Chapter Twenty-Two Three/Time, part two
For the third time in three days, a car from the Las Vegas Crime Lab was on its way to the Las Vegas Courthouse. Tired of driving, Warrick sat in the passenger seat of Nick's car, sweating profusely and grumbling under his breath about the phone call they had just placed. Three times, the three passengers had tried getting in contact with the officers they needed to interview again, but each of the three times, a reporter had picked up the phone in the hopes of tapping into breaking information. And as they approached the three story-high building, they saw the media situation was even worse ever since the slip that it might have been a suicide. They, meaning Warrick, Nick, and Greg, now knew that the slip wasn't accurate, but none of the people standing in the entrance hall with cameras, microphones, and notepads knew that. And so they swarmed when the door opened.
"Mr. Stokes, tell us, why do you think it was a suicide? Did he show any signs of wanting to kill himself?"
"Mr. Brown! Mr. Brown! Was the victim depressed? How exactly did he get a gun without the officers noticing?"
"Hey, kid with the blonde hair! Was a cop involved somehow?"
"Did they let the brother go?"
"What's your evidence?"
"Is there a conspiracy theory?"
"Is it over?"
They tried to ignore the people screaming over others, asking questions they didn't have answers to, some they didn't even know what they meant. But as they kept their silence and walked casually over to the officers who were doing a much worse job than yesterday at calming the media, like a hunting pack, the reporters cornered the three CSIs.
"Why aren't you answering our questions?"
"Is there something you're not telling us?"
"Why are there only two CSIs working on such an important case?"
"Shutup!" Nick finally called, pushing his way in between two men who were practically shoving microphones up his nose. Warrick followed closely behind him, and Greg brought up the rear.
"Three CSIs," he added. "Not two."
"There he is!" Warrick called, spotting Officer Bradshaw among the guards they had passed before. He fought his way through the crowd towards the large man, and approached him lightly. "We've been looking for you."
"Looking for me?" asked Bradshaw, slightly nervous-sounding. He took a hand and wiped sweat away from his forehead. "I told you all I know, all I did. That's all."
"I think you left a little something out," Nick interrogated. "Something...important."
Greg stood behind them and nodded along, glancing over the other guards that were conversing with each other, occasionally pushing a reporter back into the swarm. But there was something missing. No. Someone missing.
"Where's Officer Wolfe?" Greg blurted out in the middle of Nick's sentence.
"Wolfie?" Bradshaw said. "He called in sick. Poor kid. I wonder if he got green cos of all the blood on his new cop shirt."
"Yeah, whatever," said Nick. "The thing is that you said you were out when you heard the gunshot. Where exactly did you go?"
But Greg wasn't paying attention to the answer. Instead moved away from the other two, walking to the back of the room to where there was a room labeled "LOCKER ROOM." A warning sign sat under it: Authorized Personnel Only. Ignoring the sign, Greg turned the doorknob, pushed forward, and entered the cops' locker room.
He looked around but found no one was there except for him. Why hadn't they checked here before? He took a sidelong glance at the rows of lockers, set alphabetically, and walked towards them cautiously. Curiosity got the better of him when he saw the one labeled "Bradshaw." He gave the handle a tug and discovered that it had been left unlocked. He smiled.
There was a shelf on top that had on it a prescription bottle for Lunesta and various papers, and hanging by a rod that went across the middle was a spare uniform, size large, and a bagged lunch. On the inside of the door were photographs of a woman with rosy cheeks and long red hair, smiling broadly. One of them included a small boy with blonde hair and chubby cheeks and the officer himself: Bradshaw's wife and son. Greg gave the whole locker another lookover, but found nothing else. He closed the door slowly.
A creak went off somewhere. He turned sharply, but still didn't see anyone. Deciding it must have been the locker door, Greg moved on through the locker rows, until he saw a newly re-labeled one that said "Wolfe." But he didn't need to pull on it to know he wouldn't be able to get it open. A large 3-number combination lock was enclosed on the door. However, he didn't give up. Greg sat on the bench near the locker, thinking hard. He knew there was an old college trick for those people who couldn't remember their combinations, and even people who could remember the numbers would do it just in case. After five minutes or so, it hit him, and he looked down towards the bottom of the door. And sure enough, there was a small piece of paper sticking out from the bottom of the locker. Greg pulled out the slip and saw three numbers printed on it: 3, 17, 32. He turned the lock to those numbers and tugged, opening the lock. He pulled it off and opened the door, looking over its contents. On the top shelf was a bagged lunch and three bottles of water along with a book entitled The Pancake Murders. Greg smiled to himself as he had been reading the same book. There was nothing hung on the hook and on the bottom was a duffel bag. He leaned down and opened it, but found nothing inside but cartridges for a gun. It struck him as odd that someone would have a practically empty duffel bag in their locker, as there wasn't even a gun in there. He shrugged and turned to the inside of the door. His jaw dropped.
Wolfe also had pictures in his locker. But in every single one of them were two people that Greg recognized. A young man with neat, brown hair and a cut on his cheek, smiling next to Wolfe with his arm around his shoulder, and on the other side a blonde young man with glasses and a slightly sinister smile. Greg shook his head slightly in disbelief. But he knew who they were, and it couldn't possibly be anyone else. The Mason brothers. Greg took the picture that stood above Wolfe's degree in Forensics, and looked at it closely. This was just too weird.
"Hey," said a voice behind him. Greg, turned, holding the picture up, expecting to see Nick standing behind him, but it wasn't Nick. Instead, Greg found himself staring into the barrel of a standard cop gun. The hands clasped around that gun and the face behind it belonged to Larson Wolfe. Greg put his hands up.
"Get out of my locker," he said.
"Sorry," said Greg. "I'm with the investigation, I was just looking around, and-"
"You've seen too much," Wolfe said and he cocked the gun. Greg breathed hard. All three people in the picture he was holding had now held a gun in his face. He wondered if the third one would finally be the one to kill him. "I can't let you out of here. And to think, you almost believed that he killed himself. Well...I'm gonna make sure you still think that. The media doesn't need to know what really happened. We'll just give them a story that sounds plausible and they'll be happy."
Greg gaped. "It was you!" he cried. "You killed David. And you framed Roger!"
"Well...yes," said Wolfe. "Opportunity knocked. I answered. Is that a crime?"
"Opportunity?" Greg said. "He was your friend! They were both your friends!"
"Friends?" he asked rhetorically, his voice raised. "Friends would have helped me out. You know how I got this job? Sympathy. I was supposed to be a great scientist like them. You know? The brains behind the badges. But no. They went and left me and I got this job guarding criminals at midnight. But..I've said too much already. And to think you could have ended up like them. It's too late, though. Goodbye."
"I don't think so," said a voice from the doorway. Nick stood there, his gun raised, as ready to fire as Wolfe's. He grinned. "Hey, I get to be part of the action this time!" His smile faded as he got serious and Wolfe turned towards him.
"I will shoot him," said Wolfe.
"And I will shoot you," Nick retorted.
"Of course you will," Wolfe taunted. "You're going to shoot a cop. And I'm going to shoot a Junior CSI."
"Not without any bullets you won't," Greg said.
"I have bullets," Wolfe said, gripping tight to his weapon. "Care to test it?"
"I don't know whose gun you've got," Greg noted, "because we have yours. But you have all the cartridges in your locker. A standard gun comes with 5. There are 5 in there. Meaning that there are none in your weapon."
"Who says this is the same weapon?" said Wolfe, but he seemed unsure.
"Put down the weapon," said Nick, advancing on them. "Just do it."
Wolfe had no choice. He lowered the gun as Greg breathed a sigh of relief. Tom came into the locker room, clutching a pair of handcuffs, and pulled Wolfe's hands behind his back, reciting his Miranda rights. Nick hurried over to Greg.
"Greg, you alright?" he asked.
"I'm fine," Greg said. "I think I'm getting used to it."
Nick smiled. "That's good, I guess."
Greg smiled back. "You know what this means?" he asked. "Us catching David Mason's murderer."
Nick nodded. "We drop that charge on Roger."