Author: Sam

Story: Ten Little Indians: 8 of ?

Series: Speed-Burn

Pairing: none

Nevada Police Codes: 425: Suspicious situation; 422: Officer down; 444: Officer needs emergency assistance; 428: Missing person; and 418: Kidnap.

Setting: Las Vegas, Nevada: Thursday, July 21, 2005, morning.

Feedback: Yes, please? Especially constructive. samwise_baggins@yahoo.co.uk

Webpage: http://www.geocities.com/samwise_baggins/index.html

“Warrick, call my house.” The desperation in Cath’s voice as she called out made the other investigator pull out his phone without question. He dialed quickly, listening for an answering voice, as he watched his friend.

She was busy hitting the sequence of buttons needed to get a phone number on the last in-coming call. Hissing in shock, her blue eyes wide in horror, Cath’s face went even paler than it had when she’d first answered her phone. When Warrick said, “Yes, I’ve got Catherine right here,” she all but snatched the phone from his willing fingers. “Mom? Where’s Lindsey?”

“Lindsey? She’s in bed, Catherine.” Her mother’s voice was tired, but the sounds of movement could be heard through the line. She must have been alerted by the distress in her daughter’s voice.

“Check anyway,” Cath demanded. She offered her own phone to Warrick, who listened to the recorded message concerning the last in-coming number. His green eyes widened as much as Cath’s had as the significance of the number made a neat fit with Cath’s reactions.

Over the cell phone, Cath could hear her mother calling her daughter, a door clicking open. The sound of a sleepy teenager barely sounded when Cath called out in relief, “Lindsey?”

Her mother confirmed, “I told you she was here, Catherine. What’s wrong?” Before the investigator could answer, her mother hissed, “Did you get a body that looked like her?”

Cath sighed and tried to calm herself, unaware that her relieved shout had drawn the attention of the other investigators. “No, but something like that. Thanks, Mom. Tell Lindsey I love her…” She wanted to tell her daughter herself, but there was something even more pressing happening at the scene. Cath was finally aware of the attention she’d drawn.

She hung up and passed Warrick’s phone back to him as she turned worried eyes to her supervisor and long-time friend. “Gil, I just got a call that I believe is from our perpetrator.” She gestured to her phone, still next to Warrick’s ear.

The man nodded and offered it to Gil. “The number is Greg’s cell phone.”

Sara frowned, Jim crossed his arms, and Nick leaned forward as if to try to hear the recorded message himself. Grissom merely listened, then shut the phone off, looking at Cath. “What did he say?”

“It wasn’t Greg, Gil.” She shook her head, taking her phone back and staring at it as if it were some disappointing subject. “It was a deep voice, a man’s, and he said ‘It’s eleven P.M.; do you know where your daughter is?’ Then he just hung up.”

Gil nodded and frowned, but his words were quick and sure. “We’ll get Archie to try to trace where the call came from… where Greg’s phone is. As of a few minutes ago, someone’s got it and using it.” He slipped the phone out of her hands once more.

With a deeper frown, Sara pointed out, “This means that if it’s Greg’s attacker, he also knows Cath’s got a kid.”

“Yes,” Gil looked towards the younger woman then turned back to the worried mother. Without looking at the homicide captain next to him, he asked, “Jim, do you think we could get police protection for Cath’s mother and Lindsey?”

“Done,” Brass barked out, pulling his radio and making the necessary orders.

Turning back to the group, marking each one with a serious expression before looking at the next, Gil Grissom finally spoke up. “As soon as you’re done out here, come in by the front door. We’ll regroup inside and get this scene processed. We’ve got to find Greg and stop this guy from going after anyone else.” He turned and carefully made his way back inside, not returning Cath’s cell phone.

The rest gave each other silent looks then turned back to their immediate work. Cath’s hands were shaking so badly, Warrick started retrieving the evidence for her, letting her try to collect herself. The same thing was on everyone’s minds: why was the man targeting the investigators? There was no doubt that was what was happening, after all.

An hour after the disturbing phone call, the entire group stood inside Greg’s bedroom, reviewing what evidence they had and the information gathered so far. They chose not to go back to the lab just yet, instead utilizing the apparently untouched room for their temporary command site. Sara had just finished telling them of her encounter with Greg’s lawyer neighbor, and the group was now listening to Cath’s translation of the blood evidence throughout the house and outside; she was utilizing their sketches to help demonstrate her points.

“From the various blood patterns, prints, and other trace left behind, I would say Greg fought back hard before he was finally incapacitated and drug off.”

A dark figure, in equally dark clothes, grabbed his victim just under the shoulders. Greg’s head lolled sideways; he was unconscious and bleeding. Tugging carefully, the man made his slow way down the carpeted hall, blood dripping from his hand and mixing with the blood flowing from Greg’s injured head. Once in the tiled kitchen, he was able to move a bit quicker, but the trail still led through the destruction of the dish of stew that had broken in there.

The man ignored the mess, his goal the door and the car beyond. With determination, he pulled Greg from the well-lit house onto the darkened porch, stopping as he reached the steps. The man swiftly made his way down the three stairs and headed for the Volkswagen Passat sitting innocently in the driveway. He produced the keys, opened the trunk, and headed back to the steps; once more in front of his victim, he stooped and gripped his heavy burden. With a bit of tugging, he managed to get the bleeding man onto his shoulders and stagger towards the small car, finally getting to the trunk and dumping the unwieldy load inside. With a bit of readjusting and shoving, he got the unconscious man tucked neatly into the small space then shut the trunk with a harsh click.

Ominously, he returned to the house, slipping inside to retrieve his knife and several personal prizes belonging to his victim, not the least of which was the phone he planned on using to scare Greg’s coworker.

“We’ll know better if Greg was put in the trunk or back seat when we develop the photos, but if no one noticed a bleeding, unconscious man in the back seat of someone’s car, he was probably in the trunk.” No one added that Greg could have easily been in his own back seat and no one felt like getting involved by reporting it; that thought was too disheartening.

“Either way,” Cath continued, “someone bled by both the trunk and the driver’s side back door… unless we want to get technical and say he bled by the hood and the passenger’s side front door.” No one decided to play semantics and the redhead nodded. “We can also assume, for now, that our perp drove off in Greg’s car, rather than Greg driving it off. Though, if he was injured and bleeding, he staunched it before moving to the front door of the vehicle… no blood drops in the gravel there.” Cath’s voice was determined. She was going to try to ignore her fears for Lindsey; Brass had promised protection for the teenager and the elderly Mrs. Flynn.

Nick nodded, adding his preliminary findings. “We discovered that our bloody knife probably didn’t come from Greg’s kitchen; his knife block is full and the one we received doesn’t match any of the eating knives in the drawers.” He crossed his arms. “What is missing, though, besides his cell phone,” he nodded to Cath but didn’t go further into the terrifying experience she’d had with Greg’s cell number, “is his badge and kit. If he’s got a little black book, we haven’t found that, either.”

With a slow, thoughtful look from the bedroom into the still disarrayed living room, Gil firmly stated, “Okay. Let’s do one last run through of the crime scene then head back to the lab. We’ve got a lot to process and,” he was cut off by the sound of a ring-tone coming from his pocket. Frowning, Gil retrieved Cath’s cell phone, putting it carefully to his ear. “Hello?”

His frown deepened and he asked, “Who is this?” A look of disgust crossed Gil’s face as he closed the connection. “Jim? We’ve got police protection for Cath’s family, right?”

Fear shot across Cath’s face and she gratefully accepted Nick’s hand of support.

“Yeah; verified it half-an-hour ago, Gil,” Brass informed the group.

Grissom nodded then looked at Cath then back to the phone in his hand. His words were for Jim, though. “Call and find out where Lindsey is… as a precaution. We’ll need this line monitored, as well.”

“What did he say, Gil?” Cath jumped in, her voice trembling.

The supervisor looked at her, his face grim, and answered, “It’s twelve A.M. midnight. Do you know where your daughter is?”

Exhaustion gripped the injured man and he was forced to stop trying to open the broken emergency trunk release. He’d been at it for what seemed like hours, his fingers slipping on the now rain-wet metal, rubber, and fiberglass. In his efforts, he even managed to snag his nude torso on a bit of protruding metal, ripping his flesh even more than it had already been. He still had double vision, his hands were trembling from fatigue and pain, and now that he’d had some water and, embarrassingly enough, relieved himself, he was beginning to feel extremely hungry.

Greg was, in all, miserable.

But alive, he reminded himself. I’m still alive. Almost perversely, his odd sense of humor leapt to the fore and the words of a Meat Loaf song started running through his head. Not fighting it, Greg started humming along with his thoughts as he slowly reached a shaking hand around. There was something large and hard wedged under his legs, and the investigator wanted to find out what it was. He stopped mid-tune when his hand stroked the clasp of the metal forensics kit he’d tiredly left in his car upon reaching home.

Wanting to crow in delight, Greg began the tedious, painful task of manipulating his long frame in the small confines of his trunk, trying desperately to shift around to where he could get into the waiting kit. For one, there was a flash light in there, so he could actually see what he was doing. Secondly, among the many supplies he had neatly categorized and stored in the box, there was also a screw driver. True, it wasn’t standard equipment, but after that incident where Sara couldn’t remove a bloodstained door due to lack of a screwdriver and the presence of an over-abundance of explosives, he’d slipped a brand new flat-head into his kit on the off chance it might come in handy.

Boy was someone smiling on him that fateful day.

Suddenly, pain ripped through his side once more as his injured flank tore open, bleeding anew and causing nausea to nearly overwhelm him. Tears of frustration welled up, pouring easily down the battered man's cheeks, followed closely by anger at his situation and the person who put him into it. He slammed his hand as hard as he could on the trunk lid, kicking his cramped legs at the sidewall of his car’s trunk.

A click was heard and suddenly Greg was inundated by rain and wind as the trunk popped wide open. Stunned, the investigator took a few precious minutes to lie there, just letting the water run over him, wondering at the miracle that a good jarring had finally knocked loose the damaged latch. Then intelligence reasserted itself and he grasped the trunk edge to pull himself out and over the lip, falling in a heap on the ground. Several pain-filled minutes passed as Greg heaved, the nausea getting the better of him after hours of dehydrating heat and lack of sustenance in a very poorly-aired trunk.

The only thing the weakened man could do was pray his kidnapper didn’t come back to finish the job while he was lying there too weak to defend himself.