Err... OK this chapter is so unbelievably rubbish, that I wasn't going to publish it. But my mum has convinced me that everything need to come in a set, so you need to have the whole of season three from Speed's point of view.
Horatio found a replacement.
A patrol officer, young, enthusiastic, called Ryan Wolfe.
He was on the scene of a murder when the CSIs arrived.
Horatio said he was thorough; he even asked Yelina to put in a good word about him.
She didn't need to really. He had been so thorough at the crime scene that Horatio was convinced quickly.
He had a perfect clean gun.
He was hired before the end of the day.
Which Calleigh was not happy about.
He was put on the case of her drunken father, who thinks he may have killed someone, but isn't sure.
Well, a sure way to get on the wrong side of Calleigh is to insult her family.
She and her father are so close. She used to spend half her life picking him up from some bar, but now he had been off the drink for six months. Apparently.
He came to her in the office and told her. Well, you can tell how well that went down. She was furious, but just barely managed to contain her anger.
She went with him out to his car.
She looked at the front bumpers and knew.
There was blood all over it.
"Take a drink." I looked at her in disbelief, even though she couldn't see me.
"A drink? But that's what caused this trouble in the first place."
"DRINK!"
Suddenly I understood.
She was going to make him turn himself in to Horatio and because she had seen him drink, it would ruin any drink test they did on him.
She talked calmly to Horatio who asked them about the whisky he could smell.
Calleigh explained that she had just seen him drink.
She had managed to keep calm throughout this and I admired her for it. I would have lost it ages ago.
But when Horatio told her that he was assigning it to Ryan Wolfe, she went mental.
"A newbie? They don't even know how thinks work in CSI!"
She knew she could have no involvement in the case, but her southern stubbornness wasn't going to let her stop trying.
She stopped in to see Ryan while he was processing her Dad's car.
She was standing well away, but Ryan told her to put her hands in her pockets.
I was stunned but Calleigh ignored him.
Makes a change.
I couldn't believe the cheek of him.
I would have hit him.
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After floating around the department for a few hours, I saw Ryan leaving, followed by Calleigh.
I was curious to see where they would be going together, but I knew it was something to do with the case (that Calleigh wasn't even working).
I was curious to see how the case ended, because I used to know Kenwall Duquesne.
Before I died.
Ryan drove Calleigh to a building site and followed the trail of evidence Kenwall's car had made.
It led him to a dead body.
Ryan was focussed on the body, but Calleigh was looking at some footprints in the dust.
She started to explain to Ryan how the footprints showed where something had been thrown.
She followed where she was pointing and walked to a large hollow pipe with Ryan right behind her.
He threw something into the pipe and walked off.
Calleigh was just about to enter the pipe when a large alligator crawled out and headed for Calleigh.
She immediately drew her gun and backed away.
"RYAN! RYAN!"
He didn't appear.
Calleigh was about to squeeze the trigger and kill the advancing reptile, when Ryan sauntered out of the pipe saying, "I took the back way."
Calleigh saw the alligator pick up what Wolfe had thrown earlier (which turned out to be a sandwich).
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This newbie needed some lessons.
For example, we have an unspoken pact about working with Calleigh or Alexx or Yelina.
We protect them.
Yes, they say they can protect themselves, but being girls, they are more likely targets.
We don't stroll off, doing our own thing, leaving whoever we are with at the mercy of an alligator!
Eric was going to have to teach him a lot about being a CSI.
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Calleigh and Ryan did manage to clear her father.
At the end of her shift, Calleigh drove him home.
She was about to leave when she saw Horatio.
She couldn't help remembering what he had said to her once about family.
"Sometimes it's difficult to have family." She had said.
"Sometimes it's more difficult not to." He replied.
I don't know how I knew she was thinking this.
I just did.
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As she was driving, she thought about what Horatio had said to her once and then thought of me.
How were my family doing?
I knew they were coping, but she didn't know them, so hadn't gone to see them.
I watched her lead her Dad up to her apartment and make the sofa-bed up for him.
Seeing her with her Dad made me miss my own family even more.
"Goodnight Daddy," she said as she turned out the living room light.
I had to find a way to communicate with living people again.
There has to be some way.