26.
Horatio was barely out of Schell's room when he pulled out his sunglasses and, with both hands, slipped them on. His face was unsmiling, lips set in a grim line, as his mind turned things over and over. He was damned close to finding something, a key piece of evidence, if only he could set all the pieces in the very complicated puzzle that surrounded Schell Demereau into place.
With his long stride, he was in the parking garage within minutes, and headed for the Hummer. It didn't come as too much of a surprise to the early shift to see Horatio -- without bothering to gather any messages from the front desk-- simply walk in and disappear into one of the labs. These days, however, it was unusual to see him don a lab coat, collect several files together and begin laying out the contents of them on a huge light table. From the set of his shoulders and the look on his face, no one dared to disturb him.
The only one willing to do so was Calleigh.
Silently, she entered the lab, seeing Horatio standing back from the table, staring down at the huge array of photos and paperwork that he had set up in an order logical only to himself. He had his right arm across his chest, his hand trapped by the other arm as he silently chewed on the edge of his left thumb.
Calleigh raised an eyebrow in query, looking at the display, and couldn't help but notice that Seattle had sent down an incredible load of information, along with all the new photographs of the two victims of the BMW crash. Among all the photos, were the official shots of the victim from the first Seattle case to the current one. There were also shots of Horatio, just after being hauled unconscious from Puget Sound. He didn't move as Calleigh joined him...
"Is it me, or is the victim's hair really white?" She asked, breaking the silence. She glanced sidelong at him, meeting his gaze.
He nodded, dropping his hand to fold both arms across his chest and continued studying the layout. "Premature greying," he murmured.
"That's rare..." Calleigh commented. When he didn't reply, she cautiously asked, "Care to walk me through this?"
Another glance, then he drew in a breath, dropped his arms, and leaned forward to point out the various objects he had arranged in the left upper corner of the table.
"This is where it started..." he said, pointing out the pictures of the wrecked boat. "The boat was drifting into the path of a ferry and I saw the preflash before the explosion. That's when Miss Demereau was knocked off the boat into the water."
"And you dove in after her..." Calleigh murmured, with the faintest of smirks on her lips.
"Uh huh..." he murmured as he continued, ignoring the pictures of himself and pointing out the principal players in the case from the mug shots. "Randall Thorpe had hired his ex-security guard, Joe Miller, to rig the boat to explode next to the ferry in the hopes of taking out Miss Demereau and Paul Hirsch, a Seattle Forensics detective who was on the ferry with us during the convention. The attempt failed, she and I were rescued, and Paul Hirsch vanished shortly afterwards. The connection was that Paul Hirsch was onto a large forgery ring and he had recruited Miss Demereau to help him find the originals from among the forgeries."
He tapped Randall Thorpe's mug shots. "Thorpe told someone that Miller failed in his attempt to take out Miss Demereau and Paul Hirsch." He reached over and tapped a large blank space on the table with a long finger then moved on. He began pointing out the array of evidence in the upper right hand corner of the table.
"That lead to the attempt on Schell Demereau's life three days later at her studio." He explained the sniper postion in the park across the street from the studio, his bloody shirt as evidence, with a large quantity of bullets and now the matching rifle photo's, plus a second set of the same mug shots of Randall Thorpe.
"We now know that Randall Thorpe didn't just show up to see if his paintings were safe, he wanted to make sure Miss Demereau was dead. When he discovered she wasn't, Thorpe got careless." Horatio moved on to the third case set up in the lower right hand corner of the table.
"The following day, Joe Miller and Paul Hirsch were found dead in a warehouse known to store artwork in transit from one museum or studio to the next. It was here that Hirsch had brought Miss Demereau to help him identify original paintings; paintings that were being forged and swapped out. Miss Demereau identified Thorpe's business card in the office and matched it with her own. It was a big break in the case and again, Randall Thorpe was involved. Plus he had contacted someone who then ordered that Miller and Hirsch be killed." He pointed out the photo of the hand gun Calleigh had identified as the primary murder weapon of Paul Hirsch then tapped a third set of Thorpe's mug shots, and the blank space in the table again.
"Your investigation of Clete Parnell's case turned up the two weapons that were used in two of the Seattle cases," Horatio said. "Now we have Clete's brother Owen as a suspect in those cases." He pointed to Parnell's mug shots. "So far the only common denominator in this series of cases is Schell Demereau, the need to kill her, and artwork."
In the center of the table was a neatly fanned out series of photo's taken of all the artwork recovered the day Hirsch had been found dead in the warehouse. "The warehouse turned out to be owned by a false corporation that yielded nothing about its owners." Horatio murmured. Then he directed Calleigh's attention to the current case, immediately in front of them, in the left lower corner of the table.
Official shots of Lionel's corpse (in situ and at the morgue), Schell's injuries, the scenes from the wreck site and the BMW, held their attention.
"We are now on this case... Lionel Harrison is killed by a sniper we believe to be Parnell, and Miss Demereau escapes being killed again. We have Miss Demereau, artwork and now Parnell as the common denominators." Horatio mused. "We have part of a motive; someone wants Schell Demereau dead for her involvement in identifying stolen artwork and to be able to cash in on the escalated value of a dead artists' paintings."
"Which leaves the blank as the last denominator..." Calleigh added, reaching over to tap the blank spot on the table."What's the other part of the motive..." She glanced at him. "And who is behind it all? I mean, Randall Thorpe is obviously a pawn that was used and tossed aside. He couldn't have been the one to hire Parnell and anyway, when Thorpe tried to take out Miss Demereau and Paul Hirsch the first time and failed, the mystery person brought in Parnell..."
Horatio was only staring at the layout before him. "The other half of the motive must be money, and a lot of it. Randall Thorpe was in a lot of debt..." he muttered, more to himself then to Calleigh. "Financial debt..."
"You know, don't you?"
"But I don't..." he murmured.
"But you suspect someone..." Calleigh replied, giving him a slight smirk. "You have that look in your eyes."
"What I have is a puzzle that is not yet completed..." he said and lifted his chin to indicate the blank spot on the table."If we fill in that piece, we'll have the whole picture."
"Whoever it is has some money, can afford to hire a marksman with no ethics and wants an artist dead..." Calleigh mused.
"Mmm," Horatio mused, his eyes narrowing as he looked over the entire display again. He abruptly began to peel off his lab coat, turning from the table.
"Horatio?" Calleigh asked. "Are you not telling me something?"
"Nothing to tell at the moment, but when Eric gets in, have him call me. I'm going downtown..." he said and abruptly left the room, leaving Calleigh behind looking perplexed.
She studied the layout on her own and ended with a long hard gaze at the photos od Schell Demereau's unconscious, battered face taken just the day before. She knew Horatio had been waiting to speak to her... had the victim revealed something to him that they didn't know about yet?
It wouldn't be the first time that some seemingly insignificant fact would turn out to be the key piece needed to solve a case, and Horatio, knowing that fact, would be three to four steps ahead of them all in connecting it to the case.
It left Calleigh shaking her head; she could only admire his retention, knowledge and expertise...