Summery When Nick is investigated in a murder cold case, the team questions his integrity. What really happened on the cliff? Nick should know better than to lie to the police.
Rating T, just to be safe.
Comments This fic is full of flashbacks, and the first chapter doesn't have anyone from the show in it, Nick is just mentioned. But stick with me. Oh, and this will be an unconventional ship pairing. Read and find out.
Disclaimer I don't own the characters Nick Stokes, Catherine Willows, Warrick Brown, Greg Sanders, Sara Sidle, Gill Grissom, Conrad Ecklie or Dad Stokes (Nick's dad has two lines in a later chapter). Melissa Woods, Tanner Woods, John Blevins, and Kerstin Salazar are mine (also Jeda and Bolt if horses count).
Melissa Woods sat in the attic of her home in Dallas, Texas. She had nothing more productive to do, so she had decided to go through some of her old things. Pictures, keepsakes, rusty junk and long-forgotten memories littered the floor of the dimly lit room. The woman dragged another box out from under the eves. She removed her sandal and hastily swatted the large brown recluse spider that had scurried out of his cardboard home. She blew the dust off the top of the box. Written in faded black marker was "Tanner's Notebooks." Just like that, year's worth of memories flooded her mind. Her son Tanner had only been fifteen when he died twenty years ago. He had been horseback riding with his best friend when the horse got spooked, reared up and threw her only child off the side of one hundred foot high Buckman's Cliff. The death had been ruled an accident.
Melissa carefully opened the box and removed a green composition book with a broken black binding. She sighed sadly when she saw the edges of the paper. The silverfish and moths had obviously been feasting away at her lost child's writings. This was the first time she had opened this box sense she had paced it away all those years ago. She opened the notebook and turned to the very last page. She had never read any of these before; the memory had been too painful. But tonight she just could not stop herself. She began to read his final entry, dated July fourteenth, the day he died. What she read would haunt her:
I can't take it anymore. Lying hurts too much. Nick's my best friend. He has to know the truth, that… The remainder of the line had been a meal for a moth. He won't be happy about it, but he has to listen. I know he'll be angry, he might even hate me, but I just can't stand it anymore.
Nick. Melissa remembered Nick Stokes. He was a good kid from an upstanding family. He was the one Tanner had been riding with when he died. Melissa wondered now what Tanner had planned to say to Nick. Did he get a chance to say it? How did Nick react?
How did Nick react?
That question echoed in her mind until she thought she had the answer.
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Detective John Blevins of the Dallas Police Department sat in his office awaiting the mother of a boy who died twenty years ago. He worked in the cold case unit and the woman said she thought she had new information concerning her son's death. He thought it sounded serious enough to speak with hr in person. His nose was buried in the old case file when the woman walked in.
"Detective Blevins," the woman said.
The cop looked up from his desk. "Hello, Mrs. Woods. Please come in and sit down.
Melissa Woods came in and seated herself in the wooden armchair in front of the detective's desk.
"Now Mrs. Woods," Blevins began, "I've reviewed your son's case file, and it appears that Tanner's death was ruled an accident."
"Yes, but." The woman reached into her purse and produced the old notebook. She opened it to the last page and set it an the desk in front of the detective, "I have reason to believe that Tanner may have been murdered."
TBC. I'm building up to something. See you next chapter (I hope).