Brass couldn't look. He turned and walked away. It felt terrible having to do this to his friends. It felt... wrong. But he had to do it. When Warrick had approached him about Gedda that last time, with the information about the mole, it became clear what needed to be done.
Warrick had to die.
But not really. Grissom, Doc Robbins, and the dayshift coroner were the only ones aware of what was going down besides Brass. Grissom had followed McKeen up until he entered the alley. Warrick was to act as if he knew nothing of the undersheriff's involvement with Gedda. Would it be easy? No. But Brass had had faith that Warrick could handle it, and he was right.
His last glimpse of Grissom had been of him covered in the pints upon pints of blood that had been taken from Warrick for the experiments that Grissom liked to perform. It was more than enough to convince anyone that he had died of exsanguination. Maybe they had gone a little overboard, but it had been necessary. Anything they could to make it as realistic as possible to those uninvolved in the scheme.
The plan had been difficult, but wildly effective. The look on Catherine's face was proof enough. But the guilt Brass was feeling over it was killing him. She and Nick looked heartbroken, like nothing was right with the world because Warrick was gone. Or so they thought.
They had to think that. They had to believe that Warrick was dead, or their plans to take Gedda and his entire faction of mob assholes down would all be useless. Warrick was the only witness to see the barber's chair and come back with his life-and balls-intact. The only one to get deep enough into the world of Gedda's murder and debauchery and live to tell the tale.
And dammit, they needed him to tell the tale. God knew his credibility would be argued because of the drugs and the alcohol and everything in his personal life that was going wrong, they would just have to pray that the judge would look past it all to the great CSI that he had once been, and would hopefully be able to be again.
In order for any of that to be possible, he had to get Warrick into Witness Protection. The FBI was on board, waiting in Pahrump to pick up Warrick, but first they had to get him to the morgue and then sneak him out to the crime lab out in Pahrump. It wouldn't be easy, but Doc Robbins was to give David the next night off, and-
He sighed. If everything seemed to be going so right, why the hell did it feel so God damn wrong?