Gossip Mongering

Chapter XL

Nick had been more than happy to drive out to Henderson alone tonight. The Lab's high-strung atmosphere was too tense for his tastes. If he wanted to walk through mine fields he would have joined the Marine Corps. He wasn't sure what had exactly been said, but Sara had taken some hard knocks lately and she had finally lost control of her temper. It wasn't that he'd never seen her angry, you couldn't go a month without Catherine and Sara disagreeing about something, but this had been different. Sara had changed; her kidnapping and subsequent sojourn through the desert had left its mark on her. He didn't think anyone, not even Grissom, had realized how deep those marks and scars went.

He, along with Warrick, Greg, Bobby, Archie and a few others had already called the wayward CSI but they had all been kicked to voice mail immediately. Wherever Sara had gone—she wasn't at her apartment, as someone had already checked there—she didn't want to be disturbed.

Nick poured the quick setting plaster over the footprint he'd been examining in a smooth, steady back and forth motion. He didn't blame her, they all needed to get away from the lab and the job once and a while. Besides, if he had pissed Catherine off like she had, he'd be hiding too. He smiled at his own thoughts as he kept a wary eye on the mold he was taking. This would all blow over by tomorrow and he would badger Sara into going out for a drink with Warrick, Greg and him. That would get her mind off of things, a day out with the guys. No angry blonde women, or Grissom, allowed.

Speaking of perturbed blondes, an odd angled flash of blue light against the stucco white of the house told him that Sofia Curtis, his detective for this case, had finally arrived. He cast one quick glance over his shoulder and saw her slam the door of the beige econo-box suburban from the PD motor pool. He eased out of his squat, rested one knee and raised a hand to her in greeting.

It took her longer than it would normally take one to walk across the scant few hundred yards between them, but she had to duck under the crime scene tape, get a status report from the uniformed officer who had secured the scene and skirt around the yellow evidence markers he had already laid in the grass. She was also, he noted, on her cell phone. Since she, like most of the LVPD, was juggling several cases at the moment, it was not out of the ordinary. The frustrated and borderline furious look on her face made him hope that her wrath was focused on whatever poor sap was on the other end of the conversation and not him.

He winced when she came closer and he could actually hear her speaking. "Look I don't have time to talk about this right now." The detective paused and shoved the hand that wasn't holding the cell phone through her lose blonde locks. "Fine, let me rephrase." Her usually smooth and pleasant tone had been replaced by a clipped and staccato one that he recognized from the interrogation room. "I am not having this conversation, now or ever and definitely not with you." There was another short pause and he could see Sofia's shoulders stiffen and her scowl deepen. "You know what, I'm on a scene. I have to go." She snapped the phone shut and shoved it in her pocket, then she looked at him.

Nick grinned up at the woman. "It makes you miss corded landlines. Slamming the handset down on the cradle made a great closing statement. Now all we can do is push buttons angrily."

Sofia chuckled. "Yeah."

Nick glanced at the mold, which was setting nicely. "That wasn't Sara by any chance was it?"

Sofia patted her pockets absentmindedly and pulled out a plastic wrapped toothpick. "I wish. No, it was the Capitan."

Nick's eyebrows shot up into his hairline. "Capitan Brass?!"

Sofia, toothpick in the corner of her mouth, shook her head. "My mother."

He shook his head. "I love my family, but there is a reason I live in Vegas."

Sofia let out a full-fledged laugh. "No one ever said you weren't a smart man, Stokes, now tell me what we've got tonight."

Nick quickly checked the mold's texture and was satisfied that it had set properly. He spoke as he photographed, lifted, bagged and tagged the mold. "Oliver Doakes, forty-six year old Caucasian male, last seen Friday as he left his office. His wife, Heather, and two teenage daughters went to see the mother-in-law in LA for the weekend. They arrived back home this afternoon, but Mr. Doakes was nowhere to be seen. He missed his usual Saturday golf game and wasn't at church this morning. All of his clothes are in the closets and his car is in the garage. The front door was unlocked, the alarm was off and there was no sign of forced entry."

Sofia rolled her eyes. "And there's no way he just went out for a walk or called a cab."

Nick stood up and motioned for her to follow him. "That's the first thing I thought, it wouldn't be the first time we've seen it."

Sofia fell in step with him. "It wouldn't even be the hundredth."

Nick led her through the front door and down the main hall, "This is where the suspicious comes in, though." They entered the kitchen and Sofia immediately saw what he meant. There was an open styrofoam takeout box on the kitchen table along with a six pack of beer.

The food had been, a couple of days ago, the best barbecue in Vegas. Every cop in the city knew about LJ's Barbecue. LJ, a Chicago native who had been in Vegas for more years than anyone could recall, referred to his carefully guarded recipes the best-tasting heart attack in the West and with good reason.

There were flies buzzing around the spoiled food, and Sofia took a step back, slightly disgusted. Bugs were Grissom's bag, not hers. "He had a full rack of LJ's ribs with all the fixings, descent beer, ESPN on his high-def TV in the next room, no girls running around to complain about him wearing his old boxers and no wife to nag at him about his cholesterol. It sounds like a nice little vacation." She looked around the kitchen quickly. "You worked the inside yet?"

Nick shook his head. "I was waiting for you to get here. I figured you'd like to see it undisturbed."

Sofia nodded absently, her mind already going over possible explanations for the man's disappearance. She was about to leave Nick to his job, but he reached out and touched her shoulder.

"Can I ask you something, off the record?"

Sofia twirled the toothpick in her mouth around. "Fire away."

Nick frowned, and shoved his ungloved—he'd taken his plaster spattered gloves off already—hands in his pockets. "What do you think about this whole Sara-Alex Dupree thing?"

Sofia sighed. "I don't think anything about it."

Nick shifted around, lowered his chin. "C'mon, Sofia, I'm not digging for dirt here. You are a good judge of character and you've been around this Dupree woman. It's obvious that they have history. She broke Sara's heart and I don't like to see Sara hurt."

Sofia's initial reluctance melted away. The Graveyard CSIs were a hard bunch to crack, but they were loyal to a fault. Nick was everybody's brother and since Sara's kidnapping, he had been even more protective of her than before. She trusted the Texan and needed to talk to someone, anyone.

"It's complicated, but my gut says that Dupree isn't our killer." Nick looked around, making sure no gossip-mongering uniforms were around, "Catherine is dead set against her." Sofia scowled. "I don't know what her problem is."

Nick shrugged one shoulder. "Catherine's not my concern right now."

They stood silently for a minute. Nick rubbed the back of his neck furiously then looked Sofia dead in the eye. "I have a friend, a friend of a friend really, who might be interested in this case, hypothetically speaking."

Sofia crossed her arms over her chest. "How would this friend of a friend weigh in on this situation, hypothetically?"

Nick smirked, "She's one of the top legal eagles in DC and hypothetically has a lot of push and shove when it comes to federal crimes."

Sofia saw where this was going. "We will need help when this whole thing breaks, everywhere from LA to Atlanta has people involved."

Nick smirked. "And if TAN really is involved we will, hypothetically, need a star witness against them."

Sofia nodded. "How do you know this hypothetical person?"

Now Nick's grin could truthfully be called shit-eating. "She played basketball with my sister at U of Texas before they went off to Law School together." He momentarily paused and Sofia wasn't exactly sure what he was thinking, but it didn't seem very pleasant.

She didn't particularly want to know where Nick's thoughts had taken him, but she did know what was in her head. Sofia nodded as she turned to take Mrs. Doake's statement. "Get in touch with her, but keep things hypothetical for now."

Nick nodded. "We can trust her to do the right thing."

Unfortunately, Sofia mused as she passed through the dining room to the den, even she wasn't sure exactly what the right thing to do was at the moment.

The Lab was observing a temporary cease fire, but everyone knew it was just the calm before the next storm raged through. It was as if the air vibrated with tension and everyoneknew why. Sara Sidle and Catherine Willows had just had the mother of all blow-out, knock-down, drag-out arguments. This time, though, Conrad Ecklie hadn't been there to step in. The assorted lab personnel counted themselves lucky that no shots had been fired or punches thrown.

The lines of loyalty were very blurry tonight, and no one wanted to officially declare their side yet. The scuttlebutt that was being passed around at the speed of text was that Catherine was going to get Sara fired. Others wanted to know the odds on the fist fight that was on the brink of sparking off.

Wendy, for herself, didn't know where she stood. She watched the vials of DNA samples and control vials spin in the centrifuge while she thought. She had been in the lab long enough to know the stories. Catherine, according to gossip, had been gunning for Sara since the day the brunette had walked in the door. The stories varied wildly as to why the two women had such a rocky start. While most claimed that Catherine had known about Grissom and Sara from the begining, others offered more exotic ideas. Wendy very much doubted that Sara was one of Catherine's dead exes old mistresses and the idea that Sara was one of Catherine's old clients, from when the woman had been an exotic dancer, was even more ludicrous.

No, Sara was just too damn classy to poach and while the jury was still out on the matter, Wendy was pretty sure that the two women hadn't had a torrid affair. Then again, Wendy glanced at the computer running a rape case semen sample through CODIS, if they had been involved, it couldn't have been since she had arrived in Vegas. She would have definitely seen the signs. Besides, if the fling was still going, Catherine would have killed Grissom and a few others a long time ago. She didn't think the older blonde was much on sharing.

The testing cycle ended and now the computer had to run its analysis so she keyed up the correct sequence and took the specimens out of the centrifuge. All of that was, in Wendy's opinion, coincidental.

The real issue at hand was Alexandra Dupree. Weather she was innocent or guilty as sin was currently unknown. What she and everyone else in the city knew was that Catherine wanted to take Dupree down, hard. It was a fact: Sara Sidle had been Dupree's girlfriend. Now that she thought about it, she had heard something about one of the ex-CSIs dating a model back in Frisco, but had never paid the rumor any mind. Sara had been recused, but was sure that Dupree had nothing to do with the murders.

It was Catherine versus Sara and the whole lab was watching and waiting to see who would come out on top. The printer beeped and she swiveled in her chair to get the printout and then cursed under her breathe. Meagan Moonigham's rapist wasn't in the system.

She double-checked the results and considered consulting the Military DNA database since the rape had occurred so close to Nellis, but was interrupted.

Warrick Brown breezed into her lab with a sealed evidence bag. He looked grim, his green eyes dull. She looked up, asking, "Did she?" He shook his head and Wendy felt something inside her deflate: Megan Moonigham hadn't survived surgery. There was a six-month old baby boy with no mother and twenty third-graders with no teacher anymore. Wendy crinkled the useless paper in her hand. She wasn't looking for a rapist, now she had to find a murderer. Maybe TAN wasn't so far off the mark after all.

Warrick leaned against the counter. "They worked on her for hours, but—" he let his hand rise and fall limply, "you can't save them all, I guess." Wendy sighed; she'd read the case report, and the woman hadn't had much of a chance to begin with: rape, blunt force trauma to the back of the head and a stab wound to the right lower quadrant of the abdomen. She had been found in a 7-11 parking lot in a pool of her own blood.

More determined now, Wendy snatched the evidence bag out of his hand. "What have you got for me?"

Warrick stood up straighter. "We found it shoved into a trashcan by the gas pumps."

She opened up the bag and pulled out a rough cotton-poly blend work shirt. She could barely make out the white on blue embroidered name for all of the scarlet red blood. "Think our killer is Joe?"

Warrick nodded. "I'm already tracking down who makes it and who bought it. See if you can pull DNA and match it to the semen."

Wendy's mind had already jumped ahead. "Have you already logged it in and photographed it?" When he nodded, she scrawled down her initials to transfer it to her possession. She carefully turned the shirt inside out and started scrutinizing it. If she could match epidural DNA to the semen that had been left inside Megan, Warrick would have plenty of support when he went for Joe Doe Rapist-Murderer.

She picked up a sani-swab and started swabbing the cloth for skin cells. "Anything else on the Device killings tonight?"

Warrick let his head fall backwards. "Other than my headache, no."

Wendy scowled. "Damn." She pushed the cap over the first swab and began on the second. She had double gloved before touching the evidence, and the samples went straight from shirt to her which meant less room for error. She looked up from what she was doing, momentarily, to ask, "Have you heard anything from Catherine?" Everyone knew that Catherine went to Warrick before anyone else.

Warrick chuckled weakly. "I would repeat what she said, but I'm kind of afraid my Grandmother would make a special trip from Heaven just to wash my mouth out."

Wendy winced. "That bad?"

He nodded. "She's pretty hot under the collar right now."

She turned the shirt over and capped the swab. "Warrick Brown, ladies and gentlemen, master of the understatement."

Warrick pushed his hand over casually styled brown hair and grinned half heartedly. "If I had wanted to take this kind of abuse, I would still be married."

She finished taking her primary samples and started to process the swabs. She clipped the cotton off of the stick and put a piece down in each of the test tubes.

"I'm just worried, that's all." Her hands moved smoothly, even if her thoughts were a little rocky. "I think Catherine might have pushed Sara too far this time."

Warrick nodded. "Sara's stronger than most people think and Catherine does care about her more then she lets show." He looked around quickly, as though to make sure no one was ease dropping. When he was satisfied that no one would root them out as gossip mongers he turned back to her. "I don't think I've ever seen Catherine panic like that, except for Lindsey. She fell apart that night Natalie Davis took Sara. She played it strong for Griss and everyone, but she was a mess right up until they let Sara leave the hospital."

Wendy nodded, but wasn't exactly convinced. "So they're what, frenemies?"

Warrick shrugged, "They have one of those weird girl relationships. I don't get it, but that's how it is. Plus Cath is trying to keep the case from going under. She's a supervisor and everyone is looking to her to pull this thing through."

Wendy lifted each plastic vial and visually inspected her work, "That doesn't mean she has to trample Sara to do it."

Warrick nodded. "Grissom won't let that happen, and not just because it's Sara. We've all been in tight spots before and Griss has helped get us out. He has some friends in pretty high places."

Wendy nodded. "I hope so."