Set Up

a/n: This story will be very different from "Distraction," in pace and content. But I hope you all like it anyway.

Solo

Nick looked at his pager and frowned. It was Grissom. It was odd that the man was paging him when Grissom knew Nick was at the crime scene, still processing.

But he called his boss. He often wondered why they had pagers when cell phones were a bit more immediate. He shrugged that thought off.

"Grissom, it's Nick," he said. He heard stress in his supervisor's voice, which was somewhat entertaining to Nick.

"Nick. I need you on a DB at an office in Henderson," Gil said. "Tell Warrick he can finish where you're at."

"Okay," he said.

"Nick," Grissom said with a stern edge. "You're solo on this." The call ended, and Nick was left a bit stunned and elated as he stood in the middle of a crime scene.

Slowly a grin crept over his face.

The office building was a decent 18-story structure of glass and steel. Nick glanced up, noting the reflections of the city lights bouncing off the building.

Detective Vega spotted him from the entrance and waved him inside.

"Hey," Nick said.

"Glad you could make it," Vega said. "Grissom said you guys were swamped as it is." Nick nodded, and tightened his grip on his kit. He followed Vega to an elevator and rode up to the 17th floor.

Once there, Nick immediately felt it: the atmosphere that was just saturated with death. He could always tell when he was near a dead body. There was this tingle or shudder that started through him. That, and it was extremely cold in the room of the crime scene.

The DB was male, age 35 and a rising employee of Phoenix Telecomm. The company occupied the whole floor, but this late at night, the only employee around was the custodian.

Vega moved over to the custodian, while Nick knelt over the body. His suit was soft, and obviously very expensive. Nick looked over the area, trying to notice anything abnormal.

"Christian Patterson," Vega said from behind him.

"You look at his wallet?" Nick asked. Vega shook his head.

"Wasn't on him," he said. "The custodian found him on his nightly cleanup of this office. He's the one who ID-ed Patterson." Nick nodded, and opened his mouth to ask the standard questions, until Vega cut him off. "No, no one moved him or touched him."

Nick let an amused smile appear on his face. He began to open his kit, and collect evidence.

Christian Patterson was stabbed twice, once a clean slice to the side, and the other, a fatal wound to the stomach region. Nick swabbed the blood around the wounds. There was a decent amount of blood, but not as much as Nick would have expected from a bleed-out stab wound. His eyes moved to the man's hands, which were covered in blood.

Nick guessed Patterson clutched his stomach after he was stabbed. But there weren't any defensive wounds.

"He knew his killer," Nick said to himself. "Or he was completely surprised." His eyes continued their search, this time spotting some dirt on the man's shoe. It flaked off a bit too, collecting on the floor. Nick gathered the dirt.

He moved up to the head of the body, leaning close to it as his eyes caught sight of something.

A hair.It was long and brown. There wasn't a skin tag on it, but Nick bagged it anyway.

"Nick?" He looked up from the body to see David waiting. "You done yet?"

Nick nodded. "Yeah."

Detective Vega was working on getting the surveillance footage from the office building, while Nick met with Dr. Robbins just after the autopsy.

Nick snapped on the latex gloves and turned to Al.

"Time of death?" he asked first. Al leaned heavily on his cane, and began with his findings.

"Six hours ago," Al said. Nick frowned at that, but let the man continue. "Cause of death was damage to the internal organs, and bleeding out. The second stab was to the upper gastric area."

"Slow way to die," Nick commented.

"Normally, yes," Al said. Nick looked away from the corpse to the doctor. "Notice the size of the wound."

Nick leaned in closer. It was ragged, but nearly round. "What was he stabbed with?" He glanced at the wound on the side of the corpse.

"Knife, probably the same one for the both wounds," Al said. "The stomach wound was forced open. My guess is the blade was twisted after entry."

Nick started to nod slowly as he caught on. "Twist the knife so the wound can't close." He shook his head and sighed. "Sure way to kill someone quicker."

Al raised an eyebrow at the corpse. "Yes. Although, there are quicker ways to kill someone as well."

Archie had the surveillance tapes cued up and ready to go. Nick slid into a chair by him, and gave the kid a nod.

"Let's start at 7 p.m.," Nick said. "That gives us an hour before the time of death."

The tape moved ahead, showing the elevator and the 17th floor's comings and goings. Most people were going, no doubt calling an end to a long work day. Nick kept his eyes peeled for anything as the tape moved on at a quickened speed, but nothing caught his attention.

The tape sped through four hours of footage. Nick couldn't believe they hadn't seen anything yet. It was impossible that they hadn't caught anything yet.

What have I missed? He was about to tell Archie to rewind and watch the footage again when he saw it.

Or her.

"Archie, hang on."

The tape showed a woman with dark hair exit the elevator and head directly to Christian Patterson's office. Nick's eyes were glued to the screen and time code. Five minutes later, the woman emerged. She moved hurriedly, but not to the elevator. She took the stairs.

"That's odd," Archie said. "Why would someone take the stairs when the elevator works fine?" Nick glared at the image of the woman.

"Because she's involved."