PART SIX
"Grissom," Nick was sounding exuberant as if he had a theory to the twins separated by birth case. "I was thinking about this whole Monica Uchtman thing. Remember Paul Millander? He suggested is that everyone has a twin. I mean, there has to be a finite number of genetic markers in the world and perhaps every so often the same combination occurs and two unrelated people do look alike."
"I don't think so." Grissom didn't think like that. "Millander, much like The Patty Duke Show, was wrong." "Cousins can never look alike, much less complete strangers; it's a myth."
" I hope so…" Warrick started to force a grin with his little banter. "I know I can sleep easier at night knowing there's only one Nick in the world."
"Aw, come on…"
"Warrick," Grissom flashed a new case file. "Disappearance of a teenager down on Caldwell. I want you on it. Take Nick with you."
"Right…." Warrick and Nick shared a look like two brothers who liked punching each other's buttons. Looking at them and trying to decide if they were colleagues or proverbial younger brothers, he turned a corner and saw Jim Brass standing very proud of himself. He was grinning ear to ear like a young kid.
"We got him."
"McKinnon?" Grissom immediately thought of the fourth possible shooter.
"Ares Marshall." Brass revealed. "The FBI just delivered him for us from Nashville, Tennessee where he was visiting his sister. She practically turned him over to us."
"You mean Marshall Reason." Grissom answered as Brass failed to follow. "I've got a sneaky hunch he's related to J. Peter Reason."
"The philanthropist with the Greek myth fixation." Brass recalled the case with Jason Scott Troy. "You're right on track, his sister is Minerva Reason, a professor of historical antiquities at the University of Tennessee. She talked him into turning himself over to the FBI."
"Well, she was the goddess of wisdom." Grissom played this game out to as far as it seemed to reach.
"She must really love country music then to live in Nashville." Brass mumbled a bit amused at the things people named their children.
"No," Grissom shook his head. "There's a replica of the Parthenon in Nashville. It was her temple." They turned together into the conference room. Marshall Reason, sometimes Ares Marshall, sat at the table accompanied by two FBI agents. Clad in leather, blue jeans and a black t-shirt, he sat with his leather boots disrespectfully perched upon the table and a thick mane of long dark uncombed hair surrounding his unkempt appearance. Grissom looked at him and realized he certainly fit the image of a modernized war god living within the restrains of the twenty-first century no longer adored by followers or worshippers. An irreverent glance from the would-be mercenary followed Grissom and Brass as they took seats and forgot the insinuations of this figure possibly being the same figure who once ordered ancient Greek armies and fought with his brothers for the attention of their father.
"We'll be outside the room." The government agents excused themselves.
"What? No tip?" Reason disrespectfully called to them then shrugged his shoulders.
"Take your feet off the table." Brass spoke next. "This isn't a barn."
"Well, some famous prophets were born in barns." Reason sighed a bit bored and moved his feet before sitting up straight and leaning back in his seat. He reacted bored and with contempt knowing he could leave this place at any minute and they couldn't stop him.
"You're probably wondering why you're here…"
"Well, the thought did cross my mind." Reason answered with a sort of whimsical discarded interest.
"We were able to connect you to murders at the Mason Jar Restraunt on the Interstate." Brass continued. "Now, we know you didn't have a part in the murders, but…" Brass grinned with a chuckle as he scratched his ear. "You fled the scene without getting injury. How did you manage not getting shot?"
"Flak jacket." Reason answered as if he were telling Brass what he wanted to hear. "I've been shot at before." He turned his head to Grissom silently studying him. "Go ahead and ask what you're thinking. You've already guessed the truth about my family, but you don't want to believe it. You still want to think it's impossible, but guess what? You're not the first to figure it out."
"That you're Ares, the god of war." Grissom refused to slip into this game. Obviously the Reason family was incredibly set up like the gods of myth. J. P. Reason was almost the modern incarnation of Zeus posing as a mortal businessman. Apollo was posing as a mortal singer and Athena was a college professor while Helen of Troy was living the life of an actress and model. It all seemed incredibly far-fetched and all too impossible, but he had seen other incredible things. Cult leaders posed as gods in this world, but true immortals concealing their longevities and pasts behind mortal facades? It was a fascinating concept to tinker with, but in the end, he knew he'd find the answer.
"I don't care if you want us to believe you're Jesus Christ himself." Brass added to the would-be war god. "But eleven people are dead in my morgue and someone walked away from the scene. You want to tell us what happened and how you escaped without a scratch."
"It's not against the law to run from children playing with guns." Reason mouthed off. "Have you found Michael McKinnon yet?"
"The fourth shooter?" Grissom asked.
"He never fired a gun." Reason leaned back in his seat. "He never even entered the diner…. Oh crap…" He looked up to window to the hall and recognized the figure in the blue Armani suit in the hall talking to the FBI agents. It was his father, J. Peter Reason, himself. Philanthropist and contributor to the arts, the bearded patriarch was on first name terms with figures in the FBI, the American Government and British and Greek embassies. Part playboy, part financier, the Reason family head pushed into the conference room with the demeanor of an irate father pressed by the activities of his grown children.
"I'm in the middle of a business venture in Cairo with Amun Ra and Nyambe Orishas of Nigeria and I get a message from your sister that you've blown up a diner in Las Vegas; just what goes through your mind?" He resumed a long tirade of arguments with a son who seemed to be at the bane of his existence.
"Don't make me leave with this man." The younger Reason bemoaned. "I'll confess to anything! Just don't make me leave with him!"
"Excuse me," Grissom spoke up to this father-son dispute. "He didn't blow it up. We found no evidence of explosives on the site."
"You want evidence of explosives?" Reason looked down to his son. "Give me a few minutes alone with him."
"If you're up there…." Marshall Reason looked up through the ceiling and proved that even retired Olympian deities believed in a one true God. "Take me now!"
Nick Stokes and Warrick Brown soon found themselves elsewhere. Caldwell was a suburban street east of town with two story homes and swimming pools. It was the kind of neighborhood meant for the almost rich, the type of folks like doctors, lawyers and real estate developers. Nick wore his sunglasses in the car to read the initial report and then looked out to the Danvers house that served as the waiting crime scene. Officer Bruno Hess was on site to take a report from Charlotte Danvers, the mother of missing young man. The absent youth was William Danvers, thirteen years old, and he'd been home sick from school. His mother had just left him alone to go to work and bring home some medicine. Her son had stopped answered the phone after lunchtime and she had hoped he was just asleep, but when she got home and realized he was gone, she became worried. It was so unlike him to leave the house when he was sick.
"Where's your son's room, Mrs. Danvers?" Nick had done the initial breakthrough.
"Upstairs," She answered held back by Officer Hess. Her eyes were filled with tears of worry. Warrick started up first carrying his test case and looked to the room. Posters bikini-clad and leotard-covered women stared down from the blue walls. The desk by the door was relatively undisturbed but for a stack of school textbooks. Light from the window came through a large fish tank. Nick first checked the floor for footsteps and Warrick pulled down the bed sheets of the unmade bed.
"What is that!" Warrick was unprepared for what he found. Nick clicked a few more pictures of patterns in the carpet and looked up to the bed. Across the single bed in the vague shape of a human figure was a strange mucous residue reaching under the sheets. Specks of it were on the blankets and sheets, but most of it was in the head impression on the pillow or in the shape of the body on the mattress.
"Looks as if he blew his nose on the fitted sheet, but…" Nick contorted his face disgustedly. "But that is a lot of mucus even if you are sick from school." He looked over the length of it. "I'd say about five and a half feet long and one and a half feet at its widest point." He started snapping pictures of the crime scene.
"It's as if he melted." Warrick placed some chemicals on the tip of a cotton swab and then took a sample of the residue. If the substance were human, the chemical would turn red from the presence of DNA. He held up his test and watched as the residue produced an orange, not quite red, reaction. Warrick made a face as if he was not prepared for this one.
"I don't think we have a normal disappearance here." He replied.