Titania Falling
Chapter 14 - Sever himself and madly sweep the sky

::

"Okay, gang, what are we missing?" Danny asked as they stood in the trashed apartment.

"Good question," Hawkes said, looking around thoughtfully, trying to see if there was anything that stood out this time around. Unfortunately, to him it looked the same, still an apartment that had been tossed by someone looking for something.

"I mean," Danny said, looking over the gaming system and TV with awe, "I still can't believe the guy left this behind. This is some great stuff. And face it, with this mess anyone else wouldn't have known it was here in the first place."

"He was planning to come back and get it after you guys were done," Angell supplied, stepping into the bedroom. Still the same: closet that looked like it had thrown up all over the bedroom, drawers pulled out of the dresser and emptied on the floor. She knew that if she looked in the attached bath it would be more of the same, medicine chest emptied into the sink, towels pulled out of the cabinet and thrown into the tub.

"How did he think he was going to get away with that?" Hawkes asked from the kitchen, trying to make room for Danny to come and look. It barely fit one person, let alone two.

"Who knows." She shrugged as she returned to the main room. "Okay, you two are the CSIs - what are we looking for?"

"Why you asking us?" Danny retorted with a smirk. "You're the fancy homicide detective, I thought you were supposed to know."

Hawkes sighed, half in amusement and half in frustration. "Something that doesn't fit."

"This whole place doesn't fit," Danny complained, looking over at the TV again. "Who tosses a place and leaves the most expensive thing there?"

"We already know the answer to that," Hawkes said, gingerly stepping over a broken plate to return to the main room. Angell was looking into the hall closet, reaching up for something.

"No, the question is: who leaves the most expensive thing here but takes the video camera?" She held up the empty gray case she'd noticed the last time they were there, this time recognizing it for what it was. "This is what we missed. It's the only thing in the apartment that was put away. Empty, but on a shelf, like that was where it belonged."

"What the-" Danny started shaking his head, beginning to realize what Angell was implying. "Okay, fine. But we've got to go back to the pool. This can't be the only place where we're missing something."

::

The diving club was dark when they arrived, but Angell still had a key to the building and was able to let them in. It hadn't been released yet, so it remained empty as a tomb. "Clive Watkins said Andrew Landon was a diver."

"Yeah," Danny said, walking over to the empty pool where Landon had fallen to his death. "I looked him up. He was supposed to be considered one of the best in the competitive world of diving until he was caught cheating. Apparently there was even some suggestion he'd sabotaged other people's gear, putting drugs in their sports cream and whatnot, trying to fix competitions. Pretty nasty stuff, if you ask me."

"But he probably knew his way around a natatorium," Angell said.

"Uh-huh." Danny was shining his light up the stairs to one of the platforms. He was about to start up to see if there was anything up top that he'd missed when Hawkes spoke.

"And he would have known about the offices up there. Those with the windows overlooking the platforms are probably used to record dives during training." Hawkes pointed up at the set of large windows looking out over the pool."

"You don't think-"

"We should at least look."

The first problem was that the key they had been provided with wasn't a master for the whole building, so they had to wait for the director to arrive to let them in, and he wasn't particularly pleased about it. He reminded them that he'd checked all of the doors in the building and nothing besides the pool had been disturbed - until he opened the door for them.

"This isn't supposed to be set up!" he said, motioning to the recording equipment. "There isn't a competition for months; there's no reason for this to be out."

"Mr. Hempel," Danny interrupted, "are you certain that's your equipment?"

"Of course it-" He took a better look. "-isn't. No, that's not ours. Do you mean-"

"Thank you very much," Angell said, grasping him gently by the arm and leading him out. "Now why don't we leave Detectives Messer and Hawkes to do their job."

They carefully bagged the recording equipment after taking pictures of the entire room. A set of keys was sitting on the shelf next to the camera. "This is probably how he got in," Danny said as he bagged them, too. A windbreaker and matching pants lay in the corner beyond and were carefully collected, as well. Just to cover their tracks, they fingerprinted everything, picking up a few clear prints that Danny expected probably came from their victim. It was all starting to come together.

Angell was waiting at the entrance when they finished. "I didn't put it past him to try to get back in," she said by way of explanation. "Got anything?"

"Video camera and equipment that probably came from that case you found, clothes he probably wore, and a set of keys."

"Good. Let's go. I want to see what's on that tape."

They snagged the reconstruction room at the lab to watch it, since it was the one room that had actual walls, and if this was what they thought it was, well, then their vic deserved a little privacy and respect. Adam had helpfully moved the video equipment in there for them, but declined staying after learning what they thought it probably was. Not that they blamed him. Personally, Angell didn't particularly want to watch it, either.

None of then were surprised when the video started with their victim - alive and talking. Landon started by explaining about his gambling addiction, how it had ruined his career and his relationships. Then he'd started dabbling in drugs a few years ago, - trying to find a new high since he was not longer allowed to dive. Now he owed various bookies so much money that at least one had already tried to collected in blood.

"I told him I could pay him back, he just had to let me go get the money. It wasn't too hard to lose his goons, but when I got back to my place, I knew what I had to do. Someone else, another one of them, had torn it apart. Probably looking for what wasn't there. So I grabbed what I needed and came here."

He talked about his surprise run-in with his ex-girlfriend a few months prior, the one who'd broken up with him over the gambling. "She was the best thing that happened to me, but I screwed it up." He continued about how he didn't have insurance, so he didn't have to worry about any suicide clauses. He just wanted to make things right, or at least try to.

"This place brings back memories," he said to the camera. "I learned to dive here, back in the day. All of the divers on the team back then were given keys, and I kept mine when I was banned from diving."

He made a scoffing noise, shaking his head. "I figured they'd rekey the locks, especially when that new director started four years ago. It took me over a year to figure out that they didn't. I come sometimes, to clear my head, watch the water, I would practice my dives like I was still in the sport. I-I know it sounds stupid, going out this way. But diving was everything to me. And this- this is going to be the biggest, most important dive of my life."

He disappeared from view after that, though the camera kept recording. Hawkes was pretty certain he could hear Danny softly mutter, "He didn't" to the side.

Then Landon showed up again, this time on the highest of the platforms. And with neither pomp nor circumstance, he dived.