In case you're wondering how Sara's doing ...
July 10th, 2004 - - Nevada Desert
Today, Sara awoke to a startling development; for today was the first time since her ordeal began that she had woken up alone in this little ramshackle prison cell. Her stoic and chain-smoking security guard – normally watching over her morning, noon and night with an impenetrable silence – was nowhere to be seen.
She doubted very much that her captors had suddenly acquired a newfound trust in her, so something else must be going on to drag him away from his post.
As her weakened senses adjusted once more to the unstimulating environment, she became vaguely aware of raised voices traversing down the narrow hallway from the perpetually darkened room at the end.
"E dov'è?!" [Where is he?!] A familiar tone demanded.
"Non lo so." [I don't know.] Another confessed; and even she picked up on the hint of panic in his voice. "Sono domande." [They're asking questions.]
"Naturalmente sono. Il loro lavoro a pore domande." [Of course they are. It's their job to ask questions.] The boss spat dismissively.
"Si, ma..."[Yes, but...] The anxious man stuttered. "Ma che cosa se la polizia lo trovo prima?" [But what if the police find him first?]
For a moment she thought they must have stopped talking, as everything fell quiet. She strained closer, but the pain in her head had been growing exponentially day-on-day; inducing agony with even the smallest of movements.
She managed, however, to catch the low murmur of human voices and realised that they were still exchanging words, just at a volume indistinguishable to her ears. Nevertheless, there was one phrase that she heard clear as day.
"Allora avremo a liberarsi della sua." [Then we'll have to get rid of her.]
July 10th, 2004 - Las Vegas Police Department, Observation Room
Jim closed the door and turned to the awaiting group.
"So, what do you think?"
"He's not the most sympathetic of people." Catherine mused, one eye still watching their sullen suspect through the glass. "But I don't think he'd purposefully mislead us."
"So, maybe he genuinely doesn't know anything about his grandfather." Grissom suggested. "You said Valentino disappeared in the 80s, right? Dylan would have been a teenager."
"I don't know; I still don't trust him." Nick scowled, moving in front of the door to glower at the middle-aged man. Dylan was shuffling his feet anxiously, his twitchy gaze seeking out every corner of the compact interrogation room as if following the movements of something that nobody else could see. "I mean, look at him. I can smell the fumes from here."
"I guess it can't hurt to take another look at the parents." Catherine sighed, turning her back to the one-way mirror and leaning heavily against it. "Although I don't know what we're going to find out from a dead man and a schizophrenic murderer."
"Well, he's refusing to say anything else until his lawyer gets here." Brass shrugged. "But he took a swing at the officer who brought him off the plane – that should be enough to hold him for now."
"Good." Grissom nodded absently, checking his watch. It was a nervous habit he had acquired of late, as if he was counting down the minutes until Sara was found. "Maybe some thinking time will clear his memory."
"Well, we were going to look into Acerbi's family and see if anyone might still be holding a grudge about his death." Warrick finally spoke up and Gil's interest peaked again at the suggestion.
"Good, I'll come with you." He agreed hurriedly. "If anyone catches a break, use the emergency pager code to get in touch."
He turned to the detective and raised an eyebrow, but Jim had already guessed what he was going to say and held up his hands in assurance.
"Yeah, I'll keep Sidle Junior company." He promised. "Maybe when the withdrawal symptoms wear off he'll become a bit more talkative."
July 10th, 2004 - - CSI, Layout Room
"Greg was right, there is a son." Nick explained. "A Raymond Acerbi, born in September 1959 – nine months after Joseph died. I bet Joey didn't even know he was going to be a dad."
Grissom's expression suggested that he really didn't care about the unjust timing of Joseph's death, more concerned with the relevance of this information as it pertained to finding Sara.
"1959." He repeated, calculating the numbers in his head. "That would make him forty-four. So, he can't have been the man in the security video."
"No, bosses rarely put themselves on the line. He'll have sent a soldier to do his dirty work." Warrick corrected. "He probably did the same with Nino's murder."
"Hmm." Gil nodded slowly, continually marvelled by his protégé's wealth of knowledge about mafia dealings. "How did you get on with Nino's case? Any new leads?"
"No, I went over everything with a fine-toothed comb. Whoever killed him was careful."
"But not careful enough." The trio were interrupted by the always welcome sound of Doc Robbins' cane clicking into the room. "I finished the autopsy on Nino Carmine, as a priority." He offered the notes to Warrick, who flicked through them with rarely seen impatience as he scoured the reams of text for any small detail of significance.
"Cause of death?" Grissom asked, electing for the more direct route.
"Fairly obvious: multiple gunshots to the face." The coroner shrugged. "I found some fibres in what was left of his nose, sent them to trace. But the interesting thing was his hands, take a look." He produced a set of x-rays and slid them across the table one at a time.
"His palms are broken." Nick noted, holding the ghostly images up to the light. "Shattered, in fact."
"He was hammered." Warrick realised aloud. Usually used as a warning after stealing from a casino, hammering was also occasionally employed by the mafia for the purposes of extracting information.
"Yeah, and I found the same thing on his feet and his kneecaps." Albert continued sombrely. "He was tortured before he was murdered."
A deathly silence fell over the team as the depth of this sank in. If the same person who'd killed Nino was currently holding Sara, that didn't bode too well for her right now.
"Okay." Warrick cleared his throat, shaking away the worst-case-scenario thoughts that were suddenly flooding his mind. "So, where's Raymond Acerbi now?"
"His address is listed as New York, but he also has links to Las Vegas through some of the smaller casinos off strip that used to belong to Joseph Acerbi." Nick answered. "I guess daddy wanted to keep his business in the family."
"Yeah, well too bad for him he messed with the wrong family this time." The dark-skinned CSI snapped. "What do you wanna bet that Raymond is in Las Vegas right now?"
"If he is then we'll find him." Grissom stated in an eerily calm voice, his gaze still fixed on the haunting images of Nino's battered and slaughtered body.
July 10th, 2004 - - Las Vegas Police Department, Interrogation Room C
"Where's Seth?" Brass asked, idly twirling a pen around on the tabletop with the tip of his finger. Dylan was refusing to speak about the case or his missing sister without legal representation, but nothing had been mentioned yet of the third Sidle sibling. "Huh? Where's little bro?"
"I don't know." Dylan hissed through clenched teeth. Either his high was rapidly starting to fade, or he had toothache because he had been grinding them for several minutes now; a sound which felt like claws raking down Jim's spine.
"Sure you do. You said to my colleague," – he glanced at Catherine's hastily typed statement about the phone call – "'I'm going to tell you the same thing I told Seth'." Flicking his blue eyes over the piece of paper, he affixed the younger man with a steely glare and repeated his question. "So, where is he?"
"I don't know!" Dylan barked, slamming his hands on the table in frustration. "I talked to him on the phone. I don't know where he lives – we haven't seen each other for years."
"Well, it's nice to know that you share the disregard for both your siblings equally." Brass stated sardonically. Surprisingly, Dylan seemed to take offence at the insinuation that he had neglected his brother and sister in some way. He threw his head back, raking dirty hands through his scraggly blonde hair.
"Hey, I tried to help him once before – he wasn't interested."
"Oh yeah? Maybe he knew what your kind of help entailed." Brass continued the harsh mockery, glad to be getting some kind of reaction out of the man even if it was only sullen anger.
"No, it wasn't like that." Dylan sniffed, shuffling further upright and leaning his elbows on the table. "I was sixteen when I started making plans to move out. I tried to take him away from them, okay. I found a job, I had a mate who was going to let me use his flat ... but Seth wouldn't come. He was too damn loyal to Laura."
"What about Sara? Did you try to save her, too?"
"Of course I did! But what was I supposed to do? She was just a little kid – I could hardly leave her alone all night while I worked my ass off at a takeout joint for three bucks an hour."
"But you could leave her in that house, with your parents." Jim raised an eyebrow, not entirely buying that this scruffy piece of flesh had tried to be the knight in shining armour for his family.
"Hey, I tried!" He snapped back. "I called the police, I reported them. Nothing happened. Nobody ever did anything about it."
Tears were starting to creep down his stained face and he hurriedly wiped them away with an even grubbier sleeve.
"And then, when Max died, I thought they would take her and put her somewhere safe. I didn't know what those people would do to her while she was in care. I never thought it could get worse than it was in that house."
His voice, cracked with emotions that he was quickly losing control of, increased in volume with every strained word uttered. A soft cry stuck in his throat, strangled by the dismissive scoff he hiccupped out in its place.
"I trusted the system with my baby sister before, and look what it did. It was supposed to protect her – you people were supposed to protect her!"
Jim sat forward, never shifting his gaze.
"What do you think we're trying to do now?"
Dylan paused, appearing to calm a little; though the hard look in his watery eyes didn't fade.
"Then where is she?" He demanded, showing the briefest glimpse of fear for the first time since his arrest. "Who has her?"
There was a soft rap at the door and Jim turned to find Catherine gesturing for him through the window. He pushed himself away from the table and stood up, glowering down at the now nearly-sobbing suspect.
"That's what we're trying to find out."