Club 11 was one of the best clubs in Vegas, in my opinion. Tonight, however, I wasn't here to party with my friends. I was here to investigate my very first murder. Nick parked the Tahoe on the street, next to Brass's cruiser. I slowly opened my door and placed my Nike-clad feet on the warm asphalt. Brass was already at the door, talking to a few of the burly, WWF-style bouncers at the door. The doors had been blocked off with orange road cones and yellow police tape. I opened the back of the Tahoe and grabbed my field kit, a transparent apple-green fishing tackle box with some eyeballs painted on it.
"Ready?" Nick asked. I looked up, "As I'll ever be." Together we started toward doors; Brass met us half-way. "All the witnesses say the same thing, 'the guy had a dark face.'" I started and glanced sharply at Brass. Wait a second, did he…? No, there had to be some mistake. "A dark face?" Nick asked, confused. Talk about de'ja vu. I shook my head, I've gotta stop drinking Starbucks, that's all there is to it. "Yeah," I said, trying to push back the creepy feeling I had, "Okay, guy with a dark face, got it, well, evidence doesn't lie, so let's go." I started toward the building with my kit in hand.
"He sounds like Grissom," Nick said to Brass. "I heard that!" I called over my shoulder as I walked in and flashed my ID to the two officers guarding the door. Inside the building was a typical nightclub. This one happened to have three stories with a bar on each level. At the far end of the building there was a stage with all sorts of musical instruments on it, the body, marked off by yellow police tape, was lying on the ground in front of the stage. I sighed. It was going to be a long evening. No doubt about it, I was going to need a Venti Caffe Americano before the night was out. I set my kit on the ground, opened it and snapped on a pair of latex gloves.
The music inside the club was still blaring at its five-octave level, strobe lights pulsed in time to the bass beats, I could feel a headache building at the base of my skull, I was going to need that coffee sooner than I had thought. I took out my flash light, feeling like a knock-off verison of Mulder from The X-Files. Paper and other… things littered the floor. I walked down the flat ballroom like stairs, carefully stepping around substances I couldn't identify, hey, you never know. It could be something really nasty.
I slowly made my way towards the body, I wasn't in a hurry, I had all night, after all and this was my first murder, I wanted to take things slow so I could piece everything together and solve the case. The song changed and I hummed along as I shone my flashlight on objects here and there. The song picked up and I started to sing:
"So here you are in your small, little world
Kept up like a little precious virgin girl…"
I knew that Brass and Nick were probably some where behind me, so I shut my mouth and stopped singing. Something clattered, I whirrled around and noticed a police officer who had knocked over a glass on the dirty bar. "Sorry," he said sheepishly. I held up my hand as my eyes latched onto something over his shoulder, "Don't touch anything," I said, walking closer to him. He cringed, as if I was going to hit him. I gave him a funny look and shook my head. Behind him on the smooth, red and black speckled wall, someone had written with a neon green highlighter, 'I cross the oceans'.
"What'd 'ya find?" Nick asked, coming up behind me with a flashlight of his own. "He's quoting," I murmured, turning to look at Nick. His eyes followed to where I was pointing and he looked at the text on the wall. "It's block text," Nick said, snapping a picture of it. "Trying to throw us off, probably, so we can't get a hand-writing sample. Who's he quoting?" I shook my head, "I don't know, it's a poem or something I'll bet. Grissom would probably know."
"Huh," Nick said, "Let's go have a look at the vic." He turned and walked down another set of three, flat, ballroom like stairs. I stared at the text for a moment longer deciding that I'd get back to that later, I turned and followed Nick down the stairs. I actually wasn't paying that much attention as I went, I had been in this Club before, (might I add I always got carded here? Yeah, really annoying, I'm almost twenty-five!), sure, but I had never seen it this empty, and when people weren't all crowded around you, trying to look cool and everything, you realize: this place has really cool architecture.
I pointed my flashlight up at the ceiling, just looking around. Grissom would probably bite my head off if he were here, 'What are you doing?! Get back to work!' Yeah, that's Grissom for you. "Female victim," Nick called over his shoulder, "Looks like she was part of the band." Slowly, I turned around, about to say, "Huh, interesting." But that's when I noticed something… she was holding a drumstick in her left hand. I gaped at the body lying before me. "Do the bodies still bother you, Greg?" Nick asked, his voice soft, understanding.
I turned and stared at him, that creepy de'ja vu feeling washing over me again, "No," I murmured, I turned back to the body. I felt like I had done all of this before. I knelt beside the body of the girl. Something caused me to look up. A drum kit was spread out behind the vic, on the stage, just like my dream… the red shells caught the light from the mirrorball that was perched high above on the third floor… just like my dream… the light was reflected like neon moonbeams, giving the room a very dark and ominous feel. Just like…
Nick didn't seem to notice the dumbstruck look on my face; instead, he smiled, setting his kit on the floor, "Yeah, you get used to it after awhile." God, what the hell was going on here? Maybe it was just a creepy dream; sometimes I had dreams like that when I was in college. Like I dreamed that this one Prof. of mine would give us a quiz on this one Monday morning and I would fail the test because I didn't study. But that Monday my sister, (who is five years older than me), had my niece and I was excused from the Quiz. I had a chance to study and I passed the test anyway.
Maybe it was just one of those weird deals, you know? Like sometimes you know what song is going to come on the radio five seconds before it happens? Yeah, that's all it was nothing X-Files or Twilight Zone about it. "Hey," Nick said, "Look at this," I looked down. Nick had, for some reason, pried her eye lids open.
She had violet eyes.