Greg found himself sitting in an interrogation room – but not at the police station near the lab. He'd been alone in the room for hours, resting his head on the table in an attempt to sit as comfortably as this cold metal table and chair allowed. Having his injured hand cuffed behind his back didn't raise his comfort level, either. He was exhausted – both physically and emotionally. His wounds needed medical attention, but that wasn't on his mind right now. He tried hard to process what had just happened to him but couldn't – he just didn't understand what happened. Even though he was tired he couldn't sleep, as soon as he closed his eyes the moments from tonight started to replay in his mind. The memory was too fresh, too vivid, he didn't dare sleep – the nightmares would be too much to handle.
After almost three hours, a detective walked in to talk to him.
"Here, sign that," he said without introducing himself.
"What is this?" Greg asked, lifting his head up.
The detective put a pen in front of him. "This will make this all much easier, just sign it."
He raised his eyebrows as he looked at him. "Where's my representative?"
"You don't need one, it's very clear what happened. Sign." It was audible the detective was getting unnerved.
"I'm not signing anything until..."
He interrupted him. "Listen up, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. If you don't sign now, you won't get a second chance to do it."
Greg took a look at the paper. "You want me to confess to killing the warden?" He couldn't help but laugh humorlessly as he shook his head. "I didn't kill him."
The detective slammed his hand on the table in front of Greg, it startled him. "Are you kidding me?!"
He was determined to comply with the detective, thinking he was on his side. But it was now clear he wasn't. "Listen, I'm a CSI. I didn't kill the warden and I want to talk to a lawyer."
"Do I look like I care? I'm doing you a favor here, kid. The next person you'll have to talk to will be the D.A. and believe me, he's pissed. Because his daughter just lost her godfather because you killed him."
He meant to again state his innocence, but he just realized what the detective said. Warden Shaw was an extremely important, powerful person who had connections to pretty much everyone in Vegas. Although his body was pretty dried out by now, his eyes filled with tears of desperation. "I'm injured and in pain, I need to go to a hospital."
He had to endure another half hour of this interrogation when it was disturbed by loud noise in the hallway outside. "...Don't move," the detective said with gritted teeth. He walked outside, but came back moments later, looking much more hecitc than before. "Alright, let's get this going. It's time for you to..."
As the door burst open, Brass and Nick hurried inside. "Finally!"
Greg quickly got off his seat in excitement, wanting to hug them, but the officer walking in after them forced him back down on his chair.
"Hey, watch it!" Nick protested. "What are you doing?"
"He's under arrest, don't touch him."
"You already said that, but what for?!"
"Murder."
They both stared at the officer, then at Greg. All they'd been told was that there'd been an incident at the prison and that Greg was here. "...What are you talking about?"
"Warden Shaw's dead, but I had nothing to do with it," Greg explained.
"...Are you serious?" Nick adressed the officer. "He's under arrest for the murder of the warden?"
The officer simply nodded.
The detective sighed annnoyed. "I told you to wait outside."
"And I told you that we needed answers," Brass chimed in. "Why is he under arrest?"
The detective and Brass got into a discussion, but Brass didn't want to discuss this in front of everybody. He asked the detective to talk outside, so they walked out.
"What happened, Greg? You look horrible, who did this to you?"
"My career's over… Russell was right, but not in the way he thought he was."
"...What are you talking about? You didn't… kill the guy, right?" he whispered.
"No. Of course not. But you heard the detective. They arrested me…"
"Hey, listen. You didn't do anything wrong, did you? It will all work itself out, you're going to be okay."
"I don't think so." He started crying.
"Hey, look at me." He put his hands on Greg's cheeks to get him to focus on him. "You're going to get through this. I'll be there for you."
He nodded, but he didn't believe that things would actually turn out okay.
The detective and Brass walked back in. The detective had an annoyed look on his face as he put the handcuffs off Greg's wrists."Mr. Sanders, we're releasing you out of our... protective custody."
"...What?"
"You're captain Brass' responsibility now. Don't leave town, you're still a person of interest."
Greg looked around confused. "I-I can go now?"
Waking up the next moring felt strange. Greg was thankful to be still alive, but at the same time felt like dying wouldn't have been the worse option. He was depressed and was ridden with post-traumatic stress that he felt more intense today than right after the fact. His left arm was in a cast and his face and body were in bruises. After sitting in the interrogation room for hours, he had finally been able to get his wounds treated at a hospital.
Russell had offered for him to take the next few weeks off and he accepted. But before he could do that, he wanted to wrap some loose ends on his old cases up, as well as do a little investigating on his own.
The supervisor walked past the evidence room, surprised to see Greg in there. "Hey, what are you doing? Stop that."
Greg looked up from some files. "Don't worry, I'm not working."
"Sure looks like it."
"I'm just getting some things done so whoever takes over doesn't have to work through my organized mess." He smiled at him.
The smile was as empty as Greg's eyes, Russell noticed this. "I'm taking over, I'm quite familiar with your mess, I can deal with it without you trying to organize it. Believe me, you'll only make things worse," he replied jokingly. As he glanced on the computer screen, he realized he was only working on one particular case. "What's this? Prison records?"
Greg didn't answer as he clicked around the files nervously.
"Greg, you should know better than this. What are you doing?"
"Nothing, I was just following a lead..."
"What lead?"
He got off his seat. "You're right, it was a bad idea."
"No, tell me. Whatever could be of help, we need to give to the D.A."
Greg hastily shook his head. "Don't tell him about this."
"Why not?"
He sighed as he sat back down. "I know you'll think I sound paranoid, but the D.A. is friends with warden Shaw. Just like this detective."
"It won't be easy finding a D.A. in Vegas that wasn't friendly with him. He was a very respected man, he did a lot for Vegas' police."
"Yeah, and he also abused his prisoners. I know you never believed me, but he did."
Russell shook his head as he grabbed a chair to sit down. "This was never about whether I believed you or not. I wanted to protect you, I just didn't care whether you were right or not. I just wanted to keep you from doing anything that would hurt your carreer." He looked him up and down. "I feel like I should've been more persistant."
Greg looked back at the computer screen in an attempt to hold his tears back.
Russell sighed. "Alright. Tell me what you were just working on and then get back home, you need the rest. I'll take care of this."
He shook his head. "Thanks but… I don't want to drag you into this."
Russell chuckled. "I'm already in knee-deep and I don't mind. Anything to help you out, really."
The younger CSI hesitated for a moment, but then decided to just go with it. "The warden was surprised… almost angered… that they broke my left arm instead my right. At first I thought maybe because he feared I could fight back less with an injured right arm. But he was a big guy, they outnumbered me and he knew the inmates would weaken me so I remembered… Glenn Weller had a broken right arm. He was the inmate this all started with."
"...Okay." Russell wasn't sure where this was going.
Greg got off his seat to walk to a drawer, pulling a pile of folders out of it. "There have been dozens of broken arms in the last year in this prison." He handed the sheets to his supervisor. "Three were injured because of auto-aggressive behavior, the rest all accidents or fights between the inmates. In over 80% of the cases the right arm was the broken one."
"Yeah, because it's the dominant side in most people, so it makes sense that..."
"Russell, the numbers don't add up. I compared three different prisons, nowhere do the numbers match this prison's. There'd been much more broken arms in that prison than in any other, let alone the right one."
"So what's your theory?"
He shrugged. "I'm not sure, maybe some kind of fetish? I know this all sounds weird and paranoid, Russell, but… you do believe me, right? The warden wanted to kill me."
Russell nodded thoughtfully. It was hard to believe the story and there were lots of things that just didn't quite add up, but he didn't dare question Greg – because it would mean he was lying about last night's events. "...Detective Sullivan thinks you were alone with the warden."
"...Huh?"
The supervisor sighed. "He thinks you made the inmates up so the focus is off of you."
"D-Do you think that, too?"
He shook his head. "I think it doesn't really matter, either way. The warden clearly attacked you."
"I'm not making them up."
"I'm not saying you do. I'm saying that whatever happened and whatever you did, you did it in self-defense."
He looked at his boss quite desperate. "Russell, it matters to me. I wasn't alone with the warden, three inmates were with us. They killed him."
Russell hadn't planned asking Greg any questions about last night. He knew how hard it was for him to talk about this, but since they already started the discussion he decided to ask some questions, after all. "But Sullivan said you're the one who shot him. They found gunshot residue on your hand."
Greg hastily shook his head. "I tried to tell him but he wouldn't listen. One of them put the gun in my hand and pulled the trigger."
"Why'd he do that?"
Greg's eyes filled with tears again. It was obvious to him that Russell didn't really believe his story. "I'm not making this up, Russell."
"I'm sorry. I do believe you. But this is such a weird story to process." He tried to talk himself out of this, but he knew the damage had already been done. Greg felt like he didn't believe him.
