Title: The Gospel of Mary
By: Emily Brunson
Pairing: gen
Rating: R
Warning: WIP, violence
Note: Crossover with Millennium.
Summary: Between chasing a serial killer and coping with some strange new abilities, Nick's got a lot on his plate.

"The first form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance; the fourth is the excitement of death, the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh, the sixth is the foolish wisdom of flesh, the seventh is the wrathful wisdom. These are the seven powers of wrath." (8:10)

Part One

The Fall of Empires

Chapter One

"Thou dost frighten me with dreams and terrify me by visions." (Job 7:14)

"I hate fires," Nick said heavily, staring around them.

"We all do, Nicky," came Grissom's quiet reply at his side. "Come on."

It had probably been a very nice house. Not a mansion, nothing like that, but nice, broad expanse of expensively kept lawn, probably had a swimming pool around back. Good place to settle down.

Now it was a smoking hulk, charred timbers and debris everywhere, and where they were going to start was anyone's guess. For his own part he just followed Grissom and Catherine.

"So do we actually know this was arson?" Catherine asked, stepping carefully on scorched carpet.

"Not yet. Fire marshal hasn’t made the call."

"Guess that's where we come in."

He could hear Warrick behind him, coughing a little when tenacious wind caught ash and sent it scattering. Nick silently handed him a mask, holding another over his own nose and mouth. The smell was sickening.

"The fire burned extremely fast," Grissom stated, standing near a blackened wooden beam lying canted with one end reaching for the sky. "The family were all upstairs. Master bedroom over there," he added, lifting his chin. "Right where we are is approximately the living room."

"And the kids' rooms," Catherine added gloomily. "Like a pancake."

"The second floor collapsed just before the first fire teams arrived." There was a smudge of soot on Grissom's white mask. "Maybe five minutes after the 911 call came in."

Nick tried not to shiver. "Five minutes from smoke to structural collapse? That wasn't just a hot fire; that sounds like a bomb."

"You're right, for all intents and purposes." Grissom’s eyes flickered over him and back to the house. "Superheated the timbers. You've seen logs on a fire. The whole house was built around a series of hardwood timbers. Heat those fast enough, and the remaining sap inside explodes. It might not have even taken five minutes."

Nick was never really sure exactly what he was doing when it happened. Just poking around like everyone else, trying to sift a clue or two out of the disaster both fire and firefighters had left behind. He leaned down to get a closer look at something gleaming through the sodden remains of a couch, and reached out to push the debris out of the way.

It felt like a clap of thunder, although there wasn’t any sound. Just the sense that his brain had somehow suddenly expanded, not painfully but nauseatingly, bloated with a fast dump of information.

A man's voice, screaming, a raw sound of agony that made Nick's balls try to draw up inside his body. A dog barking maniacally. His nostrils were filled with an alien smell, harsh, not smoke but the acrid stench of terror.

Nick coughed out a shocked grunt and flung himself away from the spot, falling flat on his ass into a puddle of water.

"Yo, Nick, you okay?" Warrick called from about ten feet further on.

Nick stared at his hand and then wiped it frantically on the dry front of his jeans.

"Find a hot spot?" Grissom asked, but he had no idea what to say. That hadn't been heat, nothing like it. What he'd felt had been cold, and utterly alien.

"M'okay," he forced himself to say, carefully not touching the couch while he levered himself up. Gunk everywhere, shit, he was a goddamn mess.

He stared at the spot and heard the man's scream again, fainter this time but just as horrifying. Without thinking about it Nick clapped his wet hands over his ears.

"Nicky?" Grissom had somehow gotten right in front of him, staring at him with a frown. "What happened?"

He blinked away tears that shouldn't have been there and did an unsteady backward two-step, away from Grissom. "He was right here," he heard himself say. Words echoing inside his skull. "He watched the whole thing. He got off on it."

Grissom's frown deepened. "Who watched? What are you talking about?"

"The guy," Nick snapped, shaking his head. "He watched it, and he didn't do a goddamn thing to help him."

"Wait a second, Nick, don't --"

"He stood right here." Nick gritted his teeth and forced himself to step back over next to where the couch lay. "This was the driveway. He waited until he heard the timbers start to give. He heard the guy screaming. He LIKED it, man, he loved it!"

"You're saying the arsonist stood -- right here? How can you tell? We don't even know if --"

"I saw it!" Nick bellowed. "I saw what he saw!"

What he saw then made him feel as if the rug had been pulled out from under him all over again. Grissom's concerned face, morphing into a set look of doubt. "Nick, you can't know for sure. Not until we've gone over everything. It's too early to tell yet." He smiled, patronizingly Nick thought. "Come on, go back to the car. You're soaked."

Nick swallowed hard and stood his ground. "He knew them," he said shakily, and had to clear his throat. The images crowded inside his head, clamoring, confusing. "He knew the people who lived here. He took his time, waited until they were gone, and he -- put it together. He knew -- he knew when they'd be home again."

"Put what together?"

"The bomb," Nick whispered. "It was a bomb."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Arson, probably." Lou Johansen sighed and shrugged. "Hell of it is, there's no way to know one way or the other. Not unless the needle just happens to jump out of the haystack. I've been a firefighter a long time, Gil. Needles have a tendency to stay put."

Gil nodded. "I think we'll stick around. See what else we can find."

"You're not saying you buy what the kid said?"

"I'm not discounting it, if that's what you're asking."

"Fine. Go through the whole site with tweezers if you want. I’ll go so far as arson. But if my team didn't find any trace of any sort of bomb mechanism, and your team hasn't either, then I'm going to stand by my feeling that it wasn't a bomb."

Gil smiled briefly at him and went back to staring at the site. Or trying to, at least, while he reluctantly thought about the scene an hour ago.

Nick's face had been ashy white, dark eyes glaring at Gil as if they saw past him, through him. "He's a pro," Nick said hoarsely. "He has experience with explosives. It's why you haven't found any evidence."

"It's equally possible we haven't found that evidence because there's none to be found."

Nick shrugged. "It's there. He couldn't make it as perfect as he wanted to. He didn't have access to the right materials. But he was satisfied. It did the job."

"Job?"

"It was his job once, but not anymore. But now he sees it as his calling. It’s more than work; he does it because he loves it."

"There’s no way you can know that."

Nick nodded absently. "You’re right." The hollow tone gave Gil a distant shiver of unease. "But I do." He looked at Gil again, and the vague air gave way to sudden shock. "But how? How do I know?"

"You don’t. You suspect it. That’s all." Gil forced a smile. "Why don’t you head back to the lab, Nicky?"

If anything Nick’s face went even paler. "I’m gonna see who the neighbors are," he said in a rusty strained voice. "He’s one of them. I know it."

"Don’t –"

"If I’m wrong, I’m wrong," Nick interrupted. He rubbed his cheek and left a smudge of carbon like a mottled tattoo. "His background is explosives. But he knows it doesn’t look like a bomb, so no one’s going to look. He’s counting on that." His smile was bleak and tired. "He didn’t count on -- this."

"Count on WHAT? You don’t --"

"I’ll call you later, okay?" Nick was already walking away, his gait a little off-center, making him reel a tiny bit.

Gil watched him go, shaking his head as another vague chill washed through him.

"Got something."

Warrick’s voice jolted him out of his reverie, and he glanced over. Warrick was pointing at something in front of him.

"What?" Gil asked, walking over.

"Not sure."

Gil hunkered down to have a look. The piece of metal was violently twisted, the kind of damage he associated with extremely hot fires. "Could be anything."

"Yeah." Warrick nodded shortly. "And it could be a detonator."

Gil stared up at him. "Have you been talking to Nick?"

"Nope. Why?"

"Nothing. Bag it."

"Got it."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He felt split in half. Part of him was pragmatic, skeptical, completely disbelieving. And the other part already knew what he’d find. No surprises, at all. The second part of him didn’t care about pragmatism. It simply knew.

Even then it shocked him to find what he did. Skepticism died hard, evidently; he wanted to deny the information staring him in the face, even when it vindicated his earlier statements. There was no comfort in being right. There was only wonder, and a sharp, acidic kind of terror.

By the time Grissom showed up, Nick had a dossier of sorts thrown together. Completely circumstantial at this point and not enough to warrant investigation on its own, most likely, but potentially devastating for all that.

Grissom’s gaze had a funny quality to it. A little wall-eyed, even with his vaunted self-control. "Hi."

"Find anything?"

For a moment Grissom didn’t say anything at all. Finally he gave a short nod. "Possibly."

"Bomb?"

"We won’t know until we do some analysis."

"But that’s what it looks like."

Another pause. "Maybe."

Nick nodded again and picked up his pile of printouts. "Here’s your suspect," he said. "John Maeker, lives four doors down."

Grissom took the sheets like he was afraid they’d burn him. "That’s fast work. What we found could be meaningless, just scrap metal."

"It’s not meaningless." Nick met his wary gaze steadily. "It’s proof."

Grissom flipped through the pages quickly after putting on his glasses. "Military background. Specialist in explosives." His lips thinned. "Early retirement two years ago." His eyes flickered to meet Nick’s. "Fits your profile. So why’d he do it?"

Swallowing, Nick replied, "I don’t know."

Grissom’s expression was studiously casual, but his eyes flared with some kind of feeling Nick didn’t want to name. "Yes, you do," Grissom said crisply.

"He feels like he has no purpose now. The Army trained him and used him, and then threw him away. His skills have no use in regular society."

Grissom looked faintly sickened. "So he just decided to blow up the neighbor’s house?"

"He’s planned it for months. He had to make another fire. See it burn. He doesn’t care if he’s caught. He just had to make the fire."

"How do you know that?" Grissom asked in a strangled mutter. "How in the name of Christ could you possibly know that?"

"I don’t know," Nick replied miserably. "I just do. He’s happy right now. He doesn’t care that they died. He’s happy with his creation."

Grissom looked away, folding the papers carelessly. "Warrick’s having what we found analyzed. If it’s a detonator, or what’s left of one, I’ll let Brass know."

"You -- You won’t tell --"

"Tell him you saw it all in a psychic flash at the site? I think I’ll leave that part out for now."

A bubble of nausea bloated and popped in Nick’s belly. "Good," he said faintly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I was at home."

Gil studied Maeker’s calm visage. Utterly expressionless. No fear, no anger. As smooth and even as new-fallen snow, and just as cold.

Brass stirred, leaning his elbows on his knees. "Anybody who could maybe back you up on that?"

Maeker shook his head slowly. "I live alone. I don’t get out much."

"Your background in the military indicates a specialty in explosives." Gil shifted, keeping his eyes glued to the man. "Not a very useful civilian occupation. Why’d you retire?"

"It was time."

"According to you, or your COs?"

Maeker regarded him stonily. "Does it matter?"

"It might."

"Am I a suspect?"

"We have no concrete evidence a crime has been committed. Why, do you know something we don’t?"

Maeker smiled, a slow, dead expression that chilled Gil more than anything else about this odd case. "A lot of things," Maeker pronounced. "A great many things."

"All right." Brass stood up with a pop of knee joints. "Why don’t we take a little trip downtown, Mr. Maeker? Maybe that would jog your memory."

Maeker didn’t react. The frigid smile faded back to nothing.

"Pyromaniac?" Brass asked a few minutes later, standing next to Gil as they watched Maeker being loaded into the back seat of a patrol car. "Firebug?"

Gil didn’t look at him. "Or maybe someone society made to do something they don’t need anymore. Discarded when he was no longer useful."

"So Nicky figured it out, huh?"

That made Gil glance over finally. "You heard about that?"

Brass nodded. "What I didn’t hear was how in the hell he broke it before you even got back to the lab. What’s up with that?"

Gil shook his head slowly. "When I know, I’ll tell you," he said slowly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter Two

Every man before he dies shall see the devil. (English proverb)

It was a shitty day, and Ray Carmody had the headache to prove it.

Something landed on his desk, and he flinched.

"Aspirin." Fisher walked over, looking about as tired as Ray felt. "Can we talk?"

"You're an asshole," Ray snapped. He popped four Excedrin anyway, chasing them with cold coffee. "What are we gonna talk about? Huh? Weather? The fucking horse races?"

"How about the case?"

"Be my guest. Be my fucking guest." Ray leaned back and put his feet up on his desk. "Amaze me with your new insights. Because I'm all out of ideas."

Fisher sat down heavily across from him. "I know we've been at this a long time, but --"

"No, WE haven't been at this a long time. I have been at this a long time. A long, long goddamned time. You on the other hand have been on this for exactly four months. You still think we can break this, don't you?" He laughed harshly, shaking his head. "Real life, Fisher. This ain't Quantico, and you're so green you could march in the fucking St. Paddy's Day parade."

Sometimes he really wondered if Fisher were hearing-impaired. It was the only explanation for why none of Ray's slams seemed to affect him. "The pattern changes," he continued stolidly. "I showed you. It changes, two years ago. There's something there."

Ray sighed. Ah, fuck, it wasn't even any fun to give Fisher shit today. If that wasn't a sign of a truly, mindbogglingly bad day he didn't know what was. "I heard you when you told me the first time. I promise. And I think there is a change. I think you're right."

"So why don't --"

"Shut up. Listen to me, okay? It doesn't help. Nothing -- NOTHING -- helps."

For once Fisher looked slightly wounded. "But you've done fourteen years of --"

"I know how long it's been. Trust me. I know. I tell myself that every day." Ray reached for his cigarettes before he remembered the no-smoking policy. The thought made him feel like quitting. Not quitting smoking. Quitting the job. "But we have other cases to work on. Real cases. Criminals who aren't as smart as we are, criminals we can catch. Let's just do that, okay? Let's just -- let it go."

"Sir --"

"Tell me you have something legitimate to work on."

"I do, but --"

"Then why don’t you make me happy and go work on it."

Fisher’s mouth turned down, but he nodded stiffly. "Yes, sir."

He didn’t watch Fisher slink out. Instead he swiveled his chair to inspect the view out the window. Not a lot to see out there. Dust, and shimmering heat, and a few cars crawling along four stories down, looking like Tinker Toys.

He sipped his dreadful coffee and set the cup down before levering himself out of the chair. Christ, the years weren’t getting any easier on him, either, if the rifle-shot pop of his knees had anything to say about it. He wandered out to the restroom in the hall and washed his hands unnecessarily, staring at himself in the mirror. The man staring back wasn’t exactly romanticized, either. More salt than pepper these days, starting to look his age after a long time of putting it off.

Well, snipe-hunting will do that to you, Ray my boy. Chasing ghosts of people too long dead, people everyone but you has forgotten. Seeing connections where there aren’t any. It’s a hard way to live, and a fast way to grow old.

His phone was ringing when he got back to his office, and he glared at it for three more rings before finally picking up.

Shelley sounded breathless. "I know you said no calls this morning, but line 2 is Mike McAda. He said --"

"It’s all right," Ray interrupted. "I’ll take it." He reached over and punched the flashing button. "Hey, Mike. What’s up?"

"Hey, Ray." McAda sounded reassuringly himself: all smooth good-old-boy camaraderie masking the real purpose of his call, which was probably lousy news. "How’s it going?"

Ray sank down in his chair and eyed his cup of cold coffee balefully. "It was going all right," he lied, "but if I know you it just got worse."

No trace of offense colored McAda’s tone. "Got a DB over here, and I remembered what you said last spring about that case in Reno. Looks like the same MO."

"Tell me."

"Just between you and me, right?"

"Of course."

McAda sounded a lot crisper suddenly. "42-year-old male, Hispanic, appears to have been strangled. Rancher turned up the body while he was out checking his fences early this morning."

Ray nodded to himself. "I’m assuming this will become pertinent at some point?" he asked, rubbing the bridge of his nose between two fingers.

"Well, since the guy was evidently a man of the cloth…."

Ray sat up. "Priest?"

"Father Jesus Martinez. Maybe he never got over the name." McAda paused to appreciate his own lame joke and continued, "ME’s having a look now, and we’ll have a definite cause of death later this week. But I thought you might like a head’s up."

"Did anything else turn up at the scene?"

"Don’t know that yet. Got the CSI’s looking around right now."

Ray sagged a little in his chair. "Grissom?"

"He’s the man."

"Great."

"Come on, Ray. He don’t bite."

He barks, Ray thought. That’s plenty. "Let me know what else you find, okay?"

"Always."

"Thanks, Mike. Owe you one."

He could almost hear McAda’s satisfied smile. "I live to serve, Agent Carmody."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Late that night, Marcia closed the book she was reading with a snap. When he glanced over his questioning look turned to dread. He met her frustrated expression with as much calm as he could muster.

"I know," Ray said, holding up his hand. "I’m sorry."

"You said a year." Her voice had lost its normal mellifluous quality; she sounded tired, and angry. "One year. It’s been nearly eighteen months, Ray. When will it be enough?"

He took off his reading glasses and set them on the bedside table, resisting the urge to sigh. "We’ve been over this before. I’ve told you everything already. It’s just temporary, until --"

"Until what, Ray?" she shot back icily. "Until you’ve done your penance? Until you’ve caught enough real criminals to make up for the one that doesn’t exist?"

It always hurt when she said that. Years of hearing it from his superiors didn’t make it any easier to hear from his wife. "I don’t know," he told her as calmly as he could. "Maybe."

She didn’t say anything for a second. When she spoke again, the cruel edge had blunted slightly. "You had a great career, and you could get it back. You know you could. Leave it alone, Ray. Forget about it. And let us get back to our real lives."

"This isn’t --"

"This isn’t our lives! This is a goddamn holding pattern, and you know it!" She tossed the book on the floor, where it thudded sharply on the thin rug. "I want to go home," she added thickly. "I hate Nevada. Elise hates Nevada."

Anger was harder to control when it was as leavened with guilt as his was now. He sat up and swung around to stuff his feet in his waiting slippers.

"What, Ray?" Marcia said to his retreating back. "Gonna have a drink? Drown your sorrows? How can you drown mine, too, huh? Can you do that? Can your Apostle do that for us?"

His teeth were grinding so loudly he though Elise could probably hear them down the hall in her bedroom. Downstairs he veered carefully around the door to the study, making himself head for the kitchen instead. He drank orange juice and took his cigarettes outside to smoke.

It was cold out, the crisp dry kind of Nevada cold that he silently relished. Nothing hidden about the desert; nothing seductive, covert, no pretty Virginia window-dressing. The desert was what it was, no apologies, and no quarter. It didn’t accuse, and it didn’t care about guilt. It simply was.

He dragged hard on his cigarette and stared at the bright glow of Las Vegas lights over the hard-won trees. That was the problem with fighting with Marcia. She wasn’t wrong. And neither was he, and there weren’t any easy answers. He could apologize for bringing them here, and he had. Too many times to count. But no apology changed anything. An apology didn’t change what he’d spent too much time doing, time he could have spent edging up the Bureau ladder instead of chasing the ghosts of a killer whose existence was as debatable as this sere desert wasn’t.

Christ, he was thirsty.

He was lighting his second smoke when he remembered Mike McAda’s phone call. Mike was laid-back and crooked as the day was long, but he was also smart, and nearly as paranoid as Ray himself. If Mike thought this new murder was worth a look, it almost certainly was. He didn’t call for no reason. Mike never did anything without a reason.

He couldn’t face going back upstairs. Instead he got clothes out of the hamper and dressed in the laundry room. Unwashed, but there was a kind of simplicity in wearing dirty clothes that were already on the laundry schedule, so it wasn’t a problem.

Besides, if he ran into lab people, it would probably make him look like less of a Bureau creep.

He put on the deck shoes he usually wore for gardening, and slipped away.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Hey, doc."

Robbins glanced around, eyes narrowed. "Agent Carmody." His voice was more than dry; the vocal equivalent of the dust outside. "What brings you here this time of night?"

"Insomnia," Ray told him as lightly as he could. He walked over to the table. "Is this Father Martinez?"

"Someone’s been telling tales out of school."

"I’m not here in an official capacity. How’d he die?"

"Unless you’re representing the FBI," stated a chilly voice behind him, "that information’s off limits."

Ray took a second to school his features to an impassive mask before turning. "Dr. Grissom. Fancy meeting you here."

"This isn’t your case, Carmody," Grissom said, snapping latex gloves on his hands. "If we need your help, we’ll let you know."

"I know your opinion of my predecessor wasn’t very high, and from what I’ve heard, deservedly so." Ray slid his hands into his pockets. "But I’m not him."

Grissom’s gaze was as impermeable as granite. "Be that as it may, we have work to do. If you’ll excuse us?"

"Dr. Robbins, can I ask you one question?"

Robbins had the hangdog look of a guy stuck in between a rock and a very unyielding place, and gave him a slow, reluctant nod.

"What did you find in his chest?"

He didn’t need to hear the answer. The narrow surprise in Robbins’ eyes told him. Ray nodded, as well. "Good night, gentlemen."

Grissom caught up with him in the hallway. "God damn it, Carmody, you can’t just barge in here and --"

"Correction, Dr. Grissom, I can." Ray faced him squarely, meeting Grissom’s dislike with tired calm. "You know, it would make things a hell of a lot easier if you didn’t treat me like the enemy."

"How did you know?" Grissom asked, as if Ray hadn’t said anything at all. "If you have information relevant to my case --"

"I don’t." Ray gazed at him, seeing Marcia’s angry face. "I don’t have anything."

Grissom frowned. "Then why are you here?"

"Chasing a ghost. That’s all. Just chasing ghosts."

He didn’t wait for a reply. Outside the lab the night had gotten colder, and Ray shivered in his sweat shirt. And then he thought about Robbins’ autopsy, and the object in Father Jesus Martinez’s chest, and he shivered again. This time he wasn’t feeling the cold at all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter Three

"Our passion is our task. And the rest is the madness of art." (Henry James)

Sleep was next to impossible, but he tried anyway. Shot of bourbon, Tylenol PM, white noise from the radio, tuned to static. But behind his closed eyelids he saw fire, orange and yellow flames and smoke, curling like baroque traceries of destruction.

He sat up, aware of the afternoon light trying to pry fingers under the bedroom’s blinds, and listened to his own ragged breathing for a minute before throwing back the covers and giving up.

With no sleep and after a night like the one he’d just had, he figured he’d be worth shit at work. But instead of tired and draggy he felt peculiarly energized. It wasn’t a very positive feeling. Twitchy anxiety made him hesitate before touching anything. He’d never been so glad for latex. It hadn’t stopped last night’s weird -- whatever it was -- but there was a little comfort in knowing he wasn’t making real skin-to-skin contact.

But even when he did, nothing happened. The things he touched were just things: coffee cup, microscope, doorknob, chair back. No more sudden core dumps of information, jittery jagging images that made his brain feel as if it too were furiously afire.

His shift was almost done before he had to deal with anything regarding the Maeker case again, and he’d relaxed a little by that time. Enough that he could face Grissom and not feel like immediately apologizing.

"Brass says he thinks there’s enough for an indictment." Grissom pushed his glasses up his nose, frowning at the papers he held in his hand. "Not the first fire, looks like. Maeker lived in Albuquerque before Vegas, and there was a suspicious home fire in his neighborhood there as well. Never tied to him until now, but it’s pretty interesting."

Nick shifted in his chair. "Warrick turn anything up with the stuff he found?"

"Not sure yet. Ought to know by tomorrow." He sat back and took off his glasses, and didn’t say anything else.

Nick took in his quenched expression with a flicker of unease in his belly. "What?" Nick asked shortly.

Grissom gazed at him. "How did you know?"

Nick swallowed dryly. "That it was Maeker?" He couldn’t quite meet Grissom’s stare. "A hunch."

"Hunches are based on information, Nick. But you didn’t have any, certainly no more than the rest of us did. It sounds more like an epiphany than a hunch."

"What difference does it make? Got the bad guy, everyone can go home happy."

"Tell me how it happened."

The flickering anxiety in his belly surged, making him swallow again. "You really want to know?"

Grissom nodded. "I really do."

"Look, I just touched something, okay? And I knew. That’s it."

"I don’t believe you. I think it was more than that." Grissom leaned forward, brows drawing together in a frown. "I saw your face, Nick," he continued urgently. "You didn’t just know. You saw it happen, didn’t you?"

His brain echoed with remembered screams, and the belling sound of the dog’s endless, frantic barking. "I guess. Something like that."

"Has this sort of thing happened before?"

"What do YOU think?" Nick snapped. His face felt hot, embarrassed. Afraid. "No," he added curtly. "Nothing like this."

But hadn’t there been something? a tiny part of his mind whispered. Is that true? Or do you want it to be true? Enough that you’d --

"I’m not accusing you." Grissom’s expression softened, took on a film of concern. "If it was a hunch, it was a damned helpful one. But you have to admit it sounds wild."

"Yeah, well, do me a favor? Don’t tell anybody else about it. All I need is people treating me like I’m some kinda damn -- psychic."

"One time, it’s a hunch." Grissom’s mouth curved in a rueful smile. "But if you start getting more of these ‘hunches,’ let me know?"

When the damn pigs fly, Nick thought, and nodded. "Sure. You’ll be the first to know."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Two nights later, it happened again. But this time with a vicious power that made Maeker’s bomb look like a firecracker.

The night didn’t start out badly. In fact it went pretty well, all things considered. First some finishing work on the Maeker case, which appeared to be heading rapidly toward the promised indictment. A search of the man’s home had turned up some incriminating materials, and Brass told Nick not long after his shift started that he figured an arrest was imminent.

Nick wasn’t quite sure how that made him feel, considering he might as well have seen it in a fucking crystal ball for all the empirical provability it had, but he reminded himself of his own words to Grissom a few days ago: what difference did it make? The only thing he was completely sure of was that Maeker had built a homemade bomb that took the lives of several innocent people. That was enough to salve his twitchy nerves. At least somewhat.

By the time he met up with Catherine at their assigned scene, he felt pretty much as solid as he had in days. The case was fairly straightforward, if somewhat gruesome: death by misadventure, some kid out farting around on his friend’s motorcycle, ending up the way too many of those did.

Catherine looked up at Nick, nose wrinkled. "What do you think? Booze, drugs, or bad luck?"

He shrugged. "Take your pick. Tox screen will say for sure."

She straightened and peeled her gloves off. "Know what they call motorcycle riders in the ER?"

"What?"

"Organ donors."

The guy’s friends predictably weren’t that much help.

"Jesus, he didn’t have that much to drink." This particular friend was a type Nick recognized too easily: future frat president, slicker than snot and faintly repellent. Nick wasn’t sure why lately he’d been viewing his own fraternity history with a more jaundiced eye, but he chalked it up to maturity. Or maybe a growing cynicism.

"He was okay when he left," the guy added, jaw stuck out and eyes meeting Nick’s confidently. "It was an accident, all right? Shit happens."

Biting back the urge to comment on the guy’s blasé attitude in the face of death, Nick nodded. "Your bike?"

"Yeah. Man, look at it."

Catherine’s mouth had a tense look Nick recognized as the mirror twin of his own creeping disgust. "So you guys had a party, you let Mark go for a ride on your new bike –"

"Not that new. Got it four months ago."

"New-ish. And nobody saw the actual crash?"

"Janie. But it’s dark, man, who can say?"

"Right. Served alcohol at this party?"

"Just beer."

"Last time I checked beer contained alcohol. How much beer?"

This time the guy’s look was mulish. "I already told the cops. You a cop too?"

"No," Nick said flatly. "We’re crime scene investigators."

"This wasn’t a CRIME –"

"If you let your buddy Mark drive your motorcycle knowing he was shitfaced? That, my friend, is a crime in all fifty states."

It got him the first honest look he thought this guy had worn since they met him. Nick wanted to smile at the scared flicker in the guy’s eyes. "I’m sure the police will be in touch once we’ve gotten Mark’s toxicology results," Nick added smoothly. "Thanks for your time."

When he turned away he stopped trying not to smile. Felt too damn good, wiping that smug look off that fucking kid’s face.

~~~~~~~~~~~

It was overtime before he met Catherine at the morgue. He was surprised to see Grissom there as well, but then hadn’t he worked another DB that night? Nick wasn’t actually sure, but what the hell. At least the case he was one was looking pretty cut and dried.

"Your timing is impeccable," Robbins told them with a crooked smile. He lifted his chin in the direction of a file on a table nearby and went back to his work. "Toxicology, the usual suspects."

Nick brushed by Grissom on his way to retrieve the file, giving him a fast just-us-grunts smile. "So was he tanked?" he asked over his shoulder.

"BAL was .16. Your motorcycle rider shouldn’t have even been allowed to take a walk."

"Figured." Nick tucked the file under his arm and wandered back over. "Guess I’ll give Lt. Hankins a call." To his shock he almost made a crack about not needing any psychic abilities on this one, but bit it back before it could escape his lips.

"So what you working on?" Catherine had been standing at Robbins’ elbow, looking on with professional curiosity. Now she leaned forward a little.

Grissom gave her a brief look. "Terry Fletcher, age 34. Wife found him, dead of a single gunshot wound."

"Ah. Any leads?"

"Might have, if we finish this autopsy before the next millennium."

Catherine grinned and ducked her head a little. "So, we’ll stop bugging you, how about that?"

Grissom looked amused. "No problem. Good work, you guys."

"Easy work," Catherine told him dryly, but by that point Nick had pretty much stopped listening.

He didn’t ever figure out exactly why he decided to take a closer look himself. He wasn’t normally that interested in other cases. Yes, this was his livelihood, and he found all their cases at least professionally interesting, but it didn’t necessarily mean he wanted to work the ones he wasn’t assigned to. Too much of a busman’s holiday, and he had enough crap to deal with without taking on someone else’s as well.

But that didn’t stop him from stepping over, near the end of the table. Terry Fletcher was a heavyset man, and the first thing Nick thought was how his shoes must have been too tight, maybe from edema, because his feet were puffy, toenails a little discolored. Diabetes? Certainly possible.

He let his eyes travel up Fletcher’s body, and felt his hands tingling. The room was so quiet. All he could hear now was his own heart, thudding away in his chest. Too fast, and the room was so cold, so goddamned cold.

Without thinking he reached out and touched Fletcher’s ankle.

A welter of images, flickering and jagging like a videotape on super-high speed. Faces, an elderly woman with tears drying on her face, a boy of maybe nine, gazing over his shoulder at him with a grin, a girl so beautiful she belonged on magazine covers. And places, a house with an immaculate yard, gorgeous roses, clipped grass and perfect hedges, and a swing on a white-painted porch. An empty field after harvest, and dust curling down the furrows. A lake – Tahoe? – and a boat, and hands stringing a fishing line with a chunk of bright orange cheese.

A man’s face, twisted in shock and horror. Blood on a mirror, and a finger tracing a figure in the gore. A woman in a black dress, staring with dead eyes at nothing.

When the voice came he wanted to scream, but he didn’t know if he was, couldn’t feel his throat anymore, couldn’t feel if he had air in his lungs. He listened because he had no choice, because the sound was all-encompassing, a trumpet blast pointed not at his ear but at his mind, a furious, elated bellow of triumph.

Screaming, Nick tore his hand away, and then the autopsy room was gone, and the voice as well, and he sank into welcome, silent blackness.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter Four

Behold ye scoffers, for I will work wonders in your days, which ye will not believe. (Book of Habbakuk)

"Nick. Nicky. Wake up. Come on, open your eyes."

His eyelids felt sticky, and he pried them open with difficulty. Above him, hovering like anxious birds, were Grissom, Catherine, and Doc Robbins. Catherine’s face was white as death.

"Nick, are you okay?" she asked, touching his shoulder.

He blinked at her, and glanced at Grissom, and something whispered in his mind, some remnant of awfulness. He drew a harsh gasp and sat up, and the room swam for a second.

"Not so fast." Grissom’s mouth was drawn into a tense line, but his hand was gentle, urging Nick to lean against the table leg. "Take it easy. You fainted."

"How are you feeling?" Robbins asked. He had a black bag open on the floor next to his crutch, and Nick thought about how weird it was, because he was still alive, and Robbins worked with dead people. Didn’t have to ask them how they felt, did he? "Dizzy? Any nausea, headache?"

Nick worked some spit into his ash-dry mouth. "What happened?"

No one said anything for a second, and when he looked at them he saw a trio of similar expressions: wary, uncertain, more than a little shocked. "You might have to tell us, Nick," Catherine said finally, giving him an unhappy little half-smile. "I looked over at you and – you looked like you were having a seizure or something. You started talking, I mean, yelling. And then you passed out cold. Happened so fast, we didn’t –" She broke off, looking more unhappy. "Nobody had time to catch you. Are you okay?"

"Talking?" Nick cleared his throat rustily. "What did I say?"

He didn’t miss the look all three of them exchanged. "What?" Nick added more strongly. "I don’t – remember much." Anything, he almost added. But he did. A little.

Only Grissom met his eyes fully. His expression was impossible to read. "It wasn’t English," he said calmly.

Nick stared at him, dizziness forgotten. "Huh?"

"I don’t even know it was real words as such. No language I recognized." His tone was faintly peeved, as if that puzzle surprised him.

"Nick, I’d like to get you over to the ER," Robbins said. "Get a CT scan, make sure you don’t have something going on. I can’t say if this was a seizure or not until we get some tests run."

"Is – Do you think that’s what happened?"

Robbins shrugged. "It’s certainly possible. When you woke up you were pretty post-ictal. Confusion is standard after a seizure."

"I don’t feel confused now."

"What’s today’s date?"

Nick swallowed. "March 18^th."

"Who’s the president of the United States?"

"You’re kidding me."

The ghost of a smile flitted over Robbins’ grizzled features. "Humor me."

"George Bush. Dubya. I didn’t have a seizure."

"I’d prefer if we –"

"And I don’t need to go to the hospital." Nick grasped the table leg and hoisted himself up, glad the room didn’t immediately turn into a Tilt-A-Whirl this time. "I’m okay."

"Nick, why don’t you go?" Catherine asked in a low voice. Her hand was cool on his arm. "It won’t take long. And you can make sure nothing else is going on."

"I’m already sure." A ripple of anger made him swallow. "We all know what it is," he added gruffly, flicking a glance at Grissom. "We’re just not saying it out loud." He took a step forward and looked down at Fletcher’s blue-tinged body. "He had a stone, didn’t he? In his chest."

When he looked over Robbins’ face was almost as pale as the dead man’s. "How –"

"Where his heart was," Nick continued flatly. "The killer removed his heart and replaced it with a big rock."

"Who have you been talking to?" Grissom gazed at him with what looked a lot like anger, but wasn’t. Just that familiar, terrible intensity, now point in Nick’s direction. "How do you know that?"

Fighting down the urge to laugh, or maybe cry, Nick shook his head. "Who do you think I’ve been talking to, man? Nobody! I’ve been doing my job. I know it the same way I knew Maeker blew that family to kingdom come the other day." He held his hand over the body, an inch from touching. "I know it because I SAW it. You think I’m making this up? How could I know this? How?"

"You couldn’t," Catherine said unsteadily. He hated the almost fearful look in her eyes. "There’s no way you could know. Unless you were here."

"But I was with YOU," Nick shot back. "I’ve never seen or heard of this guy. And his chest’s already sewn up again, I mean, it’s not like I watched the whole autopsy. What kind of evidence do you guys need? I didn’t have a seizure, okay? I –" His momentum ran out abruptly; he felt suddenly exhausted, and bewildered. "I don’t know what I had," he added after a silent moment. "But I saw things. I saw – what he did to Fletcher."

"Who?" Grissom demanded. "What who did?"

"The killer. I – saw parts of it. And there was more." He put his fingers to his forehead, where a tiny headache had blossomed. "I don’t remember that as well."

"Nick, what you’re talking about –" Robbins broke off, looking flummoxed. "You’re talking about a psychic ability, and that’s pure science fiction. You couldn’t possibly –"

"Morris Pearson was legit." Nick ignored Robbins, focusing on Grissom. "He was right. About everything. You saw it yourself."

"Most of what Pearson said was so vague as to be interpreted almost any way you like. He gave very few –"

"He came to my own goddamn house because he knew I was in danger." Nick glared at him. "He was a mile ahead of you, and you know it! How could he have known that? He knew about Jane Galloway, he knew about me."

Grissom sighed. "Nick, our experiences with Morris Pearson were far from empirical data. I agree there were some startling congruencies there, but it’s not proof."

"What would be proof for you?" Nick asked. His heart thudded in his chest, and his headache was getting worse by the second. "What would it take for you to believe he was right? Or that I am? I respect the scientific method as much as you do, but I also know what I know. Pearson saw Nigel Crane fall through my ceiling, hours before it actually happened! How can you stand that and tell me that isn’t proof? I was THERE! I lived it!"

"Nick, I need you to calm down." Robbins had an anxious look now, a doctor-y look. "This isn’t going to be resolved right here, this very moment, and I’m not convinced you haven’t experienced a neurological event. If nothing else, will you go home and rest for a day or two?"

As much as he was not going to admit it to anyone there, he felt like hammered shit about now. His head was killing him, and he felt like he might hork up his dinner sometime pretty soon. He settled for shrugging. "Sure. Okay. I can do that."

"Catherine, would you drive him home? He shouldn’t operate a motor vehicle right now."

She nodded. Grissom looked thunderous, but said nothing at all. Nick thought about some parting shot, but his head hurt too much to come up with anything good.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He started noticing it the next night at work. Subtle, not really all that big a deal, but it was there. Definitely there.

"What?" he asked finally.

Greg blinked at him. "What what?"

Nick drew a deep breath for calm. "What was the look for?"

"What look?"

"Look, you got something you want to ask me? Ask me." He sat down in the nearby chair and crossed his arms. "I’m an open book, man. Shoot."

"I’m not asking anything." But his eyes flickered when he said it, and it didn’t take a psychic to see right through him.

Nick nodded. "You want to know if it’s for real?"

A painfully evasive look twisted Greg’s features. "It’s none of my business, Nick, I mean –"

"The answer is, I don’t know. I don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on. There. Now you have something to tell people around the water cooler."

He stood up fast, and the chair shot out behind him, rolling on casters. Greg now looked absolutely miserable. "Aw, Nick, come on. Word got around, okay?"

"What word? Word about what?"

"The guy that blew up the house. You know."

"And what are people saying?"

"Just – that you knew it was him before anyone else."

"That’s all?"

Greg’s eyes slid away from his own. "Well. And that you kinda, you know. Just. Knew."

Hearing it spoken aloud had a curiously deflating effect; it didn’t sound quite as weird as he’d thought. Or else so weird his mind didn’t quite bend itself around it, one, he wasn’t sure which. Whatever, he now felt tired, and on display. "I did," he said hollowly. "I just knew."

Greg looked back up, this time with real surprise. "So it’s true? Oh man, that’s so freaking cool. Like a psychic flash or something?"

"I guess. Something like that. Look, it’s no big deal, all right? Just one of those freaky things, that’s all." He forced a smile that felt as fake as – well, most psychics he’d ever heard about, actually. "Could have happened to anyone. We’ve all had that kind of thing happen once or twice. You know, got a feeling you know who’s on the phone before you answer it. That kind of thing."

"Knowing who’s on the phone’s a little different from knowing who killed four people," Greg said softly.

"Maybe. But maybe it’s not that different. Just – a different flavor of the same thing."

Greg nodded, looking completely unconvinced. "Sure, Nick. Okay."

"I’m not a psychic, Greg. Whatever people say. I’m just a regular guy. Just like I always was."

Greg nodded again. It made Nick feel like screaming.

The rest of the night was pretty normal, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that people were staring at him. Talking about him when he wasn’t around. Which was stupid, because if he WAS psychic now, god only knew how, he’d know anyway, right? Not just feel paranoid – he’d have the whole story. But he didn’t. Just this creeping uneasy feeling, like the walls had both eyes and ears.

It took him by surprise when Grissom stopped by.

"Hey," Nick said, taking off his goggles. "What’s up?"

"Got a minute?"

Nick felt his fragile smile slipping. "Sure."

"Come down to my office."

Never failed. Going to Grissom’s office was just exactly like elementary school. Going to the principal’s office. Only he wouldn’t get detention or a smack from the paddle this time. This was grownup shit, and he felt as if he were wading through wet cement, walking down the hall.

By the time he got there Grissom was already seated at his desk. "Have a seat," he said mildly.

"What’s up?" Nick sat cautiously.

No smile lightened Grissom’s features; he looked as bleak as Nick had ever seen, which was saying something. "I’m pulling you off your current cases."

Nick recoiled. His heart triphammered in his chest. "Pull –"

"I want you to work with me on this one. It’s not censure. Don’t think that."

"Oh." He relaxed minutely, still staring at Grissom. "Your case? Fletcher?"

Grissom nodded. "Except it isn’t just Fletcher," he added grimly. "It’s potentially a lot bigger than that."

Nick sagged a little. His pulse was still way too fast. Damn, Grissom really knew how to get a guy’s attention. "Okay. Look, you know I’m all over it, whatever I can do." He paused. "This isn’t just – needing an extra hand, is it?"

There had been surpassingly few times he could remember seeing Grissom look abashed. The expression sat strangely on his features, like an ill-fitting suit. "No," he admitted, ducking his head a little. "It’s not."

Nick nodded slowly. "It’s because of last night."

"I had an interesting conversation last night with Ray Carmody. You know him?"

"Not – no, I’ve never met him. He’s the ASAC, right? FBI?"

"Agent Carmody has an informant somewhere. I’m not sure where, and believe me I’ll find out." Grissom’s jaw twitched. "But what was interesting about this conversation is that there is a possible connection between Fletcher’s murder and several older crimes. Crimes Carmody has investigated in the past."

Nick drew a breath, and Grissom held up a finger. "It gets a lot better. Because Carmody has chased this killer for a very long time. And to date he’s never had a shred of concrete evidence to prove the person even exists. He’s a ghost."

Swallowing, Nick said, "I’m gonna assume you don’t mean a real ghost."

"There are some notable differences between our cases and those Agent Carmody worked earlier."

"Cases? Plural?"

Grissom reached out and picked up a thick file. "The first Las Vegas victim was Father Jesus Martinez. The M.O. was different. But."

"The heart. It was gone."

Grissom nodded. "You were right about Fletcher. And Martinez was the same."

"So…what do you want me to do?"

Grissom leaned forward, holding out the file, and Nick took it with cold fingers. "Read this for starters. I’ll get you what I have on Fletcher when you’re done. After that?" Grissom sat back again, lacing his fingers together. "Work the case," he said simply. "Because our cases are so far limited to the state of Nevada, Carmody can’t help in any official capacity. But he’s availed us of his notes, and that might help. We’ll meet with him tomorrow."

"Okay."

"What happened last night was inexplicable." Grissom’s expression darkened, looking frustrated. "I’m not going to say that I believe in paranormal phenomena. Or that I’m so stuck on this case that I’ll grasp at straws. What I do believe is that there is an explanation for things. We may not have that explanation yet, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Do you take my meaning?"

Nick nodded stiffly. "Kinda how I feel, too."

Grissom smiled fractionally. "That said, I think you had some insight, and I’d be a fool not to put you to work where you might be able to benefit the case in ways others can’t."

"So just in case."

"I guess so. Yes."

"I don’t – know anything," Nick said, feeling the words out cautiously. "I saw some stuff. But I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what any of it means. Or if it means anything at all."

"The things you said last night – they bothered me. I’m familiar at least in passing with a lot of languages, and these didn’t even ring a bell. I wrote down what I could remember of them." Grissom shifted papers around and pulled out a sheet of legal-sized yellow paper. "It wasn’t much. But I called an acquaintance of mine in California, a linguistics professor at UCLA. I gave him what I had, and he was fascinated. He couldn’t identify the language with ironclad certainty, but he did have some comments."

The room felt as if someone had cranked down the air-conditioning; it was meat-locker cold. Nick fought down a shiver. "Comments?"

"The closest match he could come up with was Aramaic. Precursor to modern Hebrew, the language Christ spoke. A dead language, long dead."

"Aramaic?" Nick stared at him. "That’s – I don’t speak any other languages. I mean, a little Spanish, I took French in college. But –"

"He couldn’t be certain, and he did have a couple of names, people he said might be able to say more accurately what this was. I want you to look at what I wrote down. See if it seems familiar."

Nick took the paper he held out, holding it gingerly. "O-kay."

Grissom had shitty handwriting, and for a second Nick almost made a joke about how maybe the alphabet was just as foreign as the language. And then he forgot about making jokes, and took in the words.

It wasn’t anything like the previous jolts. Nothing overt, nothing he could pin down. And he certainly didn’t know what the words meant.

But some part of him knew something. He could feel it in the prickle of the short hairs on the back of his neck, the way his hands started to shake. It was gibberish, but it wasn’t. What it was, he couldn’t say. But not garbage.

"Nick?"

Grissom’s soft question made him jerk in his chair. He drew a fast breath. "I can’t read it," he said, hearing his own voice as if from a distant room. "It doesn’t mean anything to me."

Grissom’s eyes narrowed just a little. "Really?"

His throat had gone painfully dry. "It’s familiar," Nick added hoarsely. "It’s like – nonsense syllables. But I feel like I’ve heard them before."

"I can’t swear that what I wrote down is anything like accurate. Maybe in the ballpark, but more than that I seriously doubt. But you went white as a sheet when you read those words."

Nick reached out and put the sheet of paper on Grissom’s desk. He felt absurdly like crying. "This is all kinda – freaking me out," he mumbled, not meeting Grissom’s all-too-penetrating gaze. "I don’t -- I don’t know anything. I just saw some things."

"Tell me what you saw? What you can remember?"

"It’s all mixed up together. I can’t -- I don’t know what’s what. I don’t."

"You screamed, Nick," Grissom said gently. "Just before you fainted. You screamed. Was it because of what you saw?"

Nick tried to swallow, and couldn’t anymore. The dryness in his throat had become real pain. "No," he choked. "No."

"What?"

"I don’t know."

But the thought was right there, immediate and irrefutable: You do know. You know good and well.

"Nick?"

He heard his throat make a dry little "glick" sound before he replied. "It wasn’t what I saw, it was what I felt," he said in a cracked rush. "I felt it."

Grissom nodded, eyes locked with his own. "What did you feel?"

"Evil," Nick whispered. His eyes filled with tears. "The worst evil imaginable."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter Five

Hey there Mister Madman, whatcha know that I don't know

Tell me some crazy stories, let me know who runs this show

(Kansas)

"Your 8:30 appointment is here."

Ray reached out and tapped the intercom button. "Thanks, Shelley. Send him in."

"Him" turned out to be "them"; Grissom was accompanied by a man Ray had never seen before.

"Dr. Grissom," Ray said evenly, standing and coming around to shake Grissom’s hand.

"Agent Carmody." Grissom didn’t smile. "This is my colleague, Nick Stokes. He’s working the case with me."

Stokes shook his hand lightly and fast, as if he’d touched something very hot. Frowning, Ray circled his desk again. "Have a seat, gentlemen. Want some coffee?"

"No, thank you." Grissom didn’t look at Stokes as he sat down. "I realize you can’t help in any official way, but I’m very interested in see what you might know about our case."

Ray nodded cautiously. "I don’t know anything about your case, aside from a few similarities to some I’ve worked in the past," he qualified. "But I’m willing to talk about those. Off the record."

"Of course. You’ve seen something like this before?"

Ray nodded again. "You should know that none of what I’m about to tell you has ever been given any official sanction." He sat back and laced his fingers together. Work day barely started, and he was already hearing that little whisper in the back of his head. The one that wouldn’t be a whisper for long, but louder, until it was a yell he couldn’t pretend he didn’t hear. He thought about the bottle he didn’t keep in the bottom left drawer anymore, and swallowed.

"If we are looking for a serial killer," he continued heavily, "he’s slippery. My interest in this case, if you want to call it that, started back in 1989. I was new with the Bureau, working out of the Dallas field office. A nun was found murdered in November of that year, Sister Mary Peter McWhorter. Strangled, no sexual assault. It got quite a bit of publicity, and I had the chance to see the coroner’s report. The case was up to local law enforcement, but I followed it out of curiosity."

Stokes stirred, and Ray glanced at him. "Yes?"

"I remember that case. People said it was a cult. Satanists, maybe. But no one ever found out for sure."

Ray eyed him consideringly. "Right, yes. You sound like you’re from Texas. Did you work that case?"

Stokes shook his head. "Still in college. But my parents did."

"Stokes. Thomas Stokes?"

"My father."

Ray sat back, raising his eyebrows. "I worked with Tom Stokes on a few cases. Tough as nails. He’s a justice now, isn’t he?"

"Right. But it always bugged him that the Sister Mary Peter case was never solved. He never closed the file, always said there was something else there, something they’d missed."

"He was right," Ray said baldly. "But neither he nor I could ever prove it."

Stokes leaned forward, his square-jawed face a younger replica of his father’s. Ray was irked that he hadn’t seen the resemblance until now, but hell, how many years had it been, anyway? And he hadn’t seen Tom Stokes in a lot of those years. "Did she fit our pattern here in Vegas?"

"Not quite. There was no stone in her chest, for one thing. And there was something at that site, and subsequent ones, that you haven’t mentioned having found with yours. Some writing."

Grissom shifted. "Note? What did it say?"

"No one there could read it." Ray sat back and shrugged. "It took a while to find anyone who could. It was in Aramaic."

Both Grissom and Stokes flinched.

Ray raised his eyebrows. "Or maybe I was wrong about you not finding any notes," he said dryly.

Grissom shook his head. "No notes." He looked distinctly uncomfortable, shooting Stokes a quick glance. "Let’s just say that doesn’t come from as far out of left field as it might normally. Did they get a translation?"

"They did," Ray said slowly. "Roughly, ‘For the nature of the body returns always and only to its own nature.’"

"I don’t recognize it. Nick?"

Stokes shook his head, gazing at Ray with rapt focus. Ray nodded. "It’s a quote from one of the Gnostic gospels. Not exactly on most people’s summer reading lists."

Grissom cleared his throat. "Gnostic, from the Greek ‘gnosis,’ for knowledge. Traditionally Gnostics believed they had a special knowledge of all things divine. And a nun was murdered. You think the killer is Gnostic?"

"I have no idea. But the Church and gnosticism have traditionally been pretty divided. It hasn’t made it any easier to find our killer."

"Who else has he killed?" Stokes asked, dark eyes intent as ever.

"That’s a very good question, and the answer is: I don’t know. I know how many I suspect. Can I prove them beyond the shadow of a doubt? Not enough to please my superiors, or a court of law."

Grissom shifted in his chair, steepling his fingers in front of him. "So you believe our two local murders are connected?"

Ray sat back and shrugged. "The symbolism of replacing someone’s heart with a stone is pretty blunt. I’d say there’s a resemblance, but I’m sure more than one person has resorted to ham-fisted symbols in order to get a point across. Heart like a stone, hard-hearted, etc. Father Martinez’s murder clearly suggests a connection. But the second victim wasn’t Catholic, as far as I’ve seen."

"Nor I. Were all the previous victims Catholic? Just how many are we talking about, total?"

"That I know of, or at least suspect? Eight. Only one wasn’t a practicing Catholic, but he was raised in the Church. Your victim, Fletcher -- he doesn’t fit the paradigm."

"He was religious, though," Stokes said quietly.

Ray glanced at him. "How so?"

"Mormon."

Grissom was also looking at his partner, his expression a little puzzled. "When I spoke with Fletcher’s wife," he said, turning back to Ray, "she expressed his devotion to the LDS church. Different creed, similar faith. Still think he’s not connected?"

"Doubtful. But I won’t say it’s impossible. If he is connected with the previous cases, it suggests a significant deviation from the pattern."

"So if you’ve got all this evidence linking fourteen years’ worth of crimes," Stokes said abruptly, "why don’t you have a task force assembled? The FBI’s just letting these cases go unsolved? Why?"

Staring at him, Ray felt his throat tightening. With anger or something else, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. "That’s a good question," he said after a moment. "The answer is, these cases were investigated. This isn’t closed."

He saw Stokes frown, and had a flash of Tom, flushed and angry over a beer. That same lantern jaw, and an identical bulldog look. When had that been? Four years ago? Five? After William Carnes. Baltimore, Jake’s Roadhouse, and Ray had had about six shots of tequila past his limit. And that was a big limit. "You’re fucking it up, Ray," in Tom’s velvet Texas twang, softness covering tempered steel. "Aren’t you? Goddamn it, you’re fucking it all up."

Aloud he continued, "We’re still working on it." He produced a formal smile. "Don’t worry. But until we have some piece of concrete evidence linking your two dead men with my eight victims, I can’t offer any more than discussion."

"Do you have a suspect?" Grissom asked, regarding him stolidly.

"Not as such," Ray replied after a moment. "There’s the rub, as they say. Off the record?" He sighed. "Combine Mr. Clean with the Invisible Man, and that’s who we’re looking for. He leaves no trace evidence at the scene. There is no connection between the methods of the victims’ deaths; whoever is doing this seems to choose a different method for each person, with no connection that I can determine. Two victims were shot, but ballistics turned up no matches in any of our databases, nor were any weapons found. The scenes have been scrupulously clean. Does that line up with your two victims?"

Grissom nodded. "So far, nothing. Aside from their gender and the ritualistic aspects of their deaths, our two victims seem to have nothing in common. No trace evidence specific enough to move us forward."

"What about the location?" Stokes asked suddenly. "Vegas. I mean, it’s Sin City. If our guy is making some kind of statement, what better place to do it?"

Ray nodded. "Good point, and it occurred to me as well. But it gets us no closer to our perpetrator."

"But if he stays local, that could change."

"Maybe. That’s all I have, gentlemen." Ray forced a professional smile and shrugged. "Aside from files and various bits of – ephemera. Evidence of a sort."

Grissom’s eyes were all too astute. "You’ll share?"

"On the QT? Sure. But don’t get me wrong." He felt his fragile smile falling and didn’t much care. "I’ve been chasing this ghost for a lot of years now," he continued, leaning forward and placing his hands flat on his desk. "You keep me informed, in the loop. Or I take my toys and go home. Understood?"

"Understood," said Grissom with a faint smile.

Ray glanced at Stokes. "Your father cared a lot about this case, and so do I," he said bluntly. "There’s more to it than I’ve been able to find. I can already tell you’re not being completely square with me. What did the Aramaic mean to you? Why wasn’t that a surprise?"

Stokes didn’t say anything, but his face lost color. Grissom shifted and to Ray’s eyes, looked almost diffident. Certainly an expression Ray hadn’t expected to see. "Take my word for this," Grissom said in a soft voice. "When we understand, we’ll tell you. Okay?"

Ray regarded him stolidly. "Not really," he replied after a moment. "But what the hell." He drew a deep breath. "There’ll be more bodies. He’s been on a hiatus, I think. Something maybe happened, delayed him. Or something else changed, I don’t know what. But he’s back in business, and I think until someone stops him you’ll be busy. I’ll bring my unit and everything at my disposal if you can give me one link to the files I’m giving you. Don’t make this territorial, Grissom. We gotta share the pool, or he’ll get away."

Unruffled, Grissom nodded. "We’ll be in touch, Agent Carmody." He lifted his chin. "Thank you for speaking with us."

Ray watched the files change hands, all that information so hard to obtain and looking so insignificant, reduced to a few folders and a couple of Paige boxes. He walked the two CSIs to the door, and caught another hooded, uncertain look from Stokes.

"Talk to your dad," Ray said impulsively, hand on the doorknob. "Ask him if what I say is true."

Stokes swallowed. "I’ll do that."

Door closed, Ray walked slowly over to the window. Outside the day had turned gray, clouds moving in from the west, casting dull shadows over the sidewalks below. He shivered, and shoved his hands in his pockets.

Maybe he’d take off early today. Go home, spend some time with Marcia. Let her talk, for once. Listen to her, as he hadn’t been listening since what she said tended to be so familiar. Familiar because he’d heard it before? Or because it matched what he felt?

Time to let go of all of this. Go do the right thing, go back and make up for lost time. Wasn’t too late. Couldn’t be. He couldn’t afford it to be.

He swallowed convulsively and leaned his forehead against the glass.

Chapter Six

He shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand: he shall hold it fast but it shall not endure. (Job 8:15)

"Thoughts?"

He glanced over at Nick, who had been silent since their departure from Carmody’s office. Nick’s mouth was pinched, and he kept his eyes forward. "Nick?"

"Huh?"

"I was asking what you thought of all that."

"Oh." Nick still didn’t look at him, glancing instead at the heavy file folder he held. "I’m thinking if he’s right, we have a lot of work to do." His tone was light, but something about his tense body language shouted to Gil of unexpressed tension. "I remember my dad talking about this, a few times," Nick continued. "Sister Mary. Nearly drove him crazy that he couldn’t prosecute her killer."

Gil directed his attention back to the road ahead. "You’re Catholic, right?"

"Yeah."

"Did you ever study any of the Gnostic gospels? Learn anything about Gnosticism in general?"

From the corner of his eye he saw Nick shake his head. "You?"

"Nothing substantial. This entire case – if these cases are indeed all connected – reeks of religious mysticism, something, I’m not sure what. Don’t you feel that?"

"Think it or feel it?" Nick replied in a sharp voice, and Gil looked at him. "You asking me as a CSI?" Nick continued, dark eyes somehow dangerous. "Or something else?"

"I’m asking you as Nick, the person I’m working the case with," Gil returned mildly.

Nick paused, and then sighed. "Sorry. Guess that was kinda uncalled for."

"Understandable, though. I didn’t ask you to work the case with me solely because of what’s been happening. Much as it might appear that I did."

"Know something weird?" Nick tapped the folder in his lap. "I thought maybe something would happen, up there. In Carmody’s office, you know, talking about all this. Something like in the morgue the other day."

Gil nodded and signaled for his turn. "And?"

"Nada. Well. I mean, nothing that big."

Gil raised his eyebrows. "That’s not the same as nothing," he said slowly. "Are you saying you did feel something?"

"Maybe. Not sure what, though."

"You want to tell me about it?"

Nick was silent while they exited the highway, and only drew a breath once Gil had made his right turn. "It’s Carmody," he said suddenly. "But it’s not. It’s – like something connected to him. I don’t know how to explain it."

Gil nodded slowly. "When you know, tell me?"

"Absolutely."

They didn’t speak again while Gil drove them back to the lab. It was late, they were both hours into overtime, and as he watched Nick trudge over to his own truck and climb in, Gil felt a sharp tug of sympathy, unexpected and plangent. Nick walked like a man waiting for a blow to fall, someone in the midst of a beating who knew there would be more, and who dreaded it even as he expected it as surely as night followed day.

Nick had just climbed into his vehicle as Gil approached. His expression lightened a little. "You okay?"

Gil smiled. "I was about to ask you that."

Nick sagged a little, hand draped over the steering wheel. "I’m all right. I mean. You know."

"Buy you an early lunch?"

"Yeah? I – sure. Yeah, hop in."

They ended up at Paco’s, of course; it was still early enough to hint about breakfast, and this was the greasiest of greasy spoons, but the food was horrifically great and Gil didn’t mind. He ordered something disgusting and waited to hear Nick’s equally cholesterol-laden request, but Nick surprised him with cereal and fruit. "Hey, I can be healthy," Nick retorted, catching Gil’s raised eyebrow. "On alternate Tuesdays."

"Today’s Thursday."

"Then, too."

Gil sipped his coffee and regarded Nick, smile slipping away. "Have there been any more – flashes?"

"No. Not except the thing with Carmody. And I don’t know what’s up with that."

"How do you feel?"

Nick’s gaze was dark and guarded. "Tired," he said slowly. After a moment of swirling his glass of ice water he added, "And a little scared."

"Of the case, or what’s happening to you?"

"What is happening to me?" Nick shot back. "Do you know? Because I sure as hell don’t."

"You want to know what I really think?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do."

Gil nodded carefully. "I think you are more insightful than you appear to be. And I think intuition can look very much like something mystical, under the right light."

"So I’m not psychic?"

"What’s psychic? How is it any different from a hunch that proves to be correct? The label doesn’t change the intrinsic facts. A hunch can seem fully as insupportable as a psychic – flash, if you want. But intuition is based on knowledge, in the long run. Maybe even knowledge you don’t know you have. Observation, thought, experience."

Nick gave a tight nod. "So that’s how I knew Fletcher had a rock where his heart ought to be? A hunch?"

Gil sat back and shrugged. "I don’t know. You said yourself your father was obsessed with Sister Mary Peter’s murder. It’s likely that you’ve drawn on old knowledge, dredged up –"

"She didn’t have a stone inside her."

"No."

"Lucky guess?" Nick snorted. "I just don’t buy it. I didn’t guess. I knew."

"How did you know? Did you realize it, think about it?"

"No. It was like – something falling out of the sky. One moment it wasn’t there, the next it was. I didn’t know and then I touched him and I did. That’s it."

After a moment Gil sighed. "Be that as it may, Nick," he said gently. "Humans aren’t truly psychic, as popular media would define it. Morris Pearson was a very sensitive person, that much I will say. But being empathetic is not being psychic."

Nick’s jaw was set in a stubborn line. "So what would it take to make you think there WAS such a thing? What would convince you?"

"What difference does that make? My belief or disbelief in psychic phenomena doesn’t change what you’re experiencing, does it?"

"No. I don’t guess so." Nick sipped his water. "So why’s this happening now? Why didn’t it happen a year ago, or five years ago?"

"Maybe it was happening, and you didn’t recognize it as such."

"No. No, it wasn’t. I’d have known." Nick shivered visibly, his cheeks going a little pale. "Take my word for it."

Gil nodded. "Then maybe it’s better not to ask at all. Just go forward. What else can you do, realistically?"

Nick’s smile was ghostly. "Not much."

They ate in silence, and Gil thought some of the savor was gone from Paco’s cooking. That, or Nick’s palpable discomfort sapped Gil’s appetite. They finished fast, and Gil paid and followed Nick outside.

Back at the lab, Nick put his truck in neutral and kept his eyes forward. "Tell me this," he said tonelessly. "What if you’re wrong? What if it really is psychic?"

"It isn’t, Nick. Trust me. Don’t let your imagination run away with you."

What Nick said next chilled him. "I never imagined anything like this. Never." Nick’s eyes were dark with misery. "But someone else did. Does. How can I imagine someone else?"

Gil put a hand on Nick’s shoulder and felt him tense and then slump a little. "I don’t know," Gil said gently. "But I think the absence of an explanation doesn’t mean one isn’t there. It only means we don’t have it yet."

"I hope you’re right," Nick whispered. "God, I hope you are."

"Get some rest, Nicky. It’s been a long night."

"Yeah. See you later."

He watched Nick drive away, and hated the tiny stubborn voice that repeated Nick’s question inside his head. What if he was wrong? It wasn’t impossible. Improbable, maybe, or so he believed, but not outside the realm of possibility. What if Nick, against all odds, all requirements of the scientific method, had somehow gained an ability that went beyond the norm?

He was sweating, and the air felt cold and dry against his skin. Gil swallowed and dug in his pocket for his keys, pushing the vague unease away.

Chapter Seven

A man’s past is not simply a dead history…It is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavours and the tinglings of a merited shame. (George Eliot)

When he awoke it was pitch dark inside his apartment, only the faint green gleam of his alarm clock breaking the blackness. 9:14.

Nick sat bolt upright in bed, and immediately put a hand to his forehead, gritting his teeth at the surge of pain. Slept too long, maybe, or no maybes about it, he was two hours late to work, and his head was killing him. Remnants of dreams clung like vapor hugging the ground: a man’s face, his father’s, crooked teeth showing in an awkward grin, his hands covered with soot. Awake he strained to remember what his father was trying to say, and felt it slithering away, vague as mist.

His hand shook when he picked up the phone. Grissom answered after the first ring, sounding tense.

"I overslept."

"I noticed."

Nick swallowed as his headache expanded and contracted again. "I had the weirdest dream," he blurted without thinking. "I want to remember it. I need to."

"Nick, I don’t have time right now. Are you coming to work? Are you okay?"

"Y-yeah. I just – musta been tired, that’s all. I’ll be there in a minute."

"Call me when you get in."

"Will do."

He trudged to the shower, and in the middle of relishing the feel of blazing hot water and soap on his skin he wondered about the smell. Perfumey. Not the soap, and he wasn’t anywhere near putting on any cologne, even if Grissom didn’t frown so prodigiously on the practice. No, this was feminine, a little heavy, he wanted to call it old-fashioned.

By the time he rinsed off the smell was gone, but it nagged at him. Visions and kooky dreams were one thing, but ghost smells?

Youth Dew? Something he associated with older women, maybe his mom wore it.

Damn.

It was nearly 10:30 by the time he made it to the lab, and he remembered why he hated coming in late. Everyone running around with things to do, and he was sort of waving in the background, going, Here I am, got anything? He checked Grissom’s office, but no joy, so he wandered over to the break room and got a coffee before he called Grissom’s cell phone.

"Just stick around there," Grissom told him, yelling over the noise in the background. "I want you to memorize Carmody’s files, okay? Know them inside and out."

"You have anything new?"

"What?"

"You got anything new?" Nick bellowed at the phone, startling Greg, who peered into the room. Nick grimaced at him.

"No, nothing new, just wrapping up on this accident scene! I’ll see you at the lab!"

Nick thumbed the phone off and shook his head. "Man, I’m glad I’m not wherever he is."

"We’re running a tad late tonight, aren’t we?" Greg quipped, heading to the soda machine.

"Yes, Mom, thanks for noticing. Working on anything interesting?"

"Working, but nothing interesting." Greg took out a soda and uncapped it. "You missed the excitement, man, 13-car pileup on the interstate. I think Grissom sent the whole crew out there."

So that explained the noise. Nick thought about the probable carnage and felt tired. "He’s on his way back."

"Goodie."

Nick sniffed. "You smell that?"

"Smell what? I mean, aside from the general eau-de-crap that tends to hang around this place?"

"Perfume. Smell it?"

Greg regarded him gravely. "So that’s why you’re late, then. You dog." He cracked a grin.

"No, man, I just keep smelling this perfume. Old-lady perfume, something. Really sweet."

Greg tapped him on the forehead on his way out the door. "Brain tumor. Olfactory hallucination’s one of the first signs, my friend. Got your will made out?"

"Ha ha."

But the smell didn’t go away. Not strong enough to really annoy him, just to keep him constantly aware, while he settled at his desk with Carmody’s files, started flipping pages. Christ, the guy really was obsessed with these cases. If these were all the work of the same person, this was gonna be big when they finally broke it. Huge.

Chanel #5? His mother had worn that, he knew; he’d seen the bottle.

With a jolt of pure terror he slapped the file shut and fumbled for the phone.

His father answered, half-awake and mumbling. "’Lo."

"Dad?"

"What? Nicky? Is that you?"

"Aw, man, I’m sorry I’m calling so late."

"It’s all right." His father sounded more awake already. "Is something wrong?"

Nick swallowed and tasted metallic fear. "No, I was gonna ask you that. Everything okay?"

"Here? Fine, everything’s fine."

"And Mom? She’s okay?"

"She’s asleep, but I can --"

"No." Nick had to swallow again. "No, don’t, I just -- I don’t know what I was thinking."

"Nicky, what’s wrong? You sound funny."

Nick sat back, pulling his knees up to his chest and balancing his heels on the seat of his chair. "You remember Sister Mary Peter?" he asked softly.

His father didn’t say anything for a second. When he did, his voice was toneless. "Why do you ask?"

"I think I’m working on something that might be related. I’m not sure yet."

He could hear his dad walking, the click of his house shoes on the tile hallway. "That was a long time ago. But of course I remember. We never found her killer, and it’s always stayed with me."

"This case -- I had this meeting today with somebody you used to know. FBI. Ray Carmody?"

"My God. He’s out in Nevada now?"

"Yeah. He’s the ASAC in Vegas. He gave me his files, Sister Mary Peter, some others. They may be connected to a couple of murders we’ve had locally."

His father sighed. "Ray’s a good man, but -- Be careful. Okay? I was caught up in Sister Mary’s case, but Ray -- Ray was obsessed. Still is."

"What was your theory? His theory?"

After a moment his father said, "Ray believed it was the work of a serial killer."

Nick nodded. "And you didn’t?"

"I didn’t believe or disbelieve. There was no evidence in either direction. Just a lot of tangents, suppositions. No hard proof."

"Was I a weird kid?"

A startled laugh. "What?"

Nick closed his eyes. "I mean, was I different? Weird? Could I – do things?"

"Nick, what the hell are you talking about? Things? What things?"

"I -- Nothing. No, I just, I don’t know what I was thinking. Forget it."

"Why would you think you were a weird kid?"

"I never did anything you – you couldn’t explain?"

His father laughed again, sounding bewildered. "Every one of you kids did unexplainable things every DAY, Nick, you’ll have to be more specific. I mean, you were so dreamy you had accidents all the time. Was that what you mean?"

Nick frowned. "Dreamy?"

"Well, it was Liz who noticed, more than I did. Just the usual kid thing, though, nothing weird. Your imaginary friends. Even I remember Buster."

It hit him like a missile, hearing the word. Because he DIDN’T remember, not until he heard his father say the name, BUSTER, oh Jesus God, Buster.

"Nick? Nick, what is it? You’re spooking me."

Buster. Oh God, Buster. "Nothing," Nick breathed, staring at the far wall. "You just – surprised me. Look, it’s late and I woke you up. I’ll let you go, okay? Say hi to Mom for me when you can."

"I don’t know what exactly is going on up there, but you be careful, kiddo? Do you hear me? Call us tomorrow. Don’t forget."

"I’ll call," Nick said through numb lips. "Night, Dad. Thanks."

"Night, son."

The perfume was back, but for the moment it didn’t matter, didn’t make him curious. All he saw was the outline against the wall, that sturdy shape. No one else saw him, but Nick did, Nick always had, and no amount of teasing and crap from his sisters changed it. Not until later, not until

the bad thing

much later. And then it was as if Buster had never existed, even though he hadn’t, not really, right? Imaginary, the tool of a lonely kid with too many sisters and hardly any friends. And he’d forgotten him, completely, erased him along with so much other stuff, and he felt the weight of all of it like oceanic force, pushing him down onto his chair, harder and harder, until he could barely breathe, suffocating in a room full of oxygen.

I put aside childish things, he thought, while the room darkened and the corners grew monsters, things with claws and fangs and sweet high melodious voices. I set them aside and I did it so well I forgot them, I unmade them, and part of me along with them. What part? What did I put away along with Buster and Teddy and Isabel?

"Nick?"

He was out of the chair before he realized he was moving, flinging himself to the back of the room, crouching and screaming for Buster inside his head, Buster, help me, it’s going to get me this time, it’ll GET ME and there won’t be anything left.

"Nick. What’s wrong?"

He blinked at Grissom’s puzzled, more than slightly alarmed face, and drew a deep breath and made himself stand up straight. "You scared me," Nick whispered. The high sound of his own voice shocked him.

"Unintentional." Grissom took a careful step toward him. "What happened?" he asked softly. "You look like you’ve seen a ghost."

I have, Nick thought, and forced a shrug. "Got the willies reading through those files, I guess." He swallowed dryly. "There’s a lot of stuff there."

Grissom nodded, looking unconvinced. "Question is, is any of it related?"

"Not sure yet."

"You ready to talk shop, or you want to take a breather first? You’re white as a sheet."

"I’m good. No, let’s talk."

Catherine chose that moment to look in, and Nick was thankful he’d at least had his head turned the right direction this time. Grissom had already seen him spooked; wouldn’t do to reinforce this whole fucking fragile-Nicky thing he’d already started.

"The pickup driver." Catherine waved a printout at Grissom. "You said ASAP, you got ASAP."

Grissom nodded at her. "BAL?"

"Stratospheric."

"Figures. Okay, give me a few and I’ll have a look."

"Gotcha." She switched gears, glancing at Nick. "You okay? You look like hell."

He forced a smile. "Got up on the wrong side of the bed. Hey, what kind of perfume do you wear?"

She blinked at him. "Here? At work? None, unless Grissom isn’t working and I can get away with it." Her mouth tilted in a slanted smile. "Why?"

"Ever wear Chanel #5?"

"Nope. Not my style, baby."

"Damn it. What’s this perfume?"

"What perfume?"

He waved tiredly. "I just keep thinking I recognize this smell. Youth Dew, Chanel – what’s some other old perfumes?"

"Nina Ricci?" Catherine shrugged. "Joy? That’s an old one. Shalimar?"

"Shalimar," Nick whispered. "I think that’s it. Shalimar. Who wears Shalimar?"

"Other than old broads? No one I can think of."

"No one here? Sara?"

"Nick, does Sara seem like the perfume type to you?"

He had to smile. "No, but –"

"I gotta run, okay? You can quiz me on perfume trivia some other time."

He stared after her, thinking. Shalimar. Did he even know what Shalimar smelled like? But that was it. Somehow.

"Nick?"

He turned, shaking his head. "Sorry. Yeah. I’m here."

"Shalimar?"

"Just this thing. Never mind."

"So tell me what you’ve got so far."

Nick reached out to open the top file, and nodded.

Chapter Eight

His children are far from safety; they shall be crushed at the gate without a rescuer. (Job 5:4)

"Missing persons."

Gil made a face at the traffic and hit the brakes, tucking the phone beneath his chin. "If you hadn’t noticed, I’m already working on one case here. More than once, actually. Why –"

Brass sounded a little rattled. "Look, you’re already north of town, and I’m almost there myself. Two kids, missing since this morning. You’re in the neighborhood, I figured you could stop by."

Gil looked over at Catherine, who looked a question back at him. "Call Warrick, send him out here."

"Warrick is off tonight, and you aren’t. I already called Nick, said he’d head out here as well. Maybe he can work a little magic, make this short and sweet, huh?"

"Nick’s not a magician, Jim; don’t treat him like one."

"I’m just saying. Any port in a storm. I figure, we’re practically in the country, no estranged spouses hanging around, those kids are just lost and we’ll pick ‘em up in no time. All right?"

Gil felt his jaw tensing. "It’s never that simple, and you know it. How old are they?"

"Young, not sure. Not runaways."

"Damn it. Give me the address again."

He hung up after Brass finished, shaking his head.

"What?"

He didn’t look at her. "Brass wants us to check in on a missing persons, not far from here."

"So?" Catherine had an audible smile in her voice. "No sweat, right? We’re here, aren’t we?"

"And we need to be back at the lab. Processing. Or have you forgotten what we just spent three hours outside our shift doing?"

"So we’ll check out early tonight. Not first shift’s fault half of them are out sick."

Privately Gil thought she was wrong about that, but he let it pass. "Nick’s on his way out here, too."

"Thought he wasn’t coming in until seven."

"Brass paged him."

"Ah."

The area was one of Gil’s least favorites. Not just rural, but desolate, shabby. A cluster of old small houses, that if memory served had tried a couple of decades ago to incorporate as its own township. But with only an electrical power plant serving as local industry, not even a grocery store otherwise, the attempt had predictably failed. Now the houses he made out on the rapidly approaching horizon looked worse than he remembered, some possibly abandoned, and there were no cars in the plant lot. The advent of nuclear power had made the plant obsolete years ago, and the one industry had died overnight.

There were cars, though. Clustered in a field of scrub about two hundreds yards off the road, facing the empty plant. Gil frowned. "Are they reopening?"

"What, the station? Hell if I know, but I doubt it. Wait, this was on the news this morning. Think they’re tearing it down. New highway going through next year, plant’s being demolished." Catherine lifted her chin. "I’ll bet the houses go next. Doesn’t look like it’ll be that much of a loss, if you ask me."

"We have two missing kids. Both parents accounted for." Gil turned down the dusty road and glared again at the cluster of SUVs and pickups. "Is that Nick’s truck?"

"Where?"

"Off to the side."

Catherine took off her sunglasses. "Could be. Said he’d be out here."

"The house we’re going to is a mile up the road."

"Maybe he heard something?"

Gil sighed. "Hang on."

He pulled up next to Nick’s truck, watching dust curl around it as he climbed out. No one was inside.

"So let’s ask them," Catherine said, walking up beside him. Shading her eyes with her hand, she nodded at the group nearby.

In his time in Vegas Gil had seen a lot of buildings come down. Explosives were cheaper and faster than physically tearing down a building, and perfectly safe as long as the crew knew what they were doing. Press had a field day with it, and people were always entranced; watching a tall structure implode, crumple in on itself, was admittedly a little fascinating, and there were always spectators. This time was no exception, even though they were hardly in the middle of town. Evidently word had gotten around, and he saw a couple dozen spectators, noticeable for their lack of hard-hats, and one lonely television crew. Hell, maybe it was a slow news day. Must be, if they were at the end of the world filming a dead building making its final exit.

He brushed past the lookie-loos and headed for the hard-hats. "Excuse me," Gil said, approaching a heavyset man in work clothes. "Gil Grissom, Las Vegas Crime Lab," he added, extending his hand.

"Crime?" The man, named Atchison if the embroidery on his pocket wasn’t misleading, shook Gil’s hand and frowned. "Uh, we got all the permits and stuff. This thing’s been on the calendar for months."

"Gil? What in the hell are you doing out here?"

Gil turned, and snorted when he saw a familiar face. "Hey, Ken." He shook hands again. "You in charge here?"

"What there is of it." Ken Baker hadn’t lost the sunbrowned wizened look, and Gil was pretty sure that was permanent these days. Not like when they’d first met, years back, in the course of an investigation. Missing person then, too. Funny how that worked. "You doing all right?"

"Fine, thanks. When’s the demolition?"

"About ten minutes, if all goes according to plan." Baker’s firm voice suggested it had better, or else. He smiled. "Haven’t had the pleasure," he added, looking at Catherine.

"Catherine Willows, Ken Baker." Gil watched them shake hands. "Ken runs –"

"The Baker Company," Catherine interrupted dryly. "Yeah, I kinda figured. Good to meet you."

Baker’s frown came back. "Listen, I got a lot of stuff to see to, so I gotta cut this short. Unless you guys had something official come up?"

"Nothing major, just looking for one of my team. I think he’s around here. Nick Stokes?"

Baker shook his head. "No one unaccounted for, and the name doesn’t ring a bell."

"About five-ten, dark hair? Texas accent?"

"You just described half my crew."

Catherine grinned. "Cute as hell."

Baker laughed out loud and shook his head again. "Okay, that leaves out my crew," he quipped. "But can’t say I’ve seen anybody, like I said. This area’s contained; sightseers over yonder, crew right here. Other than the goddamn press acting like this is big shit, that’s it."

Gil glanced around. "Well, I saw his truck parked by the road. We’re up here looking into something, and I think he’s here. Any chance you could have missed him?"

"Nope. We get folks trying to sneak in sometimes, you know that, so I learned a long time ago to be careful. No blowing up civilians if you can possibly help it."

"Mind if we take a look?"

Baker frowned, but shrugged. "Long as you’re clear of the blast site in five minutes. We’re on a timer; I can’t just unplug something if you need me to."

"Understood."

But looking around didn’t turn up Nick. He didn’t answer his cell phone. And gazing out at the expanse of metal that was the aging power station, Gil felt a cold frisson of dread prickle his spine.

"Don’t see him." Catherine sighed, walking over to stand next to him. "Maybe he had car trouble, walked to the house?"

"Maybe."

"Call him?"

"Already tried, no answer."

"You don’t think he’s in there, do you?"

Gil swallowed. "I hope he’s not."

"Jesus, Gil, it’s gonna be a pile of rubble in five minutes. If he’s in there he doesn’t have a chance. Why the hell would he do that?"

Gil was already walking. "I have no idea."

Baker looked a lot more annoyed this time he saw Gil. "I don’t –"

"I’m sorry, Ken," Gil interrupted tightly. "But I have to ask you to give me a little time here. I think my man might be inside that facility."

Baker goggled at him. "Why in the fuck would he be there? He have a death wish or something?"

"I can’t answer that, but I can’t let you proceed without being sure the area’s clear. Surely you can understand that."

"Shit." Baker reached up and took off his hard hat, wiping his forehead. "Okay, well, above and beyond the fact that you don’t have the authority to halt my operation here, fact remains that even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. This thing’s coming down, Gil, ain’t nothing I can do to stop it."

The cameraman chose that moment to bob into view, keeping his lens trained on them, and Gil fought down the urge to send him packing. No time. "There has to be something you can do," he grated, feeling another surge of icy dismay. "You have safeguards, I know you do. Turn it off. You can start again –"

"Oh, just turn it off? Like flipping a switch, right?" Baker snorted. "You know how complicated this kind of job is? I know you do, and I know you know it ain’t anywhere near that easy. Look, I don’t want to hurt your guy, but unless you can prove to me he’s in there, there’s nothing I can do. Stopping now would cost me a hell of a lot of money, Gil, and the state frowns on that kind of thing. I gotta meet my bid, or this thing is fucked all to shit."

"What’s going on?"

Gil flinched and turned, watching Jim Brass pick his way through the clods of dirt. "I think Nick’s in there," Gil said baldly.

"Nick?" Brass blinked at him. "Isn’t this thing about to blow?"

"Yeah, and Nick’ll blow with it unless we can persuade them to put a hold on it."

"Nick’s supposed to be at the house." Brass sounded aggrieved, not as scared as Gil felt. "He wouldn’t be here."

"His truck’s here. And I don’t see him. Jim, you gotta help me out here."

Brass glanced at Baker and seemed to remember his official capacity. "Jim Brass, Vegas PD." He didn’t bother with a handshake. "You in charge?"

"That’s right, and like I told Gil here, the train’s already out of the station. Even if you could prove to me your man was inside, there isn’t enough time to stop. I can shut down the main leads, but the rest has to be done manually. That means going over there and doing it by hand, and that would mean sending my men out to be blown up for certain. No fucking way."

"So you’ll let an innocent civilian die because of your bottom line?" Brass shot back. "I’m sure that would make good press." He glanced meaningfully at the cameraman.

Baker looked alarmed. "Are you sure he’s in there? I mean, are you positive? Jesus, what a goddamn screwup. He couldn’t have gotten past us, I’m telling you. There is no way he could have gotten in there without us seeing him. Just isn’t possible. He can’t be in there."

By this point the cameraman had company, an avid-looking woman Gil vaguely recognized from local news, as well as more than a few of the spectators. And Baker’s crew, standing silent and worried-looking behind Baker.

"I’m telling you," Brass said stolidly. "Shut it down. It’s gonna be pretty damn hard to run your company from a prison cell, and don’t think I won’t arrest your ass for manslaughter if you go forward. That’s minimum."

Baker now looked desperate, hat clamped in his beefy hands. "And I’m saying, even if I hit the failsafe it won’t shut everything off!" he cried. "Part of it has to be done manually! Christ, I don’t want to kill anyone."

Gil drew a fast breath. "I’m going down there," he bit off, and took a step, before Brass’s hand clenched tight on his left arm, Catherine’s on his right.

"And get yourself blown up with Nick?" Brass spat. "Fuck that." His icy gaze swerved back to Baker. "Shut it down. Now."

And Gil thought later that Baker would have done it, caught between a rock and a miserably hard Brass-plated place. But it didn’t really matter, because that was the moment they heard the scream.

They all froze. Kind of amusing, in a horrible sort of way. Everyone’s head swiveling to look east, gazing at the metal hulk of the station. The high-pitched sound faded, and the silence was oppressive.

"That sounded like a kid," Catherine whispered at his side.

"Can’t be," Baker came back, sounding old and breathless.

"Jim?" Gil stared at the station. "Those kids live near here."

"Jesus. Yeah, they do."

"Shut it down!" Baker bellowed, dropping his hard hat and taking off in the direction of one of the vans. "Shut it all down! Now!"

"Oh Jesus," Catherine said weakly. "Gil."

Gil felt the fear draining away, replaced by cold welcome clarity. "What are the kids’ names, Jim?"

"Shit. Let me look." He heard Brass scrabbling with paper. "Two kids, boy and girl. Boy aged 12, named Demetrius."

"And the girl?" Staring, staring. "What’s the girl’s name?"

"Shalimar. Why? Christ, are they in there? Tell me they’re not in there."

"Shalimar," Gil breathed.

"Gil," Catherine moaned at his side. "Nick was asking about Shalimar the other –"

"I know. They’re in there. Nick –"

Someone screamed, and Brass blurted a fervent curse, and over the sudden babble of excited voices, Gil saw.

Chapter Nine

Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God. (Luke 18:16)

When he watched the tape later, he realized the camera had gotten a much clearer shot than he had. But then the camera wasn’t afraid, and he’d been terrified.

What the tape showed was first a gaggle of people, onlookers, crew, all with mirror expressions of surprise and horror on their faces. Then panning around, fast and blurry, to gain a jittery focus on the plant hundreds of yards away. That far, it wasn’t clear that it was Nick. Only a guy in dark clothing, something in his arms, and something at his side.

The somethings were Shalimar and Demetrius Dickson, and Nick was running like he had the hounds of hell nipping at his heels.

"Jesus God almighty, they’ll never make it," Brass said in a warbly voice.

The tape didn’t catch that, but Gil’s reply came out loud and clear, even if it was only his disembodied voice. "Shut that down NOW, goddamn it!" Complete with a bleep, in the edited version.

And more voices from off-camera, while Nick and his charges ran in scary silence. Pelting across the grated fourth floor, flying past the elevator.

"Good boy," Gil whispered, unaware until later that he had tears running down his cheeks. "Don’t trust it. Stairs, go for the stairs, run, damn it. Run."

Then the real kicker, the one that made this particular news clip the top of the news cast, and then the national news the next night: a new shrieking voice, heralding the arrival of Mom.

Ignoring it, Gil sprinted to find Baker, who was in turn shouting at everyone in earshot. The controlled chaos of demolishing a building had become real chaos, and Baker’s face was a mask of absolute shock.

"Got everything I can get," he panted, wiping sweat from his upper lip, gazing at the tiny figures now approaching the barely visible outside stairway. "But some’s gonna blow anyway, Gil, isn’t anything I can do to stop it. Won’t be enough to bring the building down, not even close, but I can’t swear they’ll be okay. I just can’t. Oh Jesus, run faster, you bastard, why’d those fucking kids have to choose today to go exploring?"

"And how did you miss them?" Gil shot back, and Baker met his fiery gaze with such horror that Gil took a step back.

"Larry, Jimmy, come on," he bellowed, jamming a hard hat on his head. "Fuck this."

But even their dead run across the dirt wasn’t nearly fast enough, anyone could see it. The camera saw it, impassive and all-recording, and that was all: those futile men trying to rescue people hopelessly out of reach, and Nick with Shalimar and now Demetrius in his arms, too, hurtling down the stairs and bouncing off one railing so hard even from this distance you could see him stagger. And going right on, third floor, second, and putting his foot on the stairway to the first when Gil heard the crewman next to him whispering, "Five, four, three."

On television it played as if it were part of some rather amateur action movie. Poor film quality for the movies, but everything else like choreography. Not the blind luck it was, as Nick hit the ground floor at a dead run, arms full of children clinging like barnacles to his neck, foot casting up a tiny puff of dirt at the same moment that the first explosion suddenly crumped through the air. Like distant thunder, the most demure waft of dust at the rear of the facility, furthest away from Nick. The tape’s images showed his figure highlighted from behind, outlined in pale beige and the second charges going off, nearer, so near.

Beyond the plant’s concrete ground floor was a lip of dirt foundation, and then a drop-off, about two feet down. Gil never remembered to ask Nick later if he’d scoped out that ledge beforehand. Just as well. The answer would almost surely have been no, and that was too much proof of the enormous amount of sheer luck involved in the whole proceeding.

But it was the ledge that Nick headed toward, tape clear enough now that his expression could be seen: no fear at all, nothing but fierce and complete focus, aiming at that drop-off. Jumping and landing awkwardly, and then going down, pushing the two children to the ground and immediately lying over them. It was that pair of seconds of tape that was edited and bit-captured and made into the picture that ran in the papers the next day. Nick, only his back showing, and his arms, cradled around those two invisible children, and the plume of dust as the nearest detonations began.

Then it was all haze, and a somehow terrible silence. Even the children’s mother, frozen as she waited with everyone else to see if anything emerged from that pall of dust. Baker and his two men, stumbling to a halt a few hundred feet away, bright orange hard hats obscured in the murky air.

And then someone shouted, and the dust cleared enough that the camera and Gil and the mother and everyone else could see Nick standing up, reaching for the two kids, and walking away.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Nick didn’t watch the news that night. Couldn’t; he was stuck at the ER, getting checked out along with the two children he’d rescued. Nothing major, but next to everything else that seemed like a very minor miracle; surviving at all was the biggie. Nick had a few cuts where flying debris had struck his back and shoulders, some bruises, probably from the pellmell flight down the stairs. Shalimar and Demetrius were untouched, with the exception of the injury Shalimar had already sustained before any of it happened, the injury that had gotten her stuck and delayed their exit until Nick had shown up.

Gil sat very still and watched, while the almost hysterically excited reporter shoved a microphone in Nick’s dust-streaked face. "How did you know, Mr. Stokes? How did you know these kids were here?"

It probably wasn’t evident to someone who didn’t know him. That brief second of calculation, that little breath of time in which Nick considered how to answer that. And then smiling, and saying, "I was out here looking into their disappearance, that’s all. I was just in the right place at the right time."

Next to Gil, Sara shifted. When he looked over her arms were crossed, and she shook her head. "How’d he do it? For real?"

Gil drew a long breath. "I don’t know," he said slowly. "And that’s the truth."

"A vision? A dream? How’d he get inside without anyone seeing him?"

"I don’t know."

"Does he know? Does he?"

"You’ll have to ask him that."

Work went on the same, as night became early morning. But nothing was the same. Gil shrugged out of his lab coat around 2:00am, and sat down at his desk with a sigh.

"Hey."

Gil jerked around, staring at Nick’s very clean face. "I was going to come pick you up," Gil said in a rush.

Nick smiled a little and took a seat opposite him. "I got a lift. Man, the place was crawling. I felt like I was inside a microscope."

"They want to understand how you did it. How you could have rescued those kids."

"I’m not saying."

Gil nodded after a moment. "I think I can understand why."

"But you know how," Nick whispered. His smile was gone; he looked tired, and horribly wistful. "Don’t you?"

Gil gazed at him, wordless. Didn’t he? What more would it take to convince him? An affidavit from God? Because all the evidence was in, now, wasn’t it?

"Yes," Gil said softly. "I guess I do."

Nick’s dark eyes filled with tears. "You believe me."

"It would be pure stupidity not to, now. I believe you."

Nick nodded fast, reaching up to wipe his eyes with the backs of his fingers. "So what do I do now?" he asked in a thick voice, staring down at his lap.

"Go forward, Nick. What else can you do? Hide from it? How can you do that?"

"It won’t let me."

Gil leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the desk. "The first time I met Morris Pearson, he said something about how it was his duty to act on his feelings. That it was part of a – I don’t know, moral code. It was a requirement. He didn’t explain why he felt that was so."

Nick was nodding, eyes still averted. "Once you know, you can’t – not know. You can’t just forget about it."

"Let me take you home. You don’t need to be here tonight, okay? You need some sleep."

He saw the way people looked at Nick as they walked out of the lab. Looks of confusion, wonder. Fear. Mistrust. With newly acute eyes Gil saw it all, and felt his gut tightening with restless anxiety. So was this the way it would be? Must be? How did you act around someone you knew had an ability no one could understand, or share?

Thankfully Nick didn’t seem to notice the askance looks. He just walked out, favoring his right side a little, the hip that had taken the worst of the beating on his way down the stairs. Gil opened the Tahoe’s door for him and waited for Nick to climb in.

Half an hour later in front of Nick’s condo complex, Gil looked over at him and saw that he was asleep. Mouth open, face soft and somehow old in the reflected sodium gleam of the streetlights. Gil reached over and touched his shoulder gently, and Nick’s eyes peeled blearily open.

"Oh man. Musta dozed off."

Gil smiled faintly. "Yeah. You’re home."

Nick looked around, sitting up and visibly trying to get it together. "Okay. Thanks for the lift."

"No problem. Nick?"

"Yeah?"

"You did an incredible thing today."

Nick’s eyes were inky and unreadable in the dimness. "Did what I had to do."

"That doesn’t change the facts."

"What if I’d been too late? What if I hadn’t been able to find them?" Nick turned away, leaning against the passenger door. "Every time I think about feeling good about it, I think about that. Because it wasn’t me, Gil. It was – a dream, a call from Brass. How do you arrange to be in the right place at that one right time? How can I be sure that next time will be the right one, too?"

"How can you be sure it won’t be?"

"Maybe."

"Night, Nicky."

"Night."

Chapter Ten

"God doesn't move us by telling us the facts. He moves us by pains and contradictions. He's given me a lack of understanding: not answers, but questions. An invitation to marvel." (Alex Ventoux, "Luminary")

He stopped by Shelley’s desk on the way out. "Take messages for me? Not sure I’ll be back today." Well, he was sure he wouldn’t be, but it never hurt to hedge a little.

Shelley’s look told him she wasn’t much fooled, but she’d humor him anyway. "Yes, sir."

Ray winced. "You know what we talked about, right?"

"I’m sorry, s—" She wrinkled her nose. "Agent Carmody."

"You say ‘sir,’ I start feeling like we’re in the military. And I don’t want to be in the military."

Now she smiled, even if it was still a bit formal. "Understood."

The heat hit him like a fist holding a roll of nickels. Hadn’t he just been thinking how he liked the climate here? This was like taking a stroll on the goddamn sun. He opened his car door and let it air for a minute before climbing in. Not even feeling the sweat; it was so hot the damn moisture evaporated off his skin before it had time to register.

Too early for rush hour, so he didn’t have too much trouble on the highway. Back on residential terrain, he consulted his map a couple of times, but it really wasn’t that hard to find. He parked on the street and thought about putting on his suit coat again before the outside heat convinced him protocol was for places where eggs didn’t fry on sidewalks.

Stokes answered the door after Ray leaned on the bell the third time. He looked tired, and annoyed. "Agent Carmody?"

Ray smiled a formal little smile. "Mr. Stokes. I’m sorry to bother you, but I had a couple of questions. Mind if I come in?"

Stokes frowned. "Suit yourself."

The interior of Stokes’s condo was cool and dim, and Ray felt immediately better, out of the white-hot skillet that was the Vegas outdoors. "Want some coffee?" Stokes asked. He was dressed in ancient jeans and a tee shirt, and unless Ray missed his guess, that was a bad case of bed-head, too.

Ray accepted a cup, and watched Stokes down his own in a few fast swallows. "I thought I’d check in," Ray said when Stokes didn’t add anything. "Our mutual interest."

Stokes glanced at him on the way to refill his cup. "Wanting a progress report? There isn’t one. Been busy with other stuff."

"So I hear."

"It was just one of those things," Stokes said tonelessly. He regarded Ray over the rim of his coffee cup. "Is that what you really came to talk to me about? The thing yesterday?"

Ray shrugged and set his coffee on the table. "I came to talk to you about your two dead men. But I’ll admit I’m curious. How did you know?"

"What, the power plant? I just knew. Next question?"

The flat words seemed forced, and Ray studied Stokes carefully. Under the veneer of tiredness and flippancy, the man looked deeply uneasy, almost afraid. "It’s made you a hero," he replied softly. "Isn’t that worth discussion?"

"Whatever. Look, it was a long night and I gotta be at work pretty soon. I don’t have time –"

"Do you consider yourself to have psychic abilities?"

Stokes glared at him, but the expression had little power. The impression of fear was stronger now. "I don’t have a crystal ball or a Ouija board, if that’s what you’re asking," he snapped.

"Mr. Stokes, I’ve worked for the FBI for a long time, and I’ve seen a lot of weird shit. I’ve seen things I can’t explain, and things I don’t think anyone can explain. Maybe you don’t like the psychic label, but the fact remains that you had an amazing thing happen yesterday. You saved the lives of two children, based on what? A hunch? A feeling? A vision?" Ray shook his head. "Unless you want to tell me you led those kids there in the first place. Is that what you’re saying?"

"What?" The annoyed look had completely disappeared; Stokes looked shocked, and suddenly younger. "Led them there? What the hell are you talking about?"

"So if you didn’t," Ray continued stolidly, "and I believe that you didn’t have a hand in the setup, that was all random -- then you have to admit there is something uncanny about the whole thing. Right?"

Stokes walked over to the couch and sat down heavily. Ray followed, taking a seat in a wide chair. "I’m not accusing you of anything," he said after a moment. "Please believe me. But I need to know what you can do."

"I had a dream," Stokes said in a hushed voice. "That’s all. And we got the call for the missing kids, and something just -- clicked."

"Has anything like this happened before?"

Stokes’s quick hooded look gave him his answer. "Not like this," the man added, shaking his head. "Not so dramatic. Just stuff."

"From what I understand, you nailed a man for arson recently, based entirely upon a feeling you had at the site. Is that the stuff you’re talking about?"

"What do you want from me?" Stokes whispered. His face contorted with too many emotions for Ray to catalog. "You here to call my bluff? Say I’m a faker, what?"

Ray smiled a little. "I’m here to ask for your help."

Stokes sat back. "With what?"

"Off the record."

"Okay."

"I have a lot of ideas about our killer. But ideas aren’t facts, and I won’t pretend otherwise." He shifted a little in his seat. "Grissom doesn’t strike me as a man who appreciates the old-fashioned hunch."

After a moment Stokes nodded minutely. "Not a lot of forensics people do."

"Your father didn’t, either," Ray added, softening the words with a shrug. "Or let’s just say, he preferred to back up any hunch with facts within 24 hours. Your basic pragmatist."

Stokes’ mouth quirked in a tiny smile. "You could say that. He’s open-minded, but."

"Exactly. All I have here are hunches, Mr. Stokes."

"Call me Nick, okay? Feels like my dad’s in the next room."

"Done. Frankly, Nick, I don’t think we’ll crack this case working by the numbers. I think it will take hunches. Insight, intuition."

"Visions?"

"If you have any, I wouldn’t be against hearing about them." He regarded Stokes carefully. "Have you?"

Stokes leaned back, suddenly looking even more tired than before. He rubbed one eye with his fingers. "Yeah. One."

A prickle of familiar interest flared down Ray’s spine. "Tell me?"

"I never saw the first vic. Martinez. But I saw the second during the autopsy. Some things happened."

"Aramaic things?"

Stokes’ dark eyes flashed. "That was part of it. Grissom says I spoke it."

Spoke it. Ray swallowed. "What did you say?"

"I don’t know. I don’t remember. I remember images. And this feeling, like the worst, deepest evil I’ve ever experienced." Stokes looked away, jaw muscle twitching. "But none of that is any help," he added heavily. "Doesn’t mean anything."

"Here’s what I didn’t want to discuss with Grissom." Ray waited until Stokes looked back at him. "I have a theory. I think whoever this is, was practicing before. I think Sister Mary Peter was an experiment. And I think right now, here in Las Vegas, he’s done practicing. This is what he’s been working toward, all this time."

"How do you know?"

Ray sighed. "I don’t. Get it? It’s all theory."

Stokes frowned. "I’ve worked cases based on a lot less than what you’ve got now. But it sounds like the FBI never took any of what you learned seriously. Wasn’t this worthy of at least a cursory investigation?"

Shoe on the other foot now; Ray felt his stomach clench, automatic ruffled distance. "Very likely." He forced down ready anger. Wasn’t Stokes he was angry at, now, was it? "I tend to have the opposite of the Midas touch in some ways," he continued gruffly. "Let’s just say my involvement was probably the kiss of death. As it were."

Stokes looked a lot like his father just then, regarding Ray with a clear, all-too-penetrating gaze. "Why?"

"It’s personal," Ray replied in a thin voice.

"So you want us to do your work for you? Is that it?"

"I had more in mind a partnership of sorts. Unofficial."

Stokes sat back, looking tired and young. "So you’re not gonna say why you’re persona non grata with the FBI, but you expect me to spill everything we’ve got. And take advantage of whatever the hell it is I’ve found out I can do, so you can what? Scratch a fifteen-year itch? What makes you think I can help? It just happens, Carmody; I don’t control it."

"Maybe not yet." Ray swallowed and drew a deep breath. "I worked with someone, years ago. A case in Baltimore, involving a string of what we thought were related murders, prostitutes. This guy –" He broke off, shaking his head.

"Don’t tell me. Another goddamn local psychic."

"No. No, he worked for the FBI. At the time. And he said he wasn’t psychic. He called it experience, knowledge."

Stokes nodded slowly. He had lost the tired look; his eyes were almost too interested. Frantically so, although Ray would have taken a large bet to say the man himself didn’t realize it. "He could – do this? What I do?"

"I don’t know exactly what he did. But he took one look at the current crime scene and – he knew everything. It all fell into place. Drove the ASAC absolutely bugshit, but the guy was right. About everything."

"So why don’t you call him?" Stokes said harshly, lip curling. "Get his help."

Ray shrugged. "He left the Bureau a long time ago. Did some consulting, then came back and left again. I have no idea where he is these days. Hell, he could be dead by now."

Stokes gave him a dull glance. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I believe you can do amazing things. Things I don’t understand, things probably nobody understands. I think you are the key to finding this killer."

Stokes stared at him, and then visibly flinched, eyes darting to the left. Ray automatically followed his gaze. There wasn’t anything there. Just a plant, and a low-slung chair. He looked back at Stokes. The man’s cheeks had gone startlingly pale, eyes dark and haunted.

"What do you see?" Ray whispered. His neck prickled with atavistic excitement. "What did you just see?"

Stokes shook his head without losing the gray, stunned look. "Nothing," he said hollowly.

"I don’t believe you. You saw something. Something that scared you?"

"I need you to leave." Stokes stood abruptly, avoiding Ray’s eyes. "I can’t – talk about this right now."

Ray stood, but didn’t move to the door. "Why? Maybe talking about it will help. How do you know if you don’t try?"

"I am trying!" Stokes cried. High color blossomed in formerly bleached cheeks. "I’m trying to make – sense out of something that doesn’t fucking MAKE sense, all right? I can’t be – whoever it was you knew back in the day, okay? I don’t know who it is you want me to be, but I’m not him, I’m not anybody, I just do the best I fucking CAN!"

Ray nodded, feeling his heart triphammering in his chest. "Then tell me what’s in that chair."

Stokes swallowed. "No one," he whispered. "There’s no one in that chair."

"But there was."

"Just my imagination. That’s all. You have to believe me. That’s all it was."

"I can’t believe something I know you don’t. And you know that wasn’t just your imagination. Was it?"

"Just please go," Stokes moaned, eyes closing. "I’ll – call you if something else happens. If I find out anything, all right, just go. Leave me alone."

"I want to help, Nick. Believe that. I’m not the enemy. The enemy is a psychopath who’ll kill a lot more people if we don’t find him soon. Believe that, too."

"Get out," Stokes said hoarsely, and turned away. "Get out, please. Just go."

Ray nodded at the man’s rigid back. "Okay," he said softly. "I’ll go. But I mean what I say. I’m a friend, Nick, and I’m more than that. I’m a believer. How many of those do you have in your life right now? How many people look at what you can do and say it’s a gift to be treasured rather than something to be afraid of? How many people around you are scared of you right now?"

Stokes said nothing at all. Ray swallowed, and bit back the other things he wanted to say.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

His cell phone rang when he was still a few blocks from home. Ray opened the phone and wedged it between his chin and his shoulder, glaring at the glinting mass of cars on the highway.

"Hey, Ray." He could hear the smile in McAda’s voice. "Got a minute?"

"About five, until I get out of the car and start shooting. What’s up?"

"Talked to someone today, about the Martinez case. You know, the priest, got whacked last week."

Ray nodded and shifted gears, gunning into the right lane. "Tell me."

"Long shot, but if you’re still into this case I thought you might want to hear about it. Turns out Martinez had seen this guy, day before he died. The other priest at the parish remembered seeing them, some kinda confessional thing, right? Didn’t hear what the guy said to him, but he remembered Martinez looking a little freaked, so I did some asking around. Guy’s been seen around the church for a few weeks, not going to Mass or anything. Just hanging around. Talked to a few people. They remembered him because they said he was spooky."

"You get an ID?"

"John Baker. Unemployed, moved to Vegas recently from parts unknown. Sounds like an alias, but I got an address. Wanna meet me there?"

"Where?"

McAda read off an address, and Ray sighed. "On my way. Don’t do anything until I get there, you got it?"

"This still on the QT, or official?"

"What do you think?"

McAda laughed. "Gotcha. Half an hour?"

"See you there."

It wasn’t that far. And it was probably the latest in a long line of wild goose chases, which meant he could have a look and still be home before Marcia had time to work very hard on the you’re-late-and-I-waited-supper speech. Ray dropped the phone on the passenger seat and swerved back left, passing a guy in a sleek BMW who mouthed something and gave him the finger.

He identified the house by McAda’s blue Mustang, the cop leaning against the door with beefy arms crossed. Ray parked by the curb and got out, wincing at the furnace blast of desert wind. "Anybody home?"

McAda shook his head. "Nobody answers, and I ain’t got a warrant yet. I can fix that, if you give me a couple of hours."

"You think this is legit?"

"The lead? I think we ain’t got shit otherwise, is what I think." McAda made a face and shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. "I made some calls while I was driving. Baker is definitely an alias. Guy didn’t exist before he popped up here in Sin City. No checking account, no job, and his landlord says he pays the rent cash on the barrel."

Ray nodded tightly. "We need that warrant."

"In the works, man. I ain’t gonna fuck this up. Not if this is as big as you’ve said it might be."

"It’s big. It’s fucking huge."

"If you say so. Listen, I’m gonna hang here for a while, see if he shows up. You wanna join me?"

"No can do, gotta head home."

"She’s got you whipped, man, I’m tellin’ ya."

"No," Ray shot back. "But unlike you, I have responsibilities."

McAda raised his hands in a defensive gesture, completely belied by the grin on his face. "Hey, don’t hate me because I’m single, all right? Footloose and fancy free."

"Yeah, right. Call me when you get that warrant."

"You know it. Give Marcia my love."

Ray snorted and walked back to his car.

Traffic was even worse now, and his jaw ached from gritting his teeth by the time he turned onto his street. "Sorry, honey," he whispered as he pulled into the driveway. "Got held up at work, honey. Yeah, I still work, even if I’m going nowhere fast. I’m weird that way."

The house was silent when he walked in the front door. No television blaring local news, no clatter in the kitchen as Marcia stormed around making a big deal out of the late dinner. No girlish giggles from the direction of Elyse’s bedroom. Ray put his briefcase on the foyer table and called, "I’m home."

No reply. No smells of cooking, no nothing. His jaw popped, and he took a look in the deserted kitchen before widening the search. Nobody, there wasn’t anyone home, anyone could see that. Mouth dry, he jogged up the stairs, glanced in Elyse’s room. Neat, for once, no clutter of clothes and shoes and lots of frilly things that made him obscurely uncomfortable to see in association with his only daughter. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth by the time he got to the master bedroom. Neat, too, and there was an envelope on the pillow. Ray paused for a moment, staring at it. Then he sagged down on the edge of the bed and reached out to pick it up.

"Ray," he read in Marcia’s loopy, feminine cursive. "We’ve gone to stay with Mom and Dad for a while. I’m sorry I didn’t wait to tell you face to face, but what difference does it really make? We’ve been postponing the inevitable for far too long. We’re all miserable. I don’t want Elyse growing up this way, and I don’t think you do, either. I’ll call you in a few days. Please don’t call until then, or come find us. There isn’t any point."

His eyes were blurring, but he could still make out the last words. "I loved you since high school, Ray, and I guess I’ll always love you. But I don’t like you very much any more. Marcia."

Blinking at nothing, Ray crumpled the letter slowly in his fist. His ears sang with a weird, high-pitched drone, the sound of the blood making a frantic race through his veins, heart pumping for all it was worth. With a snarl he stood up and kicked the urn by the dresser, the one Marcia had bought for way too much money at a stand in Williamsburg. Surprised she hadn’t taken the goddamn piece of crap with her, loved it so much. He regarded the shattered bits of crockery with zero interest. Broke the vase, broke my goddamn marriage. And that after I broke what was left of my career, way back when I was still a relatively golden boy, back when it still meant something. Meant as much as Marcia, maybe more.

Downstairs he paused at the door to the study. Make a choice, Ray, good buddy. Lady or the tiger. The case, finally lukewarm again after being so stone-cold for so long. Do something about that, when there’s nothing you can do about Marcia, nothing you can do about the shattered pieces of your marriage.

Or take that tiger by the tail and dance, boy. It’ll be the last waltz, so you better make it a good one.

He leaned against the door jamb and uncrumpled Marcia’s dear-John letter. Dear-Ray letter.

"I want to dance, Marcia," Ray whispered, squeezing out two hot, acid tears. "I’m going to dance, dance with him. Dance on the blood-dimmed tide."

He shoved the letter in his pocket and reached for the doorknob.  

Chapter Eleven

"Do you know what it's like to scream in silence three hundred and sixty-five days of the year?"

(William Gary, "Covenant")

"His name is John Baker."

Nick stared at the file Grissom had plopped down on the desk in front of him. "You mean you found him?"

Grissom leaned back in his seat and shrugged. "We have a possible suspect. Nothing more. Complicated by the fact that no one’s seen him since Father Martinez’s murder. According to Detective McAda, the name is probably an alias."  He sighed.  "We have no forensic evidence tying either of these murders to any person," he said heavily. "What evidence we have exists in a vacuum. No DNA matches, nothing. The man we’re looking for doesn’t seem to exist."

"That’s what Carmody said."

"You spoke with him?"

Nick fidgeted. "He came by this afternoon. No big."

Grissom’s eyes narrowed. "What did he tell you?"

After a long pause Nick said, "He thinks I’ll crack this case."

"He does."

"Because of what I can do," Nick added, and snorted. "The guy’s reaching, man. He’s been working this thing way too long, and he’s grabbing for anything that might give him an edge. That’s all."

"McAda’s at Baker’s apartment right now. You ready to head over?"

Nick sat up. "Uh. Sure."

He had time to flip through the file on the way over. A part of him sat back, waiting for some kind of bombshell, some flash of weird crap to hit him out of nowhere, but nothing came. It was just paper, and it didn’t say much. Baker was a non-entity: featureless, without history, without family, without anything that Nick could see from the too-brief reports.

"So he comes here, what? Two months ago, right?" Nick closed the file and glanced at Grissom behind the wheel. "Doesn’t have a job, but the landlord says he’s gone all the time. Doing what?"

"Stalking Father Martinez, for starters," Grissom replied. "Aside from that, I don’t know."

The apartment was tacked onto the back of an elderly frame house in an even older part of town. Nick climbed out and turned to see Buster, sitting on the hood of a blue Mustang parked by the curb.

"Don’t go in there, Nicky." His blue eyes were wide and scared. "Bad place. Bad, bad place."

Nick swallowed and turned away, following Grissom inside.

The air was stuffy inside the tiny apartment. Smelled like dust and something Nick’s nose insisted was Elmer’s glue. He looked around, popping his gloves over his wrists, while Grissom got the skinny from Detective McAda.

"Guy lives like a monk, maybe he is one." McAda looked tired and cranky, sweat gleaming on his mostly bald pate. "Either way he’s got us made. He ain’t comin’ back."

There wasn’t much furniture, and what there was of it looked like furnished-for-rent crap: a sprung sofa, leaking stuffing; painfully austere kitchen table with two chairs. A desk that looked like salvage and probably was, with a rickety chair. Nick did a slow circuit of the room, and saw Buster perched on the table. His apple-red cheeks looked artificial. "Tick-tock, Nick-knock," he crooned in his high little-boy voice. "Someone’s coming around the block."

"Shut up," Nick whispered. "You’re not helping."

"What?" Grissom gave him a quizzical look.

"Nothing," Nick blurted.

He turned to look at the closed bedroom door, and felt his balls immediately try to crawl up inside his body. Wrongness, this place was a cauldron of – not evil, precisely, but a kind of jagged off-centeredness that made his brain hurt, like a broken piece of glass inside his mind. That room, that was where the clues were. If he could stand to look inside.

A hand on his elbow made him flinch.

"Nicky?" Grissom regarded him with another shade of that same concerned, cautious color Nick was starting to expect. "What is it?"

Nick lifted his chin in the direction of the bedroom door. "In there. That’s – what we came to find."

Grissom flicked a glance at McAda. "You checked out the bedroom yet?"

McAda looked, too, his craggy-handsome face cloudy. "Yeah." He kept staring. "I think."

"You mean you don’t know?"

Nick watched a growing expression of vague confusion trying to materialize on the detective’s features, out of place. Jarring. "Of course we did," McAda said gruffly, but his pale blue eyes were somehow haunted. "Didn’t find nothing."

"You can’t see it," Nick breathed. His hands were cold. "But it’s there."

Grissom gave him a ferocious frown. "What’s there?"

"You feel it too. Don’t you?"

"Feel what?"

Nick glanced at Grissom. The frown was still there: affronted, mildly indignant. "That," Nick said simply. "You don’t think we should go in."

"It’s already been examined."

"But not by us. That’s our job, isn’t it? To go over everything?"

A flicker of the same confused look McAda had worn now appeared on Grissom’s face. Utterly out of place, and a little shocking. "Certainly. But we have bigger fish to fry. Let’s go."

With a tingling feeling of disbelief Nick watched Grissom put away his gloves. "Don’t you get it?" Nick asked, shaking his head. "We have to see what’s in that room."

"It’s a snipe hunt, Nick. That’s all." Grissom gave him a weird, scary smile and shrugged. "Come on."

"You should go, too," Buster said at Nick’s other elbow. His hand was feather-light and cold as a dead person’s, touching Nick’s wrist. "You don’t trust me any more, do you?" His expression grew doleful. "You grew up, and you forgot."

"You’re not real," Nick murmured, sotto voce.

"They don’t think that’s real, either." Buster pointed at the bedroom door. "But you know better. But what’s inside, no one was meant to see. It’ll fry their brains like touching a live wire."

"But not mine."

"Bad," Buster whispered, sidling close and tugging on Nick’s jacket. "It’s bad, Nicky, we gotta go."

That’s what it wants, Nick thought, and Buster sniffled.

"Just a minute," Nick said out loud. He took a step toward the door and felt Grissom’s hand on his wrist, over Buster’s, hard and human and strong.

"Don’t," Grissom snapped.

Nick smiled at him, and gently disengaged Grissom’s hand. He saw without any sense of surprise that Grissom’s fingers were shaking, badly. "It’s okay," he lied. "You don’t have to go. I’ll do it."

Grissom swallowed and touched his forehead with one trembling hand. "What’s going on?" he asked in a weird, high voice. "I can’t think."

"Go outside. All of you," Nick added, glancing at the paper-white faces of McAda and the two uniforms standing like statuary nearby. "Go outside and wait. I won’t be long."

They went, like children careening out the school doors on the last day of class. McAda followed, more slowly but with the same look of utter relief on his face. Grissom stood firm, but his face was a mask of misery laid thin over pure fear. "Nicky," he said helplessly.

"Go. I’ll be all right." He wasn’t absolutely sure of that, but the urge to see them all to safety was far too strong to refuse. "It’s not safe for you here," Nick said. He put a hand on Grissom’s shoulder and pushed lightly. "Go on. I’ll be out in a minute."

He watched while Grissom trudged out. It gave him a twitch of weird nausea to see the look on Grissom’s face. Out of place, that lost look, that biddable look. Grissom was the one to give orders, not Nick, right? But he went, and Nick was suddenly alone in John Baker’s house.

"Concentrate on what you need, and get out," a man’s voice said.

Buster was gone. There wasn’t anyone there. But he heard it as clearly as if whoever it was stood at his elbow. Deep, faintly raspy voice, a calm like cool water, even and true. "There’s far more here than you need," the voice continued. "And knowing even half of it could be very, very dangerous."

"Who are you?" Nick whispered.

"A friend. Trust me."

Nick tried to force some spit into his suddenly ash-dry mouth, and stepped forward. The door seemed to pulse in his vision, a throbbing malignity as blatant as a scream. The others hadn’t seen that, not really, but they’d felt it. Oh yes. Not like he felt it, but enough to get the hell out of Dodge. He, on the other hand, was going inside it. His stomach lurched for real this time.

"What is it?" he whispered, hand an inch from the doorknob.

"Madness. Delusion. The fabled heart of darkness. It can only touch you if you let it. I advise you not to."

"They felt it."

"Of course they did. You’re a conduit; they feel it through you."

The words stung, and he let his hand drop to his side. A voice out of nowhere, saying this was madness, and suddenly he was sure none of it was real. Schizophrenia, right? Hearing voices when no one was there? He was off his fucking rocker.

"I didn’t do it on purpose," he said softly.

"None of that matters. They won’t remember it anyway."

"But I will."

"Open the door, Nick. Do what you have to do."

I don’t want to, a part of him shrilled. Don’t WANNA, and you can’t make me. The Buster part, maybe, the part he’d stowed away far too early, like an appliance that still works just fine but is suddenly outmoded, obsolete and no longer wanted. Speaking out now, when the last thing he needed was childish fear and stubbornness.

He touched the doorknob and felt a lancing chill go up his arm. The hinges creaked faintly, and the door swung open.

It was just an ordinary, dingy bedroom. Full-size bed, neatly made. A desk and chair, looking as if they’d come out of some 50’s-era motel room. No clothes, no personal effects. No sign that anyone had been here in the recent past. It looked as if it had all been abandoned a long time ago.

But he smelled something. Not in the air, not with his nose, but with his mind, a stink like fruit gone over, high and sick-sweet. And under that tangy seawater, salty and bizarrely refreshing.

So this is how insanity smells, a part of his mind observed, and then he walked inside.

He had his printing kit, and at one point he did retain enough presence of mind to brush the desk and the fixtures on the tiny adjoining bathroom for prints. There weren’t any, and it didn’t surprise him. Mostly he just waited, walking back and forth, not really looking around. Whatever he was here to find, it would appear. Whether he wanted it to or not.

It came in a jolt of pain, his gloves offering no protection when his fingers brushed the back of the ladder-back chair. His fingers clamped down hard, and he threw his head back as the room imploded with strobing images.

Some of them were vaguely familiar. The elderly woman, weeping as if her heart were shattered into a million pieces: hadn’t he seen her before? The house, like something from his own childhood, old but oddly brilliant inside his mind.

He didn’t feel the blood start to run from his nose. The images were too many: a wan, pinched girl, maybe sixteen, gazing at him with huge dark eyes that were far, far older than they should have been; a woman in her late twenties or early thirties, holding a small furry body in her arms -- a cat? -- and shaking her head. A dark-skinned man with suspenders and a brilliant smile, laughing as he pointed at the giant bloodstain on his shirt.

More, and he paid feverish attention, trying to memorizing nanosecond-long glimpses of people he’d never met, never seen before. The air smelled different now, attar of roses and the coppery taste of water from an old elementary school fountain. So many faces, how could there be so many? He choked on the perfume smell and heard someone else laughing. The sound made him feel young, younger than Buster, younger than he’d been when he found Buster and the others, when he’d started knowing things that no one could know, only no one believed him, they laughed and shook their heads and whispered things where he didn’t think they’d hear. He wanted to cry, from sheer tired fright.

The panorama vanished, popping loudly, and the room narrowed to a single laser-sharp beam of white light, making him blink and squint. And then cry out when a man’s voice shrieked, "MINE! Get out! I need them, and you can’t take them away from me! Get out getoutgetoutgetout!"

He blinked, and felt the bed’s ragged chenille spread pressing against his cheek. Sitting on the floor, how’d he gotten here? And stuff on the spread, too, dark stuff that looked like

Nick uttered a hoarse cry and lurched to his feet, and heard the air buzzing with voices, whispers. Trapped, he was trapped here with that awful voice, that presence that turned his bladder to a hot aching stone in his abdomen, tense with absolute terror. That voice was the thing Buster used to tell him about, in the dark when everyone else was asleep, family and his friends, too. The voice of the man with the sharp teeth and glittering eyes who hid behind the dresser and only came out when Nicky was alone, defenseless.

And for a second he really couldn’t get out: the door was stuck, and he jiggled the knob and heard the high scary whine coming from his own throat, tasted the blood in the back of his mouth. But it relented finally, and he staggered out into the main room, drawing in great drafts of fresher air and then coughing when he choked, spitting out bright red in wads on the worn carpet.

Behind him the door slammed with a sound like a shotgun being fired next to his ear. He flinched and cried out, but when he looked it was only a door. A closed door.

"Nick? What’s taking so -- Jesus."

He didn’t look up, just stood there leaning forward with his hands braced on his knees, coughing. "Here," Grissom said in a scared, gruff voice. A wad of tissues waved in front of Nick’s face, and he grabbed them and held them against his nose.

When he finally met Grissom’s eyes, he felt a sharp stab of new misgiving. There was no understanding in Grissom’s gaze, no memory at all. Just as the voice had told him.

"What happened? Did you fall?"

A terrible urge to laugh bubbled up in Nick’s belly, and he fought it down savagely before nodding. "Yeah. Just a nosebleed." He swallowed copper. "Anyone find anything?"

Grissom shook his head. "No, I was just waiting on you to finish up." His blue eyes were cloudy, a little unfocused, and he probed his temple with his fingers.

"Headache?"

"Yeah." Grissom’s voice sounded a little foggy, as well. "You know, McAda, before he left – he said he had a headache, too." He gazed at Nick, and the expression on his face gave Nick a pang of savage unease. "Did something happen?" he asked, almost plaintively. "I don’t remember."

Drawing a deep breath, Nick shrugged. "I think whoever this guy is, he was using some heavy solvents," he said evenly. "My head aches, too. But the house is clean." He almost flinched, saying it, but kept the calm look on his face with effort. "Nothing here. You wanna clear out?"

"We should go back to the lab." Grissom shook his head slowly. "This -- I don’t think he’ll come back."

"No," Nick agreed with more vigor. "He’s done here."

He followed Grissom to the truck, and took the keys sadly from the man’s fingers. "You got any Advil?"

Grissom walked around to the passenger door and nodded. "Back at the lab."

"Good."

When he put his hand on the driver’s-side door, the man’s voice said, "Good work. But you need to rest."

Nick froze. "Who are you?" he repeated. "Tell me."

"It doesn’t matter. I know what’s going on. You have information now. Use it, Nick. Carmody’s right. You’re the key."

"The key to what?" Nick whispered. The small hairs on the back of his neck tickled.

"Stopping him. Before it’s too late."

"What’s he going to do?"

The answer chilled him in its simplicity. "Kill. Over and over again, until he reaches the place he wants to be. You know what that place is. You can’t let him get there. No matter what it takes, you have to stop him."

"Nicky?" Grissom peered at him over the top of the Tahoe’s cab.

"The people I saw," Nick breathed, staring at nothing. "He killed them, didn’t he?"

"Yes. Some of them long ago. I can’t stay, Nick. I don’t have the strength. Do what you have to do. I’ll come when I can."

"Come here?"

"Yes. But you’ll have to do it without me. It’s going faster now." The man’s even voice was fading, and Nick found himself straining to hear. "It’s circling, like water in a drain. It’s building, and I won’t be there in time. You have to do it, Nick. It’s up to you."

"Don’t go," Nick said jerkily, and heard the man’s soft laughter.

"I’ll be back. Take care of your friend."

"Nick."

He flinched, seeing Grissom standing a foot away, face twisted with new worry. "Nick, who are you talking to?"

"I don’t know," Nick said with a shiver.

Grissom nodded slowly. "It’s more of what you can do, isn’t it?" His face was rapt and tense. "Something happened. In the house."

"I saw things. People. The people he’s killed."

"Father Martinez?"

"Further back than that. So many, I don’t --" Nick broke off and swallowed blood-flavored spit. "We have to hurry," he whispered raggedly. "There’s not much time."

Grissom frowned. "Time until what?"

"Until he does what he wants to do."

"And what is that, Nick? Tell me what he wants."

"I don’t know what it is. I only know we can’t let him succeed."

The furrow in Grissom’s brow grew deeper. "People will die."

"I think --" Nick swallowed again. "I think if he succeeds, we’ll all die."

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