Neon in All Shades

Fresh Chances

"What have we got today, Miss Matthews?" Horatio leisurely removed his dark glasses as he looked at the young and very dead body on the wooden docks we were both currently standing on.

"Twenty-one year old Donna Thomas; she was supposed to be enjoying spring break in the marina with her sister, Rachel Thomas. Right now Alexx suspects poisoning to be the COD, but she’ll know more once she’s run toxicology. We'll know more after the autopsy." I explained, as I polished the camera lens clean of all sandy dust.

"Any physical signs of an attack or struggle?" Horatio asked, looking over the body.

"There’s nothing that we can see. The only thing is a bruise on the inside of her right elbow, but the sister told us that the two of them were recent blood donors. There's a strong possibility that the bruise may be from that." I explained, pushing myself back to my feet to photograph the surrounding crime scene for use later.

"Who's on this case with you, Perri?" Horatio noticed that hardly anyone was around once he had passed beyond the uniformed cops at the yellow tape.

"I did have Delko helping me, but he got called away by Detective Tripp, so Ryan arrived about fifteen minutes ago." I answered, taking a photograph of the bruise on the victim to run by Alexx later.

"Where is Mr Wolfe?" Horatio looked around the unusually quiet scene for his other CSI.

"He's inside the yacht, talking to the sister again and looking for anything that might have been the murder weapon. Surprisingly, he's already emptied three cupboards of possible toxic substances." I told him as I used the tweezers to pull some foreign fibres from a knot in the wood of the run.

“Keep up the good work, Miss Matthews.” I glanced up and nodded silently as Horatio moved towards the simple yacht, presumably to find out what his other CSI had to say about this tragedy.

"I used to come out to this place all the time as a teenager. My dad used to have a small fishing boat he kept out here for the long weekends." I told Ryan as we finished up at the crime scene, disposing of our gloves and grabbing the shiny silver evidence cases.

"Really?" He sounded slightly surprised at the conversation, but I just smiled and nodded my head.

"Yeah. I even trained as a lifeguard back when I was seventeen. I loved the ocean; if ever my dad couldn’t find me or my step-sister we were usually in the water." I smiled as the almost forgotten memories flooded back to me.

"What made you stop?"

"There was...stuff happened and things changed." I answered after a long pause, keeping my eyes fixed on the path ahead, rather than looking across at my colleague.

Just because I didn’t look didn’t mean that I couldn’t feel his eyes on me. I knew that he had to know there was a lot more to my story than just “stuff”, but something stopped him from pressing the matter further and I was grateful of that. It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about and I hadn’t realised how close I had come to opening that door until it was almost too late.

Ryan had become a good friend since I started working with Miami Dade. I had learnt a lot from him since my first nervous day there and he made me feel less like the new kid whenever I didn’t understand something. Calleigh was always around, too, if I needed help or someone to cheer me up after a tough case; she was the first to suggest a drink and a good bar on those days. I was warming to Delko, too. I could understand what Ryan had meant by his bad days, but when he wasn’t letting something drag him down the rabbit hole he seemed like a good guy, willing to show me the ropes or teach me a new CSI trick. No one spoke about it, but I could see the same pain in him that I knew only too well myself. Something had happened in his life and he probably needed time to come to terms with all of that; hell, I still did.