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Is it possible that they even know I'm missing? Is it possible that they know I'm still alive? Is it possible that they know where I am? Is it possible that they're trying to figure out where I am? Is it possible that I'll ever make it out of here? These are all very good questions that I am asking myself as I sit in a dank, dark room, God knows where. I'm not bound. I'm free to move around. Trouble is, there's no real light to speak of. I still have my sidearm, my little flashlight, my memo pad and my cell phone. Whoever snatched me didn't do a very good job of it. Any moron knows that when you abduct someone you take away anything they might use to free themselves or use to signal for help. Its possible that I'm in a place that has no cell signal. Its possible that my captor may never return and that's why I still have my light, sidearm and memo pad. Its also possible that whoever took me intends to return at any minute.
Checking my clip, I can see that its full and I know the batteries in my light are fresh because I changed them yesterday morning. I shine my light around the room that I'm in and all I can see are four solid walls and a staircase leading up to a door. I stand up and walk over to the stairs, shining my light on them. I check under the stairs to make sure they're solid and not booby trapped. Everything looks good, so I slowly climb the steps and when I reach the top I check the doorknob; its locked. However, the hinges are on the inside and as I fish through my pockets, I find my Swiss Army knife and try to remove the pins. The first one comes out nice and easy but the second one is a bit more difficult and doesn't want to come free. The good thing is that there are only two hinges.
I can hear no sounds on the other side of the door, but I wait a few minutes before I begin to work on the doorknob. With the Phillips on my knife, I unscrew the plate and remove the knob. I hear the other side of the knob drop to the floor and as I stick my fingers through the hole, the door opens and I immediately draw my gun. I do a sweep of the house and find nothing and no one. Not one stick of furniture; not one sign of habitation. The windows are boarded up from the outside as is the door. I open the door and kick the boards free and exit the house to stand on the front porch. Looking around, all I can see are trees and woodland. I think to myself, "God, I could be anywhere." I think harder, trying to remember the events as they occurred before I woke up in that basement. I remember coming home from shift, eating something light and going to bed. Then I woke up here. Who did I piss off to wind up in this place? Sorry to say, the list is longer than my...well, you get the idea.
Walking down the steps of the porch, I pull out my cell to see if there's a signal, but there's no joy. I could be at Meade or any other heavily wooded area in Nevada. Or I could be in a whole other state. I look for high ground but don't immediately see any. There appears to be a path or game trail, so I follow it in hopes that it will lead me to a hilltop or someplace where I can get a decent signal. However, given the thickness of the woods and the relatively flat terrain, there may be no higher ground to speak of. I listen for the sound of cars, any sign of a freeway or well traveled road, but I don't hear anything except for birds and the wind blowing across the treetops. I remain optimistic as I walk this path in hopes that it will lead me anywhere but here.
I look to the sky and see that its getting dark out and the air is cool. I can only imagine how cold it will be once the sun goes down and its fully dark out. Resigning myself to the fact that I'm not going to get anywhere tonight, I spend what daylight is left looking for some sort of shelter. The forest is full of downed trees and root cavities that might serve as some sort of success in shielding myself from the cold of night. Just as the darkness comes I spot a rather large hole in the ground and make my way down. When I land I can tell that I'm a good ten or fifteen feet down. "God, I hope it doesn't rain tonight." I think to myself.
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Arriving on scene, Sara looked around for Brass but didn't see him. Instead, Vega approached her and gave her a brief run-down.
"We've got a triple homicide. Husband, wife and son; kid looks to be about ten years old." he said plainly
"Why isn't Brass here?" she asked
"We don't know where the hell he is. We sent a car by his house. His car was in the drive but no one answered when we knocked and he's not answering his cell." he explained
"Well, someone should go back there and check his place out. For all we know he could be passed out on the floor with a broken hip or he could have been abducted or God knows what." she protested
"We've got guys doing just that. When we know something, you'll know something." he replied
As she processed the house, Jim was never far from Sara's thoughts. She wondered where he was, if he was alright and why he didn't show up for shift. Usually when Jim was taking the night off or had somewhere else he had to be, he'd call her and let her know. This was highly unusual for him and it was for these reasons that Sara was so worried.
Of all the people in the lab, she didn't really identify with anyone. However, when it came to Brass, they shared more in common than she and her lab mates. Sometimes they'd go out to eat after shift or go over to her place where either she or Jim would make dinner or supper; depending on how you looked at it. They'd only been seeing each other for a few months and the thought of Jim having gone missing made her stomach turn. It was there and then that she decided to do a little detective work on her own, in her free time. Her first destination would be Jim's house; she knew it better than any team that might walk in there. She'd wait until everyone left his house until she'd go over and check the place out.
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It was her night off and Sara drove over to Jim's house and climbed through the unlocked bedroom window at the back of the house. She knew it was unlocked because she and Jim both liked a bit of cool air while they slept. Her flashlight in hand, she slowly made her way through Jim's house and found several anomalies. There was mud on the back stoop, which was curious because Jim's back yard was all grass; no patches of mud. In the living room, on the coffee table, the magazines weren't neatly stacked as they usually were. The dishes in the kitchen sink were still unwashed and in the front hall, outside the closet, his shoes and jacket lay on the floor instead of being in the closet as per usual. She wondered how the CSI team had missed these clues. They were so obvious to Sara, but maybe that was because she knew his place and the investigators didn't. They didn't know the way Jim liked things; neat and orderly. She missed him so much it was unbearable. From the closet in his room, she took his favourite fleece pullover and the pillow from his side of the bed.
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(change of person from Jim's thoughts to an outside observer)
The sun was up and as Jim crawled from his hole in the ground he found the path he had been following the previous day. He walked for hours before he hit a water source; a creek. He followed it until it became a stream and then a small river. He figured if he followed the water he'd find civilization and possibly a way back home. He knew Sara would be working overtime between her shift and trying to find him and this was a small comfort to him. He knew that with Sara's determination and resourcefulness it was only a matter of time before she found him. As he meandered down the path his thoughts fixated on Sara; on the shape of her body, the colour of her eyes and hair, the spark of her life and mostly, her smile. He liked to think that she saved that smile for him because she always lit up when she saw him. It was these thoughts that kept Jim comfort as he bushwhacked his way through the woods.
By this time he had been walking since sun up and it was now noon. Jim still had no idea where he was but he had to be someplace secluded in order for him to be walking for so long and for such a distance. He could be in Henderson. There were a lot of places in Henderson that were secluded and someone could walk for hours or days without finding any signs of city or town.
It had been more than 24hrs since Jim had something to eat and he was getting kind of on the hungry side. As he walked he looked around for some berries but through his travels he found nothing. He dared not drink from the water; who knows what micro-organisms might live in there. Hell, he could be shitting or throwing up for a week. At this point the was actually praying for some rain; at least he'd have some fresh water to drink.
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At her apartment, Sara was going over the evidence she'd collected from Jim's house. There wasn't much to go on, so she went back to Jim's house for something she might have forgotten. In the drive there were a second set of tire tracks and it looked like the vehicle had peeled out and onto the street. She took photos and went back to the lab with the rest of the evidence she'd brought with her. She sent the dirt to trace and the photos of the tire tracks to the A/V Lab for Archie to analyze. It took a while for the results to come back and when they did they were of little help. The only thing of any consequence that turned up were the tire treads. They came back as a 2007 Range Rover. Sara forgot about the street cameras and within a couple of hours she had the feed from the camera a block from Jim's house. She had Archie enhance the feed to get a plate number and when she got it, she ran the plates and came up with a name; Ulrich Hoffschneider. She didn't recognize the name immediately, but after a few moments she remembered. Hoffschneider was arrested by Jim six years ago for manslaughter. Checking his record,
she learned that he had just got out of prison. Maybe this was the person that took Jim, Sara thought to herself. She wrote down his last known address and was out of the lab like a bat out of hell.
Pulling up in front of Hoffschneider's house, Sara jumped out of the truck and walked up the drive so she could take a look inside the truck. The windows were tinted, but not so much that she couldn't see into the window on the back hatch. She saw the usual things that people keep in the back of their vehicles including one item of interest; the pen she had given Jim for Christmas the previous year. It was unique in nature, being made of 14k gold with his name engraved in it filled with white gold. Now she knew that Jim had, indeed, been in this truck. Unclipping her holster and removing her gun, she held it in front of her as she walked the concrete path to the front door. Raising her fist to knock on the door, she was surprised when it opened before she could knock. Standing before her was a Caucasian a male about 6ft tall, average build with very closely cropped hair and a goatee. Luckily, she had called for back-up on her way to the house, so by the time she got there two patrol cars rolled up and the officers stepped out and approached the house, standing behind Sara. Since they didn't yet have a warrant, she was hoping he'd allow them to check the truck without one, which he did. He stood on the front lawn and watched as Sara checked his truck out and when she emerged she had several bags of evidence. She had Jim's pen, his lucky lighter, several hair samples and most importantly, she had Jim's watch which was engraved with his name on the back plate.
She stashed the evidence in her truck and told the officers to take Hoffschneider into custody. She called the lab to have the man's truck taken to the vehicle bay for further inspection and they had a full hamper of clothes that Sara had retrieved when she had been told by Hoffschneider that it was fine with him if she searched the house,
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Back at the lab, the clothes went to trace, Jim's belongings went to Hodges along with the dirt she had collected from Jim's house. The evidence was mounting but they still had no idea where Jim was. That's when Sara got the idea to check for any properties that the man might have. He had his house, free and clear, and he also had a cabin in the woods of Orovada, which was way upstate. Sara went to Grissom and told him what she had found out in regards to Jim's absence. He notified the local authorities in Orovada that a couple of his team members would be paying them a visit. For certain, Sara would be going and she chose Greg as her second, as she thought he could benefit from more time in the field. They grabbed their kits and jumped in a lab truck and headed North.
It was a six hour drive because there wasn't any freeway to take them directly to Orovada, so they had to take the rural roads and wouldn't reach a freeway until they got to Winnemucca. By the time they reached Orovada it was dark and they checked into a motel for a good night's sleep. They would wake early in the morning and go to the sheriff's office to announce their presence and purpose.
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Jim had been walking all day and had a sneaking suspicion that he was going round' in circles. It was dark now and getting on the cold side. Jim had to find some sort of shelter as he had done the night before. However, there were no fell trees or hollows in the groupings of rocks that might serve as a cave of sorts. He sat down and leaned against a tree and closed his eyes.
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In the morning Sara and Greg went to the sheriff's office and made their presence known. They enquired about the property that Hoffschneider had and were given a police escort to the house which sat at the edge of the wood. They all went inside the house and did a sweep of it. Sara focused on the basement and that's when she noticed the door had been tampered with. She saw the missing hinge pin as well as the dismantled doorknob. She called out and Greg and one of the officers came running.
"Someone was here. They removed one of the pins and dismantled the doorknob." she said
Looking to the ground, she spotted Jim's pocket knife and picked it up.
"Jim was here. This is his knife."
She stood up and went to the front porch to look around. She saw the same trail that Jim had seen and when she was about to call out again, Greg and the other officer were already there. She grabbed a backpack from the boot of the truck. Inside the bag were a couple of walkies, a couple of bottles of water, some power bars, a basic first aid kit, two thermal blankets, a length of climbing rope strapped to the outside of the bag and some other items that might be of use, like a flashlight with several changes of batteries and a GPS unit. There was also a flare gun that she would use in the event that she found Jim first, so that Greg and the officer would know where she and Jim were.
"I say we follow this path but kind of spread out. Keep each other within sight, but call out for him. I'll stay on the trail and you two can bushwhack. Jim must've gone this way in hopes that he might find a road he could hitch hike along or a house where he might be able to use the phone."
As Sara walked down the path she looked to the ground and noticed fresh tracks in the form of a shoe sole. She followed these tracks as far as the went, always keeping an eye out for Jim's tracks just incase he went off the trail; but he didn't, he had stayed on the trail like a good little boy. As it became dark Sara radioed to Greg and the officer that she was on the trail and gave some landmarks so they could find her. They were all together within a matter of minutes and discussing what they should do. Should they go back to the truck or make camp where they were. The officer wanted to go back, but Sara wanted to stay put and make camp. Greg decided to stay with Sara so she wouldn't be alone. It was two to one in favour of the CSIs.
Greg went in search of firewood while Sara turned the thermal blankets into a tent with the help from the length of rope. The officer was generally useless in regard to making camp and when Greg returned with a whole lot of wood, he set it down beside the fire that Sara had already made by using some wood that she found in the immediate area. During the night it had turned very cold so Greg snuggled up behind Sara for warmth while the officer was asleep fireside.
At the first signs of morning they all woke up, broke camp and resumed the same sweep pattern they had been doing the previous day. Sara was determined to find Jim and she wouldn't stop until she was face to face with him.
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Jim opened his eyes and looked at the time on his cell phone. It was around 05:30hrs and he decided to get up and keep on trekking. He stood up and got back on the path; tired and hungry. He hadn't had any food or water in two days and he was getting weak and starting to stumble. He even thought he was starting to see things. He looked up to the sky to see if he could see a break in the trees that might indicate a clearing of some sort. He did see a clearing and it was about 300 yards from his current position. His decision, get to the clearing and stay there. Anyone looking for him and following the path would find him and then it would just be a question of time and getting out of there.