Title: Sub Rosa (1/1)
Author: Andrea (abc3969@juno.com)
Rating: R
Pairing: While I might explore the potential of other duos on occasion, my heart will always return to Horatio/Calleigh; and so, to my own muse I must be true.
Disclaimer: Me no profit; you no sue. Song titles shamelessly borrowed-no infringement intended.
Archive: Is anybody archiving these? If so, just say so. I'll come visit. Laeta and Eve be my guests.
Spoilers: None.
Author's Notes: I finally tried my hand at a real case fic--within the confines of an H/C romance, of course.
Dedication: For taking this long, winding journey with me, and most importantly, for putting up with my moody, temperamental self, Mar. There are no words.
Summary: A serial killer leaves clues on his victims' bodies, taunting Horatio and the team to catch him. Then he escalates, sending the clues before the murders. Can Horatio find him before it's too late-for Calleigh?
Feedback: If you please. Be gentle.
~~~~~ Chapter One: Red Roses for a Blue Lady ~~~~~
Omaha, Nebraska, USA
"I have asked you nicely to leave me alone. How many times do I have to say it? I'm not now, nor was I *ever* in love with you."
She looked at him in desperation.
"I am going to marry Scott in two weeks. You have to leave me alone!"
She was in tears now, unable to get through to him, unable to make him understand.
"But *I* love you..."
"Then you have to stop. Someone else has my heart, not you."
The young blonde girl turned, frustrated and scared, and ran--distance from her pursuer her only objective--tossing his offering of roses to the ground without a second thought.
The man knelt and retrieved the roses, pulled them free of their tissue paper wrapping. In a fury-induced trance he was helpless to fend off, he savagely ripped the buds from their stems, his contempt for the girl intensifying with each successive flower.
A thorn viciously pierced his thumb, but he felt nothing.
As the first drop of blood dotted the sidewalk, his stupor instantly lifted, morbid intent now firmly entrenched in his thoughts.
"Not for long. One way or another, I will have your heart. I swear I will," he vowed derisively to himself as he watched her leave.
~~~~~
Miami, Florida, USA
Horatio Caine and Adell Sevilla hunched over the woman's prone body, dead but a few hours.
Pensive and intensely focused on the crime scene, Horatio picked up the killer's calling card for closer examination. The single red rosebud, devoid of stem, still carried a lingering scent.
"One blood red rose left on the victim. *Blood red*. Our guy seems to have a poetic sense of humor," Horatio offered ruefully.
"Yeah. I'll say it's poetic--poetic and warped. This is the third vic in as many weeks." Adell agreed.
"No doubt about it. We've got a serial on our hands, folks."
Speed's irritated groan filled the starkly lit hotel room. "The press is chomping at the bit outside, H. We're gonna have to give them something before they go off half-cocked and start a panic."
"Let them wait. We have a crime scene to process. Speed, photograph everything. Eric, you're on trace. Be sure to bag the rose carefully-it's our only lead so far."
"You got it, H."
"Adell, I'll get with you later on the victim profiles. Calleigh, you're with me. Let's go feed the sharks."
Calleigh fell into step beside Horatio, matching his long, graceful strides with marked effort. Horatio noted her determination to stay with him and obligingly slowed his pace. Glancing down to her eye level as they walked on, he snickered.
"Sorry. I need to keep reminding myself that those little short legs sometimes have trouble keeping up with me."
In a rare display of playfulness, he winked at her, letting a teasing sparkle in his eyes shine through.
Calleigh tried to shoot him a look of mock indignation, but the sizzle of heat that tickled at her senses made it impossible to do anything but grin.
"Hey, you. No short jokes, thank you very much. These 'little short legs' haven't been a problem for you yet."
"That they have not," he admitted absently, suppressing a grin.
Without missing a beat, Horatio focused his attention on the gaggle of reporters and flipped the switch on his authoritative persona, making a brief noncommittal statement meant only to dazzle the crowd and buy the team more time to identify the killer.
Calleigh stood silently by his side scanning those assembled with her keen investigator's eye. The killer may have been just brazen enough to stick around to enjoy the frenzy his spree was causing and Calleigh was determined to pounce on anyone suspicious.
The television cameras first zoomed in on Horatio, then on Calleigh, broadcasting their faces across the entire greater Miami metropolitan area during that night's five o'clock news.
~~~~~
Clyde Huffman watched in rapt fascination. How perfect was this? Another virtual twin to the bitch from Omaha was right there on the TV screen. His next mark had just been delivered to him through the wonders of modern technology and he didn't even have to go out looking for her. He sneered, barked out a hideous cackle, and crumpled a rose between his beefy fingers.
~~~~~
The following day, Horatio entered the conference room, slapping the "Rosebud Killer" case file on the table with a *thud*.
"So, what have we got?"
Adell, as lead investigator for the case, sat in on this meeting ready to work hand-in-glove with the Crime Lab. She pushed a button that started the overhead video screen on a downward path and lit up the viewer.
As Adell began recounting details, a yearbook photo of a slightly built, ultra-feminine blue-eyed blonde slid onto the screen.
"Victim Number One, Hillary Lancaster, age twenty-one, visiting our fair shores from Omaha, Nebraska. Two weeks ago, another guest at her hotel, her best friend, in fact, found her splayed over a sauna bench, shot through the chest, the rose meticulously placed over the entrance wound in her heart. She was supposed to be married three days after she was found."
Calleigh caught her breath...the resemblance of the victim to herself was uncanny. Horatio caught her reaction, but chose not to make an issue of it.
"We have contacted the would-be groom, then, I take it?" Horatio queried, his focus never leaving the photo.
Adell gave a quick nod in the affirmative.
"You bet. His alibi checks out, as does her best friend's. The poor girl just walked into the sauna to meet her friend and instead found her lifeless body."
When the second photo came into view, this one a more candid shot, Calleigh's discomfort ratcheted up a notch. Again, the victim was a pretty blue-eyed blonde, strikingly similar in appearance.
"This is victim number two, Krista Noone, twenty-three years old, formerly of Buffalo, New York...moved here a few months back. Similar story-a jogger found her body in Loomis Park last week. This time, she was laid out flat with the rose nestled in her cupped hands, again, placed over the hole in her heart.
Adell continued unimpeded, clicking the last photo onto the screen.
"And finally, yesterday's victim, Melanie Blair, age twenty-six, a Miami native. Same MO. The rose hid the bullet hole," she explained.
"Yet another pretty young blonde." Horatio observed out loud.
By this point, the entire group had caught on to the pattern-young, attractive, toe-headed females with crystalline blue eyes were being murdered systematically and the shooter was marking his kills by leaving a rosebud near their now-arrested hearts.
Calleigh could feel four pairs of eyes appraising her unabashedly.
"So, the victims look like me, or I look like the victims, or whatever. Big deal. There are plenty of blondes in this town." Calleigh rambled defensively.
Anxious to shift attentions elsewhere, Horatio spoke up. "There's something about his leaving the roses over their hearts. He's telling us something...what is it?"
"Maybe one of the victims is an old girlfriend who jilted him and he took revenge. That wasn't enough, so he started killing look-alikes." Delko reasoned.
"Or maybe he's just a nut job." Speed quipped.
Speed's joke diffused the tension in the room and allowed everyone but Calleigh to laugh uneasily in the face of tragedy.
"He was romancing their hearts, or trying to, at least. And when they didn't respond the way he wanted them to, he killed them. The rose was his way of expressing infatuation, even as he was ending their lives." Calleigh's words, remarkably succinct and profile-like, echoed off the walls bringing a hushed silence to the room.
Horatio's heart felt leaden. Calleigh's melancholy tone stood in stark relief from her sagacious perception of the circumstances. He hoped that her insight had not come from first-hand knowledge of love gone horribly wrong. The very idea that anyone could use and abuse her heart devastated him. If she was mine, I would safeguard her heart with my last ounce of strength he thought.
Shaking himself out of this uncharacteristic bout of dreamy introspection, Horatio took charge again, moving around the room to command the team's attention and draw it away from Calleigh. She needed time to regroup after her pronouncement and he was determined that she should have it.
Delko spoke up. "OK. This guy has a problem with blondes, maybe even one specific blonde. The only real pieces of evidence we've found at any of the scenes are the roses, American Beauties. I'm working through a list of growers and suppliers to see if anyone bought a large quantity lately. Could be a dead end, though. He may just go to the corner grocery and buy them one at a time."
Horatio was quick to point out the commonality. "American Beauties. Really? We're back to his poetic, romantic gestures again."
"Trace found a partial print on a petal, but roses are porous. The print's gonna be hard to extract, H."
"Run it through AFIS anyway. We may just get lucky, Eric," Horatio suggested.
"On my way." Delko confirmed, en route to the print lab.
"Speed. You get anything from the crime scene photos?"
"Aside from the obvious, no. Nothing, H."
"Then let that go for now. Instead, why don't you work with Adell interviewing the families? We've got to find a connection...and soon."
"You got it, Boss."
"What's my next assignment, Horatio?" Calleigh wondered.
"Sit tight. We need more to go on."
The strained nonchalance of his reply grated on her. In fact, Calleigh was halfway to furious. She lit into him with a fierceness that bordered on insubordination.
"Even after all this time, how can you still think I'm some hothouse flower who can't take care of herself? Don't coddle me, Horatio. I've got a job to do and I'm not going to let some psycho stop me from doing it."
Horatio was glad the room had otherwise emptied before this scene played out. Her vehement tirade stunned him speechless. He knew that trying to explain his reasons would open up Pandora's Box, revealing emotions neither one of them was as yet prepared to face. He stayed silent, choosing to look away rather than into her accusing eyes. He stood with one fist clamped to his waist and the other vigorously rubbing the frown lines from his forehead.
He took just a second to look into the near distance, then back at Calleigh. Controlled breathing helped him school his features and his temper as he steeled himself for the coming confrontation.
In a voice that was all business-determination and intent-he addressed her concerns, his trademark cool professionalism in play, as always.
"First of all, *Detective*, I am *not* coddling you. I am, however, looking out for my team. Surely you realize that everyone in this room today saw your resemblance to the vics and surmised that you could very well be a target, even if only by coincidence."
Duly reprimanded, Calleigh's belligerent mood disappeared, her posture indicated defeat.
Horatio cautiously stepped closer to Calleigh and chancing a sheepish smile, tenderly cupped her cheek in his hand.
"And secondly," he nearly whispered now, "I would never forgive myself if anything happened to you that I could have prevented, Calleigh. If this animal is even so much as a remote threat to you, I have to nail him."
His tenderness and heart-felt concern were her undoing.
Calleigh couldn't stop herself; she pressed her cheek more fully into his hand and gave it a slow, lazy, cat-like nudge. For months, she had been craving a new kind of closeness with him, and if this was the first step in that direction, then she was willing to take it.
Taken by surprise at how quickly Calleigh's fiery spirit could turn into sensual, passionate heat, Horatio stepped back from her and took great pains to look everywhere but in her eyes.
Calleigh ducked under his chin, drawing his attention downward to look at her, despite his efforts not to do so.
A discontented sigh fought its way through her, but she didn't let it escape.
"Oh, Horatio. I am grateful for your concern; but there's nothing to worry about. Really. I'm not a target. I don't want the team to think I'm a victim waiting to happen. I don't want special treatment and I don't want to be excluded from investigating this case. So, let's just do our jobs, okay?"
She smiled an easy smile then and turned to leave the room, but before she stepped over the threshold, she gave him a saucy wink, saying, "Besides, don't let my size fool you. If he decides to come after me, he's gonna have his hands full!"
Horatio grinned openly as his eyes followed her retreating figure. Calleigh never heard the retort that he whispered under his breath.
"Don't I know it..."
Author: Andrea (abc3969@juno.com)
Rating: R
Pairing: While I might explore the potential of other duos on occasion, my heart will always return to Horatio/Calleigh; and so, to my own muse I must be true.
Disclaimer: Me no profit; you no sue. Song titles shamelessly borrowed-no infringement intended.
Archive: Is anybody archiving these? If so, just say so. I'll come visit. Laeta and Eve be my guests.
Spoilers: None.
Author's Notes: I finally tried my hand at a real case fic--within the confines of an H/C romance, of course.
Dedication: For taking this long, winding journey with me, and most importantly, for putting up with my moody, temperamental self, Mar. There are no words.
Summary: A serial killer leaves clues on his victims' bodies, taunting Horatio and the team to catch him. Then he escalates, sending the clues before the murders. Can Horatio find him before it's too late-for Calleigh?
Feedback: If you please. Be gentle.
~~~~~ Chapter One: Red Roses for a Blue Lady ~~~~~
Omaha, Nebraska, USA
"I have asked you nicely to leave me alone. How many times do I have to say it? I'm not now, nor was I *ever* in love with you."
She looked at him in desperation.
"I am going to marry Scott in two weeks. You have to leave me alone!"
She was in tears now, unable to get through to him, unable to make him understand.
"But *I* love you..."
"Then you have to stop. Someone else has my heart, not you."
The young blonde girl turned, frustrated and scared, and ran--distance from her pursuer her only objective--tossing his offering of roses to the ground without a second thought.
The man knelt and retrieved the roses, pulled them free of their tissue paper wrapping. In a fury-induced trance he was helpless to fend off, he savagely ripped the buds from their stems, his contempt for the girl intensifying with each successive flower.
A thorn viciously pierced his thumb, but he felt nothing.
As the first drop of blood dotted the sidewalk, his stupor instantly lifted, morbid intent now firmly entrenched in his thoughts.
"Not for long. One way or another, I will have your heart. I swear I will," he vowed derisively to himself as he watched her leave.
~~~~~
Miami, Florida, USA
Horatio Caine and Adell Sevilla hunched over the woman's prone body, dead but a few hours.
Pensive and intensely focused on the crime scene, Horatio picked up the killer's calling card for closer examination. The single red rosebud, devoid of stem, still carried a lingering scent.
"One blood red rose left on the victim. *Blood red*. Our guy seems to have a poetic sense of humor," Horatio offered ruefully.
"Yeah. I'll say it's poetic--poetic and warped. This is the third vic in as many weeks." Adell agreed.
"No doubt about it. We've got a serial on our hands, folks."
Speed's irritated groan filled the starkly lit hotel room. "The press is chomping at the bit outside, H. We're gonna have to give them something before they go off half-cocked and start a panic."
"Let them wait. We have a crime scene to process. Speed, photograph everything. Eric, you're on trace. Be sure to bag the rose carefully-it's our only lead so far."
"You got it, H."
"Adell, I'll get with you later on the victim profiles. Calleigh, you're with me. Let's go feed the sharks."
Calleigh fell into step beside Horatio, matching his long, graceful strides with marked effort. Horatio noted her determination to stay with him and obligingly slowed his pace. Glancing down to her eye level as they walked on, he snickered.
"Sorry. I need to keep reminding myself that those little short legs sometimes have trouble keeping up with me."
In a rare display of playfulness, he winked at her, letting a teasing sparkle in his eyes shine through.
Calleigh tried to shoot him a look of mock indignation, but the sizzle of heat that tickled at her senses made it impossible to do anything but grin.
"Hey, you. No short jokes, thank you very much. These 'little short legs' haven't been a problem for you yet."
"That they have not," he admitted absently, suppressing a grin.
Without missing a beat, Horatio focused his attention on the gaggle of reporters and flipped the switch on his authoritative persona, making a brief noncommittal statement meant only to dazzle the crowd and buy the team more time to identify the killer.
Calleigh stood silently by his side scanning those assembled with her keen investigator's eye. The killer may have been just brazen enough to stick around to enjoy the frenzy his spree was causing and Calleigh was determined to pounce on anyone suspicious.
The television cameras first zoomed in on Horatio, then on Calleigh, broadcasting their faces across the entire greater Miami metropolitan area during that night's five o'clock news.
~~~~~
Clyde Huffman watched in rapt fascination. How perfect was this? Another virtual twin to the bitch from Omaha was right there on the TV screen. His next mark had just been delivered to him through the wonders of modern technology and he didn't even have to go out looking for her. He sneered, barked out a hideous cackle, and crumpled a rose between his beefy fingers.
~~~~~
The following day, Horatio entered the conference room, slapping the "Rosebud Killer" case file on the table with a *thud*.
"So, what have we got?"
Adell, as lead investigator for the case, sat in on this meeting ready to work hand-in-glove with the Crime Lab. She pushed a button that started the overhead video screen on a downward path and lit up the viewer.
As Adell began recounting details, a yearbook photo of a slightly built, ultra-feminine blue-eyed blonde slid onto the screen.
"Victim Number One, Hillary Lancaster, age twenty-one, visiting our fair shores from Omaha, Nebraska. Two weeks ago, another guest at her hotel, her best friend, in fact, found her splayed over a sauna bench, shot through the chest, the rose meticulously placed over the entrance wound in her heart. She was supposed to be married three days after she was found."
Calleigh caught her breath...the resemblance of the victim to herself was uncanny. Horatio caught her reaction, but chose not to make an issue of it.
"We have contacted the would-be groom, then, I take it?" Horatio queried, his focus never leaving the photo.
Adell gave a quick nod in the affirmative.
"You bet. His alibi checks out, as does her best friend's. The poor girl just walked into the sauna to meet her friend and instead found her lifeless body."
When the second photo came into view, this one a more candid shot, Calleigh's discomfort ratcheted up a notch. Again, the victim was a pretty blue-eyed blonde, strikingly similar in appearance.
"This is victim number two, Krista Noone, twenty-three years old, formerly of Buffalo, New York...moved here a few months back. Similar story-a jogger found her body in Loomis Park last week. This time, she was laid out flat with the rose nestled in her cupped hands, again, placed over the hole in her heart.
Adell continued unimpeded, clicking the last photo onto the screen.
"And finally, yesterday's victim, Melanie Blair, age twenty-six, a Miami native. Same MO. The rose hid the bullet hole," she explained.
"Yet another pretty young blonde." Horatio observed out loud.
By this point, the entire group had caught on to the pattern-young, attractive, toe-headed females with crystalline blue eyes were being murdered systematically and the shooter was marking his kills by leaving a rosebud near their now-arrested hearts.
Calleigh could feel four pairs of eyes appraising her unabashedly.
"So, the victims look like me, or I look like the victims, or whatever. Big deal. There are plenty of blondes in this town." Calleigh rambled defensively.
Anxious to shift attentions elsewhere, Horatio spoke up. "There's something about his leaving the roses over their hearts. He's telling us something...what is it?"
"Maybe one of the victims is an old girlfriend who jilted him and he took revenge. That wasn't enough, so he started killing look-alikes." Delko reasoned.
"Or maybe he's just a nut job." Speed quipped.
Speed's joke diffused the tension in the room and allowed everyone but Calleigh to laugh uneasily in the face of tragedy.
"He was romancing their hearts, or trying to, at least. And when they didn't respond the way he wanted them to, he killed them. The rose was his way of expressing infatuation, even as he was ending their lives." Calleigh's words, remarkably succinct and profile-like, echoed off the walls bringing a hushed silence to the room.
Horatio's heart felt leaden. Calleigh's melancholy tone stood in stark relief from her sagacious perception of the circumstances. He hoped that her insight had not come from first-hand knowledge of love gone horribly wrong. The very idea that anyone could use and abuse her heart devastated him. If she was mine, I would safeguard her heart with my last ounce of strength he thought.
Shaking himself out of this uncharacteristic bout of dreamy introspection, Horatio took charge again, moving around the room to command the team's attention and draw it away from Calleigh. She needed time to regroup after her pronouncement and he was determined that she should have it.
Delko spoke up. "OK. This guy has a problem with blondes, maybe even one specific blonde. The only real pieces of evidence we've found at any of the scenes are the roses, American Beauties. I'm working through a list of growers and suppliers to see if anyone bought a large quantity lately. Could be a dead end, though. He may just go to the corner grocery and buy them one at a time."
Horatio was quick to point out the commonality. "American Beauties. Really? We're back to his poetic, romantic gestures again."
"Trace found a partial print on a petal, but roses are porous. The print's gonna be hard to extract, H."
"Run it through AFIS anyway. We may just get lucky, Eric," Horatio suggested.
"On my way." Delko confirmed, en route to the print lab.
"Speed. You get anything from the crime scene photos?"
"Aside from the obvious, no. Nothing, H."
"Then let that go for now. Instead, why don't you work with Adell interviewing the families? We've got to find a connection...and soon."
"You got it, Boss."
"What's my next assignment, Horatio?" Calleigh wondered.
"Sit tight. We need more to go on."
The strained nonchalance of his reply grated on her. In fact, Calleigh was halfway to furious. She lit into him with a fierceness that bordered on insubordination.
"Even after all this time, how can you still think I'm some hothouse flower who can't take care of herself? Don't coddle me, Horatio. I've got a job to do and I'm not going to let some psycho stop me from doing it."
Horatio was glad the room had otherwise emptied before this scene played out. Her vehement tirade stunned him speechless. He knew that trying to explain his reasons would open up Pandora's Box, revealing emotions neither one of them was as yet prepared to face. He stayed silent, choosing to look away rather than into her accusing eyes. He stood with one fist clamped to his waist and the other vigorously rubbing the frown lines from his forehead.
He took just a second to look into the near distance, then back at Calleigh. Controlled breathing helped him school his features and his temper as he steeled himself for the coming confrontation.
In a voice that was all business-determination and intent-he addressed her concerns, his trademark cool professionalism in play, as always.
"First of all, *Detective*, I am *not* coddling you. I am, however, looking out for my team. Surely you realize that everyone in this room today saw your resemblance to the vics and surmised that you could very well be a target, even if only by coincidence."
Duly reprimanded, Calleigh's belligerent mood disappeared, her posture indicated defeat.
Horatio cautiously stepped closer to Calleigh and chancing a sheepish smile, tenderly cupped her cheek in his hand.
"And secondly," he nearly whispered now, "I would never forgive myself if anything happened to you that I could have prevented, Calleigh. If this animal is even so much as a remote threat to you, I have to nail him."
His tenderness and heart-felt concern were her undoing.
Calleigh couldn't stop herself; she pressed her cheek more fully into his hand and gave it a slow, lazy, cat-like nudge. For months, she had been craving a new kind of closeness with him, and if this was the first step in that direction, then she was willing to take it.
Taken by surprise at how quickly Calleigh's fiery spirit could turn into sensual, passionate heat, Horatio stepped back from her and took great pains to look everywhere but in her eyes.
Calleigh ducked under his chin, drawing his attention downward to look at her, despite his efforts not to do so.
A discontented sigh fought its way through her, but she didn't let it escape.
"Oh, Horatio. I am grateful for your concern; but there's nothing to worry about. Really. I'm not a target. I don't want the team to think I'm a victim waiting to happen. I don't want special treatment and I don't want to be excluded from investigating this case. So, let's just do our jobs, okay?"
She smiled an easy smile then and turned to leave the room, but before she stepped over the threshold, she gave him a saucy wink, saying, "Besides, don't let my size fool you. If he decides to come after me, he's gonna have his hands full!"
Horatio grinned openly as his eyes followed her retreating figure. Calleigh never heard the retort that he whispered under his breath.
"Don't I know it..."