So, it's been a while since we've had a Nick chapter. Let's bring him back and make his life suck just a little bit more. Also, this chapter is what I have deemed the Point of No Return (PONR, for short). Those of you who are still hoping for a completely happy and sunshine-y resolution, with lots of bunnies and rainbows, you can leave now, and there will be no hard feelings. Those of you who like to watch the blood hit the walls and the bodies hit the floor, you are very sadistic, and we are very much alike.
Thus, Nick and Warrick in the break room, and Nick and Greg on the roof.
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Chapter Twenty-three: Knight and Martyr (NICK)
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He sat there, hands folded over his lap like a child eager for a lesson, and listened to it all. Warrick explained it to him in a slack, almost dead voice. His tone didn't shake with anger even when he reached Lizzie's death and the missing evidence, he just told the story of the last few days as if he were telling Nick about an insurance seminar he'd attended. If Warrick's hands hadn't been trembling, Nick would never have noticed that something was wrong.
"Sara left early," Warrick said, "and I sent Catherine home." He sighed and sat down in one of the break room's small plastic chairs. "I tried to get Greg to leave, too, but he won't. He's up on the roof right now, I think. I ought to go up there and make sure he doesn't decide to jump off or something, but I'm just too damn tired." He gave Nick a weary smile. "Not so much fun, playing boss. You want to try?"
"No thanks," Nick said, the first thing he'd said at all since he'd walked into the lab and Warrick had derailed him, saying there were a few things he needed to know. "Doesn't look like my kind of thing. And I'm just going to have to add on to your bad news tally."
"I already know you didn't find anything in Boston," Warrick began, but Nick cut him off.
"I didn't find out anything in Boston that you didn't already know, yeah," he said. "But someone found me on the way to Boston, and I'm not too happy about it. I lied my ass off about why I was headed east, and I think I pulled it off, but it's all a matter of whether he'll remember my name when it comes up at a trial."
"So who is this guy?"
"Abraham Claberson," Nick said, and finally, it was out into the air. It felt good to say it at last, to confess it - - even just to Warrick - - because he'd been carrying the weight of Claberson in his head for days on end, and he didn't think he could have stood it much longer. He watched the burden travel in a short path to Warrick, who sighed again.
"I'm sorry," Nick said. "We were sitting next to each other, and we started talking. I didn't even know that he was Zimmer's lawyer until someone in Boston told me."
Sweet, mousy little Amy with her orange tea and disarming smile seemed to be an eternity at all. Closer was the fear, the nervousness of the realization about Claberson, crossing and re-crossing his legs as that husky voice from the past whispered again and again in his ear, Come on, Nicky, let's go.
You let the good things go and invite the bad things along with you, he thought. You don't ever drop things like that by the side of the road.
"You know what, I don't even care," Warrick said, sagging so that his head fell forwards into his hands. "I'm so sick of this. I'm just glad you're back, man. You don't know how much we all freaked when we heard that you weren't here. Panic City."
If this were how bad things had gotten in Vegas, Nick almost wished he'd stayed in Boston, even with all of its uncertainties. In a split second, he saw himself dating Amy, marrying Amy, and working at one of the Cambridge labs, wrapped up in scarves and overcoats in the winter, and building snowmen with his kids in the yard. It vanished when he opened his eyes again to Warrick.
"I just - - I can't believe this," Nick said, moving his hand in a swathe to indicate all of it, everything. "How did things just - - get this far off-course, this quickly?"
Warrick's lips were white, pressing together, and Nick realized that Warrick didn't have an answer.
"You want on the case, Nick?"
Jetlag was seeping into him, exhausting every inch of him, but he nodded anyway. He had a headache and he had barely slept for the last few days. Arriving in Vegas was supposed to have cleared the grime off him. He was supposed to have returned to find that everything had been sorted out on the rape charge, but now the rape charge was murder and the evidence was irrevocably compromised. He wanted sleep and a shower, in that order, but he said yes anyway, because, like he'd heard whispered before, he was the boss's bitch, the company workhorse, the dependable one. The solid one. The one who didn't screw up too badly and didn't shine too brightly. Just there. Oh yeah, That Guy. Give him the cases that you don't want, the trick rolls and the forgeries, and give him a pat on the back if he needs one, because people like that need encouragement every once in a while or they're liable to just snap and kill someone or themselves. Not that losing That Guy would be, you know, heartbreaking or anything, but we'd have to rehire and the paperwork would just be so messy.
Every "Good, Nick" and "Nice work" came out from between Grissom's teeth like appeasement.
But just because he saw right through it didn't mean that he wanted to lose it, and it didn't mean that he wanted to lose Grissom, because, right or wrong, That Guy or one of Those People, he liked Grissom, and he needed Grissom.
"Tell me what you need me to do," Nick said.
"Find out everything you can - - past cases, signatures, everything - - about Matthew Flowers."
Nick said, incredulously, "Matthew Flowers? The serial killer? Isn't he supposed to be a legend or something, or just a bunch of copycat crimes? Like trying to track down Jack the Ripper, man."
"Grissom thinks he's real, and more importantly, our evidence seemed to say that he was still alive. Possibly here."
"You're kidding me."
"Hand to God. We've still got the pictures of that damn white rose someone around here - - oh, here." Warrick pulled a photo out of the file on the table, and handed it to Nick.
White rose, on bloody sheets. Nick winced at the sight of it. He set it face-down on the table, pushing it away with his fingertips.
"We've still got the most important evidence though, right?" he said. "We still have Lizzie's body." A sudden fear struck him. "I mean, we do have Lizzie's body, right?"
"Yeah. Yeah, we haven't managed to lose that yet. Give it time, and I'm sure the lab will be invaded by grave-robbers or something, but for now, Dr. Robbins is working on it. I'd like to say that we traced the semen through CODIS and got a hit, but we didn't, and that was one of the tests Greg ran before the stuff disappeared."
"Grissom's DNA would be in the system, though, right?"
"Yeah, but not in CODIS," Warrick said, "and that was the only database we could check before it went missing, and we can't get anymore from Zimmer - - Robbins already bathed her and everything."
"This situation blows," Nick said bleakly. He poured another cup of coffee and looked at it instead of even starting to drink. "Okay, I'll run through our database and see what I can find on Rose-Boy. And I'd like to stop by Grissom's tonight, talk to him in person." He frowned. "Assuming I don't pull a Brass and walk in on something I didn't expect to see. You think Sara's over there?"
"I told her to stay clear of him for right now," Warrick said.
"And I ask again, do you think Sara's over there?"
"Yeah," Warrick admitted. "I'd be more surprised if she was just sitting at home." He opened the file again and looked down at the photos. Nick could see them from an angle, but with the distance, they all looked the same. Besides, they'd never be able to make a case on photographic evidence alone, but he guessed that Warrick knew that and didn't feel like pointing it out. They had to do what they could.
He squeezed Warrick's shoulder as he walked to the exit, but as his arm swung past, Warrick grabbed his wrist. "Hey, Nick? Do me one more favor."
"Sure, what do you want?"
"Make sure Greg hasn't jumped off the roof by now, and see if you can get him to come back inside. Or, better yet, see if you can get him to go home for a while."
Boss's bitch, a voice crooned in his ear, doesn't really matter the boss is, as long as someone can tell you what to do. And you'll do it - - and do it adequately, we won't say well because we won't lie to ourselves, will we, Nicky? And by the way, take your pants off and just lie on the bed, okay? Let's go, Nicky. Come on, let's make it.
Breath against his ear and skin against his skin, and so many unending whispers, voices of insecurity and history, pulling him down.
"No problem," he said.
The stairs leading up to the roof always seemed to be from somewhere else. They were slick steel, unpainted, and polished to a shine, even though he'd never seen anyone polish them. Even the handrails were the same way, impersonal and smooth, leading upwards, towards the inevitable. And, of course, the roof. He never understood why Greg always ended up there when something was stressing him out - - Nick hated climbing those stairs, and didn't find the roof, with its dust and ascending smoke, particularly soothing in itself.
But there Greg was, sure enough, sitting on the ledge with his legs dangling out over the face of the building, so precariously balanced that for a minute, Nick thought Warrick was right, and Greg was just going to slide down the edge and off, into the city.
"Greg?"
Greg jumped, but, thankfully, more to the back than to the front. Hiking his legs up, he spun around.
Nick didn't know what to think. When he'd left Las Vegas, Greg had looked - - well, healthy. Alive. Greg had been jumpy and excitable, sure, but he'd never had that zombie look he had now. His skin was almost sallow, his eyes rimmed with purplish circles from lack of sleep, and there was a wide bruise on his cheek - - Catherine's slap. His lower lip was swollen, too, probably from the sliding force of the blow. His clothes were hanging on him as if he'd become a skeleton in the last few days, but when Greg straightened, Nick was able to see that that, at least, had been an optical illusion from Greg's uncommon slouch. Greg had maybe lost a little weight, but not that much.
He should have said hi, or something, but what came out was, "Dude, you look like shit."
Greg laughed, a laugh that sounded more like a scream than anything else. His hands were balled into fists at his sides.
"You're back," Greg said.
"Sure am."
"You're here."
"Yeah," Nick said. He wondered if Warrick might be right about Greg's mental state at the moment. Greg's eyes looked unfocused, as if he were the one not entirely there. "I came up here to see you. You okay, man?"
"No." Greg shook his head from side to side and the snapped it back to the center. "No, I'm not really okay." He collapsed in a heap down to the roof's surface, and Nick could see the tiny explosion of dust swirl up around Greg's jeans. "Not so much, no. Why don't you tell me about Boston? I bet it's nice there. I always wanted to take a trip there when I lived in New York, but we never got around to it."
"It's nice," Nick said, carefully sitting down beside Greg. "It's a lot greener there. I've never seen so many trees - - and all the old buildings . . ." He didn't know what else to add. His time in Massachusetts hadn't really been a tourist's idea of fun, and he'd spent most of his time in his hotel room, chain-drinking Cokes from the vending machine and wondering whether or not Claberson had known who he was. "I stole some towels from the hotel for you."
Greg laughed that nervous, shrill laugh again.
"Awesome. Free towels. I hope you stayed somewhere nicer than a Holiday Inn."
"I went extravagant, since Grissom was footing the bill and everything," he said, and then immediately wished he hadn't. Mentioning Grissom seemed to bring back the dead look in Greg's eyes.
Greg actually lay down on the roof, his arms folded behind his head and his elbows sticking up in the air, thin and sharp, like the wooden joints of a puppet, and his legs splayed out in the darkness before them both, his toes pointing towards the barely-visible stars. He was wearing tennis shoes, Nick noticed, the rubber tips scuffed and then rubbed chalky-white with roof dust. He stared at Greg's shoelaces because he couldn't look at Greg himself.
"Grissom's going to lose his job," Greg said, "and so am I."
"No way," Nick said, with more confidence than he had in his entire body. "No one's going to let that happen to either of you. Have a little faith."
"You've been gone a little too long, Nick," Greg said softly. "Faith's not doing anyone here a bit of good. What's that saying? Faith, hope, and love - - and the greatest of these three is love?"
"Something like that."
"Well, faith's useless, hope's a bitch, and love bites hard."
Greg was right, and Nick knew it. Not so much about the saying, because Nick had to believe in something, and faith, hope, and love were the best he had, but about the first thing. About him having been gone too long. It was true. He'd left behind a bunch of people who were worried but whole, uncomfortable but solid, and he'd returned to this. To new bitterness and sharp edges, to the shape of Catherine's hand printed on Greg's cheek, to Sara and Grissom getting what they wanted and finding out that it wasn't enough.
He'd been gone just a few days, but he might as well have stayed away for years.
"You're a cynic now," Nick said, and it wasn't even a question. "Guess I have missed out on a lot, huh?"
"I'm a lot of things now. Cynic, screw-up, suspect . . . take your pick."
"No one's made a suspect out of you."
"So sure about that? Want to bet your job on it? Oh, hey, better yet, want to bet mine?" Greg propelled himself upwards and turned to look at Nick. "The only person here who really believes that I didn't have anything to do with that missing evidence is Sara. And not to wallow in the self-pity, but she might just be taking my side because she didn't want to be on Catherine's. They're kind of fighting right now." Greg pressed his hands against his thighs, leaving white-dust handprints. "I don't really believe this is happening," he said. "I mean, we were just eating pancakes."
Nick had no idea what Greg was talking about. Warrick hadn't mentioned anything about pancakes. He nodded anyway, though.
"I really kind of wish it felt more like a dream," he admitted.
He knew he should add something about how he believed that Greg wasn't the one who had tampered with the evidence, but he couldn't, somehow. He hadn't even been present for that, and watching Greg right now, he could see that the lab tech looked perfectly capable of screwing it up on accident, he was so frazzled. And the new, bitter cynicism - - if that had come out before the evidence went missing . . . he didn't know. He couldn't think.
His grandfather used to tell him that most people consistently made the right choices, and his grandmother used to tell him that everyone had their price. There was always some point where someone would make the selfish choice, or the hurtful choice. There was always something they wanted so badly that they'd give up everything else just to have it - - just to know it, touch it, taste it . . .
Until this week, he'd thought like his grandfather, but now he wondered if he hadn't been wrong all that time. What was his price? What was Greg's?
"Greg," he said hoarsely, "did someone . . . tell you anything? Offer you something? Fieldwork, maybe? Money?" He thought, Thirty pieces of silver? and then, with a pang of horror, realized that he'd said it. He'd said it out loud, and Greg was recoiling from him, almost crab-walking backwards on the roof in a way that should have been comedic but sickening instead.
Greg stood hastily, brushing dust off his clothes and just succeeding in smearing it around.
"Judas," Greg said flatly. "You think I'm some kind of Judas?"
"I didn't mean - - "
"Hey, Freud, we say what we mean, okay? You said what you were thinking about. And you - - you were thinking - - you . . ." Greg bit his lip so hard then that Nick could see a fresh line of blood well up under the white of Greg's teeth. "You were my friend," Greg said. "I thought that you . . . I mean, of all people, you'd understand. I'd never do anything to mess with Grissom or anyone else here. I wouldn't ever . . ."
The jetlag, the exhaustion, the pain - - all of it caught up with him at once, in the worst possible way and the worst possible moment. Greg wasn't even listening to him, he'd tried to say that he hadn't meant to imply what he'd implied, but Greg had just gotten so carried away by his saintly act that Nick snapped.
"Sorry to interrupt your martyr scene, Greg," he said, "but this isn't all about you. Do you want me to hit you or something, like Cath did, so you can just forgive me without another word and go around with a few more bruises? So everyone knows how perfect you are? So everyone knows that the rest of us are bad, evil people who just mistreat you and kick you around?"
Greg said, "I've got a martyr complex? Coming from the original white knight, that's kinda funny."
"I'm not going to hit you," Nick said through his teeth, "even though you'd probably get a big kick out of getting to turn the other cheek. But let me tell you something: you're not a martyr, you're not a sacrifice, and you are not perfect. You're no better than the rest of us."
His head was pounding, his heart was racing, and the adrenaline from the anger was fading away just as quickly as it had come, leaving him feeling hung-over and still so tired. So hateful, too, all of his frustrations coming out here, on the roof, and he wasn't going to care about whether Greg deserved to take them or not, because he didn't deserve to have this happen to him, he didn't deserve to have his life fall apart like this, and Greg didn't get to sit there and act holy when the evidence had been with him, for God's sake, been in his own lab when it disappeared.
Greg glared at him. "You sure you don't want to hit me while you're at it, Nick? 'Cause like you said, I'd really like that. It's just so awesome. I can't imagine why I didn't have more people doing it for longer. Guess I'm just slow that way, but wow, I've really caught on. So hit me, if you want to, and if I can't be perfect, then you don't get to act like you are, either. You don't get to act like you're seeing the big picture and know how . . . how petty we are."
Nick shook his head, telling himself that he didn't think like that at all, and said coldly, "Go home, Greg. Just go home." Some spiteful part of him couldn't help but add, "I don't think there's any evidence left for you to work with here, anyway."
For a second, he thought that Greg was going to hit him, but the moment passed, and then it just seemed ridiculous to think how close they had come to killing each other right there on the roof. Greg nodded without speaking, and Nick let him go by and walk down the stairs.
Where Greg had been lying, the dust was smeared so badly that Nick could see the actual roof under his feet, and he felt unsteady, even so far from the edge, as if the world might suddenly sway enough to throw him off entirely.