He wasn't supposed to latch on to one particular theory and force the evidence to fit it, discounting anything that contradicted it. For goodness' sake, even the greenest rookie knew that Time of Death was a fluid and inexact determination!
It was too bad that screaming wouldn't actually do any good! Instead, he would just have to let the evidence speak for itself. All the information they needed to find the real killer and prove that Cole Judson was innocent was out there somewhere - they just had to find it.
And find it they did. Just as he had predicted, the evidence cleared Judson's name and lead them to the real killer. The Landlord, of all people.
Sometimes, there was such a thing as being too smart, trying too hard.
Lee Bastille had almost committed the perfect crime. Almost. If he hadn't decided to frame his tenant for the murder, he would have gotten away with it. But he had actually been too clever, gotten too greedy.
Without the planted fingerprint, they would never have stepped foot into the apartment complex and would never have matched the mold sample to Bastille's bathroom. In fact, they would probably never have solved the murder at all.
Why Bastille had felt the need to frame Judson, Horatio didn't know. Perhaps he had thought that he needed to give the police a suspect so they wouldn't look to deeply into the case. Or perhaps he was offended by the thought of an interracial couple living in his apartment complex. Who knew? Perhaps even Bastille didn't know, himself.
What Horatio did know was that, in the end, the evidence had led them to the right man. They had just needed to stop and listen to what it was saying.
