Pushing the flimsy office door open Horatio heard the rasp as the match head was dragged along the rough strip on the side of the matchbox and saw the flare as it ignited. Dillon glanced quickly up as he saw the movement at the open door and smiled at the red-haired Lieutenant as he held the match delicately for a second before opening his thumb and forefinger and allowing the lit match to drop lightly into the metal wastepaper bin. There was a soft 'whoomph' as the material within the metal container caught the flame and began to swiftly combust. Horatio took a quick glance around the office, grabbed the small fire-extinguisher that was fixed to the wall next to the door, dispensing the extinguisher's foam onto the flames that were licking the sides of the bin, swiftly putting out the fire before it took hold. Dillon made a sharp move towards the door but his progress was halted by the appearance of Eric Delko who was flanked by two uniformed officers, as well as the daunting figure of Frank Tripp.
"Leaving already Angelo?" Eric asked the club manager, a grim smile on his face.
"You might want to stick around for a few minutes. It should be interesting." Horatio kept his back towards Dillon as he spoke, his eyes fixed on the bin.
"Doing a little clearing out?"
"Yeah, just some junk that I didn't need lying around any more."
"How about your gun Angelo, is that just lying around somewhere too?"
"I don't know what you're talking about man."
"Come on Angelo, about a year and a half ago you registered a Taurus 24/7 Pro pistol. Where is it please?"
"That thing? It got stolen a couple of months ago from my desk. Guess you just can't get the staff these days."
"Did you report this to the police Angelo?"
"Nah, you kiddin' man? The cops ain't gonna knock 'emselves out over findin' a dude's gun. Figured, just chalk it up to experience."
Horatio laughed humourlessly. "Chalk it up to experience." He tilted his head and nodded, a smile that didn't reach his eyes fixed on his face. "How about this for experience Angelo? I figured we missed something last time we were here. So we got our search warrant amended for a return visit."
Right on cue Frank slapped a piece of paper to Angelo's chest, a piece of paper that contained the revised warrant terms.
Horatio walked across the office space in careful, measured steps until he found the spot he was looking for. The boards squeaked and Horatio rocked his foot back and forth to emphasize the noise. Looking towards Angelo with raised eyebrows, a mock surprised expression on his face.
He knelt down, pulling on a pair of latex gloves as he did so and ran his fingers along the line of the floorboards until his touch found the loose one. As he gently pried it up, Horatio tilted his head up so that he could look at the club manager, his face now twisted into a wry smile.
"Well, what d'ya know."
As the board was lifted it revealed a dark space beneath. Horatio quickly retrieved his maglite from his inside jacket pocket and clicked the base to turn on the beam of light. Shining it inside the newly revealed void the light illuminated the brushed chrome surface of a hidden safe.
"Open it." Horatio's words were a command rather than a request.
Angelo remained still, staring defiantly ahead, refusing to look the Lieutenant in the eye. The wrinkles at the corner of his eyes and his pursed lips spoke of his deep irritation that the cops had finally found his secret hiding place.
"Last chance to help yourself out Mr Dillon. No? Ok then." Turning to Eric, Horatio continued, "Eric, will you get a safe-cracker out here please?"
"No problem H."
"Fine, fine. I'll open it, but I want it on record that I cooperated." Dillon snarled, realising that the safe was going to be opened one way or another.
"The first and only time you've helped this investigation so far Angelo. C'mon then."
Dillon stepped forward and knelt down next to Horatio, spinning the code dial until he heard a series of clicks that indicated the safe was unlocked and then stood up and returned to his position near the door, clearly hoping for an opportunity to make a run for it. Eric had already noted the club manager's intention and shifted his position so that the bulk of his body was filling the doorframe, crossing his arms across his chest, which had the effect of flexing his muscular biceps.
Horatio reached in and twisted the handle which gave a soft clunk and opened smoothly. The Lieutenant's face broke into a triumphant smile as he cast his eyes over the newly revealed contents that lay within the safe. He extended his hand inside and retrieved a bulging plastic baggie full of a fine, white powder. Horatio pulled the silver forensics kit that he had initially bought into the room towards him, snapped open the clasps and rooted around in the many compartments for a drug test pod. Each time he performed this test Horatio realised how much he appreciated the advancement of science. Until recently if he'd wanted to test for any of the more commonly encountered recreational drugs he would have needed to carry half the laboratory with him into the field. The Scott Test for cocaine alone had required the use of cobalt thiocyanate, glycerine, hydrochloric acid and chloroform, and while the firms who provided crime labs with their equipment had created smaller, field-kit sized bottles of chemical reagents it still felt like he was dragging around half of the toxicology lab in his kit. Now however, all he needed to do was to scoop a little of the substance in question into a small plastic pouch that measured just a few centimetres in size, break the plastic ampoule inside and watch as the reaction occurred before his very eyes. As he went through the motions with this test substance Horatio watched the pouch turn a deep blue colour, a victorious expression sliding onto his face as he confirmed a positive test for cocaine.
Horatio swivelled his body around so that he was looking at the now red-faced Angelo Dillon, but remained in a kneeling position and lifted the bag up, at the same time cocking one of his eyebrows into a jaunty arch.
"It's just for personal use." Dillon's comment made him sound like a petulant child caught red-handed.
"Mmm, I'm sure. And what about this?" Horatio bought his other hand around delicately holding the butt of a gun that he had also pulled from the storage space. A gun that to any professional was easily recognisable as a Taurus 24/7 Pro handgun.
This time there was no comment, petulant or otherwise forthcoming from the club manager.
"Mr Dillon, you will be placed under arrest initially for the possession of an illegal substance…and when we're done testing this gun I have a strong suspicion that we'll be adding two counts of murder as well."
Frank moved forwards and snapped handcuffs around Dillon's wrists, just tight enough to be uncomfortable, before reading him the Miranda warning that was a compulsory part of the arrest process.
"…Do you understand your rights?"
"Hell yeah, and I want a lawyer."
"Angelo, you're going to need one." Horatio quipped as Angelo was led, snarling, out of the office.
Left to process the evidence, Horatio turned his attention to the bin, the contents of which Dillon had tried unsuccessfully to destroy.
"Eric, lets take a look at what Angelo was so desperate for us not to see."
Eric pulled on a pair of gloves and reached into the bin, extracting a long ribbon of thin plastic.
"Looks like video tape, H. Some fire damage in sections."
Horatio could see, even from some distance away, that Eric was right. In sections the plastic had started to melt and bubble, or else had stretched, the plastic forming strange, almost ornate, drip patterns. And of course now, the remainder of the tape was covered in the foam from the fire extinguisher. Horatio just hoped that what was left of the tape could be rescued by the skills of the lab's AV technician. Dan Cooper was the lab's resident audio-visual specialist, his work had cracked open a number of cases in the recent past. If an investigation called for any technological wizardry then Cooper was the team's first point of call. It still amused Horatio to watch Cooper work on any hardware that the team bought in for analysis, the man could extract time stamps and hidden data with such ease it was like he was born doing it.
"Ok, bag it, tag it and get it back to the lab for Mr Cooper to take a look at please, priority one. Let's see what makes this tape so special."
It took just a few minutes to document and collect the few new items of evidence that were forthcoming from the hidden nook. The knotted tangle of video tape had been lifted out of the wastepaper bin and stored in a sturdy evidence box ready for Cooper. The firearm was similarly boxed ready for dispatch directly to Calleigh in the ballistics lab as soon as they got back to MDPD, and the rest of the evidence had been bagged for trace analysis. As Eric surveyed the evidence in front of him his face knotted up into a frown.
"Something wrong. Eric?" Horatio asked, having noticed the look on the CSI's face.
"It's just too easy. I mean, the gun is hidden right here in Angelo's office, in a safe no-one but him knows exists, alongside enough blow to get most of South Beach high, and who knows what's on the video that he was trying to burn."
"Your point?"
"Well, it's just a bit convenient isn't it? I know Angelo's hardly on the A-list when it comes to criminals, but even an amateur would know to get rid of the incriminating evidence when the cops start looking at them for the hit."
Horatio's mouth twitched up at the corners a little. He walked over to the window and beckoned for Eric to follow him.
"Take a look out in the parking lot. What d'ya see?"
"Patrol car." Eric shrugged, after all the whole place was now surrounded with patrol cars, in the back of Eric's mind a thought niggled at his consciousness questioning whether his boss wasn't starting to lose the plot a bit.
"Well, that particular patrol car has been tailing Dillon ever since we got the first callout to the break-in at Sarah Turner's apartment."
And suddenly it was like a light had been switched on in Delko's brain.
"So if Dillon knew he was being tailed he wouldn't have a chance to get rid of the evidence, he'd think that anything he threw away would be collected by the cops trailing him. He had to hide the stuff until the heat was off him."
"Or until he was desperate. Exactly."
Angelo Dillon had already departed with the uniformed officers leaving Tripp and the CSIs to make their way out of the club and back to the lab. As they walked across the main floor of the club they were met by two stocky men both dressed from head to toe in black. Horatio recognised one of them as being the security guard who had questioned his presence at the club when he had bought Grace here for that first meeting with her estranged sister all those weeks ago. Initially, however, it was not the man's face that had caught Horatio's attention, but rather his footwear. His drab outfit was finished off with a scuffed pair of Harley Davidson boots. Horatio's mind flicked back to the team debriefing after Sarah's initial disappearance and remembered Eric's discovery that the tread impression on the door was from the same kind of boot.
"Gentlemen." Horatio greeted the pair as they approached. Both looked a little startled, which Horatio put down to the possibility that neither of them had ever been addressed by the title 'gentleman' before. "Horatio Caine, Eric Delko, we're with the crime lab." There were muttered grunts in response. "We would like to take prints from your shoes, so that we can exclude you from our investigation." What he didn't add was the thought that was whizzing through his mind, 'or prove you were a part of it.'
"Eh, sure knock yourselves out." The guard with the Harley Davidson boots shrugged his shoulders as he acquiesced and stooped down to remove first one boot and then the other.
Buoyed by his companion's action the second guard also began to remove his footwear, and a few minutes later the two CSIs left the club adding a series of tread prints to the other evidence they'd already collected, a distinct spring in both their steps.
To be continued…