Afterlife

By EB

©2004

Chapter Seven

"This is everything I could find." Catherine slid a stapled sheaf of papers across the table. "Every case Nick worked from basically his first day through early 1999."

Gil shook his head, eyebrows raised. "That's…more than I'd thought."

"TELL me about it." She blew a gusty sigh and flopped back in her chair. "You know, it doesn't feel like that much until you see it in a list like that. Then you think, 'We do THAT MUCH?' I think we all need raises."

"Too true," he agreed distractedly, already scanning the first page. "Turn up anything interesting? Anything jump out at you?"

"Nothing much."

"It's here," Gil murmured, and turned to the second page. "I know it is."

"Okay, the natural question is now: What's here? What are you looking for?"

He glanced at her over his glasses. "I'll know it when I see it."

"And in case you were wondering? That isn't a lot of help."

"I'm not sure." Gil sucked on his lower lip for a moment, sagging a little in his chair. "An idea. I think based on some things I've uncovered, that Nick was involved in – whatever this was – very early on, almost certainly within the first year of his hiring. I could be wrong, but after last night I don't think I am."

She frowned. "We didn't get much decided last night. What convinced you?"

"It was after you left." He forced what he hoped was a nonchalant shrug. "I got a strange phone call. The caller didn't identify himself, but he warned me to stay away from this."

Catherine goggled at him. "Someone warned you off? Jesus."

"I thought about seeing if I could trace the call," he continued evenly. "But that would involve making all of this official, and I'm not quite ready to do that yet."

"Screw making this official. Gil, are you in danger?"

"I'm honestly not sure."

"Are you kidding?" she flared. "We've got four dead bodies, and you aren't SURE?"

He went back to studying the list. "I'm not saying I really want to take any unnecessary risks, Catherine. But this is important, and I'm starting to believe it may be much, much bigger than anything we've yet uncovered. I need to know why this happened. If this is how I do it, then so be it."

"And risk your life at the same time?"

"Nick did," Gil replied simply. "That much I'm certain."

Her cheeks were very pale. "Gil," she said in a thick voice. "Don't make me lose you, too. Please."

Her shaky tone took him by surprise, and he laid the list aside. "It won't come to that," he told her, praying he was correct. "I promise you."

"So you say. Jesus, Gil, what IS all this? What is going on?"

He smiled. "That's what I'm going to find out."

Catherine's list was six pages of a bulleted list, complete with dates, names, and case numbers. After she reluctantly left, he went back to studying it.

Some cases he could automatically dismiss. Simple process of elimination: Anything Nick had worked with anyone still here, was pretty unlikely. Still in his probationary period, Nick had worked primarily with Catherine and with Gil himself, but there had been several cases that Brass assigned to Nick and Ed Blake, or Nick and Rusty Anderson. Ed's death had opened up a vacancy filled by Warrick, and Rusty had left after Thanksgiving that same year, 1998. Gil wasn't completely sure where he was now, although some time ago he'd heard Rusty took a position in Seattle. Probably still there.

Excluding the obvious, that left nearly twenty-five individual investigations to explore. Elimination again: take away the small potatoes. No trick rolls, no break-ins, a few others. He drew a heavy line through more items on the list.

What was left, at that point, were nine cases, six of which Nick had worked with Ed, the remaining three with Rusty. All involved deaths, whether by intent or accident. He wondered briefly about the accidents, and decided to exclude those for the moment, at least. He had a feeling he'd be studying this list again, in any case.

Which left him with four ostensible homicides. All four had been solved, relegated to the court system for trial.

Gnawing on the end of his pen, he read over Catherine's synopses. Case one had involved a husband and wife, murder for a sizeable life-insurance payoff. He shrugged off a dark thought about Nick's own policy and kept going. The husband had been arrested, ultimately, for his wife's murder, and now languished in prison, serving a life sentence. Case two was similar. This time the husband was the victim, and the wife and a boyfriend convicted of engineering the hubby's poisoning. Boyfriend convicted of manslaughter and serving twenty to life; wife serving a life sentence.

The other two cases were nominally less domestic in nature. A murder committed during a robbery attempt, and another involving two business partners and a real-estate deal gone sour. Convictions all around, in the former case the death penalty.

He tapped his fingers on the page, and then sighed, tucking his pen in his breast pocket. Time to descend to the dungeon.

One of the perks of being a supervisor, he'd discovered early on, was that he no longer had to descend to the basement when he needed a look at an inactive or closed file. He delegated. Someone else had to deal with silverfish and dust. He could simply reap the benefits of their search later.

Some wit had nicknamed the cavernous basement the "dungeon," ages ago, and it had stuck. Gil surveyed the rows of file cabinets and shelves, inhaled, and sneezed four times. The dungeon was organized, relatively neat, and he was allergic as hell to some of the contents.

Making a mental note to have someone actually come down here and do something about the dust, he glanced down at Catherine's list and began hunting for the actual physical files.

Two he found quickly, but after half an hour of fruitless searching he decided the other two were either misfiled or missing entirely. Fifteen minutes after that, he located the third, stuffed haphazardly into the wrong year, and he'd put his burden on a long table and given some serious thought to making someone else do the last part of the search when he saw a pile of several files lying on the floor. Worth a look, and the bottom-most file was the fourth he sought. Someone had had it out, sometime, and never bothered to put it away properly. It occurred to him to dust the cover for prints, just to find out who that particular lazy asshole was, but it just might be himself, so he just gritted his teeth and added it to the pile.

Back in his relatively dust-free office, he spread the files on his desk and sighed. He was tired, for some reason, and his head felt as if it had been stuffed full of cotton batting; his allergies were not improving with age. He blew his nose, coughed a couple of times, and opened the first file.

Beyond the initial purely forensics section – fingerprints, trace analysis, ballistics – he found a section of handwritten notes. Photocopies, and Nick's architectural handwriting. Lips curved in a sad smile, Gil snorted a little. Nick's somewhat obsessive habits carried over beyond his Daytimer; these were his case notes, carefully preserved. Two pages of observations, a theory or two, the names and addresses of the witnesses and other sources. All of that information was available in printout form, but trust Nick to copy the originals, just in case. He'd learned the hardcore principles of CYA early on, it seemed.

The case – hubby wiping out the spouse for a juicy life-insurance policy – was fairly straightforward. Nothing in the file, including Nick's notes, suggested anything beyond what he now saw in mostly black and white.

The same was true of the second file, but this one was missing any handwritten notes from Nick. So cut-and-dried that there hadn't been any need, maybe. Certainly it appeared that way, flipping through the slightly yellowed pages.

He hit pay dirt with the third, though.

The victim was a man named Paul Brooks, who had the rotten luck to be home during a break-in. The perpetrator had used a crowbar to bludgeon Brooks to death, an appalling level of violence. From all accounts the investigation was short and tidy; while the accused, a long-time repeat offender named Javier Lewis, had been careful not to leave prints on the items already selected for stealing, the crowbar had given up his secrets. DNA and fingerprint analysis spoke loud and clear. Lewis was arrested less than twenty-four hours after the crime, and ten months later a jury had convicted him and laid down the death penalty.

Gil frowned, flipping through more pages. Autopsy report, trace analysis, a copy of Lewis's substantial track record in the penal system. The man had been a model for recidivism, first arrest at the age of twelve, for stealing a neighbor's car. It was all downhill from there.

Brooks, as far as he could see, had been a very average guy. An accountant with a local branch of a national firm, he had a family, wife and two kids, who were that week luckily out of town visiting relatives in Provo. The housekeeper had discovered Brooks' body the next morning.

He turned more pages, a little impatiently, and found Nick's handwritten notes in the back, behind those of the detective working the case, John Sutter, neatly typed. Sutter's comments were brief and to the point; Nick's were rambling and went on for several pages. Whatever Ed Blake's opinions, he'd kept them to himself on an official level: there were no notes from him.

Gil leaned his chin on his hand. When had Nick stopped writing out his thoughts like this? He certainly hadn't done it the past couple of years. His reports, like Sutter's, were typed and printed in official departmental format, not jotted down in the field. Maybe he hadn't known better yet? Or maybe he simply kept it all to himself, and only later made copies of a more official nature?

Whatever the reason, Gil was glad for Nick's odd habits now. He scanned the first two pages, and then paused over the third. "Lewis – gloves," Nick had printed hastily. "Why fingerprints?"

Flipping back, Gil glanced at the forensics report. Lewis's fingerprints had indeed been all over the crowbar, although no others had been found. He frowned. Nick was saying Lewis had gloves on the whole time? That didn't make a lot of sense.

Nick had gone on to say, "Talk to wife. Reason for trip? Audit – ck records."

There was nothing about an audit in the file. But Brooks had been an accountant; a reference to his professional dealings prior to the murder?

On his last page of notes, Nick had drawn a crude chart, reminiscent of the one Gil himself had made while meeting with Brass and Catherine, at least in execution. The content, however, was decidedly different.

Gil sat back, gnawing his lower lip. The last thing Nick had jotted down was, "Not sure this was a robbery." So had he believed Lewis's actual goal had been the death of Paul Brooks? And if so, why hadn't he pursued it? There was nothing after Lewis's arrest, at least in Nick's notes. If he'd had questions, he hadn't notated them here.

He could feel the jitters in his stomach. There was more to this case than met the eye – he was certain Nick had been certain. But nothing in this file suggested what else that might have been. Nick had been oblique, not writing anything down that was truly substantive. More like reminders to himself, something. But reminders of what, Gil couldn't tell.

He glanced at the fourth file, and then sighed and gathered up all but the Brooks file and stacked them on the table near his desk. It might not be anything. Just Nick being a bulldog, hanging onto a case that hadn't been as complicated as he'd initially believed. It had happened before.

Thinking ruefully once again of Occam's razor, Gil closed the Brooks file and stood, tucking the folder under his arm.

John Sutter lived out past the city limits, on a five-acre plot of land a mile or so off the interstate. Gil pulled up in the gravel driveway and climbed out, squinting behind his sunglasses. The heat slammed into him like a balled-up fist, sweat popping out immediately on his brow.

The house was small and immaculate. Walking to the porch, he noted a brave flowerbed, its inhabitants drooping but still surprisingly green. Someone paid a lot of money to keep those plants watered.

He rang twice, but there was no reply. But the front door was open behind the screen, and he heard a radio playing softly from somewhere. Frowning, he secured the file once more under his arm and stepped off the porch to go around the side of the house.

"Hello?" he called. "Anyone home?"

A rustling behind the Japanese pear, and a tall, heavyset man appeared, wiping his hands on a pair of overalls already burdened with more than their share of red dirt. "Can I help you?" he called, stepping out from what was revealed to be another plant bed, this one pregnant with tomatoes and corn. The corn looked a little tired, but the tomatoes, Gil thought, looked damn good.

Gil stepped forward. "Detective Sutter?"

"Not anymore," Sutter told him, taking off heavy gloves and shaking his head. "Retired two years ago. Disability. Gil Grissom, right?"

Gil nodded "I wasn't sure you'd remember me."

"Hasn't been that long." Sutter stepped over the last of the trailing tomato vines and revealed a distinct limp. He extended a hand to Gil. His fingers were damp and very hot. Hardly surprising, with gloves in this heat. "I'm gonna assume this isn't a social call."

"More official, yes," Gil admitted with a brief half-smile. "I'd like to ask you about a case you worked a few years ago."

"Figured it'd be something like that." Sutter tucked his gloves in his pocket and gestured at the house. "Want to come inside? I try to get an early start these days, but damned if it isn't too hot to work an hour after the sun comes up."

"Nice garden."

"Since my wife died, it's been my hobby, I guess." He led the way to the back porch, right hand absently covering his hip. "We were gonna retire out here. Then I got shot, and she got cancer. A lot of land for one person with a gimpy leg."

Inside, it was cool and dim, revealing utilitarian furniture and few decorative touches. Gil privately thought it was very much a bachelor's house, or a widower.

"Want something to drink? Got coffee, but it's so damn hot I'm having iced tea."

"Tea sounds good."

He followed Sutter into the spare, neat kitchen. "So what's this case you're after?" Sutter asked, going to the refrigerator and taking out a tall plastic pitcher.

"This would have been back in 1998. Paul Brooks was murdered in the course of a robbery attempt in his home."

Still with his back turned, Sutter nodded and got out two glasses. "Javier Lewis, right? I remember that one. You know, that was the fourth time I'd arrested Lewis. Last time, too," he added with satisfaction.

When Sutter sat at the small table, Gil followed suit, taking his glass of tea and tasting it briefly. "Thanks."

Sutter drank half a glass before wiping his lips with the back of his hand. Indoors, his features were younger than they'd appeared under the harsh sunlight. Fifty-five, sixty at the most, Gil judged. Formerly dark hair was slowly going to silver. He hadn't shaved that morning.

"As I recall it," Sutter said, "we wrapped that one up pretty fast. Lewis got the needle a couple of years back, and good riddance, ask me. Any particular reason you're looking into this one now?"

"A long shot." Gil laid the file on the table, tapping it with his fingers. "You worked this case with Nick Stokes, correct?"

"Stokes, yeah." Sutter sighed. "Good kid. Heard what happened. I'm more sorry than I can say."

"Nick left a lot of notes about this case. He didn't seem all that sure it was what it appeared to be."

Sutter gave a slow nod. "Yeah. I remember that."

Gil raised his eyebrows. "Can you walk me through it?"

"Old news, but sure. What I remember of it."

"Anything would help."

Sutter cleared his throat. "Well, let's see. We got the call early, about five that morning. Captain sent me out for a possible homicide. Housekeeper found the body. Poor woman was so scared we had to call an ambulance, afraid she was gonna have a heart attack."

"Go on?"

"It's all in the file. Lewis left his prints all over that crowbar. He hit Brooks so many times all that was left was goo, you know? Hell of a mess." He drank some tea. "Pretty cut and dried, really. Made the arrest the next day, Lewis didn't even put up a fight."

"Did he say why he killed Brooks?"

"Lewis never said a thing except, 'I want a lawyer.'" Sutter snorted. "He knew the drill."

"In his notes," Gil said carefully, "Nick said something about Lewis wearing gloves. There were no fingerprints found, except on the weapon. Did that strike you as strange?"

"The way I figured it, he'd gotten what he wanted already, and Brooks surprised him. Lewis took the gloves off, since he was done. Then he's gotta brain Brooks, so he uses the crowbar, and that's where we got prints."

It was logical. Like so many other things he'd been running into. Gil fought down the urge to heave a sigh. "Nick also wrote down he wasn't sure it was a robbery."

Sutter was silent for a moment, and then leaned back in his chair, setting his tea glass on the table. "Nick had this theory, something kind of out there. He thought this had something to do with the work Brooks was doing. Some kind of audit. A casino."

Gil raised his eyebrows. "A casino audit? There's nothing about that in the file."

"That's because it didn't pan out. Look, whatever Brooks was doing on a professional level, fact is, Lewis just wanted cash and jewelry, and when Brooks interrupted him, he flipped. Killed the guy and ran. When we found him he had tickets to Mexico in his pocket."

Leaning forward, Gil pressed, "What was Nick's theory, exactly? Did he believe Brooks was set up? Lewis?"

"Now everybody knows these audits are set up months in advance. No casino's going to be surprised by some bean-counter showing up. It just doesn't work that way."

"But if it did. This time. What did Nick think Brooks had found out?"

Sutter looked uncomfortable. "You think I know? Look, Nick was a good CSI, smart, a little naïve. Really gung-ho, you know? I didn't want to ignore him, but the thing is, we had our guy already. There was no evidence to support some kind of conspiracy theory. I told him that myself, and hell, he agreed."

"Did he ever tell you the gist of his theory? Anything more specific?" When Sutter didn't immediately reply, Gil added, "Please. It may be important."

"This have anything to do with Stokes getting shot?"

Gil paused. "Possibly. I can't say yet."

Sutter nodded. "All right. Yeah, he told me about it. It's been a while, so I don't remember it all. Something about Brooks sprung an audit on the Horseshoe. That was back when Sal Coppa still owned it. Now you and I know, nothing happened that Coppa didn't know about first." He shrugged. "But Stokes thought for once nobody got warned ahead of time. This time, Brooks just walked in and asked for the books."

"What was the timeline? How long before he was killed?"

After a moment, Sutter said reluctantly, "About a week, maybe ten days."

Gil recoiled. "And you didn't pursue that?"

"Look, Grissom, we had our guy already." Sutter's face had gone pale beneath the tan. "There was no reason to look into it. You don't just investigate somebody like Coppa on a whim, you know that. Jesus, talk about having a death wish."

"Maybe that's just what Paul Brooks did. And maybe this was the result."

"Maybe. But I didn't believe it at the time, and I still don't. I worked this city for twenty-two years, Grissom. Nobody does crap like that. It just isn't done."

Gil nodded slowly. "Did Nick say anything else?"

Sutter finished his glass of tea and shook his head. "I saw him about a week after we made the arrest. Up at the DA's office. I asked him if he had any more crazy theories, you know, and he said, "No, John, you were right. There's nothing else there.'"

"Did you believe him?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

Gil drew a deep breath. "Thanks for your time, Detective. Sorry to interrupt your gardening."

Sutter studied him for a moment, eyes narrowed. "Like I said, too damn hot. What difference could all of this make now, anyway? Coppa's dead. Been pushing up daisies for three years now. The Horseshoe isn't even the Horseshoe anymore."

"If I knew, I'd tell you," Gil said, half-honestly. He pushed back his chair and stood. "Good to see you, John. Take care."

Sutter stood, too, shaking Gil's hand briefly. "Like I said, I'm sorry about Stokes. He was a good man, real good."

Gil nodded. "That he was."

To be continued. EB 12/14/04