Chapter Three

VEGAS

Next to when Nick had been kidnapped, this was the most difficult crime scene Grissom's team had ever had to process. This one had a different slant to it, because they had gotten Nick back from that awful time before. Here it was just as personal because one of their own had been violently taken away who they wouldn't be able to return.

Grissom was back at the crime lab having ridden in the ME's van with Warrick and accompanying the stretcher until David took over the grim task but would do so with a gentle hand. Grissom's clothing had to be submitted into evidence he thought numbly as he encountered an equally stunned Greg in the hallway who glanced at the bloody clothing. He haltingly asked Grissom what he could do and Grissom sent him to get Warrick's clothing; a possibly menial errand in any other case but Greg was grateful for the task.

It was now daylight and from the start the team's work began to yield important clues. As Nick and Catherine processed Warrick's Mustang, Nick was on the driver's side and let Catherine know he'd found a .25 caliber bullet on ground and took an evidence photo. Catherine was on the passenger side and located a .25 caliber pistol on the floorboard with another shell casing. She was taking evidence photos as well, the camera humming with the series of shots she took.

"Warrick's gun's still in evidence," Nick observed with a knit brow, adding that there wasn't a back up service weapon. He further opined that Pritchard did it like a hit and Gedda's influence was there.

"I'd say we have the murder weapon here with two shots and was fired inside," Catherine said as she looked again through the open passenger window to the CD's in the seat and the bloody papers. "The shooter was here and shot inside the car to get Warrick."

"Test for GSR," Nick suggested and Catherine swiped the headliner with the chemical wipe that showed positive.

On further discussion, they tried to reason why Warrick would have his passenger side window down. The driver's window had been shot out by the bullet Nick had found. Their findings would be relayed to Grissom. The car was ready to be taken to the lab to be gone over fully.

When Grissom returned to his office, he was stunned to find Sara there waiting for him. As they embraced, she told him she'd caught the first available flight after hearing the awful news. She asked him to tell her what happened and Grissom told her of watching Warrick fight to stay only to see him slip away. Sara told him that Warrick wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else and Warrick loved Grissom. He quietly disclosed to Sara that he'd also loved Warrick, Sara's dark eyes bright with emotion for what they shared unsaid. As Catherine, Greg and Nick also came into Grissom's office, they each hugged Sara as the team painfully reunited. Nick mentioned that Warrick had wanted to be buried next to his grandmother. Sara said she would help with funeral arrangements because she couldn't officially work the case. She added she'd go to Warrick's apartment and Greg volunteered to go along to see if they could find potential evidence there. Sara was secretly grateful to be allowed a hands-on role with the team. In Warrick's bedroom, she was checking the closet while Greg looked through the top drawer of the chest.

"Hey, Sara, check it out," he said after pulling out a legal envelope bearing the address of a local attorney firm.

To their dismay, they removed legal paperwork for confirmation of paternity that Warrick was engaged in a custody battle with ex-wife Tina for their son, Eli. A DVD was also enclosed entitled it was a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation of Warrick to help bolster his efforts to prove himself a fit parent.

Sara and Greg exchanged an amazed look, and then Sara asked Greg if he knew and that he'd had to say he didn't. She wondered if Nick had. Surely if anyone would have known it would've been Nick.

Later at the crime lab, Nick was focusing his attention on going over every nook and cranny of Warrick's Mustang. He glanced up to see Catherine and Grissom walk up. He informed them that he'd recovered knuckle prints from the passenger side window and that the killer knocked on the window.

Grissom commented he didn't think Warrick would lower his window for Pritchard, knowing he was the suspect for Gedda's murder.

Nick decided it was time to speak his mind as he laid out his thoughts that it was McKeen who was the shooter. The undersheriff was dirty. Nick's series of statements wove a convincing version of what had occurred, showing that Warrick wouldn't have backed down to McKeen, who then shot him in cold blood. Grissom and Catherine found themselves agreeing with Nick's line of thinking.

In the LVPD part of the building, Brass issued orders to fellow detectives and officers as a dragnet was being set to snare Pritchard. He'd pulled everyone off cases in progress so that the department could concentrate its energies on capturing Pritchard. This much he could do for Warrick and personally oversee the killer's being taken into custody. Brass wanted Pritchard alive so bad he could taste it. On a certain level Brass wanted to be alone with him for five minutes in a soundproof room with no video cameras. Yeah, that was worth asking God for, he thought, but just in case the Almighty was listening, he did quietly ask that the slime be apprehended without anyone having to take a bullet. He'd been there done that.

Regrouping back at the alley, Grissom with Nick and Catherine planned out how to recreate the sequence of events McKeen had laid out from his perspective. Their conclusions quickly pigeonholed the undersheriff's claim that the position he said he was standing in revealed he couldn't have heard the shot from the blaring club music coming from the open doorway. The undersheriff had just gone from being the eyewitness to the chief suspect.

Back at the crime lab, Grissom sought out Brass and relayed the team's findings and his assertion that McKeen was the department mole and Warrick's killer. The homicide detective took it in stride, telling Grissom his long-time belief that McKeen was dirty, something he was so familiar with back from his days in Jersey. He cited that when he'd come to Vegas back in the day that McKeen tried to get him in with his other cronies but Brass would have nothing to do with it. He couldn't be bought and McKeen knew it. They needed to find Pritchard to tie everything together to help bring McKeen down but had to proceed with care.

McKeen was self-assured in his confidence that no one suspected him in the least but he viewed Pritchard as a potential loose end. He had Pritchard holed up in a ratty hotel but now was the time to get him out of town. He had to disappear…permanently. Dead men told no tales he reminded himself.

Ecklie carefully measured what Grissom had just told him about the team's findings and his intimations about McKeen. In turn, Grissom was advised by Ecklie of the critical need for incontrovertible evidence. He didn't want to see their investigation jeopardized by proceeding hastily. Their return to the evidence resulted in the break they were seeking when examination of the very small .25 caliber bullets by print analyst Mandy Webster yielded a partial fingerprint that was matched to McKeen's fingerprints on file.

Moving concurrently in their investigation, the CSI team scrutinized McKeen's cell phone calls and traced them to a hotel deduced to be where Pritchard was being kept under wraps by McKeen. The location was pinpointed and Brass with Nick and Greg along with two officers carefully approached the room. After Brass swiped the room's door card, the officers promptly entered the room and gave the "4" sign that it was clear. The evidence including a wet towel and ice in the room told them they'd just missed their quarry.

Brass now called McKeen on his cell phone to establish contact and through a carefully worded conversation telling McKeen that they were after Pritchard and would issue an APB. Grissom was on the phone with Nick where he was back at the lab with Archie who was trying to pinpoint McKeen's location using the cell towers in vicinity of McKeen's phone. Archie determined the direction McKeen's car was headed on a route taking them to Mexico.

Using a police helicopter overhead, Brass and Nick sped on the same highway followed by three squad cars in pursuit of McKeen's car. Grissom suddenly informed Nick that McKeen's signal had stopped moving and they should be right where the signal had ceased.

Brass was ahead of them and saw a hole in the guardrail as his car screeched to a halt. With Nick and the other officers, they found McKeen's car had gone through the guardrail and plunged down a ravine to land on its top in a rollover crash. Pritchard was still in the upside down car strapped in his safety belt and was dead. Nick spied a blood trail leading away from the car and followed it, leaving Brass behind. McKeen was alive at least long enough to get out of their immediate sight, but Nick wanted to be the one who found the corrupt undersheriff.

Two officers following behind him, a worried Brass tried to raise Nick without success on his police radio. Jim requested that the police helicopter verify where McKeen was and the pilot responded visual confirmation of McKeen with Nick holding him at gunpoint. He knew what was driving Nick and he didn't want the CSI to put himself in harm's way in such an emotionally charged state of mind.

Spitting up blood but defiant and unrepentant, McKeen boldly told Nick in a harsh and mocking manner why he'd murdered Warrick. Seeing the mounting fury in Nick's face, the undersheriff taunted the CSI, ridiculing him as a friend, daring him to shoot.

Brass was headed in the direction the pilot had given him when he heard a shot and he pulled up short for an instant before his pace quickened to a run. As he approached the clearing, Nick was poised over the still form of McKeen with his gun.

Fearing the worst, Brass' quick look at McKeen confirmed the undersheriff hadn't given up the ghost. Looking Nick over carefully, Jim asked him what was the shot and Nick calmly replied he'd missed. Brass gave Nick a measuring glance before turning to McKeen to, as surreal as it seemed but still his pleasure, read him his rights.

DALLAS

As Iris was dusting a car door of the carjacking case for prints, her cell phone chimed that she had a text message. Grateful to stop for a moment, she opened up the phone to see it was from Nick. It was concise and told her that the team had found Warrick's killer. Iris sucked in a breath of surprise to see it was the undersheriff. The wake would take place at his house that night and the funeral would be the following morning. Grissom would be delivering Warrick's eulogy.

Iris reread the text message. Nick or his team mates wouldn't have peace from this tragic event for some time to come. She again debated flying out to Vegas to surprise him in a few days. Iris had always treated him like a kid brother and in some ways she was closer to him than his own sisters even though Nick came from a close-knit family. They'd just connected as friends and over time the rapport had ripened into a strong familial affection. Either of them would do just about anything for the other.