Back to the Beginning

Note: In case anyone is wondering, I actually read about the thing with the table in a book of forensic cases. I thought it was kinda funny and I thought it was a pretty ingenious idea.

Valera walked into the evidence lab carrying trace results for Ryan when something flew at her head. She ducked and turned, seeing a mobile hit the opposite wall and explode followed by Ryan's voice swearing venomously. Several people walking past stopped and stared.

She poked her head around the door. 'Trace asked me to send this to you,' she said.

Ryan spun and glared at her. 'Thank you,' he said from between gritted teeth.

She blinked. 'Something wrong?' she asked, grinning.

'Oh yeah, everything's great,' he said sarcastically.

'Oh, so you just throw your phone at the wall for fun, do you?' She smiled. 'Lighten up, Ryan. What's wrong with you?'

'Family,' he spat, snatching the results from trace off of her. 'This the results from those fibres I found on the victim?'

She nodded.

He swore.

'Something wrong?'

'They're plain red cotton,' he said angrily. 'Nothing unusual there are all.' He crumpled the paper up and threw it on the floor.

She decided to leave him to it.

As she left, she bumped into Alexx. 'Don't go in there,' she advised the ME. 'Or you'll get shouted at.'

Alexx raised her eyebrows. 'Never seen Ryan this mad before,' she commented. 'Sounds like it's just a bit more than family problems, doesn't it?'

Valera shrugged. 'All I got out of him was some four lettered words and a phone thrown at my head.'

'What's with throwing things at your co-workers?' Alexx asked Ryan.

He looked up angrily. 'What?'

'What did you throw your cell at Maxine for?' she asked.

He relaxed. 'I'm sorry, Valera,' he said. 'I just got a call that really annoyed me.'

'I could tell,' Valera said. 'Try not to throw your phone, next time? It's not something people appreciate.'

'Yeah, yeah,' he muttered as she left.

Alexx watched Ryan for a moment. 'You want to talk about it, sweetie?' she asked.

He didn't look up. 'There's not much to say, really. And this is not the time or the place.'

'True. I'm here if you want to talk,' she said.

He smiled, tiredly. 'Thanks, Alexx.' He rubbed his eyes. 'I guess I'd better get back to work.'

Alexx peered at him. 'Ryan, when was the last time you slept?'

'Slept?'

'You must be familiar with the concept,' she said dryly.

He shrugged. 'I'm not sleeping too well at the moment,' he said. 'It'll pass.'

She nodded, not convinced but decided not to comment right then.

It was the next day, late in the shift.

'Any leads on that murder case yet?' Horatio asked.

Ryan had been hoping he wouldn't. 'Nothing,' he confessed. 'Or nothing that anyone is admitting. I can find people with motive, all with alibis. Nothing I can crack, either. There's no one that I can match the DNA we found to, nothing. I'm stuck, Horatio. I hate to admit it, but I'm stuck.'

'All right,' Horatio said in his usual calm manner. 'Think about this, Wolfe. Is there any evidence you've overlooked, anything you might have missed?'

'I don't think so.'

Horatio sat down. 'Take me through everything, Ryan. Just talk me through the case.'

Ryan closed his eyes, thinking intently. 'Victim is named Moore, a wealthy nightclub owner. It's a new nightclub, doing well. It's been under investigation but so far they're found nothing that they can prove. He has no major debts, no gambling problems, no drug problems, no divorce or maintenance to pay. There was money left on him, money at the scene where he was killed.'

'So the motive isn't robbery.'

'No. He was beaten to death, we still haven't found the murder weapon. A cylindrical object, Alexx says. I got some impressions off of the skull but can't match it to anything. He definitely died of head injuries. Both the wife and the daughter have alibis.'

'What about the security camera at the club?' Horatio asked.

'They show someone, probably male, going inside about an hour before the victim was killed. He was wearing a baseball cap, a scarf and a big coat. We couldn't get anything from that. He walked in, there wasn't a car. The owner had sent the security guard there home, the club was closed that night. No one seems to know why.'

'Evidence on the victim?'

'Red fibres, plain cotton. Probably from a shirt. They don't match anything the wife or daughter own.'

'What else?'

'There's broken glass, looks like a struggle. No useable fingerprints because they're cut glass. The DNA on them matches the victim and an unknown donor, which matches the DNA under the victim's fingernails. He fought his attacker.'

'What else?'

'There's the unknown DNA from blood on one of the glasses. The glass was already broken because the blood is on the jagged edge.'

'So the victim lashed out with a broken glass. Anything else?'

'There was a void in the blood spatter. The killer will have been sprayed with blood, if we can find them then we might get some trace off of their clothes.'

'Did you finger print the door handles?'

'We found a few fingerprints, from the security guard and the victim and the cleaner. The security and the cleaner are in the clear, and I think the killer must have worn gloves.'

'Right. So our problem is finding the most likely person to have murdered him.'

'Once we find a lead to our killer, we might have some luck. So far, everyone who had something against him is cleared. All have alibis that I've verified.'

'Right. So, where do you go from here?'

'Home,' Ryan muttered.

Horatio bit back a smile. 'Wolfe, where do you go from here?'

'Back to the beginning,' Ryan said slowly. 'I go back to the beginning.'

Horatio smiled. 'Back to the beginning.'

A couple of hours later and Ryan's optimism had faded with incredible rapidity. He had gone over the original crime scene again and again and so far had come up, once again, with nothing.

At least, until he went into the office again.

Instead of looking around for the millionth time, he stood beside the desk and took a long, long look around. He ignored the disturbance from the murder, the struggle that had occurred. Rather, he took a look around at what the office would have looked like when Moore was alive. Neat. Tidy. Ryan grinned despite himself. Almost obsessively tidy. Everything was carefully arranged, books and files arranged in either height or alphabetical order. Pictures on the walls hung straight, not a single one crooked. Everything had its rightful place. And everything was in its rightful place.

Or not.

The desk was slightly skewed. He crouched down, turning on his flashlight and examined the floor. There were indentations in the carpet where the table legs rested, but the desk wasn't set into them like it should have been. He pushed the table slightly and felt it shift. That was odd. It wasn't as heavy as he had expected. Either it was made of cheap wood that had been dolled up to look expensive, which was possible, or the owner had deliberately made sure it was easy to move, which was also possible.

Ryan sat back on his heels and considered. The skewed desk might not have meant much to anyone else, but it was bothering him. Mr Moore had clearly been a very neat, very tidy person who liked things to be exactly where he wanted them. Ryan could appreciate that, and he figured that he himself would not shift a desk over unless he specifically wanted it shifted. The fact that it might simply have been a result of the scuffle was most likely, but Ryan's intuition was knocking and he was going to listen to it. There was something about this that he had read in another case file. Something about a table.

He lay down flat on the floor and shone his flashlight over the foot of the desk leg, not entirely certain what he was looking for, only that he would know when he found it. There was nothing, so he moved to the second table leg and this time he saw something. There was a very small crack in the wood at the end of the leg. He tapped the leg with his torch and was rewarded with a vaguely hollow sound.

He grinned. That was it. He had read a case study about a CSI who had found incriminating evidence about a suspect hidden inside a cunningly hollowed out table leg. A plug had been fitted into the foot of the leg and papers had been rolled up and placed inside. The suspect had moved the table to hide the papers and had not put the table back exactly where he had found it and the CSI on the case had noticed.

It took a few minutes for Ryan to shift the table, find the plug and prise it out, after photographing everything, probably more times than he needed to. He was again rewarded with a rolled up cylinder of papers inside which he pulled out and photographed. He unrolled them and found that they were several pictures of Moore and a young woman in a series of – compromising – positions, and she was most definitely not his wife. The dates scrawled on the backs of the photos put them at having been taken recently.

Ryan smiled. The case was beginning to look more hopeful.

'You're accusing me of murdering my husband,' Mrs Moore said coldly.

'Oh, you haven't been accused of anything yet,' Ryan said. 'I'm just asking.'

'Asking me if I murdered my husband. The answer is the same as before. No.'

'Oh, I know you didn't kill him yourself,' Ryan said. 'The DNA at the scene – the DNA that isn't your husband's – is male. No female DNA. That doesn't mean you didn't have anything to do with it. Far from it.'

'Why would I do that?' she demanded. 'What makes you think I had any motive to kill my husband?' She gave him a furious glare.

'Because you found out he was cheating on you,' he said.

She stared at him, the colour draining from her face. 'He was what?' she whispered.

'Cheating on you.' Ryan considered her thoughtfully. 'Let me tell you a story,' he said conversationally. 'You find out your husband is having an affair. You're hurt and angry. Maybe divorce isn't an option – too long, too messy. But if he dies you get everything, right? All the money, the club, the house, the cars, everything. Sounds better than half, doesn't it? So, angry and hurt, you decide enough is enough. Maybe you hire a hit man. Yeah, that sounds likely.' He pushed a sheet of paper across the table to her. 'We managed to get a warrant for your financial details. Says you went shopping a week ago, bought yourself a heap of expensive jewellery. Eight thousand dollars worth, to be exact.' He watched her a moment. 'Which you then took back, in exchange for cash. That's a lot of money to spend on jewellery you take back two days later, isn't it? Unless the money wasn't for jewellery. It was for the hit, right?'

'I didn't even know he was cheating on me,' she said quietly.

'Then explain the money.'

'It was for my daughter. She's in college. She needed the money for equipment and books.'

Ryan laughed. 'That's a lot of money for just college things, isn't it?'

'She has expenses,' Mrs Moore said. 'I was helping her out. Her father wouldn't give her anymore money. You can check on that.'

'Oh, I will,' Ryan said grimly. He glanced up and saw Horatio outside. 'If you'll excuse me,' he said and went outside.

'You found something then, Wolfe,' Horatio said.

Ryan nodded. 'Some photographs. The wife is still denying murder, although we've found a motive now.'

Horatio nodded. 'Eric is doing some research in trying to find out who the woman in the photographs is.'

'She might have motive,' Ryan agreed. 'I need to check her story. She might be telling me the truth.'

'Good, you do that,' Horatio said. 'Get the woman he was having an affair with in.'

'I'll tell her she's free to go, but we might want to speak to her at a later point,' Ryan said.

'How did Ryan find those photographs?' Alexx asked.

Calleigh smiled. 'He found them in the table leg.'

Alexx stared at her. 'In the table leg? What possessed him to look inside the table leg?'

'He noticed the table was skewed,' Calleigh said.

'That could have been the scuffle.'

'He said that, but he also said he just wanted to check. And he found them.'

'Maybe OCD can be beneficial in a job like yours,' Alexx said.