"What have you found, Dave?" Calleigh Duquesne asked as she made her way into the A/V lab with Kyle following closely behind her. She had tried, and failed, to convince the young man to rest and assured him that she would find him if anything happened.
He had given her suggestion short shrift and it occurred to her that Simon was right; the boy had inherited his father's stubborn streak as well as his eyes. Horatio's stubbornness drove her to distraction at times, she remembered with a sense of some guilt and sadness how the redhead had driven himself into the ground with his relentless pursuit of Toller and North, only collapsing to the ground in an undignified heap when both men had been arrested and taken into custody. As with the rest of the team, she had tried to no avail to persuade Horatio to return to the hospital but he had steadfastly refused until he himself had cornered and captured the evil Jack Toller.
She hoped that Horatio was clinging to that stubborn streak now, using all of the willpower he possessed until she could find him and bring him home. He was bruised, battered and beaten; she told herself that the one thing they would not be able to break was his spirit. She silently prayed that she was right.
Dave Benton cast a wary eye over the blonde-haired young man that had followed Calleigh into the lab, unsure of whether he should wait until the other man had left before showing Calleigh his findings. "Uh….would you like me to start?" he asked with uncertainty in his voice, shooting nervous glances at Kyle.
It took a moment for the reason for Dave's behaviour to register in her mind and she put it down to fatigue, she'd spent the best part of the 36 hours with little or no sleep. Looking at Kyle, she answered, "It's ok, Dave. He's already seen the footage."
The lab technician raised an eyebrow but said nothing of Calleigh's surprising admission. Turning his head towards the wall screen he pulled up the video, syncing it to play at the beginning. He cleared his throat awkwardly before beginning.
"The first thing I checked for was to see if the GPS device in the phone had been activated, turns out it had been disabled before the recording was made. The phone is a regular 'burner', pre-paid and unregistered so there is no way to track who it belongs to or where it might have come from. Because there has only been a text message sent to the phone I didn't have much luck in trying to triangulate where the text might have originated from."
"I've done as much as I can with the images, the more I try to expand them the more pixelated they become. My best guess is that Horatio is being held in a secluded building somewhere."
"What makes you say that?" Calleigh asked, her curiosity piqued.
"When I isolated the sound from the images I managed to pick up on at least four distinct sounds." He looked at Calleigh and continued his assessment as he turned back to the screen, bringing up four sound waves as he did so.
"I've played the audio over and over, this is what I heard on the first track," he said as he played it.
"That sounds like running water," she surmised as she unconsciously leaned her head closer to the screen in an effort to pick up as much information as she could.
"That's my guess too. Here's what I found on track two." Again, Dave played the audio clip for everyone in the room to hear.
"Is that a fan humming in the background?"
He nodded his head in agreement and played the third clip, watching for Calleigh's reaction to the voice of Gianni Malucci and the grunts of pain from Horatio as he was held and beaten. She closed her eyes as she heard his agonising scream and the sound of wood hitting flesh, the cracking sound of bones resonating in her ears.
Dave suddenly felt distinctly uncomfortable; he'd been forced to watch the images and listen to the audio of his superior's ordeal over and over during the course of the morning, finding it no less hard than the last time he'd had to sit through it, as he watched the expressions flit across the faces of Calleigh and Kyle.
"I think I might have found something that could help us narrow down where Horatio might be being held. Have a listen to this," he said as he cued up the final audio clip.
Both Calleigh and Kyle listened intently, the latter became the first one to speak and voice his frustration.
"So what?" he said, clearly frustrated at what he perceived as a lack of progress and a waste of valuable time. "All you've got there is some birds squawking, how is that going to help us?"
"Because that is the sound of a Black Rail," the lab technician replied proudly, his smile faltering as he took in the puzzled and unimpressed looks of his visitors. "You commonly find this type of bird in areas of dense vegetation and damp environments like rivers, swamps or lakes. They're notoriously shy birds but they tend to get pretty loud around mating season, that's probably why the cell phone picked up their chirping."
Calleigh brushed a lock of hair back behind her ear, her brain still unable to make the connection. "That bird could have flown from anywhere, Dave; it doesn't really help us very much."
Undeterred by his colleague's negative response he carried on with his analysis, "Would it help if I told you that the Black Rail is a pretty lame flier? These types of birds never stray too far away from home. My guess is that the building you're looking for is near or by a swamp, river or a lake."
"Miami is pretty much inundated with those kinds of things, it still leaves us with a pretty big search radius," Kyle chimed in, glancing from the lab technician and then back to Calleigh.
"But it's more than we had before, Kyle. At least we can discount a fair few areas of the county. Come on; let's put your Army training to good use and see if we can scope out possible search areas."
Although he didn't share Calleigh's new-found enthusiasm, he had to admit that they had just caught their first break. Spending time pouring over maps would help take his mind off of how much his father was suffering.
The two of them were just about to leave the room when the cell phone in question began chirping. Three sets of eyes followed its movements as it vibrated and moved across the table. Dave looked at Calleigh expectantly, waiting for her instructions.
She carefully picked the phone up and read the display, 'Withheld Number'.
"Be ready to trace the call when I pick up," she instructed Dave as he nodded in agreement.
With a sense of some trepidation she opened the clamshell phone and answered in as steady a voice as she could manage.
"What have you found, Ryan?" Natalia asked as she came back to her senses, trying to rid herself of the feelings of panic that her previous stream of thoughts had created.
He held up the dirt-covered object so that his colleague could get a closer look at it. "Do you know what this is?" he asked her excitedly.
Natalia was in no mood to play a game of 'twenty questions' with Ryan, she sighed in frustration and placed her hands on her hips. "I've got no idea, why don't you just spit it out and tell me?"
"This is part of a shell; I found it by the prop shaft, covered in mud and dirt. If we send this to Travers I bet he can give us an idea of where we might find a shell like this, it should help to narrow down the search radius."
Natalia felt the first embers of hope begin to glow within her, perhaps they were finally getting somewhere with their search for Horatio. "Any guesses what type of shell that might be?"
He looked at the object he was holding between his tweezers and studied it carefully before answering. "It looks to me like a mussel shell, if it is, it would mean that the SUV has spent at least some time in an area that is pretty densely waterlogged. I've seen these shells before, when I've been fishing up near the 'Glades."
"You think they might be holding Horatio there?" Natalia responded as she felt adrenaline begin to course through her veins.
"Don't get too excited, Nat. You can find mussel shells in any kind of freshwater, which still leaves us a lot of potential areas to search." He looked up and saw her crestfallen expression, "The best thing we can do is get this to Travers, maybe he can run a few tests and help narrow down which areas we should concentrate our search on."
Walter couldn't help the little laugh that escaped his mouth, after spending hours on the phone to the Miami field office of the IRS he'd finally found a solid lead to follow up on. He'd been passed from pillar to post and back again as his enquiry was diverted from one operative to the next, he'd almost given up hope of talking to anyone with two brain cells to rub together when a deep, yet feminine voice came on the line.
"CSI Simmons, how may I help you?" the sultry voice purred at him like a Cheshire cat about to devour a bowl of cream.
"Uh….that's correct, I'm looking for some information on possible suspicious cash withdrawals in the Miami Dade area. I was hoping you might be able to help me."
"Hmmmm, I'm sure I'll be able to...accommodate you. Why don't you lay it out for me and we'll see what happens."
And so the risqué conversation continued, after almost half an hour of double-entendres he'd finally got the information he required, and a possible date to boot.
The minxy IRS agent had informed him that three withdrawals had been made from the Dade Mutual Bank in downtown Miami a week previously. Trying to keep his voice level, Walter asked his new friend to email over the details for the account in the hopes that he would be able to track down the whereabouts of the Malucci's.
Buoyed by a possible new lead and his flirtatious conversation with the IRS agent he pulled out his phone and dialled a familiar number.
"Yeah, Tripp."
Even the grouchy response from the detective couldn't sour his mood. "Frank, I've got a lead on the money we found at Fuentes place. Fancy a little road trip?"