Fracture

Chapter 4

The FBI's tattoo recognition database was huge, complex, and woefully incomplete. The State of Nevada's database was almost the same size but only because it served mostly as a catalog to the many unique performers that lived within the state's borders (many of whom had crossed paths with the criminal justice system for some reason). It should have been a surprise to no one that a vast majority of the entries were from people who'd either lived or were currently living in Las Vegas.

Josh combed through both the federal and state archives with the vague hope that each click would lead him closer to the specific tattoo that he was looking for. The one in question was an intricate tribal sun drawn from start to finish in one continuous line. It was an impressive piece of work that some poor, unknown artist had created not knowing that it would one day be the calling card of one of southern Nevada's most notorious and violent biker gangs.

"Ah-ha! Gotcha," he crowed when he found it hidden in the vast archives. "The Solrider Boys."

He stifled a laugh despite knowing the history of these criminals all too well. Their long list of crimes didn't stop their name from being lame. They sounded like some failed punk rock band or some knockoff cowboy variant of the Thunder Down Under guys. Then again, maybe the lameness of their name was why their crimes were varied and more violent; they had to make the name feared. Josh clicked on the list of known gang members that the FBI had helpfully archived and linked to each gang's claimed symbol.

His amusement evaporated when some familiar faces began to appear on screen. The men in the Folsom bloodline had a history of strong jaw lines and bright blue eyes. There had been a time when a younger, more foolish Josh had taken pride in how similar he, his father, uncle, and cousins had looked–like it had been some exclusive badge of honor that only birthright could provide. As time had gone by, the strong, chiseled Anglo-Saxon features had felt like a curse that he couldn't escape from no matter how far in life he went

It seemed that he still hadn't gone far enough. He sighed as he looked at just one of the many mugshots of Timothy Folsom. His Uncle Tim had been in his twenties in this picture and yet somehow his rap sheet had already been so long up to that point that Josh got tired of scrolling before he was even in Tim's thirties. He clicked on a few other faces that he vaguely remembered from his tumultuous childhood, from the many characters that came and went. To his dismay, with these vaguely familiar faces came a stream of memories that he'd hoped remained buried–of a person he wasn't proud to have been.

A welcome distraction pulled him out of his dark memories. Allie strode in with two Starbucks coffee cups and placed one down on the table by his hand. "Hey. I've been thinking about the sequence of events leading up to our crash, and we may have gotten something wrong."

Josh nodded his thanks, quickly scrolling so that the screen on his laptop showed a different section of the Solrider roster. He made no secret of his history, but there was something about the mere thought of Allie and his criminal family crossing paths that always made him uncomfortable. He took an appreciative sip and cocked his head at her. "Your tribute is accepted. I will hear you out, my child."

"I went over the 3D reconstruction we built and cross-referenced them with the photos from the scene because something was bugging me," she immediately began, ignoring his facetiousness like she always did when she was fixated on something. She only paused long enough to log into the lab room's shared computer so that she could pull up a map on the flatscreen. Then she launched into a lengthy explanation that began with their driver carjacking Henry Hicks.

"After he fled with the car, traffic cams have him fleeing south for two blocks. Then for unknown reasons he takes a left here," Allie zoomed in and used the mouse indicator to highlight the road where a clerk at a corner store had been the last witness to spot the vehicle before it had mysteriously ended up in the side of the house.

"Our initial theory was that the driver was shot and killed somewhere in this blank period. And that body somehow ended up in the car," Josh added, more to keep her line of thought going than to add anything she didn't already know. This had been their tried and true methodology for as long as they'd worked together. One of them would start and they'd talk it through together until they reached the end. Oftentimes it would lead them to discover new angles or re-examine points with a more critical eye.

Allie opened the file containing their case photos. She focused first on the house where the car had come to its final rest but, to Josh's surprise, zoomed in on the curb. "See anything odd about that curb?"

Josh took in the picture for a quiet moment. His mind drifted back to the actual scene they'd investigated. He remembered walking the perimeter with the iPad and magnifying scanner. Now that he thought back, there had been something he'd made a minor note of as more a point of curiosity than anything else. His eyes met her in realization. "There's no damage."

She bobbed her head enthusiastically, her curls bouncing around her face. "Strange, don't you think? If this car was speeding down the road as we assumed, hit that curb at high enough speed, and then went crashing into that house…"

A picture of the decimated curb down the street side by side with the photo of the parked car that they'd found damage to. "...it would have looked more like this."

In his mind's eye, Josh rapidly built a simulation of the black Sentra hurtling down the street. First, it hit the curb, which caused the driver–who was most likely already bleeding out–to jerk the wheel and then hit the parked car. He took the mouse and isolated the part of the parked car with the most severe damage. "Allie, does that quarter panel damage look like a corner impact from another vehicle to you?"

She tilted her head and stared at it for a moment. "It could be. The tire marks would corroborate a direct hit from a front right corner. And that would kill any momentum that the car might have had."

Josh nodded along as the pieces of their theory fell into place. "Meaning that car came to a stop at this impact and was moved again at some point to end up where it did."

Her entire face lit up as they came to the same conclusion at the same time. Their scene had been set up after the fact. Josh frowned, more puzzled than ever. What kind of person would have taken the time to put a headless body into the car, moved the dying driver, rammed the house, and then…what? Placed the driver back?

At his expression, Allie shrugged and offered a brief smirk as if to tell him that she'd never said that she had anything to add that wouldn't make their case more convoluted or confusing. Still, he was impressed (as always) by her unexpected flashes of insight. Her pleased expression made him smile, unable to help himself.

He saw a tinge of color flood her cheeks when she saw this. When their eyes met for that single heartbeat, he felt it again–that intangible, invisible thread that connected them and had become the bedrock of their partnership. It'd been there since the beginning and had grown stronger through mutual respect, trust, and friendship. Josh often wondered how things could have been different back then and now if he'd been ready to let someone in and she'd been less career-driven. Ever since they'd narrowly thwarted Anxon Wix's assault on the Crime Lab that they all loved, Josh found himself re-evaluating a lot of things that he held dear to him.

"So...have you had any luck?" Allie asked after another beat.

Josh, still careful not to scroll up too high, showed her his laptop screen. "Just some light reading in the FBI tattoo database. Meet the Solrider Boys."

"The Sol...like that rapper that was just in the news for his nudes being leaked?"

"What? No, not Soulja. Solrider. I know, I know. I laughed too. Anyway, I still haven't found our driver yet, but I will. These guys take pride in their criminality."

"Strange how his prints didn't immediately come up in the system. I thought for sure that we would have identified him by now."

Josh made a small noise of agreement around another sip of coffee. "What did Grissom say to Penny? Something about assumptions?"

"Ohh so now you're trying to quote him, are you? Shall I get him to autograph something for you for your next birthday? He and Sara should be back from San Diego any day now."

"Ohmygosh, you think he would?"

It earned him a giggle, and if Josh got nothing else done that day he could at least feel accomplished in making her laugh. Her fluctuating mood over the past week had become more and more worrying, as did her silence on the cause. She didn't let it affect their work, but he'd seen increasingly frequent moments when she mentally checked out. He had not pried, and she continued to respect the professional line that he'd drawn in the sand between them for his own sake.

However...the longer it dragged on, the more he found himself toeing that line. It hurt when she mentioned Mark, but reflecting over the past months had made Josh realize that she'd asked him for advice because she valued his opinion as her friend, especially when she was anxious. He could deal with a little heartache if just listening would ease whatever was eating away at her.

"Hey, is everything okay?" he blurted out before he lost his nerve.

Allie, probably still mulling over their case, tilted her head at him in confusion. "What do you mean?"

Josh chose his words carefully, ignoring the little voice in the back of his mind screaming for him to abort. "I mean…is everything okay? With, uh, Mark? You seem a little down the past few days."

She blinked and then abruptly averted her gaze back to the photos still on screen. She didn't sound convincing when she answered. "Oh. It's nothing. Everything's fine. Just...you know."

If past interactions of this nature could be followed, this is where his silence would lead her to collect herself and pour whatever was going on in her personal life onto him after a moment. He would listen, maybe nod along at the most, and try to busy himself with whatever task they had at hand; work was always a safe way to disengage himself when things got too personal. His therapist told him that this need for an exit was a reaction borne from a combination of his unstable childhood and a survival mechanism. You couldn't get hurt if you didn't let anyone close enough.

As Josh studied the look on Allie's face, of the conflict he saw in those pretty, expressive eyes, he wondered if he should have been bracing himself. Allie looked back at him, and he saw the moment she decided against saying whatever she really wanted to say. In his mind's eye, it was as if they were face to face at the line in the sand, and Allie had consciously chosen to take a step back. He didn't know why it made him feel more uneasy than relieved.

"Listen, I'm heading over to the warehouse to get another look at the car. I still think we've missed something," Allie went on, all business again. She logged out of the lab computer and nodded at him. She was expressionless, but he caught a quick flash of emotion in her eyes that he couldn't identify. "I'll leave you to your light reading. Happy hunting."

"Heh. You too," Josh answered and watched her walk out. There was a part of him that wanted to go with her and try to get her to talk to him, but old habits die hard. He wondered if his therapist would call his willingness to even attempt to open himself up in this way as progress. He only spoke about Allie in his therapy sessions in passing, but he'd gotten the distinct impression that his therapist had already picked up on how important she was to him.

Sighing, he tucked the complicated feelings safely back into their mental compartment and shifted his focus back to the Solrider Boys. He spent a good chunk of time searching for a face to match their driver but found it was all in vain. When he found nothing, Josh sat back in defeat and gently massaged the muscles in the back of his neck that had stiffened in the time he'd spent hunched over the laptop. What were the odds that they had a gang member with no criminal history?

He heard footsteps and glanced up in time to see Max walk in, followed closely by Chris. Again, Max was dressed up fashionably: black pantsuit, a cream-colored blouse, and her hair pulled back into a tidy bun. She had a pile of folders in one arm and looked as close as frazzled as he'd ever seen her despite her polished appearance.

"Morning, Madam President," he couldn't help but to quip and earned a sharp look for his wittiness.

"Afternoon, you mean," Chris interjected immediately but looked amused as well. "How long have you been in here?"

Josh blinked at the clock just past Chris' shoulder and then at the laptop screen that he'd all but gone blind staring into for so long. The coffee Allie had brought him was long gone. How long had he been in there? "Uh, too long."

"No luck on our driver?" Max asked, coming to a stop across the table.

"No luck. It's weird. You ever heard of any gang affiliate with a clean record?"

"First time offenders maybe," Chris chimed in and then frowned at the picture of the driver. "Seems kind of old to be committing first time offenses for a has-been biker gang, if you ask me."

"You'd be surprised, Chris. Desperate people do desperate things. No matter what age," Josh replied, the words carrying more weight from his personal experiences than he would have liked to admit. He closed the laptop, admitting defeat for now, and looked expectantly between them. "You look like you have something for me."

"I do. We've got a hot one. High profile. Undersheriff wants attention on it ASAP," Max said, careful to keep her inflection even. Josh knew her well enough that he could read her expression and what lay between the lines. Whenever the brass got involved with triaging their cases, it meant some sort of highly publicized political firestorm was on the horizon. There was nothing Max hated more, especially since they were still in the media crosshairs for the David Hodges case as it was.

"...Alright. Tell me."

To his chagrin, the case involved a local councilman, a dead hooker, and (he sighed) a traumatized little boy who might have been their only witness. Josh took in the sparse details Max provided without comment, only asking questions to get a better idea of what kind of case he was looking at. She couldn't provide much and promised him that she'd head over to back him up as soon as she was done interviewing a new batch of lab techs.

"Am I solo on this one for now?" Josh asked. He was going through a mental exercise to start the new case with a clean slate and fresh eyes.

"Chris is going with you. I'm making Allie lead on your current. Undersheriff says we're going to have even more eyes on us than usual so he wants a Level III for lead investigator," Max explained and shrugged when Chris made an exasperated noise at the even more eyes statement. They were still being harassed daily by the media as it was. The word councilman probably bumped the case's priority up above two unknown maybe-gangsters by at least a few notches.

Josh took it in stride and looked over at the younger man. "Ready to head out?"

They made a pit stop only to grab Chris' kit from one of the lab rooms. As it turned out, he'd been helping Allie re-process the car in the One-and-None case (as they'd morbidly begun to call it around the lab) before Max had snagged him for this new case. Josh asked mildly if they'd found anything of interest as he carefully pulled out of the lab's parking garage.

"Maybe the jacket of one of the bullets that killed the driver. It still doesn't tell us how the passenger got there but it did nix that theory that the driver may have been removed and put back. It's driving her a little crazy," Chris said and they shared a laugh. Allie would tear the car apart to get to the bottom of the mystery if she had to. After a moment, Chris frowned and went on. "Have you noticed anything off with her lately? She's been drinking a lot of coffee. Like heart-beat-out-of your-chest a lot. In just the two hours I was with her she must have had like three cups."

Josh thought the question over. Now that Chris had pointed it out, it did seem like Allie hadn't been seen without a coffee or energy drink in the past few days. Not that they didn't all have days that required loads of caffeine to keep going, but paired with her strange behavior, it solidified his theory that all was not well at home.

"Maybe she's just pulling too many doubles. Once Max gets those new lab techs in and the field candidates get through their practicals, it'll take some of the load off of all of us," Josh answered but was still thinking about Allie and the tired, far away look he'd caught on her face too often lately.

"Hmm, maybe," Chris muttered, not sounding convinced. He let it drop and turned his attention to his phone. Josh carefully tucked the memory of Allie's troubled face into the same compartment where the rest of his complicated feelings for her went and then turned up the volume on what she called his yacht rock to ease the rest of the trip.

When they reached the MGM Grand, they found the media circus had already set up. A few police cruisers held them at bay, but there was no stopping streams of curious tourists that wandered to and from the main doors of the massive casino. Josh took in the scene with his usual safety check before he climbed out. The vest bearing his name and identification as a member of the Crime Lab had never felt more like a target painted onto him.

Luckily, he and Chris were barely past the tape barrier when a friendly face came up to greet them. Jerome Hayden was a homicide detective that Josh had worked with on several cases in the past before the man had transferred to a gang violence task force made up of state police officers and some of LVPD's finest. Coincidentally, his younger brother had just become a Criminalist and had been assigned to the night shift.

"Well. I know we're in for it if they called back the big guns," Josh said and shook Hayden's offered hand. The other man was taller than him by a few inches, broad-shouldered, and built in a way that made Josh want to hit the gym more often. "Detective Hayden. What a nice surprise."

"How's it going, Folsom? Been a minute," Hayden greeted with a beaming smile, his teeth bright against his dark complexion. He nodded at Chris. "Yo, Park. Good to see you, my man."

"When did you get back to Vegas? Last I heard you were leading the charge against gang violence," Josh asked as he and Chris fell into step with the detective.

Hayden smiled amiably. "Ah, you know how it is. Starts off as a nice adrenaline rush but chasing and arresting the same guys over and over gets old after a while. Besides, my little brother's finally settled in, and I promised our mom I'd look after the kid on her deathbed. So here I am."

"Lucky us. What've you got?"

Their case had all the makings of another media scandal. Councilman Kyle Rickard had recently won his district election by a landslide by promising the poorest communities that he'd single-handedly right the wealth inequality plaguing Las Vegas. He celebrated his victory by booking the luxury SKYLOFT experience at MGM Grand for a weekend of partying. The problem was once the party was over, room service showed up the next day to clean up–only to find a naked woman tied to the bed with her throat slashed and a terrified child huddled in the butler pantry.

Josh gave Hayden a grim look at the mention of the child. "Did the kid see it?"

"We don't know. Paramedics looked him over and didn't see any physical injuries, but he hasn't said a word to anyone. CPS is already on site with him," Hayden replied as he led the way inside and past a stream of curious onlookers towards the hotel portion of the massive casino.

"Really? That's…faster than normal," Chris remarked, exchanging a look with Josh. It was a heartbreaking reality that many children were victims or the children of victims in many of their cases. One complaint that they'd often made was how slow the overburdened Child Protective Services agency was in responding when they were called upon to aid a child in distress. Josh had been one of those children once so his feelings about the much needed but broken CPS system were complex and, if he was honest, biased.

"We had her take the boy to the room across the hall while we waited for you. Do you want to talk to them first?" Hayden asked as their elevator neared the top floors.

"Sure. Did you manage to get a name?" Josh asked and wasn't surprised when Hayden said no. He used some breathing exercises that he'd learned from Yoga to center himself and mentally prepare. It was always terrible to have a child victim or witness. His heart ached knowing how violence could affect a child, how the wounds never quite healed even if you could learn to live with them.

"I'll start with the room," Chris volunteered.

Josh nodded his approval and veered off with Hayden to approach a different suite. The suite was luxury incarnate, built to provide comfort and class to the highest echelon of society. Josh only gave the cold, opulent surroundings a cursory look before he focused his attention on a boy huddled on the couch with a massive teddy bear bearing the MGM logo clutched protectively against his chest. The child couldn't have been older than nine or ten and was dressed from head to toe in clothes that someone had obviously procured from one of the gift shops on the ground floor.

There were two other people there with him. As soon as he saw them, a well-dressed man came to greet them, and Hayden introduced him to Josh as the property manager, Geoff Sullivan. He was painfully courteous but as careful as Josh expected him to be when it came to releasing any security footage.

"Of course we want to cooperate and aid this investigation as much as we can. Such a terrible tragedy. However our patrons of this caliber require, uh, a certain level of privacy. You understand," Sullivan said smoothly. He'd clearly been covering for unsavory guests of that caliber for a long time.

Hayden didn't look or sound impressed. "I see. If you need a warrant, we'll get one. Though I do wonder if your bosses will be happy to hear how the MGM Grand did not fully and voluntarily cooperate when a woman was found dead under suspicious circumstances on their property."

He gave Josh a look, who immediately took the ball and rolled with it. "Media might like it, though. What do you think, Jer? MGM Grand complicit in coverup?"

Hayden shook his head dramatically. "Not bad but not unique enough. Uncooperative MGM Grand Resorts possibly linked to cover up of dead woman found in the exclusive SKYLOFT suite."

Josh offered Sullivan a tight, humorless smile. "Sounds eye-catching to me."

They probably could have gone on for longer, but the man wisely (and unhappily) muttered that he would see what he could do. Hayden exchanged a smirk with Josh and followed the property manager out. Josh turned to the child and woman. The boy had yet to look up from where he'd buried his face in the teddy bear, but the woman was now standing and staring at Josh with cold gray eyes that looked so pale in the afternoon light that they reminded him of ice or snow.

"Josh Folsom. Criminalistics," he introduced himself. "Are you with CPS?"

She gave him one sharp nod, still staring into his soul with those piercing, startling gray eyes as she presented her badge. "Samantha Ryder. I'm with the CPS Rapid Response team."

That explains a lot. Josh thought. He remembered a scathing editorial had been written a while back criticizing the many faults of the Nevada Child Protective Services. The governor's response (on a re-election year of course) had been to publicly pour money and support into the overburdened system and appoint a new director. This had literally been the first time that Josh saw the fruits of those spent tax dollars.

"Nice to meet you, Miss Ryder," Josh replied and tilted his head at the boy, who seemed to shrink even further into the couch. Josh softened his voice at the sight of the child's anxiety. "And who is this little man?"

He made no movement towards him, but the boy all but hid behind the teddy bear. Samantha made a subtle step in front of him, blocking him from Josh's view. At full height she was almost as tall as he was. Her red-orange hair fell in a thick curtain just past her shoulders. It framed her pale, freckled face like a badly tamed mane. A mane was fitting considering how those sharp, pale eyes reminded him of a documentary he'd watched on lions and how they hunted their prey.

"Mr. Folsom, may I have a word with you?" She asked with a crisp, leery edge to her tone. Josh nodded and walked back over to the massive suite's foyer. Samantha gently murmured something to the boy before she left him and joined Josh. Her expression was wary and guarded as she sized him up. Josh patiently stared back and waited for her to work out whatever she was thinking.

"He's deeply traumatized. You might not be able to get a word out of him. I advise you not to push too hard or you'll make the trauma even worse for him," she finally said.

Josh looked back at the child for a thoughtful moment and then asked her. "Do you know anything about him? A name? Age?"

Samantha shook her head. "He hasn't spoken a word to anyone. When housekeeping found him, he was covered in blood, but I don't think he's hurt."

"Were you able to communicate with him at all?"

"Only enough to convince him to change into the clothes the manager brought," she answered, the steely look on her face softening ever so slightly as she glanced over her shoulder back at the boy. When she looked back at Josh, she still looked grim but marginally less hostile. "His clothes are in that bag on the table. I figured you might want a look at them."

"Thank you," Josh answered, genuinely surprised. "Can I talk to him?"

"Just for a few minutes," she nodded and then, as if daring him to challenge it, added, "and only if I'm present. I know you have a job to do but he's been through enough today."

Josh didn't bother to assure her that he wouldn't push. He gingerly made his way back into the living area of the suite, keeping his movements slow and projecting them so that he wouldn't alarm the child further. The boy's tense, frightened body language was his biggest tell of where to advance and where to stop. He left a healthy distance and knelt so that he could be at the boy's level.

"Hi. I'm Josh," he started softly. "I'm here to help, okay? Are you hurt anywhere?"

No reply. The boy didn't even look up, but his hold on the teddy bear tightened. Then, after a long few seconds, he shook his head slightly.

"Okay. That's good. Is it okay if I sit here with you?"

The boy shrugged. His head was still firmly tucked into the toy's head, hiding his eyes from view. Josh carefully folded his legs under him Indian-style. He relaxed his body and kept his demeanor as non-threatening as possible. "Did Mr. Sullivan bring you that bear?"

Another shrug and then a short nod. The child slightly lifted his head to peek at him, and Josh caught a quick glimpse of wary brown eyes under that mop of brown hair. He smiled gently when their eyes met. When the boy didn't immediately hide his face again, Josh asked him if he could tell him his name.

He didn't expect to get an answer. His experience in dealing with traumatized children had taught him that the most important thing was to make them feel safe. Simple questions were a way of not only building a communication bridge but to give the child back some power when they were the smallest, most helpless thing in a big, scary world that they had no control in. Josh's chest felt tight at the way the boy was gripping the teddy bear so hard against him that his little hands were shaking.

To his astonishment, he heard a hesitant answer that was half muffled by the top of the bear's head. "...Miles."

Josh heard Samantha's soft intake of breath behind him but ignored her and smiled. "It's nice to meet you, Miles."

He quickly discovered that yes or no questions were the best way to proceed. Miles wasn't there with his parents nor did he know the deceased woman across the hall. He was nine-years-old and had no brothers or sisters. When Josh asked if he had parents, Miles only answered affirmatively to having a mother. Then, like a switch had been thrown, the child clammed up and buried his face back into his comfort toy.

"That's enough, Mr. Folsom," Samantha said with no room for arguments the moment she saw Miles' stress level spike.

"Okay. Thank you, Miles," Josh murmured and stood up. His eyes met Samantha's briefly as he turned and left. The heartbreaking fear and stress of the child haunted him, and he had more trouble compartmentalizing it than usual. Whatever that poor boy had seen, Josh hoped dearly that time and therapy could heal him.

Before he left, he glanced back one last time. Samantha was talking quietly to Miles, who nodded to whatever she was saying. It struck Josh how tiny the child was, how easily he could have disappeared into the cushions of the luxurious couch and never be seen again. With this disturbing thought at the forefront of his mind, he scooped up the bag of bloody clothing and crossed the hall into the crime scene.

It was time to unravel the horrors that Miles had seen.