A/N: I know hardly anyone is reading this, but I'm going to finish it anyway. I altered the events of Double Cap just a bit, compressed some scenes and changed some others. Hopefully no one will be that upset with me. Disclaimers in full force and effect, meaning I own nothing but the plot and the original characters.
Six.
Valera was analyzing hair samples left over from the graveyard shift when alarms started going off in her head. The DNA samples from the victim were a bust. Nothing hit in CODIS. However, she got a hit from the strands of curly dark hair from the crime scene. She stared down at the printout, not really believing her eyes.
She ran the test again.
And a third time, just to be sure.
This is so freaking weird. Horatio is definitely gonna need to see this. Valera resealed the evidence envelopes, marking her notes and initialing the report.
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Horatio had just left Trace, after giving Speed the gun cleaning kit. He'd known the younger man had been having issues with the events surrounding the disaster of Dispo Day, and Tim hadn't reacted well during his deposition with IAB either. Despite IAB's rather improper line of questioning, Tim's reaction hadn't been appropriate. And no matter how much any of the brass complained, Horatio had no intention of docking his pay or suspending him. There was no way he'd be willing to lose his best Trace analyst, even for a day.
He'd overheard Calleigh and Tim in the hall the other day, and he'd known of the problem before either of them mentioned it. Although chaotic, it helped that his memory was damn good – it was part of what had helped him rise to the top of his field. Saying nothing to Calleigh about her reluctance to file her reports or to Tim about his negligence, Horatio had taken matters into his own hands.
His mind for once decidedly blank, Horatio made his way through the labs to his office. As always, there was far too much paperwork, so while he had some down time, he was going to tackle that.
Maxine Valera, one of his newest technicians, caught him just as he was passing DNA.
"Lieutenant?" He paused, waiting for her to catch up with him. "Have you got a minute?"
"Sure. What have you got?"
"Graveyard had a call out on one of the Keys." When he made a face, Valera shrugged. "Don't know why they got called in, except the scene was pretty brutal and the locals couldn't handle it."
"Okay, go on."
"Anyway, I got no hits on the victim. Nothing in CODIS, though I'm not sure if anything came back from AFIS. The good news is; I did get some stray hairs on the scene." She handed him the printout and Horatio stopped dead in his tracks.
"Are you sure about this?"
"Ran it three times just to be sure."
"All right. Thank you, Valera." He moved past her, retracing his steps back toward the Trace Lab. "Good job."
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Hector had them nearly barricaded in a small bedroom in the new safe house. They'd been here for two days now, and Sorcha was slowly going mad. She'd heard the order come directly from Gonsalvo himself, so she knew it wasn't Hector's fault they were locked away, but it still didn't help her mood any.
There was only so much she could do, stuck between the four walls. In addition to losing her mind, her temper was beginning to fray. Mairin was sleeping, her tiny form curled in the center of the huge bed, while Sorcha paced the short distance between bed and walls.
She had no way of knowing that Gonsalvo was making arrangements to move them. He was going to take them out of the county.
Time was running out.
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Another hotel. . . . Another wonderful collection of body fluids. Tim always stifled his instinct to reach for the sanitizers and anti-bacterial soaps when he left one of them. He hated hotel rooms.
Really, truly.
Thankfully, this particular hotel room wasn't the crime scene itself, merely a secondary site. Once he and Delko were done processing it, they only had to check the tape from hotel security.
After watching the tape twice, Tim found what he was looking for and paged Calleigh.
The instant she walked into the AV lab, he realized he hadn't thanked her – nor had he apologized. She slid into the chair next to him and Tim swallowed heavily. "Hey, Cal?"
"Yeah?" She turned toward him, a bright smile on her face. "What's up? You look so serious."
"Ah, that thing . . . I just wanted to say thanks."
Calleigh stared at him for a minute, eyes wide and uncertain, unsure of what to say when he spoke again. "And uh, I'm sorry I snapped at you." She continued to stare at him and his leg reflexively started shaking, showing how nervous he actually was, so Tim just mumbled again, "So thanks."
"Oh, Tim. . . . " Calleigh was at a loss. She really didn't know how to respond. He'd caught her so off guard with his thanks and then thoroughly floored her by his apology. She clasped her hand over his forearm and leaned closer. "You don't have to apologize. Just promise me you'll take care of it."
He gazed at her for a minute, his dark eyes intent on her face. "Okay."
They stared at each other, until Tim finally cleared his throat, saying, "So, this is what I've found."
Without skipping a beat, Speed launched into the details about the bogus pool attendant.
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Events had moved rapidly in the case of Gina Cusak/Gloria Tynan and Frank Carbone. Having the Feds step in hadn't made anyone on his team happy, although having them around had set off alarms with Horatio. Eric's discovery of the prints in Interpol also had him wondering, but because the Hannagan case was effectively stalled, Horatio pushed it aside.
Once the Cusak case was for the most part cleared, he put Delko to fishing for prints from the victim on Islamorada and had Speed double checking the night shift's results. Cause of death was a single gun shot to the temple, which spoke of a simple execution, but the post-mortem destruction was nothing short of torture – or revenge. Had the victim not already been dead, his injuries would have done the job twice over. Absolute overkill. And there were clues in the pattern of abuse – genital wounding, dissection of the mid-section, and tongue removal that all spoke of a crime of rage. Rafe of the up close and very personal kind.
He'd seen this handiwork before, he just wasn't entirely sure when. For now, though, Horatio had to focus his considerable attention elsewhere. Once the Feds were gone. . . .
Sorcha Hannagan and her plight were never far from his thoughts.
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Speed approached Calleigh in the hallway, not recognizing the man she was talking to, but noting her thinly masked tension. He shot her a look, then eyed the older man, nodding a greeting in his direction. Calleigh didn't introduce them, instead smiled a little too brightly and blushed.
It wasn't hard for her to pick up on his concern, since she knew him so well, but seeing him gave her the out she needed to escape having yet another long discussion with her father about his drinking. Breaking away from him, Calleigh made it to the front desk in time to see Paula hand off the Hannagan file to Tim.
"Speed, hold up."
He waited, flapping the file against his leg, the other arm carrying the box of evidence from the case. "I thought we had all the evidence?"
"Apparently not. Valera found some hairs from a scene on one of the Keys. We gotta add this stuff into the rest."
She stared at him for a minute, not sure she understood him. "From the Cardoso scene?"
"No. From the scene on Islamorada the night before last." He turned as she caught up to him, heading toward the layout room.
"Another crime scene connected to this girl?"
Before she could make another comment, Horatio broke in. "Seems trouble follows Miss Hannagan like the plague."
"Horatio, we've got three crimes tied to her and we still have no idea where she is." Calleigh was shaking her head, concern filling her eyes.
"The only good news in all this is that we know she's still alive."
His look encompassed the two detectives and he grimaced when Speed added, "We don't know anything about the baby, though."
"Let's find them before anything else happens." He opened the door to the layout room, letting them precede him, saying, "Lay it all out and see what we have. Eric's running some prints and he should have something shortly."
Calleigh got to work, writing it all out on the transparent board, making corrections as Speed unpacked the newest evidence.
"We have no idea when she got pregnant, but we have a general idea of when the baby was born." Calleigh pointed to the date of the crime scene at the Marseilles. "Based on an analysis of the DNA and other blood enzymes, we think the baby is no more than two months old. The amount of HCG and prolactin indicate a recent birth. My best guess is the baby's about a month old."
Horatio glanced down at the file, opening up the thick manila folder. "Were you able to isolate any placental tissue?"
"No. That's one reason why we decided to place the infant's date of birth about a month earlier. If she had delivered the baby later, we'd have some trace of that." Tim pushed the printout across the table toward Horatio, commenting, "And then there's the other contributions."
Calleigh made a face. "Our guy is gross and having sex just after she's given birth is pretty disgusting."
"More than likely it was non-consensual."
Before any of them could comment further, Delko entered the layout room, holding out a bunch of printouts. "I got it, H."
"What's that?" Calleigh moved toward the table, dry-erase marker in hand.
"Using Speed's brilliant idea to run the prints through Interpol, I checked for more of our unknowns."
Calleigh shot an unreadable look at Tim, who smirked in her direction. Her smile brightened for a second and she leaned over to whisper at him, "Nice going."
"So what have we got?"
"Prints from the Islamorada vic come back to a Jesse Lopez, a Dominican national. No warrants for the U.S., but he is wanted for questioning by MI-6 in connection with a botched gun deal between an unknown source and an extremist Islamic group based in Southampton."
"Wasn't one of the other guys wanted by MI-6?"
"Gutierrez, the drug overdose, which I'm beginning to think was staged came back with warrants in three countries. One here in the States and two in Guatemala and Honduras. Headless guy – Vanegas – comes back with a whole dossier from MI-6." Speed picked up pictures, securing them to the light board.
"All right, let's walk through the time-line." Horatio stood at the head of the table, staring down at all the evidence.
Speed blew out a breath, launching into the explanation. "Sorcha Hannagan went missing on November 18, 2000. Trail went dead until March 29, 2002 when traces of her blood and her fingerprints were found at the scene of the Vanegas and Gutierrez murder scene." He paused, pointing out the knife. "Only link between the two is the knife, which separated Vanegas' head from his torso."
"Four days later we have our latest crime scene. " Calleigh looked down at the photographs. "The only reason we got anything there is because the locals couldn't handle the scene, right?"
"Right. Valera found hair. We haven't gone through the rest of the evidence." Speed shrugged. "I haven't even started the sheets."
"That's our first priority. Speed, you and Calleigh work on that. Eric, I want you and Tyler tracking down everything you can find on our bodies. Pay particular attention to associates and recent travel. Horatio picked up the blown-up picture of Sorcha. "We have two people to rescue."