Grissom walked into his office and threw his folder down onto his desk. He plopped down into his seat, and rubbed his eyes. He was sick of always being the foundation of the group. For once he'd like to show his emotions, but that would be giving too much of himself away.
He looked out into the hallway to see the lab in chaos. Normally the lab was a well-oiled machine, but with the forty-eight hour timeframe that they were given, they had to get moving. Though the last time this happened, they only had twelve hours to find Nick. Just to find him. This time they were told that a prisoner was to be released for Nick's return.
They all knew that the release would never happen, except for the guy who had Nick. He was positive that the Judge would cooperate with him; little did he know the Judge had said that to buy time. Nick did know his father. Too bad this guy didn't know him.
Catherine had followed Gil out the conference room and saw him make a beeline for his office. She gave him a few minutes to himself then walked over and knocked on his door.
Grissom looked up when he heard the knock. Since Nick's abduction his office was like Grand Central Station, so he had turned off his singing fish. Catherine was standing in his doorway. He waved her in.
"You wanna talk about it?" She asked sitting down.
"Talk about what Catherine?" he said looking back down to his work.
"Come on Gil, it's me ... remember? I know you. You can't keep bottling up your emotions it's not good."
"I don't know what you are talking about. I'm fine." He said not looking up.
Catherine rolled her eyes got up and leaned over his desk. She grabbed his folder and closed it then sat back down.
"Gil, It's OK to feel. You don't always have to be a robot. The team won't think any less of you."
"My feelings here are irrelevant." He said standing up from his desk. "We have work to do. Let's get to it." He walked out of his office leaving her sitting there.
Sara was camped out in front of the computer doing research on Michael Mitchell. She located both his rap sheet and background information. She found out that Michael had an older brother named Brent, and that they were both born and raised in Dallas, Texas.
They came from a rich family, but both parents had died mysteriously. They were never able to prove that it was foul play. Both boys had inherited the money.
Since then the brothers had doubled their inheritance. They were into everything both legal and illegal. Problem was no witnesses, but Mickael had made a mistake and got himself arrested.
She also went a step further. She pulled up Michael Mitchell's transcripts from his school days. She skimmed over them, not much there. She filed them away in her case folder. She continued to dig.
When Warrick finally left the conference room he decided to go over the physical evidence collected from the scene of Nick's abduction. He located Bobby in the ballistics lab. He wanted to see if Bobby had gotten anything off of the bullets.
"Hey Bobby." Warrick said as he entered the room.
"Warrick. You coming in for your bullets?"
"Yep. What do you got for me?"
"Well with the type of bullet you gave me here, you are looking for a 9mm Beretta."
"Great. Thanks Bobby!" Warrick said as he started to leave.
"Hey Warrick. I'm not done yet."
Warrick looked at Bobby.
"I was able to match this bullet from Nick's abduction to the bullet from your earlier case. So the same gun was used. Find the gun and you got yourself the murder weapon. Greg was in here a little while ago. I think he mentioned that he was going to see if there were any prints off his bullet."
"Thanks Bobby. You've been a great help." Warrick left the ballistics lab and went looking for Greg.
Warrick located Greg in one of the side labs. Greg was wearing the typical dark blue lab coat with latex gloves. He was hunched over the table with a Fingerprint Brush in one hand and the Fingerprint powder in the other. The bullet was held in a vice-like machine.
Warrick walked in. "Hey Greg. Have you been able to lift any prints off of that bullet?"
"Nice to see you too Warrick." Greg replied.
"Sorry. I've got a lot on my mind."
"Sure. No problem. Well so far I don't have anything but a big goose egg. This bullet is clean. The bullet came from a ..."
Warrick finished his sentence. "9mm Berretta."
Greg looked at him surprised. "How did you know?"
Warrick held up a bag with four bullets in it.
"Let me guess." Greg said.
"You don't have to." Warrick replied. "Bobby said that our bullets came from the same gun. So our cases are related. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the tread marks that we lifted from both crime scenes are going to match a Black GMC Van, but let's run it through Tread Assistance to verify. We want to make sure we dot our Is and cross our Ts."
Greg placed the evidence back in the locker and they both headed over to the computer to check tread assistance on the tire markings. Sure enough they found a match.
"Well it looks like we have a match. Now if only we had the vehicle."
Catherine sat at her computer running the prints she retrieved from the Cadillac through AFIS the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. She hoped that these guys were already in the system.
The computer chugged along, then stopped. She had a match for one set of prints. The mugshot of Jeffrey Johns popped up.
The information had shown that Jeffrey Johns was from the Dallas area, and had been in arrested for threatening a cop during a traffic stop. Of course he was bailed out and nothing else showed up.
She looked at her watch. The hour was almost up, she hoped the rest of them had more information then her.
Nick gave up trying to get comfortable; his hands were going numb from being tied behind his back for so long. He knew that his wrists were starting to bleed from both the ropes and the splinters of his wooden coffin. His thigh throbbed. The white bandage that had once covered it was now red. The wound had started bleeding again when the linebacker had punched him there. He would give anything just to be sitting in that damn chair again.
Nick looked above him and started to breath fast. Hanging there above him was a spider. The spider slowly made it's way down to him it landed on his shirt. Nick screamed and started to buck in the coffin. He couldn't brush the spider off since his hands were tied.
Brent chose that moment to enter the room. He stood there and watched, he liked Nick, and he amused him. Brent walked over and looked into the wood coffin.
"Problem Nick?" Brent said with a smirk.
Nick looked at Brent. He knew Brent heard him scream, but he wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.
Nick swallowed. "Nope, no problem."
"Are you sure?"
"Yep. I'm sure, just need to use the facilities. Anyway that's possible?"
"Well as I said earlier I'm not an ungracious host. Yes you may use the facilities, but this time if you try to escape you will have more than a spider joining you in this box. Do I make myself clear?"
Nick gulped and said, "I understand."
The hour was up. The whole night shift was seated in the conference room waiting for Grissom. Grissom finally walked in and sat down at the table.
"What do we have so far?"