Fic: Backtrack Creek, Chapter 11 (CSI/CSI Miami, Nick / Greg, Ryan / Eric)
Title: Backtrack Creek, Chapter 11
Pairings: Greg Sanders / Nick Stokes,
Ryan Wolfe / Eric Delko
Rating: PG
Genre: AU
Disclaimer: Not mine, etc.
Summary: A deranged serial killer is terrorising a small isolated town of Backtrack Creek. CSI Ryan Wolfe and a pesky reporter Greg Sanders end up in the middle of it, and there is no shortage of suspects.
What is the local police officer Nick Stokes hiding? Does Catherine Willows, the madam of the local full-service Inn, have her own ideas of customer service? Has Lindsay, the owner of the tiny diner mummified something else besides her pastries? Is Eric Delko, an enigmatic mechanic, as good under the hood as he says he is? What is Warrick, the man without a past, running from? Has the long lack of bathing finally snapped garage owner Timmy Speedle`s fragile mind? Who wanted to kill a perverted science teacher Gil Grissom and the police chief Brass, the patron saint of the local doughnut shop?
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Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Interlude Chapter 10
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“Sara, get an APB on a vehicle registered to Willows. It’s probably heading out of town.” Nick demanded as he walked into the bullpen. “Sanders said it was a pick-up, pretty old.”
“Okay.” Sidle put down the gun she had been cleaning and grabbed the phone. “What reason do I give them?”
“It looks like a person of interest is using it to escape.”
“We have a person of interest?”
“No, the Vegas PD has one. Just get it done. Where’s-” Nick stopped and instinctively lowered his voice when he spotted Wolfe sleeping with his head against the keyboard. “Never mind. How long has he been asleep?”
“I don’t know, I just got here.” Sidle shrugged. “Can’t say I blame him. I f I had to wait all day for the computer to finish the search I would be in La-La-Land too.”
“Where’s Curtis?”
“Trying to get a straight answer from Henry. He keeps saying the inventory should be done by the document log. On the plus side, it looks like the intruder escaped before he could take anything.”
“Is Henry making any progress?”
“Well, he started from the beginning of the archive logs so, he should now be going through reports filed about two years after the end of stone age.”
“Hey.” Curtis greeted and walked in carrying a stack of case files. “I think I got them all. These are the files from the previous victims, and by the way Henry is totally livid. He says I ruined his system.” She dumped her cargo on a free tabletop.
“How would you feel about getting some more excitement into your day?” Nick asked. “You gotta go back there.”
“No way.”
“I heard something new last night. There was another similar series of murders about thirty years ago. We’ll need to take a look at those files too.”
“I’ve already been in there once, I’m not going there again. Half an hour with a passive-aggressive geek in full speed is enough for one day.”
“I spent last night with one of them-” Nick’s mind caught up with his brain and he quickly corrected himself. “I mean, talking about the case.”
“Has anyone ever told you that a man of your age shouldn’t blush like that anymore?”
“Yeah, quite a few times.”
“I’ll do it. I know how to motivate him. You can call out the APB on Willows`s truck.” Sidle tossed her phone over to Curtis, picked up her gun from the desk and marched into the hallway. “Henry! I’m coming in and I’m armed!” The door slammed shut behind her, and Nick sighed deeply.
“Better her than me.”
“I can vouch for that…” Curtis agreed. She glanced at Wolfe, who hadn’t even winced at the raised voices. “Either he’s just a deep sleeper or he had a bad night. He’s pretty cute like that.” She put her hand on the man’s shoulder and shook him gently. “Wake up, Nick’s here.”
Wolfe snapped awake and pulled himself up, stretching his back after the uncomfortable position in the chair.
“Stokes? Sorry I didn’t answer my phone-”
“That’s okay, yesterday was bad.” Nick nodded. “Anything from the databases?”
“Not yet, it’s still running it. We don’t know if the killer is local or maybe someone who used to live here or a complete outsider, so I thought it would be safer to widen the search outside the State. That takes time.” Just as he finished his sentence a red mark appeared on the screen. “Forget I said that.” He sat down again. “We got a partial match.” He clicked a few keys. “The sample was taken in Las Vegas. Suspected domestic battery and aggravated assault. Charges were dropped, but the samples were taken during the medic’s check-up. It’s a protocol when there’s a lot of blood on the scene, so they can separate one from the other.”
“How close is the match?”
“Look at this.” Ryan brought the information of the samples on the screen side by side. “This is the sample we got from the scene, and this was taken in Vegas. Not a full sibling, maybe a cousin or a half sibling. A male relative.” Ryan speculated. He opened the data file connected to the match. A moment later the datasheet appeared on the screen, with a small photo of a woman glaring at them.
Nick leaned down behind his back to read over his shoulder.
“That’s got to be the incident Greg talked about. Willows was in Vegas with a man, and things got ugly.”
“Really ugly, but no one looks pretty in crime scene photos, especially when they’re all black and blue.” A voice commented behind them and both Nick and Ryan twirled around. Greg didn’t wait for them to recover from their shock before he continued. “So according to your sample, it’s not Willows, but someone close to her. At least genetically.”
“Don’t sneak around like that!” Nick exclaimed. “I could have pulled a gun at you!”
“Maybe, if your reflexes were better. No direct matches?”
“No.” Ryan stated. “That partial was the closest thing we could find.” He continued scanning through Catherine Willows`s information. “As far as I can tell, she only had one sibling, an older brother. Same mother, different father.”
“We already knew that.” Greg placed his head on the man’s shoulder, mirroring Nick position on the other shoulder. “Horatio Caine. Pronounced dead over twenty years ago.”
“Yeah, and it looks like…” Ryan continued tapping the keys. “... Willows doesn’t have cousins from her mother’s side.” He groaned and slumped back in his chair. “Or her father’s.”
“So it’s a dead-end.” Nick interpreted with the same frustrated tone. “Maybe we should ask doctor Robbins if we could take a look at his files. He’s been treating the whole town for decades, so if anyone knew about the kids born around here, it was him. Now that he`s retired he might just cut us some slack with the confidentiality issue.”
“Guys…” Greg started, frowning at his own thoughts. “Aren’t we overlooking the most obvious thing? I mean not logically, but in Twin Peaks-esque little town kinda obvious?”
Nick and Ryan gave him two very similar looks of confusion.
“Okay, I’ll spell it out.” Greg seemed to have trouble controlling his urge to jitter with excitement. “Think carefully. Willows has one relative who ticks all the boxes and was connected to the previous killings.”
“If you mean the brother, he’s been dead a long time.” Ryan commented. “You said it yourself.”
“You said he was pronounced dead. By whom?”
“I’ll check.” Ryan turned back to the computer and a few minutes later found the name. “Catherine Willows, using a power of attorney from their mother. He was pronounced dead after four years. Normally it takes longer, but the judge decided to grant their appeal based on the circumstances of the disappearance.”
“And what does that mean?” Greg spread his arm like a magician presenting a white dove. “He was pronounced dead without a body, without a proof he had been killed. Even the fact that he was the killers victim was pure speculation. The time and circumstances just matched, so they grabbed it. Easy way out, and when there wasn’t any more killings after that, they assumed he was the last victim.”
“You’re thinking the originally killer may have taken him to get…” Ryan tried to find a fitting phrase. “…an apprentice?”
“Something like that…” Greg nodded. His nervous energy was becoming more jittery as he scratched his nose, taking a minute to consider. “But it wouldn’t explain the thirty year gap. If you wanna snatch a kid and train him to be a killer it doesn’t take that long, no matter how thickheaded the kid is. Anyway, it’s too much to be a coincidence. They never found a body and when the killing starts again, a DNA that could be his is found on the scene. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“Yeah, but there could be a ton of other explanations for that.” Nick stated as calmly as he could. “Just because it was speculation at the time, doesn’t mean it wasn’t accurate-”
“A ton of explanations?” Greg repeated, his hands on his hips, leaning forward and ready for an argument. “What other explanations? Gimme at least one other explanation that would fit all the facts as we know them.”
“I will.” Nick said. “I will, I just… need to think about it.”
“Both of you, just stop that.” Ryan complained, rubbing his eyes. “Right now we can’t deny that it is a possibility, no matter how far fetched, so we have to keep an open mind.”
“I’m open minded, but I got a problem with dead people coming back to start a killing spree-” Nick defended his view, but was interrupted. He grabbed the ringing phone and pressed it against his ear. “Stokes.”
Greg and Ryan stayed quiet, observing Nick’s expressions as they grew darker. Nick’s one worded responses caught Curtis’s attention, and she walked over from her desk to join the others in waiting.
“We’re on our way.” Nick placed the phone back in the cradle. “Another killing. Same method, but this time the attack happened in his own house and the body wasn’t moved.”
“Who was it?” Curtis asked.
“Doctor Robbins. Mrs. Murray was supposed to come to do his weekly cleaning, she used her own keys to get in and found him on the floor. She called Alexx first, but she says doc Robbins was already dead by then.”
“Another killing so soon…” Ryan stated. “He’s escalating. Doesn’t sound like he cares about getting caught anymore.”
“Leaving the town would be risky.” Greg suggested, but his earlier vigor had diminished. “Two roads out of the town, both very straight for miles and miles. On one side there’s a ride through open road, where he would be easy to spot, and on the other side-”
“The Stateline.” Ryan finished his thought. “If he’s so far gone, that he can’t follow his own rituals in killing, I wouldn’t be too sure that he’s clearheaded enough to think about escaping. If he doesn’t care about getting caught, there’s no telling what he might do next.”
“And in a small town he has limited number of places to hide. Hiding out in the woods might work in the daytime, but at night with no gear… He has to have some place to hide. Someone must be protecting him.”
“Willows.” Nick grunted, nodding at their reasoning. “When we’ve checked doc Robbins’s house, I’m going to her place and I’ll search it from top to bottom, with or without a warrant.”
TBC