Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Do I need one for every chapter? I don't know, but better safe than sorry. (sigh) I own no part of CSI: Miami, although, if I did, some things would be different. I guess that's why fanfiction was created in the first place.
Author's note: I had to take down chapter 1 for a while to fix a fatal error. Some things were changed, so, if it's important to you, I'd check that out first. It wasn't anything too significant, but it was driving me crazy. Enjoy chapter 2, and feel free to leave feedback. I even accept constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement, but please don't simply say hateful things, it's just cruel and I'll remove them anyway. Meanwhile, I'm rather hungry right now.
--Jess
--------------------
Anna Loran's clothing lay spread out on the table, and Calleigh had gone over every piece with excruciating detail. She found almost nothing and was preparing to start in on the tape when Horatio entered the room, seeming quite exacerbated. He stalked quickly across the tiled floor, glancing briefly at the clothing.
"What's wrong?" Calleigh asked. "Is our witness still not talking?"
"Oh, she's talking," He replied. "But we sent her home because every word out of her mouth is a lie."
"You didn't want to hold her?" She wondered.
"We've got nothing to hold her on," Horatio stated matter-of-factly.
"What's she saying?" Calleigh inquired, pulling out the first piece of tape and laying it on the tabletop.
Horatio shifted his weight and leaned against the table, crossing his arms indignantly. "She says...that she doesn't know how her friend ended up dead."
"Maybe she doesn't," Calleigh said, "but she definitely came into contact with the body. I found a hair on Anna's shirt. It's long and brunette, just like Joley's. It's good for DNA, so I'm going to need something to match it to, but, right now, it works for me."
"What about Eric? Has he come up with anything?"
"Actually," She began, "I haven't been able to get a hold of him. He's not answering his phone." There was a slight hint of frustration behind her voice, but Calleigh attempted to keep it unnoticeable.
"Alright," Horatio continued, ignoring her irritation, "Wolfe and I are going to talk to the family, and then I'll send him over to Eric," Horatio paused. "Now, did you get anything off the other articles of clothing?"
"There're a few drops of blood on the shirt as well," She said, reaching for the blouse, holding it up for Horatio to see more clearly. The crimson drops seemed startling against the light purple fabric. "As for her skirt and underwear... I got nothing. No evidence of sexual assault, no blood, no semen. We'll have to wait for the rape kit, but I doubt it will come back positive. I'm about to process the tape for prints, but other than the hair and blood I came up completely empty." They both paused thoughtfully for a few moments, pondering the lack of evidence, before Calleigh spoke up again. "I know I've said this before," She paused, "but there's something weird about this case. Now, I don't know if Joley's holding back information or not, but this evidence doesn't fit. We're missing something important." Horatio moved from the table toward the door before replying.
"If anyone can find it..." He stated, pulling the door open as he looked back at her.
"Thanks," Calleigh called after him. Sighing, she turned back to her table full of useless evidence and continued trying to make sense of all the chaos. Methodically, she returned each individual item of clothing to its respective bag, placing them aside in case she needed to go back over them later. Calleigh then returned to the task at hand: Checking the duct tape for prints. Picking up the piece of tape from Anna's mouth, she carried it across the room where she'd set up a container of Gentian violet. Using a pair of tongs, she dipped the strip of tape delicately into the purple liquid and raised it out again. She squinted hard at the tape, incredibly confused. There was so sign of fingerprints. Even if the killer wore gloves, that didn't explain the absence of Anna's own prints. Surely the victim would have tried to pull the tape from her mouth. Her wrists were bound, but not her fingers, she should have been able to remove it. Like everything else Calleigh had discovered, the newest piece of evidence posed yet another question without providing any answers.
-------------------
Eric had crawled across the floor on his hands and knees for three hours, searching for any hint of blue fibers, blood, hair, or anything. After swabbing forty square feet of carpet and testing each individual sample for blood he still had nothing. With an exhausted sigh of defeat he glanced at his watch. It was almost five thirty, and he hadn't even started the closet. Groaning slightly, he stood, stiff from being hunched over the floor for so long. Not expecting to find anything remarkable, he walked to the closet and lifted the handle, which was also free of fingerprints and blood. There was no light, so Eric reached over and snatched the flashlight from his kit. A preliminary flicker of the light around the inside of the closet confirmed that Anna Loran's body had, at one time or another, been present. Sweaters and jackets hung neatly from the wooden bar, but a few had been knocked off their hangers, and there was something resembling blood on the floor.
"Is that blood?" Wolfe asked, causing Eric to jump. "Sorry," he added, "Didn't mean to sneak up on you."
"When did you get here?" Eric demanded. "I paged you twice."
"I just came in. Lieutenant Caine took me with him to notify the family," he replied indignantly. "I called you, but you didn't answer." Eric glanced down at the cell phone clipped to his belt. The battery was dead. Looking around to the front door, he remembered that he had left it open for the light and the breeze, but was confused as to the fact that he hadn't heard Wolfe pull up or come inside.
"Oh," He said simply. "Okay, well you can help me process the closet then. Hand me the ALS and hit the lights." Ryan obliged, quickly and quietly, flipping the light switch. Eric turned on the ALS and its green glow filled the closet. He ran it over the walls, looking for prints. "Looks like a couple partials," He said, shining the light on the lower wall. "You wanna lift those?" Eric instructed, marking their place on the wall and stepping back to let Ryan in.
"Are you going to test this spot for blood?" Wolfe asked, nodding toward the red splotches on the carpet.
"As soon as you get those prints lifted," Eric replied, turning the lights back on. Rolling his eyes, Wolfe leaned back, accepting the fingerprint dust and brush from Eric's willing hands. He spun the brush over the prints, tape-lifted them, and handed them back up to Eric.
"Flawless," he stated, replacing the lid on the powder. "Give me a swab and I'll check for blood." Without arguing, Eric handed him a swab, having checked enough carpet for blood to last him a lifetime.
"I'm gonna check the shelf," Eric said, glancing up at the top of the closet. Turning away to go find a chair, he heard Wolfe proclaim happily that there was indeed blood lurking on the bottom of the closet. "Cap it and shoot the floor," Eric replied, indicating his camera lying on the floor by his kit as he walked into the next room.
"Right." Quickly, Wolfe tucked the blood sample away and retrieved a measurement scale, laying it beside the smudges of blood as he snapped photographs.
"Look out," Eric called, setting a kitchen chair on the floor beside him. Climbing onto the chair so that he was eye level with the closet shelf, Eric shined his flashlight around, illuminating several cobwebs but very little else.
"Anything up there?" Wolfe asked, tilting his head up to get any kind of view.
"No," Eric replied, disappointed. "Nothing."
"Well," Wolfe continued, "I've got more blue fibers." This caught Eric's attention and he stepped down off the chair.
"Where?" He asked, crouching down on the floor. He looked at the carpet inside the closet, but didn't see any himself.
"Right here...blue fibers." Wolfe leaned down beside Eric, pointing a gloved finger at the door's lower hinge. "Looks like whatever it was got caught on the way out the door. I'll lift it for Detective Duquesne." He pulled out another sheet of tape and used it to pull the fibers from the door hinge.
"That'll make Calleigh's day," Eric replied, unaware that she had just come in the open front door to join them.
"What'll make my day?" She asked chirpily, nearly sending Eric through the roof once again. Trotting over to see what they were studying, she continued, "Sorry Eric, I thought you heard me coming."
"Twice in one day," Wolfe muttered, grinning slightly.
"You heard her coming?" Eric countered, somewhat irritated.
"Yeah," He replied modestly. "The door's open man, I heard her shoes on the sidewalk."
"What'd you find?" She asked again, resting her hand reassuringly on Eric's shoulder as she knelt down beside them.
"Fibers and fingerprints," Wolfe supplied, showing her the newly recovered strands of blue material. Studying them carefully, Calleigh mentally compared them to the others she collected earlier. It was a visible match.
"Did you run the prints?" She asked, dropping the fibers to her side.
"No," Eric replied. "We don't have a tenprinter here, so I'll have to run them through AFIS when we get back to the lab."
"They probably belong to the victim anyway, and Alexx hasn't sent up her prints yet. But, actually, we're heading back to the lab right now," Calleigh informed them. "That's why I'm here. Horatio's called a powwow and y'all aren't answering your phones. So he sent me to find you and bring you home."
"My battery's dead," Eric explained unenthusiastically.
"Let's go," Calleigh said, choosing not to comment on the status of Eric's cell phone. She pushed lightly on his back as she stood, offering him a hand as he came up beside her. "You wanna lock up, Ryan?" She asked, grabbing Eric's kit and leading the way out into the setting sun.
"No problem," He agreed, giving them a quick thumbs up. "Meet you back there in a few."
"Okay," Eric replied, following Calleigh out the door, closing it behind him. "You think he can do it?" He wondered, squinting into the sun as they walked toward her car.
"What? Close up? Sure. He's good Eric," Calleigh assured him. "And Horatio likes him," she added.
"Why?" Eric asked, crossing to the passenger side of the car and opening his door. "Because he cleans his gun?" His last words were bitter, and full of disdain, not for the new CSI, but what he represented. The tone in his voice grabbed Calleigh's attention and she snapped her head around to face him, eyebrows raised. Eric avoided her questioning glare and slid into the seat.
"Eric," She began, climbing into the driver's seat beside him. "It's hard for all of us. Don't hate Ryan just because he's Tim's replacement. You've got to give him a chance."
"Do you sleep at night, Calleigh?" He asked quietly, looking across at her.
A soft, sad little smile flickered across her lips with understanding as she turned her eyes away from his. "Sometimes," She whispered, turning the key in the ignition.
"I don't," He replied, almost inaudibly. Without further conversation, Calleigh shifted the car out of park and pulled out of the driveway. The trip to the lab was silent, but appropriate, neither having the words to further the conversation.
--------------------
"I found them," Calleigh sang triumphantly, pushing through the break room door with Eric in tow. Staring placidly out the window, Horatio turned to greet them as they entered.
"Where's Wolfe?" He asked, noting the new CSI's absence.
"He stayed to close up the scene," Eric explained. "He's about ten minutes behind us."
"Did you find anything at the house?" Horatio questioned.
"There was nothing on the carpet outside of the closet, but we found a few fibers, a couple partials, and some blood smears on the inside. She was definitely inside that closet, but the injuries to her face weren't sustained there." Everyone was disappointed, to say the least, but Horatio hadn't been expecting a lot to turn up.
"So all we've got is a secondary crime scene," Calleigh said, "And no idea where our primary is. That whole house is pretty immaculate."
"Did you find anything on her clothes?" Eric wondered, glad that he wasn't the only one frustrated beyond hope.
"A hair, probably Joley's," Calleigh replied. "There were some drops of blood on the shirt, gravitational droplets most likely. The tape is a different story."
"How so?" Horatio asked curiously.
"There were fingerprints on the tape that was used to bind Anna's feet, but not on the tape around her mouth. I'm waiting for her ten-card from Alexx to verify that they are Anna's prints, but I'm guessing that her arms were also restricted somehow so she couldn't reach the tape over her mouth." Before anyone could add to her theory, the electronic beep of Horatio's pager filled the room.
Glancing down to read the page he said, "Alexx has got your ten-card and autopsy results. So, Calleigh, why don't you check in with Alexx and run the prints from the tape and the closet against Anna Loran's." Looking past her, out the door, he saw Wolfe running toward them. "Eric, you and I will talk to the neighbors. If he brought her from the primary scene back to her house, somebody saw something." Wolfe clambered through the door, somewhat out of breath from his sprint down the hall. "I'll meet you outside." Eric nodded and ducked out the door, chuckling slightly as he passed Ryan. "Wolfe," Horatio began, "Go back to the house and check out the driveway. We'll find out how he got her there."
"Sure," Wolfe agreed. "I love driveways." Without further instruction, he turned on his heels and meandered back down the hallway toward the parking lot.
"Calleigh," Horatio continued as the door fell closed behind Wolfe. "I know you don't like being stuck in the lab on this one, but I need you here working on trace for now."
"I don't mind," She replied, shrugging slightly. A quiet pause filled the room. The conversation didn't seem quite complete, but there was nothing more to be said. Calleigh had seniority over the other two CSIs, and it made sense that Horatio would want someone with more experience delving through the mountain of confusing evidence. She just wasn't used to digging through it alone. "I just wish..." Her voice trailed off. It was no use stating the thought that had run through her mind so many times. "I'll call you if AFIS turns anything up."
"Thank you," He said, brushing past her and heading out the door. Leaving the palpable tension behind her, Calleigh followed suit, exiting the break room and heading down to the morgue.
---------------------
"Find anything?" She asked, trotting up to the exam table.
"As a matter of fact," Alexx began, picking up some fibers she had lifted, "I found these in her head wound. They're white fibers, most likely from a towel. He probably pressed it against the cut on her forehead to stop the bleeding."
"He didn't want to leave a trail," Calleigh agreed. "May I?" Holding the delicate strands of white up to the exam light, she noticed that they were tipped with blood. "Looks like cotton. Almost no unique qualities. Unless we find the towel this came from we've got another useless clue." Again, Calleigh sighed in frustration. "What about cause of death?"
"My preliminary finding was correct," Alexx said. "She was suffocated. The adhesive residue around her neck indicates that she had something taped around her face and head."
"What about this bruising?" Calleigh asked, pointing to a faint line of purple bruises around Anna's throat. "It's not consistent with a handprint, and it's in the center of the adhesive residue."
"You're right." Moving alongside the body, Alexx continued to explain her confusion. "Something else was around her neck, but I don't recognize the impressions. Most likely they're part of whatever smothered her." Slightly distressed with the direction this case was heading, Calleigh crossed her arms and took a step back, attempting to survey the body with a fresh pair of eyes. Anna Loran was a beautiful woman with a promising life ahead of her. Now she was lying on the cold metal table, surrounded by sharp metal instruments after Alexx had extracted all of her organs and analyzed each part of her body.
"Okay," Calleigh said, breaking the thoughtful silence, "I'm going back up to trace. You have her prints for me?"
"Right here." Handing the print card to Calleigh, Alexx, always observant, noticed the cloud of discontent hovering on her face. "What're you thinking?"
"I don't know," Calleigh replied, taking the paper. "We're missing so much evidence, and we don't even have a primary crime scene. We're way behind this guy, and I'm not sure we can catch up."
"You will," Alexx reassured her, turning down to Anna's body. "Don't listen to her, angel. They'll catch the guy that did this to you." Turning away, Calleigh smiled a bit at Alexx's attempt to lighten her spirits and began the trek up to the DNA lab.
--------------------
"You didn't see anything strange? No unfamiliar cars or vans in the area? Nobody going in and out of the house that you didn't recognize?" Eric had been questioning Anna Loran's next-door neighbors for nearly two hours, and they were suspiciously drawing blanks on every aspect of the young woman's murder.
"We told you," Craig Wallace spit, wrapping a protective arm around his wife, "I was at the office and Julie didn't see or hear anything. Is there anything else you need?" Defeated, Eric turned from them and opened their front door.
"I'm sure we'll have more questions as our investigation continues. Thank you for your cooperation." His words were robotic, preprogrammed as the appropriate response for a prospective witness who gave no information. Stepping out into the evening air, the breeze reminded him that Wolfe was still processing the driveway, and he hoped that they hadn't returned too late to gather any useful evidence. "Hey, Ryan!" He called, jogging across a well-maintained lawn, silently hopping that he killed some of the Wallace family's grass. "Ryan?" Momentarily, Wolfe popped his head out of the garage door, grinning slightly.
"I got more blood," Wolfe said proudly. "Take a look." Eric followed Wolfe into the garage. Surprisingly, there was a pronounced blood trail leading from the victim's car to a door that, Eric assumed, led into the house.
"Did you collect a sample?" Eric asked, kneeling down to get a better look at the red drops.
"Of course," he paused. "There's also some blood in the car."
"So he brought her here in her own car," Eric mused thoughtfully. "We'll bring the victim's car back to the garage at CSI and finish processing it there. Is there anything else?"
"No," Wolfe answered. "Oh, wait" he said, grabbing Eric's attention again. "Lieutenant Caine wanted me to tell you that we're supposed to take all the evidence back to the lab process it, and comparing it to the results that Detective Duquesne already found. He sounded pretty tense."
"Where did he go?" Eric asked, noticing for the first time that one of the CSI Humvees was missing from the street.
"He didn't say. He just called Detective Duquesne, told her to meet him somewhere, and took off. I don't know why."
"Okay, I'll call in to have this car towed back to the garage and we can start processing. I'm sure that H or Calleigh'll call when they've got something they want to share."
--------------------
Calleigh hopped down from the driver's side of her Humvee, glancing around the parking lot. "Yelina," She said, crossing over to the detective. "Who's this?" She asked, gesturing toward the man Yelina was interviewing.
"The owner, Marcus Letty," She replied. "This was Anna Loran's place of employment. He agreed to let us search his restaurant without a warrant."
"Yeah, for now," He interrupted briskly.
"That's gracious of you," Calleigh said. "I'll bet shutting down early was quite the inconvenience."
"We only serve breakfast through lunch," He replied airily. "I've been closed since three."
"Well aren't we lucky?" She replied. Turning her attention back to Yelina she asked, "Horatio?"
"He's waiting for you inside."
"Thanks." With her kit at her side, Calleigh strode across the gravel lot, the dusty rocks scratching her shoes. The sun was setting, and, as she entered the empty restaurant, her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn't eaten since breakfast. "Horatio?" She called, setting her kit down inside the front door. None of the hanging lamps were on, and there was no sound coming from the kitchen. "Horatio?" Again without a response, Calleigh pulled her gun from it's holster and held it tensely at her side as she made her way discreetly down the rows of booths. She ducked through the first swinging kitchen door, pointing her gun toward anything that might have been there to surprise her. Relief flooded her mind when nothing came at her. Tentatively, she again lowered her gun to her side and called out as she moved along the counters and stove tops that lined the walls. "Horatio?" A door at the far end of the kitchen flew open unexpectedly, and Calleigh whipped her gun up again.
"It's just me," Horatio said quickly, face-to-face with Calleigh's weapon. Dropping her gun down in front of her, she let out the breath she'd been holding and holstered her weapon.
"Sorry," She replied quietly. "I didn't hear you working," Pausing, she rolled her eyes at herself. "I'm a little on edge." Calleigh turned back toward the front of the restaurant, heading out to get her kit. "So, what's up?' She asked, Horatio following her to the door. "You told me to meet you here, but didn't say why? Did Joley give up some information?"
"No," Horatio answered, "But we have found our primary crime scene." Calleigh looked at him questioningly. "Downstairs." Curiosity peaked, Calleigh followed him back to the room he had come from. Opening the door revealed a short flight of dusty wooden stairs leading down to an empty wine cellar. The room was completely bare, save a few shelving units and cardboard boxes.
"What makes this our primary crime scene?" Calleigh asked, walking cautiously down the rotted steps. "It doesn't look like anyone has been down here in ages. There's no wine, the shelves are empty, even the dust is undisturbed." Crossing the floor, she knelt beside one of the shelves and shined her flashlight on the ground. "Why didn't you tell me?" She asked, grinning.
"I wanted you to enjoy the surprise." He replied, crouching beside her shining his light in the same direction. "I also found some hairs and your favorite blue fibers. Blonde like Anna's, brown like Joley, and another unidentified brown. Now, no one but the killer and his victims would have reason to be down here, would they?"
"This shelf has been moved recently," She said, moving the beam of light along tracks in the dust. "No new dust has settled yet so it was within the last twenty-four hours." Turning her flashlight toward the wall behind the shelves, Calleigh noticed a crack running vertically in the wall. "Is that a door?" She asked, reaching into her kit for a pair of gloves. "Extra storage maybe?"
"Let's find out," Horatio said, rising. "Take that side," He instructed as Calleigh climbed to her feet. Obediently, she grasped the opposite end of the shelving unit and helped pull it away from the wall. She studied the door for a moment, then bent over he kit to retrieve her camera. "Okay," He began. "So, we've got a door, obscured by shelving, about four feet tall, with no handle, just a shiny new deadbolt. What does that say to you?" The repeated click of Calleigh's camera stopped as she took a moment to put Horatio's observations into context.
"Well, hidden rooms or closets are usually put in for security like a built-in safe. But this lock is just a sliding dead bolt. It can be opened from the outside. That's what it's designed for. This guy...I don't think he was trying to keep people locked out."
"He was trying to keep Anna Loran locked in, wasn't he?" Horatio replied, completing Calleigh's thought.
"I'll take the door with me," Calleigh stated, turning back to her kit to set her camera down. "You wanna see what's inside?"
"You do the honors." He said, stepping back.
"Thank you," She said, accepting his offer. Kneeling in front of the door, Calleigh pulled the bolt loose and stood, swinging the door open toward herself. "Look at that," She said, ducking her head to lean in.
"A blue wool blanket," Horatio observed, leaning in beside her. "Bag it and tag it."
"Feels like Christmas," She said, smiling as she reached for the blanket.
"Horatio," Yelina called out from the stairway behind them.
"What's up?" He inquired, ducking out of the small closet.
"Bad news," She answered, coming down to stand with them. "We've got another possible victim."
"Possible?" Calleigh piped up, pulling her bagged evidence out of the closet with her.
"Joley Nelson," Yelina replied.
"Our witness," Horatio said, somewhat agitated.
"Yeah," Yelina said, confirming. "She's MIA. Her neighbors called the police, said they heard screams, but by the time uniforms responded she was gone.
"He thinks she talked," Calleigh said, "and she'll never be able to convince him that she didn't."
"And we all know what that means," Horatio added.
"He took her for the sole purpose of covering his tracks, and if he thinks she's working against him..." Calleigh began.
Horatio's voice interrupted, "She'll be dead by morning."
"It's almost nine right now," Yelina pointed out.
Taking the time of day into consideration Horatio continued, "That means we've got roughly ten hours before we find Joley Nelson's body stuffed in a closet."
--------------------
Author's note: Woo! Chapter 2! That's kind of a rhyme. Anyway, thank you everyone who has managed to read this far without strangling me for my technical inaccuracies. If you want to make my day, you could leave feedback. Meanwhile, chapter 3 is already in the works so it shouldn't be nearly as long of a wait this time. Thanks a bunch.
--jess