Title: Zebra
By: bachelor_girl
Characters: Nick, Greg, Sara, Catherine, other
Genres: case file
Rating: R
Warnings: none
Summary: DNA doesn't lie. It just doesn't always tell the whole truth.

"Well," Sara said, pulling her black bag out of the SUV and closing the door behind her, "If I had to pick my favourite way to start a stabbing case, this would be it."

"What? At ass o’clock in the morning, on a college campus, in the pouring rain?" Nick asked, following behind as they headed into the building.

"No, with the ambulance flying away from the scene with its sirens blaring."

"Live victim. Me too," Nick agreed as he shook the excess water out of his hair.

It was a maze of rooms and stairs and hallways, as college residences usually were. And, by the time they’d made it to the seventh floor, both of them were slightly winded.

"Wow, I have memories of doing this six or seven times a day when I was in school. It makes me wonder where the hell the Freshman Fifteen could have possibly come from if I was doing that much cardio coming and going from my dorm room every day," Sara said, rounding the corner to the corridor containing room 723.

As they approached the room, Nick noticed that the door was brightly decorated. Pictures and sparkles and stickers covered every inch of the door, aside from the area covered by the placard that read "Residence Advisor."

As they approached the door, Nick saw one of the uniformed officers – Campus Police, Nick read on their badges – give him a knowing look.

"Crime lab?" he asked, motioning to the badges they wore.

Nick nodded, "Nick Stokes, and Sara Sidel. Criminalistics. What have we got here?"

"Johanna Continescu, 20 years old, junior here at UWLV. Residence advisor for this floor. Multiple stab wounds to the abdomen and thorax, unconscious with a weak pulse when we showed up. Her friend, Bridget Harrison, a junior here as well, called it in. Apparently she’d phoned the victim just before the incident and the victim was expecting her to show up."

"So, what you’re saying is, the friend probably only missed the perp by a couple of minutes, then?" Nick asked.

"They could have passed each other in the hallway, but the friend said she didn’t see anyone else at all on her way here. Not unusual for this time in the semester."

"And where’s the friend now?"

At the sound of the unexpected, but familiar voice that had spoken from behind him, Nick turned and found himself face to face with Detective Jim Brass.

"In the back of the ambulance in hysterics, on her way to the hospital with the victim," the officer replied.

Nick saw Brass nod and sigh, probably making a mental note to track the girl down when they finished at the scene.

~*~*~


"Music’s still on," Sara noted, cocking her head to the side as she listened. "Classical. The college student’s study music of choice. So, she was here, studying," Sara used a gloved hand to gently pick up the textbook that was lying atop a number of neatly stacked notes, "Environmental management. You know, it’s pretty late at night, so she probably had her door closed. From what I can remember about my RAs, they liked to take their peace when they could get it."

"So, then someone knocked on the door. It’s 2:15 in the morning on a Sunday night and she just got up and answered it?" Brass asked, standing just outside the doorway, watching as Nick and Sara surveyed the crime scene.

"She was probably thinking it was one of her students who had locked themselves out of their room on their way home from the bar. Or the, uh, library," she added as an afterthought.

"So she probably didn’t check to see who it was before she opened the door," Nick continued, noting the peephole midway up the door."The building’s locked and you have to pass through more than one locked door to get into the living area, so our perp either picked the lock, had someone open the door for them, or –"

"Has a key to the building," Sara finished. "So, she answers the door, probably standing somewhere about here. And, from the way that she fell, and the fact that the blood’s pretty well contained in this area," she continued, motioning to the floor, "Our perp was standing here. In the hall or just inside the doorway. Which leaves us with…"

"Not a hell of a lot to go on."

"Exactly."

"I love dorm rooms," Nick said, looking around. "There are so many finger prints and bodily fluids all over the damned places that you have absolutely no way of knowing who donated what, why, and how long ago." Nick took one last look around the undisturbed dorm room.

"Nothing like a challenge, my friends."

~*~*~


"So, Sara said you wanted a challenge, huh?"

Nick heard a voice coming from the doorway behind him. Turning, he saw Greg standing there, making a face as he walked into the room. Motioning to what little evidence Nick had spread before him on the table, he smiled. "Well, here you are, then."

Nick sighed. Aside from the blood on the floor and a little on two separate spots around the doorframe, samples of which had been sent to the lab already, there wasn’t much else. It was becoming more and more apparent as time went by that the suspect hadn’t even stepped into the room. And, because of that, they really had very little to go on. A school policy kept security cameras out of the campus residences, and there were so few people in the building at this time of the year, the very tail end of the exam period, that the LVPD hadn’t had too hard a time tracking them down.

"The squad has talked to everyone?" Greg asked from his position in the doorway.

"Yeah, yesterday and this morning. Every single person who’s still living in the building, or had any reason to be there."

Sitting on the table were about a hundred and fifty photos of the crime scene, the victim’s exam schedule, some photos taken off the wall of Johanna’s dorm room, the RA logbook that recorded all of the reported incidents in the campus housing system for the school year, and the students’ forms that indicated whether or not they had signed out of residence for the year and when they had done so.

"We really don’t have much to help us out. As far as I can tell, everyone loved this girl. Let’s hope the blood tells me something," Nick said as he looked expectantly at Greg.

"What do you want it to tell you?" Greg asked, pulling a sheet of paper off of the clipboard he was carrying.

"Preferably exactly who did it and how I can get hold of them, but at this point I’ll take anything you’ve got for me."

"Sorry, boss. No luck. All of the blood you brought is the same. Your victim’s."

Sighing audibly, Nick rubbed his forehead into his palm.

"So, where’s your partner wandered off to, anyway?" Greg asked.

"Well, there’s not really much keeping us busy with this one at the moment, as you can see. And remember that case she and Gris were working on a few months ago? The three boys down in that gulley with all the dead rabbits? Apparently something new came in about it and they’ve whisked themselves down to the ME’s office."

"Aww… your girl went and ran off with another man and left you all alone. How ever will you get over it?"

"Well, apparently with you around to harass me, I’m never alone. You’re growing on me. Like a fungus, or something," Nick said, putting the RA logbook back onto the table, knocking a couple of pieces of paper to the floor in the process.

They bent over to reach for them simultaneously and ended up smacking their heads into each other. What followed was an awkward silence that had Nick fumbling for something to say. Just as he had settled on something, his cell phoned buzzed at his hip, making him jump and snap back to reality.

"Nick here," he answered gruffly.

"She’s moved out of trauma? Good. And, you have what? Right. I’ll be right there."

Clipping the phone back to his waist, Nick looked at Greg and grinned, "I hope you weren’t planning on taking off early today. I think I might have just the thing to keep you busy for the rest of your shift."

~*~*~


"So, how’s she doing, doc?" Nick asked as he shook hands with the emergency room doctor that met him at the hospital’s receiving entrance.

"She’s still unconscious, but she appears to be stable, for now. She’s a very lucky young woman, actually. The wounds were pretty well confined to her front. The ones on her thorax, mainly lower torso, were mostly superficial. Internally, we only had to repair some minor damage to the distal portion of her left lung. And, although we had to remove her spleen and the caudate lobe of her liver, there was a surprising lack of significant damage to any of her other major organs. And, once she regains consciousness, which could take anywhere from hours to days," the doctor said hurriedly, noticing Nick’s expression. "There shouldn’t be too many lingering effects. Well, aside from some nasty scars, but we’ll talk to her about plastic surgery when the time is right," the doctor explained as he led Nick down the hall toward the room Johanna was in.

"I had one of the ER nurses package up her belongings for you, they should be in the room with her. We also ran a rape kit once she stabilized in the ER, which was negative."

Nick nodded. It was a blessing, he wouldn’t wish sexual assault on anyone, and he was glad the poor girl hadn’t suffered that, as well, but he couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed that he was still without any solid leads.

"Are her parents here?" he asked, as the doctor reached for the door to the hospital room.

"No, we’ve called them. They’re on their way from Seattle and we’re expecting them sometime tomorrow. It’s the quickest they could manage to get here. They’re pretty frantic, as you can probably imagine."

Nick jumped slightly as the doctor’s pager suddenly went off.

"Well, I’m needed back in the ER, but you’ll be fine on your own here, I'd imagine."

"Thanks, doc," Nick replied, nodding and pushing the door open.

Once he was inside, Nick paused for a moment. Around the room, a number of monitors blinked and beeped at him as he surveyed the scene. And, lying in the bed was the young woman whose face he had only seen in the photographs he’d pulled down off the wall of her dorm room.

He closed his eyes and sighed before he reached over to his bag and pulled out his camera. He quickly snapped a few photos of her face, which had a dark purple bruise beneath her left eye and a swollen lower lip, and her chest and torso, noticing thick sutures holding together both stab wounds and surgical incisions. None of the visible marks appeared to be distinctive in any way, and Nick once again marveled at the lack of anything to help him out.

"There has to be something," Nick muttered to himself, quietly, as though her were afraid of waking the unconscious girl, but at the same time thinking that he might be at a dead end with this case until she did.

Lastly, Nick took some photographs of her arms, which were covered in defensive bruises. There were quite a few of them, but once again, they didn’t appear to have any distinctive qualities. As he paused to take some photos of her hands, Nick noticed how perfectly manicured her nails were and he stopped suddenly. Gingerly, he picked her hand up and flipped it over, staring at the palm.

"Thank you God," Nick whispered to himself as he dropped it gingerly back onto the bed and practically leapt over to his bag. He pulled a pair of gloves, an autoclave package and a sterile plastic tube from his bag and set them on the bed, next to Johanna’s arm.

He opened the gloves and slid them on, pulled a pair of forceps from the autoclave package and quickly set to work on meticulously scraping underneath her fingernails.

"Oh, hon. That manicure might just be the best thirty dollars you ever spent."

~*~*~


"So," Greg asked, rubbing his hands together in anticipation when Nick walked into the lab, "What’ve you got for me?"

Tossing Greg a clear plastic tube, Nick grinned and showed Greg the display on his digital camera. "This, my friend, is our DNA."

"Ahh... Acrylic fingernails," Greg said, taking a close look at the photo and a quick glance at the contents of the tube. "Best friend of DNA collectors everywhere. Skin sampling is so much more effective when you increase the surface area like that."

"I also have the clothes she was wearing last night to go over, see if I can find anything new. I doubt it, they’ve been through so much since the incident, but at least it’s something to keep me occupied for the next little while. And, well, you never know."

"And, to add to your good news," Greg continued, picking up a red box off the counter and holding it up, "The fast Taq PCR kits are working with our machines again, so you know what that means…"

"I’m going to have my DNA replicated in 4 hours as opposed to the 10 and a half it took you on Thursday?"

"Hey, I resent that. My prowess is severely limited by my technology. And, if you’re going to be all sarcastic with me…" Greg taunted, putting the red box back on the shelf and reaching for the white one he’d been forced to use for the previous week.

"Greg," Nick said, in warning. When Greg looked over at him, Nick slowly and purposefully raised the middle finger on his right hand.

"Oh, shut up. You are so not helping your cause here, man."

"I am too," Nick replied, taking his middle finger and flicking the back of Greg’s hand hard enough that it caused him to drop the white box onto the lab counter.

"Please keep in mind the fact that I’m going to use the quick kit has everything to do with the fact that I’m kinda attached to being employed, and that it has nothing whatsoever to do with you and your childish scare tactics," Greg replied as he pulled the plastic off the red box.

"Right. Duly noted," Nick agreed, poking Greg in the lower back with his index finger, guiding him toward the other side of the lab so he could get to work extracting DNA from the skin samples he’d collected at the hospital.

"Hey. I’d knock that off if I were you," Greg said, the seriousness in his voice negated by the laughter in his eyes and the smile that pulled at the corner of his lips. Nick saw Greg glance quickly over at the lab counter and reach for the first mobile piece of lab equipment he could find and turn to hold it in front of him like a sword.

Taking one look at Greg, Nick burst out laughing. "What are you going to do, pipette me into submission?" Nick asked as he reached to grab the pipette out of Greg’s hands, but ended up with his hands securely around Greg’s wrists.

"Oh, you wish, Stokes," Greg replied with a snort. "You should be so lucky."

For a moment, neither of them spoke and they stilled. Nick felt a hot blush creeping up his neck and saw that the tips of Greg’s ears were turning slightly pink.

Releasing his hands, Nick cleared his throat and took a step back. "So, um. DNA. Four hours?"

Greg nodded, "Then another couple or more for the markers. But, I’ll page you before I even finish identifying the loci."

"Right," Nick said, as he turned and left the room, the bag of clothes clutched in his fist.

~*~*~


Nick couldn’t figure why on earth it was raining on the subway. There he was, sitting on the subway, reading a newspaper when it started to rain. It was almost–

"Nick… Nick… Nicholas!" Nick heard a voice he couldn’t identify speaking into his ear.

"What the –?" Nick sat up with a start. It took him exactly the length of time required for him to blink his eyes three times to realize that he was, in fact, in the evidence room and not on the subway. "Oh, fuck."

He turned around and saw Greg standing behind him with a piece of paper in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.

"Wakey wakey, sleepyhead."

Groaning, Nick let his head fall back onto his arms that were crossed on the table, right next to his microscope.

"No worries, man. I won’t tell if you won’t," Greg said with a wink. "But, now that you’re up, how about we run these markers through the system?"

"We?" Nick said, wiping the water off the back of his neck and turning to face Greg, an eyebrow raised at his choice of words.

"Um…"

"Oh, come on, then. Though, it’s your ass if Warrick wants his spec readout and you don’t have it done."

Greg flashed Nick a wide grin and threw his arm around Nick’s shoulders, leading him down the hall. "I make a pretty fantastic fungus, wouldn’t you say?"

"Greg?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut up."

"Right."

~*~*~


"I am slowly going crazy, 1-2-3-4-5-6 switch, crazy going slowly am I 6-5-4-3-2-1 switch. I am slowly going crazy 1-2-3-4—"

"Look, Greg, if you’re that bored, you could always go back to the lab," Nick offered, spinning his chair around to look at Greg who was not only singing, but performing the actions that accompanied the song he’d been singing for the previous 5 minutes.

"And what? Watch some DNA run along some gels? Trust me, this is much more exciting. And, I have company in here. Back in the lab I’m pretty much limited to the voices in my head. Not that I’m not brilliant and fascinating, mind you."

"I think that’s more than I –. Oh, I think I’ve got a hit, here. What do you think?"

Excited, Greg pushed himself off the desk and rolled himself across the room. "Twenty-four for twenty-four in the loci department. Looks like a match to me," he confirmed. "In my highly trained, expert opinion," he added with a laugh.

"Ryan Jonathan Stuart. 21 years old. Las Vegas," Nick muttered as he read off the screen.

"What’s his record?"

"Uhh…" Nick scrolled down the screen. "Clean as a whistle, actually. He gave a voluntary oral swab last November at his workplace, a classy restaurant on the strip. There was some sort of investigation, but he wasn’t involved in any way. Probably one of those jobs where they swab everyone in the place."

Sliding himself across the room back to his computer, Greg pulled up the telephone and e-mail directory at the UWLV website. "There’s a Ryan J. Stuart at UWLV. Coincidence?"

"I think not," Nick replied.

"So," Greg said, "What are we waiting for? Let’s call him in."

"Greg…"

"Right. Shutting up."

~*~*~


Looking into the interrogation room, Nick saw their suspect sitting at the table, running his hands through his hair nervously. He took a deep breath to steady himself as he pushed his way into the room, holding the door for Brass who was walking behind him.

As they took a seat across the table from Ryan, Nick heard Brass ask, "So, you want to tell me where you were last night?"

"Last night? I was at the library, studying. I left just before the library closed at 2:00am, and then I went back to my room to catch a few hours of sleep so I would be ready for the linear algebra exam I’m supposed to be taking right now."

"The library, huh?" Nick asked, "It would help if there was someone who could verify that for us. Did anyone see you?"

"No, I was on the fifth floor and the whole library was pretty much deserted. Today is the last day of finals, and most people have already packed up and gone home for the summer."

"So nobody can vouch for your whereabouts last night," Brass surmised.

"Alright, then, would you like to explain this to me?" Nick asked, sliding a photo that was taken of Johanna at the hospital across the table.

When Ryan got a look at the photo, his face turned from slightly flushed to pale grey and, all of a sudden, he slid his chair away from the table noisily and ran to the corner of the room where he threw up probably everything he’d eaten in the last 12 hours.

When he’d finally started to heave unproductively, he stood up and looked over at Nick, sweat and tears mixing on his face.

"You want to tell me what that was all about?"

"That... that’s… Anna. Oh my God," Ryan said quietly, almost in a whisper, as he leaned back against the wall and slid down until he was sitting on the floor, hugging his knees into his chest, wiping his eyes and his mouth noisily on his sleeve.

"You know her?" Nick asked, pretty confident he already knew the answer.

Ryan nodded.

"Don’t you think it’s about time we called your parents, Ryan?" Brass asked.

"No."

"This whole thing might be easier if you had them around," he suggested.

"No. I don’t speak to them. Or, they don’t speak to me. Ever. It’s just me." Sniffling, Ryan paused before he began to speak again. "I didn’t do it. I swear to you. I couldn’t. It’s Anna. I love her. Why would I do that?" Ryan asked, his eyes tearing again and his voice cracking as he swallowed back the sobs.

"Are you sleeping with her?" Brass asked, always one to get straight to the point.

"No!" he said, quickly. "Her boyfriend would castrate me." He mumbled something else, but the words were lost as he ducked his head into the crook of his elbow.

"Well, then I think you’re going to have a hard time explaining how your DNA ended up under her fingernails. I think we –"

Mid-sentence, there was a knock on the door as Erica from administration stuck her head through the door. Nick was closer to the door so he rose, angrily, more than a little pissed off that they’d just been interrupted.

"It’s important," she said, cutting Nick off before he had a chance to verbally express his anger and motioned him out into the hall.

Grudgingly, Nick followed, giving Ryan a stern look that informed him quite clearly that they weren’t through talking just yet.

"The victim, Johanna Continescu. She’s awake."

Nick swore under his breath and turned and stuck his head back into the interrogation room, motioning for Brass to join him in the hall, hoping that he was able to communicate his request non-verbally.

After Nick had filled Brass in on the situation, he waited while Brass stuck his head back through the door and into the interrogation room. "I don’t want you going anywhere, Ryan. We are far from finished here. And, I really hope that you can get your story to start making sense by the time I get back, if you know what I mean," he said, with a pointed expression.

Grabbing his jacket from the evidence room, Nick headed for the parking lot.

As he reached the front door, he passed Greg, who was carrying three bottles of oven cleaner, a book on the haematology of Asian elephants, and a one red shoe in a plastic evidence bag. Nick knew better than to ask unless he wanted to sit through a lengthy, but probably very humorous, explanation that he most certainly did not have time for.

"So, where’re you headed in such a rush?" Greg asked.

"The vic’s finally awake."

Greg just looked back at him wearing a confused expression.

"Rule number one. If there’s a living victim, talk to them, no matter what you think you know. You never know what information they have for you."

Greg nodded, processing, and Nick had to smile. He remembered the days when he was still learning about the job. He’d never thought he’d be able to learn as much as he had, and Nick didn’t have any doubt Greg would be able to do the same.

"Makes sense," Greg replied, thoughtfully, "Things change around here almost before you’ve figured out what they used to be."

"Yes. They do," Nick agreed, wrapping his jacket around himself and waving as he followed Brass down the hall.

~*~*~


When Nick pushed opened the door to Johanna’s room, he was surprised to see a young man about her age sitting next to the bed, instead of her parents, which he had been expecting.

When Nick walked into the room, Johanna struggled to push herself into a sitting position.

"Hey, Johanna," he said, softly, "I’m Nick Stokes from the crime lab. This is Detective Jim Brass from the Las Vegas Police Department."

"Hey guys," she said, wincing. "Dr. Morrison said you would be coming by to see me. He said you were here yesterday sometime, and you’d probably have some questions to ask me now that I'm more or less out of my drug-induced stupor."

"Yeah, I had some things to check out here, yesterday. How're you feeling today?"

"All things considered, not too badly. Rumour has it you don’t really need your spleen, anyway," she replied with a small smile.

"Did you find whoever did this?" Nick jumped a little, and saw that Brass did the same, when the young man in the room spoke abruptly, quickly shifting the topic.

"We have a suspect down at the lab right now. A young man from your school, who claims he knows you. Does the name Ryan Stuart ring a bell?" Brass asked, looking carefully at Johanna.

Nick felt a tightening in his chest as Johanna’s face paled and as he watched the plastic cup that the young man was holding slip from between his fingers and crash loudly onto the floor, sending water and ice splashing in a number of different directions.

Nick could tell that he was both surprised and angry. He could practically see the veins in the young man’s neck from the other side of the room.

"That bastard!"

"Shh… Andrew," Johanna said, quietly, placing her hand lightly on his forearm. "It wasn’t him."

"What?" Andrew, Nick and Brass said at the same time.

"It wasn’t him," she repeated.

"I know Ryan," Johanna said, looking at Nick and Brass while she explained. "We’re friends," she said, looking back at Andrew with a pointed expression, "And it wasn’t Ryan."

"I know he’s your friend," Brass began, gently. "But lying to protect him isn’t going to do any good at this point."

"I’m not lying," Johanna’s voice was desperate now. "It wasn’t Ryan. This guy had dark hair and he wasn’t built as much like a beanpole as Ry is. I’d never seen him before."

Johanna looked desperately at Andrew when she finished speaking and Nick looked over at Brass who was wearing an expression of confusion that he was pretty sure mirrored his own.

The room was silent for a few moments as everyone in the room tried to process what was going on, the silence finally broken when Johanna spoke again. "I should probably call him, or something, he’s probably scared out of his mind."

"Shh… Anna, it’s okay. We’ll figure it out," Andrew said, stroking his hand along her forehead gently, trying to get her to relax again. He bit his lip nervously as he watched her relax, slowly. As she finally started to drift back to sleep, he looked back over to where Brass and Nick were standing. "Can I talk to you guys in the hall for a minute?" he asked.

Nick couldn’t even begin to imagine what on earth Andrew was going to have to tell them, but it’s not like it could hurt to hear what he had to say.

As the three of them stepped into the hall, Nick gently pulled the door closed behind them.

"So... Andrew, is it? What can we do for you?" Brass asked, looking the young man up and down.

"Um, well, I know you can’t tell me what led you to Ryan, but since Anna gave you a description of a guy that doesn’t look a thing like him, I’d imagine it probably involved DNA of some sort, right?" he asked, looking up at Nick and Brass for confirmation, but not really waiting long enough for a response. "And, I know that’s, like, the holy grail of criminal identification, and I totally don’t want to tread on your turf or anything, but… uh…" he trailed off, seemingly unsure of himself.

"Yes?" Brass asked, somewhat impatiently.

Andrew blushed, "Ryan has a brother. He’s never said much about him. I don’t think they’re on very good terms, actually. I can’t even recall if Ryan’s ever even called him by his name when I’ve been around. But, I know that he goes to Harvard, so I would assume he’d be somewhere in the neighbourhood of college-aged, and he’s never told me for sure, but…"

"Andrew, I know that Anna has convinced herself, and you, that it wasn’t him, but the DNA is a perfect match to Ryan, and even a full sibling—" Brass was cut off when Andrew started speaking again, quickly, waving his hands wildly.

"I know, I know, a set of full siblings have a coefficient of relationship of 1/2, and they can’t be expected to have more than about half of their genes in common, unless–"

Nick nearly dropped the cellphone he was holding in his hand, "Unless they’re identical twins," he said, slowly, finishing Andrew’s thought for him.

"How come no one mentioned this before?" Brass asked.

"Sir, Ryan’s a great guy," Andrew responded, looking alternately at Brass and Nick as he spoke. "And, he’s a fucking genius with numbers, but I think the closest he’s ever come to any sort of biology class is waiting for me outside my genomics lectures on Thursday afternoons when we go to the quad for lunch together." Looking over at Nick, Andrew continued, "His brother goes to Harvard, I’m not sure why they don’t get along, he’s never said, but as far as I can tell, they don’t even speak to each other very often. And, well, I think he’s supposed to be in France right now."

"Thank you, young man," Brass replied, reaching for his phone. As he was about to flip it open, it rang loudly.

"Yes, thank you," Nick echoed.

Ducking his head a little, Andrew nodded. "Well, I’m just glad I could help a little," he said, with a small, sad smile that looked more like a grimace. "I guess I might finally be able to convince my mother that four years of molecular bio and genetics was a practical decision, after all." He cursed under his breath as he looked back into the room where Anna was sleeping soundly, still hooked up to a number of monitors, and kicked the wall. "I don’t even know him and I’m pretty sure I want to kill him."

"She wanted you to be a doctor or a lawyer?" Nick asked, trying to distract Andrew just a little while Brass spoke abruptly into his cellphone.

"Plumber, actually. She’s proud of me, but I don’t think she was ever convinced that my honours thesis about components of the model of Double Strand Break Repair was going to help me in the real world."

Out of the corner of his eye, Nick could see Brass putting his cellphone back into his pocket and motioning to Nick that they had to go.

"Sorry man, but I gotta go. It looks like something’s come up. Go back and spend some quality time with your girl, I think she needs that right now. When she wakes up, tell her we’ll keep her posted."

"I should probably go call Cole anyway, while Anna’s still asleep. He’s probably wondering why Ryan didn’t meet him after his exam."

"Cole?"

"Ry’s boyfriend."

Nick nodded, as he turned to catch up with Brass. "Oh, and Andrew," he said, turning back around momentarily. "Thanks."

He hurried to catch up with Brass who was giving him a very impatient look.

"What’s going on?" Nick asked, following Brass as he weaved his way through the crowded hall.

"My boys think they might have found the knife you were looking for."

"What?"

"An elderly gentleman found a bloody knife in a park about 3 or 4 miles from the main campus when he was collecting cans to take in for refund. He brought it down to the precinct about a half hour ago. It’s on the way to the crime lab as we speak," Brass explained, handing Nick the notes he’d made while on the phone.

As he read, Nick had a realization. "Fingerprints!" he said, suddenly, and rather loudly, as he reached for his phone. He sighed impatiently as it rang on the other end.

"Somebody pick the hell up," he muttered, examining the ridges on his own fingertips while he waited.

"Greetings!" a sing-song voice answered, "What can I do for you today?"

"Is that how you’re supposed to answer the phone, Greg?" Nick asked. "And come to think of it, why are you answering this phone, anyway?"

"It’s a long story. You’re better off not asking."

"Right," Nick replied. "So, um, I’ll get straight to the point. Has the knife from the Continescu case made it to the lab, yet?"

"Yeah, I just swabbed it and I’m extracting your DNA at this exact moment. Making sure the blood is your vic’s. Or, I was. Until you rudely interrupted me."

"Yeah, whatever," Nick said quickly and dismissively. "Get someone to lift the prints off that knife for me, okay? Compare ‘em to the suspect’s prints and if you don’t have a match, run them through the system."

"I'm sure somebody's already on that," Greg replied. "But, I can go double check if you really want me to. Why the sudden paranoia that things aren't getting done around here, Nick?"

"You ever heard that med school joke about how if you hear hoofbeats coming towards you, you should think that it’s a herd of horses. And, then there’s that one wise-ass student in the back of the room that asks, ‘Well, what if one of them’s a zebra?’"

"Yes…" Greg replied. Nick could almost hear the furrow in his brow.

"I think we have one hell of a zebra on our hands this evening."

"Huh." Greg replied, sounding as though he was thinking about what Nick had said, even if he was not quite following at the moment. "Alright, man. Will do."

"Great. And, uh, can you patch me over to Archie?"

"And, now you're checking up on the guys in the media lab? You know, I'm pretty sure they're probably already doing whatever it is you're going to tell them to. Paranoid much?"

"Well, considering that I was calling with new information for him in the first place, just humour me, Greg."

"Sure thing, boss," Greg replied, and then Nick heard the familiar click and buzzing that told him his call was being transferred.

"Media lab." The voice on the other end was quick and professional.

"Hey, Archie. It’s Nick. So, you know the Continescu case, the one that Greg’s pulling the DNA off the knife from? The knife was found in a trash can in a liquor store bag with a receipt. The boys from the squad should be bringing you the surveillance tapes from the store that the receipt is from."

"Right, it's sitting on my desk, I was just about to load it in, see if I could place your suspect at the store." Archie replied.

"Well, there's been a slight change in the plan."

"Alright. What am I looking for now?" Archie asked.

"Well, according to the squad," Nick said as he flipped to the next page in Brass’ notebook, "they talked to the store owner, and the time on the receipt is wrong. Apparently all of the registers automatically put 12:00pm on every receipt, regardless of the time of purchase, but the date is right. So, I need you to go through the tapes and find me a young guy, late teens to early twenties. Dark hair, probably medium height and build."

"So, let me get this straight. On the basis of gender and hair colour, you want me to find a particular young, college-aged man. In a liquor store. In Las Vegas?"

"Um. Yeah?" Nick replied.

"Sure, and after that, how about I bring you the proverbial needle from the haystack?"

"You’re the best, Archie. Thank you." Nick said as he hung up the phone, Archie’s sounds of retaliation fading as he pulled the phone from his ear.

"So," Brass asked, looking curiously at Nick, "you want to tell me what it is that just lit the fire under your ass?"

~*~*~


It took a few hours, but eventually Archie had freeze-framed and printed photos of every male between the ages of 12 and 35 who was vaguely dark-haired or wearing a hat that had passed by the security camera on the day the receipt was issued.

Grabbing the stack of photos, Nick headed back to the interrogation room where Brass was waiting with Ryan.

"So, has anyone explained to you what’s going on right now, Ryan?" he heard Brass ask as he walked into the room.

Wordlessly, Ryan shook his head.

"Okay, Ryan. What I need you to do is look through this stack of photos," Nick explained, placing the photos on the table in front of Ryan.

Nick saw Ryan take a look at the stack of photos with a wide-eyed expression.

"I know, there are a lot of them, but it’s really important that we go through them all. Just take a look at these photos and tell me if any of the people look familiar to you, okay?"

Nick watched as Ryan swallowed thickly and reached out to hesitantly take the stack of photos that Brass slid across the table. Looking up at Brass and then over to Nick, he nodded. "Okay."

"Good," Nick replied, pulling a chair up to the table.

Anxiously, Nick and Brass watched as Ryan tipped his head on an angle and chewed nervously on the inside of his cheek as he flipped.

When Ryan paused, concentrating for a little while longer on a particular photo, Nick felt his stomach lurch, in anticipation, and he saw Brass lean slightly forward in his chair.

Pulling the top photo off of the pile, Ryan held it out, "This is Shaun Murphy. He’s on the track team with me. That’s his girlfriend following behind him. I can’t remember her name. Janice or Janet or something."

Nick let out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. "Okay," he replied, taking the photo from Ryan. "Just keep going through the stack and let me know if there is anyone else."

It seemed like hours later, when Ryan paused on another photo, but it was probably less than one hour, in reality.

Nick saw Ryan open his mouth to speak, but watched as his mouth moved, but no sound came out. Licking his lips and clearing his throat, he tried again with no success. Nodding his thanks to Brass, he took the glass of water that was offered to him.

Looking back up to Nick, he dropped the photo to the table and whispered, almost inaudibly.

"He’s supposed to be in Paris. That’s my brother."

~*~*~


When Nick heard a soft knock on the door of the interrogation room, he unobtrusively excused himself and walked into the hall where Greg was waiting for him, printouts in hand.

"Sounds pretty intense in there," Greg commented, gesturing to the interrogation room, where the door was open a crack.

Nick nodded. "You heard about what’s going on?" "

Greg nodded, "I don't know why I'm still sometimes surprised that things are hardly ever what they seem to be around this place," Greg said, leaning back against the wall.

"Yeah, it still happens to me occasionally, as well," Nick replied, leaning backwards until he felt his shoulders hit the solid of the wall behind him. "So, what’s the scoop?"

"Blood on the knife’s a match to the vic," Greg started, handing Nick the printout. "So, that’s your weapon."

Nick nodded, processing. "And the prints? Did you get a hit?"

"You know, it take a lot less time to identify a fingerprint when you know the last name of the person it belongs to."

"And…"

"How’s your French?" Greg asked.

"It really was the brother?"

"Michael Anderson Stuart. Found the old-fashioned way," Greg replied, holding up the fingerprint analysis for Nick to see. "Perfect match. Twenty-two points and counting. The guys in the lab are still working on it for you. Negative on a match for the prints we gabbed from Ryan earlier."

"So, Michael's prints are in the system, but not his DNA, ’cause we didn’t get a hit on him with the skin sample…" Nick murmured, thinking out loud. "He got a record?"

"Nope. Just lofty ambitions." Greg grinned and nodded as he spoke.

"Huh?"

"His record couldn’t be cleaner. His prints are on file from when he wrote the Medical College Admissions Test, last April. In Boston."

"Harvard."

"Exactly."

"You’re kidding me. They fingerprint for that?"

"Absolutely. It’s some serious shit, man. Hardcore."

"Huh. What do you know…" Nick mused, studying the prints as though he was expecting them to change in front of him. "Strange, huh?" Nick said, all of a sudden.

"What’s strange?"

"Their DNA matches perfectly, but…"

"Different fingerprints," Greg finished for him.

"It’s a strange phenomenon, isn’t it? Identical twins, I mean," Nick said, mostly to himself as he looked back at the fingerprint analysis.

His attention was captured again when he heard Greg begin to chuckle a few moments later, softly at first, but increasingly louder.

"He wants to be a doctor?" Greg asked, between laughs.

Nick gave him a look that plainly told Greg he was failing to see the humour in the situation.

"Well, at least you know that if he ever performs surgery on you with a carving knife, he’s not going to hit anything major," Greg practically spat the last few words out as he was overcome with laughter again. "Sorry, I know, I know. That was in really bad taste," Greg apologized, between laughs. "I’m really tired and I think I need to sleep."

Shaking his head, Nick looked over at Greg and found himself starting to laugh along. Sometimes, this job was fucked up on so many different levels and in so many different directions that you had to have a black and twisted sense of humour about things and occasionally take the time to laugh, just to stop yourself from going fucking insane.

When Brass emerged from the interrogation room a few minutes later, he stopped in his tracks, Nick saw him pause staring over at him and Greg. Trying his hardest to stifle his laughter, Nick straightened himself up and looked over at Brass expectantly.

"So?" Brass asked.

"The guys got you a hit. Prints on the knife match the brother, Michael Anderson Smith. He doesn’t have a record, but he wrote the Medical College Admissions Test last April and his prints popped up. 22 point match."

"So, I guess I’m getting on the phone to Paris, aren’t I?"

Nick nodded, not giving Greg time to respond, he didn’t think Greg was capable of a coherent response at this exact moment. He appeared to be turning a rather alarming shade of red as he tried to contain his laughter.

"So," Brass said, as he turned to walk back down the hall, "That’s what happens when you try to please mommy and daddy and get into medical school. Your fingerprints end up as federal property. Oops."

Nick waited until Brass had completely rounded the corner before he dared to look back over at Greg, the two of them making eye contact and bursting into laughter again.

~*~*~


When he had regained his composure, Nick quietly slipped back into the interrogation room and sat, out of the way, in the rear corner.

"So, you were expecting your brother, Michael, to be in Paris? He hadn’t made any plans to come home?" Brass asked.

Ryan nodded. "Not that I know of. He’s supposed to be studying there for a few months. He goes to Harvard, a senior in Biomedical Science. But, then again, we don’t talk much. Maybe an e-mail every couple of months or so…"

"He’s a senior? And you are…"

"A junior," Ryan finished, nodding. "He finished high school in three years. It took me the regular four. There’s really only room for one overachiever in each family."

"And you and he look nothing alike." Brass stated, as though that weren’t clear from the photos.

"Well, right now, not unless you look closely. We’re the same height, but he’s got about 20 pounds on me. I run, a couple of times a day. I’m on the track team and the training's pretty intense. Mike goes to the gym, but he’s always trying to bulk up when I’m trying to keep my weight down. And," he continued, pointing to his brother's face in the photo, "Mike broke his nose in a fight back in the in eighth grade. Damn thing’s been slightly crooked ever since. And, most obviously, I guess, he’s been dying his hair black since high school, whereas I," Ryan explained, pointing to the light brown hair with blond streaks on his own head, "spend a lot of time out in the sun, and have a friend who likes to dye my hair whenever she needs something to do."

It was funny, Nick thought looking back and forth between the boy sitting in front of him and the photo on the table. There was a familial resemblance, but not the one he’d always taken for granted that identical twins should have.

"Where’re you from, Ryan?" Brass asked, changing the subject.

"Well, my parents moved from Raleigh, North Carolina to just outside of Boston when Mike started at Harvard four years ago. I live here, in Las Vegas. I have for the last three years, while I’ve been going to school here. But I live here full time. I have a job on the strip."

"So you lived in Boston for the year before you came to UWLV?"

"No. I was in Raleigh," the look that Ryan told Brass that he didn’t want to press the issue any further. Nick noticed that Brass, however, was purposefully ignoring it.

"You didn’t go with them to Boston?"

"No," he replied, exasperated. "I haven’t lived with my parents since I was 16 years old. I lived with my father’s sister, Janie, for two years. Then UWLV gave me a track scholarship. And here I am."

"Well," Nick interjected, "if you don’t want us to call your family, do you want us to call your aunt and let her know what’s going on?"

"No, thanks. She can’t come all the way out here, so I really don't want to bother her. She’s got my two little cousins to look after. Just… do you think I could give a friend from school a call?"

Nick nodded. "We ran into your friend Andrew when we were at the hospital earlier, and he said he was going to call, was it, Cole? And tell him what’d happened so he wasn’t worried about why you never showed after your exam."

Though he didn’t respond, Nick could see that he’d guessed correctly. "Of course, if you still want to make that phone call, we’ll be happy to show you to a phone as soon as you’re done with the rest of the questions, okay?"

~*~*~


"You track down the brother?" Greg asked, as he caught up with Nick

Nick nodded. "We called the school in Paris where Michael was supposed to be. He hadn’t been in class for three days. Brass and his boys are catching up with him at the airport. The plane back to Paris that he is scheduled to be on is boarding almost as we speak. We took a photo line-up to Johanna at the hospital and she pointed him out. It’s really not looking good for him," Nick said, keeping an eye on the doorway.

"Well, he doesn’t win any points for brilliance," Greg replied, following Nick’s line of vision. "He flew across the Atlantic using his own name and passport, and threw out the murder weapon in a bag from a liquor store, where he was buying himself a little bit of liquid courage in the form of a mickey of vodka. Not to mention he left his prints all over the knife. Why on earth would someone do that?"

Nick barely heard the last few words of what Greg was saying as he saw Brass pull up in the lot and escort the young man from the photographs from the back of the cruiser.

Nodding his acknowledgement, Nick said to Greg, "Hey, man, I’ll catch up with you in a few."

As Nick headed toward the elevator, he could see the reflection of the hallway behind him in the glass. Without turning around, he saw Catherine come out from the room just beside where he and Greg had been talking, and where she’d been standing in the doorway, listening. Nick had thought for while that Catherine had a bit of a soft spot for Greg. Being a tech that worked herself out of the lab, Nick often figured Catherine likely knew better than any of them what Greg was probably thinking and what he’d need to have pointed out.

As she sided up next to Greg, Nick heard her say softly, "Never forget who your players are, Greg. We aren’t dealing with a criminal mastermind here, this time. Just one pissed-off undergrad."

~*~*~


Quietly, Nick stood outside the interrogation room, listening carefully. Michael was in the process of explaining how he’d gone about committing his crime.

"I got into the building through the cafeteria," he said calmly, as thought that should have been obvious. "It’s open 24 hours, so the door’s always unlocked. And, when I got to the top of the stairs, where the doors were locked, I told someone that I’d locked my keys in my room and they very nicely held the door open for me. How’s that for hospitality?"

Nick shuddered at the grin that crossed the young man’s face.

"It wasn’t hard to charm the pants off the girl working at the res desk when I called a few days ago, either. I called from a phone in the library once I got to Vegas, so there won’t be a phone record from Paris, if you’re looking for one. I told her I was looking for my girlfriend. I wanted to surprise her for her birthday, but I didn’t know where she was. So, she looked it up for me. Some people are just so helpful."

Nick found himself developing a foul taste in his mouth as he watched the scenario unfold.

"What’s his story?" Greg asked, walking up to where Nick was standing and stopping beside him, leaning forward and pressing his forehead into the wall as though he were using it to hold himself up.

"He’s not even denying it, actually. I think he took his brother’s alienation from his family harder than anyone, possibly even himself, realized. I’m no psychologist, but it seems like when his family cut themselves off from Ryan after the whole situation which wasn’t so much Ryan coming out of the closet as it was he got dragged out of it, kicking and screaming, that Michael followed along to keep his parents happy. And, since Ryan's often gone home to Johanna’s family on holidays and vacations, it seems like he saw Anna as the person who was stealing his brother away. He doesn’t really seem to understand how he and his parents fit into the situation."

"So, he tried to kill her so he could have his brother back?" Greg asked, slight bewilderment in his voice.

"Yeah, I think so," Nick relied, shaking his head and sighing. "You know what the sad part about Michael’s situation is?"

Greg didn’t say anything, he just waited for Nick to continue.

Looking over to the other interrogation room where Ryan was pulling on his jacket and preparing to leave, Nick said, "If Michael had wanted his brother back, he probably only had to ask."

They stood in silence for a few moments, watching and listening.

"You don’t have to stick around for the rest of this, do you?" Greg asked, gently.

Nick shook his head. "I was off the clock a half-hour ago. You?"

"Couple hours ago," Greg replied, shrugging nonchalantly. "You wanna come back to my place and wind down? Play some videogames or watch a DVD or something, I’m know that I’m not really in any sort of mental place to be sleeping at the moment, and it doesn’t look like you are either," Greg said. Out of the corner of his eye, Nick saw Greg turn his neck slightly without taking his forehead off the wall, turning to look at Nick for the first time in their conversation.

"Will there be beer?" Nick asked, mostly as a stalling tactic. It wasn’t like they hadn’t done this before or anything, it just seemed like it was getting harder and harder to ignore the issue that was sitting there, like the elephant sitting in the corner of the room, whispering, ‘Hey, this could work you know, you and him. It could,’ over and over again every time things got awkward between the two of them.

"Will there be beer? Honestly. What sort of a question is that? You’d think you didn’t know me or something. Of course there’ll be beer. And pizza. If you are feeling so inclined."

"Sure, then I’m in," Nick replied, taking a quick glance toward the interrogation room.

"Great," Greg replied, with a smile. "And, maybe later, we could go for breakfast," he finished in a slightly rushed, slightly quieter voice.

"Greg," Nick said, glancing at his watch. "It’s 11:23 in the p.m."

"I meant tomorrow morning."

"But wh--. Oh." Nick stopped suddenly, the implication hitting him like a ton of bricks.

Okay, so now it wasn’t just an elephant sitting in the corner of the room. It was an elephant doing cartwheels and back flips through the middle of the room, waving a neon sign and shouting into a bullhorn.

"Umm… yeah. Okay."

"Yeah?"

"Sure. Sounds like an, uh, excellent plan. I’m just going to grab my coat and file the last of my paperwork. I’ll be at your house probably a half-hour or so after you get there, if that’s alright."

Smiling, Greg nodded.

Nick turned slightly to walk down the hall toward the locker room and Greg quietly fell into step behind him. As they walked, Ryan passed them, wearing a sad expression on his face. Ryan was walking with a young man about his own age – Cole, Nick assumed – who had placed a gentle hand placed on Ryan’s lower back. Ryan gave Nick a slight nod as they passed each other.

When he got to the doorway of the locker room, Nick turned around and took one last look down the hall. Coming toward this end of the corridor was a couple that he assumed to be Ryan and Michael’s parents. As Ryan walked towards his parents, they not only ignored his presence in the hall, his mother looked away and his father looked at him wearing an expression of disgust.

As they passed, Ryan turned around and gave his parents one final look. Looking sad, but unsurprised, that they didn’t turn around, Nick could see Ryan sigh and watched as Cole grasped Ryan's hand lightly and led him toward the elevator.

"It’s amazing what some parents are willing to sacrifice, isn’t it?" Greg asked Nick as he walked up behind, holding the coat he had grabbed from his locker and motioning to Ryan with his free hand.

Nick nodded and felt a gentle pressure where Greg’s shoulder pressed into his. As the parents walked into the interrogation room where Michael was seated, Nick watched each of them pause to give their other son a hug before sitting down. Sighing and resting his head against the doorframe, Nick spoke softly, "And what they’re willing to forgive."