Chapter X

Like a Carrier Pigeon

Los Angeles, California

Across hundreds, even thousands, of miles a carrier pigeon would always find its way home. Nick had told him that once. At the time, he had rolled his eyes and muttered something about watching too much Discovery Channel. Now, though he would never admit it to the man's face, he understood the subtle metaphor of what Nick had been saying. The instinctual tug back towards Vegas came before Channel 12 broke the story about the stayed execution and the reopening of the case. He had sensed it, and if he took his grandmother's route, he would say he had foreseen it.

It was all he could think about on his drive into work. Any time you weren't totally focused on LA morning traffic, you were begging for trouble. He got off the expressway an exit early and drove through the urban sprawl of Los Angeles. This wasn't the glittering, palm tree lined Hollywood-envisioned LA either. Every corner came with its very own prostitute and dealer. His hands tightened on the wheel as he passed them. At an interminably long red light, he watched a dealer, sporting a gang tattoo, sell a nickel bag of smack to a kid who probably didn't even have a learner's permit yet. It was disgusting, and yet it was horribly familiar. He made this drive every day to remind himself that this had come very close to being his world.

There had been a time when he would have done anything to get his next hit. Heroine, morphine, speed, anything to get away from the blinding pain that was withdrawal and reality. Grissom's death and Sara's betrayal had left this void inside of him and it hurt. At first, he had started drinking, and that had been okay. Everyone was dealing with the situation in their own way. Hell, he'd heard that Sofia had been forced to switch jobs because she couldn't handle the memories. Alcohol had stopped dulling the edges, though. One night, one year to the day after it had all happened, he'd found solace in a line of cocaine. His higher brain told him that it was bad, but it had felt so very good. He'd gone back again and again, trying to reach that nexus away from the daily reminders of the woman he'd loved, the man who had taught him everything he knew, and the bloody scene they had found them in. He'd been so sure he was in control, though.

When Catherine had questioned him, he'd told her nothing was wrong and when she confronted him, he'd rebelled against her. It had only been when Warrick had found a few grams of cocaine in his locker that things had really started to fall apart. Most of it was hazy, lost in a drug-induced amnesia, but he was pretty sure he had sucker punched Warrick. His memories were mostly second hand, but the scuffle had turned into a full-blown fight and somehow, Catherine had caught the wrong side of his elbow with her face.

He'd been fired the next day and at the time that had probably been the best thing for him. It had taken two more months of self-loathing, self-pitying, and self-medicating in the worst way, to see the light. An overdose would do that to you.

Now, three and a half years later, he was clean and a constant fixture in the local Narcotics Anonymous and he was slowly rebuilding his career. He was damn lucky, and he knew it, to have his job at the Metro Los Angeles Crime Lab. He had scoured the country for months, receiving what seemed like a hundred 'No's before Trent Culver had taken a risk and taken him on to his team. It was that man Greg was going to see now.

He walked down the hallway, offering a greeting here or a 'How's your wife' there, but didn't pause. Pausing would be hesitation and if he hesitated, he might just back out all together. He had to face this, though. Avoiding situations and not facing down his problems had been at the root of his turning to drugs. He had worked too hard to start down that path again.

He knocked on Culver's - the Lab's lead man and his direct supervisor - door. The gruff answer of "What?!" reminded him that he wasn't dealing with Catherine Willows or Gilbert Grissom. Trent Culver was a force unto himself. Greg opened the door and stepped into a slightly different world. One would have thought the view of the city behind him would be the first thing that caught one's eye around the office, but it wasn't. The slightly surreal painting of a strand of DNA, one that covered half of one wall, might have been another. Both were downplayed by the man himself. Trent Culver didn't look like a scientist. He looked like the front man for a heavy metal band. Thick muscles, a gleaming bald head and the aura of an animal that had been caged but not fully tamed, that was how most people perceived Culver. They were right.

"Sanders."

Greg sank his hands into his pockets. "I need a leave of absence." Culver didn't even bother to look up from the report he'd been reading. "Will a week be enough?" Greg had practiced his explanation, he had reasons and had been ready to argue. "Uh yeah. Don't you want to know why?" Culver finally looked up, focusing his laser green eyes on Greg. "I watch the news, I know your background, and last time I checked, it's my job to connect the dots. Sidle's stayed execution, the reopening of the case..." Meticulously organized, he pulled out a couple of papers. "They're all ready; they just need your signature." A little skeptical, Culver never let anyone go without an earful of some kind of lecture or insight. Greg plucked a pen out of the holder the man had on his desk and scrawled his name. Despite Culver's closed mouth tactics, Greg felt the need to explain himself. "I just need to be there."

Culver nodded and out of the blue, it began. "Did I ever tell you where I worked before coming to LA?" He might not quote long dead philosophers, but Culver was just as tricky as Grissom had ever been. Culver motioned for him to take a seat and he did so. "No, I don't think so." Culver got up from his chair and went to the wall. He took a framed picture from it and tossed it across the desk to him. It was a group portrait of some kind. Culver's precise handwriting in the bottom right hand corner proclaimed it to be from San Francisco, 1998. There was Culver, a little younger with more hair and slightly less attitude and on the other end of the group, looking much younger then he'd ever seen her, was Sara Sidle.

Though the point was moot, he looked up, "You know Sara." It was surprising how that had never come up in the two years of them working together. Culver sat back down and took the picture back. He gazed at it for a moment, his expression unreadable. "I knew Sara about as well as anybody can know her. You know what I mean?" Greg nodded, of course he knew. "I offered to testify on her behalf," Was there some kind of accusation there? "But she refused, of course." Greg felt a smirk coming across his face. "Sounds like her." Culver put the picture down and looked him dead in the eye again. "When I read your application, I saw that you worked with her. Let me be clear on this, Sanders. Her high opinion of you and your skills are the only reasons I took a chance on you. A stint in rehab is a heavy thing and it's not something a lab particularly wants on its sheet." Greg nodded; he knew that. About twenty major labs had turned him down. "So I owe her my job?" Culver returned to his work, "You owe her a lot of things, Sanders." He took the papers Greg had just signed, "If you hurry, Delta has a flight to Vegas leaving in two hours."

Mesquite, Texas

(Just Outside of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metro Area)

He stared out at the open fields across from his home. He wasn't a rancher, he didn't own horses, but it was good to have them so close. It reminded him of home. Of course, home was only a short drive away now. It was not, though, thoughts of his family, that had his attention now. Nicholas Stokes was miles and years away from the here and the now.

A pair of slim arms looped around him from behind and a light voice tickled his ear. "Why so serious, Mr. Stokes?" Despite the heaviness of mind, he had to smile, "Well, Mrs. Stokes," He whirled his wife of three months around. "I've got a confession to make." Cobalt blue eyes narrowed, "It's that hussy down at the Lab isn't it? You've been having a red-hot affair with that airhead Medical Examiner." As Doctor Cori Dart-Stokes was the head of the Dallas-Fort Worth ME's office, he only smiled. "Yep. Made love to her all night last night and into the morning." She pecked him lightly on the lips. "You sure did. Now, what's going on?"

It had only gotten page six treatment, a couple of lines, but it was enough to let him know. The execution had been stayed and, according to the Associated Press, the LVPD had reopened the case.

"I have to take a trip. I have to go back to Vegas."

As his wife, and as a fringe member of Law Enforcement, Cori knew exactly what he was talking about. "I heard they reopened the case." He nodded, "Yeah, it's just some unfinished business I need to see to, that's all." They both knew that was a vast understatement. Cori pushed her blonde hair back out of her face. "What are you going to do, Nicky? You don't have any power there any more."

She was right, of course. His wife was rarely wrong and when she was, he was too intelligent to say so. "I don't know. I just need to be there, you know?" She probably didn't, but she loved him enough to try. "Do you want me to come with you?" He did, oh he did. "Yes, but, you can't."

The first time they'd met, he'd pissed off the ME by telling her that she couldn't lift a body. It had been a two hundred pound Dallas Cowboys reserve player. After a good verbal thrashing, a flexing of the muscles he'd underestimated, she'd told him to never again tell her what she could and could not do. The joke around the lab was that it had been love at first sight.

"Excuse me, and just why the hell can't I?" Her voice carried hints of her native Mississippi and lots of fire in it. He couldn't help but smile. "Because I need to know, no matter what happens there, I can come back here to you." In an instant, the fire dimmed in her eyes and she gave him a lopsided smile. "Damn it. How can you be so infuriating and so sweet at the same time?" He pulled her closer. "It's all apart of the Stokes Charm." She shook her head, "Sure." She pulled away from him, but kept their hands linked, "I guess I'll go pack you a bag, because God knows if I trust it to you, you'll pack those same old raggedy pants and those shirts that you think look good on you." He grumbled about her good naturedly, but the truth of it was, he thanked all the bright stars over Texas that she was his.

Author's Note: To quote my beta, it's the return of the prodigals (!). To answer the question before it's asked, no, I don't hate Greg. The Greggo rocks. On that same trian of thought, believe ot or not, I don't hate Grissom (hating GSR and hating Grissom are two very differint things) and I don't hate Catherine. No, really, I don't hate Catherine.