A/N: I posted 2 chapters, please read chapter 19.

Chapter 20

Nick rubbed his head as he walked into a layout room and checked the clock. It was after nine in the morning and he should have gone home by now. Catherine and Grissom were still out at the mass shooting along with half of Day Shift. Warrick was MIA, he had no idea, and he should have been home getting some sleep.

Instead, he had a feeling to check out Nathan Cole's wallet. A damn wallet kept bugging him. He emptied the contents of the evidence bag onto the table as he used a pair of tweezers to go through it so as not to compromise any fingerprints that might be on anything. He placed the driver's license on the table and then went through the slots.

There was no money or credit cards, but in the money pouch he did find an unopened condom wrapper and in one of the card slots he found a business card for the employer of Nathan Cole. On the back was a handwritten phone number, 702-555-0348. The name written under the number was Brandi P.

Nick printed both and found a print on the condom wrapper but only smudges on the business card. He took the print to Neil in latent prints. "I thought you were working Trace?"

Neil took the print and uploaded it as he told him, "I thought you had a basketball game today?"

They both smiled at one another. "Yeah, well, duty calls. It's been postponed until tomorrow."

It didn't take long before Neil got a hit. "Evelyn Olsen."

"The girl killed in the hotel room then tossed off the balcony?"

Neil printed out the results and handed it to him. "The one and only."

He took the results and left the room, saying over his shoulder, "Thanks."

The business card was dropped off for handwriting analysis in the A/V lab. Someone would get to it, either Ronnie or Archie, or Phelps with Days. Hell, he might be back to analyze it himself. They had items taken from Brandi Powers apartment in another layout room. It shouldn't be too hard to check to see if the numbers and signature were a match.

He filed the results for the fingerprints and then went to the layout room where Agent Collins and Greg had been working yesterday. Or the day before? What day was it, anyway? Saturday. It was Saturday and his head was hurting. He hadn't eaten in hours. Scattered over the layout table were the items taken from the homes of all the serial victim's. He found a journal belonging to Brandi Powers and took it with him to handwriting analysis.

Phelps was sitting at the workstation and Ronnie was in the draft free room. "Hey, Phelps, got a second?" He raised up the evidence bag with the business card and the journal. "I need to know if the same person who wrote in this journal is also the same person who wrote this on the business card."

It didn't take too long, only about ten minutes, for them both to confirm the results of the handwriting. "You're a hundred percent certain?" Nick asked.

Phelps handed him the evidence bag back with the business card and said, "As I know my own mother's face. It's not a match."

"Man or woman?"

"My best educated guess would be that it's a man."

He gave a nod as he said, "And Grissom collected a notebook at Cole's apartment."

Nick left the A/V lab and headed to the evidence locker in search of the notebook. A few minutes later, he returned to the lab and handed the notebook to Phelps. Then, they go to work.

After filing the paperwork on the handwriting, Nick finally headed towards the locker room. He did all he could and now it was time to finally go home and sleep. Or so he thought as he saw Grissom walking down the hallway.

Gil's head was still aching from the scene and the talk he had with Kevin as he entered the crime lab. Kevin was right, he was a misanthrope. He had no faith in humanity and a lot of his faithlessness came from distrust. The distrust was embedded into every thought and action he took because, as he told Kevin, he knew all too well humanities flaws. He could feel every single one of them. Dream of all the ways people could hurt, betray, and torture one another. Everything about being human hurt him to his core. Of course he didn't trust it. How could he?

Being surrounded by death for far too long had him feeling more connected to them than he did the living. At least with the dead he didn't have to feel them. They were cold and at the moment so was he. So cold to care as he dropped off the blood evidence to DNA. Lee went to speak to him, but he was out of the lab before he could get a word out.

The camera was dropped off at the A/V lab. It was empty but he saw the bags of chips and can of soda on the workstation that indicated that Phelps would be back soon. As he neared the ballistics, Chelsea Young waved him down.

The moment he entered the tox lab, he asked, "Did you find something?"

"I completed my toxic report. The hiker didn't just have mercury and lithium in her body but also a high volume of salts and lead. I think she wasn't just a user, but a cooker." She held up the report in her hand and said, "Sauna detoxification protocol. I found a 2005 report of Utah police using comprehensive nutritional support and physical sauna therapy along with exercise to detox from exposure to meth lab toxins. I think she was combining all three into one trying to rid her body of toxins. We retrace her whereabouts—"

"We'll find the meth lab. Thanks," he told her as he left the room.

All the ballistic evidence was dropped off with Rich who was talking with Bobby Dawson in another room.

They knew who did the shooting. Nathan and Ellie's faces were plastered over every news station and flyers sent to every patrol unit in the state. All he did was clean up the mess. Ecklie was at his office door, and he didn't even care as he walked right by him. He wasn't staying.

"Gil. Gil—Grissom!"

He kept walking as he turned the corner and walked through the lobby and then out into the daylight. His personal car was still parked in the lot. He had his keys out and hand on the door when Ecklie appeared next to the car, hands on his hips, and looking more annoyed than usual.

"The sheriff—"

"I'm off the clock, Conrad—"

"—has called a mandatory meeting and you're required to attend."

"I don't care."

Ecklie gapped at him in surprise as he said, "Do you want to be fired?"

"I want to go home," he said as he opened the door. "You don't need me. Catherine's at the scene—"

"She was at the scene," Ecklie said. "She's attending the meeting. Warrick's taking her place."

"Well, then, she's more than qualified to fill-in for me. I haven't slept since Thursday night. It's Saturday."

"Have you forgotten about the CSI's from San Francisco? This meeting isn't just about last night—"

"Again, I'm not the only one working the case—"

"You're Supervisor." He looked around the crime lab parking lot, seeing the comings and goings of the CSI's and techs. Ecklie stepped up onto the sidewalk, glanced back at him and gave a nod. "If you don't want to be a part of this—"

"Since when have I ever liked group meetings?" he said as he opened the driver's door. "It's not like I'm quitting the case."

"Are you sure about that? If not going to be fully present, if you're pushing it away before it's over, then you might as well take the full day, and night while you're at it."

Gil watched as Ecklie walked back inside the lab as he felt that jab slice through the cold numbness of his skin. A spark of anger shot through him as he slammed the driver's door closed. He hit the lock button and headed back into the lab. Kevin was right again. He could be an asshole, but so could everyone else.

His heart was still pounding in his chest as he heard Nick's voice behind him.

"Grissom."

He stopped in front of the break room to wait for Nick to catch up to him. "Whatever it is you have to tell me better be quick. I have a meeting with the Sheriff."

"Oh, hell, I forgot," Nick said. "We all do. It's mandatory."

"Then I guess we're going to the same place."

As they headed to the conference room, Nick told him, "I went through Nathan Cole's wallet and found several things of interest. One was an unopened condom. Prints on it belong to Evelyn Olsen, the woman thrown from the Mediterranean Hotel balcony. The other was a business card with Brandi Power's phone number written on the back of it. Phelps and I confirmed that the handwriting doesn't match the vic."

"Based on?"

"A journal that Agent Collins collected from her apartment. Phelps thought it might've been written by a man."

"I'll have it checked against Nathan's notebooks to see if it's his handwriting."

"Already did. It's not a match to Nathan's handwriting either."

Gil thought, not for the first time, that he was becoming obsolete. It was time to leave, he thought once again. The only person who really needed him now was Sara. They entered the conference room where several other people were waiting, including Doctor Jane Snyder and Doug Wilson from San Francisco. Sheriff Atwater along with Undersheriff McKeen were also present along with Ecklie. Brass was standing near the front of the room with Catherine.

"I thought the FBI would be here?" Gil asked.

Brass told him, "Agent Collins called, he's uh, busy with what happened last night." Jim seemed nervous and afraid. He wasn't too surprised seeing how his daughter was a wanted fugitive on the run with a spree killer.

He stood in the back once again and hoped his cell phone rang so he could leave. This was the last place he wanted to be. As Brass, along with Catherine, laid out what they knew about the case, he tried to keep his eyes focused on the people talking while keeping himself out of his head. It wasn't working.

He was so tired that the darkness was threatening to swallow him whole. His body felt almost weightless, like he could just drift up into it. Suspended in air like floating in water, only he wasn't going up but down. Sinking down into the depths—

"Grissom," Atwater said from the front of the room. "Tell me what you got."

Gil blinked and he was right back in that room again. He didn't say anything as he saw the shadows creeping in his peripheral vision as it grew darker.

McKeen's face was hard as he said, "Grissom, a moment," as he started to stand from the table.

"Sit back down." His tone was equally as hard as McKeen's and it startled everyone in the room, including himself. He's only heard that tone a few times over the years. It was a tone he rarely used, but when he did it always froze people in their place. It wasn't Grissom's tone of voice. It was Graham's. And with Graham came an unpredictability that was birthed from fear.

McKeen also held fear as he suddenly didn't know what to say or do. He almost appeared shaken. Then he cleared his throat and said, "Excuse me? I'm your superior and I expect—"

"Fine, you want an update, we'll give you one. Nick, you first."

Nick was taken back by suddenly being in the hot seat. He recovered and shifted in his seat as he said, "Well, um…As I told Grissom…"

As Nick informed everyone of what he'd found, he kept his head down and eyes on the floor. He'd crossed his arms as his mind drifted as it threatened to send him back into the darkness. It was becoming so hard to stay focused.

Shaking it away, he heard Doug Wilson saying, "So, Nathan's making meth and killing addicts. And there's another killer going around killing women who…What? Who came into contact with Nathan? Are you positive it's two different killers? Everything's pointing to one guy—"

"That could be how he's finding his victims," Catherine said. "He's following Nathan and killing women who match the physical characteristics who're connected to him. Maybe he was even trying to frame him for the killings. Hide the dead among Nathan's victims. That's why they were together in the park."

The park was the only place where they knew of where the two killers crossed paths.

McKeen crossed his arms and said, "I have to agree with NTSB Wilson. Sounds to me like you have one killer. Not two."

Gil said, "It's two."

"Every piece of evidence is coming back to Nathan," Dr. Snyder said. She was a stern woman, reminding him a lot of Catherine. "Captain Brass said his jacket was found at the scene of Brandi Power's murder. CSI Stokes said he found her phone number in his wallet. A condom wrapper, also found in his wallet, with Evelyn Olsen's fingerprints on it. All roads are leading to one suspect."

Gil didn't take his eyes off the floor as he said, "I think they were planted."

"Based on what?" Doug Wilson asked.

"The condom wrapper had her print on it, not his. How did it get there if he never touched it? Same with the business card with Brandi Power's phone number. Nick, did you find any fingerprints on the business card?" he asked.

Nick answered, "A few smudges."

"All with characteristics of a normal print, correct?"

Nick gave a nod as he confirmed, "Loops, whorls, and ridges."

"And we know that Nathan's hands are burned. If he touched it, he would have left prints with patterns unique to his burn marks on the card. There were none. Then there's handwriting. Nick determined from handwriting that the phone number was written by someone other than Brandi Powers and Nathan. Most likely a man. Nathan's accomplice is a woman. We have an unidentified male—"

Doug Wilson held up his hand and said, "Does this Nathan fellow have a last name? I'm going to get confused if he's taking the lives of other people with the same first name."

Gil hesitated a moment before saying, "Sidle. Nathan Sidle is our prime suspect in the spree killing."

He saw the realization on Doug's face. That startled him; he hadn't suspected it. Neither did Dr. Snyder as she gasped and said, "As in Sara Sidle?"

"Yeah," he said. "He's her brother."

Doug said, "And the FBI doesn't have any information on who the serial is?"

Atwater answered that by saying, "Agent Collins has yet to give us a profile of the organized killer. He says he's still working on it. Unless, Grissom, if you can—"

"And you think I can hurry it along? It takes time—"

McKeen crossed his arms, leaned back in his chair, saying, "If you believe that we have two killers running around out there working in conjunction with one another then we need a profile now. You used to do that sort of thing. Don't you have an understanding of this killer?"

He did, but that didn't mean he wanted to bypass his son's expertise. The profile was Kevin's job. Not his. "I think you should wait for Agent Collins—"

"We can cross reference his findings later. We need something. And you haven't convinced me there's two. If you want us to believe that we need a profile—"

"Okay." Gil gave a nod as his eyes returned to the floor. In his mind he saw the masked figure appear out of the dark. As it got closer, he realized it wasn't a figure that he didn't know or recognize. It was what he always saw. It was his dragon, and on its face was the phantom white mask. "He, uh, he's obsessed, and we think the object of that obsession is Sara—"

"Wait," Doug said, interrupting him. "He's after Sara?"

"We think he might be—"

Doug was angry as he stood from the table and said, "And you brought her back here?! What's wrong with you? She was safer in San Francisco!" With me.

He heard the unspoken words as clearly as if Doug had spoken them. The pounding in his head grew as he clenched his hand into a fist. He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Brass, and he was holding him back. When had he crossed the room? Doug was right in front of his face as they both glared at one another.

Ecklie's voice cut through the pounding in his head as he said, "Everyone calm down. Maybe this was a bad idea. Gil, take a walk."

He never took his eyes off Doug as he said, "I'm going home." He shrugged Brass's hand off his shoulder. "To my fiancée," he said directly into Doug Wilson's face.

Doug flinched as if he'd punched him. And he had.

Someone stepped between them and shoved him away out the door. It was Brass. Once in the hall, and they were alone, he said, "I've never seen you that way. You were ready to take that guy's head off. Is there something we need to know—"

"No," he said a little too quickly.

That got Brass's attention as he glanced back towards the door as everyone else left the room.

Catherine hung back as she crossed her arms and stopped in front of them. "Well, that was informative. You want to tell us what that was all about? If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were jealous," she said. It was his turn to flinch, and they all saw it. They knew. He was jealous. She was the first to gasp. "Oh…So, Sara and Doug have a history?"

"I really need to leave," he said as he turned to walk away.

This time, no one stopped him.

The sunlight was streaming in through the balcony doors as the curtain whipped around with the breeze. Kevin stood on the balcony and looked out over the courtyard of the Mediterranean Hotel. Down below were palm trees, mesquites, and various other exotic plants that made up the Spanish courtyard. There was a rock pool, various tables and terra cotta pots. If he hadn't known better, he would have thought he was actually somewhere other than Nevada. But he was in Nevada, and down below the palm trees was where Evelyn Olsen's body had been found.

Turning around, he walked into the hotel room where she'd been killed. In his hand was the casefile. They also had surveillance footage stills of Evelyn sitting beside a man that they now knew to be Nathan Sidle. They left the hotel restaurant together, made their way up to the room, but then…Nathan left alone not too long after. He wasn't bloody. The killer would have been bloody.

This one time, the killer let himself off the leash. He cut her like all the others. Three precision cuts. She should have dropped where he killed her. He pulled out the crime scene photo of where most of the blood had collected on the white carpeted floor and dropped it onto the blood stain at his feet. Her body should have been where the photo landed.

Instead, the killer grabbed her up and threw her off the balcony. Kevin couldn't get himself to feel that rush of anger, but he could see it. The killer grabbed her bloody body and took it through the sliding door and tossed the body. He could visualize, but he couldn't empathize. He couldn't feel their killer. All he had were questions.

Why? Why toss the body? Why make it look like suicide? He was a 'fisher of men' and what he did excel at was getting answers to all his questions. He wasn't a profiler, but an interrogator. So, he had to question the scene. Question the evidence. He had to find his answers, and they were there, somewhere, in that room.

He heard a ringing and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. "This is Agent Collins."

"Hey, Kevin, it's Nick."

"What'd you want? I thought that game was post—"

"It's about the case. I searched Nathan's wallet and found an unopened condom with Evelyn Olson print on it."

"Her print on a condom in the wallet?"

"Yep."

"What about his print?"

"Nope."

He turned and looked at the bed and side table as he said, "Thanks," and flipped the phone shut.

Kevin couldn't feel the man he imagined in his head, but he could sit in his place as he sat on the edge of the bed. Closing his eyes, he shook his head at himself. He had to figure this out. Pulling out his own wallet, he sat it on the table. "Okay. I, uh, I invite Evelyn to the room. I sit down, take out my wallet as she gets close, and we get…comfortable. Then…something happened and…I bolt, but what? Why do I leave? And how did her prints get on the condom, that's in my wallet, if I never touch it?"

There were too many questions. He took a breath as he laid back on the bed and stared at the ceiling as the sunlight moved across the ceiling. Closing his eyes, he let his mind drift.

He's sitting at the hotel bar. Drink in hand. Ice cold beer. He feels the condensation on his palm as he lifts it and takes a drink. A woman moves up beside him. She's blond, and hot, and her eyes are on him. It's Sofia. She takes his hand and goes with her because he's longing for her. It's been a while. Years in fact. It wasn't just the sex, but the warmth of a good woman that he missed. A human connection that made him feel a little less lonely in a lonely city.

He had his dad there, and his work, but that was it. And it wasn't like his dad and him were close. They were trying. Working on bridging the distance that time forged between them. Will had left his life when he was twelve years old. Only calling on holidays and birthdays and only when he was sober, which wasn't often. He would never call him drunk. He was drunk often and so the phone calls were few and far between until they suddenly stopped. Stopped for fifteen years. His dad hadn't been his first call once he got the cancer diagnosis. Will still didn't even know.

Instead, the first person he told was her. Sofia. The woman who pushed him down on the bed and straddled his hips. Why? He could blame it on vulnerability, or her determination. Their shared intimacy. All he knew was that when he looked down at her, and she smiled up at him, all he wanted to do was tell her. He had to tell someone. He didn't want to go through it alone.

Her smile had been everything. So open and inviting. She was so beautiful.

Kevin opened his eyes as he blinked up at the ceiling. "She smiled at him. Gap in her front teeth." He sat up on the bed as he let it come to him. "Sara has the same smile. He's her brother. It freaked him out. She resembled his sister. He ran away." His eyes found his wallet on the table. "He ran and forgot his wallet."

He stood as he started pacing the floor. The door to the hotel room opened after Nathan ran out and in walked their killer.

"He runs away, and then the killer comes in. Evelyn, she doesn't run. She stays. Why? Why stay? He's asking questions. She's answering. She doesn't feel threatened. she's not scared, until she sees the knife. He kills her. He goes to leave the room, sees the wallet. Realizes he can plant evidence. Takes out a condom, places her print on it and then...Why throw her off the balcony?"

He walked back onto the balcony and looked over the edge as his mind started spinning and aching. "What did the police first suspect? Suicide. The killer threw Evelyn off the balcony to try to hide the stab wounds. He needed to buy time. Time for what?" Walking back into the room, he picked up his wallet and pocketed it as he said, "To give Nathan back his wallet with the plant evidence inside."

That meant one thing. Their killer's been following Nathan in order to set him up. The first victim, Samantha Ivers, was found at the gas station near the apartment where Nathan lived. Brandi Powers was found in the park down the street. Evelyn Olsen in the hotel room, picked up from the restaurant where Nathan stopped to get dinner after work.

Amanda Henly was found across the city at Anthem Hills Park. Ground was contaminated with lithium and mercury, the same elements found in the meth.

He stopped pacing as he dropped his hand from the back of his neck. "The meth lab." Pulling out his cell phone, he made the call into Captain Brass.

"Agent Collins this better be good," Brass said as he answered the phone.

"I think I have a location for the meth lab. It's near where Amanda Henley's body was found. Near Anthem Hills Park. Her body was full of lithium and mercury because she worked in the lab. She helped to cook it."

Brass was quiet for a moment before telling him, "I'll get someone on it. Anything else?"

"Yeah, Nathan's being set up to be the fall guy. My dad's right. There's two of them, but I was wrong. They're not partners."

TBC…