"Past the point of no return,
The final threshold.
The games we've played till now are at an end."
The Phantom of the Opera
***
The foreman of the jury sat stiffly in the jury box, self-conscious of his duty. The first day of the trial, his eyes had darted curiously from witness to judge to accused, usually finally ending up on the lawyers. It was like keeping score in a verbal ping pong game, with a man's life at stake. How on earth were you to sort out the truth after the lawyers had had their say? This morning, however, his eyes never left the man testifying. Head of the crime lab, the DA had called him, and the foreman could easily believe he was head of wherever he worked. In striking contrast to the day before, with the lawyers tying verbal knots, this man's testimony was given with a calm, inflexible assurance. He honestly believed himself everything he was saying, and the conviction carried over to the listeners. Then he explained the line of evidence, educating the jury without sounding condescending, demonstrating how certain each link in the chain was. It was his own demeanor on the stand, though, that the jury would remember through the end of the trial, that they would remember days later in the deliberation room. He was absolutely convinced, and absolutely convincing, that the truth in this case was plain and simple, that it was here in these links, and that it could not be twisted or ignored. Of course, the defense attorney tried, and the witness calmly, good-naturedly, with absolute confidence stuck to his evidence. It was the lawyer who wound up getting slightly rattled. Watching the witness, the jury foreman wondered admiringly if there was anything that would rattle this man, that would ruffle that composure and that certainty. He doubted it.
***
Calleigh was definitely feeling rattled herself. This morning, she had already had to deal with three crying jags from her mother, mourning the fallen imaginary saint. The only remedy Calleigh knew to her mother's flights of talkative fancy was alcohol, and that remedy couldn't be used in the morning, not with a whole day to get through. Peter hovered around the edges, unsure what to do, and Calleigh had snapped at him finally. "Would you do SOMETHING, Peter? Help me out here." Then their mother, wounded by the tone, broke down again into the terrible plight of the children not getting along and what would her husband say if he heard them, when he had cared for family so much, worked so hard to raise them right. At 11:30, Calleigh finally managed to get her mother to go into the bedroom to change clothes for the funeral. She had already laid out the clothes herself, of course. Her mother never would be able to pick out clothes for a funeral. It would probably take her 30 minutes to even put them on, but Calleigh was not about to stand there and dress her. She already was doing everything else, damn it. She went into the kitchen for a glass of water.
Her cell phone rang. "Duquesne," she snapped.
"Hello, beautiful." The voice reached clear through the line and gave her a verbal massage. Her stress level immediately plummeted.
"Horatio." She closed her eyes.
"Tough morning?"
"I've had better." She smiled at the understatement. At least she could smile about it. That was an improvement on five minutes ago.
"I just wanted to tell you, I'm all through in court. I've got to run a few things by the office, and then I'll be right over. So no danger of me being late. I'll help you get your mother to the church."
"How's the DA?" Calleigh was still smiling. Incredible, how the prospect of a day could invert in ten seconds.
"Meek as a kitten. It was the defense lawyer who tried to rock me."
"Silly him. I could have warned him not to try."
"The trial's still going, of course. The defense will have their say. Still, I think the jury was impressed."
"Of course they were." Who wouldn't be impressed by him?
"Yes, it was strong evidence. We had a good case built up." They were impressed by you, Horatio, not just the evidence. She didn't say it, though. He honestly couldn't see it. For him, it was just the evidence that spoke in court. "Would you like me to pick up lunch on the way over? That would give you one less thing to do."
"Thank you, Horatio. You're an angel."
He chuckled. "Try telling that to the defense attorney. See you in half an hour."
Calleigh snapped the phone shut but continued holding it. "Horatio," she said softly to the empty room.
"You're as bad as Tony." Oops, not an empty room. She turned to find her brother standing in the doorway.
"As bad as Tony? Who's Tony?"
"From West Side Story. When he was singing about his girl's name. 'Say it loud, and there's music playing. Say it soft, and it's almost like praying.' That's how you sounded there."
Calleigh straightened up to her full height, such as it was. "Don't mess with this, Peter. It isn't a joke. And if you say that in front of Horatio, or in front of Mother, I'll shoot you. I do have a gun, you know."
"Mother would probably agree with you. She liked him."
"Don't you like him?"
Peter considered for a minute. "Yes, I do. He's impressive, I must admit. Just be careful, Cal. So many people out there aren't what they seem. Just be sure he's good enough for you."
Calleigh met his eyes directly. "Peter, the only question I have about Horatio is whether I'm good enough for him. Now, let's get busy. We've still got a lot to do before the funeral." Briskly, she marched past her brother back into the living room. He watched her go for a minute, then said softly to the air, "You'd better be good, Horatio. You'll kill her if you let her fall." Part of him worried about his sister, but part of him envied her, too. He wondered if a beautiful woman would ever say his name like that.
***
The funeral was as long, and as hard, as Calleigh had feared, but she didn't have to deal with everything, after all. Her mother had latched onto Horatio the minute he came through the door, and he, bless him, dealt with her as he had last night, being an attentive (or at least seemingly attentive), sympathetic audience, accepting the verbal flood without comment. He managed to get everyone else there amused watching him, and the one bright spot of the whole service for Calleigh was watching her CSI coworkers watch Horatio.
After the funeral, Alexx had invited them over to her house for an early dinner, sparing Calleigh having to fix anything. So everyone packed around Alexx's small table: Her own husband and two kids, Calleigh, Peter, Mrs. Hayes, Horatio, Speed, and Delko. Mrs. Hayes continued to dominate the meal, impossible to ignore even though she was only addressing Horatio, who was sitting next to her. Calleigh had never admired him more. A whole afternoon of her mother at painfully close range, and the edges still weren't fraying. Incredible.
The same couldn't be said for the rest of them. Even Alexx's children, who hadn't been to the funeral, were starting to get restless by dessert, looking across at Mrs. Hayes, then back at their mother, as if asking if people really could be like that. Peter was wearing thin, and Calleigh herself wasn't far behind. If it weren't for Horatio, she probably already would have snapped.
It was Peter who finally offered the first tentative change of subject. "Mother, you should eat your dessert. You can't eat it while talking. Give someone else a chance. Why don't we hear some of Calleigh's cases? She was telling me a few last night, and they're interesting."
"You never did care about your father, did you." It wasn't a question. Calleigh thought she was about to burst into tears again. "Yes, just talk about something else. Ignore this loss we've had. I'll remember it every day for the rest of my life, but you just shrug it off. You Benedict Arnold. You ran away and left us, after all he did for you." She trailed off gradually as she realized that no one was listening to her anymore. Everyone was looking at Horatio instead.
His head had snapped sharply up, and the eyes had burst into instant flame. Not just the eyes, but every inch of him, alive, alert, eager for action. Mrs. Hayes, following everyone else's riveted gaze, eyed him as if she had never seen him before. The electricity hung in the air like a snapping, arcing wire, almost visible.
Horatio with difficulty pulled his focus back from its object momentarily and looked across the table. "Um, Calleigh. . . " he started, and she interrupted him.
"Sure, go ahead. Go get 'em, tiger."
"Thank you." He bolted out of his chair, almost tripping in his eagerness, and headed for the door.
"H," called Delko, "You going to need any help?"
"No." He swung back around, facing all of them. "Stay with Calleigh. I'll be fine, but you stay with Calleigh." His eyes touched hers briefly, and then he was gone.
Mrs. Hayes sat stunned in her chair, shocked into speechlessness for the first time since her husband's death. Even Alexx's children were motionless. It was a good minute before Peter broke the silence. "What the hell happened to him?"
"He does that sometimes," said Speed. "You get used to it." But he still hadn't himself.
"He sees the answer to a case he's working on," Calleigh explained. "Now, he's got to work backwards and build up the evidence to meet it."
"Isn't that wrong way around?" Peter was confused. "I thought you guys followed the evidence to the answer."
"Most of us do," said Eric.
"It's not jumping to conclusions." Calleigh defended him. "Horatio just sees how things fit together. He starts from the evidence, but he sees where it's going and beats it there."
"What case has he been working on this week, anyway?" asked Alexx.
"He got some new information from Susie - you remember Susie? - about his brother. I don't know all the details, though. I never really had a chance to talk to him about it this week." Calleigh once again felt guilty.
"He asked me to go through Chaz's notebook and make a list of all the names and dates," said Speed, "but I couldn't make anything out of it. Alphabet soup. If there's a single real name in there, I'd be surprised."
"Whatever he's on to, I hope he can prove it," said Alexx. None of his coworkers questioned that Horatio was right, but proving it was a different matter sometimes. They had all seen him on cases where he knew the answer, absolutely knew it, and couldn't link the chain together. Adding his brother to one of those equations was unthinkable. The CSIs looked at each other warily around the table. Peter tried to redraw his assessment of Horatio, adding lightning on the inside. And Mrs. Hayes sat there still stunned, for the first time in two days thinking of something besides her husband. What on earth had come over that nice man, to bolt off like that?
***
Horatio sat in his office, running files as fast as his fingers would work the keyboard. It was all there. But how on earth would he ever prove it? Nothing incriminating, even when you looked at the evidence. Totally circumstantial. The defense attorney from that morning's case would make mincemeat of it in two minutes. Horatio closed his eyes, trying to blank his mind, trying to look around the beautiful, blazing whole that filled it, seeing if there were any other possible approaches. One. His eyes snapped open, and he picked up the phone.
"You want what?" Detective Tripp couldn't believe his ears.
"I want to talk to Chaz. Tonight. Right now if possible."
"Um, Horatio, I don't think that's such a good idea."
"It's okay. I promise, I won't kill him. I just need the answer to one question from him, just to confirm something."
"You think Chaz will give you the answer to anything?"
"He'll give me the answer to this. I know how to ask now. He won't be able to help himself."
"He's still in county, waiting for trial. They refused to set bail, you know. Attempted homicide of a whole crew of police officers is a big offense."
"Fine, can you meet me there? Fifteen minutes?"
Tripp sighed. "Horatio, are you sure you know what you're doing?"
"Absolutely." Rock solid conviction, like that morning on the witness stand. Tripp yielded, believing in spite of himself.
"Fifteen minutes, then. But I'll be sitting in on this interview."
"You won't have to," said Horatio. "It won't take long enough to sit."
***
Chaz sneered as Horatio entered the witness room, along with Tripp. "You again? Back for more dirt on your brother? I remember how Tin Man used to . . ." He checked very slightly as Horatio tossed a picture onto the table between them. In the next instant, he caught himself and went on with his former attitude. Anyone not watching intently would have missed his automatic response. Horatio had been watching intently.
"That's all I wanted," he said. "Thank you for your cooperation, Chaz." He turned and marched out the door, leaving Chaz halfway through another sentence about Ray. The entire interview had taken 15 seconds.
***
Horatio re-entered his office, his mind racing. Chaz had identified B.A. absolutely. Of course, his testimony was worthless, even if he would give it in court, which he wouldn't. But Horatio now had a card he could play, could use for leverage. The only possible way to capture this man would be to confront him directly, try to trip him into a confession. He had a four year start on Horatio, and he had covered every step so calmly, so surely along the way that even with Chaz's ID, Horatio had no legally valid case. No, he would have to face him down himself. And he would do it tonight. This four-year charade had just crashed to a halt. One way or another, tonight would end it. Horatio picked up the phone, dialing the man Ray had wrestled with in his dreams, the worthless friend, the man who had deliberately set up a brother officer to take suspicion away from himself, B.A., Benedict Arnold, the traitor, the bad cop, John Hagen.
The Phantom of the Opera
***
The foreman of the jury sat stiffly in the jury box, self-conscious of his duty. The first day of the trial, his eyes had darted curiously from witness to judge to accused, usually finally ending up on the lawyers. It was like keeping score in a verbal ping pong game, with a man's life at stake. How on earth were you to sort out the truth after the lawyers had had their say? This morning, however, his eyes never left the man testifying. Head of the crime lab, the DA had called him, and the foreman could easily believe he was head of wherever he worked. In striking contrast to the day before, with the lawyers tying verbal knots, this man's testimony was given with a calm, inflexible assurance. He honestly believed himself everything he was saying, and the conviction carried over to the listeners. Then he explained the line of evidence, educating the jury without sounding condescending, demonstrating how certain each link in the chain was. It was his own demeanor on the stand, though, that the jury would remember through the end of the trial, that they would remember days later in the deliberation room. He was absolutely convinced, and absolutely convincing, that the truth in this case was plain and simple, that it was here in these links, and that it could not be twisted or ignored. Of course, the defense attorney tried, and the witness calmly, good-naturedly, with absolute confidence stuck to his evidence. It was the lawyer who wound up getting slightly rattled. Watching the witness, the jury foreman wondered admiringly if there was anything that would rattle this man, that would ruffle that composure and that certainty. He doubted it.
***
Calleigh was definitely feeling rattled herself. This morning, she had already had to deal with three crying jags from her mother, mourning the fallen imaginary saint. The only remedy Calleigh knew to her mother's flights of talkative fancy was alcohol, and that remedy couldn't be used in the morning, not with a whole day to get through. Peter hovered around the edges, unsure what to do, and Calleigh had snapped at him finally. "Would you do SOMETHING, Peter? Help me out here." Then their mother, wounded by the tone, broke down again into the terrible plight of the children not getting along and what would her husband say if he heard them, when he had cared for family so much, worked so hard to raise them right. At 11:30, Calleigh finally managed to get her mother to go into the bedroom to change clothes for the funeral. She had already laid out the clothes herself, of course. Her mother never would be able to pick out clothes for a funeral. It would probably take her 30 minutes to even put them on, but Calleigh was not about to stand there and dress her. She already was doing everything else, damn it. She went into the kitchen for a glass of water.
Her cell phone rang. "Duquesne," she snapped.
"Hello, beautiful." The voice reached clear through the line and gave her a verbal massage. Her stress level immediately plummeted.
"Horatio." She closed her eyes.
"Tough morning?"
"I've had better." She smiled at the understatement. At least she could smile about it. That was an improvement on five minutes ago.
"I just wanted to tell you, I'm all through in court. I've got to run a few things by the office, and then I'll be right over. So no danger of me being late. I'll help you get your mother to the church."
"How's the DA?" Calleigh was still smiling. Incredible, how the prospect of a day could invert in ten seconds.
"Meek as a kitten. It was the defense lawyer who tried to rock me."
"Silly him. I could have warned him not to try."
"The trial's still going, of course. The defense will have their say. Still, I think the jury was impressed."
"Of course they were." Who wouldn't be impressed by him?
"Yes, it was strong evidence. We had a good case built up." They were impressed by you, Horatio, not just the evidence. She didn't say it, though. He honestly couldn't see it. For him, it was just the evidence that spoke in court. "Would you like me to pick up lunch on the way over? That would give you one less thing to do."
"Thank you, Horatio. You're an angel."
He chuckled. "Try telling that to the defense attorney. See you in half an hour."
Calleigh snapped the phone shut but continued holding it. "Horatio," she said softly to the empty room.
"You're as bad as Tony." Oops, not an empty room. She turned to find her brother standing in the doorway.
"As bad as Tony? Who's Tony?"
"From West Side Story. When he was singing about his girl's name. 'Say it loud, and there's music playing. Say it soft, and it's almost like praying.' That's how you sounded there."
Calleigh straightened up to her full height, such as it was. "Don't mess with this, Peter. It isn't a joke. And if you say that in front of Horatio, or in front of Mother, I'll shoot you. I do have a gun, you know."
"Mother would probably agree with you. She liked him."
"Don't you like him?"
Peter considered for a minute. "Yes, I do. He's impressive, I must admit. Just be careful, Cal. So many people out there aren't what they seem. Just be sure he's good enough for you."
Calleigh met his eyes directly. "Peter, the only question I have about Horatio is whether I'm good enough for him. Now, let's get busy. We've still got a lot to do before the funeral." Briskly, she marched past her brother back into the living room. He watched her go for a minute, then said softly to the air, "You'd better be good, Horatio. You'll kill her if you let her fall." Part of him worried about his sister, but part of him envied her, too. He wondered if a beautiful woman would ever say his name like that.
***
The funeral was as long, and as hard, as Calleigh had feared, but she didn't have to deal with everything, after all. Her mother had latched onto Horatio the minute he came through the door, and he, bless him, dealt with her as he had last night, being an attentive (or at least seemingly attentive), sympathetic audience, accepting the verbal flood without comment. He managed to get everyone else there amused watching him, and the one bright spot of the whole service for Calleigh was watching her CSI coworkers watch Horatio.
After the funeral, Alexx had invited them over to her house for an early dinner, sparing Calleigh having to fix anything. So everyone packed around Alexx's small table: Her own husband and two kids, Calleigh, Peter, Mrs. Hayes, Horatio, Speed, and Delko. Mrs. Hayes continued to dominate the meal, impossible to ignore even though she was only addressing Horatio, who was sitting next to her. Calleigh had never admired him more. A whole afternoon of her mother at painfully close range, and the edges still weren't fraying. Incredible.
The same couldn't be said for the rest of them. Even Alexx's children, who hadn't been to the funeral, were starting to get restless by dessert, looking across at Mrs. Hayes, then back at their mother, as if asking if people really could be like that. Peter was wearing thin, and Calleigh herself wasn't far behind. If it weren't for Horatio, she probably already would have snapped.
It was Peter who finally offered the first tentative change of subject. "Mother, you should eat your dessert. You can't eat it while talking. Give someone else a chance. Why don't we hear some of Calleigh's cases? She was telling me a few last night, and they're interesting."
"You never did care about your father, did you." It wasn't a question. Calleigh thought she was about to burst into tears again. "Yes, just talk about something else. Ignore this loss we've had. I'll remember it every day for the rest of my life, but you just shrug it off. You Benedict Arnold. You ran away and left us, after all he did for you." She trailed off gradually as she realized that no one was listening to her anymore. Everyone was looking at Horatio instead.
His head had snapped sharply up, and the eyes had burst into instant flame. Not just the eyes, but every inch of him, alive, alert, eager for action. Mrs. Hayes, following everyone else's riveted gaze, eyed him as if she had never seen him before. The electricity hung in the air like a snapping, arcing wire, almost visible.
Horatio with difficulty pulled his focus back from its object momentarily and looked across the table. "Um, Calleigh. . . " he started, and she interrupted him.
"Sure, go ahead. Go get 'em, tiger."
"Thank you." He bolted out of his chair, almost tripping in his eagerness, and headed for the door.
"H," called Delko, "You going to need any help?"
"No." He swung back around, facing all of them. "Stay with Calleigh. I'll be fine, but you stay with Calleigh." His eyes touched hers briefly, and then he was gone.
Mrs. Hayes sat stunned in her chair, shocked into speechlessness for the first time since her husband's death. Even Alexx's children were motionless. It was a good minute before Peter broke the silence. "What the hell happened to him?"
"He does that sometimes," said Speed. "You get used to it." But he still hadn't himself.
"He sees the answer to a case he's working on," Calleigh explained. "Now, he's got to work backwards and build up the evidence to meet it."
"Isn't that wrong way around?" Peter was confused. "I thought you guys followed the evidence to the answer."
"Most of us do," said Eric.
"It's not jumping to conclusions." Calleigh defended him. "Horatio just sees how things fit together. He starts from the evidence, but he sees where it's going and beats it there."
"What case has he been working on this week, anyway?" asked Alexx.
"He got some new information from Susie - you remember Susie? - about his brother. I don't know all the details, though. I never really had a chance to talk to him about it this week." Calleigh once again felt guilty.
"He asked me to go through Chaz's notebook and make a list of all the names and dates," said Speed, "but I couldn't make anything out of it. Alphabet soup. If there's a single real name in there, I'd be surprised."
"Whatever he's on to, I hope he can prove it," said Alexx. None of his coworkers questioned that Horatio was right, but proving it was a different matter sometimes. They had all seen him on cases where he knew the answer, absolutely knew it, and couldn't link the chain together. Adding his brother to one of those equations was unthinkable. The CSIs looked at each other warily around the table. Peter tried to redraw his assessment of Horatio, adding lightning on the inside. And Mrs. Hayes sat there still stunned, for the first time in two days thinking of something besides her husband. What on earth had come over that nice man, to bolt off like that?
***
Horatio sat in his office, running files as fast as his fingers would work the keyboard. It was all there. But how on earth would he ever prove it? Nothing incriminating, even when you looked at the evidence. Totally circumstantial. The defense attorney from that morning's case would make mincemeat of it in two minutes. Horatio closed his eyes, trying to blank his mind, trying to look around the beautiful, blazing whole that filled it, seeing if there were any other possible approaches. One. His eyes snapped open, and he picked up the phone.
"You want what?" Detective Tripp couldn't believe his ears.
"I want to talk to Chaz. Tonight. Right now if possible."
"Um, Horatio, I don't think that's such a good idea."
"It's okay. I promise, I won't kill him. I just need the answer to one question from him, just to confirm something."
"You think Chaz will give you the answer to anything?"
"He'll give me the answer to this. I know how to ask now. He won't be able to help himself."
"He's still in county, waiting for trial. They refused to set bail, you know. Attempted homicide of a whole crew of police officers is a big offense."
"Fine, can you meet me there? Fifteen minutes?"
Tripp sighed. "Horatio, are you sure you know what you're doing?"
"Absolutely." Rock solid conviction, like that morning on the witness stand. Tripp yielded, believing in spite of himself.
"Fifteen minutes, then. But I'll be sitting in on this interview."
"You won't have to," said Horatio. "It won't take long enough to sit."
***
Chaz sneered as Horatio entered the witness room, along with Tripp. "You again? Back for more dirt on your brother? I remember how Tin Man used to . . ." He checked very slightly as Horatio tossed a picture onto the table between them. In the next instant, he caught himself and went on with his former attitude. Anyone not watching intently would have missed his automatic response. Horatio had been watching intently.
"That's all I wanted," he said. "Thank you for your cooperation, Chaz." He turned and marched out the door, leaving Chaz halfway through another sentence about Ray. The entire interview had taken 15 seconds.
***
Horatio re-entered his office, his mind racing. Chaz had identified B.A. absolutely. Of course, his testimony was worthless, even if he would give it in court, which he wouldn't. But Horatio now had a card he could play, could use for leverage. The only possible way to capture this man would be to confront him directly, try to trip him into a confession. He had a four year start on Horatio, and he had covered every step so calmly, so surely along the way that even with Chaz's ID, Horatio had no legally valid case. No, he would have to face him down himself. And he would do it tonight. This four-year charade had just crashed to a halt. One way or another, tonight would end it. Horatio picked up the phone, dialing the man Ray had wrestled with in his dreams, the worthless friend, the man who had deliberately set up a brother officer to take suspicion away from himself, B.A., Benedict Arnold, the traitor, the bad cop, John Hagen.