Nick secured his bag on his shoulder before slowly beginning his walk out to the parking lot, ready to leave work and the nightmarish case he had just solved.
The little boy across the table from him was small, even for his young age. He had a look of fear about him; he knew he was about to get in trouble.
"You found him. You put him in the dryer." Nick wished he didn't have to say those words.
"Mm-mmm. Mm-mm," Andy mumbled immediately, eyes wide.
"Mm-hmm. Chase can't even lock himself inside those things. They lock from the outside." A kid in a dryer, how screwed up was that?
Andy's mother shot him a look, one of those mothering looks that said 'you had better start telling the truth right this second or so help me…' Nick had gotten plenty of those looks from his own mother.
"And I matched your print on the handle. I got it off your school's safe kit." Ironically enough, the thing that was supposed to keep the kid safe was what would send him to juvie. Though he supposed the kid would have been going there anyway.
The kid slowly began recounting his story, of being drunk, of putting his friend in the dryer. His mother started to cry and Nick wanted to tell her it was going to be okay, that nothing would happen to Andy. But he couldn't lie.
"You put your best friend in a… in a dryer, and you turned it on, and you just walked away? What is wrong with you?" she sobbed.
Andy stared for a moment then threw up on the table.
Nick walked almost blindly through the stark hallways of the lab, eyes downcast, avoiding everyone. However, when he reached the front desk, he was forced to acknowledge his former boss.
"Tough shift, huh?" Grissom asked, surprisingly perceptive. Nick turned and walked a few steps backward, so as to meet his eyes.
"Just another day in paradise," he said, the tiniest ghost of a smile on his face. Then, relishing the surprised, confused look on the older man's face, he turned and continued out to his car.
He slung his bag into the passenger seat of the large SUV and climbed in, turning the car on quickly. Then he realized he didn't know where he wanted to go.
Certainly not home, though the concept of sleeping and forgetting all of this seemed heavenly. He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep. But he didn't want to be with anyone, didn't want to drink, didn't want to play a sport, or anything else for that matter.
He put his car in reverse and pulled out of the space, then left the lab parking lot. He drove through Vegas, the sparkling, glittering lights nothing more than an eyesore, extra ammunition for his already unbearable headache.
Nick followed a familiar path, making the turns without thinking, just driving until he knew where he wanted to go. And then, all of a sudden, he knew where he was going.
The drive took a little while, and as he followed the quiet roads, he thought.
Kids killing kids was the worst thing there was. It was bad enough when an adult killed a kid… the loss of a whole lifetime. Not like when someone killed an older person. Any death was horrible, but at least those people had lived. Chase Ryan was twelve years old. He had hardly lived at all.
Not to mention his friend Andy, only twelve, who would now spend years in prison. Andy, who had lost his childhood innocence to a stupid mistake made because of alcohol.
If you got right down to it, you could blame Chase's sister for letting two twelve-year-olds have alcohol. That was about the worst decision possible. But on that track, you also had to place some blame on the parents, who never should have left their kids alone.
It's a screwed up world, Nick concluded as he pressed the accelerator a little harder. That was the only real explanation, wasn't it? A series of events occurred, despite the fact that they shouldn't have, and because of it, a kid was dead.
He pulled his SUV off the paved road and onto a dirt path that led out into the desert.
The world was a screwed up, ugly place, where innocent kids got killed and guilty men walked free. It was a world where random events somehow conspired to kill people who didn't deserve it.
Nick stopped the car and turned off the engine, just sitting there for a long moment. He worked as a criminalist because he wanted to help those who couldn't help themselves. He wanted to get justice for kids like Chase. But what could he do when there was none to be found?
He stared out the windshield as the first few rays of sunlight peeked out over the horizon, staining the sky a deep purple and silhouetting the mountains.
Whenever he felt hopeless for the plight of the world, he came here. Here, where the earth was unspoiled by humans, where there was no crime and no punishment, only land and the sky, the light that brought them all together.
Nick watched the sun rise, the sky going from inky purple to crimson to golden orange to pale blue. He watched as the clouds glittered with the light that refracted from them, as the crevices in the mountains became more defined. He watched until the sun was too high in the sky to make those colors anymore. But he didn't feel better.
He had always used this place as a way to see the beauty of the world, a way of reminding himself that it still had some things to offer, despite the horrors he saw every day. Every day, he met people on the worst day of their lives. It was a terrible thing. But always, always before he would watch the sunrise and remember that it was a new day, and maybe it wouldn't be the worst day. Maybe, just maybe, it could be the best.
But now, as he stared at the mountain ranges, he only thought of the people who would die today, the people who would lose their loved ones today.
The world didn't have any beauty left to offer. Not really. It was full of people who hurt kids, full of selfish people who would do anything to make a few bucks. There was no beauty in that. It was just plain ugly.
Nick turned on the car and swung it around, turning his back to nature's masterpiece, pure paradise, and turning to face humanity's disaster.