Chapter Two: Got Murder

"You're looking at Chelsea and Kelsey Wight." Doctor Al the coroner informed Nick as he stood over the bodies of his victims.

"So they are twins?" Nick asked as he stared at each of their faces. They were completely identical, right down to the way they styled their hair. "What are the odds of both of them being killed in the same place on the same night?"

"Oh this one," The doc pointed to Chelsea as he limped around her table. "She's been dead around fourteen hours. Her sister Kelsey on the other hand has only been dead around eight or nine hours." He informed Nick.

"Did you find the cause of death?"

"Yes." The doc handed over their files to Nick which was complete with their cause of death along with the coroner's signature. "Chelsea died of a single gunshot wound to the back of the head, close range."

"Execution style?"

The doc nodded. "Exactly. Death would have been instant. Kelsey however died of a double tap chest wound. She may have bleed out for hours; the wounds would have allowed her minimal movement, but caused her a lot of pain."

"So they could have been shot at the same time?"

"Most likely." He nodded. "I sent the bullet from Chelsea's head and the one in Kelsey's chest up to Bobby along with a sample of their blood up to Henry and Wendy. If they took anything, we'll know."

"Okay, thanks." Nick snapped the latex gloves off his wrists, tossing them into a trash can as he head off towards the lab to check with everyone about his evidence he collected.

"Hey Nick!" Warrick shouted, waving to him from the other end of the hall. He ran towards him, giving him a friendly shoulder tap. "Whatcha doing after work man?"

"Nothin'." Nick answered, shaking his head. Warrick laughed, rolling his eyes at him. "What?" Nick asked confused.

"What happened to the old Nick? You used to have a date every night of the week. Now you've gone all cold turkey." He chuckled.

"I didn't have a date every night of the week and I haven't gone cold turkey." Nick corrected, heading off towards Bobby's lab. "Hey do you know an officer Sanders?" Nick asked curiously, turning back towards Warrick before he left.

Warrick raised his eyebrows thinking a moment then shook his head. "This a girl that caught your attention?"

"Somethin' like that." Nick slyly nodded, heading into Bobby's lab. "Hi Bobby, whatcha got for me?"

"Ah Nick." Bobby reached over for the right file. "Your twins were shot with a 357 magnum. The bullets match a bank robbery heist over a decade ago..."

"You managed to find records that old?" Nick asked shocked as he looked through the file.

"Yep, Brass found the file for me since he worked the case. The bullets match exactly. The gun is owned by a Mr James Wight."

"Their father?" Nick asked surprised.

Bobby nodded. "Yep, he was a security guard at the bank back then. He quit shortly after, but his gun mysteriously disappeared from the evidence lock up."

"When did it disappear?" Nick asked. Bobby shrugged his shoulders. "That's helpful." Nick sighed sarcastically.

"You can check for yourself . . . here's the address to the evidence lock up." Nick took the address in his hands, thanking Bobby as he made his way back out the lab.

"So this officer Sanders?" Warrick continued where their conversation left off as he had been waiting outside the lab to talk to Nick again.

"Warrick, I'm kinda busy." Nick muttered, heading off towards his locker.

"C'mon man, you can't start up a conversation like that and expect me to just drop it. Who is this mysterious woman who caught your eye?" Nick glared at Warrick annoyed.

Why did they have to be a woman?

"I'll tell you about it later, okay? I have to get back to work." Nick pushed past Warrick to grab his jacket, heading off towards the garage for his truck.

"Sandy!" Her father shouted startling her. "Help me here!" Sandra looked round to see a young man in her father's arms.

"Oh my God! Who's that?" She asked surprised, rushing over to her father's side to help him lift the young man to the sofa.

"I don't know." He clearly lied to her, but Sandra wasn't about to question him.

Sandra lifted the young man's eyelids to see those vibrant green eyes again. This was the man that had exited her father's lab. He looked pretty banged up though.

"Get me some wet cloths!" Her father ordered. Sandra nodded, rushing off to the bathroom for some cloths, quickly wetting them under the tap then returning to her father.

"Shouldn't we get him to a hospital?" She asked.

"No! No hospitals!" Doctor Nelson barked at his daughter. "We should get him to my bed. Help me up the stairs with him." Sandra followed his orders, taking the young man's feet as they carried him up the stairs, carefully lowering him to her father's unused bed. "Stay with him!" He ordered his daughter, rushing off down the stairs again.

Sandra stripped open the young man's hooded jumper, seeing his body was a bloody and bruised mess. She didn't know much about health care or the human body, but she used her common sense and carefully started to dab the cuts and bruises with her cold cloth.

Doctor Nelson soon returned with what looked like a medical kit. "Sandy! Go get a blanket." Sandra nodded, rushing off down the hall to retrieve a blanket from the linen closet. She ran back, handing it over to her father. He placed it at the foot of the bed gently rolling it towards the young man's waist then fiddled with some equipment in his kit, tending to the young man's injuries, telling Sandra where to apply pressure and wipe the blood for him as he operated on his body.

Doctor Nelson grabbed some tweezers from his kit, digging out a bullet from the young man's chest. Sandra looked at the small metallic object in shock. She thought people only got shot in the movies; she never thought that real live people got shot.

"Sandy, I need you to stitch!" He ordered.

"No, no I can't." She panicked, seeing all the blood. She was used to stitching clothing or curtains, but a human body was something else entirely.

Doctor Nelson ignored her protest, threading a needle then handed it over to his daughter. "Yes you can honey. Just take it slow. Think of it as one of your sowing projects." Sandra sarcastically rolled her eyes at him.

This wasn't some sowing project, this was a live human being.

She carefully lowered the needle to the man's flesh, cautiously threading it through his skin, stitching across the gap to close the wound. Once she was done Doctor Nelson cut the thread, poured some whisky over the wound then carefully placed a bandage over the top.

"Good girl Sandy." He smiled up at her for the first time in years. Her father being proud of her felt warm inside of her, she didn't feel as lonely right now and she knew that she helped her father save that young man's life.

She was surprised at her father's actions too as he wasn't a medical doctor, he was a research scientist for molecules and things. He had explained it all to her when she was younger, but she never that there were humans involved in his experiments.

But the question that still pressed against her mind was; who was he and why would someone want to hurt him so bad?

Sara Sidle stepped over her male DB, looking around the rest of the apartment with her flashlight. The place was completely trashed, definitely signs of a struggle and there appeared to be bullet's in the walls as though there was a moving target in the hallway. One of the bullets clearly hit whoever was over there, from the blood splatter against the wall.

Sara pulled a swab from her vest pocket, swabbing a sample of the blood on the wall then labelling it up in a box for Wendy to look at once she got back to the lab. She carefully photographed everything as she looked around the trashed apartment, waiting for the coroner to arrive. She had been at her crime scene just under an hour and she was still waiting for him to determine her victim's cause of death for her.

From her point of view it looked like he was stabbed repeatedly. The murderer even left the murder weapon beside his victim's body with bloody finger prints all over the handle. Sara bagged up the knife then smiled as she saw David finally arriving.

"Hi Sara, sorry I'm late. Catherine had a triple homicide and Warrick had a suicide cult." He explained, setting his kit up by the body.

"That's okay David. My guess is this knife was the thing that killed him." She said, holding up the bag to him.

"Certainly appears that way." David agreed.

"I didn't touch it." She quickly informed him.

"I know." He sweetly smiled up at her. "I know you better than that. Well, I count... eleven stab wounds. Got defensive wounds on the hands too." David showed her. Sara grabbed her camera to take a snap shot of the victims hands while David searched the DB's pockets, handing over the drivers licence to Sara.

"John Walder, thirty two years old . . . from Texas." She read, handing it over to Vartann as he entered the room behind her. "So have we got any witnesses?" She asked him.

"None of the neighbours heard anything before the gunshots. No one saw anything useful. But one neighbour said there was a 1946 red Ford Sedan parked out front for about ten minutes before they heard the gunshots. They said a man in a black hooded sweatshirt entered Mr Walder's apartment around 10:30pm. Then he got back in the car and left."

"Ford Sedan?" Sara asked curiously. "Not many of those around here now. Did you get plates?"

Vartann shook his head. "No security cameras round here either."

Sara groaned as she looked out the window. "Traffic light cameras though." She pointed across the street. "Coulda picked him up."

"I'll check em out and get em back to the lab." Vartann handed over the drivers licence again, heading out the door.

"I'll get him back to the morgue." David told Sara.

"Okay David, thanks." She smiled up at him.

"I don't know when we'll get round to him though. We've got so many to process today."

"That's okay." She smiled, heading into one of the bedrooms down the hall that looked like it had been turned upside-down as though someone was looking for something in there.

She watched David and the coroners wheeling out the body then noticed a photograph that had fallen under the bed. She picked it up, seeing a younger version of the victim John Walder with another man, who appeared to be his father from the similar looks. She bagged the photo up as potential evidence then collected up everything she had collected into a box, heading down to her car to get her evidence back to the lab and processed.

"Have you noticed anythin' missin' or someone broken in?" Nick asked the security guard as he checked the lock for metal shavings.

"Huh?" The security guard shouted.

"I said, have you noticed anythin' missin' lately. Or broken locks, windows? Anythin' like that?" Nick asked, turning to face him.

"Um..." The old man that could barely see past his nose scratched his head in deep thought. Nick sarcastically rolled his eyes, heading into the storage warehouse, looking around at the stacks of evidence boxes around. The man could barely hear him, let alone see. It was pointless to ask him that question again.

"Where would the box of evidence be for the 1995 Red Rock Bank Robbery be?" Nick asked curiously.

The old man stumbled towards his desk, picking up a clipboard. Nick watched as he set some glasses on his nose, reading down the evidence log list. Nick sighed heavily realising this was going to take a while as the old man was reading the log for 1998 not 1995. He thought he'd help himself out by grabbing another list that actually had 1995 printed on the top, scanning down it until he found the one he was looking for.

According to the record the evidence hadn't been checked out since 1996 when the court case was finally closed. Nick could barely read the signature of the officer who checked it out though. The signature was so smuggled and curly, so it was of little use to him.

Nick walked down the rows of evidence boxes, reaching his destination when he saw the box he was looking for was in fact missing from its spot. He clicked his flashlight on again to look around at the other boxes around the empty spot in case someone had just misplaced it, but the box was well and truly gone for years by the looks of it since there was a thick layer of dust sat where it used to be sat.

He didn't think there was any point in asking the security guard if he knew what happened to it. He probably wouldn't even be able to hear alarms going off let alone noticing a single missing box out of thousands of others in his charge.

Nick had hit another dead end.

Sandra sat up in bed all night thinking about the badly bleeding man in the room beside her. Her father had since returned to his lab, leaving her alone in the house with this mysterious stranger. She didn't know why they couldn't call for an ambulance. She thought that's what you're supposed to do when people are hurt. She saw it on TV shows and movies all the time, but she had never seen an ambulance for real.

She suddenly jumped as she heard something break down the hall.

Sandra threw back the covers, pulling on her dressing gown then slowly made her way down the hall towards the bathroom as she could see the light on inside. She stood outside a moment listening in then heard something fall inside.

Sandra threw the door open, looking at the strange young man lying on the bathroom floor. "Oh my goodness, are you okay?" She rushed to his side, trying to help him to his feet to get him back to bed.

She carefully lowered him to the bed, checking over his wounds again in case he tore any of his stitches open. She rushed back to the bathroom to wet one the cloths, quickly returning to clean the blood from an open wound.

"Where am I?" He choked out.

"You're at my house. You're safe." She whispered softly to him. "What's your name?" She asked, looking down into his vibrant green eyes. He looked at her completely confused.

"I... I..." He started to stammer then looked at her even more confused. "I don't know."

"You don't know your name?" She asked shocked. From her years of watching movies she'd guess he had some kind of amnesia. "Are you in pain?" She grabbed the bottle of pain killers beside the bed. "My dad said to take two of these every four hours."

"Your dad?" The young man asked as he looked around the room then up into Sandra's warm brown eyes. "What's your name?"

"I'm Sandra Nelson." She smiled softly, handing him two of the pills along with the bottle of water. "You can call me Sandy though. How do you feel?"

"Okay I guess." He spluttered as he struggled to swallow the pills. "How did I get here?"

"My dad found you. He didn't say where." She sat on the side of the bed, carefully cleaning his wounds. "So you don't remember anything?"

The young man shook his head. "Why aren't I at a hospital?" He asked.

"My dad said it's best for you to stay with us. I can go get him if you want?" She suggested, but he was already dozing off to sleep.

Sandra carefully rested the blanket over the top of his body, setting the cloth down on the side before she made her way back to her room to finish getting some sleep herself.

She planned to question her father about where this strange young man came from in the morning.

Sara walked through the halls of the lab, making her first pit stop at the DNA lab to drop off her evidence to Wendy. "Hey Wendy." She smiled widely.

"Hi Sara." She smiled back, looking up from her work.

"Can you look at these DNA samples for me?" She handed over the bags of her evidence.

"Sure thing." Wendy nodded. "Just set it anywhere. I'll get round to it as soon as I can."

"Oh yeah I heard about the mass suicide cult. Find out what killed them yet?" Sara asked curiously.

"From the looks of it there's a high amount of ketamine in their systems." She half smiled up at her. "Can you tell Warrick I've got most of his results processed?"

"Sure." Sara nodded, heading out the doors off towards Archie's lab. "Hi Archie. Did you get the tapes Vartann sent over?"

"Yeah, I'm just going through them now. I've got the red Ford Sedan leaving, but the camera's not low enough to pick up the plates." He showered her up on the large monitor.

"Can you pick up the drivers face?" She asked taking a seat beside him.

"I'll see what I can do. It's very grainy." He zoomed in on the drivers face, sharpening the image slightly then blew it up on the big screen, sharpening it again. "Sorry, that's the best you're gonna get. The cameras in that neighbourhood aren't very advanced."

"Funny since most of the crime happens down there." Sara smirked. "Thanks Arch. Let me know if you get anything else." Archie nodded, watching her walking off out the lab.

Sara pulled open the break room door, spotting Grissom doing a crossword puzzle on the sofa and Warrick talking to his wife on the phone, leant against the wall. She poured herself a cup of coffee while she waited for Warrick to finish.

Warrick snapped his phone shut angrily, stuffing it in his pocket. "Trouble?" Grissom asked.

"Nah, Tina's just pissed I'm gonna be working another double is all." Warrick grunted, running his fingers through his hair. "She thinks I'm cheating on her."

"Marriage is hard. Especially with this job." Grissom told him. Warrick nodded then looked over at Sara.

"Wendy's got your results." She informed him.

"Thanks, do you know an officer Sanders?" Warrick asked her curiously.

Sara thought about it a moment then shook her head. "No. Why?"

"Nick asked about her. Think he has a crush." Warrick smirked heading out the breakroom. Sara looked at the wide eyed expression on Grissom's face.

"What's up?" She asked, taking a sip of her coffee, immediately regretting it as it tasted horrible and bitter.

"Officer Sanders is a male." Grissom informed her. "He posted a request to join the CSI team a few months ago."

"You turn him down?" She coughed on the thick tar coffee in her throat.

Grissom shook his head. "I haven't got around to the new recruits files yet. I should really do that." Grissom set his newspaper down, heading off towards his office.

"I'm fine, thanks for asking." She muttered to herself sarcastically as he just walked away while she was choking.

Sara took a seat on the sofa, looking through the newspaper he was looking at just as Nick walked into the breakroom, pouring himself a coffee. "Ugh, I hate this stuff." He moaned, taking a whiff of it.

"I know, tastes like motor oil." Sara chuckled from behind him. "How's it going with your twin's murder?" She asked curiously.

"Terribly." Nick poured the coffee down the sink, searching through the cupboards for anything else to drink. "Their parents were on their way to the station, now they've suddenly disappeared off the face of the planet. The gun used was supposed to be in an evidence lock up, but the box has been missin' for god knows how many years. They don't have security cameras down there and the only security guard can't see past his nose or hear for shit." Nick grunted, leaning against the counter with nothing to drink. "I've hit a dead end."

"What case was the gun used for?" Sara asked to see if she could help while she waited for her results to come through.

"A bank robbery ten years ago. The 1995 Red Rock robbery."

"Never heard of it." She shook her head.

"I wanted to talk to Brass but he's out in the middle of the desert with Catherine and her triple homicide."

"Brass worked the case?"

"Yeah, he was the lead detective." Nick sat down on a nearby chair, trying to think straight. "How can an evidence box disappear and no one notices?"

"Who was the last person to check it out?"

"Detective Bellow, Burrow or Button . . . couldn't read their signature that well."

"Well let's go look." Sara jumped to her feet, dragging Nick off towards the AV lab with her to sit at a spare computer. Nick reluctantly sat down beside her, watching her trying all three versions of the name. "Here we go, Detective Burrow. He worked the case with Brass." Nick peered over her shoulder, looking at the picture of him.

"How come I've never seen him before?"

"Because he moved to Los Angeles in 1997. Oh..." Sara stopped as she saw the details below his badge.

"What?" Nick searched the screen for whatever she was looking at. "Sara what?" He asked again.

"Detective Burrows wife was involved in the 1995 Red Rock bank robbery." She pointed out. "He was dismissed from the case and the unit after they found his wife's body amongst the dead robbers. Apparently he had no idea what she was doing. He's no longer a Detective either, they fired him."

"Do you think he stole the evidence? He might have been tryin' to clear his wife's name or somethin'?" Nick suggested, looking through the details.

"Well it might give him a motive. But why would he want to clear his wife's name if she lost him his job? This guy lived for his job. Look at all these arrests before 1995." Sara pointed out. "Not a single sick day or holiday in the twenty years he worked homicide either."

"You got an address?" Nick asked.

"Yep." Sara pulled up his home address for Los Angeles. "You gonna take a four hour trip to look up on a lead?"

"I'll have to ask Grissom." Nick smirked at her. "Been a while since I been to LA anyway." He climbed to his feet heading for the door.

"Hey what's with you and your crush on some officer Sanders?" She shouted after him.

"Warrick tell you?" He groaned, looking back at her.

"Yeah, but Warrick thinks he's a girl." She snickered as Nick started to blush. "We could check his record too?" She suggested, going to type his name in.

"No, that's okay thank you. And I don't have a crush; I was merely askin' if he knew him." Nick blushed brighter as he walked away. Sara nodded with a smirk typing in Sanders to the police search engine.

"Oh, he's cute." Sara smiled looking at his picture as it came up. Archie raised his eyebrows at her. "What, he is." She smiled wider. "Says he just transferred from LA." Archie climbed off his chair to look over Sara's shoulder at the picture.

"You think he's cute?" Archie questioned her.

"Of course you wouldn't think so." She glared at him sarcastically then shut down the computer. "Let me know if you get anything from those tapes."

"Will do." Archie nodded, returning to his seat. "And I won't tell anyone you were looking at cute cops." He smirked at her as she left.

"I was doing research actually." She pointed out to him.

"Research?" He asked, raising his eyebrows at her.

"Yeah, had to know if he was good enough for Nick." She smirked, heading out the lab.

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First Uploaded May 9th = Re-edited 6th September 2010