A Little Bit of Texas: Speed

Part Ten

It was only a few hours until Tim needed to get back to the hospital to bring Dayna home. He felt evenly torn between worry over his girlfriend, and the new need to find this nightmare lurking in the city. It wasn't too much later that he realized he didn't have to choose between the two worries; as soon as Dayna was told what they had collected so far, he would be able to worry about Dayna jumping into battle with the nightmare. It'll be a much more efficient way to worry.

Calleigh had been watching Christian Adamson for the last few hours. Delko had just relieved her, and she was in the lab to make her report before heading home for some downtime. Speed had told her what they had discovered.

"We've got to figure out where the next place is," she said.

Tim blew out a frustrated breath. "We don't have any evidence to analyze, we don't have any witnesses to interrogate. Our main suspect is untouchable and the only thing we've got on Glithe is a gut instinct. Judges don't issue warrants based on 'I just know' and even if they did, Glithe would cut any evidence found on that warrant to shreds in court. And then he would turn around and sue the city. We're stuck."

Horatio's voice came from behind the two criminalists, "We better get unstuck right now." He came the rest of the way into the room, "Tripp has been suspended without pay pending an internal affairs investigation."

"What?" Speed asked.

"He had been given orders to leave the case alone, and he disobeyed them. Those same orders, by the way, have now been given to us."

"What does that mean, exactly?" Calleigh asked, watching Horatio closely.

"That means we need to get this done now. Cal, what did Adamson do today?" Horatio turned to the blonde. Speed looked at her, hungry for anything they could use.

"Everything was normal, same as it's been the entire time we've had him under surveillance," she told them.

"Was there ever a time you lost him?" Horatio asked.

"Hardly."

"Sorry. Okay, then, a time when he was inside a building and you sat in the car for a notable amount of time, waiting for him to come back out?" Horatio asked.

"Or was there anytime he was in, or near, a park?" Speed added.

"Yes," Calleigh said, the word drawn out as she thought about the question. "There was a call to investigate an altercation in a business office. Adamson was less than a block away from the building; he called dispatch and said he'd take care of it. He told them he didn't think any uniforms would be necessary. But the call came over the scanner, I heard it. The call was legit – but the offices are right next to Bayfront Park.

"Dispatch may have legitimately sent that call, but I don't believe the 911 call could have been real. Cal, you follow up, see if there's any paperwork Adamson filed, any arrests made – I might be wrong, find out if I am," Horatio told her. He turned to his senior CSI, "Speed, how many fountains in Bayfront Park?"

Speed pulled over the research laptop kept in the lab. He pulled up a secure city database, and said, "Three. That's still two too many. Hey, H, check me on this: Brecks is a functional illiterate, right?"

"Yeah, that's right. So he couldn't read to see what fountain he was at, it would have been described to him," Horatio said.

Speed pulled up pictures of the three fountains, and clicked on the thumbnails one at a time to make them bigger. The first fountain was an arch, the water flowing down from the center. The second had a horse rearing out from the water. "I'm leaning towards the third one, myself." The last was a fountain in a classical style, with a woman wearing an ill-concealing shift. She was pouring water from an urn held under her right arm, her left hand supporting the neck. "Which do you think the bosses of the outfit would trust him to remember? An arc, a horse, or the one with the breasts?"

Horatio put on his sunglasses, and said, "Let's go."

"Of course, Brecks isn't the only one who likes topless women," Speed said, looking at the ground around the fountain. There were scores of footprints around the base, far too many to count, much less process.

"You can expect people to gather at a fountain, with expected things around it. Look for what shouldn't be here." Horatio said, shining his flashlight at the ground around the fountain. They had cordoned off the area, difficult to do with no officers around to help control the curious. Since they were here "unofficially" they couldn't call for their normal help. Horatio was taking the fountain itself, and the area around it. Speed decided to go a little further afield, look around the benches in the area, and around the trees.

"Horatio, I think I've found it," he called over. He was looking under one of the trees, seeing evidence that one person had stood there for a little time alone. There were no other prints around the tree, and it had a view of the entire fountain. There was sand in the prints, but it was whitish, not the typical yellow sand from the beach or playground. Speed collected the sand, and Horatio made a cast of the prints.

After Tim checked his watch for the third time in ten minutes, Horatio looked up at him from his position on the ground. "I'll run these, Speed. Go to the hospital, go get Dayna, I'll see you tomorrow. Tell her what's going on, but don't let her hurt herself by getting involved again. Tell her she'll be there for the bust, but until then she needs to be resting. If she gives you a hard time, tell her to call me; I'll pull rank on her if I have to," H said.

"That's rich, since we're all working off the department radar here. If we get caught, you won't have any rank left," Speed said. "Horatio, this job is your life. I'm younger, I can move on. Why don't I run with this?"

Horatio stood up and smiled at the younger man. "Thank you for that, Speed, really. But the most important part of my job, my life, is protecting you and the rest of the team. To get to you, they go through me. I can't guarantee you much in this life, but I can promise you this: as long as we're both alive, I've got your back. Now go get Dayna, and sit on her until tomorrow."

"How is she?" Horatio asked the next morning.

Insatiable. Wrapped practically head to toe in bandages and still wants to make love.

"She's fine. She was sleeping when I left this morning. I promised to call her if we find out the when and where," Speed said.

"We now know the where."

"We do? How?" Speed asked.

"The sand you found. I'm already familiar with it, from a case a few years ago. You remember the sniper?"

"Yeah, not exactly the kind of thing you can forget," Speed said.

"The next fight is going to be in that sniper's coral quarry."

"You're kidding. I guess it makes sense; the same things that made it good for the shooter would make it ideal for an arena. Plenty of cover noise, isolated, room for the spectators. How do we find out when?"

"We watch. We could go there now, but that wouldn't get us any of the watchers who encourage this filth. I want them as much as I want Adamson and Glithe. I've pulled the surveillance off of Adamson, and moved it to the quarry. Tripp is out there now."

"Tripp?"

"Yes, he can no longer work with the investigation, but he still wants to help."

"So now we just wait?" Speed asked.

"Wait and work evidence. This case isn't the only crime in Miami, just the ugliest. I'm picked up the trace from their cases, and sent them both home to rest up. I could use your help."

Speed nodded, "You got it."

A couple of hours later Speed closed his cell phone with a snap. Dayna wasn't picking up the house phone or her cell. As much as Tim would've liked to think she was still asleep, he found that hard to believe.

She's fine, she's shown you that. She's probably out running a marathon or something. Speed as running tests on the evidence Calleigh and Eric had collected on their cases. Putting Dayna aside in his thoughts he got back to work. I'll try again in a little while.

Speed tried several more times, but didn't get in touch with her. He was worried to the point of heading home and/or putting out an all points bulletin when she called him.

"It's lunchtime. You want to get something to eat?" she asked.

"That sounds nice. I was getting worried when you didn't pick up, have you been asleep all this time?"

"No, I've been running around all morning; I had some errands to take care of."

"Babe, you can't be doing that. You need time to recover."

Dayna laughed a little, "Honey, I'm fine. If I weren't fine they wouldn't have let me out of the hospital. And the pain meds they have me on are great. I don't feel a thing. I don't feel high, but no pain either."

Speed rolled his eyes, but she couldn't see it. "It doesn't matter if you feel it or not, your body needs to heal. Let's get some lunch, but then I want you to go home and rest. Please?"

"Tim, really ..."

"I'll tell Alexx ..." Speed played penultimate card.

"That is so cheating. Okay, fine, but I'm going to remember this, Timothy Speedle."

"Remember all you want, as long as you get some rest. I'll meet you at Valentino's?"

Speed came back into the lab after lunch to find Tripp waiting for him.

"I thought you were watching the quarry."

"Horatio relieved me. I had to come back to town to pick up my badge and weapon."

Speed's eyebrows rose. "They've lifted the suspension?" he asked.

"Dropped the whole thing. No time without pay, no internal affairs investigation, and they've given all of us their blessing in shutting this place down. When we give the word, we'll have all the back-up we need. Until then, though, we're keeping it under wraps. We don't want word to get back to Adamson and company."

"How did this happen?" Speed asked the older man.

"I dunno. We'll have to find that out later, because I think this is going down tonight. They were setting up lights and seating areas when I left."

"I'll be ready," Speed said. "Does Dayna know?"

"Campbell? You can't be serious, man. She just got out of the hospital yesterday. She's not in any shape to be taking these people down."

"You're right. I'm calling her anyway, though. I promised she would be in on the bust, and I'm not going to start lying to her now."

"Alright Speedle, I just hope you know what you're doing."

Me too.

It was Speed's turn to watch the quarry. He crawled the last few feet, keeping low to the ground and settled next to Horatio. Horatio passed him a pair a binoculars, pointing out the men working on the far side of the quarry. They seemed to be having problems with a huge tarp.

"That answers how they were going to light this place up and hope no airplanes would notice. They've got a damn circus tent they're putting up. No one from the air is going to see anything," Horatio said.

"I've got another question that needs answering," Speed said.

Horatio looked at him, "Just one?"

Speed looked at him, unsmiling. "Who are we going to arrest?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are we going to arrest the kids? They were taken from the streets, away from everything they knew, and thrown into a situation where they had to kill to survive. Some of them have embraced it, like Brecks. Added to that, most of them are underage. And if we decide to let the kids go, what are we returning them to? A life on the streets, where they could be alcoholics by the time they're fifteen? So I'm asking, who do we arrest?"

Horatio pulled his sunglasses off, and looked at Speedle. He looked disturbed for a minute, then nodded. "This is what we're going to do. We're taking everyone into custody. The DA can decide who they want to charge and who they want to set free. Some of these kids have families who love them, and want them back. As for the ones who don't have any family and aren't going to be charged ... they'll probably become wards of the state." Horatio saw Speedle's face harden at that. "I don't know what's going to happen to them, but we need to try and have it be a better life than they had before. First things first, we need to get them out of there."

"Two hours until sunset, probably a couple of hours after that they plan to start. We need to time this right: The maximum possible number of spectators, but before the first round starts," Speed said. "Why don't you take off, I'll call you when things start to heat up."

He was only alone for an hour. Dayna was the first to join him on his ledge, moving slowly despite her claims of no pain. She waved away his concerned look.

"The others are starting to trickle into position. We're being careful to stay unseen, so it's going a bit more slowly than I would like, but when the time comes we're going to be ready. Do you think the society people are going to fashionable late?"

"I'm sure we'll miss a few who aren't interested in the first fights, or some who just couldn't make tonight's fighting for some reason. They're going to wake up tomorrow and think they are the luckiest people alive," Speed said.

"I wonder how many of the ones we do pick up tonight will walk away from this scot-free. Money is the best defense." Dayna stared down at the pit, anger radiating from her, "Damn, but I'm depressing. To listen to me, you would think we weren't about to strike a blow for truth, freedom, and the American way."

"You forgot Mom's apple pie," Speed started to put his hand on her back, but stopped himself when he remembered she was still heavily bandaged. "The fallout is going to be an all new hell we're going to have to go through. The realist in you is just trying to manage your expectations. The alternative is to turn our backs – so we'll deal with the new hell."

They were on the ledge for hours, as the sun set, and the concealing tent was put up. The lights for the fight were turned on, and even from the ledge the two cops could hear the children crying. The cars started pulling into the quarry, disgorging people dressed for a night out. The people were dressed in everything from club clothes to tuxedos and evening dresses. Speed was surprised at how many women were walking into the tent.

"This is going to turn into a riot when we show up," Dayna said.

"I'm more worried about a stampede. This is going to get very ugly, with lots of potential for blood. Eric's taking car of disabling the cars, so everyone we deal with will be on foot. That'll help." Speed's adrenaline was starting to flow, his body tense with anticipation. When Horatio and Tripp scrambled up, it was almost a relief to know that every thing was about to start.

"Tripp, glad to see you're back on the job," Dayna said.

"You, too. You gave us quite a scare," Tripp said.

"Sorry about that."

Tripp managed a small smile. "Well, just don't do it again," he said.

"It looks like we're up. Let's go," Horatio said, taking the binoculars down from his eyes, a raising the walkie-talkie to his mouth. "Go. Go. Go."

The hardest part was the kids. Most of them looked at the raiders as saviors, crying and cheering. Not all of them, though. All of them were armed with knives, and bulletproof vests don't stop bladed weapons. Two of the teenagers methodically stabbed the cops who were trying to help them. They were both shot down, bloody knives dripping as they prepared to double team an officer who had his back to them.

Most of the spectators were armed with guns, and there was a scramble to get the children out of the line of fire, while returning that fire.

In the end, the majority of the casualties were police officers, and those mostly from the very people they were trying to save. There were no cop deaths, and the two fighters who were intent on killing the officers. The audience members surrendered, trusting to their lawyer to save them.

It was the fighters who showed the criminalists where the bodies were buried. Only a few remembered how to get there, but it was enough for the team to find the graves; there were over a dozen.

Alexx was called to the scene, and when she saw the number of bodies she called her husband. "Hug our kids, and don't expect me home tonight. I love you," she said. She corralled every transporter into almost assembly line efficiently. She did a preliminary investigation on each body, gave them the order to leave, and moved onto the next one.

While Alexx was working on the bodies, Horatio was busy trying to find who owned the land that had been used as a dumping ground.

"Speed?"

"Yeah?" Speed walked over to H, who had just shut his cell phone.

"This land belongs to Harrison Glithe. That's enough to get a warrant for him. Would you like to be there when we pick him up?"

Speed grinned at his boss, "Absolutely. What about Adamson?"

"Adamson is currently cuffed in a patrol car. He'll be the last one brought in, we need to keep him off paper for as long as possible. As soon as he's officially in custody his protectors will start pulling strings to have him released. I'm trying to delay that as long as possible."

Glithe was picked up, but was released on bail shortly thereafter. He had kept his mouth shut during the interrogation, and told the judge, "Any bodies being buried on my land was done completely without my knowledge." He was convincing enough. He did not, however, show up to represent any of his clients who were brought in during the raid.

Adamson was sitting in the interrogation room when Speed and Horatio got back to the labs. He was furious and smug, a difficult combination to pull off.

"Do you have any idea what you're doing? Your careers are over, do you hear me? Over. I've got friends in high places."

"No, actually, you don't," Dayna's voice came from the doorway. "Would you like to know about my day today?" She asked as she walked past Horatio and Speed and sat at the table, directly across from Christian Adamson.

"Why would I give a good God damn what you did today?" Adamson said, spitting the words.

"Because it involves you quite intimately. This morning I broke into your house."

Adamson froze, staring at Campbell. Both Horatio and Speed turned to stare at her.

Dayna continued, "I found your hidden room. And then I found your hidden safe in your hidden room. I had to call in some favors to get that puppy open. But in the end, everything you had over the brass – the photos, the negatives, the videos – everything you had, on every person on your little list, is now mine. I spent the rest of the morning visiting each and every one of them. They have all retired or resigned, effective no later than tomorrow."

Adamson had gone sheet white. "You can't do that, it's illegal," he managed to get out.

"You are absolutely right. If I were you, I'd call a cop. You should definitely press charges."

"You didn't have a warrant, everything you found is inadmissible," he said, grasping at straws.

"Adamson, you aren't being arrested for blackmail. I don't need any of your trash in a court."

"So that's how Tripp got his badge back," Horatio murmured to himself.

Dayna looked at him and nodded. She looked back at Adamson, who seemed to be having some difficultly breathing.

"Dayna, you shouldn't have done it. There are other ways, less dangerous ways. You've stepped on a very slippery slope," Horatio said.

"I know, and I wasn't going to do it. But then I got shot, Tripp got suspended, and Adamson was still killing kids. Sometimes you've got to fight fire with fire."

"We will talk about this later, Campbell, at great length," Horatio said, then he turned to Adamson. "Now that you're on your own, your only hope is to come clean. If you give us Glithe, I'm pretty sure the DA will be appreciative."

"There's no way these charges are going to disappear and you know it," Adamson said.

"What you need to focus on right now is survival. Giving us Glithe is the only hope you have of avoiding the death penalty, and you know it," Horatio said, throwing Adamson's phrase back. "He has, by the way, disappeared and left you standing alone. Loyalty has never been one of your strong suits, Adamson; don't try to learn it now."

Adamson had talked, to the surprise of no one. Glithe had gotten the audience, Adamson the fighters. The bodies were buried on Glithe's land at Adamson's insistence. Since he was being seen, all the risk was his. This was supposed to even up the risks, guarantee that they would back each other up ... but it didn't work out that way. Adamson placed under arrest for charges ranging from kidnapping to murder, and would only avoid the death penalty if Glithe was found and brought to trial with him.

"All in all, a good day," Speed said as he and Dayna walked to his bike, ready to go home. He had his arm over her shoulders, she had her arm around his waist. "Are you okay?"

"I will be. I'm taking a while off of work to heal up, and think about some things," Dayna said.

Speed pulled her over a little, far enough to kiss her head. "Think about what you did to Adamson?"

There was a hesitation before Dayna said, "Yeah. I crossed the line, Speed. I broke the law, the same law I've dedicated my life to. I don't know how I'll be able to live with that."

"You'll live with it because you have to, it's as simple as that. You can resign if you want, but I don't think you should. You're a good cop, no matter what you're feeling right now."

"What happens the next time it looks like we can't catch a criminal through the law? What do I do then, plant evidence? Horatio is right, I've stepped on a slippery slope, and I can feel the ground sliding beneath me."

"Okay," Tim stopped and turned Dayna towards him. "Here's what you're going to do. You are going to make me a promise. This isn't going to be the kind of promise you can break, or take back, or annul, or anything like that. I want you to promise me you will never do anything like that again, ever, no matter what the provocation."

"Tim, I don't know ..." Dayna stopped for a second, then said, "I promise you I will never go outside the law to solve a case again.

"If you ever break your word to me, not only will you and I be through, but I'll arrest you myself, and I don't care what justification you try to give me. And that's my promise to you." He put his arm back around Dayna's shoulders, and they started walking again.

"That was pretty good," Dayna told him.

"Thank you, I was rather proud of the way I handled that myself," Speed said, a small smirk on his lips. "I meant it, though. I've never lied to you, and I never will, so don't think this was just about making you feel better."

Dayna nodded. They reached the bike, but before they climbed on Tim touched Dayna's arm gently, "Hey, want to do something with me tomorrow?"

"I was planning on doing something with you tonight," Dayna said. She added, "What do you have in mind?"

"Apartment shopping."