A Mother's Love
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters. (Thank God!)
Author's Note: I apologize to anyone this offends, but this is my take on the show. Please do not use any bad language to describe your reaction to this story.
The sun had set beneath the luscious Miami skyline just hours ago when the pleading call came for all day shift CSIs to come to the lab.
Tension was on an all time high as the team grouped together in the ballistics department, afraid of the memories which would surface if met in any other place. Calleigh had skipped out on a very hot date at the newest club, Hamm's, just to get a crack at the suspect which awaited the team in the interrogation room. Ryan had done the same. And Delko needed not to rush over to the lab, for he was already there; was working hard into the night on this particular case, the case which haunted him and the rest of the lab. It was Eric who knew first of the treachery contained in the Miami Dade Crime Lab. He was the first to make the connection. Was the one who first matched the DNA. Was the one who first got to interrogate the suspect.
Eric had slid over to the door which led to the room where the suspect was being held. For a long time he just stood there, at the door, unwilling to move. He was getting his thoughts together, focusing all of his negativity on one spot. Silence was all that could be heard as he prepared for what was to come to be the most tense moments of his young life. And after a long while, he was ready for whatever was to come.
Picking a first question for the culprit wasn't the easiest task. Where to begin? Eric Delko really had to focus in on this suspect, though he couldn't bring himself to actually face him. He rather stared at the wall opposite him while once again collecting his thoughts.
"Where were you the night of January 2 around 5 pm?" this seemed like an intelligent question to begin. The suspect could simply answer with his whereabouts and Eric could get out of the room and send in another CSI to coerce the confession. He simply could not deal with it now. However, the suspect would not answer with simply a location. He would not answer at all. Eric had entered the room with a solemn look displayed across his face, which now turned to a grimace. He had to get the suspect to talk, could not give up, could not let down the lab as he had let down his previous girlfriend of six months, Calleigh.
His attention soon turned to Calleigh; it seemed easier than dealing with the suspect. So it was to be that in the next ten minutes, Eric Delko and the culprit would sit in silence. Eric fixating on his rollercoaster of a relationship with his coworker whom had blew up in his face. He and Calleigh were no more, not after he slept with someone else. But they had been fighting before, it was nothing new. But o how he wanted her back, how he longed for her sweet aroma around him once more----
His thoughts turned abruptly back to the harsh reality of the situation at hand.
"Answer me!" he screamed, taking out his frustrations on the flabbergasted suspect. "Answer me now! Don't I deserve that much?" Eric screamed, desperation seeping through his otherwise flat facial expressions. The suspect cupped his head in his hands, seemingly weeping with remorse. This was a turn in emotion. "Answer me!" Eric again cried, desperation again in his voice, desperately wishing the DNA test was flawed, that the man seated in front of him was not in fact guilty. His desperate pleas would not be answered.
"I….I didn't mean…to...to…disappoint……..you." the words trickled out of the suspect's mouth as water would out of a leaking faucet.
"Didn't mean to disappoint me? Ha," Eric exasperated, "O no you didn't DISSAPOINT ME! I knew the minute you stepped into the lab; you were nothing but a coward, a bastard, a PRICK! It's not me you've disappointed, its Calleigh and Wolfe and Speedle….up there," With that Eric glanced upward, out the window to the sky. "It's them who you've disappointed, not me," a single tear he let slip through his eye before recovering.
With that, Eric was out the door and heading on his way to the Ballistics lab, where there would be comfort and understanding, where the rest of the team was waiting. He was not the one who could coerce the confession out of the suspect. It was not his time.
"How'd it go?" a young eager Calleigh questioned.
"Go? It didn't go!" Eric yelled at his previous flame, immediately regretting it. "God I cant do this…" Eric broke down sobbing. "Wolfe, you go get it outta him, we need this confession to indite."
"Look umm…I wouldn't feel right you know I haven't known him for all that long…I umm….I wouldn't know what to –" Wolfe stammered, making excuses for not putting himself in the same tense situation which Eric had just exited.
"I'll take a crack at him" Calleigh stated on her way out the door.
Calleigh flew out of the ballistics lab and down the gruesome corridor to the interrogation room. She flung her sweating body threw the door and pulled out photos, which she then placed on the metal table, containing 19 children who had been molested, stabbed, and buried in a mass grave in the Everglades. They lay there, unwanted and unwelcome to the already tense situation. They would not be claimed by the suspect, for he maintained his innocence.
"How can you just sit there so poised and diligent? Have you no remorse? Look at these pictures. Look at how sad the children look. LOOK AT THEM. How can you just sit there like nothing is wrong? Something is wrong! You're not blinking! Not responding! Emp…" Calleigh pleaded, searching for an answer.
"You…. see bodies' everyday….everyday you deal with death and sadness….and it doesn't faze you anymore…you're blind to it all." the suspect leaked out the carefully chosen words.
"Things like this…they faze me. They make me wonder why. Why would somebody want to do this? How could they force a child, a CHILD, into….intercourse? How could you?" Calleigh squeaked out the crucifying words, unafraid of the repercussions.
"It's an urge for some people; they can't help but feel compelled to get what they want. And they can't help wanting it. It isn't a crime to want. To scratch that itch is a necessity for some. We all fantasize about certain things, for some it happens to come in small packages. And it happens in different ways too, the children want it too, they may not know it but they crave it as much as," the suspect coughs, "molesters do. It's a need for both and the job of the adult is to fill that need."
"A child does not want their virtue stolen! That's all in the molesters head, in your head!" Calleigh picks herself up and exits threw the door, she cannot take much more of the suspects need to avoid her questions.
Alex knew first hand what had been done to the children which the suspect was accused of torturing. She had been present at all nineteen of their autopsies. Their little bodies all wrinkled and grotesque. She had the pleasure of comforting the disheartened parents; telling them that their little one was gone from them was a crushing task but what was harder still was washing their blood soaked bodies and witnessing all their pain flow down the drain. For the amount of pain they suffered was irreproachable. She knew all the nicks, cuts and bruises each and every child had accumulated; she may not have known their names but she had memorized each lesion with certainty. The small wrists with indentations matching that of twine. The stab wounds 6 inches deep serrated into the flesh. Each victim was different in their own right yet the same in others; they had all had the same irregularly shaped bruise on their legs. Alex had attributed it to the watch band or ring of the culprit which had pressed into their flesh as he performed his unmentionable acts on the child. Yes it was true that she knew of the horrific deeds done to these children but what she didn't know was who could have done them. For she was not informed of the suspect, left out of the loop as she almost always was. But not this time, not when it was this personal. She was out for blood. And as she headed out of the ballistics lab and the CSIs were headed in, she stole something, something only found in that lab which would prove very valuable.
Meanwhile, Calleigh was back in the ballistics lab where the team had made a home. When she returned from the ordeal, she came immediately there, stopping briefly at the coffee stand with her new love, Ryan stood. Together they had made their way back to the lab, where they stood now in an embrace not yet willing to let go.
"Its ok…its ok….its ok." Ryan cooed to his love, uplifting her spirits.
"I looked up to him Ryan, I cared for him. I…..I just cannot believe he is capable of something like this." Calleigh confessed.
"I know…….I know." Ryan again comforted her.
Eric Delko, the jealous ex, walked into the lab just as the two love birds kissed passionately on the lips. It still pained him to see the two of them together, though it had been over three months since he had slept with another woman and consequently destroyed his and Calleigh's relationship single handedly. He was still mad at her. Mad that she could find love again when he knew, she was the only one for him. He thought that she felt the same way, then she started dating Wolfe and the two seemed happier than he and Calleigh had ever been. He couldn't stand to look at them, Ryan with his hand caressing Calleigh's back. It was rude of the two to express their love so freely in front of him. They were doing it on purpose, he thought. They knew he was there, watching them. They knew and they were gloating. This thought sickened him the most. Without a moment's hesitation, Eric Delko drew his weapon and fired.
The gun went off and cops came running by the hundreds to witness Eric Delko lying on the floor, dead. Blood was everywhere. In the twenty years of the Crime labs existence, had there ever been a crime scene in it. Well now there was one. At first assessment of the scene, two shots had been fired, it was obvious. One, striking the aorta of Eric, immediately killing him and causing massive blood loss had exited the barrel of Calleigh's gun. The other, shot by Delko entered the chest of Ryan Wolfe.
Police surrounded Ryan, encasing him in a bubble of support. At the center of the bubble, was his one true love who held onto his hand with such strength that it was the last feeling he ever had, the pulling on his hand, the warmth of hers against his.
During all of the chaos, Alex snuck in to the interrogation room, she wanted to see who all the fuss was about and in a single glance all the thoughts roaming around in her head were reduced to one.
"Horatio?" she breathed, everything coming together now. The many children he had brought around, claiming to help them, claiming to be their support-their visits making complete sense now. He was the child molester, the one who had kidnapped, raped, and murdered her little son.
"Horatio?" Alex wept, memories of her sons painful last days flooding her thoughts. Of finding her sons favorite Miami dolphins hat at the grave site with no matching body.
"Horatio…..how can it be? Did you know that little boy was my son? Never mind that….how could you destroy the lives of all of those innocent children? I just don't understand. Make me understand Horatio." Alex had wanted desperately to understand the mind behind the ghastly murders. That was before her son was taken. That was before now. Now all she craved was revenge.
She drew out the weapon she had stolen from the ballistics lab and placed it gingerly on the table, pointing the handle toward the man that had murdered her little boy. "Horatio, look at what you have done to the lab. All this chaos is because of you. Eric is dead. Wolfe is on the way to joining him. And Calleigh killed a man. But your most horrifying act by far was killing all of those children. Horatio, you took my baby boy and I can't live with that. With you still here and him gone. How can you live with that? I will never understand why you did that, why you tortured twenty human beings to the point of death. How can you live with your sins? Horatio, tell me where my sons body is."
"Why should I Alex?" Horatio challenged.
"Because I know you were once a good person and whatever drove you to commit these horrible acts was not your fault. Now tell me where my son is and I will forgive you." Alex gave Horatio the option of life or death and It just so happens he chose death.
"He is in the coroners van. In where you keep your bodies. I didn't know he was yours when I took him I swear." Horatio explained.
"Ok…….Thank you Horatio." Alex exits the dreadful room, gets to the door of the crime lab, takes one more glance around, and leaves the lab forever.
The door to the van opens without a hitch as so often it has done before. She glides in and drives ever so slowly off the premises with her son, leaving Horatio with the gun in his hands as a shot rings out, killing him instantly, all of the children have received their revenge.