:III:
The Investigation Begins
That night, it had taken Tuesday a very
long time to fall asleep. First, she called Grissom up to tell him that they
had arrived in Chicago on time and gotten adjoining rooms at the Hyatt Regency
Chicago. Next, she had called her mother in Boston, who demanded she know about
all of her daughter's travels since she left Boston. Then, she planned out the
next few days. And finally, after a hot shower, curled up in bed.
-----
There it was again. The fear.
The intense fear. His voice. The cold, round cylinder of the gun against her
head. His violating touch. And again...again...again... His breath: the vile,
foul stench of alcohol. He dropped the gun in his drunken stupor, but still
fired. The sting. The fiery, burning, excruciating pain that spread out from
the impact. Falling...falling...falling... The distorted sounds of the
ambulance, the far-away sounds of her own screams...
Tuesday woke up screaming. Her body was
bathed in sweat and shaking. Her breath has haggard, and her whole body ached.
Oh my god, my god, what is going on? Her
mind screamed, but her voice couldn't create the sounds. Maybe I ate
something weird, she thought. Nick told me not to get the prime rib...
She was scared. She had only been this
scared before once in her life. Back in Boston...
Her stomach lurched, and she ran into the
bathroom. Her face was whiter than the sheets she had been sleeping on. Her
heart hammered in her chest, and she could barely breathe.
What the hell is going on? Oh my god,
I'm dying. She tried walking back to her bed, but collapsed on the floor.
Involuntarily, she curled into a fetal position, shaking harder then ever.
She wanted to scream. To get someone's
attention. Maybe if she could get to the phone, she could call for help...
The shaking was getting worse. Help me! She
contracted in a bizarre spasm, as another wave of pain washed over her. She
screamed. As loud as she could manage before the pain returned and contracted
her throat.
"Tuesday?" It was Nick.
Oh my god, Nick help me! I'm dying.
The pain stayed, throbbing through her body. Her heart pounded against her
legs. Wild thoughts raced across her mind.
This is all Josh's fault; he cursed me.
He poisoned me
He's coming back to kill me.
The fact that he was still in jail in Las Vegas never crossed
her mind. She felt someone lean over her, and place a hand on her shoulder.
The pain slowly disintegrated, but the
shivers didn't. "No! Leave me alone, you bastard. You can't hurt me again!" she
screamed, trying to squirm out of touch. "No!"
"Tuesday, Tuesday! Calm down!"
The voice was soft, calming, familiar.
Slowly, Tuesday stopped moving, so only her body was shaking, as it had been
for the last five or ten minutes.
"Tuesday, what happened?"
Tuesday opened her eyes to see Nick leaning
over her, worry etched all over his face. Tears started to come, flowing down
her cheeks.
"It was him... He tried to kill me," she
muttered, tears splashing on her hands.
"Who?"
"Josh..."
"Josh Camillati?" Nick couldn't help the
disdain in his voice. Josh Camillati had been Tuesday's boyfriend back in
Boston. She had dumped him because he had been abusing her and came to work in
Vegas. He had followed her; however, and started a string of gruesome serial
killings, all because he wanted to kill Tuesday. But now, Josh was in prison in
Las Vegas.
Tuesday nodded. "He...he shot me."
Nick was taken aback. This was new
information. Tuesday was still shaking in his arms, and tears ran down her
cheeks. "When?"
"In Boston... He was upset that we broke
up. He was drunk, and would have blown my head off if he were sober. He shot me
in the back instead..." She began crying even harder at the memory of the
attack.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Nick hated Josh
even more now. He hated that he had touched Tuesday that he had tried to kill
her twice, and that he had no respect for her at all. Nick gently kissed the
top of Tuesday's head. "You're safe now. Don't worry."
He knew Tuesday had had an anxiety attack,
and that worried him. She had seemed so normal before, what had sent her into a
stress overload like this?
-----
"I can't believe we got stuck doing this,"
Warric muttered. He was with Sara, getting out of the car at the Hyatt Regency.
"I know, but we have nothing better to do,"
Sara insisted.
Warric rolled his eyes as they approached
the front desk.
"Hi. I'm Jessie. Welcome to The Las Vegas Hyatt Regency." A
young woman easily younger than both Warric and Sara met them. She had a
sickeningly high and cheerful voice. "Do you have a reservation?"
"No... We're from the Crime lab. We're
looking for information on Doctor Luka Kovac."
"CSI does missing people?" the voice said
laughing.
Warric glanced back at Sara. "Just wait
'til I get my hands on Tuesday when she gets back..." Turning again to the girl
behind the desk, he said, "Uh, well this is a special case. Could you please
give me the dates that Luka Kovac checked in and checked out of your hotel?"
"Uh, one minute... How do you spell that?"
"L-U-K-A K-O-V-A-C."
"Okay." The girl ran to a back room and
within a few minutes returned.
"Okay, Doctor Kovac arrived at the hotel at
4:34 p.m. on May third. He checked out two days later at 11:06 a.m. on May
fifth. Anything else?"
"No. Thank-you for your help." The two CSIs
wandered to where several couches and chairs had been arranged to for some sort
of a waiting area.
"Well, that helped a lot," Warrick
grumbled.
"At least we know that he left the Hyatt,"
Sara pointed out. "Wait a minute!" She ran back to the counter. "Jessie?"
"Yes'm?"
"Was there any evidence of a struggle or
something in his hotel room?"
"No."
"Damnit," she muttered under her breath,
and returned to where Warric was sitting. "On to the MGM Grand."
-----
"Doctor Romano, there are two people to see
you," a chipper secretary poked her head into Romano's office.
He sighed in annoyance. It was probably
that Malatuchi guy wanting another raise. "Send them in."
Enter two people, a man and a woman, both
dressed in relatively dark clothes. They were unfamiliar. Maybe the new med
students.
"What do you want?" he snapped, he wasn't
in a good mood.
"My name is Nick Stokes, and this is
Tuesday Haskle. We're here to investigate the disappearance of Luka Kovac. I
believe he works in your ER."
"Kovac's missing? Sit down."
The two complied and the woman spoke.
"Could you please tell us a little about Doctor Kovac?" She spoke with an
obvious Bostonian accent.
"Are you two from Boston?" Romano asked.
Why the hell was Luka in Boston?
"Las Vegas," Nick said shortly.
"Oh." That didn't make any more sense than
Boston. "You want to know about Luka? Well, I don't know him very well. Uh, he
came he last year as a temp in replacement for some old guy that Kerry hired. I
guess Kerry like how he worked, 'cause she kept him on. He's from Croatia."
"So he's foreign?" Tuesday asked.
"Yeah... Uh, I think he killed someone –
they tried to mug him or something – and he skipped a couple of workdays
because of it... That's all I can tell you."
"What's his relationship to Abby
Lockheart?" Tuesday asked.
"Who?"
Nick exchanged a glance with Tuesday and
nodded. "Thank-you. That's all." He and Tuesday got up and left.
"That was informative," he griped, walking
to the elevator.
"Well, we found out that he's foreign. He
could have had a political enemy that wanted him dead," Tuesday hypothesized.
"But we don't know if he's dead," Nick
pointed out.
"Of course...think that Romano dude could
have something against him?"
"He seemed pretty nonplused. I don't think
he has anything against him."
The elevator arrived at the ER.
"I guess we need to find Abby Lockheart,"
Tuesday said, as they left the elevator. They walked up to the front desk and
inquired about Abby. Soon, a young woman in her early thirties walked up to
them. Her dark hair was cut to a little above her shoulders and she wore
nurse's scrubs.
"Are you Tuesday Haskle?" She asked,
slightly disappointed to see Tuesday. She was relatively short, especially in
comparison to the man standing next to her. Her auburn hair was cut to just
below her ears and feathered, slightly. Her features were a bit European,
oddly, and her voice didn't match them.
Tuesday smiled. "Yes. This is Nick Stokes.
He's majorly helping with this investigation. You must be Abby Lockheart."
"Yes."
"Great. Is there anywhere we can go so we
can ask a few questions?" Tuesday glanced around. Unlike many of the ERs one
sees on television, this one was fairly quiet, with doctors milling around,
playing on the computer or filling out charts.
"Uh, the only place I can think of are the
chairs here," she said, motioning to several plastic chairs creating a waiting
area. The trio sat down. "What do you want to know? You know, it was really
great for you two to come practically across the country to help me out."
Tuesday smiled, but said nothing. "Well,
first of all, we want to know what your relationship to Luka is. It would be
most helpful."
"Oh, we were...are dating. Since oh, I
don't remember, October maybe September."
"Describe Luka," Nick said.
"Um, well he can be sultry, and at other
times, so romantic." She smiled crookedly.
"Has anything come up recently that might
set someone at odds with him?"
"Well, he's been kinda jealous of Carter
recently, because he thinks I'm going to go date him."
"Carter?"
"John Carter. He's one of the doctors
here."
"I see" Tuesday glanced at Nick. "Any thing
else?"
"Well, he was having a spiritual crisis
because of a priest he saw as a patient. He got really sulky for a while
because he accidentally killed a man who tried to attack us."
Another exchange of glances.
"But...oh, I don't know. I don't think
there was anyone who would really dislike him."
"Could you point out Kerry Weaver for us
please?"
-----
Sara felt like putting a leash on Warric as
they walked into the MGM Grand. She had only been in there once, when a cousin
had a wedding there, and the one thing that stuck in her mind was the size of
the casino.
As if he could read her mind, Warric glanced
back at her. "I'm sticking close to you, don't worry."
Sara nodded but said nothing. "I'll let you
do the talking again."
"Yes?" The man at the front desk was an
elderly man, and his voice was less ear splitting than the girl's at the Hyatt.
"We're from the Crime Lab and were looking
for information on one of your guests," Warric said.
The man pulled a large binder out from
under the counter. "Which one?"
"Luka Kovac?"
"Oh, yes. Such a nice man. Left large tips
too. He was here for that convention, but the funny thing was, he left early."
"Early?" Warric frowned, glancing at Sara.
"How early?"
"Only a day. He came on the fifth and left
on the eighth," he said flipping open the binder, and glancing through it
quickly. "Left with a rather attractive woman. I only got a quick glance at
her."
"What did she look like?"
"Brunette. That's all I remember."
A expression flashed over Sara's face, as
if she had just had an epiphany. Warric half expected her to shout 'Eureka!'
"Would you recognize her if you saw a
picture of her?" she asked.
"Probably."
"Can I get your name?" Sara asked again.
"Mel Thompson."
"Thank-you." Sara and Warric walked off.
"You have a plan," Warric said.
"Yup. I'm going to get Tuesday to e-mail me
all the pictures of the women who work at that hospital's ER. I think it was
one of them."