A/N: Okay, so I posted 3 chapters this week. Please read chapters 7 and 8 first. Thanks again for reading.
Chapter 9:
When Ellie had called him, Brass had been stunned. He'd hoped one day that she'd call but hadn't expected it to be so soon since leaving Los Angeles. She told him that she'd be in Las Vegas and wanted to talk, and since he'd gone through a lot over the last few months, he decided to take a break from work to spend time with his daughter. So, he put in for a vacation. That would give him time to deal with his daughter, and himself, without having to also deal with work.
It was hard to ignore the looks at times. Hard to breathe during others. Then there were the times he ached for a drink to stop the ache in his body and head. He'd killed a cop. Though an accident, he'd been responsible. There was no amount of forgiveness from the widow that could ever make it right inside.
He hadn't told anyone that he almost put in his walking papers. He was still thinking about it, and maybe, after taking this time off to try to reconnect with Ellie, he might figure out how to move on, how to heal. Or, he could always give up, say goodbye to it all, and walk away for good.
Tonight, he'd taken Ellie to dinner and then she asked him to drive her somewhere. It was a three-story building off Charleston Avenue. It had once been an office building but now was repurposed as a rec center.
"What's going on here?" he asked as he parked the car and eyed the beige-ish grey building.
"I have a NA meeting."
He looked over at her as she got out. He followed. "I told you that when you were ready I'll get you into Dream Harbour Rehabilitation—"
"I'm not going to Dream Harbour."
"You need rehab–"
"I'm doing okay with this," she said as she pointed to the recreational building. "They host NA meetings every—"
"Twice a week." Brass regarded a group of men hanging out on the corner. They looked like dealers.
Ellie moved a loose hair out of her face and he saw her brown eyes sparkle in the neon lights of Las Vegas. "What'd you know about it?"
"I know that it's a start," he said. There wasn't anything he could do for her. Thus was up to her and her own pace. "I'm proud of you for…taking the first step. Do you want me to wait here?"
"You don't have to. I can take a taxi back."
She had booked a hotel room but he offered his guest room. It came with rules and stipulations, like no drugs in his house, or men. It was an offer that he didn't think she'd take him up on, but once again she surprised him by agreeing. He figured she was just trying to save money because he doubted it was his amazing hospitality.
"Ellie, maybe…I can stay. Sit with you—" His cell phone rang. He saw it was the Undersheriff. "I have to take this."
Ellie rolled her eyes and stepped away to go into the building.
He watched as she walked inside as he put the phone to his ear. "This is Brass." Through the glass, he saw her walk by the windows to a staircase and went down.
"Jim. McKeen."
"What can I do for you?"
"I need you back on duty."
He shook his head as he glanced around the busy street. The cars going by, the dealers set up on the corner to try to win back some business once the NA meeting broke, and said, "I took a leave of absence for a reason—"
"We've got two killers on our hands and the homicide Captain on leave. Brass, this is a curiosity call. The Sheriff will be next, and then the Mayor. You don't want it to go any higher than that, because it won't. You can either come back in voluntarily, or you'll have your leave—"
"I get it. I'll…be in as soon as I can."
"Your first order of business is to get with the lead detective on the case, Nowlins, and to set up a task force. It'll need to be 'round the clock, twenty-four seven. Is that clear?"
"I've done this before. I know the drill," he said as he resisted to say something else. McKeen was getting on his nerves. He didn't like being micromanaged.
"I expect an updated report in the morning."
"Will do." Brass ended the call, took one last look at the rec center, and got back into his car.
After a couple hours of sleep in Heather's guest room, Gil was right back at the lab. There wasn't anywhere else he needed nor wanted to be, and with Sara gone it was hard being home in that silence. He knew best how his mind worked, how it could mess with him in the dark, and hearing her voice in the empty quiet had reminded him how dangerous his mind could be at times.
He didn't even understand why it was happening. It wasn't like they hadn't been apart from each other before. It had only been a week since she left. He'd been away at conferences for longer than that and never hallucinated hearing Sara's voice, or felt her in his empty hotel room. His only reasoning was his exhaustion, along with this serial case. It was affecting more than he wanted to admit. It was like a hand had reached up out of the dark void and was slowly pulling him down into it. Then during the descent he got stuck.
And that's how he felt walking through the lab. Stuck halfway down into the dark with all his thoughts and dreams and fantasies escaping up into the light, into reality. He's always been able to project what was going on inside his mind into the real world around him in order to understand the suspects he was catching and the evidence he was interpreting to understand the truth.
His head was in a constant sway of thoughts back-and-forth. He'd told Sara once that it was hard to put into words how he went from one thought to the next. It was like a pinball bouncing around making connections with no straight line of logic to explain the how or why. Instead of going all the way into the dark void to create a dream or to find a memory, it was just there, on the outside and right in front of his eyes as if he was seeing it for real.
Had it been because he'd finally accepted what it was he could do? Was it because he'd let his shadow out and allowed it to breathe air? Was it both? All he knew was that it was getting worse. He knew that because walking along next to him down the hallway to his office was an imaginary German Shepherd. He didn't try to imagine the dog there, but there it was. He remembered first seeing the dog during the Lecter case. It'd appeared in the hallway of the lab as he worked out the significance of the lamb to Clarice Starling.
The dog was a manifestation of his mind on the hunt for two possible serial killers. He figured it represented who he was, when he wasn't the Dragon. He'd never stop being that guy, in the middle of the road, trying to save an innocent helpless animal, just as he'd never stopped being the guy trying to bring closure to victims' families.
Stopping in front of the conference room, he saw his team already gathered inside, pouring over the newly processed evidence. On the walls were all the photos they had taken at the multiple crime scenes along with the ones from the murders they hadn't worked on. He would also always be the guy that got into the mind of a killer, a monster, in order to stop it.
It felt as if everything he was on the inside had been twisted and bent all up like puzzle pieces to fit together. This was the end result. A constant swaying in his head, figments of his imagination running wild in the real world, and a deep-seated feeling of being stuck between two worlds. He didn't like it, but he didn't know what else to do about it. This was him. It was his mind. It was how he empathized to catch the monsters.
The dog stood guard at the door as he walked inside and tossed the book on Egyptian mythology onto the table. Warrick looked up from a casefile he'd been reading while Catherine tacked up a photograph on the board. Nick took a sip of the coffee in his hand and leaned back in the chair watching him. The only one missing was Greg, but he knew where Greg was.
Handing a slip to Nick, he said, "You have a 419—"
"I thought all-hands on deck for this serial," Nick asked while taking the slip from his hand.
"They were, but CSI's been requested, and you were on deck. Now, you're up. Get a hold of Detective Curtis. She's the lead."
Nick grabbed his coffee and left the room without another word.
"All right," he said as he returned his attention to the other two people left in the room. "Let's have it. Warrick, you first."
Warrick placed the casefile on the table as he grabbed a printout and handed it over to him. "DNA came back on that jacket I found in the park. It's unknown male DNA. It matches the DNA you collected from the apartment. Toothbrush, the beer bottles, the hairs. All a match."
He took the printouts and put them all in the casefile that was open in front of him and looked to Catherine. She had the blood evidence.
Without hesitation, she told him, "Blood on the car," she pointed to the bloody handprint and smears on the trunk, "belong to Brandi Powers. Blood on the grip of the boxcutter is also a match to Brandi Powers. Blood on the blade is a match to Daniel Vetrini and Ashley Lang. Blood trail left down the street," she said as she grabbed another photo and put it up on the wall, "matches the unknown male DNA. He must have cut his foot while running without his shoes on."
"If we're lucky, he needed stitches. I'll have Detective Nowlins reach out—"
"I'll do it."
He stopped talking as he turned in his chair and saw Captain Jim Brass standing in the doorway.
"Jim?" he asked, confused as to why he was there. "I thought you were on leave?"
Warrick asked, "Hey, Brass, how's Ellie?"
Brass pulled out a chair and sat down as he answered Warrick first. "Ellie's good. She hasn't tried to smack me yet, and uh, she's at a NA meeting."
"Good for her," Warrick said.
"Yeah. And uh, I should be there with her, but Undersheriff McKeen called because a serial killer decided to murder a bunch of people all over the city. The Sheriff wants me to run point on this, not Nowlins."
He asked, "Is he being reassigned?"
"No. I'm putting together a task force, he'll be in charge of that on Days, because I'm sure as hell not. I got all the highlights, but I know you've been holding back."
He regarded the evidence and photos and said, "I haven't been holding anything back." There was a folder on the table from Rich. Picking it up, he flipped it open and read his report regarding the knife wounds. "The female victims were all killed by a 3 inch blade with a 0.09 inch width. Smooth, not serrated. So, that could be any 3-inch pocket knife produced. Nothing unique or special about it. Daniel Vetrini and Ashley Lang—"
"The car victims?"
"Yeah. Rich determined they were the only two killed using the box cutter, which blood analysis confirmed. Depth of penetration was only an inch with a 0.6 millimeter incision."
"Very thin," Brass said and he agreed, though not about the knife's thickness but about the whole case. It was very thin.
He let out a breath and shook his head. "We have nothing."
"We have plenty," Catherine said as she still took her time tacking up photos.
"Plenty of evidence of murders being committed," he agreed. "But we're no closer to finding any of our killers than before."
"Killers?" Brass asked.
Warrick also seemed confused as he said, "I thought this was one guy we're after."
"It's two," another voice joined in.
They all turned to see Kevin standing in the doorway with a cup of coffee and a thick file folder in his hand. Gil regarded his son as he entered the room and took in all the photographic evidence on the walls. He was certain his office at the FBI field office looked similar.
Warrick eyed Kevin as he asked, "What's your proof?"
Kevin sat down at the table as he told him, "The profile and now forensic evidence. You didn't find any DNA or blood matching any of the female serial victims on the box cutter that killed the couple in the car. So, unless he used two different weapons—and I'd like to point out that we found no other weapon at the scene—that's enough to say we've got two killers."
"If he used the box cutter and kept the pocket knife in his pocket—" Warrick was saying until Kevin cut him off.
"If he'd used the pocket knife to kill Brandi Powers and took off running, he would've had it in his hand and had used in on the car victims—"
"Unless he put the pocket knife in his pocket to climb the fence and then pulled the box cutter when confronted by Daniel Vetrini—"
"The profile," Kevin said, cutting Warrick off, "is of two suspects with two conflicting personalities. One, frenzied and disorganized, and the other, controlled and organized. Unless we're dealing with someone who can change their entire personality and thought process at the drop of a hat, we're looking at two suspects. A cold-blooded serial killer, and a maniac."
"What's the difference?"
Kevin nearly smirked at Warrick as he said, "Reasoning. Our cold-blood killer would have never confronted the couple in the car. He would have been a smooth operator. His appearance would have been clean-cut, and he wouldn't have gotten blood on him. All his cuts were precise. The veins he hit were bleeders, not squirters. Now, compare that to the homeless looking guy running around with no shoes on his feet and blood all over him, and what'd you get?"
Warrick huffed out a laugh as he picked up his cup and stood. "So, we're looking at two suspects. Just great. Coffee, anyone?"
"I'll take a cup. Thanks, Rick," Brass said as Warrick headed out of the room for a refill. He passed Greg on the way out.
Gil eyed him as he asked, "Got something for us, Greg?"
Greg walked in, a thick file folder in his hand, and said, "I charted the flies and beetles."
"And?" he asked.
"And, I determined that our hiker victim died three days ago." Greg handed him the folder.
He opened it and went over all the photos Greg had taken while he charted the bug evidence. He read over the report, saw all the calculations, and said, "Very good."
"Aren't you going to double check—"
"I left you all the books you'd need, and from everything I'm seeing from these photos, your calculations…it looks accurate. I'll take your final results as fact, for now. I will double-check once I have the time, but this, along with what we already knew, that Amanda Henley had been dead for over 36 hours, I have no reason to question your work. Like I said, very good, Greg."
Greg gave a nod. "Thanks. I worked hard on it."
Catherine smiled, saying, "Good job," which caused Greg to blush a little.
"So," Brass said, "three days puts Amanda Henley as the second victim. Correct?"
Kevin read over his notes and said, "That's right. She was the third body found, but killed second, after Samantha Ivers. And that's only if Miss Ivers was the first victim. There could be others."
"But from what we know right now," he said, "she was the second."
Kevin tapped to the file he'd brought to the party and said, "I've been all over the victims residences, took all kinds of pictures. I also got a whole room here packed with boxes that we gathered of their personal belongings, including date books, diaries, calendars, any and everything that might help us in finding out where they might've crossed paths with either each other or their killer."
"They all have a diastema," Catherine said. " Did you check to see if they shared—"
"The same dentist?" Kevin said. "They didn't."
"Greg," he said, getting his attention. "Once we break here, you're to help Agent Collins go through all their personal belongings." Greg nodded to him as Kevin was looking over the table.
At spotting the book on Egyptian mythology, Kevin asked, "What's this?" while picking it up.
Warrick walked back into the room and handed a cup of coffee to Brass before saying, "I was wondering about that myself. Gris walked in and tossed it down like it meant something to the case."
Flipping through the pages, Kevin asked him, "Are you going to enlighten us?"
He really didn't want to, seeing how he had no proof of anything his fantasies were telling him. "I picked that up at a bookstore on the way here."
"Brushing up for when you're a guest on Jeopardy!?" Brass asked in confusion. "'Cause, you know, you could win if you were ever a contestant."
Greg then said, "Is this a Will Graham thing?"
He realized that not only Greg, but everyone was looking at him with the same question on their minds. Ever since France, he realized he hadn't ever completely pushed Graham back down. He had no reason to. Graham was who he was just as much as Grissom. The name didn't matter. The differences were only in how he allowed himself to function.
Grissom was more cerebral and gave in less to his emotional side, while Graham was the exact opposite. Now that he was no longer separating himself into two, he wondered if that was the reason why he was having waking dreams. It was why he felt so stuck between both worlds.
Was this a Will Graham thing? The only answer he had to that was, yes, it was. Realizing he had to give an answer, he said, "I think our suspect, the disorganized one, believes himself to be some sort of Egyptian God or Prophet. I don't know his entire fantasy yet, but…I know that much."
Everyone was looking at him, but it was Kevin who spoke up, asking, "And how did you come to this conclusion?"
How did he come to that conclusion? Shuffling through the file in front of him, he found the photos he'd taken at the apartment. Placing the photo of the dreamcatcher on the table, he said, "This dreamcatcher is called the Eye of Horus. All it took was a quick internet search to identify it. Horus is an Egyptian god in the form of a falcon. He was the god of healing and protection, kingship, and of the sun and the sky. His right eye represents the sun, or the morning star, which represents power. His left eye, the moon, represents healing. Now, it's said that if the eyes are separated, then the left eye is the Eye of Horus, while the right eye is the Eye of Ra. The sun god in Egyptian mythology—"
"It's a dreamcatcher," Kevin said, and he was starting to sound upset. He was also doubting him.
"He also wrote these poems, which I think are representative to what he's thinking. He's obviously paranoid, but he also believes that he was reborn out of fire. That got me thinking about the Phoenix. The first known stories of the phoenix being reborn out of fire was from ancient Egypt. It's also a part of their mythology."
Brass said, "This does seem to be a bit of a stretch, Gil."
He glanced over at Brass as he started to get annoyed. This was why he didn't want to say anything. How could he explain his dreams? How could he possibly explain his leaps in thought to people who didn't and couldn't do what he did?
Kevin was watching him with that same look he had at Quantico. He was afraid where his mind would take him. "I'm having a hard time following how you got from point A, a dreamcatcher, to this guy thinking he's some ancient Egyptian falcon god."
Letting out a breath of frustration, he said, "Look, the property manager said that the guy would ramble on about the sun and the stars—"
"Again," Kevin said, cutting him off, "I'm not seeing the connection."
The way Kevin kept questioning him was starting to really piss him off. He knew Kevin was only trying to understand the logic, but there was no logic. "I know this is hard for you to understand, Kevin, but dreams and fantasies, especially of delusional killers, aren't logical. In order to understand them, you have to—"
"Be crazy?" Kevin asked as he worked his jaw.
He saw the anger building inside of his son. It was also building inside of his chest as well. That was how it always started. Right in the middle of the chest, and then it spread outward. Once it reached his head, he'd snap. At the moment, he only felt it in his chest. It hadn't gripped his throat yet. It hadn't heated his hands, causing him to ball them into fists.
The tension was rising in the room and Catherine was the one who tried to ease it away by saying, "It's not the first time Grissom's gone off on a theory. Oftentimes, if not most, he's right."
"Yeah," Brass said, "I mean, isn't this what you do when you profile? All this psycho-mumble-jumble may seem irrelevant now—"
"No," Kevin said, cutting Brass off. "I want to know how." He eyed him and he did not look away.
It took him a moment to push his own anger aside, and once he did, he realized that maybe Kevin wasn't angry with him, but himself. Kevin was supposed to be the lead profiler on the case but instead, he was doing most of the profiling and actually getting somewhere. Kevin wasn't getting anywhere because he didn't understand how to reach that place where rational thought met the irrational. Kevin didn't know how to dream. He didn't know how to see the fantasies.
Wrecking his brain, thinking of a way to help Kevin understand his own thought process, he said, "When, uh…When I was in therapy—"
"When Lecter was your therapist?" Kevin asked, which caused everyone in the room to look at him. No one else had known that except for Kevin and Sara.
He gave a nod. "There was a technique we used. Word association. The idea behind it was that when you hear a word, you visualize things that are associated with that word. It's used in psychology to determine abnormalities in people's thought process. It became a tool. A tool that I use often, even now. I word associate all the time, especially when I profile. That's how I can go from words like 'reborn' and 'flames' to visualizing the burns on the suspect's hands, to him holding fire in his hands, to a Phoenix on fire, to ancient Egypt. It was inspired by Benu, a heron that was associated with Ra, the Egyptian sun god. Then I see the words to the poem the suspect wrote: "He saw a door to his face, reflected in the blade, and felt the same thing he's heard all day, "take the knife out and open it'." And I think of a knife being used to remove a face. Then, I connect those thoughts. Removing a face, rebirth into a new person from flames, and I think…He removed his face to put on a new one, to become someone else, which is what our suspect did by taking Nathan Cole's identity. That reminded me of lyrics to a song by The Doors: "he took a face from the ancient gallery"...An ancient gallery. Ancient Egypt. The final connection was the dreamcatcher, the Eye of Horus, which flipped around to the right side is the Eye of Ra. Again, the sun god. In his other poem, he wrote about a single eye that moves up and over and to the middle." He pointed to the picture of the dreamcatcher and said, "He was writing about the dreamcatcher. Everything he wrote and what he did came back to the same thing: Ra. The Egyptian sun god. That's why I think maybe his fantasy is removing his old identity in order to become someone else and his ultimate goal to become Ra, or…something similar. An ancient Egyptian God or Prophet."
It was quiet in the room as everyone listened. The tension was no longer there, but Catherine had a look that spoke volumes. She sat her pen down and said, "And now I know why I should never ask you to explain how your mind works."
"The Doors?" Brass asked. "Jim Morrison helped you understand this killer?"
He held out his hand for the book that Kevin still held in his hand. Kevin handed it to him without a word. "It's a theory." Opening the book, he turned to the page he had marked and then grabbed the photos he'd taken of the sketches that'd been drawn in the suspect's notebook. "He drew what I thought was a torch. It's not, according to this book, it's the lotus symbol in ancient Egypt, and it means rebirth. And this one, the outstretched arms. That's 'Ka'. Ka represents the life force or spiritual power that lived within the body of a person and survived death. It's basically the person's double that's separated from the body upon death. It's their ghost. A living ghost. If you wanted someone to live forever after death, you put a Ka symbol on their tomb."
"So, why is it chained?" Greg asked.
"My guess is because the suspect believes that his Ka is trapped or imprisoned somehow. It could be the reason he took on another man's life. I don't know. What I do know is that the ancient Egyptians believed that ka, along with the physical body, the name, the ba, which is the personality or soul, and the šwt, which is the shadow, made up the five aspects of a person. What that all means for this killer…your guess is as good as mine."
"How is any of this supposed to help us catch the guy?" Warrick asked.
"Understanding his fantasy, how he thinks, can help us better understand his motives, which gets us to his behavior and then, hopefully, what he'll do next, and when, and to whom." He saw the photo of the bloody handprint up on the wall and said, "He was burned, most likely in a near death experience. That could have been his trigger to these delusions. We'll need to start looking into fires to find any correlation to this suspect no matter how much of a stretch."
Kevin had been quiet for a while, thinking. "This guy took the identity of Nathan Cole, right? If you're right about him, then that means he'll need a new identity."
"So, the question is, how and why, and where, did he choose Nathan Cole, and, who will he choose next?" He turned to the page in the casefile that held the photocopy of Nathan Cole's driver's license. "Cole was from California. He has a San Francisco address. That's where we start."
Brass stood and said as he left, "I'll start calling hospitals and put out a notice to the PD that if any John Doe shows up, dead or alive, to give me a call."
Once Brass was gone, he said, "Warrick, I want you to go over all the prior arrests of the female victims. All of them have a record, you'll be looking for any connection between them you can find, if any. Catherine, you'll be in charge until I get back."
"Back from where?" she asked in surprise.
"San Francisco. I'm going to see if I can find the real Nathan Cole."
"And to see Sara," Greg said as he stood to leave the room.
"It wouldn't hurt. She used to work for the SFPD."
Warrick was chuckling as he stood, saying, "You don't need to make an excuse to see your girl. Give her my best."
"I will," he said, and he would.
Sara had developed a friendship with everyone in that room, and he knew they were all missing her being there and on the team. Catherine walked by him, putting her hand on his shoulder before following Warrick out.
Kevin was the last one remaining. He didn't look too happy as he shook his head. "He's not the priority—"
"He's all we got—"
"We have four dead girls—"
"And a suspect who needs to be identified. You're working that angle. While you're doing that, I can do this."
"Whoever killed Nathan Cole is not our serial—"
"He's connected," he stressed as he felt the tension once again return to his body. "From everything we know, he's at least a witness. He might help us be able to identify—"
Kevin grabbed up the file folder and stood.
"Kevin," he said, stopping his son at the door. "I know what you're going through—"
"Can we not do this here–"
"All I'm trying to say is that you're not going to be able to understand how I do this. You can't do it the way that I do. Okay? No one can. You're going to have to find your own way. I'm here if you need me."
He'd been exactly where Kevin was now, in the dark trying to stop a madman from killing someone else. All the pressure of the bureau, of time and not enough of it, and all the victims pressing down on his shoulders. He felt it still. Unless they caught a break, unless they found something, someone else was going to die.
Kevin let out a breath as he turned to face him. "I know I'm not you, and as far as doing what you do…The last person who tried ended up going off with a serial killer and had her mind turned inside out because of it."
He realized that Kevin was talking about Clarice Starling. "What'd you mean she tried? Try what?"
"She tried to be you. She tried to empathize with Lecter to bring him in. Instead, it tore her apart." Kevin was getting upset again. "You know, I said that I didn't want the abyss, staring into darkness and letting the monsters stare back, and I don't. But, what do you do when they don't care and they watch you anyway? What'd you do when they find you?"
"Is this about Montana?" he asked as he remembered Detective Nowlins' words to him. He also knew that if Kevin wasn't good mentally, then he wouldn't have gotten the job that brought him to Las Vegas. He wouldn't be an FBI agent.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. He looked and saw the German Shepherd watching him. If Kevin wasn't mentally fit, he'd be a Special Investigator, like him. He would have to receive therapy, like him. And he'd fear, for years, that he was crazy.
Kevin was watching him. He noticed that he'd been staring at nothing. "This is about more than Montana." With that, he walked away.
Once he was alone, he let out a deep breath and closed his eyes. There'd been so much tension built up in his chest that it had been hard to breathe right. He grabbed up his casefile with everything he needed, along with the book he'd brought, and left.
He had to pack.
TBC…