The air in Ecklie's office was considerably less comfortable than Nick had thought it would be. Earlier, it had sounded like the whole interview was just a formality, and not a major investigation into his integrity. But Mr. Worthinton's partner was one of the tightest hard-asses Nick could remember seeing in a long time. Even when IA were involved in some more serious things...
"Okay, Mr. Stokes," began the aforementioned hard-ass. "I see you've been down this path a few times before. You must know how the drill works by now."
"Uh huh." Nick nodded.
"Then you probably know what my first question is going to be," continued hard-ass, eyes stoically staring at the wall. "Describe the event."
Nick began with the locker room. Talked about Sara, and seeing her after a hard day... Then following her out into the dark parking lot, with the wedding ring in his hand... And then, finally, seeing her in her car, with the guy, and the gun.
"I couldn't see who it was in the back seat," he explained. "I just could see the gun. I didn't think about it much beyond that."
Mr. Worthinton played the role of the scriber. He scribbled furiously on the paper in front of him, and looked up occasionally as if to show polite interest. Which, to Nick, seemed incredibly unfitting for the circumstance...
"But did you fire right away, Mr. Stokes, that is the question," pressed hard-ass.
Nick nodded his head immediately. The memory was a little blurry, but he was certain there hadn't been a delay. Other than making sure he was aiming at the gunman, and not Sara...
"Yes. As soon as I knew it was him I was aiming at..."
"'He', Mr. Stokes? I thought you couldn't see who it was."
"I couldn't. But I could hear some distinct male shouting, at random intervals. Kind of a smooth sounding voice, actually..."
"That's not how I would describe most men's voices, Mr. Stokes," challenged hard-ass.
Unhindered by the accusation, Nick flicked his eyebrows up. "If you'd heard this one, you would have. He was stressed, but distinctly male."
In the corner of Nick's eye, Worthinton shrugged. Nick bit down on his lip to keep them from turning up; a smile would look bad in an investigation.
Hard-ass straightened up, and adjusted his tie. "And after the event, your sheriff tells me you changed your shirt and came here to the interrogation room?"
"That's correct."
"I see. And then you went out with Ms. Sidle?"
Nick's torso flinched a little. "'Went out'? We had a dinner, yeah. Long day, you know..."
Hard-ass lifted his eyebrows slowly. "I do. But unfortunately, I'm going to need to know about it. If I'm to do my job properly, I need to know that nothing unscrupulous took place afterwards."
Nick folded his arms, and blinked confusedly at the wall behind an amused-looking Ecklie. "You want to know if we slept together," he skipped right to the point.
"That would hardly be unscrupulous, Mr. Stokes," rebutted hard-ass. "Questionable, but not criminal."
"'Questionable'..." Nick repeated.
"What I need to know is if you and Ms. Sidle were in conspiracy with anyone."
Nick did a double take. "What...?"
Then Ecklie, too, appeared confused.
"We've been encountering this event, or others similar to it, in several crime labs, recently," clarified Worthinton. "We have reports of shootings targeting law enforcement members of all kinds."
"What's conspiratorial about that?" spoke up Ecklie. "Risk is almost a perk of law enforcement."
"If you saw the numbers of incidents so close together, Sheriff Ecklie, you would understand," answered hard-ass. "It's like the worst possible outcome you can imagine for a wild drug party full of dumb teenagers."
Perhaps not caring for his partner's assessment of the situation, Worthinton shot a look his way before cutting back in. "All we're saying is we need to cover our options. We hadn't originally intended for all this. We just saw that this was our 100,000th case in the last two weeks. And even for law enforcement, that's uncommon."
"So what do you say, Mr. Stokes?" pressed hard-ass. "Investigative jail time, or a look into your private life?"
Nick squeezed his fist in his other hand behind the desk. But could not imagine skipping out on the team, then... He looked up at the smug-looking big suit, and nodded.
"What do you need from me, then?"
Madame Challal looked slightly stunned when Morgan presented her with the warrant. She gripped its edges with both hands almost hard enough to tear it. "He was serious?!" she shrieked. "He is really going to dig through my business in search of clues about a murder?! Of an insignificant, old woman whom I didn't even know?!"
Morgan opened her mouth to speak, but Sara got to it first. "Ms. Challal–"
"–Madame," corrected the shallowly-distressed woman.
Sara narrowed her eyes. "Every life is valuable. And rather you were involved in this or not, there is at least one base that needs to be covered, here. Now get out of the way, or the officer will be carrying out the part of the warrant nobody wants to see."
Mitchell crossed his arms, and looked down at her over an imaginary pair of glasses. Madame Challal's eyes sprinted between him, and Sara and Morgan several times before she flung the warrant back at them, and stormed away from the desk.
"Take them anywhere they ask," she barked at the girl she was leaving by the desk.
Sara sighed, and brushed her fingers through her hair. An incident was never pretty... and she just hadn't been in the mood, either way. "Alright, then: let's get into the vault."
The small-looking young woman looked nervously between them, and nodded at twice the necessary speed before motioning for them to follow her. Which they did, down a couple of twisting hallways from the front to the back, and then up some stairs. The kind of stairs, Sara noted, that were merely steel platforms, shaped up into steps and walkways, with railings on them. And as they went, she spotted a few signs hanging on the walls, which she figured mostly served as directories for the customers. Because there were none on the steel stairs and decks. Which, she uncomfortably realized, were exposed to all of the surroundings...
"We, uh... we have several vaults, actually," the nervous desk worker squeaked. "Wer-were you looking for any particular one?"
Morgan held the bag with the watch out to her. "Do you know where we could examine the kind of jewelry used to make the hands on the clock?"
Small hands gave the evidence bag a little turn. Sara could feel Morgan glance at her... but had learned from Grissom that the most convenient evidence was usually found on the faces of the people they encountered in their investigations... And the young girl's was very puzzled, for the most part.
Until, suddenly, it was not. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Oh, my, that's old... That may have been there back when my grandmother worked here! This way..."
There was a lot of twisting and turning to get to the vaults. Frankly, Sara wondered if this was really the best way to design a building for a business like this; if those fairly-insecure-feeling stairs ever gave in, then that would cut off their only access to the vaults.
And the one they were looking for, it happened, was close to the last one in the top hallway. Sara counted only four or maybe five more behind it before reaching the very back wall... "Is this the original layout?" she inquired.
"I believe so," the girl replied, sounding more bold. "I've got some pretty old pictures of this place at home. I've never seen anything in it I didn't recognize, or any major changes besides the decoration."
Morgan took a deep breath as the vault door swung open. "It smells musty in here."
Sara mimicked her... but felt quite differently about the smell that entered her nostrils. "It does not," she argued. "It smells... like blood."
She reached for her flashlight, and clicked it on before it was out of her vest pocket.
"Oh! Let me help," offered the girl by the door.
She flicked on a large, industrial light switch, and suddenly the room was lit up. Enough so that Sara squinted against the shine from all the jewelry on the shelves.
But as her eyes began to adjust, she saw that there was, indeed, blood. Blood... but nothing else. She sighed, and leaned down on her knees for a second or two.
"Oh, great..." remarked the girl, with a voice that suddenly sounded a little scared and meek again. "Madame Challal is going to be angry..."
But Sara didn't care about that. And guessing from Morgan's very next sentence, neither did she. "So is Nick..."
But they didn't have to discover how Nick felt for a while. It was almost an hour before he showed up, looking quite disgruntled and put off with the world. When he came in, there was a surprisingly bright light streaming in through the large window behind him. He looked quite determined.
Sara rose to her feet from the pile of scattered rings she was squatted down by. "Hey," she greeted. "How did it go?"
His shoulders slumped a little. "Not badly, for me."
She waited for him to continue. But when he didn't, she motioned for more information behind a tired sigh.
Instead of returning the agitation in kind, like she might have expected given the nature of things, he answered through a laugh. "They decided I wasn't conspiring with you, or anyone else that may have been faking an attempt on your life. I guess they saw us at the restaurant on the security footage they pulled. From the cafe we were in... They saw you there, too, Morgan."
She made a "YES!" gesture with her arm, silently, and took another photograph.
"They decided we weren't putting the whole thing on?" rephrased Sara, a frown of puzzlement on her face. "What, they saw an indicator on our records, or something?"
"Not that I know of," replied Nick. "But they've had a large number of shootings on law enforcement, lately."
Sara scratched her head. "Why are we surprised by that? The risk of it is like a given for the job. You just kind of hope it isn't you when you sign up for it."
Nick's voice dropped, along with his eyes. "Yeah. Been there..."
He fell quiet for a moment, and she gave his arm a hard pat. He looked up from his feet, and directed his gaze back at her.
"Anyway... they have to submit my case to the board, and all that. But they've decided I'm in good standing."
Sara started to smile. But then something else occurred to her... "What about the missing evidence?"
Nick shrugged. "They never brought it up. I did give the rest of my report to Ecklie, but he was preoccupied with the details on the big 'conspiracy', I guess."
Sara could not look away from him. While he talked, she felt that weakness come over her again. It was a strange feeling. One she didn't remember having much in her life... but something she had never quite been able chase away, or ignore, despite her best efforts, at times... The thing that wanted nothing more than to know he wasn't going anywhere. That his automatic reaction to save her life wasn't going to cut her down another team member.
"I'm sure he'll show it to the IA, when his conscious catches up," Nick was saying. "He was a little iffy on them when they were questioning me, but we all know Ecklie. He'll– Umph!"
As his voice had faded back into audibility, she had thrown herself against him like a paper blowing in the wind. He was much bigger than he appeared when she was back a distance from him. He wasn't that much taller... Close enough to her height that she felt like she could squeeze the life out of him, which she was really trying to do. But higher enough that she felt like could sink into him for a moment, as well.
His chest vibrated a little with his chuckle. "It's okay, Sara." And he gave the top of her head a little bit of a brush with his palm, the other arm kindly returning her sudden embrace.
"Yes. Well..." She stepped back, and rubbed her weary eyes. "Anyway... Here's what we've got."
She caught the slightest edge of approval rolling off of him before she turned to show him their crime scene. He followed her to their messy and inefficient setup, and knelt down by her to look at what they had.
"We found the blood... well, everywhere," explained Morgan. "I took a couple of samples here, and Sara took one from over there."
"I also found some fingerprints," Sara chimed in. "They weren't in the blood, or on the light switch, or anything straightforward like that."
"Of course not," Nick added.
She grinned, and continued through a single laugh. "No, we couldn't have that, right?
They were on the window sill at the back. Way up there..."
She pointed behind her, and his eyes widened just a bit. "Wow..." was all he commented with.
"Yep. There's a window in here," said Morgan. "Which kind of defeats the vault purpose–"
"But here's the tricky thing," Sara interrupted. "There's no broken glass, or anything like that. So, if someone was trying to break in here, what were they after?"
Nick stood up, hands gripping his hips. "Good question. Why don't I get a look? Where's the ladder you used?"
"'Ladder'? No way," she responded. "I used a lift. It's parked right out the door."
And, true to his word, Nick went to get the lift. But he wasn't as good with it as she imagined he might have been with a ladder. He steered it rather inexpertly, bumping into one of the shelves and knocking a few of the products on it off. Sara and Morgan laughed at it while they picked it up, but he didn't seem very thrilled. Instead, he navigated it to the window in silence... where he didn't seem able to make lifting the platform look comedic.
"You could have just asked me," Sara called playfully.
"Mmm," he kind of grunted back.
She knew, it felt, why he had gone stoic, right away. But rather than duck behind that dark anticipation, she approached the lift to see if she could help some other way. That he might appreciate, that was...
But he wasn't up there two minutes before his voice reached her ears again, ringing with a slight edge of competitive triumph. "I think I did find something you missed."
She glared at her feet, and inhaled slowly. "Yeah?" she let out on the exhale.
"Yeah. Did you notice the large chips in the wall on the outside?"
She looked up from her suddenly-weary position, with genuine curiosity. "What?"
"The chips in the brick on the outside... Did you see it?"
She paused... bade goodbye to a little bit of her pride... and shook her head. "That's a negative."
The lift began to descend, bringing her suddenly-stiff coworker with it. "Well... I wish I hadn't, either. 'Cause now I've got to climb around out there."
"I can do it," she said, simply.
"No, thanks. I've got it. Did you wanna bring the lift, though?"
That's what she thought. She waved a hand dismissively, and he left. And as she watched him – blown away by his hypocritical accusations of mood swings – she thought she might just abandon any pretense of service, from that point on.