"He's extremely lucky we got him here in time," said a grim-faced doctor (the same grim-faced doctor who had attended to Archie), reviewing his notes. "He lost a great deal of blood, two ribs were broken, and his left lung was punctured."
Nick was lying in a hospital bed, utterly unconscious. He had an IV hooked up, was encased in bandage, and was looking extremely battered up. An ECG kept a careful vigil over his heart rate.
"Will he be alright?" asked Catherine. She, Grissom (with a tourniquet wrapped round his wound), Warrick, and Sara had all shoed up at the hospital to see how he was doing.
"He'll live, yes," said the doctor, looking up at them with his dark and bloodshot eyes. "Had he arrived any later...he wouldn't have."
Catherine, Warrick, and Sara exchanged a significant look. Grissom did not make eye contact with any of them. He was deep in thought, and the doctor's words were only barely getting through to his brain.
"Any idea when – " began Sara.
" – he'll be back at work?" finished the doctor. "At this rate, it's difficult to tell. He's in a very unstable condition."
"Attention: visiting hours are now over," a monotonous female voice droned over the PA system. "Visiting hours are not over," it repeated.
"There's the door," said the doctor (rather bluntly, Sara thought). "You may come back and see your friend tomorrow, if he has stabilized by then."
"Thanks for the good news, Dr Doom," said Warrick sardonically under his breath as the four of them exited the room.
"Nick doesn't seem to get any breaks, does he?" said Sara, as the four of them left the room and entered the long, sterile, white hallway. "First a stalker."
"Then a box underground," said Warrick, a darkness clouding his brown eyes.
"And now this," finished Catherine. She looked into Warrick's eyes. There was a significantly serious look in them. Of course, they were all looking serious; Nick was in critical condition. But Catherine could sense that it was something more than that. "Warrick...you alright?" asked Catherine.
"I'm just thinking," replied Warrick. "All this stuff happens to Nick, and he really doesn't deserve it. Now I feel bad that I got off so easy when this guy attacked me, and Nick..." He trailed off. He didn't have to finish.
"This wasn't your fault," said Catherine.
"If I had been at that house, with Nick – "
"You couldn't," Sara interrupted. "You were here."
"You didn't do anything wrong," said Catherine. She was waiting for some words of encouragement from Grissom, but they didn't come. She looked over at where he was standing.
But the thing was, he wasn't standing there. Catherine looked around for a moment, then caught sight of him walking away from the three of them, down the hallway.
"Hang on, you guys," said Catherine, and chased after him. "Grissom!" she said, but he did not turn around. Eventually she caught up to him, bolted in front of him, and brought him to a halt.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"For a walk," replied Grissom, his voice empty of emotion.
"What's the matter, Gil?" said Catherine. "Warrick's on the verge of a nervous breakdown back there. We need you."
"Catherine, just leave me," said Grissom.
"What is your problem?"
"You want to know what my problem is?" he snapped suddenly, making a few nurses nearby flinch. "Fine. It was my idea to go to that house. Now, because of that, an officer and an innocent man are dead, and Nick's in critical condition. Along with that, Warrick's been attacked, Archie's in a room just down that hallway, Greg is missing, we have no way of finding him, and no idea who the hell is doing all this. Now look me in the eye and tell me that I have no reason to have a problem with that!"
"Gil – "
"Catherine, please, I just want to think."
"Look, Gil, you can't just take off like this. Your team needs you. I need you. And Nick, Archie, and Greg need you more than anyone."
Grissom refused to make eye contact with Catherine.
"Come on," continued Catherine. "We need to do something. We have to figure out what the pattern is, figure out who's doing this, and stop him. Sulking outside, stewing in the guilt that shouldn't be yours isn't going to help."
Grissom's eyes finally met Catherine's. They were hard and insistent, but there was pleading there as well...something that was scarcely ever seen in Catherine. "We need a leader," she said.
They needed a leader. But was Grissom capable of being one anymore? Wouldn't Catherine make a much better leader than him?
"Please."
Grissom took a deep breath and said, "Okay. Let's find this bastard."
He turned and strode back to where Warrick and Sara stood, Catherine moving along in his wake. "Here's the plan," said Grissom. "Someone has to go back to that crime scene. We need all the evidence we can get."
"I'm gone," said Sara, and without so much as another word hurried away down the hallway.
"Take an officer with you," Grissom called after her. Without turning around, she gave him a thumbs-up: she understood.
"Someone needs to stay here with Nick," Grissom continued. "If he wakes up, they can talk to him about what happened. Maybe we can gets some more information from him."
"I'll do that," said Warrick. "If they've got a problem with that, tough." With that, he reentered Nick's room, an air of determination about him.
"What about me?" asked Catherine. The expression on her face was something close to awe; Grissom had pulled himself together and organized them all so fast.
Grissom looked at her and said, "We're going back to the lab and figuring this guy out."
---
"Four victims," said Grissom, walking up to the white board in his office. He uncapped a marker and began to write their names down. "Archie Johnson, Greg Sanders, Warrick Brown, and Nick Stokes."
He wrote their names in order, and a line connecting each consecutive name.
"He also bypassed Mia in favour of Warrick." As he said this, he drew a diagonal line coming off the one that connected Greg and Warrick and wrote 'Mia Dickerson' at the end of it.
"That shows he doesn't kill at random," said Catherine, standing next to Grissom. "He's got his victims planned out."
"Probably in a specific order," reasoned Grissom. "He knew where to wait for each victim in turn."
"So what's the pattern?" said Catherine. It was more of an out loud thought than a question.
Grissom wrote the word 'Pattern?' below the chart he had just drawn.
"Once we figure that out, we can figure out who's next," added Grissom.
The two CSIs stood back and looked intently at the board, trying to make some sense of it all. Archie, Greg, Warrick, Nick. There had to be some sort of reason they had been attacked in that order...
"Age, maybe?" suggested Catherine. "Youngest to oldest?"
"It's possible," said Grissom, furrowing the brow. "I'll check."
He slid into the chair at his desk. He quickly logged on to his computer and pulled up the CSIs' files. He opened up 'Johnson, Archibald', 'Sanders, Gregory', 'Brown, Warrick', and 'Stokes, Nicholas'.
"Archie, 1973. Greg, 1975. Warrick, 1966. And Nick, 1967," said Grissom grimly. The theory didn't check out. "Greg's youngest, followed by Archie, then Nick, then Warrick."
"Well, that blew my theory all to hell," said Catherine. "Now where are we?"
But Grissom wasn't about to be so negative; he'd just come up with another theory. "Closer," he said, and resumed his work on the computer.
Catherine didn't even bother to ask. If Grissom was concentrating, it was no good speaking to him about it until he was finished. So she decided to hang about and wait for him to finish.
When a wry, triumphant smile spread across Grissom's face, Catherine knew that he had not only finished, but also hit on something.
"Well?" asked Catherine, for Grissom had been grinning at his computer screen for a good while now, not saying anything.
"You put me on to this," said Grissom. "With the dates. Archie was just made a CSI Level Three this year. Greg was last year. Warrick was last before Greg, and Nick was before Warrick."
"So he's attacking people depending on how long they've been a CSI?" said Catherine. "Shortest time to longest time."
"Right," said Grissom.
"But why? What reason does he have for going in that order?"
Grissom hadn't figured this one out just yet. "I don't know," he admitted. "But that's not the point at hand. Right now, we've got to figure out who's next."
"Who was the last person on our team made a CSI before Nick?" asked Catherine. But she figured it out for herself in a moment, and Grissom seemed to as well.
Together, in the same grim, dark voice, they said, "Sara."
---
Sara crouched down next to the large blood pool where Nick had fallen. She placed a yellow plastic marker with a black '1' on it in the pool and snapped three pictures.
But as far as she could see, there was no other evidence. This guy knew how to leave a squeaky-clean crime scene. Sara had just gotten her hopes up, too...maybe this one would have something, I something /I to nail this guy.
But there was nothing.
"Alright, Sara?" came Detective Vartann's voice. He stood a short distance away in the kitchen door, keeping a close eye on the CSI.
"All good," answered Sara, not looking up.
Suddenly Sara started. Laying, discarded, in the grass was a hitherto unnoticed, black leather glove. She could get fingerprints from it...then again, if his DNA wasn't on file, his prints probably wouldn't be. What was the harm in trying, though?
She put a marker next to the glove and photographed it. There was a clumping noise behind her as Vartann fidgeted. She then carefully raised it off the ground and turned it inside out. She removed her print powder and brush from her kit and dusted the end of each finger. Sure enough, five perfect, intact prints were soon visible. She tape-lifted each one and stowed them away.
Then something happened that interrupted Sara from continuing her investigation. Actually, it interrupted her from doing anything just then: a cloth was thrust over her face and the overpowering, sweet scent of chloroform reached her nostrils.
She gave a brief scream, but no one heard; it was muffled through the cloth and the attacker's hand.
"Thanks for finding my glove," he said in a sneering, gloating voice. Sara just had time to elbow him in the kidney before passing out.
---
A CSI Tahoe screeched up Dustin Orwell's driveway and lurched to a halt. Grissom and Catherine had opened their doors and leapt out before the vehicle had stopped swaying from the sudden halt.
Sara was in grave danger. They had to get her back to CSI before she got attacked as well. Scarcely taking time to open the front door, they jumped over the crime scene tape, burst through Orwell's foyer, and charged straight out into the back yard.
"Sara!" shouted Grissom, but there was no point.
Her kit lay discarded on the ground, open for all the world to see the contents. However, her camera was conspicuous by its absence, and was not the only thing: there was absolutely no sign of Sara.
"Oh God no..." murmured Catherine, barely audible. But her point got across.
Sara had been kidnapped.
Presently, Grissom and Catherine became aware of a groaning emanating from somewhere nearby. They swiveled around, trying to see whence it was coming from.
"Vartann!" said Catherine suddenly, and started running over to the kitchen door. Grissom followed close behind, and saw what she had spotted.
Detective Vartann was lying, spread-eagled, on the linoleum in front of the door.
"What happened?" asked Catherine, kneeling down next to him.
"Someone...came up behind me...chloroform," he stuttered, before lapsing into silence and breathing heavily.
Dejected, Grissom cast his gaze out on the back yard.