Alright, it's been months since the last update... college life is not treating me well. Thanks go out to my patient betas Anne and Ash, and feedback is welcome - especially since I've got another story forming in my mind.
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Sometimes even spooks are useful, Moriarty thought as he sat in his warehouse. They taught me a lot about how not to get caught. If you can avoid the FBI, you can avoid ordinary cops.
Moriarty had taken several steps to avoid capture. One was a rather expensive scanner that monitored emergency frequencies. While some police radios were encrypted, most were not; it allowed him to ensure that the police weren't looking too closely in his direction.
If the police ever came onto him, Moriarty thought, he would use the red compact he kept inside the warehouse. He had bought the car from a used-car lot with cash, but had not used it since then. He kept documents for several aliases inside, along with several days worth of clothing.
All he had to do to escape was get in the car, drive to McCarran, and hop on a flight to a major hub. Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco or Chicago were all possibilities. From there it was a simple matter of flying abroad to another city – the wonders of international travel would take care of the rest.
Right now he was bent over a map, analyzing times and distances from various Las Vegas landmarks to possible safe houses and staging points. He didn't have any targets in mind, but with a city like Las Vegas the potential list was limitless.
He wondered what he should do next. A sniper, maybe? No, I'm not that good with a gun. Besides, that's not a particularly... smooth way of doing it. No, there are other ways to create chaos.
It's not about that anymore, is it? It's all a game now. It's between you and the police. They've been surprisingly uncompetitive. Isn't Las Vegas supposed to have the number-two crime lab in the country? You expected more from them; you thought they'd be a challenge – a worthy opponent.
Well, you've been careful after all. The best crime lab in the world can't do anything if they don't have anything to work with. Gil Grissom is good, but he can't create evidence where there is none.
He rose from his chair and decided to get himself a drink when he heard the police scanner. A regular patrol car was ordered to watch out for any suspicious vehicle in the area around the warehouse. That wasn't out of the ordinary, but the warning at the end was: "approach with caution."
Moriarty thought about staying here, but he decided against it. There was nothing here that was truly irreplaceable. It was a superb place to think without the possibility of being observed. However, he thought, this could be a problem. Time for me to go.
As he drove out of the warehouse, he realized his work wasn't finished. Much as he wanted to leave the city, he couldn't. His still had much to do. He still hadn't truly achieved a crime of infamy that would be remembered. He had been clever, yes. That wasn't what people remembered, and that was what he craved more than anything else.
I've always wanted to go inside a pyramid, he mused.
---
The two police trucks rolled to a stop and the black-clad SWAT troopers jumped out of them, assault rifles at the ready. Several yards behind them, Brass and other uniformed cops had their handguns out. Behind that stood the entire CSI graveyard shift, ready to process the warehouse once it was clear.
The SWAT personnel broke into the warehouse, guns at the ready. Inside, they found a large van, maps over a table, modest living accommodations, but no Moriarty. The disappointment was evident in the team leader's voice as he called it in. The mood among all the people present darkened as the news spread.
The CSIs buckled down to work soon enough. They all entered the warehouse, with Grissom being the first through the small door. The others were soon spread out behind him, examining the scene with trained eyes.
Grissom was struck by a weird sense of deja vu. The whitewashed walls and sparse setting hadn't changed much, if at all, since Paul Milander had abandoned it years ago. Today, it had served as the hideout for another criminal who seemed to be one step ahead of the Las Vegas Crime Lab.
He sighed quietly before turning to the other members of his team. "This could take a while."
---
Catherine, Sara, Nick, Warrick, and Greg were all tired as they sat in the break room. They had pulled another long double shift to process everything at the abandoned warehouse, and they had all the evidence they needed to prosecute Moriarty for each and every crime they knew of.
The dead bum, discovered almost two weeks ago that had started the whole case in Las Vegas. The security guard, shot while patrolling the UNLV campus. The theft at the university's marine science building. The bomb sent to Director Covallo's office. The robbery of the Rampart. The breach of their internal computer network. The shooting at the crime lab. Last, but not the least, the interception of the armored car. The evidence was all there, proving that Moriarty had done it.
There was just one problem – Moriarty was nowhere to be found. Worse, they had no idea where he was. It was as if he had just vanished, leaving no evidence for them to work with. It was the most frustrating thing the CSIs had ever felt in their professional careers.
Proof of how badly beaten they had been lay on the table. Three passports had been found inside the warehouse. Each one came from a different country, and had a different name on them. It was something a spy would do, and catching a spy was not an easy thing under the best of circumstances.
The worst thing was that the names on the passports made them nearly useless for tracking down Moriarty's real identity. People tended to adopt aliases that were close to their real names, but the names on these passports were either generic or obviously fake ones. The Russian one belonged to Iosef Andreyevich Serov – who had been the head of the KGB during the early years of the Cold War. The British one bore the name of Joseph Andrew Brown. The American one had Joseph Demetrius as its rightful holder.
Catherine finally broke the silence. "I don't know about you guys, but I just wish this case would end," she said.
"Not this way, though. We've got all the evidence in the world – but no suspect to link it to," Warrick said.
"Come on, guys, we've still got the wanted posters out there. There's still a chance," Nick said.
"Yeah, true. We've got a poster that matches about half of the male population. We've got all the evidence we need – and we've got nothing at the same time," Warrick replied.
Catherine turned. "What do you think, Sara?"
"I don't know," she replied. She paused before going on. "You know what's bothered me about this whole case? I've run into this guy three times already. First he rapes my roommate and best friend in Boston. Then he checks into San Francisco. Five years later, he drops by Vegas. Why?"
"Coincidence, maybe?" Greg asked.
"No such thing as a coincidence, Greg," Catherine replied. "First thing you learn as a CSI. There's a reason for everything, even if you don't know what it is."
"I'm not sure we want to know," Sara said.
After another short silence which seemed like an eternity, Nick spoke up. "We're all off the clock. How 'bout we get some food before we all head for home?"
Catherine looked around and saw nods all around the table. "Alright. Any objections?"
"No," said Sara.
"Then what are we waiting for?"
---
On the other side of the building, Brass and Grissom were in the former's office, with much the same thoughts on their mind.
"What do you think, Grissom? Is he in Vegas or not?" Brass asked.
"Wise money is that he's escaped, Jim," Grissom replied with a shrug. "But somehow, I think he's still here."
"Gil Grissom, relying on a hunch? I never thought I'd see that," Brass said as he took a sip from his bourbon.
"It's not a hunch. It's based on the evidence. What's one of the few things we know about our suspect? It's that he likes the attention, almost like he's an egomaniac. He was planning something when we forced him to pack up. He may well still be in Vegas."
"Is that something you'd take to a DA?"
Grissom just shook his head. "No. It's nothing more than my intuition at work. The evidence is equivocal, at best."
"You think we'll ever catch him?"
Grissom took a sip from his bourbon. "The Greeks had this saying. Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make proud. That's what we're up against. He's going to keep on committing crimes, thinking he'll never be caught. And it might take a while. Somewhere down the line, though, he'll make a mistake, and some cop or CSI will be in the right place at the right time to catch him."
"Doesn't sound easy."
"I never said it was."
---
Nick and Warrick were handing over their payment for that morning's breakfast when someone's cellular phone rang. Everyone's attention went to their units before Sara said it was hers. She stepped away for about a minute to answer the call, and returned to the group with a look of puzzlement on her face.
"What was that about?" Catherine asked.
"Grissom. He wants me back at the lab ASAP," Sara answered.
"Did he say what it was about?" Nick wondered.
"He said he couldn't talk about it over the phone."
"And the plot thickens," Greg said, before receiving a glare of death from Sara.
"Yeah, well, since Sara here left her car at the lab and I pass by the lab on the way home anyway, I guess I'll drop her off," Nick said.
"Okay then. Bye guys," Catherine said as the breakfast group broke up.
---
The bellman had been born on an Iowa farm and was more used to handling cows than suitcases – and it showed as he manhandled the luggage from the car's trunk, up some stairs, and into an elevator. He banged the small overnighter against the sides as he pushed the button to the tenth floor. The faulty zipper broke open and some of the contents spilled out onto the floor, eliciting a curse as he hit the emergency stop button.
Bending down to put the spilled objects into the bag, a small glint caught his eye. It was a passport – no, two of them, he realized. Wait a minute, his mind instantly told him. Why would someone have two passports? From different countries?
Fifteen minutes later, the passports were on the desk of the Tangiers's head of security. Bill Altman had once been a senior NYPD detective, and he knew exactly what the passports meant. He had worked with the Counter-Intelligence Division of the FBI during his time in the Big Apple, and he knew that the passports meant he was dealing with a spy – or at least, someone who knew how to act like a spy.
While wondering what he should do next, he idly flipped one passport open. When he saw the picture on it, a light bulb went off in his head.
Someone inside his hotel had multiple passports. Usually, only spies had such things. However, Altman thought that unlikely.
He had another suspect in mind. Like the rest of Las Vegas, he had heard of Moriarty. It was impossible not to, given the wall-to-wall coverage the media had given the case.
Altman realized Moriarty was on the loose. Could he be staying right under his noses?
The rotund boss moved as quickly as he could to the camera room, where guards maintained a constant vigil if the cameras that dotted any major casino. One of them had been ordered to follow Moriarty around.
"Well?" Altman asked.
"Still on one of the no-limit blackjack tables. He's ahead, but he's either counting cards or he's just damn lucky," the former police sergeant said.
The person on the camera then turned towards the lens he didn't know was there, and presented the viewers with a prefect angle for identification. Altman was especially good with faces, and he knew this was a face he'd seen before.
He grabbed a piece of paper from a nearby pile and held it up to the screen. It took a brief moment for the ex-officer to see what he was seeing. "Goddamn," he said. "Of all the gin joints in all the world..."
Both the paper and the screen had the face of Moriarty on it.
Moriarty had made a mistake. Bill Altman, formerly of the New York Police Department, had been in the right place and the right time to make him pay for it.
The rat was about to be caught, and he didn't even know it.
---
Brass led the small contingent of brown-clad LVPD officers up the flight of stairs from the basement as Grissom and Sara followed a few meters behind. They met up with Altman, who escorted them inside the casino floor until only a door separated them from Moriarty.
"There he is, Captain, He's all yours," the former G-man said.
"Let's go," Brass said. With that, the group strode in, until Moriarty was surrounded by the police.
Moriarty looked up in surprise, but he kept his calm. "Officers, I haven't done anything wrong, unless winning from a casino is a crime," he said.
"John Doe," Brass said, "you're under arrest. For multiple counts of murder, frustrated murder, breaking and entering, and being an all-around crook."
"You must be mistaking me for someone else. I've done nothing wrong."
"Then explain why you have two passports in different names, from different countries, all with your nice mug on them," Brass replied.
The cocky look on Moriarty's face was replaced by shock, but he quickly recovered. "You searched my luggage. You don't have a warrant. All your evidence is worthless now."
"Actually, we didn't search your luggage. It fell out. Plain sight. We don't need a warrant," Grissom said.
"Take him away," Brass said to the uniformed officers.
The two CSIs watched as Moriarty was stood up – perhaps a little roughly – by the two officers and cuffed. Brass led the knot of policemen down the corridor, attracting some attention from the gamblers on the floor, but not much.
"That's that," Grissom said to Sara.
"Yeah," she said with a nod.
---
It took several hours, but the one remaining mystery about Moriarty – his real name – was soon solved.
One of the passports had, amazingly enough, turned out to be real. It belonged to a Leslie Williamson. He had been born to a family of modest means, but his intelligence had been evident from the start. Scholarships had given him entry to Harvard, where he had chosen theoretical math.
While there, he had become intrigued by patterns. He had come to believe that there was some sort of logical pattern to everything, even numbers. However, years of searching the arcane language of high-level math theory had proved fruitless, and it had driven him mad. Frustrated in his professional career, he had somehow turned against society, believing himself to be superior in intelligence and capable of any task, provided he put his mind to it. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Moriarty had, indeed, been an appropriate alias.
Brass slid his chair out and left the interrogation room, looking visibly tired. He had spent the past two hours interrogating Williamson, and he had been as tough as anyone the captain had faced, but he had cracked. It would take many days, but he would give up all of his secrets.
The five CSIs of the graveyard shift had been on the other side of the one-way glass, with nary a word spoken during the entire procedure. Grissom and Sara were standing right next to the glass, while Catherine, Warrick, and Nick, were all sitting on the small table in the middle of the room.
Brass entered the room and visibly leaned on the door frame. "I don't know about you," he said, "but that is the most difficult interrogation I've done in a while."
"Yeah," Catherine said in agreement. "Worst I've ever witnessed, too."
"You know," Nick said, "Stuff like this isn't supposed to happen in real life. It almost seems like it comes from a movie."
"Well, there's an old saying out there, man. Truth is stranger than fiction," Warrick said. "This guy is all the proof we need."
"What do you think, Sara?" Catherine asked.
"I dunno," Sara said after considering the question. "What bothers me most is that he was once a normal college student. He had a good home, good family, the brains to get anywhere. I don't get it. What happened?"
"Some people are just born bad, Sara," Warrick said.
"I'm not sure," Grissom said. "At the DNA level, all humans are more than 99 identical. Even a chimpanzee shares 98 of our genetic code. The point is, whatever differences that do exist are very small. We're not as different from him as we'd like to think."
"So what's you're answer, Grissom?" Catherine asked.
"You know what makes us different from other mammals? It's our ability to learn. There's no other creature in the world that can learn as well a human. But learning really comes from mistakes. When most people make a mistake, they figure out what went wrong and don't do it again."
"But Leslie Williamson isn't most people," Sara said.
"Exactly. He didn't fix his mistakes; in a way he became his mistakes. Why?" Grissom shrugged. "We may never know."
With that, everyone in the small viewing room turned to look towards Leslie Williamson, all trying to solve the mystery of his fate.
---
There was still one loose end that had to be tied up, but Grissom had the connections needed to fill in the last blank in the case.
Sara had come in early, as was her habit, and was surprised to see Grissom behind his desk, examining what looked to be a fairly think folder open before him.
"Hey, you busy?" Sara asked.
"Not really. Remember what you told me about having met our suspect sometime in Harvard?"
"Yeah. What's this about?"
"Well, since we now have his name, I had on old colleague of mine over at Harvard pull some strings. They sent me everything they had on Mr. Willamson."
"Oh. Is there anything new in it?"
"Well, yes. It explains the one thing we weren't sure about before."
"Why he followed me from Boston, to San Francisco, to Las Vegas," Sara said.
"You both attended some sort of seminar in Boston, just before you graduated. Theoretical math."
"Oh yeah, I remember about that one. At the time, I thought it was quite fascinating."
"You weren't the only one who remembered it well. Evidently he found you a fascinating character."
"I just thought he was a bit... I don't know. Crazy. Everyone knew he was smart, maybe even a genius. They just weren't sure if he was, well, nuts."
"Well, he was. One week after the seminar, he left Harvard. The next place he turned up was San Francisco."
"Doesn't answer the question. Why did he follow me, of all the people he could? If all he wanted to do was make himself well-known, he could have done something else."
"I don't know," Grissom said. "Maybe in his descent to madness he tried to hang on to the last remnants of his sanity, as he remembered it. Perhaps you were part of that memory."
"Scary thought."
"Yeah. We may not really want to know what he's thinking," he said. Noting the folder Sara was carrying, he asked, "What's in there?"
"I have something for you to sign," she said. "You might want to go over it first, though. It's important," she added.
Curious, Grissom got the folder from Sara. He opened it and closely examined the papers inside.
He looked up into Sara's eyes when he realized what they were. They were matching applications for leave – one was for her, but the other was for him. All that was missing were his signatures.
"I was thinking about what happened a few days ago, when we were supposed to, you know, go out," she said. "I realized that as long as we're here, in Las Vegas, we'll have a hard time starting anything. I mean, we're on call 24/7. What do we do when we get a call in the middle of a date? How can we really have a good time when it's more than likely our pagers will go off in the middle of a movie?"
"Alright, I see your point. But what does that have to do with this?" Grissom asked.
"We've both got more leave on hand than we can use. So why don't we just take some time off, you know, to see if we can make things work. Somewhere we can just be... just Gil and Sara. Not Supervisor Grissom and CSI Sidle."
Gil and Sara. The phrase clicked in Grissom's head. The last time Sara had called him by his first name was back when she been a student of his.
Sara saw the look on Grissom's face and knew that he had agreed. She smiled inside, thankful that he had not turned her down.
"Just one problem," Grissom said. "We don't have any reservations anywhere. Any ideas where we should go?"
"Sure. There's this small, intimate place near San Francisco Bay. Lots of small bike and hiking trails into the nearby hills. If the fog isn't too heavy, you can even see the Golden Gate Bridge. An excellent place to relax and get to know people," Sara replied.
A meaningful look appeared on Grissom's face, pondering Sara's answer. "Your parents' bed and breakfast?" he finally asked.
"Yeah. That's where I spent my time off."
"Well, I have another idea. Beach side bungalow, with ready access to the marina if you're so inclined. Beach is private, so you can go out for long, private walks there. Not to mention, two major-league baseball teams in the area."
"Let me guess. Your Mom's place?"
"Yeah. She's in Europe right now, on vacation. The gallery has half of the bungalow; she lives in the other half. I haven't been there in a while."
"So, let's compromise. The leave is for two weeks. Let's spend one week at my place, then a week at yours."
"Okay. I like that," Grissom said with a nod. "I'll see you when I give out the assignments, then."
"Okay thanks. I'll see you then, Grissom."
"Thanks, Sara."
Grissom could not have imagined the smile on Sara's face as she left his office.
---
Several days later, Catherine, Nick and Warrick were relaxing after shift at the nearby diner when Greg came through the door. They were going through their pancakes when Nick saw something in the sports pages that caught his eye.
"Hey guys," he said. "Isn't anyone curious where Griss and Sara are?"
"Come on, Nick, you really think they'd tell us where they went? Hell, we don't even know if they're together. Maybe it's just a coincidence," Catherine replied.
"Well, I'm pretty sure this isn't a coincidence," Nick said. He passed over the newspaper, pointing to a picture that occupied half of the page.
It had been taken from the Dodgers-Giants game the previous night. Barry Bonds had been his usual self and sent another ball into the bleachers, and the picture was of someone catching it quite neatly. It took Catherine a moment to realize than the brunette catching the ball was Sara. It took her another moment to realize who was beside her – Grissom.
"Well, I guess it's safe to say they've worked out their issues," Catherine deadpanned as she handed the paper to Warrick.
Brass arrived then. "Sorry I'm late, traffic was worse then usual," he said. "So, what did I miss?"
"Not much, Brass. Just this," Warrick said, passing the paper to the captain.
"Well, that's something to write home about," Brass said after examining the picture.
"Certainly took them long enough," Catherine added.
"Think they'll tell us when they get back?" Nick asked.
"I dunno. I doubt they can hide it for long, though," Warrick said.
"Hey, whether they tell us or not – that's their business. So long as they're happy, we're happy. I'd like to offer a toast," Catherine said as she raised her coffee. "May Grissom and Sara have many more happy days to come, to make up for all the hard times they've had."
"Amen." Everyone else said in unison.
---
THE END