"Good thing you reported Warrick, you're on unpaid suspension for two weeks to begin with." His boss' eyes belied every word he was uttering.
To say he was stunned was an understatement but he nodded in acknowledgment. "This stinks like rattlesnake oil, man." He muttered indignantly just to keep the scene authentic.
"You are to see the department psychiatrist tomorrow and then again after you're reinstated. Ecklie will let you know the details. " Grissom continued calmly and this time he seemed dead serious.
"You yanking my chain, man?" Warrick asked in disbelief.
Grissom met his eyes and shook his head in a decisive 'no' before he turned the paper over to scribble more.
"Archie found a FBI-issued surveillance device in the A/V lab an hour ago."
Warrick stared at the piece of paper, his mind about to explode from all the questions forming at once and battling to get out.
"I understand Nicky's not woken up yet? And that they fear memory loss?"
The understanding hit him full force. "Yeah, with what he's been through they figure he'll be lucky if he remembers his name, if he wakes up that is."
Grissom took the piece of paper and
balled it up before he slipped it into his pocket.
"This case
is getting colder and colder as we speak. We have nothing at all at
this point so I am re-assigning people as we speak. No use chasing
ghosts."
"It's gonna put a dent in our records."
"So is putting manpower on an unsolvable case. Have any plans for this vacation of yours?" Grissom articulated very clearly.
"Yeah, Tina and I hit a rough spot and I'm taking her on a vacation to Barbados, or someplace. Patching things up, so to speak." Warrick watched Grissom nod and suddenly understood that all this was for Tina's benefit as well as anybody else's. "Our place needs fumigation anyhow, met a coach roach last night that gave genetic enhancement a whole new perspective."
"Seen any fine ones?"
"Must be the wrong breed, they're fast but big enough to trample your specimens."
"What a pity."
"I'll go get my stuff and keep an eye open in case I spot a champion, then I'll pick up Tina and swing outta town for awhile."
"Come get that GPS of yours I borrowed last time I was out, I'll be home in an hour."
"I'll swing by," Warrick couldn't help but grin at the absurd discussion they were having. If this fooled anybody they'd nail the bastards in no time for sure.
He knocked on Grissom's door after having parked his car three blocks away, at a gas Station. The paranoia was still riding him like the proverbial monkey on his back, one of the many currently fighting for place on his shoulders.
He slid in without a word when Gil opened the door.
He found Brass, Cath, Sara and Greg already there with a bleary eyed Archie at the end of the table.
"Who's on watch?" Was the first thing that flew out of his mouth.
"Sofia and Hodges" Grissom informed him, and Warrick narrowed his eyes.
"And two armed guards at the entrance," Greg quipped. "I think you can wind yourself down a notch, Warrick."
"Yeah?" He inquired while pulling out a chair and sinking down on it. "Good news then?"
Cath shook her head as Grissom re-appeared with a mug of coffee for him and he sank gratefully down to the chair next to Brass.
"I can't make head or tails out of this whole thing." Cath complained. "Nothing leads anywhere!"
Brass sat stirring his coffee, letting the teaspoon clatter as he moved it round and round and round. "I'll go first. We know that FBI's mule is a turncoat. He skipped side and is now singing 'Kalinka' with the Russian mob. We need to get to him and tighten the screws."
Silence fell.
"A tall order since he's been underground for half a year," Grissom finally spoke up. "We have to find something else. We need to know what Nick knows, that's the bitter truth."
"Yeah, and the problem is that they seem a step ahead all the time. They know everything we know, and how we work," Archie mumbled. "Down to the last detail of what we can do."
"But we know our leak now; the outsourced cleaning crew from CAP has tapped in to our system." Catherine's voice was close to a growl.
"Hold on a goddamn minute," Warrick interrupted, "you know the leak? CAP?" He glared at the strawberry blonde woman, "then why not just stop it?"
Cath shook her head. "Clean And Pristine at your service, talk about imagination in picking company names. But knowing and proving who it was tapping in is easier said than done. Archie found out that people not even in the building were logged in on the intranet, probably with a wireless connection and a laptop. Since it's mobile, it's hard to pinpoint. They've upped the security but hey - it was said outside security was top notch, so go figure. And stopping them? We need proof they are acting with criminal intent. They have a contract and the personnel changes fast. We still can't prove it was ordered from CAP and wasn't just one of the employee's curiosity. The employees are employed day by day, hard to pinpoint the name or the culpability. We're waiting on a list of who worked when, but they are demanding a warrant and judge Derringer is unwilling to issue one; too little proof he says. Claims it could be anyone. He said he'll issue a warrant as soon as we can prove that there was intent from CAP to eavesdrop, that would be breech of contract but until then, our hands are tied. The fact that the surveillance equipment is FBI-issued muddies the waters further, it seems. Seems their local agency was broken into a year ago and plenty of hi-tech gadgets were stolen. Case still open." Cath smirked," Of all the stupid things to do, no one but Atwater would be as daft as to compromise the lab's security like that."
"Fingerprints?" Warrick asked. "Do we know who tapped in? Can we latch on to the creep and get some information?"
"It's a cleaning crew employees," Gregg pointed out. "Of course their fingerprints would be everywhere, it's the perfect alibi for a fact-finding mission."
"It'll take us weeks to check out all the names when we get the list, but we'll do it," Sara said tiredly, sucking in her lower lip between her teeth. "It takes time, too much time but there's no other option really."
"The same enterprise had both us, FBI's Field Agency and a lot of hospitals in the area on their customers list," Brass noted. "You know the amount of employees they have? I'll tell you – 2.134 at the moment. Owner Joseph Branning is currently out of state, cannot be reached and the acting manager, one Veronica Kapratsky is pleading the fifth until the owner comes back."
"My Kingdom for a cleaning crew CEO," Greg quipped and promptly looked into his coffee mug as five sets of eyes glared daggers at him. "Shakespeare's point of view, not mine," he mumbled.
Warrick frowned, tapping his fingers on the table and trying desperately to grip something lurking in the back of his mind. Something he believed to be important.
"How big is the Russian community?" Sara asked. "Can't be really large, now can it? Someone has to know something, or at least point us in some direction."
"I doubt Granny will hang her grandson out to dry," Cath replied. "Besides, most changed their names and we would spend years on digging out genealogies."
"What is the common denominator in all this? " Grissom asked quietly, "it might be very easy the moment we find out what is the one odd fact that stands out."
"Except Nicky being the target twice?" Greg pointed out, receiving a glare from Archie this time.
"Insulin," the lab-tech said. "Somebody that knows its effect and can get his hands on a vial without being noticed, someone that has knowledge of the hospital, solid and thorough knowledge."
"A MD or someone with a relative or friend that's diabetic or maybe he's diabetic himself?" Sara spoke, drawing patters on the table with her index finger. "It's still too large a sample to go through."
"Let's not forget Russian descent," Warrick added, finally latching onto the fleeing sensation nudging at him. "You know the perp in the alley, what's his name? Shaun? I remember now. I thought he looked Slavic, high cheek bones, slender built and there was some kind of accent as he spoke. I thought it was the drugs making his speech odd but maybe it was an accent I' just wasn't able to recognize at the time?" he felt hope for the first time in days, hope of something finally falling into place. "Maybe he at least had some ties to the community, maybe. The name doesn't indicate that but names can be changed, right? I know the clandestine roofies factory in Russia is said to be situated in Minsk, maybe we should start looking for geographical ties?"
"What if
this man is MD from Russia that never got his license in the US?"
Brass wondered. "What if this person still has ties to Russia,
isn't that where all those Ciba-Geigy Rohypnol heists are prominent?
What if this person is just bitter because he can't
work as
a physician here and has turned criminal as an act of revenge? A very
lucrative revenge I might add."
This time six set of eyes turned to Brass.
"I think you have something there Jim," Grissom nodded. "I'll check out all revoked or non-approved licenses from the last year."
"Make it last five years," Brass said. "This has been going on for a long time, it's only just escalated and moved to Nevada. Roofies were on demand in Florida only a year ago. Same MO, feed roofies for free to the smalltime gangster and you have killer machines to use as you wish. FBI got them over there but did they get them all?"
"Check all the docs at Palm Springs while you're at it," Warrick pointed out. "Having a well-equipped hospital with dozens of lawyers watching your back must be heaven for any killer."
"A hospital where you intended victim is laid up and helpless," Greg spoke morosely.
"It just might be that the nurse mistook identities," Grissom said. "We can't be sure it was Nick that was the intended victim."
Warrick stared at his boss, not believing his ears. "Come again?"
"I just don't want us to assume anything at this point," Grissom declared. "I admit it's very likely that Nick truly was the intended victim but we have no facts at all to corroborate that thesis."
"Except that the 'nurse' in question was executed in a way most victims for the Russian mob have ever been," Sara pointed out.
"Yes, but was that because the identity was mistaken or because the intended victim was still alive?" Grissom said.
"You gotta be kiddin' Griss'" Warrick exploded. "Somebody tried to shoot him at the scene, we have a bullet to prove that, and from what I heard no diabetic needs that kind of a dose. It was purely intentional, aiming to kill without leaving a mark. What more do you need?"
"I need to know who Nick saw in that alley and in the SUV because I think the entire case boils down to that. Who was there and why? If there's a rational explanation for that the insulin might have been intended for somebody else. The two DBs at the original scene were nobodies, two small-time criminal with a reputation for B&E's on demand. Only common denominator was that they'd recently spent time in jail. The same prison Shayn Mallow spent his last year in, before he got released due to testifying. But so did a thousand other men, did they just together plan a heist that went wrong? And why did it go wrong? We know next to nothing and we're chasing ghosts. What we need is the names of the persons in the SUV and the alley." Grissom finished with his eyes on Warrick.
"Did you happen to see what kind of shape Nick is in?" Warrick spat wryly. "You just can't walk up and ask him if he remembers. Don't put that strain on him, not now."
"I already did," Grissom confessed, looking down at the coffee mug in his hand. "And he doesn't remember. He tried, I could tell but I wasn't able to give him any cues to trigger his memory. And we need those names to put faces on the ghosts."
Warrick stared at his boss, wondering how he was able to sit there and tell him how he had interrogated Nick. His Nick, a man that was barely conscious most of the time and under heavy medication. Still, Grissom had sat down and interrogated him; he was reminded of the cold, logical side of his boss. The side he sometimes admired but in this instance found downright cruel.
"Know what," Warrick said and rose. "I'm not gonna let Nick become another one of those ghosts, I'm off to see to it that it doesn't happen."
Cath rose with him, laying a calming hand on his arm. "I'll check on Mallow and the two DBs and see if I find anything else. Something's gotta give, sooner or later."
"Just don't let it be too late," Warrick mumbled as he headed for the door.