An Unfair Act of Vengeance
Notes: I was going to wait until Monday to write this, but I really wanted to see how it turns out. Thanks for the reviews, and keep them coming! They really help motivate me to keep updating.
Summary: The team watches helplessly as they watch Nick continue to suffer through Dr. Alberts' viscous attacks. Warrick finds himself unable to watch, and begins to dig through the evidence to ensure they didn't miss anything. As the team goes over the whole case from the beginning he decides it's time that he heads over to the original crime scene once more with Brass.
Nick could hardly stand, and he was quickly losing strength. He watched as his captor went about moving various objects around, and he caught a glimpse of some other objects that he didn't like the looks of…
Dr. Carl Alberts had been keeping a close eye on his watch, and knew it was almost time to continue his little show. It was still amusing to listen to his victim repeatedly mutter that he was sorry. You should be… and you're going to pay for what happened to my friend's family… It is your fault Nick, and vengeance will be mine…
Grissom and Catherine had barely noticed the clock. They hurried back to where Archie was busily trying to track down the signal emitted from the camera, as well as from the phone, but neither attempt had been successful… The two sat down quietly and began to review the first tape of Nick…
Warrick had apologized to Hodges, and when they saw what he had found he was glad they had. Though they couldn't be sure of how it had happed there was a distinct absence of GSR in several areas, and looking at it with the light angled on it showed what appeared to be a map. There were only two distinct locations, one was Grissom's house, and the other was an unknown address that was between twenty to thirty miles away.
"Thank you Hodges…" Sara finally cracked a real smile, "You just gave us a search area…"
"Let's go, and see if there are any buildings out there that might match the basic description of the place where this guy is keeping Nick…"
"Hey you guys!" Greg called at them from down the hallway, "Catherine just called, the feed is restarting, and they want us there now!"
All three ran down the hallway to where the others were waiting for them. Their eyes quickly scanned the screen, and none of them liked the sound of the words…
'I'm sorry, I'm sorry' I can hardly believe that that is all your friend has been saying since our talk Grissom… You've really done a number on him haven't you? Of course, you've all done a number on him. But, then again, he has let you down; I mean you saw how hard he was crying before I even cut his hands. He needed to learn to let go, and now he can't hold onto anything… And, since your answers were pathetic I figured I'd give Nick the chance to sink to an even lower level. He is truly pathetic, and I'm sure that with you and your team's incapability of feeling what you're about to see shouldn't be too hard to sit through…
You can only watch…
As soon as Archie hit the button their eyes focused on Nick's new situation… They could see his hands clutching his shirt as he tried to slow the flow of blood. His legs were shaking, and they could see he was still terrified, and that his skin was much paler than it had been before. Grissom moved closer to the screen. He could still detect athe guilt within Nick's eyes, but that wasn't what had really caught his attention.
"I'm s-so sorry… so sorry… I let them down…"
It was barely a whisper, but Grissom could hear it… He watched the Texan's lips move slowly along with the words, and instinctively reached to turn up the volume on the computers. Nick's whispering suddenly filled the entire room, and the team immediately reacted to this subtle change.
"So, he's decided to add some noise to the mix…" Catherine whispered mostly to herself.
They watched the man still dressed in all black reach out to grab the end of the rope he had used to make Nick nod his head. But without the man's limbs tied down his entire body was hoisted into the air.
Nick's hands went straight for the rope around his neck, but the cuts on his palms prevented his hands from being any use. His legs flailed frantically for support, but there was nothing beneath him but air… His vision began to fade when he suddenly felt himself tumble down to the ground.
Catherine looked away as their friend fell to the ground, trying desperately to breathe through the intense pain when he had subconsciously used his palms to break his fall. He was only down for a few moments before he was once more hoisted into the air…
Once more Nick fell to the ground and felt his palms searing with pain as they hit the hard floor. Blood from his hands now covered his shirt as well as the rope and his neck as he tried vainly to remove the noose from around his neck. He found it impossible to even cry out in agony as he felt even more pain enter through his neck as the ropes dug into his flesh progressively deeper as he was hoisted up and then dropped repeatedly…
Warrick quickly left the room. It wasn't right, and he knew that he couldn't bear to see any more… The whole situation still seemed so unreal, but he could still do something. He quickly grabbed a map, and drew their search radius based on the 'map' from Alberts apartment. It wasn't very helpful, and it would take months to actually search the possible areas, and who knew what the second location was even supposed to be… Nick could still be anywhere…
Grissom never took his eyes off the young man as he dangled helplessly from the noose once more. After at least a few dozen times of this the man once more appeared on screen and removed the noose from Nick's neck.
Nick flinched as the gloves moved around his neck. He could hardly breathe, and he tried to keep his breaths shallow tominimize the movement of his throat. He tried to pull back as the leather clad hand wiped away some of his tears.
"Just like I thought, a weakling. You were never good enough were you 'Pancho'? Oh yes, I know all about what your father called you; what he still calls you. I also happen to know that your supervisor called you it once not too long ago… but you failed him Nick. He couldn't even talk to you… he couldn't stand the thought of how easily you succumbed to a little pain… They're all ashamed of you. You let them all down…"
Their eyes slowly widened as they listened to the man's taunting… Nick once more tried to cower away, but he was roughly dragged back up to face the creep who had done this to him…
Sara couldn't make herself move. She wasn't sure how she managed to fight off the tears, but she was too concentrated on the screen as the man firmly grabbed Nick's jaw.
Nick winced from the pain as the man's gloved fingers dug into his face and dragged him over towards the camera. His throat was still too sore to allow him to cry out, but he managed to release a slight whimper, which apparently made the man rather happy…
"I-I'm s-s-sorry… s-s-so s-s-sorry…" Nick began to whisper it quietly again, but to his supervisor it sounded as if he were screaming. This wasn't good, and he highly doubted Nick was still in his right mind… Who could be after all that? Who wouldn't lose their mind?
Then the camera swung swiftly to face another wall in the room, and they could see a single table with metal bands sticking out of it. They watched as Dr. Alberts once more appeared on the screen, and Nick groaned in misery as he once more hit the ground. And, though they could no longer hear him, Grissom read the man's lips as he continued to beg for forgiveness…
His eyes began to grow wider as he saw Dr. Alberts begin to lift the metal bands and he instantly realized that they were restraints… A moment later they watched as Nick was roughly pulled into a standing position before a punch to the jaw made him fall back onto the table…
Greg couldn't take his eyes off the dark ligature marks around his friend's neck. He suddenly wished that he was there with Nick, wishing that he could somehow comfort his friend, but he couldn't really see how… He watched with the others helplessly as the restraints began to snap shut over Nick's legs, arms, chest, and finally his neck…
Nick could only see the distant rafters of the building. His eyes began to tear up once more, and once his body was completely fastened to the table he could begin to see the outlines of Plexiglas enter his vision. He began to sob loudly, and knew the only place he wanted to be at the moment was in the safe confinement of his home, reading or watching some show about birds, or to be out in the park running. He needed to get out… it's over… there's only one way out of this now… so I may as well just ask for it…
Dr. Alberts stopped for a moment, suddenly unsure of himself… He could've sworn he'd misheard the man lying on the table. He looked back at the Texan, and almost went back to his next task when the man managed to say it once more…
"P-p-please… j-just e-e-end it n-n-now…"
Grissom's mouth opened wide as he heard it himself… Don't Nicky… don't tempt him, please… we'll get you out of there!
"Ah, I thought that's what you said." Dr. Alberts smiled menacingly at the clearly broken CSI. "But, you have way too much to pay for, for me to just kill you now…"
Nick shrank back. Something in the back of his mind had told him to say it, but he wasn't sure why…
Grissom watched on, as the situation grew even worse. The man had just grabbed a pair of shears and a heavy metal vice grip… Then it hit him when he realized what Nick had just done. The man didn't want Nick to die… at least not yet, and he was going to make sure that Nick stayed alive so that Grissom and the team would see their friend suffer through all the schemes that he had cooked up. Grissom would still obey any demands if he could, but he knew he could get the other man to be more lenient now… You're doing good Nick… Just don't make this any worse for yourself…
His thoughts were soon cut off when he saw Dr. Alberts position Nick's wrist in the vice. It didn't take much imagination to predict what was about to happen, and he could only watch, helplessly as the metal grip began to tighten.
Nick had already been having trouble breathing, but the metal restraint around his neck was too much. Without any notice he felt a tremendous amount of pressure pushing in on opposite sides of his wrist. From his current position he could just catch brief glimpses of some big metal object around his wrist and the man happily turning a handle. He didn't know how he did it with the severe pain in his throat, but he could hear his scream echo loudly through the room as he felt the bones in his wrist break in several places…
She had been waiting for it, but nothing could've prepared Catherine for the scream that emitted from their friend's mouth. She had cringed as soon as she heard numerous crunching sounds, and they all knew, without a doubt, that the Texan's wrist had to be shattered in at least several places… Her eyes focused in on Nick's face and the look of sheer anguish as his scream faded into sobs…
The screen went black without any warning, and Catherine immediately looked around the room to make sure no one had simply turned it off. She sighed… once more Nick was on his own… she stood up; not entirely sure of what to do.
"Hey, guys, I-I've set up everything we've got so far in the layout room… I'm not sure if it'll help, but it could get us somewhere…"
They had hardly noticed him leave before, but when they walked into the layout room they were almost glad.
"Ok, Warrick, you set this up, so you can do the walkthrough…" Grissom noted solemnly.
"Ok, we start over here, with the first victim, a patient of Dr. Alberts. Now he reportedly never left the institution in Phoenix, so we know that we can't trust any employees there. Now he was tortured, but didn't have any broken bones. This suggests that somewhere along the line Alberts discovered how much pain a broken bone can cause. We also know that the poison is Pyridine, which causes trouble breathing, nausea, vomiting, etc. Since Nick showed all these symptoms, it's reasonable to presume that he was injected with it as well. Then, my bet is that this guy found a way into Nick's attic, and pulled a stunt similar to that of Nigel Crane. Based on the "Crime Stopper" articles I made some calls, and it turns out that he has actually filled in for three therapy sessionswith Crane…"
"So, wait, when did these sessions take place?" Sara interjected.
"All took place, about four months after Gordon abducted Nick… Now this tells us a bit more; it tells us that he has been setting this up at least since Gordon died. So, we have a time frame of almost seven months where he has been going over essentially every little detail he could. Now, he must've had some way of knowing that Nick would be processing that crime scene, and based on the fact that he knew about the service area under that counter in the morgue tells me that he had at least one henchman doing his scouting. Grissom, why were you late to the crime scene?"
"Some repairman asked me if I could direct him to the morgue…" Grissom suddenly realized what had happened as he spoke, "and when he didn't understand my directions he had me take him there, because he was one of Alberts' henchmen…"
"I guessed as much, so he made sure that it'd only be Nick. I'd say that his henchman called him as everyone left, and that when you and Nick were the only two left he called the body in. Then, Officer Dayton doesn't tell us much, except that he was simply in the way. While Alberts killed him Nick was turned around, and as he stood up it was too late to stop the knife from entering the upper area of his gut. Which makes it easy enough to explain why, with all the confusion that Grissom thought it was his chest… Alberts obviously knows a lot about the structures in the human body, because the stab wound itself wasn't fatal, but I doubt he took into affect what someone going into shock can do to increase the damage of a wound. Then, we processed. Footprints were all impossible to recover, and there were no fingerprints on anything in the room."
"Yeah, but how is this supposed to help find Nick?" Greg interjected.
"If we do a complete overview, Greg, then we can be sure we didn't miss anything, and if we find something that we've missed it could help us find Nick." Catherineanswered as her eyes scanned the numerous pictures laid out carefully on the table.
"I still say we missed something back there, so I've already called Brass, and he said he'd meet me there. I'll let you guys finish up in here… ok?"
"Sure thing Warrick." Grissom nodded slowly.
He could easily feel his strength deteriorate even more, and could only whisper "I'm sorry…" between his sobs and whimpering… You guys have to find me… I can't take any more of this…
The time was drawing nearer, and he sighed unhappily as he thought about it… he wanted so desperately to make this last longer, but he couldn't. Nevertheless, he was going to make this completely worthwhile…
Sara shook her head slowly as Catherine finished the walkthrough. Nothing jumped out at them. There was nothing there, except maybe something from the first crime scene.
"I still don't get it Grissom, why does this guy want Nick to suffer so much?"
"Nick works with the people who put Kelly Gordon in prison… and Walter Gordon died needlessly because we found Nick anyway. This is merely an act of revenge for him…"
"It's not right, not fair… Nick shouldn't have to be dealing with this along with everything else…"
"This is as unfair as it gets, Sara." Greg mumbled softly.
"Yeah, a damned 'unfair act of vengeance'…" Catherine replied coldly… she had immediately taken to Nick and Warrick… they were her closest friends now, and it infuriated her when someone hurt them…
"Maybe there is something about the building that we can use to help locate him. I mean Warrick found our search area on the map. It's big, and there are plenty of homes, shops and whatever on there, not to mention uncharted buildings…" Grissom offered.
"Well, we know that it is fairly big, but we can't determine size of the whole building. We can assume that it has an open ceiling with some type of rafters or support beams that he managed to set up that noose with…" Greg immediately stopped, and had to fight off the images of Nick being so easily pulled into the air… No, now isn't the time… I'm not going to let you down Nick…
Warrick followed Brass into the building, and the two quietly walked up to the room still taped off… Brass quickly opened the door and the two froze.
The supervisor's phone went off, and he didn't bother trying to mask his concern when he say it was Archie.
"Grissom here."
"Hey, you guys better get up here quick, there's another message…"
"We're on our way." Grissom replied as he quickly turned his cell phone off, and waved for the others to follow him.
"Where are we going Gil?" Catherine called out as they ran to keep up.
"That was Archie… there's another message!"
They didn't waste any time as they raced for the room. And from the look on Archie's face they weren't going to be very happy about the message…
To Be Continued…
Next Chapter: Nick can barely understand what's happening to him anymore, and he can't get over the feelings of guilt as his abductor makes the situation even worse. Warrick and Brass can hardly believe what's been done to the first crime scene, and the rest of the team begins to discover more hidden clues within the tapes they've recorded from the video feed…