Note: I apologize for the dely in this chapter. I did indeed update on Friday. Obviously it didn't take...My deepest apologies for not noticing sooner!

Chapter Eleven: Hey, Mr. DJ

Tomorrow came and went. They didn't talk, much as Speed promised that they would. There just wasn't time for it. Following the slaughter of the family they were quickly bogged down with an attempted robbery that went bad, a home invasion that was anything but normal, and an unexpected death at a club. Horatio tried to assign the teams evenly, making it so that everyone worked with everyone in the long run. He didn't want any friction between his lab members. So he stuck Calleigh with Tripp and sent them to work the robbery. Delko worked the home invasion with Jake; which left Speed to work with Ryan. There were kinks to work out in the last two pairings; he kept a watchful eye on the boys to make sure that they got along. There would be no arguing in his lab.

--

Delko took a swab of the blood from the tile floor in the kitchen. He wasn't sure who it belonged to since the victim was in the upstairs bedroom sprawled across the bed with blood from a head wound. There was a chance that the blood droplets in the kitchen belonged to the person who killed him. But the house had been empty, the couple gone for a week in Africa. Breaking into the house and robbing the place should have been easy, a piece of cake. So why did the guy? The alarm had been disarmed and there didn't appear to be any broken windows. Either he knew the family and had a key or the guy was one hell of a cat burglar. Delko was thinking that perhaps the family had something to do with. They went away to Africa and their house gets broken into, things get stolen, and they collect the insurance money. He'd seen scams like it so many times before.

"What's with the look?" Jake asked as he walked back into the kitchen. Delko had no idea where he'd disappeared to a few minutes ago and he didn't really care, as long as the detective wasn't messing up his crime scene.

"Just sorting through the evidence in my head to get idea of what happened here," he replied. "Our victim died upstairs. All the blood is in the one room, with the exception of these droplets here. They're gravitational…whoever made them was standing."

"Maybe it was our killer."

Delko looked up at him then returned to studying the kitchen. "Heard that you and Calleigh went on vacation together…"

Had Delko been looking he would have seen Jake roll his eyes. "Can we not do this on the job?"

"Do what?" Delko asked.

"Look, I'm sorry if you feel like I'm encroaching on your territory but Calleigh can make her own choices," he explained.

For some reason Delko actually felt like laughing, instead he just smiled. "Dude, you think that I want to hook-up with Calleigh?"

"I've seen the two of you together. You can't tell me that it hasn't passed through your mind."

Delko shrugged, flipping off his flashlight with the satisfaction that there was nothing else of importance in the kitchen. "Maybe there was a time but I'm interested in someone else now. You have nothing to worry about from me, unless of course you break her heart in which case I'll kick your ass."

"Then we understand one another."

"I guess we do," Delko said. "Now about that body upstairs…"

--

Speed wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to work a scene with Ryan. He knew that the former patrol officer was a good investigator and an okay scientist but he couldn't keep from thinking that Ryan was supposed to be his replacement. Though he had no reason to actually hate the guy there was some residual resentment when it came to him. And that's why he got stuck working with Ryan. Horatio wanted all the wrinkles in the lab to be smoothed out. The biggest wrinkle being the one between him and the new guy. As they drove to the club he thought about letting Ryan have the lead on the case to see how the guy worked. It would give him a chance to offer advice from a senior investigator's point but without making him feel insignificant or lacking in knowledge. He had to learn to trust Ryan or there would be a lot of problems when it came to working crime scenes. They were supposed to have each other's back. If he felt he couldn't trust Ryan…

They pulled up outside the club to find a surprise amount of people outside on the sidewalk. Most of the clubs in the area didn't open their doors until around five so that they could take advantage of the nighttime partiers. He'd never heard of a club that was open while the sun was high in the sky. Threading their way through the crowd they were stopped momentarily by the bouncer. A flash of badges gave them entrance to the brick building. As he walked through the door he had a flash of a club fire a few years back. It caught him off guard because he hadn't thought about it in so long. But all of a sudden he felt like he was back there; the throbbing music, the dim lighting, the air filled with the smell of smoke and the screams of clubbers. He stopped in his tracks, his chest tightening. This was not the time or place to have an anxiety attack. He closed his eyes, concentrated on his breathing.

"Are you okay?" Ryan asked in a hushed voice. It was only the two of them in the dark hallway.

"Fine," Speed snapped without meaning to. He forced himself to swallow done the panic that was trying to take hold of him. The last thing he wanted to do was look weak in front of the younger man. Opening his eyes he started into the main room. Had anyone bothered to look at his hand they would have seen that he was holding his kit tight enough to turn his knuckles white.

Music with a heavy bass-line thrummed from the speakers mounted on the walls. Though there were no dancers on the floor it was still occupied. A young woman in a skimpy outfit lay crumbled on the floor, blood trickling out of the corner of her mouth. Instantly Speed thought about the possibilities of it being a combination of drugs and flashing lights. She could have had a seizure, her brain overpowered by both substances. Clubbers weren't always the brightest people in the world. He settled his kit on a table, slipping on a pair of rubber gloves. Grabbing a flashlight he began at the edge of the dance floor and began to look for clues. Without really coming out and saying it he made Ryan collect the evidence from the body. For a while they worked in silence, mainly because they couldn't hear each other with the music that seemed to be getting louder with every passing minute. It got to a point that Speed felt that he couldn't hear himself think. Frustrated he turned off his flashlight.

Ryan was looking at something, a fiber, which he held with a pair of tweezers. Speed's sudden motion caught his attention. "Find something?"

"No," he replied. "The music…haven't you noticed that it's been getting louder since we walked through the door?"

Ryan decided that a nod of the head was easier to read than yelling above the music.

"I'm going to see about having it shut off," Speed yelled, pointing toward the DJ booth that was in the corner on a slight rise. He headed toward it, his badge easily visible. The nearer he got to the booth the louder the music. He also began to sense that something was wrong, something was off. Maybe it was the lingering scent of something in the air that he'd smelled so many times before. His brain registered the familiar scent; there just wasn't enough of it to actually identify what it was. That was, until he stumbled into the disc jockey's booth. With a sigh he flipped off the music.

From below he heard Ryan say, "Now I can hear myself think. Thanks."

"Don't thank me yet," Speed was quick to reply. "We have ourselves another body. Someone killed the DJ."