Title: Stalked - Chapter 5
Disclaimer: Of course they're mine. Duh. I'm also really a five foot squirrel who likes to play poker on the weekends.
Authors' Note: Long story short? Writer's block. I apologize for the delay in getting this chapter up. Give props to my ever patient Beta, Sol! Now read, and then leave me some of that wonderful feedback. I love all of you who have! And I'll love all of you that will:o) Promise!
Nick closed the file in front of him and stood. Stretching his arms above his head he started pacing around the room, not in a nervous pattern, but in an attempt to work out some of the kinks in his muscles and some of the kinks in his mind.
These last two weeks since Sara had disappeared had been hard on everyone, but he could not seem to shake the feeling that he could have found her if he had only tried harder; worked harder. He'd taken on the brunt of her active cases after... because he felt that if he couldn't solve her case, then he should at least be solving the cases she couldn't.
Every time he opened a file filled with her handwriting, her take on the case, he felt like he was as lost as she was. It wasn't fair to the victims in these cases for him to be so distracted and he hated that he was, but he couldn't stop his memory from flashing back to her hunched over a desk scribbling notes in her almost illegible handwriting. How eager she got when she was on to something. It wasn't fair that that spirit had been taken away.
He didn't want to think like that; assuming she was dead, but he'd been doing this job a long time. Long enough to know that even when a hostage was taken for the purpose of fulfilling a desire or a fantasy, it didn't mean they lasted long. Nobody could ever live up to the expectations of a psychopath. They, almost as a rule, see their victims not as people, but as idols worth worshipping. And when that idol fails to live up to those standards, it angers the perp. And they always overreact when they find out that the person they thought was perfect, really isn't.
After Grissom and Greg had realized that he'd come back for her things; her clothes were missing, toothbrush, hairbrush... other random things, he'd felt a renewed sense of hope. She hadn't been taken to kill. A week ago, the manager for her apartment complex had called looking for her, wanting to know why her utilities had been shut off. When they called the utility companies, they discovered the order to have them turned off had been put in the same day she was taken.
Her phone was no longer working, lights, water, cable...the same order had been put in for every single one. Only the cable company had been recording calls that morning, and upon listening to the tape they learned that it had been a man, requesting that his sister's cable be shut off as she was ill, and would be staying with him for awhile.
Her bank accounts hadn't been touched, nor her credit cards used. It was like she had dropped off the face of the earth. Every time Nick thought about how scared she must have been, he got angry. Like now, as he was pacing around the small room, when he realized he'd just thought of her in the past tense.
He needed out...OUT. Or he might just put his fist through the glass of the walls that were closing in on him. They'd dusted her apartment for prints, and every single time another one came back to her, he had to fight the urge to just swipe the monitor to the floor.
He'd always thought he had good control over his emotions, over his actions. But it seemed like anything could set him off lately. It was a combination of too much stress from the pile of new cases, too much worry about Sara, and too many nights spent awake staring at his bedroom ceiling. He wasn't ok. This wasn't ok. It surprised him how off balance he felt...he knew Sara had been his friend...had been...there was that tense again...but he could never have imagined this feeling of loss.
This wasn't getting those kinks out. In fact, it was making them worse. He slammed his way out the door. Clenching and unclenching his fists, he made his way quickly toward the exit. He needed to get outside, he needed to calm down. This wasn't like him and it was scaring him.
As he was pushing his way out the building's front door, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Spinning around he glared at Greg, who was looking at him like he'd lost his mind. "Nicky...what is going on?"
"Nothing Greggo, leave me alone ok?" He opened the door fully and stepped outside. He closed his eyes and sucked in a lungful of fresh air, his hands on his hips and his face turned upwards toward the sky. "Dammit Dammit Dammit..."
"Nicky..." Greg was still standing behind him. "Talk to me buddy..."
"Talking isn't going to fix what's wrong with me."
"No, but it might help."
Nick brought his hands up and rubbed them over his face. "Do you think we did all we could?"
Greg knew immediately what he was talking about. "Yeah. I do. We gave her all we could...hell, we're still giving her all we can."
"But is it enough?"
"It kinda has to be."
Nick turned to face the other man. "Losing my temper isn't going to help anyone."
This time Greg reached out and touched Nick's arm. "We're gonna find her. It's only been two weeks...she could still be alive...there have been cases of people missing for years only to be found alive and well. We'll get her back."
Nick felt tears threaten to fall and quickly cleared his throat. He'd realized yesterday that he hadn't cried. He hadn't let himself acknowledge the loss of a friend yet. He'd taken that as a sign of optimism, but maybe it was just denial. He smiled at Greg. "Ahhh, Greg, the group's eternal optimist." He turned and started back toward the building. "Thank you. I've got to get back to work."
Greg watched his friend walk back into the building and almost ran in after him. To tell him that he wasn't that much of an optimist, to tell him that he woke up on a nightly basis with nightmares that consisted only of the images of Sara hurt, scared, dying...and the last two nights, of Sara dead. No, he wasn't optimistic about the outcome at all. He'd seen all the horrendous things that people can do to one another...he was painfully aware that she was, in all likelihood, dead. And like Nick, he felt that he should have done more.
It was like a waiting game now. The few leads that they'd had over the first few days, had taken them nowhere. There had never been a ransom, and they'd had her apartment under surveillance for the first week, and he had never come back. He hadn't left any prints in her home, or none that they had found. Nobody had seen anything; nobody knew anything...the case was cold. Ice cold, and now it felt like they were all just waiting for her body to turn up. They all expected it to.
It was his day off, but like every day in the last two weeks, he was here off the clock, giving his time to find her. When he was at home, his mind was here anyway. After the first full day of attempting to do anything but worry, he'd given in and came to the lab. Hoping, like always, that that day would be the day that they got a break. That it would be the day that this emotional roller coaster would finally pull back into the station. One way or another...he wasn't sure anyone here could take this anymore.
Nick was flying off the handle at everyone, Warrick had lost his sarcastic edge, Catherine spent more then the usual amount of time arguing with Grissom...and Grissom, well Grissom just might never be the same again.
As for himself, he'd personally never felt more driven. Sara's case had become his obsession. Chasing down imaginary leads, repeatedly picking through evidence that had already been picked to death, hoping he'd missed something. That this time there would be something there that he hadn't seen. And every time he was disappointed. The evidence was scarce to begin with. Two tapes, one contained the blurry image of a man leaving her car at the airport; one holding the voice of the man who had Sara. It was that voice that narrated Greg's dreams at night.
There wasn't much else to go on, and if he was honest with himself, he didn't really expect that to change. He just hated sitting around his apartment trying to not think about it. He didn't know if he was ever going to get over losing her.
He'd admit to having a high school-like crush on her. Who wouldn't? She was beautiful. And smart. She'd taught him a lot of things these last couple years, and she had no idea how much he appreciated it. Had it not been for her patience, her ability to laugh things off, he might not be here right now.
Now he wished he'd taken just a moment to tell her how important she was. To tell her how much he cherished her. Maybe it was true; you don't know what you have until you lose it. He started out working under her, as her student, and slowly but surely she'd pulled him up until he was working beside her...as her equal. He'd loved her smile when he'd remembered something she'd said...something she did. She'd been proud of him...proud of herself. And that had made him feel good. And God did he miss her.
He missed the way she rolled her eyes at his stupid jokes. And the way that she stifled her laughter when something wasn't supposed to be funny. The way she had crinkled her nose at his choice of lunches, but had never made him feel guilty for the greasy hamburgers he favored. Sara had such a good soul; it wasn't fair that it had been taken away so prematurely.
He started towards the evidence lab, preparing himself both mentally and emotionally for what he knew lay ahead; another day of picking through Sara's things. Things from her home that had, at first, held a delicate trace of her. Everything from inside her apartment had held her scent, everything had been hers. Now, every time he looked at it, all he saw was evidence.
It was strange, because at first, that was all he had wanted...to be able to look at things and not see her. Now it felt like he had lost her when he couldn't feel her anymore. He wasn't sure if that made any sense. They were just things...he couldn't really feel her when he touched them to begin with, but he had felt connected to her. Now he didn't. Like the imaginary ties between her and her stuff had been clipped. It was ridiculous, how strange the whole thing was.
As he walked into the evidence locker, he saw Catherine standing at the desk, collecting the box that he'd come to claim. "Hey Catherine...what're you doing?"
She turned around quickly. "Oh, Greg. I've got some time...I just thought I'd look through this again. See if I see anything I missed the first time around."
"I doubt both you and I missed the same thing..."
"What're you doing here Greg? Isn't today your day off?"
"Yeah it is, but I've been coming in to help with..." he pointed to the box.
"Go home Greg. Burning yourself out isn't doing anyone any good. Give yourself a break." She held up the box. "Let someone else try."
He nodded slowly. "I know. But when I go home...I feel like I should be here."
Catherine walked toward him and set a hand on his shoulder. "We all do Greg. I've got this for today. You don't have to go home...but you need to let someone else carry this burden for one day. Ok?"
He sighed. "I have a couple friends I've been neglecting. Maybe I'll go spend the day with them."
"Good. Have fun ok? She'd want you to." He nodded and turned around walking out the door with her. They parted ways and he headed back outside, fighting the urge to follow her to the layout room.
Catherine set the box on the table and started pulling things out. A dirt sample from the backseat of Sara's car was the first thing she looked at. Given the almost obsessively clean state that Sara kept her car in, the dirt was likely from the bottom of the kidnapper's shoe. They had had it analyzed, learning nothing from it except that at some point in the day, he had been on someone's lawn. Whether it was his own or someone else'sshe couldn't be sure.
Most likely it was a dead lawn, due to the low nutrient content in the soil sample. Unfortunately this wasn't unusual in Vegas because of the low humidity and the high temperatures. People who didn't water their lawns on a fairly regular basis were usually rewarded with brown or yellow grass.
She sighed as she set it aside. This felt hopeless. She hated to say she'd given up, she was a woman who hated to admit failure, but if it were any other case, she would have called it by now. She didn't know if it was because she considered the younger girl a friend; or because if she did file it away, she'd have the rest of her team to deal with - but she just couldn't shelve this one.
She reached into the box and pulled out another dirt sample, this one from Sara's car tires. Analysis of it had showed them nothing except that whatever route he'd taken on the way to the airport had contained loose gravel, which again, wasn't unusual in Vegas... especially during the summer months when main roads were under construction. Catherine herself had taken to driving on these roads on the way to work, to avoid the construction.
She set it down on the table next to the other sample and reached into the box again, this time pulling out a file containing photographs of the inside of the vehicle and of Sara's apartment. Included in these photos was a close-up of the gun imprint and shots taken after the inside of the car had been fumed. These shots showed obvious swipe marks where prints had been wiped away. The shots of the apartment included pictures of the locks; none jimmied, the empty refrigerator, and her closet, among others.
Catherine hated the fact that Sara's whole life was on display. It felt like an invasion of privacy every time she flipped through these photographs. Nothing was sacred when the CSI's got involved. She moved to set the photographs aside when something caught her eye. A picture she'd seen a hundred times...stared at endlessly for the first two days...and she'd never noticed? It could mean nothing, or it could mean everything. She grabbed the photo and almost bolted from the room.
Halfway to Grissom's office, still staring at the picture in her hands, wondering how the hell she'd missed it for so long, she was stopped by Warrick as she walked right past him without once looking up.
"Something's got your attention. Share?"
She glanced up, noticing him for the first time. "I've got to show Grissom..."
"He's not here. I was talking to him and he got a phone call. Said a few choice words that I never thought I'd hear coming out of his mouth, and took off."
"Sara?"
"No. I don't think so. He seemed pissed as opposed to upset."
Catherine nodded. "Good. Well then, you look at this." She held the picture out for him to take. As he did, his fingertips brushed hers. "Do you see what I see?"
The picture was of Sara's apartment, the area around the door. "What am I supposed to be seeing here Cath?"
She pointed. "Look."
"I don't see anything out of place..."
Catherine released an exasperated sigh. "The box..."
"It's a box Catherine...probably a donation to goodwill or something."
"No...look. What's in the box?"
He grabbed a magnifying glass off the desk next to him. "Clothes...a candle...shampoo..." he stopped and looked up. "Those aren't the sort of things you donate."
"Exactly. I think this guy, whoever he is, was there shortly before we were. I think we interrupted him while he was gathering more of Sara's things."
"How did we miss this for two weeks? Why didn't we notice it as being so out of place? When was he there? And what does it change?"
"I don't know how we missed it. I've gone over it numerous times, Greg has gone over it and he was actually in the apartment. Grissom didn't see it for crying out loud...he was there, and that man sees everything." She paused. "He had to have been there between Sara going missing and Greg and Grissom going in. There's a good chance he was actually there at the same time they were...maybe taking a trip to the car, and saw them going in so he ran." She took a deep breath, and smiled as she continued with her quick explanation. "But if our guy thought he was taking it with him, but never got a chance...it's very likely he wasn't as careful when touching it or the stuff inside it. And it's almost guaranteed that he didn't wipe any of it down like he did in the rest of her apartment."
"And if he didn't wear gloves..."
"We don't think he did. We've got a lot of partials, smudges, and wiped down prints in her apartment, nothing solid enough to make a match with, but enough to know they're not hers." She turned from him. "Run with it Warrick. Find that box. I've got to go find Grissom."
Warrick headed directly to the storage room where they kept larger pieces of evidence. He hoped they had collected the box and brought it back here. He was flipping through the list of things they'd collected and he could almost feel his excitement building. For the first time in almost two weeks, they had something that might actually lead them somewhere.
He'd all but given in to the fact that she was gone. For good gone. He had never been one to dwell on things and he didn't plan to start now. Hell, that was a lie. He was just trying to prepare himself for the phone call that took him to her body. Now, for the first time since she'd disappeared he felt a reason to be hopeful. The case technically belonged to Nick, Greg, and Grissom. But he knew he wasn't the only one with a copy of the file at his home.
He found the entry for the box of things and went directly to where they had it stored. Snapping on a pair of gloves he pulled it from the shelf. As he was walking from the room, Nick came up beside him.
"Catherine told me you might have something new on Sara."
"That's what we're hoping. Catherine noticed that this box looked a little out of place. Where did she go? This should be hers to run with."
"She's looking for Grissom. Said to start without her, she'll be along. Sent me to help."
"Well then, let's get started."
They'd been sorting through the box in silence for a good twenty minutes, tagging some items and dusting others for prints, finding a few that looked too big to be Sara's and clear enough to help them.
Warrick was thinking he should go get a computer search started on them when Nick spoke up. "Where's Catherine?"
Warrick pulled his nose from the shampoo bottle he was dusting and looked around. "I dunno. Better question? Where's Grissom? I expected him to come racing in here and take over."
"Think I should go look for them?"
Warrick sighed. "Probably. But hurry though; we should get some of these running…"
Nick nodded in agreement. "I'll be back…give me 15 minutes ok?"
"Run boy." Warrick let out a laugh that sounded foreign even to him. It was easier to relax when they had new leads forming.
Stopping and asking every other person he saw if they had seen Catherine or Grissom, he was soon directed towards the parking lot, where according to three lab techs just coming on shift, Grissom and Cath were making quite a scene.
Nick had just raised his eyebrows at this. He knew both of his friends well enough not to believe the story the techs were telling… but stress did make people do stupid things. He took off for the parking lot.
When he arrived, he looked around quickly, not seeing them. He was about to turn back into the building when he heard Grissom's voice. My God, the man was actually yelling.
"No Conrad. You cannot." When Nick finally spotted his boss, he was shocked to say the least. His face was red and there was a hoarseness to his tone that Nick could only blame on his having been yelling for quite awhile now.
Catherine was standing near him, shaking her head like she had given up trying to calm him down. In fact, she almost looked like she was trying to get away…Grissom was wielding a sign and looked about thirty seconds away from smacking Ecklie over the head with it.
"Dr. Grissom! You need to relax or go home!" Ecklie was returning Grissom's shouts with his own. "This is not my fault. We need the space!"
Nick stood there in disbelief. All this over a parking space? He walked over to Catherine and touched her shoulder. "What the hell?"
Catherine sighed and looked at Nick. "They're trying to reassign Sara's spot. Somehow Grissom got wind of it…" She waved her hand in his direction. "Obviously he's not taking it well."
"Obviously…" He walked away towards Grissom. "Hey. Grissom!"
"Get back to work Nick. This doesn't concern you."
"Did Catherine tell you we've got a new lead on Sara?"
Grissom whirled around to face him, the angry blue flame in his eyes slowly being doused by hope. "Really?"
"Prints. So far three clear sets. Warrick's running them now." He reached out and quickly disarmed the man of his strange metal weapon. "Ok? You good now?"
"I wasn't going to hurt him." Grissom's shoulders slumped and all at once he suddenly looked his full 50 years. "But what's she going to think when she gets back and we've given away her space? She'll think we gave up, that's what."
"And then we'll tell her that we didn't. That Ecklie did." He tried on a smile, hoping it didn't look as fake as it felt. "She'll have expected that."
Grissom ran one hand through his hair and stood up straight, looking over Nick's shoulder. "Catherine? Isn't it your job to stop me before I start going off the deep end?"
She walked over. "I'll remember that for next time."
And just like that, like nothing had happened, Grissom started for the building. "Are you going to show me where you found those prints? And explain to me how we missed them for two weeks?"
Nick almost had to laugh as he set the parking sign down. He was turning away to follow the other two back into the building when something caught his eye. "Grissom! Catherine!" He picked the sign up again as they turned around and started back in his direction.
"Another lead. I think Bill has Sara."
Grissom furrowed his eyebrows. "Who?"
"Serial criminal…Sara's cases. Left dollar bills at his scenes?"
"Why would he want her?" Catherine looked confused. "She wasn't anywhere near catching him."
"No, listen to me. I think that he committed those crimes to get her attention."
Now Grissom looked confused. "Nicky, slow down. How did you come to that conclusion?"
Nick pointed to the sign, a childish grin spreading across his face. "These numbers identify her parking space. Nobody else has the same numbers."
"Your point?" Grissom had an eyebrow raised.
"Bill marked one of his bills with these exact numbers. In this order." Nicks excitement was building. "And she was taken while in her car. We all assumed she was taken sometime AFTER she had driven away from the lab…but what if he was waiting for her here?"
"Someone would have seen something Nick…" Catherine hated to pop his bubble, but a successful abduction in a lot full of police vehicles? Awfully risky.
"Maybe someone did." Nick threw a look over his shoulder at the surveillance cameras watching him.
Grissom turned towards the building. "Let's get those tapes."
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