Chapter 2

Nick reached across to scratch the opposite arm. He snapped his hand into a fist and dropped it to the table. He focused all his attention on the microscope trying to ignore the itching bites. Hodges walked up, standing dangerously close.

"You know, I have a home remedy that works great on insect bites," Hodges told him.

Nick looked up at him. Hodges smiled. Nick didn't return it.

"What do you want, Hodges?" Nick growled.

"The hairs you found on your corpse's clothes are male, but of no relation to the victim. I ran the assault kit and there was no semen. I also pulled her dental records and have a name for your Jane Doe – Sarah Montrèsor."

Nick picked up the print outs, looking them over. The results and what Hodges had done made his anger start to raise one peg at a time.

"Why did you run the hair DNA through CODIS? I didn't ask you to do that."

Hodges grinned. "I needed something to do and I wanted to show my initiative. Looks like the husband may be good for her murder, too."

Nick stood, turning to face him.

"What?" Hodges innocently asked.

"Lab rats run the tests. CSI decide which databases to run them through, if they need to be run. Don't you ever do my job for me again."

Hodges was quickly crumbling under Nick's anger. He offered Nick a nervous smile. "I was just trying to help."

"Did I say I wanted your help?"

"I, uhm— My bad. I'm sorry. Bye."

He scampered away. Nick looked up, finding Grissom standing in the hall, staring at him. Nick turned his back on Grissom, sitting back down at the microscope. Tonight not even Grissom, someone he respected more than his own father, was safe from his ravished, angry monster.

#

Grissom found Hodges in his lab with his nose stuck in work.

"Hodges?" Grissom said.

He smiled at him, but his smile didn't hide how bad Nick had shaken him.

"I heard Nick yelling at you. What happened?" Grissom asked.

Hodges shook his head, turning back to his work. "Nothing. I just… Nothing. It was nothing."

"Hodges, what happened?"

Hodges looked up at him. "I don't want him to know I said anything."

"He won't."

"I'd heard what happened at his crime scene, so I was trying to help. I ran the DNA results through CODIS for him and it made him angry. He said I was doing his job."

"Give me what you gave him."

Hodges reprinted the documents and handed them to Grissom.

"Thank you Hodges. Take a break if you need on."

"Thanks."

Grissom left, reading the information. He slowed to a stop as he saw things in the report and DNA comparison that would have set Nick off, again. With a heavy sigh, he headed for the parking lot.

#

With a magnify glass and tweezers, Nick moved slowly over the cover of the coffin. His mind wasn't here. It was trying to return to his burial, but kept getting sidetracked by this one. He paused, sensing a presence. Nick turned his head, staring at Greg. He was pulling on latex gloves.

"This is a mess," Greg commented. "Where do you want me to start?"

Nick didn't answer. Greg smiled as he looked up, but it faded when he met Nick's hard stare.

"Don't you have your own case to work?" Nick snapped.

"I can't do anything on it right now. Hodges is running samples of tar for me, and my corpse is being chipped."

"Chipped?"

"Yeah. Grissom told me to put it in an ice bath to harden the tar, but Robbins won't let me do it. I keep stabbing my corpse when I do it. So… What do you need help with?"

"I don't need help."

Greg stood up, looking at the evidence around the layout room. "Well… There's the clothes and the—"

"I don't need help, Greg." Nick repeated as he stood up.

Greg looked at him.

"Are you sure? I could—"

Nick took a step toward Greg and the younger CSI retreated. "I said, Greg, I don't need help."

Greg stared at him. Nick could see he'd scared Greg, but he didn't care. He wanted everyone to leave him alone to do his job, to find the person that buried this woman alive, and to make that person pay. Anyone who interfered with that was to be considered the enemy, or so his monster said.

"Are you okay, Nick? You're acting… Strange."

Nick didn't answer. He couldn't answer because the answer was no, but that would only lead to Greg wanting to help him, and his monster was hungry enough it could destroy all of Nick's relationships without hesitation.

"Okay. Well… Let me know if you change your mind." Greg turned and rushed out of the room.

Nick watched him leave before turning back to the coffin lid.

#

"Albert, where's the autopsy report for Nick's corpse? She was buried and there were fire ants. Did you finish her yet?"

Robbins turned away from Greg's tar man, finding Grissom rifling through the files on his desk. Grissom knew he didn't like him doing that. Grissom's idea of filing was to smash files into a drawer and find what he needed later, and he carried that habit with him into the morgue.

Robbins sat the skull saw in his hands down, pulled of his gloves, and hobbled over to wave Grissom away from his desk.

"It's not in there. He picked it up at the start of the shift. All the evidence too. Stop messing with my files, Gil."

"Did he seem okay to you? I haven't seen him yet tonight."

"As a matter of fact, no. For the third night in a row he bit my head off when I told him I still didn't have the tox results. He got so belligerent I had to ask him to leave."

"What did the autopsy tell you about her?"

"Preliminary, I say she died of asphyxiation from the ants. Her lungs were full of them. David and I spent a couple hours spraying her with CO2 once we opened her. They were still alive inside her."

"The CO2 doesn't kill them you know. It just stuns them."

"We discovered that. Thank you for telling us ahead of time."

"I didn't think about them surviving in her body. Were there any signs of trauma? Did she fight back?"

"I couldn't tell. Her fingers were worn down to the bone. Probably from clawing at the box lid."

"Before or after she was buried."

Robbins thought about it and started to answer. A connection suddenly formed as he looked at the drawer the corpse was in. Robbins hobbled over to it, yanked open the door and pulled the drawer out. He hastily unzipped the bag and picked up her hand, looking at it. Grissom approached the other side, looking at her other hand.

"After she was buried?" Grissom asked.

Robbins laid the dead woman's hand on her stomach, looking up at Grissom. "I think he made that connection at the scene, which is probably what set off his panic attack at the crime scene."

"You were there?"

"Yes."

"During the panic attack, did he say anything?"

"He just kept repeating help me."

Grissom looked at the dead woman. Had Nick seen himself in that box instead of her? It would explain his reaction and it would explain his rare, vile mood.

Grissom zipped the bag up. "I gotta get him off this case. Thanks, Albert."

"I don't think you should do that, Gil," Robbins suggested.

Grissom looked up at him. "He can't stay objective about this case with his past, Albert."

"He's the one that ordered full panels on this woman. He's being extremely thorough. Did you ever order him to seek counseling after that ordeal?"

Grissom shook his head.

"I think he might be struggling with some things he never dealt with and this is case is forcing him to face those things. Maybe letting him see this through is what he needs."

Grissom smiled. "Thank you." Grissom walked toward the door. He stopped suddenly and turned, staring at the corpse on the table. It was still partially covered in a hard tar shell. He looked back at Robbins.

"Did Greg ask you to cut the tar off?"

"No. He kept stabbing his corpse, so I decided to do it myself before he destroyed the corpse."

Grissom nodded. "Probably a good choice." He turned and left.

#

Nick walked into the A.V. lab, glad to find Archie had run off somewhere and he would have the room to himself. He pulled up the DNA files and began a comparison in CODIS. He wasn't going to talk to the husband until he was sure the man was guilty.

"Nick," Brass said from the door.

He turned, watching the Detective walk in and lean against the edge of the desk.

"I brought in the husband. Guess what he was doing when we found him?" Brass smiled, trying to bait him into a game.

Nick wasn't in the mood for games. "Why did you pick up the husband? I never told you to do that. He isn't even a suspect yet."

"He filed a missing persons on his wife, so I was following up on it. Hodges also mentioned that—"

"Hodges isn't a CSI, Brass!" Nick bellowed.

Brass didn't speak right away. He stared back at Nick without any expression that hinted to what he thought or felt.

Quietly, as if trying to soothe a child having a tantrum, he told Nick, "Grissom asked me to follow up on the missing person's report. And while Hodges isn't a CSI, his hunch was correct. When we arrived at the man's house, he was packing to leave. He told me that he was leaving for just a few days, but there was enough stuff for a few months. Since I have a few years up on you in investigating homicides, I went with my gut that this man was about to disappear, so I brought him in for questioning. Any questions?"

Nick looked away. Brass' calm, but angry, lecture actually soothed some of Nick's anger.

"He's in a room downstairs. When should I tell the officer to expect you?"

The computer beeped and Nick looked back. His anger fizzled when the match came back as the husband.

Brass glanced at the screen. "What was that from?"

"I lifted some hairs from her clothes and skin from under fingernails still on her hands. She was still alive when she scratched him."

It took Brass a couple minutes of looking from screen to CSI to make the connection.

"She was buried alive?"

Nick slowly nodded. He felt weak and sick to his stomach. What could this woman have possibly done that warranted the torture of being buried alive?

"Are you okay?" Brass asked.

Nick looked down. "Brass… I was wondering… Do you mind sitting in on the interview?"

"Sure. But are you okay? You look like you could throw up."

Nick stood, collecting his files and printing out the screen. He grabbed it off the printer and pretended to be sorting his papers so he wouldn't have to look at Brass.

"She was buried alive, Brass. She was still breathing and conscious when he put dirt and ants on her."

"So the guy's a bastard. We've dealt with worse."

Nick forced a smile, looking him in the eye. In his mind Nick snarled at him, 'You don't fucking get it!' Out loud he said, "Let's not keep the husband waiting."

He followed Brass out of the lab.

#

Nick entered the interview room, his eyes on the folder and papers. The long walk had given his nerves time to fail him and apprehension to swell. Nick sat down next to Brass, staring at the folder on the table.

Kevin Montrèsor, husband to Sarah Montrèsor, sat opposite of him. Like Nick, his arms and face were covered with pustules. On his neck and arms were deep scratches from fingernails. If Nick had been able to focus, he would have realized that the most damning proof was plain as the nose on Kevin's face. But he just stared at the folder, silent. Eventually the silence made Kevin Montrèsor stop tapping his leg and stare at Nick. It was a long enough that Brass slowly looked at him. Even the officer standing guard at the door eventually looked down at Nick.

To Nick, it was mere seconds that he was silent. He was trying to find the courage to make his mouth open and vocal chords work. He knew if he messed this up, if his emotions got in the way, Sarah Montrèsor's husband and killer would walk. He couldn't have that. He couldn't let that happen. Not because he felt she deserved justice, because the man that kidnapped him and buried him alive had escaped, even if it was through death.

"You were married to Sarah Montrèsor?" Nick softly asked.

Brass pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket and read the screen. He quickly fired off a text message and returned his focus on the interview.

"Yeah."

Nick cleared his throat. "I'm told you were packing to leave when they picked you up. I'm confused. Why would a guy leave if his wife was missing? You did file this missing person's report, didn't you?" Nick slid it across the table to Kevin. He kept his eyes on the table, unable to look at Kevin.

Kevin didn't even look at it. "Yeah. I figured she'd just left with her lover."

"She was cheating on you?"

"Yeah. With another woman. I found out by walking in on them."

Nick made the mistake of looking into Kevin's dispassionate eyes. Was this what Walter Gordon had looked like when he spoke to Grissom? When he laughed and then blew himself up to leave Nick for dead?

Nick didn't realize that his mind had wondered and everyone in the room was staring at him again. Brass cleared his throat. When that didn't work, he cleared it even louder.

Nick glanced at Brass, and then looked down at his papers. His courage was selling out on him.

"Uh… When, uhm… When was the last time you s-saw your wife?"

"A few days ago. So she was buried alive?"

Nick slowly looked up. He hadn't said that. He knew Brass or the arresting officer never would have said that.

With a shaking voice, Nick asked, "Why would you ask that?"

Kevin leaned on the table. "Ask what?"

"No one told you how she was found."

"Really? I thought someone had. How was she found?"

Nick looked as his papers. The edge of his vision was burning. Nothing was making sense anymore. He heard sounds inside his body just like… Like…

Nick stood so fast he knocked his chair over. "Excuse me a minute." And he left the room before anyone could object.

He didn't see Kevin sit back with a smug smile. Brass glared at the man, the presumed killer.

"Don't go anywhere," Brass told him.

"I got all night, Officer," Kevin said and then laughed.

Brass walked out into the hall, but Nick was gone. He opened the observation room door. It was empty.

Brass called Grissom. "Gil. That problem you asked me to check up on… It just walked out of an interview and it wasn't acting normal. What do you want me to do?" Brass glanced back into the room. "I'll detain him as long as I can."

#

Nick leaned on his legs, trying to fight back the nausea. He'd never walked out on an interview and he couldn't convince himself to go back to it. The mere thought of being in the same room with Kevin Montrèsor made his stomach tie into more knots.

"Nick?"

Nick looked at Grissom standing at the bottom of the stairs. His supervisor slowly climbed the stairs and sat down on the step with Nick. Time was moving slower now and it felt like hours passed that they sat in silence.

Nick wrapped his arms around his stomach and laid his head against the cool concrete

"I'm sorry," Nick whispered.

Grissom nodded. "I know you are."

"I can't do the interview."

"Okay."

Nick looked at Grissom, who in turn looked back.

"Am I in trouble?" Nick asked.

Grissom shook his head. "Why would you be?"

Nick looked down the stairs. He leaned forward on his legs, clasping his hands together.

"I think, Nick, you have some issues you haven't quite worked through. Once this case is behind us, you need to consider counseling."

Nick looked at him. "I'm in therapy. We met this afternoon and again tomorrow."

Grissom hadn't expected that. "When did you start therapy?"

Nick looked at his hands. If this had been anyone else, even Warrick, he wouldn't be willing to admit anything. Even though Nick was practically raised by his mother and sisters, he believed what his father had taught him – there were some things men just didn't talk about with other men. Grissom was an exception. He always had an easy time talking to him and telling him things he'd never tell anyone else.

"I was a mess after I was buried alive. Did you know I got into a bar fight and was arrested for assault?"

Grissom nodded. "The arresting officer told me. He said your mother showed up and bailed you out, and then the plaintiff mysteriously dropped the charges. He accused me of being behind that."

"That was my parents doing. But for doing that, they gave me an ultimatum. I had to start seeing a therapist for work stuff, or they were going to pack up my house and make me go back to Texas. I chose therapy. Twice a month unless things get real bad, like they have been the last couple of days." Nick fought back the tears as he added, "I was over the nightmares a year ago, Grissom. They've come back. This case…"

"This case is probably a blessing in disguise."

Nick looked at him. "A blessing?"

"It's forcing you to face your fear and deal with it. But Nick, while Warrick and I can deal with Fire Breathing Nick, I can't say the same for the rest of your co-workers. They're confused and worried about you. You scared Catherine and Greg and maybe even Hodges." Grissom hesitated and smiled. "Hodges needs a good scare. Strike that."

Nick chuckled with Grissom.

"I tell you what. Let me handle your interview, and any others that might come up. You handle the evidence. You don't have to work this case alone."

"You're not going to take it from me?"

"I was, but… What good would come of that, Nick?"

Nick smiled, shrugging. "I thought I'd have to fight you on it eventually."

"I'm too old for a fist fight. Thanks for the offer, though."

Nick smiled at him. Grissom patted his shoulder as he stood up.

"Where's your case file?"

"Brass has it, I think. I left it in the room."

"Okay. I'll let you know what happens."

"Thanks."

Grissom walked down the stairs, disappearing. Nick laid his head against the wall. Despite the talk, he was still wrestling with demons.