Chapter Ten

Three Red Hairs

I want to dedicate this story to my Dad, who passed away April 23, 2006.

Alexx sat down at the layout table, not certain her legs were going to get her too much further into the room. The two CSIs wearily pulled up stools to join her. As the trio traded glances in silence Alexx couldn't help but notice how absolutely exhausted the two young men looked, Eric in particular.

Poor babies, she thought, wishing she could coax the pair of them into the break room for a nap. Obviously neither one had bothered to go home last night and due to the parkade shooting, the fiasco at the hospital and the deep stitches decorating his face she knew Eric hadn't slept for thirty-six hours prior to that. He was no doubt running on less than empty. Ryan seemed pale and strained but coping. Alexx herself, exhausted from a two day emotional rollercoaster, had actually managed to sleep for a couple of hours just before sunrise.

"How did Horatio's mother die?" Ryan asked, rubbing his face with his hands as he waited for an answer he didn't really want to hear. He was trying his best to stay emotionally detached the way H would want him to be but these two were making it increasingly more and more difficult. What the hell was Alexx doing here anyway, acting like a CSI, when she should be in the morgue doing an autopsy or something?

Nobody's dead, Wolfe reminded himself sharply.

Alexx spoke in a monotone. "Horatio came home from high school and found her on their kitchen floor, covered in blood, her wrists wired together. I'm surprised he told me that much, it's all he ever said and I didn't expect anything more. He never spoke of his father. He hadn't been living with them for some time and it just never occurred to me that he was the one who…" The M.E. closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Okay. Let's move past it for now. Tell me about the blood in Calleigh's condo. It was Horatio's, am I right?"

"Yeah." Eric nodded, the angry scar on his cheek particularly prominent under the florescent lab lighting. "The blood was H's, all of it. We found chloroform on the second pillow, that's how he subdued Calleigh."

"We know how he got them out of the building," Ryan volunteered. "A condo on the fifteenth floor was expecting a furniture delivery and one of the elevators was locked out for them. A couple of eye witnesses saw what they assumed were movers using it in the morning. Not much of a description, just that they were dressed for the part and pushing a dolly."

"According to the super, though," Eric picked up, "the real delivery truck didn't show until lunch time. The dolly and some tarps turned up behind the building by the dumpsters and we got the make and model of a large delivery van from tread marks in the alley. The actual furniture guys said they were never back there. There's a state wide APB out on the truck, nothing so far."

Alexx nodded. "So Horatio's father had an accomplice?"

"Uh huh. Also with red hair, as unlikely as that seems. The lab report confirms it." Ryan sighed, wishing someone else, anyone else, had picked up the DNA results. "But there's something else here you guys need to see and you won't believe it."

Eric sighed. "Yeah, sure we will. Try us."

Ryan neatly extracted three sheets of lab work from the file folder and laid them out in a precise row on the layout table.

Three sheets? What the hell was it Wolfe had said earlier about the DNA?

Eric's brain shot into overdrive and he mentally kicked himself in the head for being an idiot who couldn't count to three. If the Y chromosomes from two of the red hairs were a perfect match to Horatio's that still left one hair unaccounted for. Since red was relatively rare as a hair colour he had made the natural assumption that the three that weren't Horatio's must have all come from the same donor. Delko had broken his own first rule. Assumptions were something a CSI wasn't supposed to make.

Wolfe stood up and cleared his throat. He had no desire to look at the lab work again and he felt shaky, almost sick in an odd sort of way. Maybe it was the last time he'd seen Calleigh that was doing it, remembering the big, breathtaking smile that lit up the locker room as she consoled him after a particularly crappy day. They had worked together for over a year now, rumours about the smile floated freely around the department, but that was the first and only time he'd been lucky enough to experience it for himself. God, he hoped it wasn't the last…

"…Does anyone else want coffee?" Wolfe broke up his own round of depressing thoughts with the sudden need to do something. When nobody answered he slipped out the door anyway, in search of three coffees completely devoid of anything but caffeine.

Eric and Alexx bent intently over the layout table, devouring the DNA results that Ryan had already seen. Horatio's name was on the first sheet, DNA obtained from the internal control sample they were all required to submit. Amery Caine's was on the second, DNA in this case having come from hairs found at the crime scene in Calleigh's condo. The Y chromosomes from the two samples matched, proving that Amery was Horatio's biological father.

Processing at the same speed two sets of dark eyes went on to the third page which had no name as yet and was simply labeled with the case number and the scribbled comment "Red Hair--Unknown Donor". While there were a few commonalities with Horatio's DNA it wasn't enough to draw any positive conclusions about a relationship. Alexx reached out and slid Horatio's results off to one side.

As they began to compare Amery's DNA with that of his accomplice the X chromosomes immediately drew their attention, the ones passed down maternally. They were more than just similar, they were a perfect match. Amery's accomplice was no longer entirely unknown. The two men had the same biological mother.

"Family affair," Eric muttered. "Damn. I didn't even know H had an uncle."

"God, he would have hated this," Alexx said softly. Tears sprang to her eyes as she realized what she'd said. "Is hating this," she corrected forcibly. "Is."

hc/hc/hc

Watching the steel door swing inward into the room Calleigh had absolutely no idea what to expect. Her imagination, which often tended toward the romantic, pictured an older perhaps even charming version of Horatio. The logical part of her mind insisted that this man, so different in character, would be a complete opposite physically as well. When Amery Caine strode angrily into the room he was somewhere in between the two.

What surprised Calleigh most was that he didn't look nearly as old as she'd expected him too. His hair, instead of being gray, was a dull red, longish and curling around his shirt collar at the back. His body was still straight and strong, he was Horatio's height, slightly underweight but wiry and not the least bit frail. The Glock 17 in his left hand, she noticed, was rock steady.

It was Amery Caine's eyes, though, that grabbed her attention and froze it like a deer in headlights. They were the same beautiful blue as Horatio's but there the resemblance ended. There was no need for a pair of sunglasses here, nothing vulnerable, nothing she could in any way touch. Yet somehow she had to.

Amery took another step into the room and hooked the door with his foot, kicking it shut behind him. Centering the Glock on Calleigh's stomach he quickly switched his gaze over her shoulder towards the bed.

"You killed him," she accused in a voice rough with emotion. Her words had the desired effect, pulling his attention back to her.

"Did I?" He raised his voice. "Sit up, Horatio. I know you're faking. Sit up or I'll shoot her in the stomach."

Nothing moved in the room. Calleigh held her breath hoping that more than one of them was bluffing.

Horatio's father yanked a pair of flex cuffs out of his jacket pocket and threw them at her face. Calleigh reached up and caught them neatly.

"Put 'em on."

"Afraid I'll hurt you?" she purred. God, how she hated him, not just for now but for everything she imagined had gone before.

"Cuffs. Now. Or I will shoot you in the stomach." His voice wasn't like Horatio's either.

"How subtle," she taunted nastily. He ignored her, his concentration again straying towards the motionless body on the bed. Calleigh moved immediately to distract him, shrugging a smooth wall of hair over one shoulder as she defiantly fitted the nylon flex cuffs around her wrists.

At least it isn't wire, she consoled herself, pulling the tabs until the cuffs were snug but not uncomfortably tight.

"Good. Now get away from the bed," he grated, jerking the Glock to indicate direction. "Into the corner. Move."

As Calleigh began to back up his eyes flicked towards Horatio again and the weapon twitched. Licking his lips nervously Amery again reached into his jacket pocket and Calleigh nearly lost it when he slowly slid out a coil of wire. Before she could stop herself her eyes flew to the yellow hook in the ceiling. Amery waited for them to come back to his face before he spoke, smiling. His teeth were yellow.

"We'll save this for later I think." He set the coil carefully on the blanket at the foot of the bed and smoothed his hand in a loving caress across it.

Oh, God. Horatio.

"Keep moving. Into the corner."

Calleigh continued to inch her way backwards away from the bed, desperately trying to come up with a diversion, something to distract him thoroughly so Horatio could make his move. Problem was she would prefer to create it without getting a bullet in the stomach for her trouble and with the cuffs on there was only so much she could do.

Calleigh jutted her chin out defiantly. "What did you do to him when he was little?"

Amery smiled again, quite possibly the coldest thing she'd ever seen. "You got it all wrong, sister, not that it matters now. The little shit deserved everything he ever got from Daddy."

"I doubt that."

"He was a little coward, always thinking his way out of things, always pretending to be something he wasn't." Amery's eyes darted sideways, running hungrily along the contours of the blanket. "Pretending now, Horatio? Let's find out." Without any warning at all he swung the Glock to the side and fired it.

Horatio's body jerked with the impact of the bullet, his head slipping slightly to one side as it stilled. Calleigh screamed, covering the lower part of her face with her bound hands. No one could have faked that, not without a glimmer of expression, not even Horatio. Blood began to creep through the fibers of the blanket.

Jaw tense, Horatio's father swore a string of obscenities. Robbed of one victim he viciously went for the other. Sweeping the coil of wire into his hand Amery turned his back on the bed for the first time, advancing on Calleigh.

Horatio raised his head for a quick look, snapped the blanket off sideways with one hand and lunged up off the mattress, knife in the other. He was gray, he was shaking, and he was the most beautiful sight Calleigh had ever seen.

The Glock wavered as Amery heard movement behind him and Calleigh launched herself, praying her reflexes were faster than the old man's were.

They had to be. They were. But not by a lot. He was pulling the trigger when she tackled him, bringing her bound wrists down, hard, on the wrist of his gun hand. The Glock went off, fluff and stuffing spraying outward in all directions as the bullet buried itself harmlessly in the mattress. Horatio half-charged half-fell towards them and the knife blade with all of his weight behind it buried itself in Amery's back.

As Horatio staggered and went down so did his father, falling forward into Calleigh. The combined weight of both men toppled her backwards and her head slammed into the hard floor, leaving her momentarily dazed.

"Cal…"

From where she lay pinned under Amery's body Calleigh turned her head and saw the barest hint of movement as Horatio struggled to say her name. She fought and clawed and shoved her way free, crawling across the rug to the man she loved. Her eyes skimmed over his body, frantic to find the gunshot wound.

It was a graze to the upper arm, bleeding but shallow. Faint with relief Calleigh squirmed her way under Horatio's upper body and just held him as best she could with the cuffs on. The knife wound had reopened. It was bleeding sluggishly but not gushing like before and for a moment she dared to hope that everything would be okay. But as Calleigh gazed into Horatio's eyes they were so glassy she couldn't get past it.

He's giving up. The horrified thought solidified quickly into a lump of cold certainty in her stomach. He saved me and now he's giving up.

"Hang on, Horatio," she pleaded, resisting the impulse to shake him violently awake or at the very least rock him gently. Instead Calleigh held him ever so still, wishing she could stop time as well as movement. "Please just hang on, okay?. I'm going to get help. It'll be all right, I promise."

He began convulsing mildly, she could feel the faint, surging tremors against her arms, and it was so hard to even think about letting go. But she had to move, and quickly. Horatio needed immediate medical attention and Amery Caine's accomplice could very well be just a few steps away down the hall.

"Never again," she promised them both as she slid her arms free and settled him gently back down on the thin layer of carpet. "If you wait for me this one last time I'll never leave you again, Horatio. As long as I live. I swear. Just please wait for me."

Calleigh placed a feather light kiss against his cheek and let her fingers linger for a long instant in his hair before crawling to Amery Caine's body where a quick finger on his throat verified that he was dead. She scrabbled hastily through his pockets then, hoping for a cell phone, and felt her heart jump into her throat when she actually found one. Yanking it out Calleigh immediately pressed 911 but nothing happened. Impatiently she squinted at the tiny display.

No signal.

Of course there isn't, she reprimanded herself. We're probably too far underground. Get a grip and get moving.

Calleigh tucked the precious phone into the waistband of her pajamas and pried the Glock out of the dead man's fingers. Instinctively she checked to make sure it was ready to fire, then listened at the door for a moment before cautiously easing it open. Turning to look back at Horatio she could just make out the slight rise and fall of his chest.

"Wait for me, love," she whispered, then slid her slender body cautiously outside to find out what waited on the other side of the steel door.