Random Theory
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"I'll take Sara and Catherine with me." Grissom decided firmly, leaving no room for arguments. "Nick and Warrick, you guys get the dead body on Freeman." He handed the assignment slips out and the two teams hurried off to their respective crime scenes.
Warrick took the perimeter at the house on Freeman. He was snapping pictures of the footprints he found when his cell phone rang. "I'll be right there." He told the caller somberly and hung up. He quickly packed up his kit and went looking for Nick.
"Hey Nick. Do you think you can handle this?" Warrick asked, referring to do the scene solo. "Sure. Why?" Nick inquired, confused.
"Someone broke into my grandma's house." Warrick explained. "Hope everything's ok." Nick wished his co-worker. "Yeah, me too." Warrick agreed. "Thanks." He muttered as he left the scene, glad that he and Nick had driven separately.
"What's going on?" Warrick demanded as he arrived upon the scene. He quickly spotted his grandmother and rushed over to see if she was okay. Two officers were interviewing her, while the others looked around the area for the suspect.
"Don't worry about me now." She admonished him. "I wasn't home when it happened. I came back from the store and my window was broken so I called the police." His grandmother explained, trying to reassure him.
Nick called Grissom to let him know about Warrick, hoping his situation wasn't related to the case that they had pending with Catherine's car. "We're all done here, so we'll meet up with you there." Grissom told the younger CSI. Nick continued to work on the body while he waited for them to arrive.
"Sara, you're going to Warrick's grandmother's house to see if there is anything that needs processing." Grissom directed the brunette. "Catherine, you and I are headed to Freeman to meet up with Nick."
"Is anything missing?" Warrick queried, knowing how hard it was to recover stolen property. "I don't know." His grandmother admitted. "They won't let me in."
"I'll take a look around." He decided as he made his way into the house. "Me too." A voice announced suddenly. Warrick turned around to find his co-worker Sara on the doorstep.
"Grissom sent me." She said by way of explanation. She followed him into the house. "He thought it would be a good idea to have an objective set of eyes." Warrick nodded as he strained to find anything out of place. The two cautiously meandered through the house; careful not to disturb anything they could tag as evidence.
"Nick?" Grissom called as he and Catherine arrived at his crime scene. They found him in the backyard with the body and the coroner.
"What needs to be done?" Catherine asked as she slipped on her gloves and opened her case. "Warrick was taking pictures of the front lawn." Nick told her and she hurried off to finish the task. It didn't take long for the three of them to process the scene and they went back to the lab to get the results.
Bobby handed Nick the photos that he developed from the crime scene. Nick eagerly opened the envelope and laid them out on the table. Catherine came in to see him staring at the pictures in suspiciously. "What is it?" She asked the abnormally quiet Texan. He didn't respond, simply stormed out of the room, passing a puzzled Grissom on the way.
"Greg, did you mix up my photos?" He demanded as he entered the room. Greg resisted the urge to make a clever remark, seeing Nick's furious demeanor. "No way man. I developed them right after each other. The only ones I did tonight, in fact. I can check the film to make sure it's the same scene." He offered, hoping to assuage Nick's bad mood.
"It's okay." Nick sighed as he headed back to the evidence room to double check the photos by hand.
When he did, he stared at them in shock. The pictures Catherine took did not match the ones that Warrick had taken. It looked like someone had moved some key evidence, making it difficult, if not impossible to identify. He laid his head down in defeat.
"Nick?" Grissom questioned as he and Catherine returned to the evidence room with three mugs of coffee.
"Something happened to the crime scene. Catherine's pictures don't match with the ones that Warrick had taken half an hour earlier." Nick reluctantly reported. Grissom confirmed Nick's worst fears when he saw the pictures. The three headed to the break room to brainstorm while waiting for Warrick and Sara.
"What's going on?" Warrick asked seriously as he and Sara entered into the strangely quiet break room. The two had finished processing his grandmother's house, and returned to the lab frustrated with little evidence to show for their efforts.
"Someone contaminated our crime scene." Nick said, barely controlling his anger.
"What?" Warrick shouted in disbelief. "Who?" Nick rubbed his hands over his face. "I don't know." He answered wearily.
"Could this case get any stranger?" Sara commented as her mind raced to make sense of the evidence. Or lack thereof.
"Or any worse?" Catherine added cynically. The room was silent as the five minds churned to come up with some sort of valid explanation. To simply grab a hold of something that could tie the three loose ends together.
"There goes the random theory." Warrick said with a sigh. "Shit." Nick swore as the case closed in on them without any good leads. None of Greg's tests of the tires had returned any hard evidence either.
"I'm sorry Warrick. How's your grandmother?" Grissom apologized, turning his attention away from the frustration of the Freeman scene.
"She's fine. She wasn't home when the suspect entered." He informed the rest of the team. "Any leads?" Catherine queried hopefully, praying for some sort of breakthrough.
"No. It didn't look like anything was missing or even touched." He reported in bewilderment. "The only thing we found was part of the brick that went through the window. We sent it down to trace."
"I think maybe they did it simply to get you away from the crime scene." Sara suggested bleakly.
"So this is all related?" Grissom stated in disbelief. If that were the case, then Warrick was right, it wasn't random. IT was intentional.
"Whoever is doing this, is playing with us. They know us and our territory." Sara decided, disgusted and infuriated.
"Well sooner or later, this person is going to slip up. And when he does we'll be right there to take him down." Nick promised, trying to break up the gloom.
"Nobody takes on the number 1 crime lab in the country and gets away with it." Grissom agreed irritably.
Catherine sighed. "I'll get Greg to make a special pot of coffee. I think it's going to be a long night." She announced. Grissom went to his office and Sara ran back to the lab, leaving Nick and Warrick to converse about the case.
"Three down, two to go." Nick declared. "I wonder what this guy's motive is." He asked rhetorically. "It doesn't make any sense."
"At least we know now who to protect." Warrick offered solemnly, worried about Sara and Grissom.
"We think we know." Nick corrected his friend. "There's no way to know what his next move is or what he's capable of." He said with a shudder. He had experienced first hand being in the line of danger; it was part of their job. But they were usually the hunters, and it surprised him how scary it was to think that they were now the hunted. "The most frustrating part of it all is the evidence. Or the lack of It." He admitted slowly.
"It will come together in time Nick." Warrick gently encouraged him. "How can you be so freaking optimistic?" he yelled in response.
"If we don't believe that, then we're sunk before we even begin. We have to hope. Something will turn up, it always does." He said.
"Okay Grissom." Nick said mockingly, rolling his eyes.
"This case has really got you down." Warrick observed, taking in the exhausted appearance of his co-worker. "Aren't you?" Nick retorted. "Of course it's upsetting, I'm just trying to keep it together for the sake of the team, especially Sara." He said, without knowing what he had admitted to.
Finally a smile broke out on the Texan's face. His friend had revealed more then he had obviously intended. IF the situation wasn't so dire, he would have pursued the new revelation, but instead decided to let it pass. For the time being. But he didn't understand his overstated concern. "Why Sara? She seems fine to me." Nick argued.
Warrick almost laughed. 'Fine?' he thought to himself. She's been distracted and more quiet than usual, not to mention the dark circles under her eyes that gave her away. She was far too professional, to let it interfere with her work, but during the lulls of the job, he could see that it was getting to her. But he supposed that he was more sensitive to her moods, they were more alike than anyone on the team realized. Their similarities drew them close together even when they were so determined to not like each other. The similarities led to conversations, conversations led to respect, and respect led to a deep friendship, which led to...who knows what the future holds?
"What about Grissom?" he challenged the other, effectively changing subjects without answering the original question.
"Well I know he can take care of himself, we just have to make sure he doesn't do something stupid, like go it alone or something." Nick replied. Their conversation ended as the other three returned to the room.
"Okay. Listen up. Here's our plan of action." Grissom directed. "Nick and Catherine, you study the knife holes and come up with a list of knives that could have done the damage. Sara and Warrick, you both go back to Freeman and process the new crime scene. Brass is there securing the place now."
A few hours later...
"The knife pattern has been identified as part of the Cutco collection." Catherine reported to Grissom during check in.
"And that means?" he inquired perplexed as he leaned back into his chair.
"Cutco knives are sold by individual salespeople door to door." She explained further, looking to clarify the facts for Grissom.
"Over 3,000 were sold this month alone in Clark County." Nick offered, jumping into the conversation. "You know what to do." Their supervisor informed them with a raised eyebrow. Nick sighed; it would take hours if not days to sort through the 3,000 clients. Warrick and Sara returned to see a deflated Nick and Catherine making their way back to the lab.
"Did you find anything?" Grissom asked the other pair, hoping their news would be a little more uplifting.
"Shoe prints size ten male, and rake markings." Warrick admitted, confirming that the scene had been compromised.
"We'll have to comb the neighborhood tomorrow for rakes." Sara stated. "For now, run the shoe prints through the computer to find a match." Grissom ordered as the clock struck two am. Warrick and Sara ran off to the lab. They could only hope they could stop this person before he struck again. And in order to do that, the evidence would have to start talking.
But he was not one to be deterred. One of his greatest assets was his tenacity and commitment to a case, to his job. He was so devoted in fact; it made him naturally suspicious of anyone or anything. Not to mention judgmental of anyone else who tried to have a life outside of work. This was one task he was determined to see through.
'That was close.' The man whispered relieved as he closed the door to his house behind him. He hadn't planned on the others arriving so soon. He could only hope he had done enough damage to affect the investigation. It was a crucial part in setting up the next part of his plan. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and camped out in front of the television.
'I'm going to have to move a little quicker to ensure that they don't catch me.' He reminded himself. Looking over his plans his anxiety was lessened when he realized he had only two more tasks to complete. And the last two he would enjoy immensely. That exultant thought followed him into unconsciousness as he passed out on his couch.
The grave shift worked steadfastly through the shift. Grissom refused to work his crew ragged though, and sent them all home promptly at 8am.
"Catherine, I'd feel better if you stayed somewhere else tonight, just to be safe." Grissom warned, the pressure of the case weighing him down with worry. Through the years the team had faced many different cases, though none of them had specifically targeted them before. He felt responsible for them, being the supervisor and all. And through the years that they had worked together, they had become like a family. He didn't want to dwell on what it would be like if anything happened to any one of them.
"I don't know Griss, I have the sitter there and then I'd have to wake up Lindsey..." She protested. Nick bailed her out before Grissom could comment. He had seen Warrick take off after Sara and knew he didn't have to worry about her. "How about I stay with you?" He offered and both Catherine and Grissom agreed to that arrangement. She was relieved, though she was a bit worried about this character, she really didn't like to upset her schedule. Plus she didn't want to worry her daughter, who was getting to the age of understanding more and more of what Mommy did every time she went to work. She had known the risks when she accepted the job, but this case was causing her to doubt her passion for her career.
"Sara, you're staying with me tonight." Warrick commanded her, standing in front of her driver's side door, blocking her escape. His tone, which was unusually somber, offered no room for argument.
She wished she could lie and say that she wasn't worried. But she couldn't. Not to him. They had taken a friendship that had once been fragile and almost irreparable and had formed a deeper, solid friendship. Honest communication was how they had worked out through their previous problems, and they had vowed to be just as honest in the future. Besides, she wasn't willing to forgo the relationship they had constructed for the sake of her own foolish pride. And maybe, just maybe she would get a good night's rest for the first time in a few days. This was the first time she had ever been involved in a case like this, as it was for all of them, but it shook her to the core. Not that she would admit it. But with him, she didn't have to. He just knew and she wondered how they had close after such a tumultuous beginning.
He waited for an argument, a protest, anything. But nothing came. She simply put her keys back into her purse and followed him wordlessly back to his car. He could tell she wasn't as calm as the rest of the team thought, but he didn't call her on it. If he noticed her anxiety, he didn't comment on it. It was enough that she had listened to him and it proved her trust in him, and in their friendship.