"I want it to be noted somewhere that I came back in on very little sleep."
"So did I, Hodges," said Sara, wearily leaning against the table in the lab. "It's all part of the circle of life. But I'll be sure to mention it to Nick. See if it impresses him any..."
"I couldn't care less if it impresses him or not," dismissed Hodges. "As long as it impresses Russell..."
"Uh huh. Good luck with that... Just tell me about the shoe prints."
The short, dorky-looking lab tech spun on the spot with a cheap-looking flourish and took two plastic sheets off the desk behind him. "Ah. The shoe prints... Quite the find, if I do say so, myself."
"Mm hmm..." Another yawn...
"These prints do match each other. So, whoever was milling around outside was also upstairs, at some point."
"Great," said Sara, fake smile all over her face. She snatched up the papers, and swept from the room with more smoothness than she could ever remember Hodges even faking.
"You're welcome!" he yelled out.
"Huh? Oh, thanks!"
She edged around two other techs from the usual days shifts, and planted herself on the edge of a stool in the break room, where her mug of coffee was still sitting unbothered by the old magazine she had meant to read a couple of weeks ago. Behind her, the steady humming sound of the vending machine, working to cool its liquid inhabitants, caused an extra yawn to escape from her mouth. She grinned at the page she had left the magazine open to; Nick had pointed that humming out to her, back when she'd first come...
"There you are." Morgan entered the room with a doughnut in one hand, and a spreadsheet in the other. "I've got something on the postcard."
Sara leaned on one hand, and flopped the front cover of the magazine closed irritably. "Yeah?"
"The handwriting on this note... Or, well, the glue... It's completely fake."
At that, Sara felt a little more awake. "Fake?"
"Yeah. There is no way any human hand could write this perfectly. Especially not an old woman, like the girl at the jewelry store claimed."
"So, somebody's lied to us..." stated Sara, eyes wandering back to her warm coffee.
Morgan took a bite of her doughnut. "Yeah, but who?" she asked with a mouthful. "The weirdos at the store, or the lady who wrote it?" She swallowed. "And that wouldn't technically be lying to us..."
"No," mused Sara. "It would be lying to the weirdos..."
Morgan took another bite. "Exactly. And what benefit could that possibly be for an old lady who paid in full for the diamond?"
"Unless it wasn't an old lady," Sara wondered out loud. "For all we know, one of them planted the note, or came up with the story."
Morgan shrugged, and went for a paper cup across the room to drink down her doughnut with some steam-less coffee; Sara winced when she saw Hodges' name scribbled on the side of it. "Then how did it end up in the dead guy's house?"
"I don't know," replied Sara. "Maybe Nick has something."
"Shall we go and see?" asked Morgan. "We've probably been away long enough."
At this, a rushing fury rose up in Sara's gut. "Why, was there a time quota he told us to meet, or something?" she inquired bitterly.
She realized she almost sounded hateful, but she couldn't help it. She rose to her feet, and rolled her magazine up to fit under her arm, and took the coffee – which she definitely wasn't leaving – before starting down the halls toward the lockers.
Morgan followed, taking twice as many steps for every brusque one of Sara's "I don't think so," she answered carefully. "I think he was just trying to be nice. He said to take a moment or two. Of course, he did also leave me with backhanded vomit duty..."
Sara rolled her eyes. "Oh, I've always hated it when he does that. That falsely chivalrous, southern Texas guy thing... He knows I'd rather be out there on the field."
"Hey, Nicky."
Brass suddenly appeared at the front door, hands folded in front of him and sweeping the room with his eyes quite thoroughly, for a police captain.
Nick brushed the back of his hand on his forehead. "I think I've got everything" he said. "Is it hot in here?"
"No, it's hot outside, too," said Brass. "And I was just coming to tell you–"
"What's going on here? Grandma...? Grandma?! Are you okay?!"
Nick looked up at the sound of the voice he didn't recognize. A young man was climbing out of a car, and running up the front walk to the door with a panicked look all over his face. The two officers by the porch steps stopped him, and held him just behind the police tape.
"Grandma!" he shouted a few times.
Nick looked over at Brass with his lips pressed together. Here it was: the first family member to be disappointed by a death.
They descended the front steps and came to a stop just shy of the struggling young man, and the police officers who weren't letting him go. "At ease, there, boys," ordered Brass. "Hold him soft, for a second."
Although they appeared to loosen their force, the man they were holding didn't break through. "Where's my grandma?" he repeated.
"I don't know," said Brass with the voice of a negotiator. "Easy, there, son. Easy... We don't know anything about your grandma. We're not here because of her."
That seemed to have done something to calm him down. He relaxed against the arms of the officers, anyway... and brushed some of the sweat away from his face. "Oh... Well, this is her house... What happened?"
"We don't know that, either," Nick interjected. "My name's Nick, and I'm from the crime lab. We got a call from the neighbors today that someone had died here."
"Someone had... died...?" repeated the boy, disbelievingly. "Well, who? If it's not my grandma, then..."
He looked to the door. Then back to Nick and Brass. And then back to the door...
"Hector?"
Although Brass looked over at Nick directly, Nick only returned the edge of his eye. The clues were all over the young man's face; if he turned away now, he might miss them.
"Who's Hector, man? Who's Hector?"
That did it. The boy exhaled a sharp sob, and then stopped fighting against the police entirely. "Hector was my uncle," he cried. "My dad's only brother..." And he went down on his knees.
Nick took his forearms, and sank with the officers to keep him supported. "Your dad...? Where's your dad at? Maybe he can help us find out what happened? Where is he?"
But the boy was not responsive. He brushed his eyes, as if trying to keep the tears at bay, but without any success.
Nick moved his grip from the young man's forearms to his shoulders. "Let's start somewhere else, then. Tell me, what is your name?"
"B-Brandon," answered the boy.
"Brandon. Brandon what? What's yours and your uncle's last names?"
"They're different," Brandon managed to get out. "My uncle had a... different father than... than my father."
"Okay..." affirmed Nick, softly. "Okay. We're gonna get you outta here. We're gonna take you back to the station, alright? You can take a moment to calm down there. And we can answer all the hard questions after that."
Brandon nodded, and allowed himself to be stood up and steered to the police car. Nick sighed watching him go, and rubbed some of the weariness out of one eye.
Brass scratched the back of his neck. "Good work on that one, Nicky. We'll call you when he's ready for the interrogation. Er... questions. I don't think we'll need to put much force into it."
"Yeah," Nick stated offhandedly. "Hey... could I get a ride back to the lab? I didn't think when I sent Sara and Morgan back, I sent 'em with the department car."
Brass chuckled. "And here I was just about to compliment your job as a supervisor..."
"Har, har," was Nick's answer, as he crossed the lawn back to the house to get the evidence still waiting in the living room.
Sara was not very happy when she and Morgan arrived at the crime scene, and found that nobody else was there. She called Nick back at the lab, and, while Morgan cringed up by the door, exchanged a very terse set of words with their charming co-worker over the phone.
"Hey, hey, hey, take it easy," Nick was saying. "I just got back, alright? I didn't think you were in such a hurry to get back to the stink pit. But while you're there, go ahead and take another once-over on the place. You'll feel better."
"I am going to skin you, Nick Stokes," Sara said back. Her attempt at anger was unconvincing through her barely-withheld giggling.
"Never say something like that to a professional member of law enforcement," he answered jokingly. "I'll be here processing while you're taking another look at the crime scene. And I won't go in to do the questioning until you get here, okay? Promise. I really wanna know what you think of him, anyway..."
"Gee," snapped Sara. "If that's all you want me for..."
"Yeah... Yeah, that's what it is... See you when you get back."
Click. Beep. Sara dropped her phone back into her pocket, and bit down on her lip hard. Alright, be an ass, she thought. Then out loud, "Morgan? We're going in."
The smell inside had not subsided very much; Sara still felt like plugging her nose when she first stepped in. The mess was absolutely everywhere. Dried alcohol was all over the floor, and blood all over the floor and walls... Morgan was behind her, hand on her hip and the other one aiming a flashlight.
"It smells awful in here," she said. "There's gotta be more than just a dead body to thank for that."
"Who knows?" asked Sara. "If alcohol, activities leading to sperm, and a bad sense of cleanliness were the norm in here, it could be anything, or any combination of things."
They edged inward, following the way around the steps into the other sitting room. On the love seat, some of Nick's evidence counter markers were stacked up, looking unused and forgotten. Sara eyed them coolly, as if they were at all to blame for her dissatisfaction with their master. Morgan glanced over at them after Sara's light hadn't moved from them for a moment.
"Did Nick mention any place he hadn't looked yet?"
"No. All he said was to give the place another once over."
It was eerily quiet in there. One of those crime scenes in which Sara didn't want to talk much, because it always felt like there was someone else nearby. Waiting just around the corner... But staying quiet felt like an admission of that possibility, at the same time... and it was both dumb to think, and not a comfortable reality to face. But still, Morgan must have been feeling it, too. Or something, anyway; she didn't say anything else while they swept through the next three rooms.
Eventually, they came out through the darker downstairs hallway into the brighter-lit kitchen and dining room area. It seemed clean, at first... but then Sara caught sight of Nick's evidence marker. His one, lone evidence marker, sitting on the edge of the table... But it didn't seem like it belonged there, and this time, she knew right away that Morgan was thinking it, too.
"What, uh... what do you think he bagged from there?"
"I don't know."
Sara realized she was almost whispering just as she finished speaking. In the back of her mind, she wished she had kept a running count of the evidence markers' numbers. One of the quickest and surest ways to check for crime scene tampering was to look for missing numbers in the evidence markers' sequence. It wouldn't work in every crime scene, but she was fairly confident it would work like a charm in a straightforward one like what they were currently on.
"I'm, uh... I'm gonna go and start from step one," she said to Morgan. "Maybe there's something I missed, myself."
"Okay," Morgan whispered back. "I think I'll go peek out the back door."
As she retraced her steps back to the front, Sara could just imagine herself on TV; the mood music would have been quiet and creepy. But her count of the numbers on the evidence markers did not turn up any suggestions of foul play. Everything, from one to twenty-one, was in good standing. All the way up the stairs... But never going into the kitchen...
A shuffling sound reached her ears from behind her. She tried to inhale a substantial amount of air without letting her shoulders rise up. Then she turned... edging her feet around each other to rotate her position at a pace both steady enough to be confident, but slow enough not to challenge her beating heart too much. It suddenly seemed much darker around...
But there was nobody behind her. Just more shuffling noises...
"Morgan?" she tried.
No answer. She wished her feet didn't make so much sound each time one of them hit the floor while walking back out into the upstairs hall.
"Morgan?" she repeated, just a little louder. "Is that you...?"
She reached the top of the stairs, and the light streaming through the window above the toilet, from the bathroom on her left, cast a slight warmth on the side of her face and hair. She was almost afraid to look down the winding staircase; what if she had just given herself away to a stranger in the living room?
But there was nobody at the bottom of the spiraling staircase. At least, not from where she had been looking down. Nobody... but still more shuffling...
One more time, Sidle, she encouraged herself. One more... "Morgan? Do not try to be cute."
And still, no sound of her partner's voice came back to her. She exhaled quickly, but audibly, and came down the stairs completely, one confident-sounding (if not -feeling) step at a time.
There was nobody down in the front room. She kept biting the end of her tongue in her mouth, willing herself not to say anything else.
It's alright, she kept telling herself. There's nobody else here, this time. No guns... No kidnappings... We're fine, Sidle. We're fine...
It felt like a lifetime, but she eventually found the back door. Open, and blowing both air and sunlight in through it, as Morgan had promised. The shuffling noise seemed to be louder. But she couldn't actually see Morgan from inside the kitchen.
With a momentary closing of her eyes, Sara resigned to reach for her pistol. It was hanging so invitingly in the holster. What if the noise wasn't Morgan? What if it was someone doing something to Morgan? Like... shoveling dirt over her...?
She cringed internally as the pistol's safety mechanism clicked off. It made a sound, but it did not deter the shuffling... Which was coming from right behind that tree... Where had she been, earlier? This did not look like any part of the backyard that she had noticed before...
She pressed her back against the evergreen. It was easy to see that it had been planted manually; the roots were still showing, and it was just tall enough to conceal her position from whoever was doing whatever they were doing on the other side. She closed her eyes against the sweat that suddenly rolled down past them. The wind's blowing sounded even more unsettling...
"Alright," she muttered under her breath to herself.
And then she spun around the edge of the tree – "Freeze!" – and pointed the pistol. Where, she didn't realize, at first...
But a second later, she registered that it was Morgan's terrified face on the other end of it.
"Holy shit!" shouted the other, jumping back away from the gun's end. "Sara, what the hell are you doing?!"
Sara quickly withdrew the aim of her gun, and angled it directly upward. "Oh, God..." she breathed through the sweat. Suddenly, it felt cooling to her, against the wind...
"Are you okay?" asked Morgan, breathing so fast and so hard that it was almost panting. "What's up?"
"Oh... uhm..." She struggled to find an excuse for her behavior, which suddenly seemed extremely irrational. "Nothing. Sorry, Morgan, I just thought... Nothing."
"It didn't seem like nothing to me," countered Morgan. "From the other end of the gun..."
"No, no, that was just a precaution. I thought you were someone else. Sorry..."
"Why? Did you see something?"
"No. I heard this weird noise from upstairs, and I didn't know what it was. It scared the crap out of me. I'm sorry..."
"It was just me digging," said Morgan. She spun back around and indicated the small hole she had just dug from the other side of the evergreen tree.
Sara blinked twice, and looked to her right in discomfort. Well, that was part of what she'd worried was going on outside, anyway...
"It's a good thing I brought my camera. Look at this..."
Sara stepped up to the small hole and looked inside of it. Once the sunlight stopped glinting on what was in it – or her eyes could adjust to that glinting, whichever it was – she could make out what was there. And it looked an awful lot like more jewelry. Buried in a box. All bearing the same logo as the jewelry store they had been in a while ago...
