The Realm of the Escapist

Title: Somebody's Baby
Fandom: CSI Miami
Characters/Pairings: Ryan Wolfe, Calleigh Duquesne, Calleigh/Ryan friendship
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: One of Ryan's first cases shows him a different side of Miami.
Author's Notes: This fic was inspired by the haunting and challenging Jon Foreman song entitled 'Somebody's Baby', but it isn't a songfic.



Somebody’s Baby

The crime scene is near a club. A rich club, in a nice part of the city. But the body is round the back, near the bins. A convenient place to ditch the body, perhaps. Or maybe it is just where she ended up, brought there by life and bad luck. Her eyes gaze into Ryan’s as he crouches next to Alexx, and a sudden sense of claustrophobia, of not being able to escape, creeps over him. There is such peace in her eyes, and yet the rest of her body is traumatised, desperate. Ripped clothes that are covered in filth, hide the bruises and scars that Alexx has pointed out to him. She is young, and there is a beauty in her as she lies, even dead amongst the rubbish. But still, she seems old and world-weary. He hasn’t been in this job long, but he has never had a case quite like this before. Calleigh glances at him and speculates that it looks like the result of years of abuse to her body, inflicted by herself and inflicted by others.

He hasn’t been in this job long, but he never expected it to feel like this.

“She came to the backdoor of the club, and I would give her any food that we had left over. That wasn’t what she came for, though. She was always wanting money. Money to feed her addictions. She thought that I wouldn’t notice that whenever she appeared, one of the bottles would disappear. I turned a blind eye, claimed that whoever had done the inventory had miscounted. What else could I do? She needed help, and I wasn’t the person to get it for her. I never even knew her name.”

No ID. No-one knows who she was, and no-one cares. Those that recognise her can only say that she was probably homeless. She was never seen with anyone. Always alone, always with a bottle or a cigarette in her hands. Always begging for someone to take pity on her. Always begging for someone to notice her.

This is their last attempt. Ryan watches as Calleigh scans in the shape of her teeth, the shape of her gums. He watches as she inputs the features that make them unique: the fillings, the stains. It is a long and torturous wait. He watches the screen intently, and he is aware of Calleigh watching him. Her scrutiny makes him uncomfortable, but he needs to know, he has to know who this girl was. He has to know whether there is anyone out there to miss her.

“Isabel Worthing,” Calleigh reads out from the screen, “26 years old, last trip to the dentist seven years ago.”

Ryan looks down at her birth date.

“Today... it would have been her birthday today.”

Calleigh says nothing, but moves to stand beside him. A hand is placed briefly on his arm. She hits the print button, and glides silently to the printer in the corner. Ryan stares at the screen, hoping to find answers there.

“I saw her a few times a week. We had the same favourite spots. I called her November, I never knew her by any other name. It was the month that she ended up on the street, see? She called me April. She never knew my name either. We could have been friends, I guess. I remember, one day, I had scored two bottles and she had been unlucky. Only narrowly escaped arrest. I gave her my spare bottle. Regretted it the next day, mind you. The next few days I ended up with nothing. But she was grateful. We could have been friends, if we had allowed it to happen. But on the streets you are always aware that everyone leaves eventually, and, really, you are all in competition with each other. If you want to carry on fighting, it’s easier to just be on your own.”

No family to track down, no friends for her to call. She isn’t on the missing persons database. Ryan begins to wonder if there is anyone to be worried about her. On the way down to see Alexx he is silent, lost in his thoughts. Calleigh seems to realise this. She doesn’t speak either.
“She was a walking time bomb.”

Alexx’s face is sombre. She addresses Ryan as she talks, as if she knows that he is being affected by this case.

“The constant abuse to her body meant that it would only have taken one trip or fall, one accidental push, to kill her. Any one of these bruises could be a representation of whatever killed her. There’s no way to know for certain.”

Ryan just stares at Alexx as Calleigh takes a moment to let this sink in. She says a quick ‘thanks Alexx’ before steering Ryan out of the room. Once outside he turns to her, hoping to hear her say what he wants to hear.

“I don’t think there is anything more we can do here. We have no evidence, no family, no witnesses, no cause of death. It may have just been a fall.”

“But we don’t know for certain.”

There is a silence. Calleigh looks at him, with something that he can’t place in her eyes.

“No,” she says quietly, “we don’t.”

“From what I gathered, she had stolen some alcohol from a shop. Or had tried to, at least. The owner of the shop had her gripped by the shoulders and was threatening to call the cops on her. There was a crowd forming, people wanting to see what was going on. People wanting to see some drama. I was just as interested as the next person. She broke free of the hold that the owner had on her, and tried to make a run for it. Some other man from the crowd grabbed her, and she screamed in fury. She yelled something like ‘if you’ve ever gone it alone, you can be the first to judge me. If you’ve ever had to make it without anything: no job, no money, no friends or family, no home... go ahead. You’ve earned it.’ There was this uncomfortable silence, and I turned to walk away. There was a growl and a thud, and when I turned around she was lying on the floor, a bruise forming on her face from where she had been punched. She spat on the ground, like some sort of crazed animal, and ran off.”

There is nothing. There is still nothing. Nothing at all. It’s driving Ryan mad. He sits, with his head in his hands and tries to work up the courage to read the next stack of papers. It’s late, past the end of shift, and yet he can’t bring himself to go home. Isabel Worthing deserves to have someone who didn’t give up on her.

There is a step behind him, and he can feel her eyes on him.

“Ryan...” her voice is full of sympathy, but he interrupts her. He doesn’t want to hear it.

“There must be something. There has to be something.”

He pulls the next stack of paper towards him, but doesn’t lift the first page from the top.

“Ryan, look...”

“No. I’ll find something. There was an anonymous tip-off, right?”

She studies him, quietly, before nodding. She stands behind him, immobile, and he stares at the papers in front of him. A sudden movement and then she sits down beside him, turning the computer screen and keyboard to face her.

They sit and work, and the next shift moves in and wonders what they are doing.

“I was the one to call the police. I didn’t leave my name, because I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I’ve never seen a body before... and this... it just seemed so awful. I could see her, digging around in the bins outside that posh club. I thought I would see what she was up to, because she had that air to her, you know, like she was up to no good. I moved forward, but then she turned and saw me, and I could see tears trickling down her face. Not big, sobbing tears. The silent kind, just an overflow of sadness. I started to walk away, because I didn’t know what to do. When I was a good way off, I turned around and she was just lying there... amongst the bins and rubbish. She must have slipped and hit her head... or something. But... I just... I didn’t know... I wasn’t sure what to do...”

Ryan closes the file with a heavy heart. Knowing how she died hadn’t brought the satisfaction that he had hoped it would. He still can’t get the image of her face, lying in the morgue, out of his head. The thought that no-one misses her, that there is no-one to grieve, torments him and so he closes his eyes against it. He doesn’t even try to stop the thoughts that come so freely now. He just feels so tired, as if he has been doing this job for too long already.

Calleigh stands by his side as he puts the file away. The case is closed, their job is done. But neither of them move from the place where they stand. They contemplate in silence, both thinking their own thoughts, and yet both thinking the same thing.

“There are always days like these,” Calleigh says eventually, turning slightly towards him. She isn’t trying to comfort him by her words, he understands that. She is letting him know that he isn’t alone, that they all have to deal with these cases, and they can get through them together.

“She was somebody’s baby,” he says, without knowing why exactly he is bringing it up. Does he expect to find the answers to the mystery that was Isabel Worthing’s life? Where were the parents that must have loved her, once upon a time?

“I think she still is. We all are; nothing changes that.”

He smiles at her, and she smiles back. Their smiles are weak and weary, but they are still there. Calleigh slips her arm through his and they walk out together. And the next time Ryan sees someone living on the streets, he doesn’t just pass them by as quickly as he would have done in the days before.

She's somebody's baby,
Somebody's baby girl,
She's somebody's baby,
Somebody's baby girl,
And she's somebody's baby still.
- Jon Foreman

THE END