Chapter 2

Twenty minutes of searching yielded Ryan no luck, until he spotted Delko making his way down the hallway with a file in hand.

"Eric, wait up!" Ryan called after him.

"Hey man, how's Spring Cleaning coming along?" the tall Cuban laughed.

Wolfe returned Eric's grin with a small smile that his friend immediately recognized as forced. He waited to see if Ryan would tell him what was bothering him, and he was not disappointed.

"Actually, that's what I was coming to talk to you about. Do you know where Calleigh is?"

"Yeah, she's with H out in Coral Gables. What's up?"

Ryan hesitated, not sure how to best broach the subject. He'd really hoped to do this with Horatio and Calleigh present as well. Instead, he was left all alone to explain the situation to the man who would take it the hardest.

"Uh, yeah." He started, shoving his hands deep in his pockets and staring at his feet for a moment. "I think you need to come with me."

"What?" He's seriously concerned about something, Eric thought to himself, wondering what could possibly bother Ryan so much in a storage closet. "The spiders scaring you?" he joked lightheartedly.

"No. I, uh, I found something you need to see." Eric was listening now.

"Okay, just let me drop this off in QD."

"Sure." Ryan followed Delko to the questioned documents lab, then led the way to the back of the same floor, all the while trying to think of a way to break this to his friend easily. Really, there was no easy way to do it.

Eric entered the locker right behind Ryan, letting out an appreciative whistle for the progress the man had made. "Damn, Wolfe, this room hasn't looked this good since I started here!"

Ryan just chuckled. "Well, it was so much fun, let me tell you."

Eric studied the man next to him with a practiced eye. "Something tells me you didn't drag me all the way back here to admire your handiwork."

"No, I didn't. Um, do you remember when the lab went through its remodel, how we couldn't find anything for weeks?"

"Yeah," Eric recalled, "The moving crews and technicians had shuffled everything around."

"Right. Well, half of it ended up in these back storage rooms."

"Spit it out, Ryan," Eric stated bluntly. He could tell when Ryan was stalling, and he was definitely stalling right now.

"Ugh," he sighed. "Fine. The very last things I sorted were these file boxes," he indicated toward the table. "They were stacked up in the corner around that old desk, and in the cabinet next to it."

"And—" Eric urged quietly, an inexplicable feeling of dread settling deep in his stomach. He knew that desk, that corner, and he could only guess where this was going.

"Eric, they belong to CSI Speedle."

The reaction Wolfe expected never came. Eric simply stood stone still, gazing numbly at the boxes on the lab table.

"I—I thought you, and H, and Calleigh should go through them," Ryan said softly. Still no reaction from Eric, so Ryan just waited. Three minutes passed by in complete silence before Eric moved from his spot, cautiously approaching the five boxes.

This was surreal. Five boxes. Five boxes are all that are left of Tim. Eric thought about him every day, but most of the time he kept his memories of his best friend locked away tightly in a drawer at the back of his mind; conjuring up thoughts of their time together hurt too much, even after three years. He knew that it would always feel that way.

Eric placed a trembling hand on the lid of the box closest to him, bowed his head, and closed his eyes. A sense of shame washed over him. Tim was his best friend, and Eric had allowed the last testaments of his existence to lie forsaken in a damn storage closet. He desperately wished Calleigh were here with him, because he wasn't sure he could do this by himself. On the other hand, Eric knew he had to do this now.

"Have you gone through these?" he asked with a dead voice that scared Ryan.

"Only to see what was inside. Once I realized…well, I came to find you."

Eric nodded, but offered no further response, so Ryan spoke up again. "Do, uh, do you want me to leave you alone?"

He wasn't quite sure what to do. The man before him had gone to a very dark place, and Wolfe knew from experience that no one should be left to fend for themselves in times like those. He also knew that his and Eric's friendship was still developing, and that talking about Speedle could be awkward at best, and lethal at worst.

"No, it's okay." Eric muttered with a sigh.

"Do you know why Speedle's things would be tucked away like this?" Ryan probed gently.

Another sigh. A thousand unbidden images had flooded Eric's mind. "Speed used to come back here to escape," he said distantly, lost in another world. "Listen to music, study his cases, work on random projects. He spent more time in here than he did in the lab."

It was strange to be talking about his friend like this. With the exception of Calleigh, Eric hadn't spoken about Tim Speedle to anyone since his funeral. Let alone the obnoxious, brown-nosing little twit that was Ryan Wolfe. Things had changed, though. Wolfe had turned out to be a good friend and capable CSI. More than anything else, Eric didn't want to be left alone in this stifling room with only painful memories of his dead friend to keep him company.

He reached for the lid and pushed it aside to reveal the contents of the box. He smiled wistfully as he spied the items inside, looking just as they had all those years ago. He felt like he had just taken a giant step back in time. Grasping the box in his hands, Eric carefully dumped everything onto the glass table.

Speed's cameras, hundreds of pictures, countless CDs. Eric knew Tim's ever-present MP3 player was safely ensconced in his locker five floors below. He grabbed a swivel chair and fell into it, sad nostalgia finally overtaking him.

Ryan watched it all, increasingly concerned that Eric might not be able to do this on his own. Maybe he should have waited for Calleigh to get back.

"Speed always had a camera ready," Eric remarked slowly as he reached for the video recorder. He unconsciously pressed the power button, and to his (and Ryan's) unending surprise, the camera sprang to life. Must run on a lithium battery, Ryan thought.

Eric froze. In his hands he held Tim Speedle's camcorder, and on the screen he saw a still-frame of the last video Speed ever shot. It was a picture of a radiant Calleigh, looking at something off-screen with a breathtaking smile.

The pain hit Eric like a ton of bricks and tears filled his eyes. 'You're the most beautiful woman in the world,' Speed was constantly telling Calleigh. Eric had never been able to be so candid with Calleigh, because their relationship was always tinged with something else that didn't exist between the other two. Some waters were better left un-tread, Eric had once told Speed.

Looking at the picture on the screen, Eric couldn't help but agree with Speedle: Calleigh was stunning. She looks so happy, he thought sadly, mourning the loss of the innocence they knew before Tim was killed. He also mourned the loss of part of that extra-special bond he used to share with Calleigh. Something broke between them three years ago, and it had taken Eric's own near-death for them to get their acts together.

Despite the trials and tribulations of the last years, Eric and Calleigh were closer than ever; their friendship had just taken on a new significance than the one they shared before.

Eric didn't want to think about that right now. He set the video camera on the table and moved to the envelopes. As soon as he saw the first few pictures of he, Tim, and Calleigh, however, Eric shoved the photos roughly back into the envelope and slapped them on the table. It was too late; the last image, one of him and Calleigh at a bar, deep in conversation, was burned into his memory. Eric knew precisely when that picture was taken: exactly one week before Tim's shooting. That night… No, not going there.

Ryan saw Eric lean against the table, his chest heaving, his back visibly taut, and he felt completely helpless. The only remarkable emotions Ryan usually saw on Eric's face were longing (even though he tried to hide it) and anger. Nothing he could say to Eric right now would make this any easier, so he stayed silently perched in his chair.

Eventually, Eric stood up once more from the table. His back was still toward Ryan as he said, "This isn't fair." It had only been a few weeks since Dan Cooper had resurrected Speed from the dead, and Eric had been forced to say goodbye for a second time. Three times was too much.

"Delko," Ryan began to say quietly, "I—I know I'm the last person you want to hear this from. But maybe this isn't such a bad thing?"

Eric whipped around to stare at Ryan like he'd grown another head. "What?"

"Think about it… You've just been given five full boxes of things to remember your old friend by. Dredging up the memories can suck, but at least you can remember the good times." He sincerely hoped he hadn't just crossed some unforgivable line.

But Eric only sighed and scrubbed the back of his head. "You've been spending too much time with Calleigh," he quipped with a sad grin.

Ryan laughed. "True. That does sound like something she would say."

"Well, she's a smart woman," Eric stated, mind far away. He turned back to the table, leaning on his hands to survey everything. He knew that Speedle spent hours upon hours at the lab in his free time, messing around with the A/V equipment. By the looks of the number of jewel-cases in this box alone, Eric realized he'd only seen a fraction of his friend's work.

"He loved to take pictures. Always shoving his damn camera in our faces," Eric commented, more for the sake of remembering than for Ryan's edification. "Ha! And the videos—H put him on dumpster duty for a month for one of his little films. He had a gift for it." His voice grew quiet at the end, and he stared down at his hands.

"What could he have done to warrant an entire month of dumpster diving?" Ryan asked in amusement.

Eric chuckled deeply and shifted to look at Wolfe. "Speed was always editing together bits and pieces of footage to create short films. Some of them were… I don't know, just really artsy. Some of them were freakin' hilarious."

Eric's smile grew wider as he recalled some of Tim's stunts. "For about two months, he went around with his camera, secretly recording H. Then he pulled it all together into a grand masterwork: a rolling montage of Horatio's love affair with his sunglasses. One after the other."

Ryan gaped at Eric. "You're kidding."

"Nope."

Both of them rolled with laughter. "You know it's probably here somewhere," Eric said thoughtfully through his chuckles. "He made an extra copy before H confiscated his."

And they set to look searching...