Here ya go another chapter...a long chapter ;) I want to thank everyone who has read and reviewed and given me the encouragement to continue. I like to physically write or sketch out a chapter first then type it up, adding all the details and scenery so sometimes it takes me a little longer to get chapters up even though the story is basically mapped out already, so thank you for being patient.
I know I am taking a lot of time on the case itself but I really wanted to include the entire team and for the story to be the entire package. I don't think any other stories I write will be quite this case detailed, I just felt like this story called for it given the plot line.
On a side note, for those asking me to continue "Sins of the Father," thank you for that encouragement. I will try to get back to it. It was, at the time, being co-written with someone, who did the sex scene fyi, so I would have to continue it on my own but also without any of the original notes because it's been so long since I looked at or touched it and I've had several computers since then. I'll need to re-read the story as it's posted, make some notes and then decide if I have the "bug" to finish it. No promises, but I will give it a look.
Also, what happens in this chapter is what I would've loved to have seen happen after Backfire but clearly it didn't happen. ;)
Enjoy!
XXX
Ryan sighed as he and Walter walked around Alicia Morrison's near immaculate apartment, not entirely sure what it was they should be looking for given there was no proof the woman had made it home the day she disappeared. Certainly nothing seemed to have been moved or touched since then, the police seal on the door was still intact when they arrived.
"Ok, so Delko found a foreign hair and semen in Alicia's car that doesn't match anyone known to the be associated with this case."
"Right but consensus was she was having an affair so the hair and semen could belong to that person and it's just not someone she worked with."
Making their way into Alicia's bedroom, Walter checked under the bed while Ryan moved to the bathroom, both men totally unsure what they should be looking for.
Finding nothing unusual under the bed, Walter looked across the room from his position on the floor and spied the door to the closet. Pulling himself up he made his way across the room, "So if you were having an affair and you didn't want your fiancé to find out evidence of it when he came over, you'd hide any evidence of another man, like photos or letters."
"Who writes letters these days?" Ryan asked as Walter walked past him as he exited the bathroom
Walter rolled his eyes, "clearly you've never written your girlfriend poems or left love notes around for them."
Ryan remained quiet
"Yeah, right. Anyway, if you were having an affair you would hide the evidence of it somewhere your fiancé would never think to look…"
Walter tried to emphasize his point with his hand as his other opened the door to the closet. It took a moment, but realization finally dawned on Ryan.
"Right, you'd hide it somewhere or in something your fiancé would have no interest or need to look"
"Exactly" Walter began to rummage through the bottom of the closet looking for any type of vessel where Alicia could hide the evidence of an affair she didn't want Elliott White to find. Moving things around, he couldn't believe how many pairs of shoes the woman had. "What is it with women and shoes?" As he rummaged through the closet, he came across something curious, a lone shoe box hidden at the back of the closet. It was the only shoe box in the closet. All of pairs of Alicia's shoes were laid out either on a rack or the floor but none of them were in shoe boxes, so it left Walter wondering what made this one box so special and why was it shoved all the way at the box of her closet. "Hey Wolfe, check this out."
Walter rose to his feet, taking the lid off the box he looked at Ryan with a eureka type expression. Moving to the bed, Walter poured the contents of the box onto the bed.
"What do ya got?"
"Letters, lots of them" he replied, spreading the letters, noting none of them had envelopes, out on the bedspread, snapping photos of them as he did
"I guess you were right, people do still write each other love letters."
As the two men sorted through the letters and began reading them it became clear to both men that the letters were definitely not love letters.
"Alicia Morrison had a stalker."
"And for a long time too, some of these letters go back over a year before her disappearance."
Ryan began reading one of the letters aloud, "I love watching you as you sit behind your desk, your legs crossed just enough for your skirt to give me a glorious view of your long elegant legs. The way you bite your lip when you are working through something turns me on…..there are more graphic descriptions of Alicia and what he would like to do to her but I think you get the drift."
Walter nodded, pulling out his cellphone, "yeah I get it. I also get that these letters tell us whoever was stalking Alicia Morrison was someone she worked with"
"You calling Horatio?"
"No Natalia, she and Frank are at Alicia Morrison's office."
XXX
"Really? Ok, great thanks." Natalia said before hanging up the phone and rejoining Tripp and Alicia's boss David Daily who was clearly irritated to have the police back at his office and was letting Frank know it too. It was bad enough the negative publicity that came along with having an employee disappear and to have the world find out you were having an affair with said employee, well David Daily's real estate business, as well as his personal life, took a big hit.
So he wasn't the happiest or most cooperative person at the moment
"You people asked me all these questions about Alicia months ago."
Tripp practically growled at the man, "Well now we're asking them again, Mr. Daily." Frank's patience for rude, stupid, or annoying tended to be low on a good day, but today of days with a cop missing and that cop being Calleigh, his patience was non-existent.
"Mr. Daily were you aware that Alicia had a stalker?"
Frank had a small look of surprise while Daily hung his sheepishly. Natalia leaned in toward Frank, "Walter just called, he and Ryan found a shoe box in hidden in the back of Alicia Morrison's closet full of stalker letters."
Now Frank's lack of patience turned to anger, "Well, Mr. Daily?"
Daily nervously ran a hand through his hair before settling it at the back of his neck, "Yes, I was aware. There was an employee who worked here in the maintenance department, Sean Reitler was his name and he paid quite a bit of attention to Alicia."
"There was no mention of this when Alicia first disappeared why?"
"That's because he'd been fired close to eight months before Alicia went missing."
His explanation hadn't really answered Frank's question about why Sen Reitler's name never came up during Eric's original investigation which only made Natalia think there was more to the story.
"Why was he fired?"
"It was discovered he'd been videoing women in the office without their consent. A video camera was found hidden in the women's bathroom and Alicia was the one who discovered it. He was seen leaving the women's bathroom, when he shouldn't have been in there to begin with and it made Alicia suspicious so when she snooped around and eventually found it."
Frank was done. "And you didn't think this was an important piece of information worth sharing with us five months ago?"
"Like I said it happened almost a year before she went missing and—"
"And you didn't want any lawsuits because I'm assuming, given you've lowered your voice that you didn't tell any of the women in the office a camera had been discovered, did you?" This man was making Natalia's skin crawl at this point.
Daily shook his head, "Alicia was discreet in her discovery and letting me know what she found. I confronted Reitler with the camera and information, he never denied anything by the way, and I fired him right then. I never disclosed who found the camera or saw him leaving the women's bathroom."
"This was something we should've been told five months ago given it directly pertained to Alicia."
"I know, I know. I was just trying to protect my reputation, I have a lot of high-profile clients and the attention it would've brought, I wanted no part. Had it been anyone but Alicia who found the camera I would've said something."
Natalia scoffed in disgust knowing the man used his affair and influence with Alicia to get her to stay quiet, "Why didn't you call the police Mr. Daily? Filming someone without their consent is a crime in the state of Florida."
"I just….I didn't want the attention or scandal the whole thing would bring. Reitler was headed for the door anyway, the guy was constantly late, he did a poor job, his behavior towards women in the office, Alicia included was creepy. I just figured quietly firing him was better than making a thing of it."
Natalia rolled her eyes while Frank looked like he was ready to hang the guy from his ankles, "Do you still have Sean Reitler's home address and contact information?"
"Yeah, I'll….I'll get it for you." Daily stuttered before hurrying to his office and calling his human resources department. "Sheila, can you bring me Sean Reitler's personnel file please, thank you."
"So, if this guy Reitler was stalking Alicia before he got fired and somehow figured out she was the one who found his hidden camera which led to him getting fired…." Natalia speculated
"It might've sent him over the edge, but if Alicia wasn't a fan of the guy, so do you think she'd willingly let him anywhere near her?"
"Well, no, not intentionally"
Just then Daily reappeared with Reitler's contact information, "Here you go" he said holding out a folded piece of paper with Reitler's info scribbled on it toward Natalia, "will you let me know how this all turns out?"
Natalia couldn't hide her disgust any longer, leering at him before snatching the piece of paper out of the man's hand and turning to leave without another word. Once she and Tripp were outside she let her frustration and disgust be known, "that guy turns my stomach. If he had told Eric about this guy five months ago, then maybe…" She let her sentence trail off as she snapped open the piece of paper.
"I'm a believer in karma, that jackass will get his."
"I believe that," she replied as her eyes scanned the information, "says here Reitler's last known was Century Garden Villas in Kendall. Kendall, isn't that where they found Alicia Morrison's abandoned car?"
"Yeah, it is," sighed Frank, pulling out his cellphone, "Horatio, we got a name and an address for a possible suspect. A guy named Sean Reitler."
XXX
Back at the lab Horatio joined Eric in AV where they ran Reitler's name through their database to see if he had any priors. He didn't have a record, but his employment records showed he was currently employed at Miami-Dade College and the school required all employees, especially those working within infrastructure to be bonded, have background checks and be fingerprinted, which meant Reitler's prints would be on file with the school.
"Let's contact Miami-Dade and get a copy his fingerprints and see if we can match them to any unknowns we have from the case."
"Guy like this has to have done this before, the hidden camera and the stalking, how does he not have a record?" Eric pounded the tabletop keyboard a little harder than necessary as he was unable to hide his frustration any longer. Maybe if David Daily hadn't been more concerned with protecting his image and reputation he would've told him about Reitler six months ago and Calleigh might not have been kidnapped.
"Because like Mr. Daily, everyone just pushed him off on someone else because they didn't want the negative publicity."
"Damn it!" Eric snapped as he slammed his hand down on the table
"What is it?"
"Look where his apartment and Miami-Dade are H," Eric pointed to the map on the screen, dropping pins on Reitler's home and the college, "now look where we found Alicia's car," the distance between all three locations couldn't have been more than three, maybe four miles at most.
"This is our guy, Eric. I want to know everything there is to know about him."
"Ok." Eric replied, before glancing at his watch, six hours to go. Just hang in Cal, I'm coming. He thought to himself as he dug into Sean Reitler, pulling up anything and everything he could about the man.
Hearing the elevator ding, Horatio looked up to see a young woman in her mid 30's step off the elevator. With he exception of her hair color, hers was brown not blonde, the woman was a near spitting image of their victim.
"Is that the victim's sister?"
Eric followed Horatio's gaze toward the reception area, "yeah, that's Tiffany Morrison, I called her, said we were following up on Alicia's case and might have some new info." Eric eyed the young woman, she appeared to be a little nervous, maybe a little anxious too, yet overall she had a determined demeanor about her. She also kept looking at her watch as if she had somewhere to be and the action made Eric look down at his own and recall how he'd called her over two hours ago. He found it a bit strange that for someone who had been so demanding and obsessed about finding her missing sister, she hadn't come down to P.D. right after receiving his phone call.
Horatio could see the apprehensive look on Eric's face, "something wrong?"
Eric shook his head, "it might be nothing, but I called her over two hours ago and you'd think for someone who's been so consumed with finding her missing sister…."
"She would've come down sooner" finished Horatio
"Yeah"
"Ok, I'll talk to her, you dig into Sean Reitler"
Tiffany adjusted her watch on her wrist while spying Eric out of the corner of her eye, the tension clearly visible on the man's face and body. Part of her felt horrible for the methods she'd employed in order to get him to refocus his attention back on her sister's case but she was desperate to know what had happened to Alicia. At the same time, part of her didn't feel bad, he should've done a better job five months ago and clearly all he needed was some motivation to do so because he'd called her two hours ago saying they'd discovered some new information regarding Alicia. "For your sake, and that woman's pray he found the evidence needed to lock Elliott White up," a voice in the back of her mind admonished. Especially with the state you'd left her in."
Blowing off the voice Tiffany spied her watch again, watching the seconds tick off until the automatic update for the website she'd set up before leaving would go into effect. Calleigh Duquesne had less than six hours of air left and her situation was clearly beginning to have an effect on her, both mentally and emotionally and Tiffany wanted Eric Delko to see that.
XXX
Two Hours Earlier…
The silence was deafening. Well, not totally as the ringing in her ears from her head wound was loud and clear. In fact, the pain in her head was starting to be joined by a tightness in her chest and Calleigh couldn't tell if it was her ARDS rearing its ugly head as the air inside the box became staler and thinner by the hour, or if the tension and anxiety of her situation was beginning to take its toll on her. If the dizziness and lightheadedness she was feeling could be attributed to the concussion she no doubt had or something else.
Either way, the physical consequences of being locked inside a small box buried underground were starting to take a toll, as were the mental ones.
Calleigh prided herself on having a strong mental fortitude and an ability to keep her emotions in check in high stress situations, as the daughter of an alcoholic and child of a broken home she'd had to, even from a young age. But this situation, being locked inside a box, buried alive with only hours of oxygen left, no amount of mental or emotional fortitude could protect her. Most people would probably feel fear, fear of the unknown, fear of death. Not her. Besides knowing death could come at any time given her line of work, and it was often thrown at her over the years, she'd already died once so death wasn't something she feared.
No, what she felt more than anything at the current moment was sadness and anger. Sadness at all she would be leaving behind if she didn't make it. What her death would do to the ones she loved and cared about, to Horatio, to her father, she knew it would destroy him, and of course most of all what it would do to Eric. He'd already lost so much in his life and to know what her death would do to him, especially given the circumstances, it led her to the other emotion she was feeling, anger. And she wasn't so much angry at her captor for all this. If anything, she felt sad for them that life had led them to take such drastic measures. No, she wasn't angry at her captor per se.
What she was angry at was being cheated. Cheated out of a future, a future with Eric. Heck, even cheated out of a present with Eric as they were finally in a good place, no a great place. After everything they'd been through as friends, then lovers, then, well she really didn't know what they were for a time after he'd first left CSI back to lovers again, to finally where they were now, the cusp of their future together.
Calleigh felt the tell-tale stinging sensation of tears forming as she thought back to the ultimate turning point for them, the secret they told themselves they'd have plenty of time to wait before sharing it with their family and friends. Pinching her eyes shut, feeling a lone tear slide down her cheek she brought back the memory. It had been just under two weeks since she'd been released from the hospital after her second bout with smoke inhalation. After she'd died.
XXX
Flashback
There was no other way to describe the moment other than perfect. A slight breeze that carried the smell of the ocean on it, the beautifully pink tinted sky as the sun hung low in the barely cloudy sky, to the incredibly handsome man standing before her, their hands intertwined before them.
Calleigh had been so taken in by the giddy boyish smirk Eric wore, one she sure was matched by one of her own that she'd almost missed the words being spoken and the response she'd needed to give.
"Do you, Calleigh Duquesne, take this man, Eric Delko to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for all your days until death do you part?"
"I do"
Eric's smirk turned into a full-blown smile.
"And do you, Eric Delko, take this woman, Calleigh Duquesne to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer for all your days until death do you part?"
"I do"
The by the power vested in me by the state of Florida, I now pronounce you husband and wife, you may kiss your bride."
XXX
The first tear was joined by a second as Calleigh remembered that fateful happy day. After she'd been released from the hospital, after they'd gone home from the lab where she'd said goodbye to a young man she hadn't known in life but still somehow felt a connection to, they'd huddled together on her couch talking about the whole ordeal, laying everything they both thought and felt out for the other.
She remembered how tightly Eric had clung to her, as if he feared if he let go, she would disappear into thin air. Any other time she'd find it uncomfortable to be clung to so tightly, but not that time. That time Calleigh found it comforting and had welcomed it. Her heart had stopped, she'd died. It might not have been for very long, but it had stopped, she was dead, and he'd been right there to witness it. When Eric had been shot and died, it made her reevaluate things. Reevaluate them and for the first time since that time, she understood more fully the changes he'd gone through and made in his life as a result.
Her ordeal made her feel the same way.
In the week that followed Calleigh thought at a lot about the future, about their future and she could tell Eric quietly had been doing the same. Finally, one night as they lay cuddled in bed in the aftermath of their first love making session since she'd been cleared for normal activities and if she were honest not only one of the best in terms of the sex, but the best in terms of emotions and openness. Sure, there had been an underlying desperation and need at first, especially on Eric's part, he'd always taken great care to ensure she was taken care of, satisfied and to relay how much she meant to him, but this had felt different. It felt like as much as he wanted to pour what he felt for her into every touch, every kiss, every thrust, Calleigh also felt there was a desperate need for him to make sure she was real and alive. To make sure he'd put it all out there for her to feel.
It touched her deeply and it helped her come to decision. One she felt he might have already come to but wouldn't initiate it without her giving permission or taking the first step.
XXX
Flashback
"Can I ask you something?" Calleigh asked tracing her thumb along the side of his where their hands were joined.
"Of course"
Calleigh opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. Biting her lip she steadied herself before opening her mouth again, this time finding her voice.
"Do you still want…" she trailed off, her courage wavering again. Feeling Eric squeeze her hand signaling it was ok, for her to take her time and continuing only when she felt comfortable, Calleigh lifted her head up, turning it to rest her chin on his chest, "do you still want to settle down….with me?"
XXX
Calleigh would never forget the huge smile that graced Eric's face that night. He'd been so giddy with excitement, opening up to her that he'd been waiting for that moment, for her to decide it was them for the long haul. The admission had surprised her a bit given everything they'd gone through over the last year, but at the same time it hadn't. Eric wore his heart on his shirt sleeve and throughout everything between them he'd always let her set the pace so why should her deciding she wanted to be with him forever been any different?
Eric had further surprised her when he jumped out of bed, went to the corner of their bedroom, reached up toward the AC vent on the wall, pulled the cover off and after digging around in the vent for a moment pulled his arm out and produced, of all things a ring box. The ring was what many would consider a wedding band, but given her personality, her desire and need to not be flashy and their job, was a simple platinum band with 10 diamonds almost completely encircling it. It was perfect. He'd told her he'd purchased the ring after returning from Puerto Rico because he knew deep in his heart they'd get back together he just needed to wait for her to be ready and let him back in.
Ultimately, they'd made the decision to get married secretly just the two of them. They would eventually tell their family's and friends and have the big wedding, but after everything they'd gone through to get to this point they wanted something just for them first. And that's how they ended up on the beach, at sunset in the Keys just the two of them and the minister of course saying, "I do."
Reaching up, Calleigh fingered the outline of the band she'd put on a necklace so it would be with her always through her shirt before pulling it out and admiring it and all it represented. All the things that given the gravity of her situation and uncertain outcome had her feeling cheated.
And finally, it all became too much for her as she pounded the sides of her fists on the lid of her coffin, her anger verbalized in an emotional wail, the tears falling freely.
And off somewhere, not too far from where Calleigh lay buried, Tiffany Morrison watched, her own anger and broken emotional state tearing at her.
XXX
So there it is! I feel like I may have rushed the very very end with Calleigh, but we're not done so I can and probably will come back to Calleigh's breakdown later on. It will play into things later ;)
Please be sure to review and let me know what you think.