Tension Mounts
That afternoon – with five days left, Catherine Willows and Nick Stokes went to the house of L.C. 3, Lance Cage. They knocked on the door of his home, and he answered before Nick could ring the doorbell, dressed in his pajamas, hair disheveled and a cup of coffee in his hands.
"Hi," he said, bewildered. "Can I help you guys?"
"I'm Nick Stokes and this is Catherine Willows from the Las Vegas Crime Lab. We're here to ask you a few questions regarding a very important case that we're working on. May we come in?"
"Yeah, sure," he replied, stepping to the side to let them enter. He led them into the living room. "Can I get you guys a coffee or something?"
"Fine, thanks," Nick replied, sitting down on his couch.
"What's up?" he asked, sitting across from them.
"Last night was the attempted arrest of Walter Wallace..."
"Yeah. Picked it up on the scanner. Sounded like one hell of an attempt."
"Well, as a result of the attempt, one of our colleagues, Sara Sidle, was taken," Nick replied.
"I'm sorry to hear that," Lance replied.
"We, um, ran a ballistics test using the two bullets pulled from the two slain officers and well...they're bullets registered to you and your gun."
"Oh." It dawned on him. "I think I see where you're going with this. That's my gun. My home was broken into a month and a half ago and some things were taken, including my gun. I did file a police report."
"What kind of gun did you have?"
"A regular nine millimeter that was issued to me when I joined the Reno P.D."
"May we see your badge?" Nick inquired. Lance grabbed it off of the coffee table and handed it to Nick. The two CSIs stared at it and handed it back to Lance, apparently satisfied by the viewing.
Nick exhaled, clearly getting more and more frustrated. "Sorry to have wasted your time."
"Don't worry about it. You're just doing your job," Lance replied and the two CSIs left. They walked out into the lawn.
"This case is going nowhere," Nick murmured.
Meanwhile, back at the lab, Warrick was growing more and more and more frustrated with each passing second. This seemed like an impossible puzzle to solve. No evidence, no ransom, nothing to even give them an inclination that Sara was still alive. He was sitting by himself in the break room, staring at the folders and photographs from the crime scene.
Grissom walked by, drinking a coffee. He stopped and walked into the room. "What are you doing?"
"I'm just looking at the pictures again. We have to be missing something," he insisted. "There has to be more evidence than what we have."
"Warrick, maybe you should go home and gets some sleep. Come back with a fresh eye."
Warrick shook his head. "No time for that." He looked up at Grissom, his green eyes intense. "Any word from Catherine and Nick?"
"No."
That seemed to set off Warrick Brown. "I can't believe this. First Nick, now Sara."
"The evidence has never failed us, Warrick," Grissom informed him. "Once we figure out the missing pieces of the puzzle, then we'll find Sara."
Catherine and Nick trudged in, thoroughly defeated. "What did you guys get?" Warrick asked.
"Well, LC is a cop for the Reno PD," Catherine replied. "His gun was stolen a month and a half ago." She handed Grissom a folder and he stared at her, surprised. "The police report he filed regarding the missing gun."
"Another dead lead." Warrick's tone was lifeless, but his eyes were flashing with anger.
"My thoughts exactly," Nick replied.
"So, what we have here is no prints, no weapons, no fibers, no tire tracks..." With each listing he grew increasingly more frustrated. "All we have is nothing but photos of nothing!"
Catherine could sense the impending lightning strike. "Warrick..."
"We don't even know what the hell we're looking for!" his sleep-reduced mind yelled out into the room. "We don't know where the hell to even start looking! For all we know she's..."
That was a thought that was too much for Grissom to take. "Warrick, that's enough..." His tone was loud, stern, out of character for a man normally as composed as Gil Grissom.
"That's easy for you to say, Grissom. After all, she's just another victim, huh?"
The room went loud with silence. The two men locked glares and Warrick stormed out into the hallway. Grissom had to catch his breath and he turned to Catherine. "Send him home. Tell him to get some sleep. He's no good to us like this." He knew that if anybody could get through to him, it would be Catherine. Catherine left and Grissom rubbed his temples.
"I'm, um, going to see if we can ID that vic in the morgue. See if we can contact her parents." Grissom nods and Catherine returned shortly after Nick left.
"You okay, Gil?" she inquired.
"Yeah, fine," he replied, sitting at the table. "I'm just...I'm not sure how to solve this," he confessed. "He has to be long gone with her right now."
"Do you want me to call the neighboring states and police stations? Tell them we have a CSI missing?"
"That would be a great idea, Catherine."
"We're going to find her, Gil," she added optimistically.
"I know," he replied. "The evidence always sees us through. It's just that we're missing something important in these photos." There was a beat. "At this point in time, we should have more to go on than this."
"No tire tracks, right?"
"Not a track of anything. We have nothing leading us nowhere."
"Then maybe we need to go back out there and check the wooded area behind the mortuary."
"Didn't you guys process it?"
"Maybe we're missing something," Catherine replied. "Maybe Sara was dragged through the woods."
Grissom shot a look at Catherine. "There would be more blood. We don't even know if Sara just wasn't killed there. Or if she was even knocked out."
"It's too little blood for a murder, Gil. You of all people know that. And this son of a bitch's MO is going to prevent Sara's death for the next seven days. So what I'm thinking was he knocked her out with the stolen gun."
"Think the robbery and Sara's abduction is connected?"
"I think so," Catherine replied.
He took a deep breath. "See if you're missing anything out there. And if you think you've found everything, inspected every last blade of grass...do it again."
Catherine nodded and left to go and resume her work on the case.
Meanwhile, in some unknown place, Sara Sidle woke up to a blinding pain in the back of her head. She didn't know how long she had been out for, but instinct told her she was not in a hospital. Or a hospital that was licensed by the state of Nevada anyway. She could feel the blood clotted in the back of her head and when she went to touch at it, she found her hands tied up to opposing posts.
She could see a man silhouetted in the darkness, staring over her wallet. Upon closer inspection, she realized she was dressed in nothing more than her pants and her black bra.
"Sara Sidle with the Las Vegas Crime Lab," he read out.
"Please, let me go," Sara replied, her voice becoming fearful. She was still bewildered and confused about the entire situation. "I just want to go home...please..."
"I can't do that," he replied, standing up and grabbing a camera from the table. "What you don't understand, Miss Sidle, is that I have plans for you." With that, he began to snap photos of his potential victim.
