Walking purposefully through the Crime lab, Gil Grissom stopped at the door to the break room, relieved to find the person he'd been searching for. "PD just called. We got a bad one. Nick and Warrick are meeting us there."
Catherine looked at her watch and then at Grissom. With an exaggerated sigh, she said, "Two more hours and this would be day shift's case."
"Crime waits for no one," Grissom said with an unapologetic shrug.
Jim Brass's House, HendersonGasping for breath, his heart pounding, Brass blindly thrashed at the darkness, trying to fend off an unseen menace until the pain in his shoulder jerked him back to reality.
With the accusing voices still echoing in his head, the graphic visions still fresh in his mind, he told himself it was a nightmare, nothing more. There were no flames engulfing the room, no carpet of human corpses staring up at him with their clouded, gray eyes, nothing pinning him to the ground and stealing away his breath. Nancy, Mike O'Toole and Nathan Witten, the unlucky passenger in a stolen car, were gone now leaving him alone in a dark, empty and deathly quiet room.
Closing his eyes, he tried to steady his breathing, tried to push away the pain and the last remnants of the dream. He'd long since kicked off the covers and even now, sitting on the edge of the mattress, he could feel the sweat beading on his temples, dripping down the middle of his back. Dragging a hand across his stubbled chin, he cursed. The last thing he needed was the air conditioner on the fritz.
Pulling himself painfully from the bed, pausing as a wave of vertigo threatened to sit him back down again, he waited for the dizziness and nausea to pass then slowly shuffled down the long hallway, his right hand on the wall for support. With each step he became more aware of the blood pulsing in his ears, of the persistent shaking in his hands and legs, of the aching throb in his back and shoulder, but mostly, he became aware of his inability to focus. Blinking several times, he tried to clear away the blurriness but the more he did that, the worse his vision got.
He managed to make it to the living room without hitting anything but now his head was swimming. He knew he needed to sit before he fell because falling down was going to make the hurt so much worse.
Reaching the sofa, he sat down hard, ignoring the pain in his back, then leaned his head against the cushions and closed his eyes. He just needed a minute to rest then he'd check the A/C and everything would be all right.
Crime Scene, West Las Vegas
Catherine glanced at her watch for the third time in less than thirty minutes. Already she was in her second hour of overtime and glancing around the blood-splattered room, her chances of finishing up soon weren't looking good.
It was nearing 10am and she really needed to check on Brass. When she'd gone by his house before her shift the previous night, he had stirred just long enough to mumble something incoherent and to take his meds but she'd immediately felt the heat off his body and that's what worried her now. She'd tried to check the bandage on his back but with Jim so out of it, she hadn't been able to get a good look at the wound. Twelve hours was a long time. What if he'd developed another infection?
She thought about calling Sara, the only member of the nightshift not working this particular case, and asking her to check on Jim but Catherine had the key to his house. Even if Sara did agree, the logistics were off. It would take Sara an hour or more to get to the scene to pick up the key and by that time, Catherine hoped to be done.
"Catherine," Grissom came up behind her. "Aren't you supposed to be checking on Jim?"
She stared at him incredulously. "Yeah, but there's this little thing called a crime scene."
"We can finish up here. Hand whatever you have left off to Warrick and go."
"Um, sure." Still not quite believing what Grissom was saying, she figured she'd get the hell out of there before he changed his mind.
Jim Brass's House, HendersonThe fog in his head lifted long enough to make Brass realize someone was knocking at his front door. He knew he needed to answer it but he couldn't seem to make his arms and legs work. It reminded him of another time, another vague, clouded memory when he couldn't move and for a moment, he felt a suffocating rush of anxiety. The pain in his back shot down his spine, causing his whole body to arch. He'd taken all the pills; why wasn't the pain subsiding?
God, it was so damn hot! Nancy should have turned the A/C on by now. He wanted to turn it on in late May, when the humidity started to kick in, but she always wanted to wait until June. Save a few bucks here and there but he didn't see the point if they were miserable.Ellie would be home from school soon. He couldn't let her see him like this. She always got upset when he wasn't feeling very well—like that time he had the flu and she cried for two days because she thought he was going to die. Maybe that's what this was: a bad bout of the flu. He'd just close his eyes and rest.
The knocking persisted only now it was more like pounding. Or maybe it was just inside his head. Yeah, that was it. Someone was pounding inside his head, trying to get out. If they'd just ask, he'd let them out but he'd need a knife: a sharp knife to cut out a hole for the pounding.
He pushed himself off the sofa and stood unsteadily for a full minute before taking two wobbly steps forward. The room took a sudden tilt to the left and seconds later, the lights went out.
oooooo
Sara stood on Jim's porch, waiting. She had been knocking on his front door for a good five minutes but to no avail. She knew she should have called first but she had made a last minute decision to stop by and didn't have his number handy.
Painkillers could have knocked Brass out but when Sara heard the loud crash on the other side of the locked door, her concern grew.
"Brass!" she shouted, pounding her fist on the door. Looking around the neatly attended shrubs, she found nothing that might hide a key. Then again, she didn't really expect to find anything. He was a cop after all.
Walking around to the back of the house, she tried the sliding glass door, not surprised to find it locked and the blinds drawn tightly. Pulling out her cell phone, she started to dial when the rumble of a truck engine in the driveway caught her attention. Curious, she walked back around to the front, relieved to see the familiar Denali.
"Sara, what are you doing here?" Catherine was already out of the vehicle and shutting the door.
"I came by to see Jim but he's not answering. I heard a crash inside a couple of minutes ago…"
Catherine heard nothing after the word crash. Pulling out her key and slipping it into the lock, she didn't bother to knock as she let herself inside.
Sara followed Catherine into the house, her heart pounding in her chest, her cell phone still open in her hand.
"Jim?" Catherine called out as she cautiously walked through the kitchen and into the living room. Her eyes went quickly to the shattered glass cabinet door and Brass lying face down on the floor, blood covering the side of his head.
Hurrying into the room, she shouted at Sara over her shoulder, "call an ambulance!" then dropped to her knees by his side and quickly pressed her fingers against his neck, relieved to find a slow but steady pulse. "He's alive."
Sara stood frozen in place, not hearing anything Catherine said, only seeing the blood. All that blood, just like it had been before: Brass not moving, slowly bleeding to death. She felt so helpless and responsible then just as she did now. But there was one thing she could do. Dialing 9-1-1, she put in the call for an ambulance then without a word, she turned away from Jim, from Catherine, from the memories, and left the house, calmly walking down the driveway to her own car parked by the curb.
Catherine heard the call and turned in time to see Sara disappear through the front door. She gave a brief thought to going after the younger woman but just then Jim let out a long, sustained groan.
"Jesus, Jim, you scared the shit out of me," Catherine said, grateful she had gotten to his house when she did. She'd feel guilty later, when she knew he was okay.
He made a weak attempt to move but it didn't take much effort from Catherine to get him to stay put. Gently turning his head to get a better look at the swollen cut on the side of his head, she was relieved to find that it looked much more superficial than she had originally thought. Head wounds always did bleed a lot and this one was a gusher. The real cause for concern was his left shoulder. It had been nine days since the explosion, not nearly enough time for wounds to heal or broken bones to mend. It was easy to imagine the damage that falling could do. Recreating the scene in her mind, she guessed he came into the living room, tripped or lost his balance, and hit the tempered glass door to the TV cabinet with his head as he fell.
Looking around for something to staunch the bleeding, she started to get up only to feel his hand nudge her leg.
"Don't leave."
"Your head's bleeding so I'm just going to get a towel. I'll be right back, okay?"
He nodded.
Catherine returned quickly with a clean, damp towel and gently pressed it against the side of his head.
"Ellie's not home yet, is she? Can you turn the A/C on? It's hot in here."
Alarmed by his questions, Catherine put her hand to his forehead. "You're burning up."
"Huh?"
"Jim, do you know where you are?"
He mumbled something that sounded like Newark and closed his eyes.
She could hear the sound of the siren growing closer. Thankfully, Sara had left the front door standing wide open. "The ambulance is on the way," she said, just in case he could understand her.
"Ambulance? I didn't mean to shoot him." Brass began to ramble, his voice shaking with emotion or pain, she couldn't be sure. "He was in the car. I didn't mean to shoot him."
Putting her hand on his back, feeling the damp heat radiating off his skin, she said, "I know." She remembered hearing about the incident he had to be referring to, when he'd shot a passenger in a felony pursuit. Brass never talked about it but something like that had been fodder for station gossip for quite some time. Apparently, it was a burden he'd kept buried—until now.
Running her hand over the back of his head, feeling the dampness in his hair, on his neck, she tried to keep him calm, relieved to hear the roar of the truck as it pulled into the driveway.
"I'm not a failure. I'm not. I just did the best I could," he said, his gaze fixed on Catherine's but not really seeing her, his voice cracking. "I know she's not mine but I did the best I could."
Jim was out of his head; he didn't know what he was saying and Catherine was quite certain he was confusing her with his ex-wife, Nancy. Still, she couldn't help but feel a little guilty, not only about what she had heard but the questions that ran through her mind.
She's not mine.
Did he mean Ellie? Was it possible she wasn't really his daughter? He'd alluded to the fact that his wife had cheated on him more than once. Could Ellie be the product of one of those affairs? Or was Ellie's paternity merely something that Brass suspected?
Whatever the answer, it wasn't her concern. Catherine had simply heard the delirious ramblings of a fevered man. He didn't know what he was saying and Catherine certainly wasn't going to question him about it later. But it did make her wonder.
Outside she could hear the paramedics unloading their equipment. "Over here!" she called as they appeared in the doorway.
xx
To be continued in chapter 10