9/5/05
BROTHER GRIMM
Chapter 5
After catching only a few hours of sleep, Nick returned to the lab. He ignored the burning sensation behind his eyes and the pounding in his head and forced himself to concentrate on his work. He was in one of the labs, pouring over every map he could find of Vegas which included the Indian Springs Subdivision, looking for any streams, ponds, or other sources of water where cottonwoods might grow. As he looked over the maps, he absently hummed the tune that Tiffany always hummed in his dreams.
"'Do You Know the Muffin Man?'"
"What?" Nick asked, jumping slightly and turning to find Catherine standing in the doorway behind him.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," she said, smiling. "But the song you were humming... it's 'Do You Know the Muffin Man?' I take it you've already heard the news?"
"What news?"
"We got the results back on Tommy McCormick's DNA sample."
"It matches the semen samples?"
"No, but there are enough alleles in common to indicate a close relative."
"Michael McCormick."
"No one's seen him all day," Catherine confirmed.
"Do we have a warrant for his house?"
"Brass is working on it... What are you working on?"
"Checking the subdivision for sources of water."
"Find anything?"
"Not within the subdivision, but I found a stream not far from it. It's also runs right by the bakery."
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The team was gathered in the breakroom, everyone having just arrived for the evening. As they were talking, Brass walked in waving a folder with an expression of triumph.
"I just got the background check on Michael McCormick," he said. "It seems our boy only just moved back to the Vegas area a year ago. He came back here to take over running the business after his father died. Before that, he was running the store in San Bernadino. I spoke to the PD there and apparently our boy McCormick was the prime suspect in the rape and murder of a six-year-old girl. Unfortunately the case never panned out due to lack of evidence. Apparently he's gotten a little sloppier since then."
"We need to get inside McCormick's house," Grissom said.
"I'm all over it. We should have a warrant within the hour."
"So, where is McCormick's house, by the way?" Nick asked.
Brass consulted his notebook then rattled off the address. Without a word, the younger man abruptly stood and left the room. Everyone watched him go, stunned by this unusually Grissom-esque behavior.
"Was it something I said?" the detective asked dryly.
Nick returned a few minutes later with one of the maps he'd been looking at earlier. He laid the map out on the breakroom table and indicated a spot on it.
"This is where McCormick lives," he said. "This is the bakery." He moved his finger a fraction. "There's a stream that runs between them. I'm betting there're cottonwoods out there... This is where he holds the girls. This is where Tiffany is."
To his surprise, his words were greeted with silence. Everyone glanced at each other uncomfortably.
"We found a cottonwood borer on Ashley's dress," Nick reminded the others. "Cottonwoods like water. It makes sense they would grow near the stream..."
The others still didn't seem to be as excited about this connection as he was.
"Nick," Grissom began gently, "the cottonwood borer can also be found on poplars and willows. It didn't necessarily come from a cottonwood tree and even if it did, you don't know there are cottonwoods near McCormick's house. Look, I just don't want you to pin all your hopes on this. We have no idea where McCormick might be keeping Tiffany."
"She's here," the younger man insisted, pointing at the same spot on the map. "I know she is."
Grissom sighed and gave the Texan an almost pained look. "And this theory is based on what, Nick, another dream?"
The younger man said nothing, but turned and left the room.
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The warrant finally came through shortly after dusk. The entire team, plus Brass and three uniformed officers descended on McCormick's house, which was located on a two-acre, wooded lot adjacent to the bakery. The house itself had apparently been in the family for as long as the business. It was a large, brick, Italianate Victorian with a wrought-iron fence surrounding it.
While Brass and the uniforms knocked on the front door and served the warrant to Carla McCormick, who claimed her husband had still not come home, Grissom gathered his team on the front lawn to divvy out their search assignments.
Before he could begin, Nick spoke up. "I'm taking the back of the house." He didn't even wait for an acknowledgement of this statement before he was walking away toward the back yard.
Grissom watched the other man's retreating back for a moment, his eyes narrowed.
"I'll stick close to him," Warrick volunteered.
The supervisor nodded then returned to his team, directing Sara and Greg to search upstairs, while he and Catherine would search downstairs. At Brass' signal, they marched purposefully toward the house, kits in hand.
At the back of the house, Warrick had to jog to catch up to the Texan. "Nick, hold up!" he called out.
The other man stopped and turned to his friend. "Grissom send you to baby-sit me?"
"Hey, come on, this area hasn't been cleared by P.D. yet. You shouldn't be out here at all, let alone on your own. It's procedure, man. You, of all people, should know that."
"Yeah, I know, sorry."
"So, where do you want to start?"
"Well, I'm heading back toward the creek. You can do whatever you want."
"Lead on," Warrick said.
It didn't take them long to find the creek. After ten or fifteen minutes of walking, they came upon it and, as Nick had predicted, several tall cottonwoods stood on both banks.
Shining his flashlight up onto the leaves of the nearest tree, Warrick said, "Well, there're your cottonwoods."
The two men spread out a bit and swung their flashlights around, looking for any indication that someone else had been in the area recently. Noticing the trees' fluffy, whitish fibers floating on the light breeze, Nick was reminded of his most recent dream of Tiffany. The cotton-like fibers weren't dissimilar to snowflakes. Immediately he knew that the girl was close by. He didn't know where yet, but she was close. His sense of urgency renewed, he cast the beam of his flashlight closer to the ground. As he did, he caught sight of a small, wooden shed. He headed towards it.
The shed was obviously original to the estate. It was very old, with thick, cracked panes in the small windows. The white paint had almost completely flaked away and the exposed wood beneath was bleached almost white by the intense, Nevada sun. There was a narrow door on one side and Nick tried the rusty handle. It wasn't locked. The door swung open reluctantly on stiff, rusted hinges.
Warrick, who was still back at their original position, turned to speak to his partner, only to find that he was alone. He looked around and spotted the shed, just in time to see Nick disappear inside. Warrick gave an exasperated sigh. I swear, the next time I'm paired with Nick, I'm bringing a leash, he vowed silently, trotting toward the small structure.
Inside the shed, Nick found it filled with old, rusted yard tools, clippers, shovels, rakes, a push mower, and several ladders of varying heights. A large area in the center of the dirt floor had been cleared, all of the tools and boxes shoved to one side. The dirt appeared to have been disturbed recently. Setting his kit aside and grabbing a small hand spade from a dusty shelf, the investigator knelt beside the disturbed area and began scraping away the dirt.
"What are you doing?"
Nick looked up to find Warrick standing over him, looking confused and somewhat concerned.
"This dirt has been disturbed. I think something's buried under here," the Texan explained, continuing to work.
The other man made no move to help. Warrick watched his friend's frantic actions with growing alarm. There was no reason to suspect that there was anything under the dirt. He couldn't see that the patch where Nick was digging looked any different from the rest of the floor. Was the other man having some kind of flashback to his own abduction? Was this some kind of breakdown? Was he now obsessed with the idea of victims buried alive?
"Nick," Warrick began gently, "stop, please. There's nothing down there."
"She's down here, Warrick, I know she is!" the other man snapped. There was a definite note of desperation in his voice. "Are you going to help me or not!"
The African-American investigator stood for several minutes, debating what he should do. Should he humor the other man and help him dig? How much time would they waste before Nick came to his senses? And what if he didn't? Should Warrick summon Grissom? Or should he simply man-handle the other man out of the shed? Nick may have been more buff than him, but he still had a slighter build than Warrick and was a few inches shorter. Warrick was confident that if push came to shove, he could probably take the smaller man.
Warrick was distracted from his thoughts by the sound of metal connecting with wood, a dull, hollow sound, unmistakable in the tense silence. He looked down at the other man. Nick was looking at him with triumph in his eyes. There was something buried just beneath the dirt floor. He returned to his digging with even more energy. Still uncomfortable with the entire situation, but feeling chagrined, Warrick grabbed a small shovel and helped his friend clear the dirt aside.
Within minutes, they had uncovered a wooden trap door. Apparently underneath the thick layer of dirt was a wooden floor. It was reminiscent of the hiding places people used during the Prohibition Era. Looking down at it, Warrick let out a long, soft whistle. He reached in a pocket of his field vest and took out his cell phone.
"I'll call Brass and have him clear this," he said, but quickly realized that he was speaking to himself.
Nick had already pulled the trap door open and was shining his flashlight into the darkness below. There was a steep, wooden staircase leading down into the void. Without pausing, he started down the stairs.
"Hey, what're you doing!" Warrick called out.
He watched as the other man reached the bottom of the stairs. He could barely make Nick out in the glow of his flashlight.
"Nick!" Warrick called down in a sharp whisper, not wishing to draw any unwanted attention to his potentially vulnerable partner.
The man in the cellar lifted his dark head and gazed up at his fellow investigator. Nick raised an arm gave a wave before moving further into the cellar and out of Warrick's line of sight.
"Damn it!" the African-American swore quietly, not knowing what that wave was supposed to mean. Was Nick indicating that everything was clear? Warrick had noticed that the other man hadn't drawn his weapon. Did he want Warrick to follow him down or stay above ground? With a sigh, he opened his cell phone and dialed Brass' phone. If nothing else, the detective needed to know what they had found.
The cellar was much larger than Nick had expected it to be. He had anticipated a single, large room, which this was, but it also had other smaller rooms branching off of it. Shining his flashlight around the main room, he saw only several dusty, cobweb-covered, wooden boxes, empty glass bottles in similar condition and a few pieces of broken furniture.
Looking around the dusty cellar, which smelled of earth and decay, Nick became aware of a strange feeling of dissociation settling over him. The darkness, the earth smells, the unmistakable sense of being underground, all brought back disturbing memories of his own abduction. While he was able to separate these thoughts and force them to the back of his consciousness, they didn't leave altogether and it created a kind surreal sensation in his mind, as though he was walking through a dream, an incredibly vivid and life-like dream. But like all dreams, there was still that sense of detachment from reality.
Moving to the nearest side room, he shined his light inside. The hand that held the flashlight shook slightly. The room was empty except for a few burlap bags lying forgotten on the concrete floor. After checking two more rooms, which were also largely empty, he found that the doorway directly across from the stairs was in fact a passageway, not a room.
Moving cautiously down this short corridor, he found more doorways, this time with closed doors. There were four doors, two on either side of the passageway. He tried the first door on his left. It opened into a small, stone-walled cell, just like the previous rooms. But unlike the previous rooms, it was not empty. There was a small army cot with a few blankets strewn across it. A small pink nightgown with lace trim lay neatly draped across the bed as well. These items were conspicuously free of the all-pervading dust. As he wasn't wearing any gloves at the moment, Nick didn't touch anything.
Leaving the room, he moved to the one beside it. This one was locked. Looking down, he saw a faint, strip of light emerging from under the wooden door. Stepping back a few paces, he kicked at the door handle. The door burst open with a satisfying sound of splintering ancient wood. Stepping into the tiny room, he found one of the wooden crates, tipped on its end to serve as a stand. On it, sat a lit hurricane lamp, casting its feeble glow over the stone walls. Another army cot sat pushed against the right-hand wall.
Tiffany Metcalfe lay facing away from the door. She was tied to the cot by nylon ropes around her chest, waist and ankles. Her hands were also tied in front of her. She was straining against her bonds to see who had entered the room. She was gagged and her face was streaked with tears. Moving slowly, so as not to frighten the child, Nick knelt beside the cot and began untying the ropes.
"Tiffany, my name is Nick. I'm with the police. I'm going to take you home," he said in a soft, gentle tone. He kept his explanation simple, not wishing to confuse her and needing her to trust him.
He needn't have worried. As soon as he had released the girl, she sat up and threw her arms around his neck, bursting into tears. Cradling the back of the child's head with one hand and wrapping the other around her, he rocked her gently and murmured nonsensical words of comfort.
"Hang on to me," he whispered in her ear. "We're getting out of here."
Still clinging tenaciously to his chest, she wrapped her legs tightly around histrim waist. Transferring his own hands to her waist, he carefully stood up with the child stuck to him like a barnacle. Turning toward the door, he found it blocked by Michael McCormick standing in the ruined doorframe, holding a shotgun. The gun was raised to his shoulder, but not quite in firing position, not that it mattered. With his hands occupied with holding the girl, Nick couldn't reach for his own weapon.
"Put the girl down," McCormick said, his oddly high, soft voice perfectly calm.
Nick turned his body, trying to shield as much of the child as he could, but making no move to set her down. Strangely, he felt no fear, still under the influence of that strange sense of dissociation. He was, however, worried for the girl's safety and wondered if the man would risk shooting at him while he still held her.
In the dim light cast by the hurricane lamp and the weird angle of the beam of Nick's flashlight, which was still lying on the bed, McCormick's pale eyes were thrown into shadow, making them appear much darker. Despite the man's outwardly calm and serene demeanor, those eyes revealed the predator within, the wolf in the sheep's clothing. This was a man who had calmly snuffed out the lives of two helpless children. Nick had no doubts that this man would not hesitate to kill him as well and yet he couldn't seem to force his body to move, to respond to the man's command.
Nick was standing with the right side of his body turned away from McCormick, but there was still no way he could reach for his gun without the other man seeing this movement... but Tiffany could. Feeling movement at his waist, he realized that the girl had removed the gun from its holster. His heart was suddenly pounding in his chest, but he didn't dare look at the girl for fear of drawing McCormick's attention to her actions.
With Nick's body shielding her movements, Tiffany raised the gun. She was holding it in her left hand and therefore had to bring it across her body in order to direct it at the gunman. As she did so, her movements were awkward and not swift. Whether it was because his attention was so riveted on Nick that he didn't notice this action or that he had noticed and had simply dismissed the child as a non-threat, McCormick didn't react.
Settling the heavy gun in the crook of her right arm, cradled between her body and Nick's, Tiffany did her best to point the weapon at her abductor. For the first time McCormick shifted his attention away from the investigator and onto the girl holding the gun. He arched one eyebrow slightly in apparent challenge.
The girl had obviously never fired a gun before and therefore had no idea of how to aim it properly. The bullet merely grazed McCormick's left shoulder, but the impact was enough to send the man staggering a few paces and he stumbled backward into the passageway behind him.
A sudden blinding light exploded into the man's eyes, coming from the doorway of the corridor, and a sharp voice commanded him to drop his weapon. McCormick could just make out a vague silhouette behind the light. He could clearly see the barrel of a gun pressed up against the side of the flashlight.
"Drop your weapon!" the voice barked again.
Instead of obeying, McCormick tried to raise the shotgun. He never got the barrel anywhere near his target before three successive shots tore into his body. He collapsed onto the concrete floor, bleeding profusely from two holes in his chest and one in his neck. He managed a few gurgled gasps for air before he died with a long, hissing exhale.
Warrick moved cautiously up to the body, keeping his weapon at the ready the whole time. He nudged the body slightly with one foot. Seeing the sightless, staring eyes, he relaxed his guard. He turned to Nick, still holding the girl, who was still holding the gun, now pointed at Warrick. Slowly he stepped forward and gently removed the weapon from the girl's nerveless fingers. She stared at him wide-eyed.
"You two okay?" Warrick asked.
"Yeah... thanks," Nick answered, his voice shaking slightly. "I'm taking her out of here."
Moving past the other investigator, he left the passageway. As he was approaching the stairs, he encountered Brass and two uniformed officers swarming down, their own weapons drawn.
"What the hell's going on?" the detective demanded. "We heard shots. Who got hit?"
"McCormick, he's dead. Warrick shot him." Nick decided not to say anything about Tiffany's shot. The child had been through enough for now. They could deal with all the other stuff later. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I want to get her out of here."
Back above ground, Nick walked a few feet away from the shed and sank down carefully on the grass, mindful of his precious burden. Sitting cross-legged, he settled the child on his lap and reached up with both hands to push the thick, red curls back from her face, so he could get a better look at her.
"Are you hurt?" he asked.
She shook her head. He nodded in relief. Sensing movement beside him, he turned and looked up to see Catherine approaching. She knelt down beside him.
"Here, why don't you let me take her?" she said gently.
Nick nodded reluctantly. While he understood that the girl, who had been abducted from her home by a strange man, probably would feel more comfortable with a woman, as opposed to another strange man, he couldn't help but feel a need to keep the child close to him. So, he was rather selfishly pleased when Tiffany shrank away from Catherine's touch and wrapped her arms tighter around his neck.
"It's okay, Honey, it's okay," Catherine said soothingly. "You can stay with Nick. No one's going to make you do anything you don't want to."
The woman stepped back and rejoined the rest of the team, who had also hung back, giving the man and the child plenty of space. Tiffany laid her head on Nick's shoulder and he held her close, rocking her slightly and rubbing her back. He spoke softly to her, although he wasn't really even sure what he was saying. He simply babbled to her in a gentle tone.
Though he kept his attention focused on the girl, Nick was aware of the movements of the rest of the team around him. He vaguely heard Brass call for an ambulance and a coroner's wagon. He also heard the detective order two of the uniformed officers to take Mrs. McCormick into custody. They would hold her until they could determine the extent of her involvement in her husband's activities, if there was any. Nick also heard Grissom issuing orders to his team about collecting the evidence in the cellar.
Nick didn't know how long he sat holding the child. He thought she had fallen asleep, but when they both became aware of activity announcing the arrival of the paramedics, she abruptly straightened up and looked at him intently. He returned this look and gave her a reassuring smile.
"You're a very brave girl," he said to her.
"I knew you would come," she said very softly. "I saw you in my dream."
"What!" he whispered, his heart giving a sudden lurch.
Before the child could respond, one of the paramedics appeared by Nick's side, saying, "Sir, you need to let go of her now. We need to check her over."
Again reluctantly, Nick released the child. The medic picked her up and gently placed her on a gurney, asking her questions about her physical state. Feeling useless and abandoned, Nick stood and stepped back out of the way. After a moment, he became aware of Grissom standing beside him.
"Are you alright?" the older man asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"Are you sure? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"No, I'm fine."
The two investigators watched the paramedics work for a few minutes. When the two men moved to lift the gurney and carry it back to the ambulance, the child began fussing and calling Nick's name. He moved quickly to her side.
"Nick, don't leave me!" Tiffany cried, clutching his hand. "Don't leave me!"
"Maybe you should come along, sir," one of the medics said.
Nick turned back to Grissom, the unspoken question in his eyes.
"Go," Gil said. "Brass and I will meet you at the hospital later to get the girl's statement."
The supervisor gave a troubled sigh as he watched his investigator disappear with the paramedics.
To be continued...
Author's note: the special Little-Miss-Smarty-Pants-Gold-Star Award goes to Everybetty for correctly identifying Tiffany's song as 'Do You Know the Muffin Man' after only chapter 2. Good Job! Although, apparently I need to work on my foreshadowing skills.
Thanks to everyone else for the great reviews as well!