Night Shift
Part 4
Warning: Sexual scenes in this chapter,
(2 week after NS, part 3)
"Phoenix, I need your help on a new case," Catharine said as soon as I came in that night. I had just come in for work that night and I figured that I was the first one in after her.
"Let me get my case," I said.
"What's up?" I asked when I rejoined her. She walked me back out the door and we got into one of the Tahoe's'.
"A call came in just as I arrived," she paused as she drove out of the parking lot of the CSI HQ.
"Police were called to a disturbance in a house. Neighbour said he heard gunshots." She pulled the Tahoe in behind an unmarked police car.
"How many?" I asked.
"Dispatch didn't say," she replied. A young detective that I didn't recognise came over.
"What have we got?" Catharine asked him. Just then her mobile phone rang and she answered it.
"I'll head on in and get to work," I told her. She nodded distractedly.
Inside the house was dark; I took out a flashlight and turned it on. The front door opened straight into the sitting room. I moved further into the house. The kitchen; a shattered coke bottle lay on the floor next to a body of a teenager; she looked to be about sixteen or seventeen and her face was marred only by the blood that spattered her from a fatal neck wound. Moving onward I went upstairs and into the bathroom; a man lay slumped in the bathtub, fully clothed in a suit and tie and his head was pretty much gone. I backed out of the room and into a bedroom close by; nothing. In the master bedroom a woman lay on the bed, as if the killer had come upon her while she was sleeping. In the next room I found something though. Under the bed a boy; eight maybe and he held a small baby in his dead arms. I leaned in closer.
"Is it okay now?" The boys' voice was barely whispered. I fell backwards with a small cry.
"Yeah, I'm Phoenix Matthews, I work for the police," he probably wouldn't know what a CSI was. The baby let out a small cry.
"What's your name?"
"Tommy and this is Gillian," he held up the baby.
"Were you hurt?" I asked. He shook his head.
"No, daddy said to come in here and hide with Gillian." He held the baby close, still not sure whether I was the one who had killed his family.
"Well, your daddy was right," probably the only reason Tommy and his baby sister were still alive.
"You want to give me Gillian and we'll go outside?" I asked. His eyes darted fearfully around. Eventually he gave me his sister and crawled out from under the bed.
"Hey, honey," I crooned to the baby softly as I held her close and stood up.
"Come on, Tommy,"
We made our way back down the hallway of the house.
"Daddy!" Tommy yelled as we passed the bathroom. I crouched down to eyelevel.
"Tommy, I need you to come with me," I said.
"But what about daddy?" He asked.
"We'll take care of your daddy, okay?" I said. He glanced back towards the bathroom and then buried his face in my thigh. His small hand snaked into my gloved one. We went down the stairs. I let his hand go for a moment to open the front door and stepped out into the brightly flashing lights. Catharine was on her way up the front walk and she stopped when she saw me coming out the front door with Tommy and Gillian. I went right down to her. Tommy was hiding behind me, still clutching my hand like a lifeline.
"Catharine this is Tommy and his baby sister Gillian," Tommy peeked out from behind me and looked up at her.
"Tommy this is my friend Catharine,"
Catharine recovered quickly and smiled down at him.
"Hello, Tommy," she said. Tommy ducked back behind me.
"He's a little nervous,"
She nodded and gestured to the paramedics who had just arrived. They joined us.
"Tommy, I want you to go with them," I said to the small boy. He stared up and me and shook his head stubbornly, squeezing my hand tighter. I passed the baby to one of the paramedics and crouched down to him again.
"It's alright; they'll look after you at the hospital,"
"Can't you come as well?" He asked. I shook my head and smiled sadly.
"I'm sorry, Tommy, I have to help Catharine here,"
"But-" his lip was trembling.
"It's alright," Catharine said.
"I'll call Grissom and get someone else down here,"
"You sure?" I asked her. She nodded and I walked with Tommy to the ambulance. Got him inside.
"Listen, Tommy, I'll be right back. I just need to talk to Catharine for a minute, okay?"
After a moment he let me go and nodded. I hurried back to Catharine, who was still talking on the phone to Grissom.
"Grissom's sending Sara and Nick," she said.
"Okay, I found the teenage daughter in the kitchen; broken coke bottle nearby, there's blood on it I don't think it's hers, to far away from the body." I said.
"She hit her attacker," Catharine said.
"That's what I think, her throat was slashed. I have theories on what happened with her, but…" I shrugged.
"Upstairs bathroom, father in bathtub shot in the head. Master bedroom; mother in bed, numerous different pill bottles on the bedside cabinet. There are two other bedrooms I didn't check. Bedroom next to the bathroom is empty; bedroom across the hall is where I found Tommy hiding under his bed with the baby."
"We're ready to move here," one of the paramedics called.
"You'd better join Tommy," Catharine told me.
"I'll be back as soon as I can," I said.
I stood next to the bed as the doctor went over Tommy, just to be certain that he wasn't injured. Tommy had refused to let me go, during all this and he also refused to let his sister be taken out of his eyesight.
"Daddy, told me to take care of her," he had told me. A big responsibility for a child, but he was determined that she would not get hurt if he could stop it.
"CSI Matthews," a woman came into the room.
"That's me," I said.
"I'm Carol Hanson, the social worker," she said.
"Is this Thomas and Gillian Grayson?" She asked, looking over a file.
"Tommy and Gillian, yes," I replied, I turned back to Tommy.
"Tommy, this is Ms Hanson, she's going to take you somewhere for tonight."
"But I thought you were going to stay with me," he said.
"I can't, it's Ms Hanson's job to take care of you now. My job is to find out what happened at your house tonight, so I have to go back there." I told him. He looked at Carol Hanson, who smiled back at him. A nice social worker, next thing you know there'll be flying pigs. After a moment he looked back at me and nodded.
"A-alright," he said quietly. I looked at the social worker and she moved over to pick up the baby. I headed for the door.
"Find out who hurt daddy," Tommy's voice stopped me. I turned and looked back at him; his face was deadly earnest; I hadn't told him that his mother and sister were dead as well.
"I promise I will," I said and left to go back to the crime scene.
I met Sara outside the house taking photographs of anything she could find that would show how the killer had entered the house. She pointed out a small footprint in the soil under one broken window, I crouched down and looked at it and then up at the broken window.
"To small?" I asked.
"Looks to be, but you know Grissom, if we don't bag and tag everything in proper order then…"
"They take away the bodies yet?"
"Nope, Catharine's in the kitchen with the daughter, Nick's upstairs with the father." She replied, putting down her camera and getting ready to cast the footprint.
"Looks like I get the mother then," I said. I went into the house and upstairs on the way to the master bedroom. In the bathroom I saw Nick look up as I walked past.
"Hey, Phoenix," he said.
"Did anyone else go into the mother yet?" I asked. He shook his head, gesturing to the father in the bathtub.
"Been keepin him company all night. How's the kid doin?" He asked.
"Upset, naturally. He doesn't know that his mother and sister are dead yet. Social workers after takin him and his sister to a home for the night." I told him.
"I'm gonna get to work in there,"
In the master bedroom all was the same as the last time I had been in here. I turned on the lights and looked around; camera in hand I took pictures of everything. Including the pill bottles on the nightstand, bagging each bottle.
"Find anything?" Catharine stood in the doorway with Nick just behind her.
"Mother was shot in the chest, take a look at these." I opened one of the envelopes with the pill bottle in it. Catharine held it up to the light, reading the label.
"Sleeping pills. Yeah and the prescription date is yesterday. She was supposed to take two, but four of them are missing." I put away the rest of the envelopes.
"So the killer comes in, shoots her and she never even wakes up," Catharine murmured.
"Yeah, her whole families getting hunted and killed in their own house and mommy's in lala land." I said as I moved past her and into the bedroom where I had found Tommy under his bed.
"You know you're taking this a little personally," Catharine had followed me in, she moved towards the closet in the far corner. Nick went to the computer at the other side. I crouched by the bed.
"No, I'm trying to figure out what happened and that's all," I said.
"Don't let it get under your skin," she said.
"To late," I muttered. Something shiny near the top leg of the bed caught my eye.
"I got a bullet here," I picked it up carefully, as Catharine and joined me. I held it up for them to see. I slid it into an envelope.
"Let's see if it matches any that we pull from the bodies," Nick said.
"It will," I said.
"Don't be so hasty to jump to conclusions," Catharine said.
"Take a look around you Catharine; this is a kids room, probably Tommy's. You got toys, a computer. What would a gun be doing in here?" I asked.
"Sara find out anything?" Nick asked me.
"She found a footprint outside and a broken window, looks to small to get in through though," I said.
"And it doesn't look like the killer broke in through the front or the back door,"
"What do you think happened here?" Catharine asked me.
"Guessing games again?" I asked rhetorically.
"Okay, father comes home late from work,
&&&&&&&&&
Thomas Sanderson went into the kitchen, he was late home from work again; Sarah was not going to be happy. He turns to go upstairs and find his wife so he can apologise for his lateness, that's when he sees his daughter on the other side of the breakfast bar. He goes over to her, checks to see if she's still alive, but she's already gone. He turns and races up the stairs to make sure the rest of his family is alright. He goes to the master bedroom first, his wife and daughter. Sarah's already dead, but Gillian is screaming in her cot, the gunshot having woken her up. He snatches her up, and hurries back towards the stairs, thinking that his son is dead as well, he has to get his daughter to safety. Tommy comes out of his room and at the same time the killer comes back upstairs, he killed the mother first and went downstairs when he heard Laurie coming in. Now Thomas Sanderson has a problem; to get his son and daughter to safety he has to get down those stairs, but the murderer's in the way. He gives Gillian to Tommy and tells Tommy to hide. Tommy goes into his room and crawls under the bed. He hears the gun go off a second time and he knows his father has been killed. Now the killer comes into Tommy's bedroom to finish off the job. He points the gun at Tommy; pulls the trigger, the gun jams. The killer tried to fix the gun, a bullet falls out near the bed, and it goes unnoticed. A few seconds later the gun is ready to be used again. In the distance the murderer can hear sirens, someone's called the cops. He can't finish the job, he leaves the house before the police arrive, perhaps blending in with the crowd that's gathered outside.
&&&&&&&&&
"Bring it in?" Nick asked.
"We bring it in," Catharine confirmed
I sat in the break room eating a sandwich and drinking a can of coke when Greg came in.
"Where's Catharine?" He asked.
"Down in the morgue with Nick and Doc Robbins," I said after swallowing.
"Well I got work to do for Warrick and Grissom. Can I leave these here with you?" He asked. I nodded my consent; he put them down and left the room. I switched the sandwich to my other hand and pulled the folder towards me. I gave it a cursory glance, and the can of coke stopped in midair.
I had taken a look at the markings on a bullet earlier and taken pictures of it, adding them all to the case file. I shot to my feet and was out the door, lunch; if that's what you can call a three am meal, forgotten about.
"Greg!"
"Holy…! What?" Greg jumped a mile.
"Where's Warrick and Grissom?" I asked. As far as I knew they were still out with Brass doing the rounds. Grissom and Warrick had taken a case last the night before that they were still working on.
"I don't know, in his office maybe," Greg shrugged and went back to work. I took out my phone and dialled Catharine's number.
"You better get up here and bring Nick as well," I said. Then I thought of something else.
"Did Robbins find any bullets in the bodies?"
"Good bring them as well," I went over to the microscope. I hung up and dialled again, the phone was engaged so I had to dial another number.
"Warrick grab Grissom and bring him in," I said.
"I don't care if it is, this is more important. Just get him and get in here ASAP." I snapped.
"You got the bullet from Grissom's case?" I asked.
"Yeah, but I'm still working on it," Greg replied.
"Give it to me," he didn't argue with me just handed it over. I slid it under the microscope and put the one that I had picked up from the floor of the bedroom. Sara was so busy at the computer trying to match the print that I had found on the bullet that she didn't even seem to notice what was going on.
"Uh, oh," I muttered.
"Uh, oh, what?" Catharine asked as she and Nick entered. Instead of answering I held out my hand.
"Give me the bullet," I said.
"Phoenix-" Catharine began.
"Just give it to me. Warrick and Grissom are on their way in." I said as I removed the bedroom bullet and replaced it with the one that Catharine gave me. I turned it slowly.
"Oh, shit,"
"What is it?" Nick asked. I stepped back and gestured to the microscope.
"Take a look for yourself," I said. He bent over it, looking through the eyepieces.
"You found another matching bullet," he said letting Catharine take a look. The door opened again and Grissom and Warrick came in.
"So what's the emergency?" Warrick asked.
"Phoenix found matching bullets from the family murder we were at tonight," Nick replied.
"And we're here for that…why exactly?" Warrick asked.
"It matches the bullet found in your vic from last night," I said.
"And…it matches the bullets found at our murder from tonight. Different murders, same suspect." I finished.
"Or at the least the same gun was used. Break room, now," Grissom ordered.
I sat down at the table and grabbed my half eaten sandwich.
"Catharine, bring me up to speed on what you've found," Grissom said. Catharine started talking, Grissom started listening and I started eating.
"Phoenix!" Grissom said sharply. I jumped slightly and nearly choked on my mouthful of sandwich.
"What?" I asked probably showing him a mouthful of mashed bread, jam and peanut butter.
"I asked you how you recognised the bullet from our case," he said.
"Uh…" I glanced at Warrick.
"She was yesterday's spare wheel, I asked her to take a look at our bullet for me." Warrick told Grissom. The spare wheel was what we called the person who stayed in the CSI HQ for the night to help any of the active CSI's if they need help.
"Didn't find any matches to it in the database either," I added.
"So now we have four dead bodies, bullets, but no gun," Grissom said. No one said anything.
"And a connection," I said after a moment.
"To what?" Grissom asked me.
"Well, there must be a connection between your vic and ours. We just got to figure out what that is." I said.
"Warrick take Phoenix and go down and see if Doc Robbins has any more information on tonights murders," Grissom said.
"I've been waiting for you to get here," Robbins said as soon as we entered his morgue.
"What you got for u, Doc?" Warrick asked. Robbins gestured to the table and the body. Robbins pointed to the head of the victim.
"Just finished the autopsy on him, it looks like he killed himself," He said. I looked at Warrick, he looked at me.
"Murder/suicide?" I wondered aloud.
"How can it be? Nick didn't find any gun near the body and one thing's for sure; our victim didn't get rid of it after he killed himself." Warrick said.
"You find that gun and you'll find this guys prints all over it," Robbins said.
"Thanks, Doc," Warrick said as we walked out of the morgue.
"This thing just gets weirder and weirder," I murmured.
"Hang on," I said. I took out my phone and dialled the number that Carol Hanson had given me.
"Carol, this is Phoenix Matthews, the CSI you met earlier," I said.
"What's wrong, CSI Matthews?" She asked.
"I need to speak with Tommy as soon as," I said.
"I can bring him into you, we'll be there within the hour," she said.
"The son, you think he knows something?" Warrick asked me.
"Like you said, Warrick, the guy didn't get rid of his own suicide weapon after he killed himself with it. Someone else did,"
"Grissom isn't going to like this," he said.
"I don't think I like it either," I said. We got out of the lift on the CSI floor and headed in the direction of Grissoms office to tell him our news.
The social worker sat next to Tommy in the break room of CSI HQ. A more informal setting was better I thought.
"Hey, Tommy," I said as I came into the room with Warrick.
"Hello, can me and Gillian go home yet?" He asked. I sat down at the table across from him, Warrick next to me.
"I'm afraid not. Tommy, this is another friend of mine, his name's Warrick," I said.
"Hi," Tommy went up to making two action figures beat each other up.
"Hi, Tommy," Warrick said. Tommy stopped playing with his toys and looked at me again.
"Did you find out what happened to daddy yet?" He asked.
"I think so, but first of all I need to ask you some questions, that okay?" I asked.
"Yeah,"
"Do you know if daddy went upstairs with mommy when she was going to bed?" I asked. Robbins had said that the pills she had taken hadn't had time to work their magic when she had died. Tommy shook his head.
"I was already asleep," he said.
"What about Laurie, do you remember when she went to bed?" I asked.
"Laurie was out when I went to bed," he said.
"What about Gillian?" I asked. There had been blood spatters on her babygro.
"She's still little she sleeps in mommy's room," he told me. Indeed the baby cot had been in the master room.
"You remember just before daddy asked you to hide with Gillian? Did he say anything else to you?"
"Just to hide and be real quiet, so that he wouldn't hear us." Tommy went back to his toys, bashing the crap out of both of them.
"Do you know what the truth is, Tommy?" Flashback, Grissom had asked me almost the exact same question twenty years ago.
"Yeah,"
"Well I need you to tell me the truth, because I know that there wasn't anyone else in the house tonight. What did else did daddy tell you to do?" I asked.
"Nothing," Tommy said sullenly.
"He told me to come back in a few minutes and get the gun to hide it," he added all in a rush.
"Where did you hide it?"
"Under the bed where me and Gillian were," he said. I looked at Warrick, that explained how the bullet had gotten there, but so far we had no gun. Sara and Nick had gone over there to take a second look.
"Did I do something wrong?"
"No, Tommy, you didn't do anything wrong," I told him.
"I had to help him, he said he'd hurt Gillian if I didn't," he whispered.
"it wasn't your fault, Tommy," I told him. Carol and Tommy left.
"Not a nice thing for Sanderson to do to his own kid," Warrick said. I had nothing to say to that. Grissom and the others came in.
"So, did it go like you thought it did?" He asked.
"Yeah," I replied.
"Good job," he told me.
"Tell that to Tommy. His father made him get rid of the gun, told him that if he didn't then he'd hurt Gillian." I said. Everyone took a seat around the table.
"You figure out why he killed your guy?" I asked.
"Sanderson was in debt, a lot of debt. Owed over thirty grand. Couldn't afford to pay him back so he just killed him."
"And then he killed his own family, what a nice guy." Sara said.
"What I don't get is why he didn't kill Tommy and Gillian," I said.
"It's simple," Grissom said.
"His wife and daughter knew what he had done. Tommy and Gillian weren't a threat to him and he needed someone to get rid of the gun afterwards so he needed Tommy and in his warped mind he needed to keep Gillian alive as leverage against Tommy."
"Asshole," I muttered. I could only imagine how Tommy felt.
"And so ends another day of solving the endless crime," Warrick said.
"Breakfast, anyone?" Asked Grissom.
"Going to go home and be there when Lindsey wakes up," Catharine said.
"And I'm going home to pretend I live in a normal world for a while," I said. I followed Catharine out the door. I walked out into the parking lot and got into my car. Someone knocked on the passenger door.
"You wanna let me in?" Nick asked. Not particularly, I thought. Instead I reached over and unlocked the door and he got in. I returned to staring out the windshield.
"Another bum case we can add to the files."
"I'm just sitting here wondering what hell makes some parent such bastards," I said.
"Luck of the draw," he said.
"I'm serious, Nick," I said.
"I know, Grissom would say that there just are," He said.
"What would you say?"
"Probably the same thing. You can't change the whole world, Phoenix, so give up trying." He told me.
"I'm not trying to change it, I know that's pointless. It just makes you think, y'know?"
"Yeah, but you could go crazy thinking about it all the time,"
"I know, you want to come back home with me?" I abruptly changed the subject.
"Sure," he said. We sat in silence for a few more moments.
"You turn the key and put your foot on the accelerator and the car starts moving," he said eventually.
"Nope," I said. Feeling a little better, it was nice to have a bit of normality back.
"Nope? What nope?" He asked.
"Not this car. This car you turn the key, stomp on the accelerator and nothing happens. Nothing in this car works, Instead you're left here wondering why the hell you don't just sell the thing and get a new one." I said.
"Ah," he said.
"We could always use my car,"
"Yeah, we could. I guess," then I started laughing.
"What?" He asked.
"Well the seatbelt lock won't release," I told him.
"You're going to sell it anyway, right?" He asked.
"I was going to drive it around Vegas and crash it into walls until there isn't enough of it left to fit in a matchbox, but it won't start. The seatbelt won't release me, the pedal has jammed against my foot and just to add insult to injury…" I tugged my arm away from the keys showing where my jacket sleeve had snagged.
"So why do you still have this car?" He asked.
"Because…" I paused.
"I don't know, because I'm to lazy to get rid of it," I finished lamely. An actual smile broke out on his square jawed countenance.
"Hang on," he pulled the jacket sleeve off where it had snagged on the steering column and then bent down to loosen the foot pedal. He was down there for a while when Warrick came out and walked over to my car. He leaned in my window, looked at where Nick's head was, and promptly decided to go elsewhere. I couldn't help it I started laughing again. Nick finally released my foot and sat up again a penknife in his hand.
"What?" He asked, slicing through the seatbelt.
"Warrick," I gasped, between laughs. Nick looked at me like I was crazy.
"Warrick what?"
"Was just here," I said when I finally got myself back under control.
"Oh? Why didn't he stick around?" He asked.
"Because you were trying to get my foot out from under the pedal," I said as if that explained everything. But judging by the look on his face it didn't.
"You practically had your head in my lap,"
"Oh," he paused.
"You could have asked him if he wanted to join in," he grinned at me cheekily. I swatted him across the back of the head.
"Nick!"
"Wha-" he broke off as I kissed him.
"That's a brilliant idea, but do you think he'd go for that kind of thing?" I asked when I finally broke the kiss. He stared at me with wide eyes, before realising that I was kidding and then he shook his head.
"I never know where you're serious or kidding," he said.
"The sign of a good comedian. It was just funny because, y'know, we haven't actually done anything yet."
"Yet? That sound hopeful," he said.
"Nick, don't you realise what just happened?" I asked, turning serious for a moment.
"What's that?" He asked.
"We just gave something for Warrick to spread around the grapevine," I explained.
"I'll threaten him with something and he'll keep quiet," he told me, shrugging.
"How professional of you," I said, trying to open the door to get out.
"Oh, for…let me out your side, Nick," I crawled across the seats and finally got out of my heap of junk.
I handed Nick the box of cornflakes.
"Yummy, I love cornflakes," he said in a tone that made it clear he meant the exact opposite.
"Me to," I said. I poked my spoon at the cornflakes cautiously, as if it were one of Grissoms experiments gone wrong. Then I ate really fast.
"You're gonna make yourself sick if you do that," Nick stated.
"Faster you eat the less you taste," I informed him.
In plopped down in the middle of the sofa and Nick sat next to me. We sat in silence for a long time.
"So, what now?" He asked eventually. I answered by kissing him.
"All you were waiting for was the invitation, huh?" He asked, kissing me again. I shrugged this time when he let me go.
"I wasn't sure," was all I said. Then I was on him again, his arms wrapped around me.
"Oh, not again!" Warricks voice. I looked over at him and then back at Nick.
"I'm not going to say anything, because I really don't want to see anything," Warrick continued, he put his hand over his eyes and went straight into the kitchen. I leaned my head against Nick's chest, giggling nervously.
"Well, that put an end to that," Nick said.
"Yeah," I said. Nick knew that I was nervous about this anyway and the fact that Warrick was now here only made me worse.
"But not if we go to your house," I smiled at him.
"Good idea," he said. He stood up and pulled me to my feet, his arm around my shoulders we moved towards the door.
"See you later, Warrick!" I called.
"He's probably hiding under the table, waiting for us to leave, y'know," Nick said.
"Then let's hurry up and give him what he wants," I told him. He pulled open the door open and slammed it behind us, making sure Warrick understood that we were gone.