Chapter Seven: All Eyes on Me
Catherine was staring at him. Every time she lowered her camera after marking and snapping another photo of another blood spot on the carpet, every time he knelt to swab the spot of blood, he could feel Catherine was staring at him. And it was really rather annoying.
The soundtrack for the moment was a muffled mixture of the gruff voice of Jim Brass and the higher-pitch near-shrieking sound that was presumably the voice of the assault victim. Though he wasn't one usually quick to make assumptions, Gil was inclined to use the term "victim" loosely in this instance.
The woman, Adela Davis, was currently screaming some story at Brass about her husband attacking her, but when Gil passed her in the hall he hadn't seen anything more than a barely bleeding nose. There was much more blood on the carpet in the bedroom than a few drips from a bloody nose. He was going to have to ask about the condition of the husband upon the arrival of PD. As it was, Stan Davis had already been carted off to the station, making quite a ruckus, Brass had told him. Stan had been saying the "crazy bitch" was the one that came at him.
Gil opened another sterile swab and ran it over another spot on the carpet. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the bright flash of Catherine's camera, and not even one second later could feel those piercing eyes on him again.
'What is it?" he finally asked, closing the lid on the swab, sliding it into a box and writing the number corresponding to the marker on the side.
Snap. "This whole thing could have been very easily avoided."
Another accusation. Gil had apparently screwed something up again. Or screwed something up more. Couldn't the woman focus and think about anything else? Swab. Sigh. "What are you talking about?"
But he knew. Oh, Lord, did he know. Catherine had been making him well aware of his faults and mistakes at regular intervals over the past few days. And what "whole thing?" An argument between Nick and Sara was hardly something to ruffle feathers over. He'd already spoken with Sara, and it sounded to him that she was more than willing to reconcile. He found it hard to believe Nick wouldn't want the same thing.
Snap, followed by a disappointed shake of the head. "It was that B and E, Gil."
Swab. "That was a simple misunderstanding between us, Catherine." His defenses were rising to match her tone. That tone. The one she reserved just for him, just for telling him he was mishandling his team.
Snap. "The only one who's misunderstanding anything is you."
Swab, with a little more force than the previous swabs. Gil couldn't formulate a response quickly enough. After a moment had passed, he realized it was a long enough pause to give validity to her words, and his mind was simply trying to work through them and all their implications.
Snap. A most smug, satisfied snap if he'd ever heard one.
David Phillips had been on his way out as Warrick and Sara had just been arriving at Woodbridge Park. It was a relatively small park, frequented mostly by children from the neighboring houses, and not really anyone else. The young coroner raised his eyebrows at the approaching CSIs.
"You guys are late," he said in a light tone, hefting the black body bag-laden gurney into the back of the coroner's van.
Sara shot an accusing look at Warrick. "Took a wrong turn," she said with a crooked grin.
Warrick clicked his tongue. "I'm not driving you around anymore."
They'd shared some kind of bonding moment in the truck on the drive; one of their only moments of that kind, ever. Warrick pretended it wasn't over another's misfortune. He was just happy there were some friendships still strongly intact amongst their ranks.
David chuckled, shutting the back doors of the van. "The body was found on the basketball court. Male, no I.D., either late teens or early twenties. I saw some bruising around the neck. He might have been strangled."
Warrick nodded, taking in the information. "We're probably not looking for a weapon, then."
David shrugged. "Well, I have to head over to the other scene. Both bodies will be back in the morgue in a few."
Sara smiled. "Thanks, David. We'll see you there."
Warrick watched with amusement as David returned the smile, a blush rising in his cheeks, visible even in the dark of the night. Boy's still got it bad for Sara, he thought, shaking his head. Warrick wasn't the only one who noticed, and Sara shot Warrick a warning glance.
After the large van had pulled away, Sara bent to retrieve her flashlight from her kit. "Not a word."
Warrick raised his hands defensively. "You should go for it, Sara. I'm telling you."
She brought her flashlight up and clicked it on, letting the beam catch him in the eyes. "That sounds like a word to me," she said with raised eyebrows.
Warrick flinched out of the light. "All right, all right." He kept his hands raised in mock surrender.
Satisfied, Sara pulled a pair of latex gloves out of her vest pocket. "Where do you want to start?"
Warrick gazed out at the basketball court, alternately illuminated in blue and red from the ever-present police cruisers. "How about the scene of the crime?"
Sara shook her head and started over to the court. "Who's pulling out clichés now?"
Greg hovered over David's shoulder as he knelt next to the body, listening with divided attention as the assistant coroner described the wounds as he came across them. The victim was a teenage boy, and it was pretty obvious his throat had been cut. Greg was catching almost everything David was saying, a few words slipping past his ears as his eyes squinted and followed the figure moving slowly along the edge of the park.
"…no sign of defensive wounds," David said, letting the arm he was holding drop back lightly to the ground. Greg nodded, taking a step back to keep Nick in his field of vision.
Nick hadn't really spoken since they arrived at the scene. The two CSIs had to wait a few minutes for the coroner to meet them there as soon as he had, Nick had mumbled something about checking the perimeter for trace, possibly a dropped weapon, Greg wasn't really sure, because of the mumbling. Whatever it was he was doing, he was sure being quiet about it.
There was no denying it; in the car, Greg had been downright scared. He still was. He was scared for his friend, and what he was going through. Even more so because Nick hadn't been talking to them about any of it. Up until now, things had seemed fine. Great, even. Greg had no idea such things had been going on in Nick's life, in his head.
He should have. God, he was so incredibly stupid. After the explosion in the lab, he'd gone through his fair share of aftershocks. He could have spoken to Nick as the one person who somewhat understood what he was going through. He could have explained to the others that although they weren't seeing the effects in their friend, they were surely there. Of course, that would mean thinking back to that day. About the heat, the pain, the uselessness he'd felt, lying in that hospital bed. He wasn't just stupid, he was selfish. He could have taken just one minute and set his own feelings aside and talked with his friend.
"…and the position of the body suggests he was attacked from behind, maybe." David paused to take a breath, and for Greg to respond, and it took a moment for the silence to register in Greg's brain.
He tore his eyes away from Nick, wandering still farther away, and redirected his attention back to David. "So, not someone he knew."
David smiled. "I just examine the body, Greg."
"Yeah, I know. Just thinking out loud." He didn't have the space available in his head to house even one more thought.
Greg was in a bit of a pickle and very well aware of it. Why, why had he told Nick he wasn't going to tell anyone what had happened? That was enabling him, helping him repress the things he was dealing with, or not dealing with, as it seemed. In his gut, he felt he'd violated some kind of unspoken oath to the group by promising such a thing.
They tried not to talk about it in any kind of obvious way; there had certainly never been a "What's Going on With Nick" meeting or anything, but there was always a momentary pause when they passed each other in the halls of the lab, or when they entered the room at the start of shift. Eye contact would be made, and if there was a message that needed to be passed, that was the time to do it. It was like raising an alarm.
This was just that type of message, just that kind of alarm he'd hoped he never had to be the one to raise. He'd witnessed a crack in the solid stone exterior that had become Nick Stokes. He didn't want to have to relay this message, but knew he had to before things got any more out of hand. It was all up to him and what he decided to do with the information he had.
He couldn't go to Grissom; he'd do too little. He couldn't go to Catherine; she'd do too much. Sara would cry, and that left him with Warrick, who he knew he should probably tell no matter what. The two had certainly drifted apart lately, but damn, if Warrick wasn't keeping tabs on Nick. Greg was certain he'd be smacked into the next county if Warrick found out about what had happened and it didn't come from his own mouth.
Greg had established the right thing to do, but it was definitely a hard thing to do. At the moment, he seemed to be the only one Nick didn't have a problem with and he would really prefer to keep it that way. He'd spent the rest of the car ride coming to the conclusion that he had to tell someone, no matter what he'd already told Nick. His friend's safety and sanity meant more to him than keeping that friend talking to him.
Greg looked back to David with something more closely resembling his full attention.
David stood and motioned for his colleague to get the body ready for transport. "I'll get the body back to the morgue." He shook his head. "Busy night."
Greg nodded. "Thanks, David." His eyes flicked back over to the darkest corner of the park, where Nick was barely visible in the shadows looming over him.
There was something wrong with him. It wasn't in his head, it wasn't in Catherine's head, it wasn't jumping to conclusions or being cautious, it wasn't speculation. There was something undeniably, mentally, physically, emotionally wrong with him.
Nick trailed the beam of his flashlight along the length of the playground, paying close attention to the ground, to the movement in the dirt around one of the poles of the swing set. He stopped and stared, fidgeting nervously. He clenched and unclenched his left fist, his right hand keeping an iron-tight grip on his flashlight.
Checking the perimeter of the park, that's all he was doing. Well, that was what he'd told Greg, anyway. He was really just trying to keep his distance, somehow thinking maybe if he stayed away from Greg long enough the other man would simply forget what had happened on the drive over. The truck, unfortunately, wasn't going to forget so easily. He was going to have to pick up some touchup tomorrow to cover the scratches running the length of the passenger side of the SUV.
Nick continued to stare. What in the hell were all of these ants doing out in the middle of the night? Didn't ants sleep? Did they have to be crawling all over the place, swarming and creeping their way over to him? Just harmless little ants, but Nick could feel the grip on his light faltering as his palms slickened with sweat. His heart thumped just a little bit faster.
He could feel Greg's gaze on him as he stood there, along the outskirts of the park. He supposed there was minor cause. Or…major cause. There was the thing in the car, and then that other thing, the one following him everywhere he went. Everyone was on edge around him whenever they worked a scene outdoors and, in all honesty, Nick was a bit surprised it was Greg with him here, and not Catherine. It seemed like something she would do.
Nick wasn't stupid; he knew he had to be careful. A bug bite wasn't something he could take lightly anymore. However, it was cool, and night, and he'd applied a copious amount of bug spray before walking out into the park, just in case. Although he was an adult and perfectly capable of taking care of himself, Catherine had already called and reminded him to be careful. And careful he would be.
Nick took a step back and continued walking along the edge of the park, shaking his head at himself. They were just ants, for Christ's sake. Ants. So small he could take a step and kill a hundred of them.
And how many of those hundred would it take to kill him?
"Hey, Nick!"
Nick turned towards Greg, his very welcome distraction, at the center of the park. "Yeah?" He took a shaky breath and wiped his wrist across his forehead.
Greg jogged over to him. "You find anything?"
Nick shook his head, ashamed he hadn't paid the attention to the scene he should have. "Nah."
His mind's eye was still perfectly picturing dozens of ants making their way towards him from behind. He could almost hear the skittering.
Nick swallowed and shifted his weight. Greg eyed him cautiously, but if there was something he wanted to say, he kept his comments to himself. Nick sent him a silent thanks for being the only one of them with any remaining semblance of self-control, and jerked his head in the direction of the coroner's van. "Is David taking the body back?"
Greg glanced over his shoulder, and Nick took the opportunity to let out the breath he'd been holding since Greg had walked over to him.
"Yeah," Greg said. He cocked his head. "You wanna head back to the lab?"
Nick felt that familiar fire of defiance rising up inside of him. "I'm fine, Greg. I don't need to go back to the lab."
Greg visibly recoiled. "I just meant…if we're done with the scene…" He stammered but his eyes betrayed his frustration.
Nick bit his lip. "Yeah," he said softly. "We're done."
Greg made a movement, something between a shrug and a nod. "Okay." He turned and headed back to the truck, which, despite the scratches, was in the best shape of them all.
Nick tossed back his head and let out a frustrated sigh. He clicked off his flashlight and followed Greg. There was something wrong with him.
There had to be.
It was just his perfect luck, or perhaps the lack thereof, that all three vehicles pulled into the lab's parking lot at nearly the same time. Nick shook his head at the timing, biting his lip as his teammates exited their respective trucks. He'd let Greg drive back to the lab; "let" being a relative term, as he'd practically shoved the keys into the other CSI's hands. He didn't really trust himself at the moment, and it wasn't a comforting feeling.
He didn't trust his driving abilities, didn't trust his mouth, and didn't want the opportunity to present itself for him to say something irreversibly stupid. A nice quiet night in the lab, going over evidence, not having to talk to anyone – that was all he wanted. Nick could see Greg shift in the seat next to him and he instantly began to worry. But Greg wouldn't tell anyone, he said he wouldn't tell anyone, and he wouldn't lie to him.
As he considered the repercussions of his friends discovering his little episode, worry became panic. They would freak out, Catherine especially. They wouldn't let him out of their sight. They would think he couldn't do his job.
Nick stared unblinking out of the window as Greg pulled the truck into a parking spot. The hand on his arm startled him so badly, he jumped and smacked his right arm against the door. He turned to Greg, wide-eyed.
The younger man looked back at Nick with a serious and seriously concerned expression. Greg swallowed and shook his head. He didn't say anything, but he didn't have to.
Nick smiled and shook it off. "I'm cool. Really."
"I know."
No, you don't. I can hear it in your voice, Greggo. Nick nodded and reached for the door handle. As he hopped out of the truck Warrick called out in their direction.
"How was your scene?"
"Pretty boring," Greg said, keeping Nick from having to say anything, for which he was silently grateful. "We didn't find anything more than a few fibers."
Warrick walked over as Sara, Catherine, and Grissom headed for the entrance of the lab. He moved past Nick somewhat cautiously. "That's more than we got," he said.
"We've got quite the night ahead, then." Greg grabbed the evidence bag and his kit, wincing as he drew his right arm out of the back of the truck.
Nick felt a stab of guilt, remembering his friend's sore shoulder, completely his fault.
"You okay, Greg?" It was Grissom who saw it.
It just figures, Nick thought.
Greg's eyes reflexively ticked over to Nick, but he recovered quickly and smiled a lopsided smile. "Yeah, I'm cool. Hit the brakes a little hard."
Grissom's eyes narrowed. He was thinking. Perfect.
"Nick let you drive?" Warrick asked with exaggerated awe.
Sara, who had also made her way over to the men, brought a hand up her eyes and pretended to search the night sky. "Anyone see pigs flying around up there?"
Under any other circumstance, it would have been just the things, just the moment to break the tension between the team. Nick would have laughed, Sara would have accepted it, and things would have been easier between them.
But Nick didn't laugh, and he couldn't take his eyes from Grissom's thoughtful face. He'd barely even heard what Warrick and Sara had said.
Grissom shifted his shoulders with a questioning look. "If you had been driving, Greg, wouldn't you have strained your left shoulder?"
Damn that Gil Grissom. Always thinking.
"Nicky, what happened to the truck?" And damn that Catherine Willows, eyes sharper than anyone.
All eyes turned to inspect the long scratches on the truck. All eyes turned to Greg's gaping, answerless face. And then all eyes turned to Nick.
To be continued...
