When they arrived at the station Nick escorted the couple and their son to the daycare room located on the second floor of the police station. It was a crèche mostly used by police and csi personnel who worked nights and had small children. It wasn't easy to find a sitter who would adapt to their frequently changing work schedules. The facility was run by a small group of social workers and it wasn't unusual for interviewees or suspects' children to be left there for brief periods of time. Jesse would stay here while Mike and Annabel gave formal police statements.
Standing outside the door it was clear that Annabel was reluctant to relinquish her hold on Jesse's small hand. He in turn clung to his mothers leg, sniffling, on the verge of tears.
Nick, recognising the stale mate situation, Annabel unwilling to make Jesse go in...Jesse unwilling to go, crouched to the young boys level and spoke gently.
"Hey buddy…I just got to borrow mom and dad for a little while and then I'll bring them right back. How's that sound huh?"
He was met with silence, save for another quiet sniffle.
"humm…how 'bout I take you in there and we can meet Wendy, she's real nice, and I bet she'll let you pick out a toy to play with." Nick tried again, this time extending his hand towards Jesse.
Jesse looked up shyly before nodding and placing his smaller hand into Nicks. As he straightened to enter the room with Jesse he felt a rough hand grab his wrist. He turned slightly to see what the problem was and was greeted by Mikes steely blue eyes.
"Why don't we just let me do that huh csi Stokes, I've seen the way you been eyein' my boy, reckon you might just want to take a big step back son."
Mikes voice wasn't loud, but quiet, and strong, his grip tightened as if to emphasise the fact that he wasn't fooling around.
Nick immediately dropped Jesse's hand and took a step back from the obviously angry father.
"Look Sir, I'm sorry if there's been some kind of misunderstanding, I'm just trying to get the information I need to catch your sons killer."
"There ain't been no misunderstandin', I think we understand each other just fine." Mike moved to open the door of the nursery, pushing Jesse in before closing the door and taking Annabels hand roughly.
"Lets get these statements made and get back home baby, we need to be puttin' Jesse down for his nap soon isn't that right." It wasn't so much a question, as a statement fact.
Nick followed the couple a little ways behind, a feeling of uneasiness pervading his mind. He called directions quietly to allow Mike to navigate the halls towards the interview room.
Chris was talking to the couple in a hushed tone when Nick caught up with them outside the room. Chris excused himself and gestured for Nick to step to the side out of earshot.
"Hey look Stokes, Mr Campbell says he'd prefer if I collected their statements alone, so, a, if you could just leave me to it that'd be great, ok?" He patted Nicks shoulder gently, making as if he was going to return to the victims parents, halted only by Nicks voice.
"…look man, I know they're probably a little on edge and everything, but Gris asked me to sit in so…" Nick spoke quietly, shrugging at the end of the sentence.
"I don't think you get this Stokes, I don't want you in there and neither do they, you seem to have confused me with someone who gives a damn about your opinion, or that of Dr. Grissom. If you'll just excuse me, I need to talk to a couple of grieving parents. The same parents that you and your boss have seen fit to drag all the way down here a few hours after they found their sons body. I don't have time to argue about this."
Cavaliers body language and tone left no room for argument. Nick ran his hand through his hair before sighing and walking away. As he passed Annabel she offered a quiet thanks before being pulled through the doorway by her partner.
Having been excluded from taking any part in the interviews Nick returned to the lab and walked slowly towards the morgue, keeping an eye out for Sara, but knowing she probably wouldn't be back for hours.
He entered the morgue to the sounds of what appeared to be a heated argument between Doc Robbins and Dave. Though his ears had picked up the hushed squabble, his eyes were stolen towards the small naked body of Mikey Campbell. He'd been undressed, and appeared to have been washed, despite Grissom's instruction that it shouldn't be until he arrived.
This was in fact the source of the tension between Dave and the senior coroner.
Robbins spun round having heard someone enter the room, seeing that it was Nick he immediately launched into an explanation of the situation.
"Nick, I'm sorry, David neglected to mention until just now that Grissom instructed we wait until he got here to perform the washdown." He spoke rapidly, glaring occasionally at Dave who seemed to be attempting to melt into the grey tiles on the walls.
"It's cool, don't sweat it…could you just…a…could you cover him up with a sheet or somethin', he doesn't need to be left layin' like this."
Nicks sentence was disjointed and Al observed the csi's eyes hadn't left the boy since he'd come into the room. Mikey's eyes had been opened at some point and Nick could feel himself inexplicably drawn towards them, he was in danger of falling into the deep brown orbs. The kid looked so damn sad.
"NICK,…."
Nick jumped slightly and turned to face Robbins.
"Huh?"
Al looked to be sitting somewhere between fatherly concern and impatience, "I said, did David give you an approximation of the time of death yet?"
"umm….no…no…he..umm, he didn't."
"Are you alright Nick?"
"What? Yea, Yea I'm fine, tired."
"It seems that the victim has been dead for around 10 hours, first impressions…he bleed out from the gunshot wound, bullet probably perforated his liver. No exit wound, but if you look closely you can see the bullets lying just under the skin, shouldn't be hard to extract. Lividity is fixed and is consistent with the position in which you found the body, if he was moved it was within an hour of his death. He's in the first stages of rigor, second rigor hasn't set in yet. I'll have more to go on when I open him up. I combed his hair, found some white powder, it's in the envelope over there. Scraped his fingernails, but all there seems to be is dirt.You want to document the body before I get going?"
Nick nodded and reached for the camera the coroner had extended towards him. Taking pictures almost instinctively. The dull flash and whirl of the camera was giving him a headache, he felt nauseous, didn't really see anything through the camera lens, hoped later that his pictures would be worth a damn. He left a little over an hour later, with the camera and Mikey's clothes. He took the brown evidence envelopes Doc. Robbins had collected and a bag containing a small white pill he'd found clutched in Mikey's right hand when the rigor was broken to open it. He'd drop them off at trace on his way to the layout room.
The clothes didn't give much away, they seemed to be relatively new, thought that in itself wasn't exactly probabtive. Until the autopsy was performed and Grissom got back with the evidence from the scene Nick couldn't do much but wait for his evidence to be processed. He figured he'd grab a coffee and wait for Gris to get back, await further instructions as it where.
Warrick and Sara got back to the lab after processing the scene of a liquor store robbery. It seemed three gunmen had entered the premises a little after 3 am, raided the cash drawers and bagged some booze before attempting to exit through the storeroom. One of the employees had given a pretty thorough account of how it all went down. The second store worker wasn't doing much talking. 22 year old Sandy Cooper had been seriously wounded when one of the masked men caught a bad case of itchy trigger finger, she was still in surgery at the near-by trauma centre. With most of the evidence they'd collected waiting for trace analysis or ballistics reports, they'd have to wait until next shift to start putting the pieces together more clearly. This left them with a solid ten hours to recuperate from their long shifts before returning to the lab. Warrick called a quick goodbye to Sara before making his way to the parking lot; she made her way to the break room and poured a cup of coffee, yawning noisily before allowing her body to sink into a soft chair beside the break room table. She finished the coffee and glanced at the clock before relocating to a hard chair at the table and opening a file.
An hour later Sara looked up from the case file she'd been reading on the pretence of waiting for Catherine to arrive. She'd found a new sitter for Lynns and would be joining Sara and Warrick on the robbery turned murder. Sara had received word from Desert Palms that Sandy hadn't made it, Catherine would need to be caught up on what they'd found. That wasn't really the reason she was still there though. She'd heard that Nick's 419 had turned out to be a kid and wanted to make sure he was ok before she left for the evening. She closed the file over when she heard him shuffle into the room, she recognised his footsteps, actually she secretly enjoyed listening to them when he padded round the house late at night when he thought she was sleeping. He was a restless sleeper, couldn't quite seem to switch his mind off entirely.
"Hey, I heard you caught a rough case, you doin' ok"
"Yea, sure, just need to grab a cup of coffee. waitin' on Gris to get back"
He looked over to her from his position beside the coffee pot. She quirked her eyebrows and he smirked a little, he was busted, she wasn't buying that he was fine.
He bowed his head a little before talking again.
"I dunno Sar, just something about Mikey's parents, it doesn't seem right…I dunno, I'm probably just bein' paranoid."
She cocked her head a little to see his face properly. He was rubbing the back of his neck. She could tell he was beat, wished she could take him home. Worried that he was already in too deep. He looked up, caught her assessing him. He smiled at her, but she didn't buy it, had grown to know his tells in the few months they'd been dating.
When she spoke he could tell she was trying not to push him, he could hear the concern in her voice and her brow was slightly furrowed. A sure sign she was worrying.
"Mikey?"
"Ah, yea, the a…the kid, the victim." He fumbled over the words, gesturing unnecessarily with his hands. He knew she'd caught him and there was little chance that she'd allow him to get sucked into the case without at least advising him to be objective. He decided to get in there first.
"Look Sar, I know, ok, I know, I'll keep my distance, I'm not gonna make this personal, it's just, I dunno, when I saw him I just…" He didn't know what he "just", didn't know how to finish the sentence, he couldn't explain how he felt so he substituted a real ending with a barely perceptible shrug before moving to rub his neck again.
Sara moved to close the distance between them, slipped her hand into his and gave it a gentle squeeze. He looked up at her and she smiled. She knew he was tired, she knew she didn't need to remind him that it wasn't their job to empathize with the victims, and she knew that if she looked deep enough into his eyes she'd see that for some reason she didn't yet know, Michael James Campbell junior had already got him.
