Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters, I’m just borrowing them for a while. I promise to return them when I’m done. Really.

Author’s Notes: This is an alternate ending/continuation to the season 2 episode “Stalker”…it goes semi-AU from where the staff is watching Nigel’s videos. Catherine did NOT see the Crime Stopper article on the wall. It kinda bothered me that it was that “easy” for them to find/catch Crane. Nigel Crane struck me as too smart a character to leave such a blatant clue to his whereabouts in a house that he knew they’d be searching following his attack on Nick. I didn’t really buy the ending. So I’m changing it. Besides, I really wanted to use Morris Pearson in this story, so I couldn’t have him killed off. Heh.

I have only seen a handful of episodes of CSI, so I apologize if I contradict things that have been established in the show…

Warnings: There is a high probability of n/c or implied n/c scenes (and possibly some m/m) later in the fic. I’m not inclined to be graphic or detailed about it, but if it squicks you, don’t read. (Also, my beta reader informs me that there seems to be some slashiness goin’ on with Warrick/Nick. It wasn’t intended, but…if you want to interpret it that way, go for it. Otherwise, they’re just friends…I don’t tend to write the romance thing, so probably it will be “slash-friendly” at best ;))

Prologue


“So, I’m sorry, Jane, but it’s over,” Nigel Crane spoke directly to the camera before stepping back and continuing with the task at hand: packing. “You’re just not good enough for me,” he continued, pausing to wrinkle his nose at the camera with apparent distaste. “You’re not disciplined, Jane,” he explained as he pulled a meticulously folded pile of clothing from the shelf and placed it in a large purple suitcase. Catherine Willows recognized the suitcase as a companion to several smaller suitcases they’d inventoried from Jane Galloway’s apartment. “You couldn’t even learn the simplest things like how not to bite your nails. You’re not smart, Jane. Not like my new love. How are we supposed to have intelligent conversations if you just don’t have the brain power?” He continued his “break-up” diatribe as he finished packing his belongings. As soon as he finished packing, he turned to the camera one last time. Reaching toward it, he signed off, “So, I guess this is goodbye, Jane.” And that was it, the end of the final tape.

Sara Sidle scowled. She loathed men like Crane, and she’d met far too many of them; always putting others down to make themselves seem more powerful. “Jane wasn’t stupid, Crane, she was just scared half to death.” Sara supposed that was just fine with Crane. What Jane thought or felt was obviously irrelevant to him. Pig.

“That’s it,” Catherine sighed. “Not much to go on.”

“Wait…” Warrick Brown mused, thinking back over the final tape. “New love. Damn, he said ‘new love’.” The implication of those two words made his stomach churn.

Gil Grissom nodded, unsurprised and sounding, to those who didn’t know him, unconcerned. “He’s found a new obsession and moved on.”

“Yeah, moved on into someone else’s crawlspace,” Warrick grumbled.

“So how do we find him?” Sara asked. “How do we stop him from doing this to some other woman?”

“He’s already doing it to some other woman,” Catherine replied quietly. “Brass has 24/7 surveillance on his house and so far, Nigel Crane has not returned there. That means he has more than likely already moved in with his ‘new love’.”

Sara nodded, grimly. “So how do we find him?” she repeated her question.

“In all likelihood, we don’t,” Gil admitted, sounding fairly indifferent. Sara gaped at him, her temper starting to flare up. “We know our culprit, Sara,” he explained, sounding slightly more compassionate. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about finding Nigel Crane, he just knew it was no longer their job to do so. They had the case solved, and the evidence ready for prosecution. “Archie will go over the tapes again to make sure we didn’t miss any clues to his next destination,” he assured her, sparing their video specialist a glance. “But it’s up to homicide and the surveillance team, now, to bring him in.”

Sara knew he was right, but she was still annoyed. She wanted this guy. And she wanted him NOW. She knew that everyone else in the room did, too, considering how close that the creep had come to killing one of the team, more specifically their friend, Nick Stokes. But Grissom was right. They couldn’t just shirk their other cases to pursue this one. Reluctantly, Sara got up and headed for the lab to ask their technician, Greg Sanders, if he’d gotten any results on the blood test from the Baker case yet. But there was no way she was going to totally give up on the Crane case. Not when she knew that there was another ‘Jane Galloway’ being victimized already. Maybe after work she’d unofficially go check up on the other women who’d recently gotten cable hooked up by Crane.

Warrick glanced at his watch. The shift was just about over, and he didn’t have any cases left open on his docket. “If there’s nothing else tonight, I think I’m going to head on over to Nick’s.” He still felt responsible for Nick’s injuries. He should never have let Nick go into the unsecured area alone. The door was unlocked, so they should have known that someone was there. He should have had Nick’s back, and he’d failed. History repeats itself. At least Nicky hadn’t been killed like Holly had been.

“You’re staying with Nick?” Catherine asked, surprised.

“Yeah. He has a concussion, so someone is supposed to wake him every couple hours. I ‘borrowed’ his keys so he wouldn’t get any ideas about leaving. The doc said he shouldn’t work for at least a week.”

Gil nodded. “Tell him to take all the time he needs.”

“And make sure he takes whatever medicines his doctor prescribed,” Catherine added.

“Yes, Mom,” Warrick teased her dryly as he headed to the locker room to change.

It was twenty minutes later that Warrick turned into his best friend’s driveway. His eyes narrowed as he spotted a strange figure standing on the front walk, looking up at the house.

“Excuse me?” he called, sounding somewhat accusing as he got out of his car and approached the man. It wasn’t Nigel Crane, he realized as he neared, and he relaxed slightly. The man looked at him with an odd expression.

“I saw this house.”

Warrick raised an eyebrow. “I think you need to go home and sleep it off, man.”

“No. No…I saw it. I feel…fear. And…pain.”

Warrick snorted lightly. This must be Grissom’s “psychic”. “Mr. Pearson?” he guessed. The man nodded and Warrick barely managed to not roll his eyes. Psychic, my ass. The guy had been in Grissom’s office. He’d probably seen the roster or something and gotten Nick’s address. And of course Nick would be feeling pain--he’d been thrown out a 2nd story window. The psychic chose the wrong guy to try to impress with his “visions”, Warrick could see right through him. “Well, I tell you what. I’m going in there now, and I’ll give him his pain pills.” He patted Morris Pearson’s shoulder patronizingly, dismissing him.

“No. There’s something else…a tea. Green. Green Tea.”

“Try coffee,” Warrick suggested dryly, unimpressed. “It has a much better sobering effect.”

The man didn’t take the bait, however. He shook his head. “Does that mean anything to you? A green tea?”

“I tell you what. If I go in there and Nick is in pain or fear, I’ll make him a nice cup of it.” With that, he turned his back on the man and headed up the front steps. The man was weird, but harmless, he figured. He didn’t bother looking back as he pulled out the keys he’d taken from Nick so he could let himself in. Once inside, he did spare a peak through the blinds to verify that the psychic had a “vision” of himself leaving before police were called to remove him. Fortunately, the man was no longer on the front walk, so Warrick turned and headed further into the house.

As not to wake his injured friend, Warrick did his best to be silent as he headed into the living room. He was completely taken by surprise as Nick jumped from the couch with a startled yelp and turned as if prepared to ward off an attack.

“Whoa. Nick. It’s just me,” he assured. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that.” Warrick cursed his stupidity. Someone had snuck up on Nick once today and nearly killed him, and now he’d just about scared the piss out of the poor guy by creeping up on him.

Nick let out a ragged breath and closed his eyes. He raised a slightly shaky hand and wiped a little bit of sweat from his face. “Jesus. It’s okay. A little warning next time, huh?” he tried to make light of it and forced a smile. He sank back on the couch, his heart still racing.

“Uh, yeah,” Warrick agreed, guiltily. “I’ll get one of those collars with a bell, huh? Seriously, I didn’t mean to scare you. I just figured you’d be out cold by now.”

Nick shook his head. “Couldn’t sleep. Just a little…jumpy,” he admitted, looking embarrassed by the fairly obvious revelation.

“Hey, no sweat, man. Totally understandable,” Warrick awkwardly comforted him. “But you gotta get some sleep. Want me to get you some hot cocoa or t…tea--" damn that psychic “--or something to help?”

Nick’s smile became more genuine. “Warrick Brown making tea. Yeah, that I gotta see.”

“Ha ha.”

By the time Warrick returned from the kitchen with a cup of tea (yes, green tea, to his chagrin), Nick had managed to fall asleep on his own. Warrick smiled grimly as he pulled the blanket up over his friend. Warrick Brown, makeshift Mom, he mused silently. He checked his watch noting that it was slightly after one. The doctor had said that Nick should be woken at least once every two hours. It was going to be a long night.

He sighed as he picked up the controller for Nick’s X-Box. May as well keep himself amused. He turned on the console and sank down into the overstuffed lounger chair. He selected his favorite team (tonight anyway, it was the Bucs--he’d won a substantial bet thanks to them the other night) and hunkered down for the long haul.

Warrick knew it was going to be a bad case when all CSIs were called to the scene at 157 Walnut Avenue. Judging from the way the entire block had been roped off and the surrounding streets were filled with news vans and curious onlookers, this was as big, if not bigger, than the Collins family murders the year before.

As he drew closer, however, he found another reason for the street to be blocked--there had been a fire. The fire engines were still blocked in, though it was apparent that the fire had been extinguished.

“Arson,” Warrick muttered, surmising the nature of the crime they were there to investigate. He parked his car as close as he could get to the scene and then walked the rest of the way. If it were only arson though, he figured, there wouldn’t be a reason for all CSI to be investigating. Of course, it was an apartment complex, so perhaps they were all needed due to the size of the scene. Warrick suspected differently, though. Call it instinct, but there was something more than just an apartment fire going on.

“Warrick,” Grissom greeted as he approached the others. “Glad you could join us.” He was the last on the scene.

“What’ve we got?” Warrick cut to the chase. “More than arson, right?”

Grissom nodded. “More than arson,” he agreed. A dead body, then.

“Which apartment?”

“All of them.” That announcement received more than one pair of raised eyebrows. “From the looks of it, there were no survivors.”

“No alarm?” Catherine asked, her mouth gaped slightly with the horror of what had been revealed.

“Ah, see, that’s where it gets strange,” Grissom continued his explanation of the crime scene. “Neighbors called in the fire at 2:17 am, reporting that they could hear the fire alarm going off in the 157 building.”

“But nobody inside made it out?” Nick asked for clarification. “If someone in a neighboring building could hear the alarm, they’d have to be able to hear it, too.” He pondered for a moment. “Someone set off the alarm after everyone inside was dead?” he suggested, his distaste at the thought apparent on his face.

Grissom looked at him pointedly. “It’s a possibility,” he acknowledged. “There are five apartments,” he continued his explanation of the scene. “On ground floor we have the apartments of Rebecca Warren and Janet and Gary Masters. The second floor apartments belong to Morris Pearson and the Black family: John, Marsha, Marshall, Lindy, and John Jr. And finally the penthouse apartment belongs to Vaugn Andrews.”

Sara’s eyes widened. “The author?”

Grissom nodded. “Afraid so.”

“Great,” she griped. “A celebrity case.”

Warrick frowned. Something else had caught his attention. “Morris Pearson…why does that name sound familiar?” He searched his brain for the reference.

“He was the psychic from the Jane Galloway case,” Grissom supplied, not missing a beat. The others spared a glance at Nick. He’d healed completely in the two months since being thrown out a window, but they were all reminded how close they’d come to losing him during that case. Catherine absently reached out and placed a shoulder on the younger man’s shoulder as Grissom began assigning them their tasks.

“Anything in particular we’re looking for?” Sara asked as they prepared to enter the crime scene.

Grissom looked at her as if she’d missed the most obvious thing in the world. “The truth,” he answered easily as he headed over to start appeasing the gathering crowd of local politicians.

“We’ll need these,” Catherine informed the others, handing out the gas masks with built-in night-vision goggles. “You’ll need to come out and replace the filters every 30 minutes, so set your alarms. Don’t go over the allotted time, we don’t want anyone suffering from smoke inhalation.”

Warrick strapped his mask in place as he approached the building, showing his badge to the cop watching the door. Not much of a psychic if he let himself die in an apartment fire, he thought inwardly as he climbed the stairs to Morris Pearson’s second floor apartment.

The fire department had broken in the door to the Black family’s apartment across the smoke-heavy hallway, but Morris Pearson’s door was unmarred. Pulling on his gloves, Warrick paused to examine the door. It was doubtful that there would be any usable prints on the doorknob, but if he had learned anything in his years as a crime scene investigator, it was that one needed to be thorough. Finding nothing usable, he proceeded, turning the knob and opening the unlocked door.

“Who leaves their apartment unlocked in this neighborhood?” Nick asked, as he approached from the stairway.

“Someone who knew he’d have visitors,” Warrick returned. “Psychic, after all.”

Nick smiled and peered into the apartment. It was extremely tidy, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary. At least not on the surface. He began snapping pictures, preserving everything as it was before moving in and altering the scene.

Several minutes later he began his trek down the hallway. He hesitated a moment as he noticed that the closet door was open and several towels had fallen from the shelves. He snapped a picture. Judging how neat everything else was in the apartment, it seemed unlikely that Mr. Pearson would leave towels on the floor, or hanging off the shelves. Unless he had grabbed one in a hurry.

Nick glanced at the wide open bathroom door, then proceeded into the bathroom. The bathtub faucet was dripping water. He made a few mental leaps. Take a towel grabbed in a hurry and add water turned off in a hurry. What should one do if they’re trapped in a fire and can’t get out? Put a wet towel under the door to keep out the smoke. Someone could still be alive.

“Mr. Pearson?” he called, turning toward the closed bedroom door.

Warrick looked up as he heard Nick call for the apartment’s resident. Curious, he headed to the hallway, where he found Nick stooped down by the bedroom door.

“Wet towel under the door,” Nick informed him, looking up with a frown. “From the outside of the room.” Which meant that someone had been outside the room trying to protect someone inside it? Warrick’s brow furrowed. “Mr. Pearson lived alone, right?”

“Grissom didn’t mention any other resident of the apartment.”

Nick snapped the preserving picture before extracting the towel and placing it carefully into a large evidence bag. He then quickly examined the doorknob. “Mr. Pearson?” he called again. “I’m coming in.” He announced before pushing the door open.

Thanks to the towel, the room was almost clear of smoke. It also appeared to be clear of everything else. There was nothing on top of the dresser--no knickknacks or photos, or even cufflinks or a watch. The nightstand was likewise cleared. Not even an alarm clock. One quick glance in the open closet showed no clothing or shoes.

The only thing showing that possibly someone lived in the room was a neatly made bed. The frilly white lace comforter, however, seemed quite the unlikely choice for a single man. As did the stuffed animal that sat atop the pillow. Nick snapped a picture before moving closer.

“A grown man with a stuffed unicorn?” Warrick wondered aloud. “Odd choice.”

“Pegasus,” Nick corrected.

“Hm?”

“Unicorns have horns. This is Pegasus, the winged horse.” Nick scanned the room one more time. “Okay, so if no one is in here, why would someone stick a wet towel under the door?”

As if to answer his question, the inhabitant of the room crawled out from under the bed and pounced happily on his foot. Startled, Nick looked down at the fluffy white kitten batting playfully at his shoelaces. “What have we here?” he asked with a chuckle, reaching down to pick up the kitten. Even through his gloves he could feel the kitten start to purr. “Looks like we have a survivor after all.”

Sara snapped another picture of the young blonde woman. The woman appeared to have died peacefully in her sleep. There was no sign of struggle, no sign that she'd heard any alarm.

Even if she had heard the alarms, Sara noted, she would probably have not been able to get out of the apartment. It was quite apparent from the damage that the fire had started right outside Rebecca Warren's door, and with the security bars in place, she wouldn't have been able to escape out the window. The apartment building managers were surely going to have a few lawsuits on their hands about those bars. What had probably seemed like a good idea for protecting the apartment residents from people breaking in, they also would be doing a good job at keeping the residents from breaking out.

The extent of the damage to the door suggested that an accelerant had been used. Sara swabbed samples from the wood to take back to the lab for analyzing before continuing on in processing the apartment.

"So who was she?" Sara wondered silently as she studied the deceased. Rebecca Warren according to the bills. Becky, according to the only piece of personal mail that had been found in the mail holder on her desk.

Becky was an excessively tidy person, Sara assessed. Not a thing was out of place in her apartment. She was young, but obviously looked younger than her age. Sara had yet to find a purse or anything with Becky's identification, but the woman looked too young to even have her own apartment. She didn't look older than fourteen or fifteen at best. Far too young looking to leave anything but a sour taste in Sara's mouth when she tried to imagine the young woman wearing the skimpy cocktail waitress uniforms (such as they were) found in her closet. It seemed that Becky made quite a bit of money in tips, though, judging from the quality of her possessions. For a cocktail waitress, Becky seemed to have pretty expensive tastes in artwork. Except for the poster of the Arizona Wildcats Cheerleaders from the 1999-2000 season on the wall, every one of the paintings were ones that Sara could see selling for hundreds--if not thousands--of dollars at a gallery. Of course they could all just be copies, but they would find out for sure on closer examination.

The Wildcats poster seemed so out of place that Sara found herself staring at it for a long time. At first she'd wondered if maybe the vic was on the squad, but she wasn't in the picture. She did have a name in common with one of the cheerleaders, though, Sara noticed. The Becky Warren on the squad, though, was a very pretty African-American woman, not an extremely young looking blonde.

Sara's alarm started beeping. Time to go out and swap filters, she sighed. She hated having to take the time out to go, but knew it was necessary. She took one last look around the bedroom before heading outside. There was something else strange about the room, but she just couldn't put her finger on it. It would come to her, she was sure. When she got outside and let her head clear a moment, it would surely come to her.

"They looked so peaceful," Catherine was comparing notes with Warrick and Nick as Sara made her way toward them. "They had no idea there was a fire."

"Mine, either. She died in her sleep, never knowing there was any danger," Sara added.

"Our guy knew and he didn't even bother to wake anyone," Warrick fumed. Now that his mind had had a little time to process the scene in Mr. Pearson's apartment, he couldn't help but blame the man for the deaths of the others. "He grabbed his clothes and hightailed it."

"It's weird that he took the time to try and save this little fella, but didn't try to save his neighbors," Nick pointed out. "Maybe Pearson was the one who set off the alarm?"

"Too little, too late," Warrick countered.

"So where did he go?" Catherine wondered aloud. "If your house was on fire, wouldn't you want to stay and make sure that the fire was put out?"

Nick shook his head. "No way. I wouldn't. I mean, everything you own, everything you've worked for being destroyed and you can't personally do anything to stop it? I wouldn't want to hang around and watch."

"So, who's your friend?" Sara asked, noticing for the first time that Nick was holding a kitten.

"Mr. Pearson's cat," Nick informed her.

"How did the cat survive when none of the humans did?" Sara asked, looking the kitten over. Her eyes narrowed. "And she's still all white. Not dirty at all."

"Wet towel under the door," Warrick explained. "The guy took the time to pack all his clothes--even his shoes--and save his kitten, but didn't take the time to knock on a few doors."

Catherine patted him on the back before she finished replacing the filter for her mask. "I'm going to finish up in the Masters apartment. You guys do the preliminaries in the Black apartment and I'll meet up with you there." As she headed into the building again, she saw Greg, one of the lab technicians, crossing the lawn. She wondered why he was at the scene until she noticed that he was carrying a small animal carrier.

"Someone called for a pet taxi?" the tech called, approaching the others.

"Here she is," Nick presented the kitten to Greg. The kitten squirmed, trying to turn back toward Nick. "Take care of her."

Greg smirked, detecting a little bit of hesitation in Nick's handing her over. "Nicky wants a pet?" he suggested. Nick gazed back at him pointedly, but still smiling good-naturedly. "Nobody claims her, she...er...he's all yours," Greg amended as he got a better look at the kitten.

"He?"

"You don't need me to give a lecture about the differences in male and female anatomy, do you?" Greg teased. "This here, is not a she." He put the kitten into the carrier. It made a sad mewing sound as he latched the cage shut. "Don't worry, little fella, Nicky will take you home tonight."

Nick chuckled as he finished replacing the filter for his mask. A cat? He didn't think so. dog, maybe, but a cat? "Nah, the lab's a good home for now."

"Okay, but just so you know, I'm not cleaning up his litter box," Greg called after him as he headed back into the building, following Warrick upstairs to start processing the Black apartment.

Litter box.

As Warrick started examining the Black's destroyed door, Nick headed back to Mr. Pearson's apartment to confirm something that he'd seen.

Or rather, what he hadn't seen.

"No litter box, no cat food, no water bowl," he announced a few minutes later as he met back up with Warrick and Sara in the Black's living room.

"What?" Warrick looked away from the portrait of the Black family. They looked like the perfect "All-American" sort of family. Blonde hair, blue eyes, perfect smiles.

"Mr. Pearson didn't own a cat. I checked out the sofa and chairs. No cat hair."

"So maybe he just got it?" Sara suggested.

"And didn't bother picking up a litter box or food? I don't think so. Besides, he seemed far too...tidy to want to have a cat to mess things up."

Warrick squared his jaw. "So where did it come from, then?"

Nick shrugged. "Don't know, but I think that's one thing we'll have to figure out."

Warrick nodded, pushing open the door that led, if the drawing on the door was correct, to Lindy Black's bedroom. "Here's another good question for you."

"Hmm?"

"Who's been sleeping in Lindy Black's bed?"

Nick felt sick as he absorbed the question. If the family portrait on the wall was recent, Lindy wasn't more than thirteen or fourteen years old. And if Warrick could tell immediately that someone else had been with Lindy...either there was blood, or the person was still there. He peered into the room expecting the worst, but was quite surprised by what he saw. "That...is not Lindy Black."

Warrick chuckled humorlessly. "You think? So, who is she?" he asked as he snapped a picture of the woman in the bed. "And where's Lindy?"

Sara looked past Warrick and Nick to see what they were looking at. Her eyes widened. She turned to look at the portrait that Warrick had been looking at to confirm her suspicions. "Guys, I think this case just took on Greg's proverbial whole new level of weird," she announced. "But I can answer both of those questions."

"Guys, meet Rebecca Warren, ex-cheerleader of the Arizona Wildcats, more recently a cocktail waitress, likely from one of the bigger casinos on the strip," Sara introduced her fellow investigators to the deceased. "She lives downstairs in Apartment 1," she continued. "It seems that she and Lindy Black exchanged bedrooms for the night." Nick and Warrick stared at her as if she'd grown an extra head. She completely understood their dubious expressions.

Nick glanced at the pretty African American woman sprawled in what looked like peaceful slumber in the teenage girl's bed. "But...why?"

Sara had no idea how to answer that. "Maybe she was babysitting? The Blacks have other children, too, right?"

"John Jr. and Marshall," Warrick answered, remembering Grissom's introduction to the crime scene. "That might explain why Rebecca Warren was here, but not why Lindy was in her apartment."

"Okay, let's say she was babysitting," Nick started theorizing as he turned on his UV light, scanning the body for any physical signs of trauma, "and she fell asleep. The Blacks came home, decided to let her keep sleeping, and sent Lindy downstairs since there were no extra beds here?" Even as he said it he sounded very doubtful of the scenario.

Warrick looked thoughtful for a moment, but it was clear that, like Nick and Sara, he didn't buy it. There was a sofa in the living room that the girl could have slept on, so it seemed doubtful that Lindy would be sent down to the other woman's apartment alone. It would defeat the purpose of having a babysitter in the first place if they sent the girl downstairs to stay on her own. Besides, from the family portrait, in Warrick's opinion, even the youngest of the three children appeared old enough to not need babysitting unless the parents and older siblings were all going to be gone overnight. There had to be a different explanation.

Maybe he would find it when they checked the other rooms of Apartment 4. He left Sara and Nick to continue their work in Lindy's room and moved on to check out the brothers' rooms.

The first door he came to was adorned with "Keep Out", "Hazard Area", and "No Trespassing" signs. "Sorry, kid," he acknowledged the signs as he pushed the door open. He was relieved to discover that there was no body in this room. Perhaps one of the Black children had survived, after all. There was still something about the room that bothered him. Like the other rooms he'd examined tonight, this one was meticulously neat. Not a thing was out on the dresser, nor was there anything on the floor. There was a bookshelf next to the door, and it only took a brief glance to notice that the books had been carefully alphabetized.

Warrick glanced back at the door. The signs had led him to expect this to be a room of a rebellious teenage boy, but that's hardly how it looked from the inside. Teenage boys who kept their rooms this thoroughly organized were few and far between. Warrick had been paying such attention to the fact that there was someone else sleeping in Lindy's bed to notice that the girl's room was likewise spotless, but now that he thought about it...except for the smoke, water, and fire-damaged areas, every room in the whole apartment building was remarkably clean. There was something very wrong with the whole crime scene.

That assessment was further solidified as he pushed open the other boy's bedroom door. Not a thing out of place, except the boy himself. In the boy's bed was a man of about thirty, who did not match the family portrait. Not only was this man obviously in the wrong bed, Warrick wondered if he were also wearing the wrong clothes. It didn't seem logical at all for this man to be wearing a Good Charlotte t-shirt to bed--especially one that was several sizes too small for the man's large frame.

Warrick snapped pictures, trying not to let the questions running through his head to keep him from getting the job done. They would, of course, analyze it all later, but for now he was just there to do the preliminaries of the investigation.

"How did they all sleep through it? A whole building full of people, you'd think that at least one of them would wake up. The odds that they were all heavy sleepers are pretty slim," Sara commented to Nick as she leaned over Becky Warren's body, searching for any indication of struggle, anything to explain why she wouldn't have woken up.

"Drugged maybe?" he wondered aloud. "We'll want to get full toxicology reports from Dr. Robbins." He switched off his UV light, his preliminary investigation of Rebecca Warren's body complete. No physical signs of struggle, no blood, and no semen or other signs of sexual assault on her bedclothes or the sheets. He did find a couple odd hairs that he carefully extracted and dropped into an evidence bag.

Leaving Sara to finish up in Lindy's room, Nick headed to start the preliminaries on the master bedroom. He felt ill as he discovered the boxer-clad body of the younger Black son intimately entwined with the body of an older woman--a red-head, not blonde like Mrs. Black--wearing a barely-there nighty. He stood frozen in the doorway, staring at the image that was just wrong on so many levels. The boy couldn't be more than twelve or thirteen, the woman old enough to be his mother. Despite the horror of the scene, he couldn't tear his eyes away, nor could he make himself go forward, into the room.

He was still standing in the doorway he didn't know how many minutes later when he felt a hand on his shoulder. "You okay?" Catherine's voice broke him out of his stupor.

"Yeah. I'm fine. Just...needed a minute," he answered her, not looking at her. He knew as soon as she saw what he'd been looking at, she'd understand why the victims in this room had thrown him. But there was a job to do. They needed to finish up with the bodies so that they could be moved.

He slowly approached the bed, turning on the UV light, dreading what it would reveal. He ignored Catherine's startled gasp as she saw what he'd been looking at.

"Do you want me to do this room?" she asked quietly as she watched him begin the examination in an obviously forced calm manner. Even if he hadn't confided to her a few months before about what had happened to him when he was just a child, she would have known that there was something wrong. "I'll do this room," she changed tactics as he continued mechanically going through the motions of examining the bodies. "You go on up and start on Mr. Andrews' apartment," she made it an order.

Nick looked up, torn between being indignant and grateful at the way she was pushing him out of this portion of the investigation. It did hit a bit close to home, but he would maintain objectivity; he wouldn't let it cloud his judgment. But he backed off, somewhat relieved.

Catherine gave him a reassuring smile as he brushed past her, heading for the last apartment. Once he was out of the room, she set to work on examining the bodies. She was relieved to find that there was no sign of sexual activity other than the posing of the bodies. There were no unexpected bodily fluids on the scant clothing or either body. No obvious bruising. No needle marks in the obvious spots.

It wasn't until her alarm went off signaling it was time to go out and change her filter and she was leaving the apartment that she noticed the family portrait. Her jaw dropped as she recognized the couple she'd examined downstairs in Apartment 2. She turned as Warrick emerged from one of the bedrooms. She pointed to the portrait and opened her mouth, but couldn't find the right words to even start her questions.

"Let me guess, the Blacks weren't where they were supposed to be," he summed up the situation. He chuckled dryly as her mouth snapped shut, her eyes still wide with surprise. This was going to be one strange puzzle to put together.

***

Author's note: Thank you to those who've reviewed here and via email. It's really appreciated! This is my first attempt at a CSI fic, so I'm still kind of getting used to the characters. I feel like this is a little slow getting going, and I may combine a couple of these shorter set-up chapters once I get into the main part of the story. Thanks for sticking with the story, I'll be getting to the real investigation in the next chapter or so. :)

Nick sank back onto his sofa, closing his eyes and just resting for a few moments before reaching out to grab the TV remote. When his hand didn’t find the remote on the end table, he opened one eye long enough to spare a glance at the empty table. He scowled, but made no effort to get up to turn on the TV or find the remote. He was too tired to care that much about the game today, anyway. It had been one hell of a long shift, and tonight’s would be just as long, if not longer.

Unless the culprit stepped forward with a confession, this was going to be one of those jobs that just didn’t wrap up quickly or neatly in a day or two. Maybe not even in a week or two. Possibly it never would, but they were sure going to exhaust every resource trying to figure it all out. From the mysterious kitten, to the game of “musical beds” the inhabitants of the building appeared to be playing, the graveyard shift would be sorting out the pieces of the puzzle until the cows came home, Nick figured. Hell, the only body in the whole building that was where it should be was that of Andrew Vaugn from the penthouse apartment.

Vaugn’s body had been strange for other reasons, though.

“Take a look here,” Grissom had instructed Nick when he’d made his way into the victim’s room. Nick had accepted Gil’s magnifier and carefully examined the victim’s hands. At first, he hadn’t noticed anything unusual. He had almost given up, but looking up at Grissom’s face and seeing the expectant expression on his mentor’s face, he kept at it. Then he noticed it.

There was absolutely nothing under the man’s fingernails. No skin scraped from an attacker, which was disappointing but not entirely unexpected. Not just that, though, but there was no dirt. Or bits of food. Or anything else. He looked up at Grissom, who gave him a small encouraging smile. “He scraped under his nails…recently…” Nick acknowledged as he continued looking for whatever else may have made his boss so excited about this revelation.

And then, there it was; what Gil had been getting excited about. “Someone else scraped under his nails. After he was dead?” Nick looked up at Gil with surprise.

“Yes!” Gil gushed. “See, the break in the skin there,” he pointed at the hairline scratch. “If Mr. Vaugn scraped under his own nails, the angle would have been different. He likely would not have cut himself at all, but if he had, the cut would most likely be up here…”

“And since the cut is still opened, it means it just happened,” Nick continued the theory, not quite as fascinated as Gil, but interested regardless. “Which means that it should have been bleeding. But there’s no blood.”

“Which means was no blood circulation,” Grissom explained unnecessarily. “The heart had already stopped.”

“Dead men don’t bleed,” Nick agreed with the analysis.

After the initial once-over each of the apartments, the bodies had been removed from the site and the CSIs started the painstakingly tedious job of going over absolutely everything in each of the apartments with fine toothed combs. Tonight, they’d finish up the initial sweep of the crime scene and then start processing it all to see if they could figure out what exactly happened at 157 Walnut Avenue. It had been a hard case to just leave in the middle of, but since they already had put in several hours of overtime, they had all agreed, reluctantly, to break for the day at noon so they could get some much needed sleep.

By tonight, they would have the results of the autopsies. And with any luck, they’d have a list of suspects ready.

So far, there were only two, and as noon, neither of them had been located.

The first suspect was Marshall Black. At seventeen years old, he was the oldest of the Black children. The only reason he made the suspect list was because his body had not been found at the scene. With any luck, he would surface alive and well at a friend’s house. He probably hadn’t even learned of the fire yet. Nick hated to think of how the kid was going to feel when he found out that his entire family had perished. Assuming, of course, that Marshall hadn’t had anything to do with the fire being set.

The second suspect was far more likely, in Nick’s opinion. Morris Pearson, the psychic, who had conveniently had enough time to pack and get out while everyone else in the building seemingly slept peacefully. Nick was definitely cynical about the existence of true psychics, but he supposed he wouldn’t rule out the possibility. Maybe the guy had a vision earlier in the day and had packed up and left then.

Of course, that wouldn’t explain the kitten or the towel grabbed in a hurry and shoved under the door. Or why the apartment was left unlocked.

But Nick was far too tired to think about the case anymore. Since the TV remote wasn’t where it should be, he decided to just skip the game and go directly to sleep. He got up from the sofa and shuffled tiredly into his bedroom. He didn’t even bother kicking off his shoes before flopping into bed. He was asleep before his head even hit the pillow.

It was not a restful sleep, though. He did not often remember his dreams, but when he woke several times through the day, he had distinct impressions of John Black Jr. and the women that they had tentatively identified as Janet Masters in bed together stuck in his head. The impressions, however, didn’t exactly match what the evidence at the scene indicated. They were more like shadows of another time. Another crime scene. One that had gone without justice for more than twenty years. But Nick refused to consciously think of the scene involving the nine-year-old boy held down by his babysitter.

It was only four in the afternoon when he gave up the notion of getting a good day’s rest and rolled out of bed.

He went briefly out to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, leaving it to percolate as he took a shower to really wake himself up. The shower, however, wasn’t exactly a nice way to wake up. It seemed that his water heater had died at some point in the past 24 hours, leaving him with an ice cold stream of water. So he showered fast. Even so, he was shivering almost violently as he stepped out of the shower, grabbing for a towel. He swore he could feel himself turning blue from the cold as he hurried back to his bedroom to grab some warmer clothes.

He pulled open his drawer, looking for his old Texas A&M sweatshirt. It was the most comfortably worn one he owned, and since it was going to be another long night, he wanted to be comfortable.

He scowled as he dug through the drawer. It wasn’t there. Damn it, he knew it wasn’t in the wash. He hadn’t worn it since the last time he’d done laundry. He swore that the drycleaners losing his orders and people swiping stuff at the Laundromat, he’d had to buy more clothes in the past couple months than he had in years. One of these days he was going to just break down and buy his own washer and dryer. It’d save him a heck of a lot of money in the long run. Maybe he’d go shopping his next day off.

Since he couldn’t find the one he wanted, he just grabbed an old grey sweatshirt and pulled it on, hoping to stifle the involuntary shivering.

He was just pulling on his jeans when the phone started ringing. It was only 4:30. Nobody who knew him would be calling at this hour unless it was an emergency. He reached for the phone, glancing at the caller ID. The display only told him that the originating number was blocked. Figured. Probably a telemarketer. But Nick answered anyway.

“Mr. Stokes?” the caller asked before he had a chance to make his own greeting. Definitely a telemarketer, Nick scowled. “Please don’t hang up, Mr. Stokes,” the man on the other end asked of him as he was just contemplating doing just that. He sighed.

“Who is this?”

“My name is Morris Pearson, Mr. Stokes.” Nick’s eyebrows shot up. It was a good thing he hadn’t hung up after all.

“Mr. Pearson. Where are you?” he asked the first question that popped into his mind. He reached for the pad of paper and pen that he kept by the phone.

“I believe you’re in danger, Mr. Stokes.”

“And why is that?” Nick asked automatically. He wondered at why the man kept repeating his name.

“I’m…afraid I don’t really know. I…sometimes just feel things. There is something wrong. Something…I don’t know.”

“Okay,” Nick wasn’t sure how else to respond. “Does it have anything to do with your apartment building?”

“So it happened, then?” the man suddenly sounded quite subdued.

“What happened?”

“I tried to warn them.”

“Warn who, Mr. Pearson?”

“The Blacks. The Masterses. Ms. Warren. I tried to warn them.”

“And what about Andrew Vaugn?” Nick found himself asking before he could edit himself. “Did you try to warn him, too?” He felt his anger starting to rise.

“It was too late for Mr. Vaugn. There was nothing I could do for him.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed as he jotted that tidbit down on the pad of paper, underlining Vaugn’s name and the words ‘too late’ and punctuating with a question mark. “I really think you and I need to talk,” Nick informed the other man. “Maybe you could meet me somewhere. Like at the lab?”

“I…don’t think that’s a good idea, Mr. Stokes.”

“And why is that?”

“I think you know why.”

“Did you set the fire, Mr. Pearson?”

“Of course not. But…I will be blamed, Mr. Stokes. You know that, too, don’t you?” Yes, Nick did know that. It didn’t take a ‘psychic’ to figure that one out. “I did not set the fire.”

“Do you know who did?”

There was a pregnant pause before the replay finally came. “No. Not exactly.”

“What exactly do you know, then?”

Morris Pearson hesitated again before answering. “He…did it for you.”

Nick’s mouth suddenly went dry. “What?” he choked out. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know…Did you…did you find your gifts?”

Nick licked his lips nervously. “What gifts?”

“I don’t know. But he left some…things for you.”

“What sort of things? For me specifically?”

“He thought you would…appreciate them.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

“I’m sorry…I don’t know. I don’t…he left a warning, too.”

“A warning?”

“Not for you. It’s…I’m seeing Ms. Warren. Ms. Warren. Something about…her nightshirt.”

Nick jotted that down as well. “What about it.”

“I don’t know. It’s a warning. Not for you,” he repeated. “I don’t know for who. Someone…I don’t know.”

“Look, I really think it would be best if we talked in person. We should meet. It doesn’t have to be at the lab. Somewhere else. There’s a--”

“No. I’m sorry. It’s not a good idea. I better go.”

“No wait!”

“Be careful, Mr. Stokes. I sense…it’s going to be bad for you.”

Before Nick could ask any more questions, the line went dead.

A/N: For Anita and Mersey. Thanks for reading!

Chapter Five

Knowing that Gil Grissom was not a man that would sit idly at home while there was an intriguing case to be solved, Nick didn’t bother to call ahead before heading to the crime scene. The lone pair of officers left behind to guard the crime scene against looters and curious onlookers barely gave him a second glance after he flashed his CSI badge.

He heard someone rummaging around in Rebecca Warren’s apartment, and was not surprised at all to discover that Sara was already on the scene as well. She was carefully packing up the files and papers from the victim’s desk.

“Hey,” he greeted, acting casual. He wasn’t sure he wanted the rest of the team to know about the phone call he’d received yet. Of course he planned to tell Gil immediately, and probably would call Jim Brass as well, but he didn’t want the others to worry unnecessarily.

“Hey, Nick,” Sara replied, not looking up from the files she was going through. Curiosity got the better of him and he peeked over her shoulder to see what she was studying. “Seems like she had an awful lot of money to be throwing around for a cocktail waitress,” Sara mused as she set the receipt she was looking at into one of two piles she’d made. The receipt was from the Jameson Gallery for a piece titled ‘All That Doesn’t Glitter’ for just over eighteen hundred dollars. Nick let out a low whistle. “No kidding. This whole stack,” she indicated one pile, “is just like that.”

“She come from a wealthy family?” Nick asked, hoping there was an innocent answer to source of the money.

“Not especially. Not exactly poor, but not wealthy enough to plunk down a couple thousands of dollars for art every month.” Sara sighed. “Which begs the question: How else was she making money?”

Nick nodded. “You seen Grissom, yet?”

“I think he and Catherine are up in the Blacks’ apartment.”

While Nick wasn’t surprised at all that Sara and Grissom were on site, it did surprise him that Catherine had come in to work early. She usually spent every moment she could with her daughter, Lindsey.

“Know if anyone’s located Marshall Black yet?”

“Don’t think so. They haven’t found Morris Pearson, either,” Sara updated him absently as she continued going through Becky Warren’s records. He wasn’t even sure she noticed his farewell on the way out.

As Sara had suggested, he found Catherine and Grissom already upstairs in the Black apartment.

“…was pretty heavy into debt,” he heard Catherine’s voice coming from the other room. He headed down the hallway to the master bedroom.

“So, where was the money going?” Gil asked, rhetorically, knowing that Catherine did not yet have an answer. They were slowly going through and packing up the items from a desk belonging to either John or Marsha Black.

Nick hesitated in the doorway, not wanting to break up their conversation just yet.

“Blackmail?”

“That would explain why the large cash withdrawals.”

“But why blackmail the Blacks? They weren’t particularly wealthy…” Catherine looked up and spotted Nick. “Couldn’t stay away, either?” she greeted.

“Uh…yeah. Actually…” he faltered for a moment, trying to decide whether to let her in on the conversation or not. He didn’t want to worry her by telling her that one of their prime suspects had managed to track him down. On the other hand, he supposed she would probably find out sooner or later, anyway. “I got a phone call from Morris Pearson,” he admitted, not meeting her eyes.

“What?” He immediately became the focus of Gil’s meticulous attention.

Nick quickly filled them in on the phone call that he’d received, leaving out all references to himself that the psychic had made. He didn’t want to worry them unnecessarily. Besides, if Grissom knew that he was being threatened in some way, he’d probably be taken off the case.

Grissom frowned as Nick finished his tale. He studied the younger man for a few moments, suspecting that Nick wasn’t telling them everything. He decided not to press the issue for the moment, but would definitely have to talk to him about this later. Privately. What bothered Grissom most, though, were the questions of why Pearson had chosen to go to Nick, and how he had managed to contact him at all. At home, no less.

That question was brought up by Catherine, too. “How did he know to contact you? Have you talked with him before?”

Nick shook his head. “No. I remember you all telling me about him, but I never met him during the…uh…Crane case.” He avoided looking at either of them, still embarrassed about how he’d been caught off guard during that one.

Catherine nodded, sympathetically. She could see how uncomfortable Nick seemed and decided to busy herself with the contents again. She opened the next drawer and smiled as she picked up a folder of childhood artwork from the Black children. Things that had probably once been hung with pride on the refrigerator, now treasured in their mother’s desk drawer.

“Did he say why he called you?” Grissom asked.

Nick knew he wouldn’t be able to lie to his boss, but he didn’t want to divulge the whole truth either. “I guess he just wanted to warn us.” He swore he could feel Gil’s gaze boring into him and almost blurted out the rest. Fortunately, Gil didn’t ask anything more.

“Why don’t you head on in to the lab,” Grissom suggested, mulling over the situation. “Check out the nightgown he mentioned, see if you can find anything unusual about it. Then why don’t you check in with Doc Robbins and see what he can tell you about the autopsies. Give me a call as soon as you get t--"

He was cut off by Catherine’s gasp as she dropped the stack of papers she’d been going through, holding onto a single drawing as the rest fluttered to the ground. Her hand was trembling slightly. Nick and Gil exchanged worried glances before quickly moving to see what had caused such a reaction in her.

It was the overly simplified drawing of two stick figures--a woman and a little girl, both blonde. They stood before a house and were surrounded by flowers of all sorts of colors. A crudely drawn sun shone on the scene. There was nothing upsetting about the picture that Nick could see. He looked at Catherine, who was still staring at the drawing as though it were the sign of Armageddon or something. “Cath?” he asked gently, stunned as she looked at him, her eyes glittering with a mixture of fear and anger.

“Catherine?” Gil reached out his gloved hand to take the picture from her, hoping he’d be able to tell what the problem was. She didn’t relinquish her hold on the picture, but moved her hand so they could both see what bothered her about it.

Scribbled in the corner in the large scrawl of a young child was the artist’s name. Except for two letters, the name on the page would have been expected.

But the name on the page wasn’t Lindy.

It was Lindsey.

Nick looked at Catherine with wide eyes. “Lindsey? That wasn’t Lindy’s full name, was it?”

Catherine shook her head, still mute with the shock of the situation. Even if the Black daughter’s name had been Lindsey, it didn’t matter. She recognized this picture. It had been on her refrigerator at home for a while, even. One day she’d come home to find that Lindsey had drawn a new decoration to hang it its place, and she’d thought nothing of its disappearance. Pictures came and went all the time. “It’s my daughter’s,” she informed them keeping her voice as calm and steady as she could.

“But…how? Why would it be here?” Nick wondered if this was one of the “gifts” that he was supposed to find. “Did you know them? Did Lindy…babysit for you or something?” He knew he was grasping at straws, but he wanted very badly for there to be a logical explanation for the drawing’s presence at the crime scene.

Catherine shook her head, closing her eyes. “Someone…must have been in my house.” She suddenly felt very cold. And violated.

Grissom carefully took the picture from her and deposited it into a plastic evidence bag. He then handed it to Nick and nodded toward the door. Nick knew that was his cue to head back to the lab to start processing, but he wanted to make sure that Catherine was okay, first.

“Don’t jump to any conclusions,” Gil cautioned. “Are you sure that it was in your house? Could you have had it at the lab? In your locker maybe? Or maybe Lindsey threw it out and it was outside in the garbage?”

Catherine looked ill. “Someone going through my garbage is supposed to make me feel better?” She rubbed her temples as if relieving a headache. “So…maybe it’s this Pearson guy. He obviously knew how to contact Nicky,” she spared him a glance. “Maybe he’s been checking us all out?”

“It’s a possibility. Though for what reason?”

“Maybe he’s trying to get us all thrown off the case,” Nick suggested. He licked his lips nervously, trying to figure out how to make his point without giving away the information he’d withheld about the call. “Calling me outside of work. Getting something from Catherine’s hous…garbage that would tie her in with the crime scene.”

Gil looked thoughtful. “You may be on to something.”

“So…am I off the case?” Catherine asked, unsure which answer she’d prefer to hear.

“Do you want to be off the case?”

Now wasn’t that just like Grissom? Answer a question with a question. Catherine almost smiled, but instead focused on coming up with an answer. “Not really, but…I think maybe I should take myself off it. Conflict of interest. This could be seen as evidence placing me at the scene of the crime.”

Gil nodded seriously. “It could.”

She hadn’t really expected him to deny it, but she was still disappointed that he didn’t try to assure her that it wouldn’t be seen that way. “So…that’s it, I’m off the case. I’ll…head back to the lab, I guess. See what other cases have come in.” She felt strangely lost as she turned to leave the scene. It wasn’t that she’d never been taken off a case before, but this time was different. And she was completely thrown by the idea of the murderer having been in her house. Having been near her daughter! That’s what was the worst part about it. One thing was for sure, she wasn’t going to let Lindsey go back to the house until this creep was caught. They’d stay in a hotel maybe.

“Hey, Catherine,” Nick called after her as she started out of the apartment. She paused and waited for him to catch up. “I’ll head back with you. I can drop you back off here at the end of the shift.” She really didn’t feel like driving at the moment, so she agreed. They remained silent until they were in the car.

“You want to talk about it?” Nick asked, making no move to start the car.

Catherine shook her head at first, but after a moment she relented. “What if someone was in my house when Lindsey was home?” she voiced her fear. “She could have been hurt. Worse.”

“She wasn’t, though,” Nick reminded her gently. “I think whoever did this is just trying to scare us.” Warning us off the case, he added silently.

“They succeeded,” she let out a humorless laugh.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” He frowned as he made a realization. “We need to check out your house as a possible crime scene.”

For some reason she suddenly felt a little bit better. Crime scenes she could deal with. Detach from the emotional, focus on the scientific. That put it all in perspective. “We’ll want to dust the refrigerator for prints. It’s probably too late to find much of use, though,” she added. “I think that picture was taken off the fridge about a month or so ago.”

“You think our guy took it off your fridge?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Lindsey if she remembers taking it down, or what she did with it.”

Nick started the car. “Our shift doesn’t officially start for another couple hours. You want to stop by your place now?”

“No. You need to get to the lab and find out what you can about what Mr. Pearson told you.”

Nick felt another pang of guilt at the fact that he’d kept so much of what Mr. Pearson told him from the others. Especially since Catherine had taken herself off the case. As he probably should have done.

They drove several minutes in silence before Nick opened up the lines of communication again. “You going to be okay staying there?”

Catherine smiled at the concern in his voice. “I think we’ll be staying at a hotel until we figure this one out.”

“I’ve got a spare bedroom,” he offered. “You and Lindsey could share, or I could set up a cot in my office…”

Coming from just about any other man, Catherine might have assumed he was coming on to her, but Nick was so much like a little brother to her that the thought didn’t even cross her mind. “I think that’d be a bit of an imposition.”

“Not at all,” he replied sincerely. “Warrick’s coming over to watch the game on the big screen tomorrow, but if you can put up with us blowing off a little steam, the spare room is all yours. As long as you need it.”

It would be a lot less expensive than a hotel. “Thanks, Nick...I’ll think about it and let you know.” She looked out the window as they pulled into the parking lot for the lab. The parking lot was quite full considering the hour, which meant that part of the day shift was probably still there in addition to the evening shift, and probably most of the graveyard shift was putting in overtime on the Walnut St case.

“Stoges!” someone called out only moments after they’d entered the building. Catherine and Nick both stifled groans as the day shift supervisor made a beeline for them. Catherine gave Nick a sympathetic look, but didn’t stick around to find out what the man wanted.

“What’s up, Ecklie?” Nick asked, trying to sound cheerful. His eyes widened as he saw how miserable the man looked.

“What the hell were you thinkig leabing a cat here? Do you have any idea how much evidence that furball could combromise?” After a moment he got to the real point. “And I’b allergig to cats dambit.”

Nick winced. How come he was being blamed for the cat? He’d sent it back with Greg. But he didn’t want to get their lab tech into trouble, so he’d take the blame. “I’m sorry, sir. He’s…evidence…from the apartment fire.” It somehow seemed wrong to be counting a living creature as evidence, but it was fact. “We’ll process and…I’ll take care of him.”

“Just have him out of the lab by mornig.”

“Yes, sir.” He tried not to smile too much at the man’s misery. As Ecklie stomped away, Nick went directly to the lab area to check up on the kitten. To his dismay, it was nowhere to be found. Nor were either of the evening shift lab techs. He figured they had to be in the break room, so he headed there to ask the where Ecklie had stowed the poor thing.

As it turned out, the evening techs had the kitten out and were playing with it in the break room, while Greg Sanders flirted shamelessly with them.

“He’s so cute!” Gracie Jayne, the audiovisual specialist from the evening shift cooed.

“Don’t I know it?” Greg replied, feigning ignorance on the fact that she meant the kitten.

“Using a cat to pick up girls?” Nick asked, amused, as he pushed open the break room door.

Greg looked slightly embarrassed, but only for a moment before he picked up the kitten and headed over to talk to Nick. “Later, ladies. I’ve got to see a man about a cat.”

Gracie rolled her eyes, but grinned as she headed back to work, her coworker (who’s name escaped Nick at the moment…Michelle maybe?) following behind.

“So…you’re going to love this. I found out some stuff about your cat here.”

“Hit me.”

“We stopped by the animal control department on our way back here last night.”

“Okay.”

“I talked with the vet on duty. Aw man, she was hot. You would have lo…” he cut himself short as he saw the impatient look starting to materialize on Nick’s face. “Nevermind. You’ll just have to imagine that part. Anyway, she looked him over and what we have here is an approximately 3 month old male. No special breed. Just your average every day tom cat.” Nick gazed at Greg, hoping he was going to have something a little more interesting to tell him. “All right. So, they looked him over. He’s been well fed. Well groomed. No fleas. All in all, a very healthy little guy.”

“Tell me this is going somewhere.”

“Ah, yeah. Okay. So it seems your cat’s has been taken good care of, right?”

“Uh…sounds like it,” Nick responded, still trying to figure out what Greg was getting at.

“Here’s where it gets interesting.”

“Couldn’t you have started with the interesting?”

“I could, but then where’s the suspense? Besides, you didn’t want to hear about the vet lady’s hotness.”

“Just tell me about the cat,” Nick prompted, grinning despite his impatience with the lab tech’s storytelling methods.

“Someone, it seems, decided to protect their investment.”

Nick’s eyebrows furrowed. “How so?”

“There’s this program for pet owners called Homeward Bound. What owners can do is have the vet implant a little microchip in their pet that when scanned will help identify the animal should it become lost or stolen and turn up at a shelter or vet clinic.”

“The owner microchip-ed it?” They’d lucked out on this one.

Greg gave him a highly amused look that seemed to be saying, “I know something you don’t know,” but the words out of his mouth were, “Well…someone did.”

“Okay, so then what?”

“We ran the number into the pet registry database.”

“And…?”

“Meet Icarus,” Greg introduced him to the kitten, holding him out for Nick to take.

“Icarus, huh?” Nick took the cat from the lab tech. Icarus immediately began batting at the dangling drawstrings for Nick’s sweatshirt hood. “So, what can you tell me about the owner?”

Greg’s grin widened. “You’re going to love this.”

Nick waited for him to continue, but Greg seemed to be waiting for him to say something. “Share the love, Greg.”

Greg chuckled. “All right. It turns out that the owner is someone we all know and love.”

“Who? We didn’t find any pet accessories. In any of the apartments…”

“Well, I somehow don’t think the owner has any.”

Nick looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“I have the feeling that the owner has no idea that he’s the owner.” Greg looked far too amused, which confounded Nick all the more.

“What makes you say that?”

“Icarus, here, is registered to one Nicholas Stokes of 1317 Woodburn Place, Las Vegas, Nevada.”

* * * *

Thanks for reading, please review! Don’t worry, I’ll be getting to the nightshirt as well as the autopsy results in the next chapter or two! As well as a few more surprises (I hope). Later! --Chaos

A/N: Thanks again to Mersey and Anita (and anyone else actually reading this ;)) I solemnly swear that I will update my BSB stuff soon. This story's just seeming to write itself and my other ones are makin' me work hard to try and get chapters out...*sighs* lol. Soon though!

Chapter Six: Lab

“So you’re off the case?” Warrick asked, frowning as he studied the evidence in his hands. The kitten mewed and squirmed until he set it back on the counter, giving it a little pat as an afterthought. Aside from its odd presence at the crime scene and the fact that it had been registered to Nick, he doubted they’d learn much more from the cat. They’d found no stray hairs, or foreign fibers stuck in its fur. One of the newer lab techs--Greg had conveniently had a large backlog of blood samples “needing immediate attention”--had analyzed the last of the evidence that the cat could provide after it had used its litter box. Their efforts had turned up that the kitten’s latest meal had been Purina Kitten Chow. It wasn’t exactly a breakthrough in the case. They were still waiting to hear back from Homeward Bound to find out if the person who had registered the kitten had by chance paid by check or credit card. Warrick had his doubts that the culprit would be that careless, but they had to follow every potential lead.

Nick sighed. “If Catherine’s out because of the presence of a drawing from her daughter, I think the same thing applies to the presence of…my cat.” He reached out and tapped the table to get Icarus’ attention. The kitten whipped around, playfully leaping at the drumming fingers. Nick looked doubtfully at the kitten. “What am I supposed to do with a cat?” he mused. His expression lightened as he watched Icarus back up then pounce at his fingers again. It grew serious again as he looked back at Warrick. “Autopsy turn up anything?”

Warrick sighed and gave Nick a warning look. “You’re off the case, remember?” He relented, though, when Nick went back to looking at the kitten. “All right. I know you had nothing to do with this…but I didn’t tell you.”

“Let’s start with Rebecca Warren,” Dr. Al Robbins, the coroner, motioned Warrick over to the first body. He began running through the preliminary findings, and nothing he said surprised Warrick. Cause of death, Carbon Monoxide. That was pretty common for victims of a fire. Usually it wasn’t the flames that got them, but the smoke.

“So, she died of smoke inhalation,” Warrick concluded.

Dr. Robbins smiled. “Not so fast.”

Warrick raised his eyebrows and looked back at the coroner, who motioned him to come closer and examine the incision that the doctor had made into the young woman’s airway. He looked, but saw nothing particularly surprising. The blood was a bright cherry red rather than its usual color, but that, too wasn’t unexpected. “What am I looking at?”

“The high level of CO2 is consistent with smoke inhalation, but that’s only part of what we should find.”

Warrick frowned and looked closer. It dawned on him a moment later. Where there’s smoke, there fire, yes, but there’s also soot. If she had died from smoke inhalation, the airway should be lined with ashes. “So, she died before the fire.”

Dr. Robbins nodded. “Yes. The fire unfortunately makes it difficult for us to use her body temperature as an indication of time of death, but the lack of ash along the pathway indicates that she was not alive when the fire started. The fire also makes it unreliable for us to determine time of death from rigor mortis. Heated conditions cause faster loss of adenosine triphosphate from muscles. If we knew the exact temperature of the room during the fire, we might be able to estimate, but as we don’t know the temperature, we cannot.

“Likewise, we cannot use lividity to determine the time of death. However, I was able to narrow it down a little bit. See here?” He pointed to where the body was slightly discolored on her shoulder, hip, arm, and leg. “The stagnation in blood in the vessels causes the discoloration here, showing that she was lying on her side when she died, or was placed on her side within half an hour of death. However, as you see here,” he rolled the body onto it’s side and indicated that the skin was even more discolored on her back and buttocks, “blood goes where gravity takes it. Some time in the first six hours or so of death, she was moved and placed on her back. After six to eight hours, lividity becomes fixed. Blood vessels break down and the blood settles, permanently staining the tissues. Before that, the lividity can be shifted. Judging from the fact that we can see the faint stains in the tissues along her side, I would guestimate that the body was moved at least two or three hours after death, but obviously before six hours had passed.”

Warrick took this all in. “She was last seen leaving work around 9:00 pm. The fire started around 2:00 am. She was probably moved before the fire started.”

“Which means that she probably died shortly after she got home. Time of death was some time between 9:30 and 11:00 pm, probably closer to 9:30.”

Nick listened to Warrick describe the autopsy result on Rebecca Warren. “Carbon monoxide poisoning, and then arson to cover it up,” he summed it up. “So…was there maybe a gas leak, you suppose? That doesn’t answer why the bodies were moved…or what started the fire.”

Warrick nodded. “That’s not all.”

Nick looked over at him and settled back, waiting for him to continue.

Dr. Robbins moved over to the slab where Mr. Black’s body awaited them. “This one is a little different.”

“How so?” Warrick asked.

“CO2 levels were normal, no soot in the airway.”

Warrick whistled. “So, what was the cause of death?”

“Undetermined, pending further testing.”

“Any theories?”

“I do have one, and you’re not going to like it.”

“When do I ever like it?”

“Point taken. Okay. We’ve got a man in his late forties. Family man. Athletic, works out daily, jogs every morning according to neighbors. Both parents and three of his grandparents are still alive and have no notable health problems on either side of the family history. Until recently, this man was quite healthy. According to his medical records, though, he recently went to the doctor complaining of frequent nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.”

“The flu?”

“That’s what the initial diagnosis was. The doctor suggested bed rest and drinking plenty of fluids.”

“Okay.”

“However, two weeks pass, and Mr. Black is back at the doctor. Same symptoms.”

“Did they do any blood tests?”

“No. Mr. Black refused the lab tests that the doctor wanted to run. He said he simply wanted the doctor to prescribe him something to help with the nausea, and something to help him sleep at night.”

“Why did he refuse the lab tests?” Warrick asked suspiciously. “Drugs?”

Dr. Robbins smiled. “That’s what I suspected. So I took a look at the liver tissues.”

“Steroids.”

“That’s what I was looking for, but the result for steroids came back negative.”

“Damn…so what then?”

“I suspect that he was being poisoned. There was extensive damage to the liver, and the kidneys. My suspicion is that the tests we’re waiting on will find that Mr. Black has been slowly poisoned over a period of time, and then perhaps tonight given a final fatal dose. If my guess is right, we’re looking at arsenic. I’ve sent a sample of hair to the lab to test to find out if there was arsenic present, and at what levels.”

“Arsenic poisoning over a couple months; that would mean that the person poisoning him likely lived right there in the same apartment.”

“Marshall Black, you think?” Nick asked, cutting into Warrick’s description of the autopsy. “He hasn’t been found yet.”

“Could be. But then why kill the other people in the building?”

Nick nodded. “Or maybe our psychic has been orchestrating this for a while. We’ll have to check and see if he maybe had a copy of the neighbor’s key…you know in case the kids lock themselves out or something.”

“I’ll check on that.”

“What about the others? Did any of them die from the fire?”

“Mrs. Masters, died of smoke inhalation.”

“Well, at least that’s one of them.”

“It also appeared that she was taking sleeping pills of some sort, which likely prevented her from waking up in time to save herself. We still need to determine if that was prescribed, if she took it herself, or if someone else may have administered it. Lindy Black cause of death was insulin overdose. John Jr. tested positive for morphine, Doc is doing some further tests to determine if maybe it was heroin.” Nick looked progressively sicker as the list continued. “Mr. Masters died of a stroke; Doc has not yet determined the cause of the stroke. Mrs. Black died of asphyxiation of unknown origin. She did not have any marks to indicate strangulation, normal CO2 levels. There are no bruises or anything to indicate that she struggled.”

“Do I even want to know about Mr. Vaugn?”

“Asphyxiation. Though if that hadn’t done the trick, I’m betting that he would have died from hypothermia.” At Nick’s surprised expression, Warrick explained. “I haven’t been back to the scene, but I called Grissom to check it out and he confirmed. Mr. Vaugn died in his freezer, and was probably kept there for…days, maybe even weeks. Doc found some ice crystals still in him, the heat from the fire hadn’t quite finished thawing him out. Enough so that you couldn’t tell from the outside, but some of the internal organs were still frozen on the inside.”

“Damn.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Someone sure went through an awful lot of trouble to kill these people. Why not just do it all in one shot? Like with the fire. That could have taken them all out. The bars on the windows probably would have stopped them from being able to get out if the entrances were blocked.”

“And why bother moving around the bodies? Except for Mr. Vaugn, they all could have seemed like natural or at least accidental deaths. Well, if they hadn’t all happened in such a short period of time. Moving the bodies to the wrong apartments is a clear tip-off that there was nothing natural about the deaths.”

Nick frowned. “It’s kind of like…my sisters.” He laughed as Warrick shot him a doubtful look. “No, not that they would kill someone. I’m just thinking about when we were growin’ up. They had this big ol’ dollhouse that Daddy built for them.” Warrick’s eyebrows furrowed, but he continued to listen. “Between the five of them, they had maybe thirty dolls, right? Each of them had their own little made up doll families.” Warrick nodded, still not sure where Nick was going with this. “They’d play for hours on end with these dolls, but then they’d get bored, or one of my other sisters would come along and want to play, too.”

Warrick understood. “So they’d change around the dolls.”

“Exactly.”

“Bored of your family, you trade it in for another.”

“Welcome to the dollhouse.”

“Damn.”

“Marshall Black, you think?”

“I think we need to find him, soon.”

“Hey, Nick?” Catherine called as she stopped in the doorway, interrupting their discussion.

“Yeah?”

“We’ve got a break-in to check out downtown. Let’s roll.”

Nick got up to follow her, but remembered something on his way out. “Warrick. You’ll want to check out Rebecca Warren’s nightshirt. There’s supposedly some sort of warning on it.”

“A warning? Like what?”

“Don’t know. It may be nothing. It’s just one of the things Mr. Pearson said.”

“Got it. I’ll get Greg to check it out before I go back to the scene.”

“We still on for the game?”

“Four o’clock kickoff, right?”

“Yeah. I’ll pick up some stuff for the grill. I think Cath and Lindsey are going to be there. Invite the others and we’ll make a party out of it.”

Warrick scooped up the white kitten, who mewed indignantly but allowed himself to be carried back to the cage that had become his temporary home without much fuss. Once Icarus was safely in his cage, Warrick headed back to the evidence room to get the nightshirt.

“What are we looking for?” Greg asked. “It’s been checked for blood and stuff already,” he reminded Warrick as he took the garment.

“I have no idea. Nick said that Mr. Pearson told him there was some sort of warning on it.”

“There was one warning,” Greg responded immediately. At Warrick’s raised eyebrow he grinned. “Do not tumble dry.” He sobered up at Warrick’s unamused expression. “Okay. I’ll check it out, just set it over there,” he waved to one of the few empty spots on his worktable.

With all the other work on his docket, it wasn’t until near the end of his shift that Greg finally got around to examining Rebecca Warren’s night shirt. All the usual tests had been done already, and he had no idea what he was looking for, but he pulled the garment from the evidence bag and began going over it, looking for anything unusual.

It was a Tampa Bay Buccaneers jersey, number 81. Nothing written on it, no noticeable tears or excessive grime. Looked pretty new--this was probably the first time she’d worn it, or else it had been very recently (and thoroughly) washed. Greg turned off the overhead lights and examined it under the alternative light source, examining every inch of the fabric, turning it inside out and examining it again. Nothing stood out. He turned the main light back on and examined it one more time.

“Okay, so…who is Buccaneer 81?” he asked himself aloud, hoping that it might show some insight. Doing a quick search on the web, he came up with wide receiver Tim Brown. A little background search on him, though, did not turn up anything substantial. Other than the coincidence of sharing Warrick’s last name, there was nothing really to note.

“Warning, my butt,” he muttered. “‘Do not tumble dry’ is the only…” He blinked and looked back at the sewn in tag again. He hadn’t really looked at the tag other than a glance. He pulled the tag up again and read it over. It seemed normal enough. He flipped it over and read the back. Still nothing out of the ordinary.

“What am I missing?” he asked the shirt as if it could speak back to him. He let go of the tag and it flopped back into place.

Wait.

It was just the clothing line’s logo, but it could double as a warning of sorts. Hands Off! Clothing Co. “Cute warning there, mister psychic. Please tell me that I didn’t just waste 20 minutes looking for that.”

“Looking for what?” Nick asked as he sauntered into the lab, ready to go home after successfully wrapping up the robbery case he and Catherine had worked that night.

“Your psychic’s warning.”

“Not my psychic, man,” Nick denied. “But what’d you find?”

Greg shrugged and indicated the tag. At Nick’s looked doubtful, Greg only shrugged and explained everything he’d learned, which was next to nothing. It did garner a raised eyebrow at the name similarity to Warrick, but that wasn’t much to go on. “Nothing else I can find, so I guess that’s it. Hands off, warning Warrick to stay off the case, you suppose?” He looked thoughtful for a moment before picking up the shirt again. “Though, there is one more place I didn’t check…” He pulled at the tag again, this time carefully turning it inside out. At first glance, there was nothing unusual, only the threads from the embroidered tag information crossing back and forth. But some of the threads were broken…and seemed to have been pulled or loosened perhaps.

Grabbing a pair of tweezers, Greg carefully started shifting the threads.

And there.

Written where few would ever even think to look.

Greg dropped the tweezers and grabbed his phone, punching in Warrick’s number as fast as he could.

At the same moment, Nick’s phone started to ring.

Nick answered his phone, trying to stay calm. Greg’s call would be in time, he had to believe that. “Stokes,” he answered, hoping it would be one of the others calling him from the site.

“C’mon Warrick, pick up, man,” Greg muttered into his phone.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, Nick. I really thought you were smarter than this. It took…almost 32 hours for you to find my note?”

“Who is this?” Nick asked, trying to figure out if he’d heard this voice somewhere before. He knew about the note; it had to be the Walnut Street killer. But how had he known that they just found the note? He had to be watching! Nick spun around, looking for anyone that was out of place. Nobody. Except Greg, who was looking at him with an odd expression on his face.

“This is Warrick,” the other CSI answered Greg’s call.

“Warrick. Get out of the building. Get everyone out. Now,” Greg blurted out, watching as Nick went out into the hallway, looking first one direction than the other as if searching for somebody.

“What?” Warrick blinked trying to understand what the lab tech was trying to tell him. “Greg? What’s up, man?”

“The warning. We found the ‘warning’. Get everyone out of the building. I think maybe there’s a bomb there and it’s going to explode.”

“What?”

“Just get out of the building!”

“Nick, Nick, Nick. After all the time and effort I put into setting this up for you, and you’re not even trying?” Nick’s caller chided him.

“Not trying what? Tell me who you are,” Nick demanded.

“Not in the game, Nick. Not in the game.”

“This isn’t a game. You…” Nick restrained himself from blurting out the things he wanted to call this man. Fucking lunatic.

“Manners, Nick,” the man scolded.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“It’s not what I want. It’s what you’ve always wanted.”

Nick shook his head. “I have never wanted anyone to get murdered.”

“Murder?” the man sounded genuinely surprised. “That’s not what this is about, Nick.”

“Then what is it about?”

“The perfect crime scene, Nick. You love solving puzzles, but they’re always too easy! You want a real challenge!”

Nick barely restrained himself from yelling at this man. “I’m off the case. My cat places me at the scene. I can’t work the case; I might ‘contaminate evidence’. I lost. So game over.”

The guy actually laughed. “Oh, Nick, that’s just…pathetic. Even a small brain like yours can do better than that!”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want you to do your fucking job,” the man hissed. “I went to all the trouble of setting this up and you’re going to play.”

“I told you I can’t work this case. I tell you what, though. You give me your number and I’ll have the lead on the case give you a call.”

The man laughed again. “Don’t patronize me. You’re going to play, or everybody loses. And not a word to anyone about me, Nick. That would be cheating. So don’t go running to the bug man. And don’t bother trying to trace this call. You won’t find me that way.”

“I told you, I can’t ‘play’ your game. I’m off the case.”

“Then I’ll just have to set up another one. Just for you.”

“No. Wait!”

“You wouldn’t play the original game, so it’s new game time. Think of it like…a chess game. Rules are this: Not a word to anyone else about me. You know nothing about the Walnut Street case. Let them figure that one out. You try and help them in any way, I kill them. And I will know if you try and tell them anything, Nick. I know every move you make.” There had to be cameras or something, Nick decided, looking up toward the ceiling. Nothing visible, but they could make cameras the size of a pin. “You with me so far?”

Nick nodded, testing to see if the man could really see him.

“You have to speak over the phone, Nick,” the man condescended.

Nick wasn’t sure if that really confirmed that the man saw him, or if the man was just saying that because he hadn’t answered. He scowled. “I’m with you.”

The man let out a hearty chuckle. “I knew you would warm up to this. Next, I set up a new scene for you. You solve it, you find me. You don’t solve it, I set up another one.”

“No, wait! How will I know which…which scene is yours?”

“Oh, Nick. I told you this is like a chess game. Since you’re not as smart as I thought you were, I’ll even give you an advantage. You only have to take out the King.” Nick clenched his jaw, barely containing his fury with this incredibly arrogant man and the whole situation. “But me…I have all sorts of pawns to take out before I get to you. If you look at the puzzle I’ve already given you, you’ll know my next move.”

Realization started to dawn on Nick. “No. Wait--"

“It’s my turn. I’ll be in touch. Remember, tell nobody about me.”

Nick started to protest again, but the line went dead. Nick turned and hurried back to where he hoped Greg was still on the phone with Warrick.

“Alright, we’re all out of the building,” Warrick assured Greg. “Now what is this all about?”

“The warning the psychic gave Nick. We found it written on the tag. ‘Return to S.o.C. Bang! You’re dead.’” Greg described the short message on the tag. “S.o.C. must be Scene of Crime, right? And bang, like an explosion. We’ll want to have the bomb squad get down there and go over the place before anyone goes back in.”

“Uh…yeah. Bang is more like a gunshot than--" Nick reached to grab the phone from Greg, hoping to warn the others to get out of there. By the time he had but the phone up to his ear, though, all he could hear on the other end was chaos.

“Warrick? What’s…can anyone hear me? Warrick?” he called into the phone, bile rising to his throat. He was too late. If his guess was right, his mysterious caller had just made his first move.