Of the characters only Libby and a few assorted goons, thugs and bad guys are my invention. The rest belong to CBS and people who are definitely not me; I'm just borrowing them for a little while. No harm, no foul.

Set in season 6, a day or so after the end of Gum Drops

With many, MANY thank yous to procrastin8or951 for the help and beta'ing

And thank you also to everyone who's read and reviewed and enjoyed - and look out for chapter 3 in roughly a week's time!

Between The Cracks

Libby idly flicked through one of the abandoned magazines in the break room. She felt like a complete idiot on so many levels. When she'd first thought of coming here she'd been so sure it was the right thing to do. Get out of Dallas, away from her mother and to someone who'd always been around for her to talk to, even as far back as when she was five and had lost her favourite Barbie doll. Someone she'd be able to tell the whole story to who wouldn't immediately start making judgements, leaping to conclusions, or, worse, start ordering her around like she was still a child.

And he'd given her the chance. Given her plenty of chances to do it and the best she could manage was the fight at school.

"Some tough Stokes I am," she muttered, glaring at the issue of National Geographic she'd picked up.

Members of the Stokes Family were supposed to be tough. 'Cowboy up,' her dad used to say. They weren't supposed to skirt the truth, skip the story, run away or get suspended from school for fighting.

Maybe she'd been adopted.

"Are you waiting for someone?"

Libby's head jerked upwards in surprise. She realised that she was now being scrutinised by a severe-faced lady who had to be the same sort of age as her uncle. Presumably, Libby guessed, this was one of his coworkers. "Uh, only my uncle," she answered.

"Uncle, huh?" The lady smiled and her expression lightened into something more friendly. "Why didn't Nick arrange some vacation time instead of dragging you to the lab?"

"He, uh, didn't exactly know," Libby admitted.

"Ohh." The lady nodded in a knowing fashion. "I see." She crossed to the break room fridge and extracted a bottle of water. "Do you want a drink while you're waiting?"

"Uh, no - I'm fine. Thank you." Libby hesitated for a moment. "How did you know who my uncle was?"

The lady chuckled. "There's only one other Texan around here so it was a pretty easy guess."

Libby immediately felt stupid. "Oh."

"I'm Sara, by the way," the lady continued. "Are you Libby or Jo?"

"Libby." Now she felt even more stupid. Of course her uncle had talked about family back home. Why wouldn't he have done?

"Well it's nice to meet you." The lady, Sara, smiled again. "Do you want me to find Nick?"

Convulsively, Libby shook her head. "He went to have a meeting with, uh, Catherine?" she finished hesitantly. "I think."

But the answer was rendered moot as her uncle now appeared in the break room doorway, clutching a manila file and looking several shades paler than he had done earlier. Was he in trouble for her being here? Before Libby could formulate a question, Sara said, "You OK, Nick?"

"Fine."

"You don't look fine."

He gestured to the file. "I have Days' grunt work to do."

"Ah." Sara was now frowning. "How come?"

"It's an old case of mine," Nick answered. "Apparently. From Dallas. Can't say I remember it but..." He shrugged.

There was a lie somewhere in that statement, Libby realised. Why would her uncle lie? What was he lying about?

"There's also the McBride case write up," he was continuing. "Since I can't start the Days' stuff until the courier get here, might as well be doing something useful."

Now Libby could see a challenge in Nick's expression, as if he was expecting Sara to contradict him. What was that all about?

"I haven't talked to Catherine yet," was all Sara said.

"And Grissom?"

"I haven't talked to him, either."

"But you're going to."

"Nick, I have to."

There was now a wry smile on his face. "I know. Catherine's in her office right now, if you want to get it over with. Libby?"

Libby started. "Me?"

"C'mon." Nick gestured with the file. "I have work to do and since I'm gonna be tied to the lab tonight, you might as well keep me company."

"Uh, Nick?" Sara shook her head. "She shouldn't be in the lab. Ecklie will kill you."

"Ecklie can bite me," Nick retorted.

Sara snickered. "Your funeral." She headed out of the break room.

"Libby?"

Libby pushed to her feet. "What am I going to do while you're doing whatever it is you're doing?"

"You still read?"

Libby eyed her uncle. "Do fish swim?"

That provoked a smile. "Then reading seems like a good bet."

"You have a book stash?"

"Try the box on the counter."

Libby looked around the room and spotted the box next to the microwave. Crossing the room she said, "So why do you have a book stash here?"

"Gotta do something in your down time - and you can't play Madden every night."

"I guess." Libby peered into the box. "Hey; 'Lord of the Rings'!" She lifted the book out. "Yours?"

"Greg's, but he'll share." Nick grinned. "C'mon; let's get going."

Libby followed Nick out of the break room and into the maze of glass walls and labs that she'd already glimpsed through the break room door. The whole place felt as though wherever you went you were always under the microscope. It gave her the creeps. Did her uncle actually work in one of these glassed-in boxes? How did he stand it?

"In here," Nick directed, cutting across her train of thought.

To Libby's immense relief, she realised she was being directed into a small office off to the side. It was a dingy space with only a single fluorescent strip to light it, but all the walls were solid affording the room - if it could be called that - a sense of cramped privacy. And it was cramped. Somehow they had managed to squeeze three desks into a room that was barely big enough for one and each desk groaned under the weight of a massive and outdated desktop computer.

"Your office?" she asked.

"Not specifically," Nick replied. "Only supervisors actually have their own offices. Us peons have to make do with a couple of glorified closets." He smiled and waved her towards a stool standing in the corner. "Take a seat." He flipped the power switch of the nearest PC and slid into the seat. "Make yourself comfortable. We're gonna be here for a while."

Libby did as she was told, but eyed the computer curiously. "Isn't that a little--"

"Old? Slow? Antiquated?" Nick grinned.

"Guess I thought it'd be more high-tech."

"The labs are," said Nick. "And the other closet has computers from this side of the millennium. It's just the other one has a huge window wall so people know you're in there and they figure they can come in and bug the crap out of you. Besides," he added, "you don't need a whole lot of memory to run a word processor."

Libby grinned. "Gotcha."

She settled against the wall and began to read, careful not to dislodge the bookmark that she guessed the book's owner had left in place. A few moments later, she became distantly aware of the sound of typing. She smiled. It didn't sound as if her uncle had got any better at typing since the last time she'd watched him work, if the way the backspace key kept being thumped was anything to go by. For a moment, she debated calling him on it. Then she remembered that she wasn't really supposed to be here at all and decided that keeping as quiet and invisible as possible would be the best option.

Time passed. At some point, Libby thought she heard the sound of a printer whirring, but she didn't bother to look up to confirm it. She did look up, briefly, when she heard Nick's chair creak, but only to confirm she didn't have to move. On seeing that he wasn't going anywhere - was, in fact, studying the contents of the manila file - she returned to the book and continued to read, but she'd only got another paragraph further when she heard someone knock on the open office door.

Looking up, her first impression of the visitor was that he couldn't possibly be one of her uncle's colleagues - he looked far too young and he seemed to lack the serious edge that both her uncle and Sara had. That impression was compounded by his first words: "Book thief!" He was trying to sound annoyed but the corners of his mouth kept twitching.

Libby wasn't entirely sure how to respond. "Uh, sorry?" she offered.

He gave up the unequal struggle and smiled. "It's okay - Sara said you were hanging out at the lab tonight. I'm Greg, by the way."

"You're also," said Nick not looking up from his file, "a pain in my rear."

Greg mimed being shot in the chest. Libby giggled. "Just for that, I won't tell you there's fresh coffee in the break room and doughnuts."

Libby watched as her uncle looked up. "Why are there doughnuts in the break room?"

"Warrick brought them," said Greg. "But I didn't tell you they were there, so all the more for me!"

Nick rolled his eyes. "Was there something you actually wanted? Or did you just come along here to torment me?"

"Tormenting has its possibilities, but no. Catherine sent me to find you, actually. She said something about the courier bringing the files you wanted."

"I didn't want them, I've just got stuck with them."

To judge by the way Greg's expression contorted into confusion, the remark had made no more sense to him than it did to Libby. "Nick?"

Nick just shook his head. "It's a long story, Greggo." He rolled his chair backwards and stood up. "Guess I'd better go claim them. Libby, do you want a doughnut or a cup of coffee?"

"I'm fine, thanks," Libby answered.

"If you're sure." He started for the door then presumably realised that Greg hadn't moved. "Was there something else, Greg?"

"Well, if you're not too busy reading case files you don't want, I have a couple of hair samples I could use some help with."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, they're from a 406 I'm working on. I'd kick them to trace but Hodges is backed up because the Days trace guy's out with flu."

"You analyse hair?" said Libby, wrinkling her nose. "Gross."

"If you think that's gross--" Greg began, only to catch the glare Nick was giving him. "Never mind. Don't want to find myself in ballistics as the target. Shutting up now."

Libby giggled.

Nick rolled his eyes. "Libby, I'll be back in a minute with those other files. Greg, come find me in about half an hour and I'll take a look at the samples for you - can't do it any sooner than that. I need to check exactly what Dallas sent across first. If I need them to send anything else, I need to get the request in sooner rather than later."

Greg nodded. "Thanks, man."

Libby watched as they both departed and picked up the book again. Once again, however, she'd got no more than a paragraph further before she was interrupted again. This time, it was her uncle returning, carrying a records box presumably full of files. What surprised her was the fact that Sara was following him, also carrying a records box. Libby blinked.

"That's a lot of files," Libby observed.

"It was a big investigation," said Nick, dumping his box on one of the other desks.

"Apparently," said Sara dryly as she put her box down as well. "This big and you don't really remember it?"

"Eight years ago, Sar. Been a lot of stuff happen since then."

Libby blinked at the time scale. Eight years would put this right around the time her uncle left Dallas and hadn't he said it was some kind of big case that pushed him into finally leaving Texas?

"Right," said Sara with sarcasm. She clearly wasn't buying her uncle's explanation. "You want me to go bring the other box while you start refreshing your memory?"

"Please." He pulled a box cutter from his pocket and started cutting the tape securing the first box's lid.

Libby hesitated for a moment, knowing it was very much none of her business. "Uncle Nicky?"

"What is it, Libby?" he asked, repeating the effort on the second box.

"Is this the case you were talking about?"

He looked up. "What?"

"The reason you left Texas," Libby clarified. "Is this the one?"

Nick sighed. "Yeah."

Libby wasn't sure what, if anything, she could say in response. Then sparing her the need to reply, Sara returned, armed with a third box of files.

"Thanks, Sar," said Nick, lifting the first of the files out of the box.

"You know," Sara began, "the layout room's available - you'd have more room in there."

"And what happens if a case comes in? Last time I checked, case reviews don't take precedence over active cases." Nick shook his head. "Besides, working in here means I don't get interrupted every five minutes."

"Sara?"

The voice sounded from somewhere outside the office. "In here, Warrick," Sara answered.

A second later and a tall black man appeared in the doorway, a slip of paper clutched in his hand. "419 at the Palms, with Cavaliere." he said. Then he took in the boxes. "Esh - that's a lotta files."

"And they won't go through themselves," said Nick with a shrug. "You two had better not keep Cavaliere waiting."

"Maybe it's just as well you're not going out to this one," Sara offered.

Libby watched as her uncle smiled wryly. "Pretty sure PD arranges it that way."

Warrick snorted and shook his head. "C'mon; better leave the man to his files or else he'll still be here two days from now."

Nick flipped open the file he was holding. "It's called speed reading, 'Rick."

To Libby's eyes, Warrick looked dubious, but he made no further comment. Instead he departed, Sara close on his heels.

"Do you really have to read all these files?" Libby asked.

"Yeah." He rubbed a hand over his face. "And before I can get started on that, I need to get them into some sort of order. This one," and he shut the file he was holding, "comes from right in the middle of the damn case."

Libby winced. "Can I help?"

"I appreciate the offer, but no." He sighed. "Maybe Sara was right about the layout room." He dumped the file back into the open box. "Libby, you think you can find the break room again? You'd be better off not hanging on in here, just in case someone else wants the room."

"Sure." Libby slid off the stool and started towards the door, only to be halted as Catherine entered. To Libby's eyes, the older woman looked annoyed.

"Cath - what's up?" Apparently her uncle thought so too.

"Good news and bad news," Catherine answered. "The good news is, I've found you a solution for Libby so she doesn't have to be here all week."

Libby blinked. "Huh?"

"Which is?"

"Well," said Catherine acerbically, "that would be the bad news. I need a babysitter from seven through to one for the rest of this week."

"A babysitter?" Libby echoed.

"How come?" Nick asked.

"I'll spare you the family drama," said Catherine with a shake of her head. "The short form is that Lindsey was supposed to be staying with my sister this week; that's not going to happen now and my mom has plans every evening because she thought Lindsey was going to be at my sister's."

It was an explanation that meant nothing to Libby though, to judge from the way he winced, her uncle understood it completely. "So you were wondering if Libby could help out?"

"Pretty much," Catherine admitted.

"You'll have to ask her," said Nick, picking up one of the boxes. "I've got no objections."

Libby stared at him in stunned silence as he squeezed by Catherine and out of the door.

"You look surprised," said Catherine.

"He told me I couldn't stay at his place on my own, but I can babysit for you?" Libby shook his head. "That doesn't make sense."

"Actually, it kinda does. I live a lot closer to the lab so if there is any trouble, it's a lot easier to fix. And you wouldn't be alone the whole night. So how about it?" Catherine was continuing. "I have cable, I have internet; Lindsey's thirteen so she doesn't need much babysitting; I can pay you the going rate-- In fact," she added as Nick returned, presumably to grab the next box of files, "why don't you guys come over for dinner tomorrow evening Nick? Lindsey was complaining she hasn't seen much of you recently; either you or Warrick actually, but mostly you. Something about math homework?"

Nick hefted the next box and chuckled. "Summer school. She was having some trouble with quadratic equations. I just talked her through them is all." He started for the door. "Dinner sounds good, though. Libby? What do you think?"

"Uh, sure - why not?" Libby felt a little dazed by the whole conversation.

"Great!"

"I need to get on with this," said Nick gesturing with the box. "Why don't you two fix the details - whatever you come up with is fine by me." And he headed out of the room before Libby could say a word.

"Let's go to my office," Catherine suggested.

Still feeling dazed, Libby shrugged. "Sure."

This wasn't at all what she imagined would happen, but, as she followed Catherine through the lab to the older woman's office, Libby decided that babysitting wouldn't be so bad. Granted, it wasn't really a way to help her uncle out, but maybe helping his coworker would be almost as good - and it would, she reflected, beat the idea of trying to be invisible in a lab full of glass boxes.

Dumping the final box of files onto the layout table, Nick surveyed his evening's work. On the face of it, it was simple: sort the files into date order, go through them and pull out all the bits that would likely help with the John Doe that Dayshift had pulled out of Lake Mead. The problem was the overwhelming amount of data he was going to have to sift through. Not that Sara had really believed him, but he had forgotten the scope of the investigation. And then there was the question of what else Dallas had seen fit to send. Had they been thorough and included all the IAB stuff and what had followed that, or had they stuck to the files that directly related to the shootings? He half hoped for the latter, because that would involve fewer difficult explanations. At the same time, though, he knew that the shootings only told half the story.

"Well, it ain't gonna sort itself," he muttered, reaching out to lift the box lids. "Question is, where to start?"

A quick glance into the boxes gave him his answer. The third box only had a handful of files in. Beginning with that would at least let him feel like he'd made quick progress. Unfortunately, as he lifted out the top file, its contents spilled out across the table; a welter of photographs and pages. Whoever had last looked at the file clearly hadn't put it back together properly.

"Well that just figures," he muttered. "Like I didn't have enough work to do just reading the damn things, I gotta fix 'em too?"

With a shake of his head, he started to pull the loose sheets back together. At first, the words on the pages meant nothing. A case report without any context. There was no autopsy report, which did puzzle him; from what he remembered, there had been an awful lot of bodies, so a case file without an autopsy report struck him as odd. The crime scene sketch was even more confusing. Just an empty room, the sketch suggested. Nothing present save a chair, some rope, a pipe and blood - but not a pool of it; just spatter. Cast off. That didn't fit with any of his memories of the case. All the vics had been shot.

What the hell was this?

But the answer came to him a moment later as he flipped over one of the spilled photographs. It had been taken in an ER cubical and documented bruising on someone's arm. The swelling suggested the arm was probably broken. It could have been anyone's arm, but Nick knew it wasn't. This was the one part of the case he'd actively tried to forget. It was also the one part of the case that was seldom that far from his thoughts. Only the advent of Walter Gordon had been able to chase it from the rotation of regular nightmares.

This was his file.

His screw up.

That was why there was no autopsy report; there'd been no body. That was why he didn't recognise the sketch - he hadn't been the rookie drafting it.

Hastily he started scrabbling the rest of the pages back together, not caring that they were now out of sequence. The last thing he wanted was for someone to see any of this stuff and catch his name somewhere or see one of the more identifiable photos. Not until he was ready - or at least a little more prepared for it. Part of him was sorely tempted to just bury the whole file at the bottom of one of the boxes and not even mention the events it documented because he'd had enough of being the favourite topic of conversation in the lab, but that wouldn't work out. True, this part of the case had very little to do with the shootings, which was really all they were interested in, but it did say a great deal about the probable reasons why two out of the three shooters were still out there - and that was something that Grissom, at least, would want to know.

He also owed it to Shelley not to leave his friends with IAB's impressions of her - and if his file was here, that meant her file and all the IAB findings would be, too.

Nick groaned softly and reached for the last photo. He didn't need to see it. Didn't need to look because he was reasonably sure it was just going to be another of those ER photos. He flipped it over anyway, a morbid sense of curiosity taking control. It was another anonymous shot, showing a beaten and battered torso. There didn't seem to be a square inch of skin that wasn't marred by bruising and even knowing the outcome, Nick couldn't quite believe the photo had been documenting a still-breathing human being. He hadn't realised just how bad it had looked.

"That had to hurt."

Catherine's voice startled him from his thoughts. He hadn't heard her come into the layout room. Guiltily, he wondered how long she'd been there and how long he'd apparently been ignoring her.

"I thought this was a shooting, though," Catherine was continuing. "That looks like someone took a baseball bat to the ribcage."

"It is and it wasn't a bat," Nick replied, shuffling the photo into the file and closing it. "It was a scaffold pipe."

"I suppose that makes all the difference," said Catherine dryly. "What does this have to do with the shooting?"

"It's shootings. Plural. Big case. The investigation ran for more than a year and along the way, there were other people who got caught up in it. People who didn't get shot."

"That level of damage, I'd imagine whoever that was probably wished he had been shot."

Nick smiled faintly. "I think his family was kinda glad he wasn't; a couple of weeks in hospital and he got to go home."

Now Catherine looked disturbed. "Someone survived that?"

"Uh-huh."

"What people do to one another." She shook her head. "Anyway. I was wondering if you needed a hand with this. I don't think the Days supervisor thought there were going to be this many files."

Nick snorted. "No. Don't suppose she did. Come for a gun from an eight or nine year old shooting in Dallas, stay for the drug trafficking, maiming and corruption."

"You do remember the case."

It was a statement, but one Nick felt compelled to answer: "I do now."

Catherine looked dubious. "Right."

"It was eight years ago when everything wrapped up. It was probably nearer ten years ago when the investigation first started. I don't know about you, but I've been involved with a lot of cases since then. I don't think any of them were as long as this was, but plenty have been just as big. And I was just a CSI 1 on this, so it wasn't even really my case."

She still looked dubious, but all she said was, "So could you use a hand?"

"Grissom didn't leave you snowed with paperwork, then?"

Catherine snorted. "Nicky, you've been out of here a week. Not even Grissom leaves a paperwork mountain that big."

"If you're really that bored." Nick shoved one of the boxes across the table in her direction. "Here. Dig in."

"And do what?"

It was Nick's turn to snort. "Figure out what the hell the records clerks in Dallas have been smoking? Far as I can tell, they've sent every file they have that's even half way related to this case, but they've just dumped them into boxes any old how. This one," he added, tapping the file the photograph had come from, "is from way, way into the investigation - it's dated 'most two months before I left Dallas and came here. Next one in the box," and he pulled the next file out, "is a year older. One after that fits somewhere between the two."

"It was a rush job," Catherine suggested.

"And if the files are stored in order, even a rush job wouldn't be this bad."

They worked together in silence for a while, gradually emptying the boxes of files and slowly shuffling them into date order. Opting to keep the incriminating file under his own control, Nick started with the newest files, sending the older ones to Catherine. In turn, she sent the ones that came toward the end of the case across to him. It seemed to be working reasonably well, too, until Catherine suddenly said, "Y'know, you never say much about working in Dallas."

"Not much to say. It's not as busy as this place; the cases sure didn't get as weird as they do round here. Kind of average, I guess."

"But you must have had friends there, right?"

"A few. Hey, is that the last file?" Nick asked, hoping to try and deflect Catherine's line of questions.

"Just got a couple more, and don't change the subject," she retorted, sliding one of the two files across to him.

"It's a boring subject," he shot back. "And if we're done sorting the files, we - or I - need to get on with figuring out what's gonna be relevant and what's just side issues."

"Don't want to talk about it, huh?"

"Nothing to talk about." Nick shook his head. "Hell, at least half the time I worked there I was a lab rat anyway."

"And you don't think the adventures of Nick Stokes, Ace Lab Rat, are worth sharing?" Greg asked from the layout room doorway.

Nick snorted. "Unless you really want to hear about getting stiffed with sorting lint from thirty vacuums, or having to process five hundred or so different cat hair samples?"

"Thirty vacuums?" Catherine winced. "Someone sure didn't like you too much."

"More like they thought it was funny to give the Judge's son all the shit." Nick shrugged. "Greggo, you still need me to look at those hair samples?"

"I already know it's not cat hair, if that makes it any better," Greg offered.

"Nah, it's cool."

At that moment, Catherine's pager began bleeping. With an annoyed frown, she peered at the message. "It's Brass; we have another 419. Greg, go grab your kit, we'll take it."

"Guess that means I'm sticking with the files, then," said Nick.

"Sorry." Catherine didn't sound the slightest bit apologetic as she led Greg out of the layout room.

"The hairs are on the scope, if you do get a chance to look," Greg called over his shoulder.

Nick smiled and shook his head. "Will do." He looked back at the two stacks of files he and Catherine had put together and sighed. "Gonna be a long night."

To be continued...