Nick is faced with the challenge of saving his own life, in more ways than one. To beat his adversary, he's going to have to overcome inner demons as well and fight harder than he ever has in his entire life. For his life.
I don't own anything except for the characters I make up.
"It's not until we lose everything, that we are free to do anything." -Chuck Palahniuk
It had started out an ordinary night at the Las Vegas Crime Lab. It was a slow one, which left Nick Stokes and Warrick Brown with nothing to do but the paper work they had successfully put off for a month. Even though they were extremely behind and were only managing to get Ecklie madder, the two men still didn't start to work on the forms, and instead occupied themselves with a rousing game of "avoid Ecklie and Grissom at all costs."
Needless to say, the two of them were very good at their new game. They were able to avoid both Ecklie and Grissom for almost the entire shift by hiding out in the locker room, trace, DNA, fingerprint and A/V labs, and even going up to the roof for an hour or so. But as a result of getting better at their game, Nick and Warrick got sloppy. With only an hour left in their shift, they were cornered in the break room by both Ecklie and Grissom.
"Where the hell have you two been all night?" Grissom asked.
Nick shrugged. "Following up on cases so we could get all that paper work done," he said with a smile.
"Yeah," Warrick agreed. "You guys wanted it done, but we had to do a little more work for some of the cases. It just goes to show how dedicated we are."
Ecklie rolled his eyes. "I appreciate it, but unfortunately we need you guys to stay here and pull a double. Our slow night turned into a busy morning and we need all the hands we can get."
"You two are working a 419 out in Henderson with suspicious circs," Grissom said. "Apparently, there's an eye witness and plenty of evidence, but Brass said he's never seen anything like it. So I want you two out there as soon as possible to figure out what's going on."
"Have Greggo help us out with our paper work and we'll call it even," Nick said as he took the assignment slip from their supervisor and headed out the the parking lot with Warrick.
The pair made it out to Henderson in what had to have been record time. Nick had been driving a little too fast, which Warrick had been sure to comment on. They were still arguing about who was a better driver as they got out of the car, grabbed their kits and walked up to Brass, who was standing in the middle of the walkway that lead up to the front porch of the large blue house.
"It's about time someone got their ass out here," Brass said dramatically.
Warrick held up his hands. "Hey man, if Nick had driven any faster, we'd be on Doc Robbins' table instead of here."
"Total drama queen," Nick said, shaking his head.
"Whatever guys," Brass said with a smile. "You've got your work cut out for you today. I've never seen anything like what's in there, and I've been told this eye witness is a little nutty. I suggest both of you go inside, then go see Mrs. Nut Job."
Nick and Warrick smiled at the police captain and headed off into the house. As soon as they were inside, their smiles faded and they immediatly agreed with Brass. Neither one of them had ever seen a scene quite like this. The foyer to the house was covered in blood smears and spatter floor to ceiling. Arrows were drawn in blood on the floor, pointing towards the living room. The CSIs exhchanged puzzled expressions before following the arrows into the next part of the house.
They saw it before they even set foot inside the living room. In the center of the far wall, a man was pinned up to the white wall by a large knife sticking out of the middle of his chest. There were countless cuts covering his entire body. A large blood pool was on the beige carpet beneath his feet at the end of the trail of blood leading from behind the man all down the wall. His feet were three feet off the floor and his arms were hanging stiffly at his sides.
"He must have been killed in the foyer," Warrick thought out loud.
Nick nodded in agreement. "Yeah, there's not enough blood in here to suggest otherwise."
They heard Brass come in behind them. The two younger men followed his finger, which was silently pointing up to the ceiling. In blood, someone had written "HE'S NEXT."
"Someone had a lot of time on their hands to draw us so much," Nick said. "They obviously wanted to make a point."
Warrick sighed. "I think they made it loud and clear."
After processing the scene for three hours, Nick and Warrick loaded up their Denali with all the DNA samples, fingerprints, and trace they could find throughout the entire house. They had enough evidence to keep the techs, and themselves, busy for a very long time.
They both stretched for a minute, trying to get the stiffness out of their necks and backs. They were glad to be out of the house and out in the fresh air and sunlight. It would take a little while for the iron smell of blood to pass, but it was worth the wait.
"Ready for the witness?" Warrick asked after a couple minutes.
Nick sighed. "I guess so."
The CSIs went with Brass across the street to the tan house set back in a perfectly green grass yard. The walked up the paved path as the sun was rising to the top of the bright blue sky behind the house. The large white front door opened before they even had to knock.
"What else can I do for you?" the woman who answered the door asked politely.
"I'm Detective Jim Brass, and this is Nick Stokes and Warrick Brown with the Crime Lab. They would just like to ask you a few questions."
The woman smiled plesantly at Warrick and Brass, then her eyes froze on Nick. She held a look of shock on her face, but the Texan didn't notice. Brass and Warrick saw it, but didn't say anything right away.
"Ma'am, what exactly did you see?" Nick asked.
"Mrs. Kenley," the woman said, introducing herself. Her eyes were fixed on Nick and she didn't seem to even notice the other two men anymore.
Nick finally noticed her starting at him with a look of horror on her face. "Is there a problem Mrs. Kenley?" he asked.
Mrs. Kenley shook her head. "No, it's just...the man I saw leaving the house after I heard the yelling looks exactly like you," she said, pointing at Nick.
Nick frowned. "Me?"
Mrs. Kenley nodded. "Yeah. Except he was blonde, and a little shorter than you I guess, and not nearly as tan. I saw him from across the street, about thirty or so yards, but I swear he could be your twin."
Nick looked from Brass to Warrick, then back at Mrs. Kenley. "Are you sure?"
She nodded. "I swear on it. He got into a silver Ford Focus and sped away."
Brass smiled slightly. "Are you positive about the car?" he asked.
Mrs. Kenley smiled. "My son has the same model, only black. I would know a Focus anywhere. This one was beat up though. It didn't look like an old model year or anything. But it looked like it just came out of the junkyard because it was covered in mud and looked like it had gotten into an accident recently."
"Did you notice a license plate?" Warrick asked.
Mrs. Kenley shook her head. "No, I didn't watch long enough and didn't think to. I ran for the phone and called 911 when I saw the blood through the windows inside the house."
"Have you ever seen this man before?" Nick asked.
Mrs. Kenley shook her head. "Not until this morning when I saw him leave, unless you want to count seeing you."
"Come on Nicky," Catherine scoffed. "You don't really believe this woman, do you?"
Nick shrugged. "I don't understand why she would lie about it though. It doesn't make sense."
"Maybe she didn't see anything at all and didn't want to get in trouble for lying or something," Greg suggested.
Brass shook his head. "No, this woman was genuinely shocked. You should have seen her face when she saw Nick. She looked like she had seen a ghost. She was telling the truth, or deserves an Oscar for her performance."
Warrick nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I think she was telling the truth too."
"So you're telling me you think that Nick has an evil twin brother out there killing people?" Catherine asled in disbelief.
The entire graveyard shift, including Brass, were sitting in the layout room discussing Nick and Warrick's case. They were all intrigued by it, and worried at the same time. This was definitely not a normal occurance, and they all had their two cents to put in.
"Maybe it's a doppleganger," Grissom speculated. "There's a theory that everyone has an exact copy of themselves somewhere in the world that's their other part. This would make sense because Nick's a good guy, and this other guy is a killer. Their the same, but exact opposites."
"Nick's scuba diver in a tree theory made more sense than this. This is kind of a stretch guys. What are the chances that there's a guy who looks exactly like Nick, but with blonde hair, roaming around Vegas?" Sara said.
"Your guess is as good as mine," Nick said. "But let's be honest with ourselves, it wouldn't be that weird if it happened to me. I have a pretty strong track record for having bad things happen to me. This wouldn't be exactly out of the ordinary."
Grissom agreed, but argued against Nick and the others. "We're jumping the gun here guys. We don't even know who this suspect is for sure yet. What we're gonna do is wait for the DNA and fingerprint results to come back, and then go from there. This look-a-like might not even be our killer. Who knows, maybe Mrs. Kenley is on medication and she's seeing things. It's too soon to make any assumptions right now."
Everyone nodded in silent agreement and calmed down. They let the hype wash over them and reminded themselves they still had cases to solve with evidence that needed processing. If they had a problem with this 'doppleganger' that they had to deal with, they would deal with it when it came up for sure. Until then, it was normal lab work for them.
Nick and Warrick were left alone by the rest of their team in the layout room to process some of the things they took from the house. Nick was fingerprinting a book found out of place in the foyer, and Warrick was looking over the dirty laundry from the washroom. Neither one of them were having much luck and were beginning to get bored, so they struck up a conversation.
"When are you gonna get a girlfriend man?" Warrick asked teasingly and honestly at the same time.
Nick laughed. "When I feel like getting bitched at for how weird my hours are and how much time my job takes outta my life," he answered.
"Just because Tina does it to me doesn't mean some other girl will do it to you."
"That's probably true," Nick said, shrugging. "But I just never have the motivation to do anything other than work and sleep. And watch games with you so you can get away from your hectic marriage."
Warrick groaned. "It's even getting worse. I didn't think that was possible. She's making up excuses to yell at me. It's like living with a female Ecklie."
Nick laughed again. "Yeah, and I can't wait for that," he said sarcastically.
As the two friends were working in the layout room, Wendy was rechecking her DNA results as Mandy was rechecking her fingerprint results. They both needed to make sure there wasn't a mistake because what they found could pose to be a very big problem.
Nick had no idea how big of a problem it was actually going to be.