Chapter 13

Bidding farewell to Manon, Horatio speed dialed Alexx. At her pickup he said, "I hope you have another body bag or two."

Alexx' voice held dread, "Why?"

"Another one in the back yard. I'll meet you there with Ryan and the sonar machine."

"You think there's more?" The Medical Examiner's voice rose in alarm.

"At this time, nothing would surprise me."

The disgust of her "Huh!" was plain.

At the site, Manon's head sported a bandana to keep the drips of perspiration from her eyes. Her nose sparkled with the wet shine. Still, her face smiled as she welcomed the CSIs to her domain of the moment. "I am glad to see you all." Her eyes were riveted to Horatio as his were to her."

Realizing what the business was about, she brought Alexx to a recently excavated grave site near the wall. The body, not quite uncovered, was still plain to see. "We thought the earth was too recently disturbed and yet it wasn't nearly as new as the ones closer to the house. In digging we found this." She reached down and held up a metal object that looked like a cross. "This is a patriarchal cross of the type that is popular in Serbia. I think the home owner might have put it here for some reason."

Horatio shook his head ever so slightly as he considered what this could mean.

Alexx was all business. "Could you possibly get one of your men to help us dig about a foot wider around the perimeter of the body? I'll need the space to get as much of the dirt around the body as I can so when we get it dirt and all back to the lab, I can look for evidence."

Manon waived to some of her crew occupied in digging elsewhere outside the wall. "We also have to pull bodies with the surrounding dirt only our excavations are usually considerably older."

Alexx smiled briefly, "And without that new body smell I hope."

"From what you can tell so far, Manon, how long ago would you say this body was buried?" Horatio asked the question for Alexx' benefit.

Taking another look at what she could see of the remains, the depth and then the condition of the cross, she shook her head. "It is hard to say but as a guess, no more than twenty years, no less than twelve."

"Thank you." Turning around, he noticed that Dr. Hawk's Claw had already noticed Ryan with the sonar and was talking with him. Walking up to them he shook hands with the bone archeologist in greeting.

"The other day, we finished most of the immediate yard area here. Finding the body by the back wall was a great surprise. I suggest we finish a sweep in between the two areas." He held a fistful of brightly colored flags on stiff wires. "We'll mark anything we find with these."

Horatio nodded. "Good, I'll let you get to it."

Manon seemed to have finished her conversation with Alexx who was now at her van donning coveralls and gloves, and strapping on a tool belt which held brushes, trowels and small picks.

Manon was giving instructions to two men with shovels. When she seemed finished, she looked over at him.

He shyly looked away but didn't move. As he hoped she walked to him and stood with a questioning look.

"So," he started slowly, "about last night, I apologize again."

"Does this happen often with women who go to a great deal of trouble to get ready for a date with you?"

Before he had a chance to think he retorted gently, "When it's called off, do you go to bed so quickly even though ready for the date? You make it sound like I was planning for the call; perhaps you would have called the evening short knowing you had to get up early?"

Manon looked puzzled for moment and then bit her lips like she was hiding a smile.

Catching on, Horatio took a half a step back and also broke into a grin as he looked up through his eyebrows at her.

Gaily she said, "I think we just had our first fight."

"And came through it alright?" he asked.

She held her arms out where her sleeves were half rolled up and examined them. "No bruises here. I think I am in one piece. You?"

He playfully held a couple of fingers to one eye as if feeling for swelling. "I think I'll live. And we have known each other how long now?"

Putting a finger to one cheek, her elbow balanced on an arm across her waist she appeared to consider. Three days I believe. I think our future is bright."

"If we survive these battles."

They both chuckled.

"Excuse me a moment." Horatio reached for the softly buzzing phone in his pocket. "Yes, Eric?"

"I have news, H. I went to Beeks' home to see what more information I could get from Junior and Ms. Beeks. By sheer chance, Junior had just returned from Martial Arts practice wearing a black cotton uniform and canvas top shoes with hard leather edging. I had a photo of the mark on Lieutenant Commander Beeks neck on my phone and it looked like they matched. I asked him about the clothing and he wore it for the school team practice and their meets as well as at Zambreckski's place."

"Did you ask him if he wore it the night of his father's death?"

"Sure but before he could answer, Ms. Beeks turned into Mamma Bear Beeks pulling her cub to her chest and telling him to be quiet."

"Where are you now?"

"I'm outside so I could talk in peace. Calleigh is taking charge inside. When I suggested they come to the lab to talk there was another uproar."

"Bring them in for questioning, objections or not. Get Tripp to get a search warrant for the house and the back area near the water as well. I think you may have broken the case."

Eric's voice echoed his elation, "You think so H?"

"I do but remember, just thinking it's so and letting the evidence speak for itself are two different things."

"I haven't said a thing to Junior about the clothing. I'll just tell them we have to question them at the lab and then take his clothes for examination. He'll love the orange jumpsuit."

"Just plan on returning his clothes in case you're wrong, Eric."

"I know." The joy in his voice had died into reality.

"Also, while you're out there, bring in the neighbors who practiced the martial arts with Beeks, Soza and Zambreckski."

"Will do."

Horatio returned his phone into his jacket pocket and walked back to Manon who was surveying the activity in the yard. His lips held a sheepish grin.

"Work again?" There was no rancor in her voice now.

"Indeed."

"At least we're not on a date," she said with a twinkle in her eyes. Then she continued in a slightly more serious vein,

"How often do you get interrupted on a date as we were last night?"

"Once I was. The place was a building site with a tight schedule. They called me at one in the morning. The night shift was about to pour a cement slab when someone noticed the jawbone of a skull. I was required to come out with a full team of diggers and get as much as the skeleton out as time would allow. They had a truck of cement that was ready to set and so we had only two hours to work in. Oh, la, la, the date was really getting going nicely at that time too."

"Did you get the skeleton?"

"All except for four distal phalanges of the left foot, two distal, middle and proximal phalanges of the right hand and a knee bone."

"That sounds nearly complete."

"For the amount of time we had to work in, yes. We think the rest was scattered in smoothing out the area in preparation for the slab."

"Did you ever find out who he was?"

"She and no. The body had been buried for about seventy-five years. She had been stabbed and buried in a shallow grave in an area that was probably in the outskirts of Miami at the time. We think she might have been the victim of domestic abuse."

"But this isn't your regular line of work."

"Ah, mais non! I think perhaps four or five times in a year. Even a dig like this is rare. Most usually I am in the museum scraping detritus from very old bones and older tools of stone."

"Not from around here."

"This area seldom lends itself to preservation because of the high water table. No, I get ancient bones from sites such as Columbia or southern Mexico, even Egypt or cave sites in middle Europe. Once the bones are clean or at least exposed so viewers can see how they were placed in the ground, we set up dioramas to show how the people of the area lived and died."

While they talked, they watched Ryan pace the ground with Dr. Hawk's Claw. Every once in a while Ryan paused and he and the Doctor conferred then one of two colors of flags were layed out to outline the remains under the ground. By late afternoon, Ryan told Horatio and Manon that the red flags were the recent burials and the green ones were the ancient remains. There five sets of red flags and fifteen sets of green ones.

With the afternoon soon heading to the horizon, and the archeological team already putting up lights to get ready for a long night, Horatio agreed to allow Manon's team to keep the radar machine. After everyone signed the necessary paperwork for the loan, Horatio and Ryan headed back to the lab.

# # #

When the elevator doors opened, Horatio was met with an onslaught of noise and commotion. On one side Ms. Beeks was being held by her ample arms between two female officers as she shouted and struggled. On the other side of a pane of glass, inside an interview room, Junior Beeks, now dressed in an orange jump suit was pounding and shouting something in the direction of his mother.

On the other side of the interview section of the lab, both Soza and Zambreckski were asking about why they were being held in loud voices, each seeming to try to outshout the other.

Eric, seeing the flash of the pale face and the blond red hair, showed obvious relief at seeing rescue from a situation that resembled trying to hold on to an angry octopus.

Taking charge, Horatio instructed the women in uniform to take Ms. Beeks to an interview room that was out of sight of her son. Then he motioned to two men to take Soza and Zambreckski each to a separate interview room.

As the noise lowered notch by notch as each door was closed behind each occupant and Eric opened the door to the room that Junior occupied and told him to sit down and be quiet, everyone sighed in relief. The lab crew stopped jittering and clinking their test tubes, the officers' eyes stopped roving to spot where trouble might break out.

"Thanks, H, you came just in time."

"No worries. We learn as we go along," Horatio said gently. He remembered how many times he had been rescued by superior officers from freaked out subjects brought in for questioning when he was still in uniform. "Now, what have you got?"

"Tripp is tossing the house now with Calleigh. I just got here with these people about ten minutes ago. It took me a while because when I told her we were going to take them in to the lab for questioning she went into a faint on that couch in the living room," his face turned sour when he said that, "and then Junior went ballistic and tried to attack me. Two officers pulled him off and got him into a patrol car while two female officers and a man got helpless mama into another car. When I got here the situation was somewhat reversed with Mama Bear trying to get to her cub and him bleating for help."

He turned to the direction in which the two neighbors had been taken. "Then, the neighbors seemed willing enough to come down and throw in their two cents worth but the hubbub from Ms. Bear and cub seemed to set them off."

"Or they might have conferred on the way down Eric and decided being questioned was unnecessary to our investigation."

"We didn't have enough cars to bring them separately."

"Again, no worries. We'll never know what set them off and it doesn't matter. Who has the clothing?"

"Sam has it. He'll examine it all for any blood traces, compare the fiber we have with the clothing and the shoes and then the mark on his neck with the curves of the shoe sole."

"Lieutenant Caine?"

Horatio turned to the blond neatly coiffed female officer who was on day watch at the lab's front desk. "Yes?"

"Mr. Yoet Odobescu who is in holding is calling on line one. His daughter, Letitia, is on line two from a Child Protective Services facility. They demand to speak to you."

Looking over her shoulder, he answered, "I'll be there momentarily."

When the officer's place was vacated, she was replace by Calleigh.

"I thought you were at the Beeks' home."

"Tripp has it well in hand with several of the lab people with him. They know how to handle anything the officers come up with so I thought I'd head back here to home." She flashed a grin.

Eric's face went crooked as he half grinned. "Welcome to chaos."

Horatio tossed his coat back and placed his hands on his hips as he did when making a decision, he began, "Calleigh, Mr. Odobescu and Letitia are both demanding to see me. I think they want their American justice. Why not go downstairs to holding, get Letitia on the phone and hold a conference to see what you can do to calm the waters. Six more recent burials, including one that is between twelve and twenty years old, have been found so far. They are being brought in for examination. The older one was apparently marked with a cross in the style popular in the Serbian area."

"That should get some interesting reactions." Calleigh wheeled around and headed for the elevator.

"Eric, I'll take Mr. Souza and you take Mr. Zambreckski and we'll see what they thought of Lieutenant Commander Beeks."

Just at that moment, Ryan approached the pair having changed clothing after walking the yard with the machine for a good part of the day. "What can I do?"

"Why not go help Sam with analyzing the clothing Junior was wearing?"

Eric added, "I suspect that it has been washed once or twice since the night of the murder so blood might be hard to come by."

"Let's just hope she didn't use bleach."

Eric replied, "The black looks pristine so I doubt it."

Watching Ryan leave, Horatio reminded Eric, "Let's not waste any more than fifteen minutes on the neighbors. I just want a general idea of what they thought of Beeks."

"I'll meet you here in fifteen."

The time passed for both men very quickly. Neither looked like they had broken a sweat in their conversations with the neighbors.

"All I got was that Zambreckski didn't think Beeks was worth the time to waste much thought. He did say he felt sorry for Junior since Beeks took all of the kid's accomplishments as being due to his training. Then he added that it was more like constantly riding the boy. On the other hand he would knock him every chance he got, and then take any helpful criticisms others tried to give the kid and blow it into burning disapproval. He didn't like it but then he shrugged like he'd seen worse. I guess in the Marines he probably had."

"I got a slightly stronger feeling from Souza but only marginally. He thought Beeks was a jerk who thought too well of himself."

"So, let them go?"

"I think so. I don't get any kind idea either one had sufficient reason for enough animosity to bother to kill him and then dispose of the body."

"After that, shall we go tandem on Junior?"

"Let's see what Sam and Ryan have on the clothing first."

The two men, Detective Wolfe and the lab assistant, Sam Belmontes, were on either side of the table, each with a piece of clothing. Ryan was using several clay models of the back of a human neck with a plaster mold of the shoe, imprinting a part of the shoe and then checking it with a life size photo of the victim's wound. Sam was using a spray slightly more powerful than luminol which was best used for undiluted blood.

"Anything gentlemen?"

"I'm still trying to find just the right angle where the edge of the shoe hit. I'm sure it's this shoe but without an exact match, it'll never fly in court."

"Can you wait a moment Ryan? I want to turn down the lights." Sam's Latin background was reflected in his melodic accent. He turned the lights off around the table and stood with his back to the hall lights. He picked up an ultraviolet lamp and held it close to the bottom of the pant leg. "See there? I think it is blood. It is only a drop but still enough if it hasn't been diluted by too many washings." There was only the vaguest hint of a smudge glowing against the dark material. He turned the lights up again.

Eric showed an evil grin. "Junior isn't going to like you cutting a hole in his precious costume."

Sam grinned back. "Let's hope it doesn't backfire on us."

# # #

Horatio and Eric entered the glass paneled room where Junior was being held. He had only been there for about twenty-five minutes but he was as fidgety as if it had been several hours. He rose angrily as the two CSIs entered.

Horatio decided to be direct as possible to start out with. "According to the neighbors, you didn't get along with your father."

"That…that's crazy talk! I loved my dad. He was a Navy pilot!"

"What about him taking all of the credit for your Martial Arts wins? What about him double timing anyone who criticized something you did? Didn't he ride you pretty hard?"

"Well, sure but he did it so I'd be better."

"Why are you shouting? Who are you trying to convince?"

"We've got proof that you kicked your dad in the back of the neck," Eric chimed in. "Why would you do that if you loved him?"

Junior sat down heavily in the chair and dropped his face into his hands.

"We also found a drop of blood on your Martial Arts uniform. If we match it to your dad's DNA, that's more proof."

Even though both remarks were as yet not true, the fact that Junior wasn't denying them told them all they needed to know.

Gently Horatio asked, "Why son? If you were mad at him, why not just have it out in words?"

Raising his face wet with tears the lad declares, "Oh God! It all happened so fast. Dad rode me the other night all through practice at Zambreckski's. When we were coming back from his house, Dad said something, I don't even remember what but I just lost it. He was walking ahead of me a little I guess and I just did a roundhouse kick and hit him in the back of the head. He fell like a rock. Jeez, I thought I'd killed him! I picked him up in a fireman's carry and took him to the pier in the back of the house, and for some reason I took off his clothes and threw him in. I stuffed the clothes in the skiff we have docked at the pier. I guess I planned to toss them later or something, I don't know. Then I went to the house so I could think. It turned out that Mom had seen me. At first she acted all mad at me and said I had to fish him out of the water and to call the police. Then she changed her mind, like she always does and she said what's done is done. Then she called my grandparents, that's her mother and father. They came the next morning and started cleaning out the garage and the house like they knew he was dead already. She was giving them all of the stuff she got for wedding presents and only used for special occasions when the people from the Navy showed up to tell her about finding Dad in the canal. That was when she acted all faint and lay down on the couch like it was a big shock. Nobody seemed to notice that Gramps and Gramma didn't stop what they were doing. She should have said something instead of putting on that big act." His voice becomes steadier and more sure as he speaks until in the end, his anger has turned from his father to his mother.

Horatio made sure the boy finished speaking, finished blaming and then with his eyes flashed blue bolts of lightning, as he growled, "Now, here's the rest of the story; your father was still alive when he hit the water. You had hit him in the area of the spine that controls breathing. He still had minor control of his arms. As he struggled in the water that caused his chest to expand and this drew water into his throat. He died suffocating from the water in his mouth and throat. That's like suffocating on a gag in your mouth, not from water in the lungs which is what drowning is. If you hadn't thrown him into the water, had called for an ambulance, your father might be alive now."

"What? I didn't know! How could I have known? Mom didn't say to get him out. I was so mad, I couldn't help myself!"

Ignoring the young man's words, Horatio laid paper and pen in front of him and told him to write out what he had done and why. When that was done Eric yanked him to his feet and motioned the officer on guard at the door to come in and handcuff him starting the rhetoric, "You have the right to remain silent…"

Going to the room where Ms. Beeks was being kept, the men didn't bother to do much more than ask her about what she knew about the dish delivery to the air station where her husband reported every week. After giving a convincing story of innocence about it, they informed her of what they knew about her son injuring her husband and then what he had told them about her participation in Beeks' subsequent death because he had not been pulled from the water. After a moment of silence, she denied any blame, saying her son had said nothing to her except that her husband had gone for a walk. This time it was Eric who leaned into her face and described what it must have been like for her husband to choke as he struggled feebly with what little arm motion he had. She shrank back only to find his anger following her, hovering over her. At first she tried to faint, laying her face on her arms only to hear the rustle of paper and the soft clack of a plastic pen being put on the table and Eric's voice telling her to write the details of her confession. Raising her face up, she sighed and looked pitifully at Horatio but found only silent disgust in return. After putting her writing out to them they put her under arrest for being an accessory to the murder.