It was a full two months after his return to the lab that Nick finally discovered the serial killer. The last murder had been just before he returned to the lab.
Eight weeks later, there was another. All hands on deck, was the call. The whole team was assigned to this case.
Nick sat in the passenger seat of the Denali, drumming his fingers on his knee, waiting for Warrick to fill him in on the case. Warrick didn't say anything. Nick cleared his throat.
"What's the deal with this guy?"
Warrick glanced at him, then back at the road. "We don't know much. His victims are white males, late thirties. He tortures them extensively before he kills them, including drugs. Slashes the throat to kill."
"Any leads yet?" Nick asked.
"None that have gone anywhere. We don't have a clue." Warrick stared determinedly ahead, into the dark ahead of them.
Nick listened to the sloshing of the windshield wipers as they tried to fight the torrential downpour.
To his relief, they arrived at the home of the victim within a few minutes. It was a medium sized house, with a messy yard and chain-link fence. Grissom, Sara, Greg, and Catherine stood huddled on the covered porch out of the rain.
Warrick parked the car on the street, and he and Nick pulled on their coats in the car, grabbed their kits and dashed toward the porch.
"Good, you're here!" Grissom shouted over a loud clap of thunder. It was just their luck that they would get caught in the biggest storm of the year. "Body's in the bedroom. Warrick, you and I will look at the bedroom. Cath, Sara, you handle the rest of the house. Greg, you can process the body. Nick…" Grissom paused for a moment, and Nick looked at him expectantly. Grissom determinedly did not meet his gaze. "Nick, you check the perimeter."
"In this? Are you nuts?" Catherine yelled, waving an arm at the sheets of rain and nearly knocking Sara down the steps.
"Any evidence out here is getting more compromised the longer we wait. If there's anything to be collected, it's got to be quick," Grissom reasoned.
"It's cool, Cath," Nick said, pulling the zipper of his coat a little higher and turning to walk back into the rain.
Cool was an understatement. It couldn't be warmer than forty degrees out here, and the rain made it that much colder. Nevertheless, Nick pulled his maglite out of his pocket and began to look around the yard.
The front door slammed, effectively closing him out, but he ignored it. He wandered around to the side yard, where there were a shovel and a rake leaning against the side of the house. A tiller rested next to them and the metal garbage cans were against the fence. Noticing something strange, he walked over to the garbage cans to take a closer look.
On the top of one of them was a muddy footprint, one that somehow had survived the rain thus far, probably thanks to the large tree in the neighbor's yard which was partially covering it.
Nick pulled his camera out, and carefully lined it up to take a picture of the print. The killer had probably used these as a quick step to hopping the fence and escaping.
CRACK. A tremendous sound from above him, and he looked up to see the tree branch he was earlier so grateful for, falling and about to crush him.
Nick leapt to the side, but the branch caught his shoulder, sending him sprawling and slamming his arm and side into the blades of the tiller.
"Shit," he mumbled, disentangling himself, already feeling the burning. He carefully stood up and instinctively moved away from the branch. Then he looked down. Blood was already seeping through his coat, both on his side and his arm, becoming pink and diluted in the still pouring rain, and falling to spatter the ground. "Shit."
He stripped off his coat, ignoring the sting of icy rain through his thin shirt, and wrapped the coat around his arm and pressed it against his side to stop the bleeding.
Deciding to salvage what evidence he could, he squinted back at the tiller, blinking the raindrops from his eyes. He knelt closer to the gardening tool to see, underneath the shiny coating of fresh blood, a bit of dried blood, protected from the rain by the body of the machine. Damn it.
He used his good arm to tug his kit out from under the branch, and pulled out a swab. He swabbed the dried blood and capped it, dropping it back into the case. He snapped a picture of the tiller, then noticed a small piece of denim on one of the blades. It too, was covered in blood. Grissom is going to kill me.
He removed the scrap and bagged it, then packed up to continue around the house.
Nick walked around the back, where he found a door, with the lock all scratched up. Picked. He snapped another picture. The door knob was too wet to search for prints. Damn rain.
When he had returned to the front of the house, he discovered, to his dismay, that he did not have the keys to the Denali. More than that, he could not go into the house, or onto the porch, because the blood now dripping from his coat would contaminate the primary scene also. He could have called Warrick to ask for the keys, but that seemed too pathetic. So instead, scowling, he leaned against the car to wait.
Grissom snapped his kit shut and picked it up. "Okay, let's head back to the lab. Greg, you want to ride with the body?"
"Sure," Greg replied easily, closing his own kit, standing, and stretching. "Man, I almost miss my chair in the lab, after sitting on my knees for an hour."
Grissom chose to ignore that and headed outside, already considering the possible implications of the evidence he had collected. There wasn't much of it. Some foreign fibers possibly from a car, a snagged piece of leather that could be from a glove, a knife. He thought of how the lack of blood indicated a secondary scene, then sighed. That always made his job harder.
"Nick?" Warrick's deep voice boomed from behind him, then the tall man pushed past him through the still-pouring rain to the other CSI.
Grissom had only glanced briefly at Nick, but now he took a closer look. His CSI's complexion was almost grey and he shivered violently. He was holding his coat, rather than wearing it, and he was soaked through.
"Why aren't you wearing your coat, man?" Warrick asked.
"I-I, uh…" Nick stammered. Grissom took three long strides and was at Nick's side, where he gently tugged the coat away from Nick, then stared, astonished, at the dark stain covering his arm and side.
"God, man, what did you do?" Warrick demanded, but Grissom cut him off.
"Warrick, unlock the car. Nick, in, now. Cath, can you find that first aid kit in the back? And Sara, you drive the other car back to the lab," he delegated, tossing his keys to Sara.
When they had complied, Warrick sat in the driver's seat, Catherine next to him, and Nick and Gris were in the back seat. Warrick turned on the heat immediately.
"What'd you do?" he repeated, as Grissom lifted Nick's shirt to get a better look at the wound.
"I-I c-compromised the s-scene. I'm s-sorry," Nick said miserably, through chattering teeth, while allowing Grissom to poke at him.
"But what happened?" Catherine asked, turning in her seat to get a better look at them as Grissom used some of the gauze from the first aid kit to mop up some of the blood.
"T-tree branch fell. Hit my sh-shoulder, and I fell on a r-rotary tiller," Nick mumbled, eyes downcast in embarrassment.
"This needs stitches," Grissom announced. Nick's eyes widened.
"I d-don't wanna go to the h-hospital. We're on a c-case," he protested. Grissom glared at him.
"I don't care if you want to," he began, but Nick interrupted.
"C-c'mon, Gris. Evidence is t-time-sensitive. J-just put a b-bandage on it, and I'll go a-after shift." Nick's eyes silently begged him to give in. Grissom glared for a moment longer, then conceded.
"Fine."
"T-there was dried b-blood on the t-tiller. I swabbed it, b-but we won't be able to g-get any other evidence off t-the tiller now," Nick said quietly. "I f-found a f-footprint too, though."
Warrick glanced in the rearview mirror at Nick in the back. "In this mess?"
"Got l-lucky, I guess."
"Sure you did," Catherine said, eyeing the large cut in his side as Grissom placed some more gauze over it.
"What'd ya'll find?" Nick drawled, closing his eyes against the pain.
"Not much. A bit of cloth, fibers, a knife." Catherine turned to face the front again.
"I found a bit of d-denim," Nick informed them, looking determinedly forward as Grissom wrapped his arm in tape. Grissom could tell that having to be helped like this was really irritating Nick, though he tried not to show it. Gris dropped his arm, then reached into the back to grab a blanket they kept in case of shock. He handed it to Nick.
"Finished," he declared, just as Warrick swung the Denali into a space in the lab parking lot. I suppose it's too late for the blanket.
They all clambered out of the vehicle and hurried to the back where they grabbed their evidence, then ran for the building.
"Damn rain," Grissom heard Nick mutter, and he shook his head. You're a grown man, Nick. Quit complaining. He stayed silent.
Once safely in the doors, in the warmth of the building, everyone, sans Nick, peeled off their drenched coats and carried them to the locker room. Nick stopped there and opened his locker, but Grissom continued on to the layout room to spread out their evidence and make a list.
To his surprise, the rest of his team joined him only moments later, including a still sopping Nick.
"Nick, why don't you change clothes, before you get hypothermia?" Catherine adopted her mothering tone.
"Don't have any other clothes in my locker," Nick grunted. "Here's the piece of denim I found." An evidence bag dropped onto the table. "And this swab of dried blood from the tiller." Another bag fell, and Nick wrapped his arms around himself to suppress a shiver.
"You should go home, Nick," Sara said. "We can take it from here."
"I'm fine," Nick said. "I can stay."
Grissom scowled. "Can we focus on the evidence, please?"The others jumped, then looked at him guiltily.
"Sure," Catherine said, and began to outline the case.