Author: Sam

Story: Speed Trap: 13 of 23

Series: Speed-Burn

Setting: September 14, 2005: New York City. September 14, 2005. Miami.

Note: It was asked, by speedfanatic05 (on fanfiction.net), if Tim Speedle could really be TJ Spedelli. Here’s my question back at you: Is it possible Joe isn’t Speed? Now, play with that thought awhile.

Feedback: Yes, please? Especially constructive. samwise_baggins@yahoo.co.uk

Webpage: http://www.geocities.com/samwise_baggins/index.html

New York City:

It had been nine months and they’d reached an impasse. In all that time, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies had been giving Mac Taylor the run-around. He had long since gotten frustrated with the slow one-step-forward-three-steps-back lack of progress he was making, and now he was angry, though he didn’t let it show. He hadn’t been able to pursue Joe’s past to the depth he’d wanted to, not only due to the blockade set up by the Witness Protection Program, but because Mac was continually interrupted by crimes which needed solving. He had to run a crime lab, guide a staff of investigators, and help the people of New York City. Instead, as he worked the case in his private time, he kept a strict eye on Joe and prevented Danny from being with him alone. It was not a satisfactory solution to the problem.

Staring hard at the cursor, feeling impotent in the face of yet another response that didn’t get him any closer to the truth, Mac finally reached over and clicked the button to close the electronic mail. He stood, rolled his neck and shoulders to try to get out the kinks, and strode to the wall facing the trace lab. The supervisor watched as Aiden laughed at something Joe said, his instinct to trust the man after nine months of working closely with him warring with his doubt about Joe’s elusive past and Danny’s fear of connections to the Tanglewood Boys.

Mac trusted Danny. True, the younger man kept things to himself, and he’d been known to let his heart and emotions rule his otherwise sensible side, but he was basically an honest, trustworthy cop with a brilliant scientific mind. If Danny said there was a dangerous man out there who could tear apart the lab, Mac believed him. The only problem was that Danny’s information didn’t mesh with what Mac had seen of Joe Avery.

Perhaps, Joe wasn’t the threat. It had been years since Danny had heard of that Spedelli kid. It was very plausible that he’d mistaken their new man for the hood who’d terrorized Staten Island in his youth. Joe seemed more interested in cracking cases and finding evidence than wreaking havoc. If it weren’t for the intensity the ex-marine saw burning under the quiet man’s surface, the controlled movements and well-thought-out words, Mac would have questioned Danny’s memory. But something told Mac that Joe could be dangerous if pushed, and so he weighed the necessity of going to Danny and asking for further proof of Joe's guilt against simply accepting the trace expert at face value.

That’s what Joe Avery had become: their trace expert. They may not have originally needed him, but his arrival had been a boon. Even with the confusion and questions, everyone, including Mac, had to admit that this man was top of his field. He knew how to find evidence that no one else thought was there, as if pulling it from thin air. He was also familiar with police procedure. The paperwork on the man might say “lab technician”, but Mac seriously wondered if he’d been a CSI before the program.

The trouble was, despite his instincts, Mac still couldn’t find out enough information about the guy to entirely convince himself that Joe Avery hadn’t been dirty in his previous life. And a dirty CSI was as much a threat, if not more so, than a dirty cop or even an aging teenaged hood. Once dirty, a man rarely cleaned up permanently, which meant Joe was bad news for the lab. And if he wasn’t dirty, but merely a witness awaiting a federal trial, where would the lab be once that trial took place and Joe was safe to resume his past life... if he’d ever be safe again? If he was in protection because he was hunted, that would also endanger the lab just as much.

With a groan, Mac covered tired eyes with a strong hand. His thoughts kept going in circles; he needed answers. And the roadblocks the feds kept throwing in his way had quickly turned his background check on one of his staff into a cold case investigation. Like all the cold cases sitting on the edge of his desk, there had to be something he’d been missing.

He reached for the personnel file next to the stack of crime files he kept on his desk. Flipping it open, he looked through the information he’d been provided by the FBI, knowing that ninety-nine percent would be the false cover-story they’d created. There had to be something, that one percent of truth, that elusive piece of information that could help him locate the real Joe Avery.

“I had a bad run in down south and decided to relocate. I tried Maine, but that didn’t work for me, so I came back to the city.”

Mac lifted his head, his eyes widening at the memory. A bad run in down south... Joe had mentioned the south, and there had been the remnants of a tan on him. He’d come to them near the beginning of January, but he’d looked like he should have been in a hospital. Was it possible that Joe, himself, had provided the key to his identity?

Flipping through to the background he’d been given, Mac saw Maine listed, but nothing southern. Had the man slipped up and nearly given his true history? Opening to the medical section, Mac skimmed the facts provided then sat straighter. Heart condition. That would explain quite a bit of those early days, the slow movements, the unconscious chest massaging, the shortness of breath. However, a heart condition could be caused by more than disease... it could have been a serious injury as well.

Taking a chance, knowing it could lead to yet another dead end, Mac turned to his computer and flicked open his e-mail. He began typing, sending his request to all law enforcement organizations in Florida. He’d work his way north, if he had to, and west, if necessary. If he was right, however, someone out there might just have the information he needed to track down Joe’s former life.

Miami:

“That’s right, I’ll be home around six.” Horatio listened to the eager young voice on the other end of the conversation and smiled. HR was one of the bright spots in his life. With a soft laugh, the red-haired man teased, “You’re going to turn into beef stew. Okay, if that’s what you want, I’ll pick some up on the way home.” Most kids would have begged for pizza or macaroni; trust his son to want something like stew. “All right, I’ll see you then.” He waited then laughed again, “Bye-bye.”

Hanging up, Horatio turned his attention back to his team, his smile fading as he tuned back into their discussion. It was after hours, but for the last nine months they’d spent many extra hours off the clock investigating Speed. Every time Stetler came up with proof about Speed’s dirty dealings, Horatio and his staff would find a way to block it. This cat and mouse game couldn’t last forever, but none of them were willing to back down. It seemed that more than trying to take Horatio down, the IAB man had a personal vendetta against Speed, too.

Across the layout room wall was posted Speed’s known time line, from birth to death. Any time something more was found out, which wasn’t very often at all, it was added to the graph. There had been numerous brightly colored sticky flags all over the chart when it was first created, markers to indicate something that needed verification. Now, the stickers were very few, mostly pertaining to the summers of Speed’s teenaged years. As far as they could figure out, from the age of thirteen until seventeen, Speed disappeared every summer to New York City. What he did there, who he saw, even where he lived was information no one had managed to acquire. It was that time frame in which Rick Stetler could find the most damning evidence, as Horatio had yet to find something to prove the man hadn’t just disappeared from the face of the Earth all those months.

Calleigh stood in front of the time line, taking down yet another finally verified flag, concerning the paralyzing accidents of one of Speed’s friends in his senior year of high school, up in Syracuse, New York.

Next to the time line were several autopsy photos from Alexx’s private file. She had provided it in January, and Horatio had yet to return it. The main reason was that Alexx’s private file didn’t exactly coincide with the official file or even with Stetler’s copy. There was a major discrepancy concerning transport of the body, location of the bullet wound, and even time of death.

Alexx claimed the Chief Medical Examiner had arranged transport and hadn’t given her the chance to proclaim time of death. From her photographs, Speed’s bullet wound was a couple of inches above the heart. The bullet had been too badly damaged against the scapula to be of much use.

The official report listed Speed’s time of death as somewhere near the time Horatio had heard his friend’s heart stop. It said Alexx had received the body, but didn’t claim who had actually done the transporting. It also said his injury was to the left shoulder and was a through-and-through in which the bullet was never recovered.

To really confuse matters, Stetler’s report listed Alexx as having claimed death shortly after arriving on scene at the jewelry store. It also said that the Chief Medical Examiner had arranged for her to meet the body at the morgue, but that a rookie driver had been the one transporting and had made only one stop, to retrieve a second shooting victim from across town, before arrival. This report listed the bullet wound as being a through-and-through without bullet recovery, but that the bullet had gone clean through the heart.

With three varying reports on Speed’s death, a double red flag had been added to the time line to indicate the biggest discrepancy. They would have to get some answers soon. Horatio and Alexx had both tried, but reached dead ends; however, they couldn’t be stalled forever. They would eventually track down the rookie driver and compare notes. It was only a matter of more time.

Since the autopsy reports were inaccurate, Delko and Ryan were busy looking at the autopsy photos on the wall. They were checking every detail of the body in the photos, recording anything odd they might notice. Delko’s list was far longer than Ryan’s, having known Speed for many years. In fact, due to that knowledge of his best friend, he was firmly insisting that Speed didn’t have any marks when they’d last been swimming, despite Alexx’s clear pictures of the appendectomy scar on his right abdomen and the tattoo across his right shoulder blade.

Horatio watched at Ryan gestured to the most detailed of the autopsy photos, pointing at the tattoo once more. “When was the last time you saw him without his shirt?”

“I told you,” Eric’s got down to the business of defending Speed yet again, “last September, not too long before this was taken, maybe a week or two.”

“So, it had to be new?”

Shaking his head, Eric looked at his current partner. “Not too new, it would have to be covered with Vaseline and a bandage if it was only days old. Within two weeks, it needs to stay moist and heal a little. And even straight black ink like that might take more than one sitting to do.” He frowned intensely. “Maybe we should check with local parlors, just in case?”

With a nod of his head, Ryan added, “It says Tanglewood. Isn’t that the name of a music festival in Massachusetts?”

Calleigh looked over at the other investigator, intrigued. “Is it?”

He nodded. “Yeah, it was named after Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book Tanglewood Tales, actually. Is that a date?” Ryan peered closer at the top left of the tattoo, closest to the spine.

“Yeah,” Delko also stared at the intricate design. “It says June 24, 1989. Hey, Speed’s birthday was June twenty-fourth.”

“He would have been sixteen. It says here that he was born in 1973.”

Both men glanced over at Calleigh, but the sight of Horatio off the phone drew the attention of all three. The supervisor smiled at them, “Okay, what have you discovered?”

Returning his smile, Calleigh pointed to a date on the chart before her. “Speed’s tattoo has his sixteenth birthday and the name of a Massachusetts festival worked into it. That falls right into his missing teen years.”

Horatio slipped his hands onto his hips, pushing his jacket back at the same time. He nodded, tilting his head a bit. “All right, we need to check that festival and that date. There may be something more significant about it than we see so far. Ryan, I’ll leave that to you.” He slid his blue eyes to Delko and said, “Check with the local tattoo parlors to see if anyone remembers a man of Speed’s description coming in. Take a photo from last summer with you. A six foot man with dark hair might not be an uncommon sight, but people tend to remember Speed… especially if he was getting a tattoo with a date on it.” The redhead turned to the petite blonde woman. “Calleigh, I need you to continue going over the paperwork for those missing summers. If you find anything that can definitely be proven or disproved, not merely hearsay, I want it. He went to the city. It may be time to check with the city law enforcement. I’ll handle that.”

He removed his hands from his hips and slipped his sunglasses over his eyes. “I want definitive proof concerning those gun running charges against Speed, team.” With that, he walked from the lab.