Chapter 10
Gilbert Grissom – Grissom, Gil, or even Griss, to his friends and coworkers – sat at his desk in his office at the Las Vegas Crime Lab. At times like this, he absolutely hated being a supervisor. He was admittedly not a people person, and Catherine Willows – his assistant supervisor – was constantly reminding him to be more politic. Give him a crime scene and bugs, he'd take them over paperwork any day.
Case related paperwork he didn't mind so much. It came with the territory, after all. It was requisitions and evaluations he hated filling out.
He'd come in an hour early for his shift just to try to put a dent in the pile of paperwork littering his desk. Now his hour was nearly up, and he was no closer to putting a dent in it than he had been an hour ago. To top it all off, he could feel the beginnings of a headache coming on, and could only pray it didn't turn into a migraine.
Setting aside the file folder he'd been working on, Grissom leaned back in his chair with a sigh. Pulling off his glasses, he set them on the folder, and rubbed his eyes.
A light knock on his open door had him stifling a groan of annoyance.
Grabbing his glasses as he straightened back up in his seat, Grissom looked towards the door. "Need something, Greg?"
"Hey, boss. Got a few minutes?" Greg asked, stepping into the office. He held several papers in his hand.
"Are those the dependant forms?" Grissom asked, motioning at the pages Greg held. He hoped that was all Greg needed. He wasn't sure he could stand the DNA specialist's eccentric personality right now, what with the brewing headache.
"Hmm? Oh, yeah," Greg replied a bit distractedly, looking blankly down at the forms in his hand for a moment, before handing them to Grissom.
Grissom had been a bit shocked the night before, when Greg had come in and asked about having a dependant added to his insurance. Finding out the dependant was a slave Greg had bought on a whim had surprised Grissom even more. Though it really shouldn't have. He knew Greg's parents were wealthy, so it wouldn't surprise him to find that they had household slaves. Why shouldn't Greg have one here in Vegas?
While Grissom didn't much care for the reintroduction of slavery, he didn't speak out against it as long as the slaves themselves were treated right. Knowing Greg as he did from the lab, Grissom had no doubts that Greg would treat the slave he'd bought well. That feeling was reinforced by the fact that Greg was willing to pay a higher insurance premium to have his slave added to his health insurance.
Coming back to himself a moment later, Grissom was surprised to see Greg still standing there, shifting nervously from foot to foot.
"Something wrong, Greg?"
"Can I ask a favor?"
Realizing he wasn't getting rid of Greg that easily, Grissom reached into the mini fridge behind him and pulled out a plastic container of chocolate covered grasshoppers. Removing the lid, he held the container out to Greg in invitation, but the lab tech declined with a shake of his head.
Shrugging, Grissom took a grasshopper out and popped it into his mouth, crunching into the delicacy before replying, "It depends on what the favor is, I guess."
"Nick finally opened up to me this morning, told me something disturbing."
"Nick?" Grissom asked in confusion.
Gesturing at the papers on Grissom's desk, Greg responded, "My dependant."
"Oh. What was it he said?"
"He said he was taken in an illegal search and seizure. His dad, a Supreme Court judge in Texas, was falsely accused of being corrupt. Could you run his name through the databases, see what comes up?" Greg's face held a hopeful expression. To Grissom, the energetic genius's usual personality seemed suppressed by some emotion Grissom couldn't quite thumb down.
"I can't promise you anything. If I have a spare minute or two, I'll see what comes up. His full name in here?" Grissom said, gesturing at the forms on his desk.
A smile lit up Greg's face, and Grissom groaned inwardly, and thought to himself, There's Greg! I'm not going into DNA tonight, if I can help it.
"Thank you, Griss!" Greg said, as he nearly skipped out of the office towards his lab. He nearly collided with Warrick Brown, who jumped out of the way, then turned to watch Greg with a bemused look on his face.
Later that night, Grissom found himself with little to do. It seemed criminals in Vegas had declared a holiday tonight. Other than a B & E off the strip – which he'd assigned Warrick Brown to – there was little else going on, so Grissom had sent home the other CSIs, Catherine Willows, Sara Sidle, and Holly Gribbs, reminding them to keep their cells close in case things changed.
Pulling a slip of paper from his pocket, Grissom settled down at the computer in the deserted A/V lab.
After signing into the computer, Grissom used the mouse to open the program he needed. Tapping in the name from the slip of paper, Grissom made a few selections from the list of databases, then clicked search.
There was precious little information about one Nick Stokes. He did find a digitized birth certificate – amazing in and of itself because of the sheer amount of man power needed to scan every birth record in the state of Texas back to at least 1971. The birth certificate gave Grissom the names of Nick's parents, so at least he would have another angle to search.
Grissom also perused through Nick's school records. Nick was at least telling the truth about when he'd become a slave. School information about Nick just stopped during his junior year of highschool. Before that, Nick had been an All Star champion in both baseball and football. Texas A & M had even offered him a scholarship and early enrollment to play football for them.
The only information available after Nick's junior year was a link suggesting he contact the Slave Trade Association.
That pretty much meant Grissom would get no information about Nick's prior owners. In some areas of the country, the slave trade was so still so controversial that owners needed their privacy maintained to ensure their safety. Thus, the Slave Trade Association.
Without a court order, Grissom would get nothing from them, so he moved on.
Tapping in William Stokes, he waited to see what would come up about Nick's father.
The Austin Police Department had digitized versions of Bill Stokes's interrogation and trial, and there was a detailed list of confiscated personal property. Grissom downloaded it all.
Cuing up the interrogation, Grissom started with that.
The camera had been set to record even before Bill Stokes was brought into the room. It was taking two uniformed officers to drag the struggling, yelling man into the room, and force him down into the chair across from the camera.
As the officers struggled with their suspect, he was yelling, "Where's my son! What the hell do you think you're doing! There was no warrant! You have no right!"
A plain clothes detective came in a moment later, sitting across from Bill Stokes. A humorless smile settled on his face, as he said, "Judge Morris sends his regards, Mister Stokes."
Bill's mouth snapped shut with an audible click, and all the color drained from his face.
"He also said to tell you that you'll be disrobed, disbarred, and thrown in prison for the rest of your life, for your crimes."
"Oh, dear God! It wasn't me! It was him! You have to believe me! It was Judge Morris! He's setting me up!" there was desperation in the man's eyes. Grissom couldn't tell if it was the desperation of a truly innocent man, or of a guilty one who's realized he's been caught.
The detective leaned across the table, and whispered something in the judge's ear. It was too low for the crappy microphone on the camera to pick up, at least so that Grissom could hear it without enhancing the audio. If it was possible, Bill Stokes paled even further, though.
A tortured, "Please! No!" escaped his lips. "I'll confess! I'll say whatever you want, but please, let Nick go and leave the rest of my family out of this!"
The rest of the interrogation was a fairly typical question/answer session dealing with what the judge was confessing to.
It all seemed pretty straight forward, but just to be sure, Grissom decided to see if he could determine what the detective had whispered to the judge.
Pulling up the program the lab used for enhancing audio, he imported the interrogation video.
Some hours later, Grissom removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose in exhaustion.
He was getting no where with the audio from the interrogation. It wasn't that the whispered words weren't there, because they were. It was just that the microphone on the camera hadn't picked them up enough for him to enhance them with any clarity.
Looking at the clock, Grissom decided to call it quits for this shift. He'd come back to it the next time he had some free time, try attacking it from a different angle.
Logging off of the computer, he stood and stretched aching muscles.
On his way back to his office, Grissom stopped in the DNA lab, not at all surprised to see Greg still hard at work. For a change, he didn't have his music blaring for all to hear.
The young tech looked up from the microscope he'd been intently gazing through, a wide grin spreading across his face. "Hey, Griss! Haven't seen you all night! Got something for me to process?"
With a sigh, Grissom replied, "Not in the forensic sense of the word. I started working on that favor for you."
"Oh?" Wary curiosity replaced Greg's smile. "Started? So you think there's something to what Nick told me?"
"I'm not sure. The interrogation of Nick's father seemed on the up-and-up, except the detective whispered something to him at one point. I spent most of the night trying to enhance the audio, find out what he said. Didn't get anything, but I'm not giving up yet."
"Oh, okay," a disappointed look flitted across Greg's face, to be quickly replaced by a grateful smile, "Thanks! This means a lot to me."
"You should know, Bill Stokes, Nick's father, died in prison last year. Prostate cancer."
"Oh, no!" Greg's smile fell away, and Grissom could see an incredible sadness take up residence in the younger man's eyes.
"Are you going to tell him?"
"As much as I don't want to cause him more pain than he's already been through, he has a right to know. Thank you, Grissom."