A/N: I apologize once again for the delay, but many things as usual have happened. Also, if we could have a moment of silence for my computer Dom. He finally kicked it after seven years of faithful servitude. Just burned out completely, the poor dear. But I've got Ed now, who's a bit less irritable (meaning he won't randomly delete files from my USB drive) so it's all good. So, next chapter. Whee.
Oh yeah, and: WHERE ARE DAVID'S GLASSES?! First it was Danny, now David?! KEEP THE GLASSES, DAMNIT! Being an owner of spectacles, I feel betrayed.
Disclaimer: Still not mine. Never going to be mine. I must learn to accept that. Or so says the local shrink. The random side-character plot devices, however, are mine. So now I skip in happiness because I can actually associate something of mine to CSI, however small and un-canon. Also, I will never never EVER write CanonOC, so no worries. Like I said, they're plot devices. I don't really like OCs, and I don't really like writing them into fanfictions, but I do love the ones I use in here, so… yeah. I'm sorry. They're from my own story, and I needed to use them in here to make it work. …big disclaimer.
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Chapter Four
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Approximately forty-five minutes earlier…
"We're going to be talking right now," Grissom said, no hint of a smile on his face."I'm removing you from this case. Since objectivity usually doesn't apply to lab technicians, you can see how serious this is." He wrote on a piece of paper. "I'll get the dayshift A/V tech to take over for now."
Archie said nothing, but instead seemed interested in a spot on the floor. Grissom contemplated him for a moment, and then took off his glasses.
"You have to tell me what happened."
"I did tell you."
"Archie," Grissom said, his eyebrows rising. "I catch liars for a living. You really think I can't tell when a member of my forensics own team is lying?"
The tech's head was still tilted down, but his eyes flicked up. After a moment, he spoke. "I can't tell you."
"That could be obstruction of justice," the supervisor said, seeing an entrance and taking it as carefully and tactfully as he could. "I don't believe you had anything to do with Ben Davies' death, but anything that can lead him to his killer—"
"No, I mean, I can't tell you." He looked pleadingly at his boss, who, after a moment, understood.
"Someone won't let you tell."
Archie nodded.
Grissom sat back in his chair, for the first time fazed. "That's… very serious, Archie. In what way, if I might ask?"
The tech shook his head, his mouth tightening as though he deeply wanted to say something, but couldn't.
Grissom looked at him for a long moment, and something clicked. "Ben told."
Archie nodded again.
"Okay," Grissom said, putting his glasses back on. "You're not going to leave the building."
"Wait… what? Why? I thought I was off the case—"
"You're going to tell me everything," Grissom said lightly, "and we're going to work it out."
.:X:.
Closing the door carefully behind her, leaving Nick and Brass in the room with Anders, Catherine sighed and made her way back to the aqua halls of the lab, weaving through various lab techs and other CSIs. Tucking a strand of strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear, she stepped her way into the A/V lab.
"Hey, Arch, I got your email—" Catherine stopped in her tracks and stared.
Instead of Archie, there was a tall, thin, handsome man wearing a cargo hat pulled over dark, shoulder-length hair. At the sound of Catherine's footsteps, he swiveled in the wheelie chair and turned a light shade of red when he saw her in the doorway, staring at him like he had five arms.
"Where's Archie?" Catherine said, blinking. The man grinned timidly.
"Sorry, I sent you the e-mail from the graveyard shift tech's account; I forgot he was logged in. Natural reaction. You're Catherine Willows, right?"
Catherine nodded her head. "And… you are?"
"Oh. I'm Shawn Taft, the dayshift A/V technician. Your supervisor put me on the case. Objectivity or something." He shrugged. "I didn't really want to come in to work this late, but he sounded serious about it on the phone, and he scares me more than a bout of insomnia."
Catherine shook her head, finding herself almost laughing at the concept. "So you said you had something to show me?"
"Um…" Shawn wheeled himself over to the rack. "It's… uh... huh. I'm not usually on this side of the lab… ah." He plunked an evidence envelope from the top shelf and pushed himself back to the computer backwards, pulling out a shard of plastic as he went. He held it up and showed it to Catherine, who pulled on a latex glove and took it.
"That little fella? Yeah; your tech found a section of the serial number along the edge. I had to redo it over again, chain of evidence, you know…" Catherine nodded, waiting for him to get on with it, just slightly irritated. It probably had something to do with how carefully he was talking. "It took a kind of long time to find where it goes to, but… I think I might've—"
"Shawn," she said, cutting him off, and he cringed. "I don't have an IQ of twelve."
"Sorry," he muttered. "Ecklie doesn't like it when I talk as fast as I usually do."
"Do I look like Ecklie?"
"No ma'am," he responded instantly, recognizing the tone.
"Talk to me like I'm CSI Willows. Got it?"
"Yes, ma'am. Sorry. Uh…" he paused, breathed, and launched into a tirade, his speech fast but perfectly articulate. "The serial number, and the specific signature, matches a popular info-movie out, dealing with selling and rewiring computers. It's called BLANK, because every single one is slightly different, depending on exactly what you want to do with the computer. That didn't make sense to me at first, because the serial numbers are all more or less the same, give or take a few numbers. But then I found out that's actually used primarily so they know how many they've sold, and of course, if you've actually bought it, almost like a proof of purchase on your cereal. It was sold about three or four days ago at a small conference in the Monte Carlo, and I've got a list of both the people that attended as well as well as those that bought BLANK, since you need to register to buy it." He held out two pieces of paper from the printer.
"That," Catherine said, smiling as she took the papers from him, "was much better. Thank you, Shawn."
He smiled a little less timidly this time. "My pleasure. Can I go home now?"
"Not yet," she said. "We may need you again."
"I don't really… mind being here, but isn't one of your CSIs an A/V expert too? One of ours is. He could always take over."
"Warrick's on a case, actually," Catherine replied, handing him the evidence folder with the DVD shard in it.
He took it and sighed. "Well, I suppose I don't need that much sleep anyways."
"We're going to be bringing in a laptop, if we can get the warrant," she said. "It belongs to a Ryan Anders. Brass just released him from interrogation."
Shawn stared at her for a long second, his mouth slightly open, then he lightly tugged one of the papers out of her hand. "This Ryan Anders?" he asked in a surprised tone, pointing to a name on the list. Sure enough, under the list of the people that attended the conference, was the name Ryan Anders in bold print. She stared for a long moment.
"Is that bad?" Shawn asked, staring up at the CSI.
"Yes and no," Catherine said slowly. "It's leaning more towards yes." She lowered the paper and sighed. "Our suspect list just shot up." She pointed to the name above Ryan Anders.
Ben Davies.
.:X:.
Present Time…
"Shut up, Stokes, and let me just tell you what we found!" the male dayshift snapped, looking irritated.
"I would, if you had everything organized the way you should, Daniels."
Jude Daniels leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his coffee-brown hair, growling in frustration. "I hate you graveyard CSIs. You think that the way you do it is always right."
"That's because everything you dayshift guys always do ends up being wrong."
"Look. Just because you have the amazin' Grissom as your supervisor doesn't mean—"
"Oh, shut up," a female voice said, and Catherine and the short ginger-haired woman from earlier strolled into the layout room, seeming much more at ease than the men, who looked about ready to eat each other. The shorter one, Tracey Elliott, was glaring at Jude. "Can't you get along for five minutes without trying to rip heads off?"
He rolled his eyes at her again, pushing up his glasses. She sighed. "New Yorkers."
"Californians," he shot back.
"Okay," she said. "Since Jude clearly cannot control his Y chromosome—"
"I hate that expression," he muttered.
"—I'll tell you what we found, Nick." She passed over an evidence log. "Our coroner found contusions, lacerations, and overall wounds similar to your first body, Ben Davies, who turned out to be friends with your A/V tech, right?" Nick nodded ("Objectivity," Jude mumbled under his breath). "Ryan Anders, 32, an intern at the local hospital," Elliott continued, "He turned out to be friends with Davies as well." She shook her head. "Six degrees of separation in the making. Did your tech know him, too?"
Nick thought back for a second to when the tech in question had found out Anders was dead. "…yeah, he did."
"Catherine said that Ryan Anders was also at the conference dealing with computers. Shawn also said that Ben Davies bought this movie called BLANK." She looked over at the older CSI, who nodded. "Brass is going through the list now; he's going to bring in the ones with prior felonies first, and then work his way through those who are clean," Catherine said.
"Which means we've got a problem," Jude said, his face serious. "That conference coulda had at least two dozen people who came from out of state. Any of those tourists coulda killed Davies and Anders, then left town last night."
"No," Nick said. "Don't forget the note. Whoever did this is still in Vegas."
"Very true," Jude muttered.
"So where did you find the note?"
"In his pocket, of all places."
"We thought it was weird," she continued. "What does the note mean by 'one left?' Serial killer? Terrorist threat? We couldn't figure it out. Then Jude remembered an old case one of his co-workers mentioned."
"Back when I was on the New York squad," Jude said, tapping his lower lip, "the forensics team there had a case similar to this. Only it said 'two more will die' and it was written in blood on the body's shirt. It turned out to be a revenge case. Do you think that's what we got here?"
"A revenge case?" Catherine asked. "It could be. I think it's more than that, though. It's probably personal, though. I agree with you on that."
Elliott's phone suddenly beeped, as did Catherine's. Elliott pulled her cell out and pressed a few buttons.
"O'Dell just e-mailed me," she said, staring at the small screen of her Treo and standing up slowly. "They've just brought in Tony DeVini on the basis that he might have had something to do with Anders' death."
"Brass just sent me the same thing," Catherine added, flipping her phone closed. "He wants us to view the interrogation. They can't hold him for long."
"I'll interrogate him," Nick and Jude said at the same time, then glared at each other. Elliott rolled her eyes. "Whatever," she said, whisking out of the room with a toss of her ginger hair. Catherine followed, grinning to herself as she thought to herself, we've just left a former jock from Texas and a New York cop alone in the same room. There is sure to be a bullfight.
"This is our case now," Nick said. "Why should you interview DeVini?"
"Oh, like you wouldn't want to if it was the other way around. What happened to objectivity, huh?" The younger CSI scowled at Nick.
"That's alright," Grissom said lightly, walking into the break room. "I've just stopped Catherine and Elliott; they're going to be doing the interrogation." He turned to Jude, who seemed to shrink visibly under the supervisor's polite stare. "You, Mr. Daniels, can watch from the viewing room."
"Um. Right." And with that, Jude was gone as well. Grissom then turned to Nick.
"I think you should go home for the rest of your shift, Nick," he said, his tone very calm.
"Why?"
"Catherine and Elliott are perfectly capable of doing the interrogation on their own," was the reply.
"Grissom, this guy has killed two people, and he's going for a third—"
"But if we've got him in interrogation," Grissom interrupted, "then there's nothing to worry about for now."
Nick, after a moment, grudgedly nodded. No use trying to fight that ironclad logic. A thought entered his head.
"Hey, Gris, did you talk—"
"Yes."
"…okay then." Nick gave a barely imperceptible shrug and walked out, shaking his head.
In the locker room, Nick ran through the case in his head, slipping on his coat. Wishing dearly that he could watch the interrogation, but knowing that Grissom would have his head if he tried, the Texan just sort of accepted it and brushed it aside.
Slamming the locker closed, he made his way to the front door, nodding at Judy as he left.
"Oh, Nick," Judy called as he walked by, "Archie says he wants to talk to you."
Nick turned, an eyebrow raised. "About what?"
"He didn't say. Just to tell you that he's outside." Judy shrugged before returning to her paperwork, but not before adding, "He looked nervous."
Nick nodded, and with a thanks, pushed the doors open to find Archie leaning against the bricks next to the entrance, staring up at the sky. The bruising had gone down some, but still shone in the brightness of the building's lights. He looked over when Nick walked out, and then looked away again.
"Hey," Nick said, approaching him. "You feeling okay? Judy said you needed to tell me something."
"Yeah." There was a short pause as the tech stared at the cement, brow furrowed, but just when Nick was about to ask again, Archie spoke.
"Look, Nick, I lied," he said in a low voice, turning and looking up at the CSI. "I told Grissom too… I didn't fall down the stairs, Ben, Ryan and I were walking home from a casino and we—"
There was an ear-shattering bang and Archie's body snapped forward suddenly, his eyes wide in pain and shock. He crumpled to the ground, unmoving.
Meanwhile, Catherine's eyes widened in the interrogation room.
"What do you mean you're not the real Tony DeVini?"
.:X:.
end chapter
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A/N: Oh dear.
Reviews are lovely. –bricked-