Disclaimer – Yeah, I own CSI. I own all the cast and crew, I own Jerry Bruckheimer and his buddies, hell I own all of Hollywood. In fact, I own all of you, as well.You all belong to me. I am your master. Have you only just noticed? Okay, fine, I don't... (I also don't own MASH or any of the characters found therein.)
Notes – Spoilers for 'All for our Country', and tiny ones for 'The Strip Strangler' and 'Who Are You?'. This one shot ficlet is set right at the end of 'All for our Country.' I know it's a blast from the past, but I'm kind of nostalgic! Enjoy! Dialogue in Italics.
"You're a murderer."
Oh, that hurt. Coming from a police officer, that really hurt. Stuart Gardner wasn't a murderer. He was a guardian of justice. This certified rent-a-cop standing in front of him should know better.
Those two...things...deserved exactly what they got. They preyed on married couples and used sex to lure them to a hideous death. Okay, maybe you should be more careful about sex with strangers, but hey, this was Vegas, right? And no husband should be forced to kill his wife. Nobody deserved to die at the hands of their weeping spouse.
They were scum. So what if he had killed them? The definition of murder was to take a human life. Those two weren't even close. They were strictly NHI: No Humans Involved.
And now this man Brass was saying that they weren't brothers, even though they had both served the law. He was calling him a murderer, and saying that he wasn't Stuart's brother. Well, maybe he was right about that part. Maybe this fat, lazy homicide dick wasn't his brother after all.
"We also found your old uniform shirt, with your DNA on the collar. What did you retire on? Psych? Medical? What?"
That was enough. Maybe it was time to remind the good Captain of just how much of a hypocrite he was.
"Weren't you close to retirement? After you shot that bystander?"
Clearly he had struck a nerve. Captain Brass stood and paced the room.
"You want to talk about me, huh? Okay, you're a clerk. Get your facts straight. He wasn't a bystander. He was a passenger in a felony pursuit."
Stuart wasn't going to let him off that easily. "So how'd you get promoted to Captain after that?"
"Must be my good looks." Avoidance. Pitiful.
"You agreed to drive a desk ... at CSI ... with all the sleazy civilians."
This time the captain did something Gardner hadn't expected. He smiled.
"Don't knock the CSI's, Stuart. They put a lot of bad guys away." There was no insincerity in his eyes. Did he really believe that those people were anything other than cowards?
Brass spoke again, moving to the mirror, and this time he sounded frustrated. "I'm going to give you a little therapy for free. You know, if you had only shown a little restraint, they would have pulled DNA off the Klinefelds'. Slam-dunk case."
No. No, that wasn't true. It couldn't be. "Lots of guys get off on slam-dunk cases."
"Yeah, I bet you saw a lot of that working for Judge Slater, most liberal judge in the state. Bet you saw a lot of good cases go south, while you just processed those release forms, huh?"
Was this piggy-eyed son of a bitch TEASING him? After all that had happened, after everything he had done, he was being taunted? Stuart made one last appeal to this man, this cop's sense of decency. He moved to that ever-intimidating two-way mirror, and spoke for possibly the last time as a true cop.
"Let me ask you something. Doesn't it piss you off to put all your hard work in the hands of twelve people too stupid to get off jury duty?" He waited, hoping that Brass would agree, that he would sympathise, that his brother would realise that what he had done was right!
"Stuart, sit down."
And that was it. With a sigh of defeat, Stuart complied. He had wasted his time. The glory days of law and order were gone. That last sentence had proved it. With people like Brass and his squad of CSI pussies leading the charge, how could the world ever become safe for decent, hard-working people again?
In that dark hour, in that dark interrogation room, Stuart Gardner despaired for the world.
"This guy's a nut job vigilante. He's making the whole department look bad." Warrick spoke with the sad conviction of experience. He had seen this kind of thing before...
"I guess he'd just figured he'd take a shortcut. You've thought about it." That hadn't been a question.
"Yeah, lots of times ... what about you?"
Instead of answering, Grissom left the interrogation room, passing a certain asshole cop on the way. Warrick noted the burning looks they gave each other. Clearly Fromanski hadn't forgiven Grissom just yet. Warrick vowed to keep an eye out for bitter cops out for his boss' blood from now on.
Had Warrick known of Fromanski's earlier threat against Grissom to let him die if things got ugly at a scene, he would have been wiping his feet on that dude's face! It really pissed Warrick off how cops acted like they were so much better than CSI's because rather than kick down doors and shoot recklessly at people, the criminalists actually used their brains to solve a case, and built up enough proof to make sure they had the right guy.
Try explaining that to someone like Fromanski, a thick-as-pig-shit uniform officer from college jock-land whose understanding of police work extended to how hard he could kick the first ass placed in front of him.
Well, Warrick mused, this case wasn't a total loss. They'd caught the bad guy, the Klinefelds were gone, and best of all, Warrick had a dinner date with an extremely hot dispatcher. He left the lab to prepare for an excellent evening...
Grissom fired his gun over and over again, calmly taking the time to line up each shot. He was pretty good. All around the ten-ring. He hadn't always been this good, but circumstances in his life had convinced him that practice was necessary, as much as he loathed guns.
He remembered his childhood hero, Dr. Hawkeye Pierce from M.A.S.H, and his legendary hatred of anything that could do more harm to a human body than a double martini.
However, this wasn't MASH, and he wasn't Hawkeye. He was mortal. And he'd been reminded of that several times. When Amy Hendler had snapped and held a gun to Nick Stokes' head three years ago, he would have probably lost a CSI and a close friend if he hadn't been armed. But even as he'd seen the fear in Nick's eyes, that same fear for himself had lurked at the back of his brain.
He remembered thinking: 'If she turns on me, I'm finished.' Back then, he could hold a gun steady, but he couldn't shoot for shit. He'd been bluffing the whole time.
Thankfully, it hadn't reached that pitch. He done with words what he wouldn't have been able to do with a gun. But then, it had been his turn. He could still see the nightmarish figure of Syd Goggle standing over him, ready to kill. And he had been utterly defenceless. If Catherine hadn't shown up when she had...
And now, once again, he'd been reminded of how vulnerable he really was. He remembered Brass telling him that he was the kind of guy who went to serve a warrant without a gun. Grissom's excuse had been that he wasn't a cop. Looking back, he saw how ridiculous that must have sounded. What had he thought the Klinefelds were going to do? Say "Oh, you're not a cop? Okay, then, we'll let you off with a warning."
He fired again and again, the gunfire never drowning out these unpleasant thoughts...
Brass raised his glass to his lips, and tasted the whiskey on his tongue. It was good, vintage stuff, this whiskey, and he drank it sparingly. For one thing, he didn't have enough of it to chug, and for another, doing so could result in the kind of long-term liver damage that you never recovered from.
He was pleased with how this case had gone. He and Grissom had gotten rid of three bad guys (Stuart Gardner and the two Klinefelds) all in one go, they'd got enough evidence for a grand jury, and along the way, they'd locked horns like back in the good old days. What more could a cop ask for?
Well, maybe fame, fortune and sexy girls, but he could count on at least one of those here. After all, this was Las Vegas, city of bright lights and strip clubs.
Still, it had bothered him slightly that they'd only been able to get Stuart Gardner for the Klinefelds, and not the two gangbangers he'd told Grissom about, the ones that had gotten away with killing blackjack dealers for their cash, and had turned up dead a few weeks later.
But hey, you couldn't have everything, and as long as the guy was busted, he was happy. Too many good cases had been going south lately, and it felt good to get a righteous bust.
Taking one last belt of whiskey, he headed out the door, celebration and a hangover in mind...
Greg packed up his gear, and headed home. He'd sat in the lab and listened as Nick had told him about the vigilante case, bragging that it had been his shoe analysis that had led to an arrest. He'd sat in the lab and listened as Sara had told him about their bloated floater, and whined about Grissom taking them off the Klinefeld case. He'd sat in the lab and listened as Warrick had told him more about the vigilante case and preened over his gorgeous new date.
He'd sat in the lab and listened, and smiled and nodded and agreed, all the while wishing that they would shut up and leave him alone so that he didn't have to keep acting like a court jester. Wishing that he could have a moment to decide how he felt about things.
He knew all about the vigilante case...and about another one.
Walking home, doing an excellent job of not being seen by Warrick as his big date went straight to hell right in front of him, he reflected on the meaning of justice. What was justice? At it's most basic level, what did it stand for?
Justice, perhaps, meant making sure that ordinary people, the innocent, were safe from the depraved predators that lurked in the shadows. If that was so, why did it have to be so difficult? Why did the cops and CSI's have to go through all the red tape and legal crap of court? Why did technicalities have to mean a killerwas released back onto the streets?
He paused in his thoughts for a moment to step back before the crying, distraught dispatcher known to all as Jen bowled him over in her bid to leave the restaurant. As before, he was careful not to let Warrick see him.
Perhaps justice meant good things happening to good people, and bad things happening to bad people. If that was so, they might as well wish for the stars to come down from heaven and give them all tap-dancing lessons! That kind of justice could never happen, and even if it did, there would be no free will for anyone. If people put even one foot out of line, they would be punished Nineteen Eighty Four style. Greg hated the thought of that.
He passed a familiar place on Fremont Street, the alley behind the Hot Spot strip club. Was that Brass going inside? Nah, couldn't be. Hell, if it was Greg had blackmail material for life!
Looking at that alley brought up a plethora of memories for him. The grim smell of garbage and urine. The excited chatter of patrons coming and going from a dozen casino hotels, just audible over the thumping muzac of the Hot Spot. The feeling of dark anticipation, tinged with fury.
Maybe justice was simply a legal form of revenge. After all, whatever Greg and his friends did, they could never bring back the dead. They could never make all the pain and suffering vanish as if it had never existed. All they could do was find the bad guys and lock them up in big grey hells with hundreds of others just like them. All they could do was offer closure.
All they could do was avenge the victim, avenge the victim's bereaved friends and family, avenge their own sense of right that had been so callously wounded. Maybe a life of upholding the law was really a life of revenge.
If that was so, then Greg had done an excellent job...
The memories came again, crystal clear. The feeling of cold metal grasped in both hands. The incredible thunder of two Berettas firing hot chunks of death away from him. The sight of those two scum-buckets as they jerked and screamed and spat blood from a dozen new holes. They would never kill another blackjack dealer for their money.
Their blood had sparkled like a thousand rubies in the moonlight. Their exposed bones had been slivers of white diamond in the darkness. It was beautiful.
Greg supposed that Justice was really a combination of all three things, protecting the innocent, rewarding good and punishing evil, and revenge against the monsters of the night.
He had gone home that night and slept in absolute peace, gun clutched tightly in his hands, almost like a child's stuffed toy, just as he had done eleven times before.
He knew that sooner or later they would find out, and he dreaded that day. But until then, he would fight for justice in every way he could, legally and illegally. And he would win.
Had Stuart Gardner known of Greg Sanders, he might not have despaired after all...