Four A.M.

**

At least once in a lifetime, everyone sees something that they can’t explain.

**

His phone rang at four in the morning, and his first thought was that he was dreaming. He stumbled over the curls and snarls of the bed sheets and reached the set on its third ring, raising the phone clumsily to his mouth and ear. His eyes were adjusting to the dark, making the room around him grow from pitch black to sepia tones. He had only gotten off work two hours ago, and he had barely settled into sleep. A quick glance at the clock showed the time in merciless glowing red letters. He wet his lips.

“Grissom,” he said.

The connection was bad, and the voice was nothing more than a murmur of static for a few seconds. Then, as if gathering more strength, the fuzziness faded away, solidifying and growing coherent. “Hey, Griss. It’s Nick.” Nick sounded - - different. He still sounded like Nick in terms of pitch and projection, but - - looser. Somehow more relaxed than he had been when they had parted earlier that evening. Nick had been working solo, and Grissom easily remembered the tense lines of his face, as if every muscle had been pulled tight.

“Something wrong with your robbery case?”

“No, man. Just going to hand it off, is all. I wanted to give you fair waning. I think Warrick finished his at the end of shift, so - - “

“Is something wrong?” He hadn’t wanted to ask, but he found that he had to. Nick had never handed off a case before, for any reason, and to treat it so casually - - there had to be something that Nick wasn’t telling him.

“No, I’m okay,” Nick said. Again, there was that vaguely out-of-place note of casualness. “You should probably assign this to Warrick, though. And hey, tell him to be careful.”

“Why?”

At last, the lighthearted tone vanished. Nick’s voice was flat, even grave. “Suspect must have returned to the scene after the initial call.”

“Any casualties?”

Nick whistled lowly through his teeth. The whining noise seeped through the phone line. Grissom found his light switch and drowned the room in clear fluorescent illumination.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said.

“Double homicide,” Nick said finally. “Two males, both Caucasian, both in their thirties. One of them - - one of them’s a cop.”

“God, Nick! Did you call it in?”

Nick said nothing for a moment, as if he hadn’t heard, then, “No. Someone - - someone else beat me to it. They called about ten minutes ago. Found the - - the bodies.”

Grissom struggled into his clothes. His hand caught in the reversed sleeve of his shirt and he tugged it through with a hard yank. The seam split, the dark blue fabric parted. He could see his arm through the new gap. He tore it off with a stifled, frustrated cry behind his teeth.

“Are you okay?”

“Me?”

Another shirt, pulled from his closet and hastily buttoned. “Who else, Nick?”

“I’m going to be fine. I just can’t handle this one, Grissom. Is that okay?” For the first time through the conversation, Nick sounded anxious. Almost afraid. Almost . . . regretful?

“It’s fine,” Grissom said. He found his kit in the hall and held it. The plastic handle was warm to his touch - - hotter than his own skin. He saw gooseflesh rising on the back of his bare wrist, ghostly pebbles in the bad lighting. “I wish you’d tell me why, though. Are you - - did you know any of the victims?”

“Both, yeah. The cop.”

“And - - the other? Do you have an ID yet? What was he doing there? You know that civilians aren’t allowed on the scene.”

Nick’s voice was dulled by static again, and when it returned to its full sharpness, he sounded frightened, and desperate.

“What are you doing, Grissom? Where are you going?”

“I’m going to keep you company.” His voice was light, almost nonchalant, but he could hear his own heartbeat pounding away. His ears were warm; suffused with blood. “Is that a problem?”

“I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” Nick said haltingly. “Maybe you should just stay there. Someone else will cover this one. Maybe even someone from dayshift. That would probably be best, you know, to have them take it.”

“Nick - -“

Beep. A faint buzz in his ear. He glared at the phone.

“Wait a minute, Nicky,” he said. “Someone else is calling me.”

“I should probably go . . .”

“Wait. Please.” He didn’t pause to receive an answer, just stabbed the flash button with his finger, and said, brutally, “Grissom.”

“Gil . . .”

“Catherine? Is that you? I can’t hear you very well - - this connection’s been lousy all night.” But this distracting noise wasn’t like the static that had bothered him with Nick. This was different - - a distant, snuffling noise, wet and hoarse. A nasty suspicion dawned on him. “Catherine, are you crying?”

A flat, bubbling noise as she cleared her throat. “Oh, Gil. This is bad.” She must have sobbed into the mouthpiece then. The noise was too loud, too swollen with hurt, and it sounded painful. He distanced the phone from his ear. “There was a robbery - - there was Nick’s robbery - -“

He said, soothingly, “I know. I heard.”

“God. It’s so unfair. It’s wrong.” Her voice was thick with anger and some unidentifiable emotion. Outrage? Grief? Pain? “Are we - - are you - -“ >She swallowed and regained her self-control. “Are we going to take care of this, or are you going to hand it off?”

He started to say that it was going to be Warrick’s case, and Ecklie’s if Warrick was busy, but the words changed on the way to his mouth. Something about Nick’s fear and Catherine’s sobs changed them. “I’m going to do it.”

“Good,” she said viciously. “You better nail the bastard.”

Grissom’s hand had grown moist and slippery with sweat. The plastic handle on the case revolved in his grip and he set it down, his knees cracking loudly in protest. He wished that Nick had told him who the dead cop was, so he could understand Catherine’s reaction. She had never been a woman to cry easily, and he had never been a man to know how to deal with tears.

“I will,” he promised. “Nail him.”

“I’ll call his parents,” she said, sighing. The hoarse, noisy sobs were gone, but she still sounded weepy and unhinged. “This is going to break their hearts. Whenever they came in to visit - - Nick was always so happy to see him. And all of his family - - they were so close - -“ She kept talking, but Grissom was no longer listening. He stood in the dark, sweat trickling down his face and hands, feeling pale and cold.

I’m going to call his parents.

Just going to have to hand it off, is all.

Double homicide . . . two males, both Caucasian, both in their thirties. One of them - - one of them’s a cop.

Found the - - the bodies.

I just can’t handle this one, Grissom.

I should probably go. . .

“God have mercy,” he said softly, almost in prayer. “Nick. I can’t - -“

“I know,” Catherine said. “I can’t believe he’s - - that he’s dead.” A slippery sounded, as if she’d wiped her eyes and a tear had splashed against the receiver. “Robbins says its been a couple of hours. I can’t help thinking that somehow, we should have known.” Another sniff, another pause. “I just really can’t believe that he’s dead.”

Neither can I, Catherine. Really. Because Robbins knows Nick, and if he signed the certificate, then Nick is dead. But I know Nick, too, and I know his voice, and I know who is waiting on the other line.

It didn’t make sense. The dead stayed dead, they didn’t speak with their own voices, and they didn’t call at four in the morning to imply their own murder and suggest that someone else investigate their case. Because there were no ghosts, only bodies, and the dead were dead.

Nick?

But none of it, obviously, helped explain why Nick was waiting in the stark silence of the other connection. Not when Nick was dead. Not when he was just a body.

“I’m on my way to the scene right now,” he said. He could hardly hear himself over the roar in his ears. It was almost like he was going deaf again; his hearing being stolen away from him as inexorably as someone had stolen away Nick’s life. “I’ve got my kit.”

“Are you - - should I call the others?”

“Yeah. Please. I want to hurry.”

And I have one more conversation to finish. They said their goodbyes, both voices strained with terrible emotions. Catherine disconnected, and Grissom switched lines, the tips of his fingers cold and clumsy over the buttons.

“Nick?” he said into the silence.

The pause was long, so long that he wondered if he might be going crazy, and then long enough again to make him wonder if that might be the better option, then:

“Yeah,” Nick said softly, “I’m here.”

Grissom closed his eyes. The darkness in his living room was warm and suffocating.

“You talked to Catherine, right?”

“Right.”

I’m here.

But you aren’t. You can’t be. Why? How?

Then Nick started talking again, and the laws and reasons that made all of this impossible fell away, unimportant.

“Are my parents coming in?”

“Catherine’s calling them.”

“Good. Good. I really should get a move on, Grissom. People are going to be here soon - - more people - - and it’s getting harder and harder to stay.”

“I’ll be there.”

“You, yeah. This freaks you out, doesn’t it?”

He thought of autopsies, and Y-incisions. Blood spatter. Bullets, skull fragments, latent fingerprint powder, and souls. He thought of the million reasons why all this couldn’t be and said, “Shouldn’t it?”

“Yes. Scares me a little, too. Do you wish that I hadn’t called you?”

“No,” he said honestly. “I’m glad. Not everyone - - not everyone gets a chance to say goodbye.”

“Guess not,” Nick said. “Tell them - -“ He stopped. Revised. “I loved - - I love you guys, you know. Tell them that.” His laugh was short and shrill, like the nervous laughter of a child in church, sure the noise was inappropriate but unable to contain it anyway. “Unless that sounds cheesy.”

“It sounds fine.” Nick sounded fine, but he didn’t. He said, struggling with the words, knowing that he would hand the task of eulogizing off to someone else, because picking words to summarize a life was a task too damn difficult to bear, “We love you too, Nicky. God, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It - - it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“Yes, it does. For us.”

His voice was calm and regulated, his words well-selected, and his hands steady. He didn’t cry. He didn’t panic. He was having a conversation with a dead man, and he knew that, come morning and clean, new sunlight, he would be able to convince himself that it had been an extraordinarily accurate and vivid dream - - or even a hallucination of grief - - butt the future and reason didn’t matter. He was talking to Nick - - saying goodbye to Nick - - and that was all he needed to think of to hold his control.

Nick said, again, “I should go.”

“Where?” The question startled him. He never would have thought he’d be interested.

“Don’t know,” Nick said. “I guess I’ll find out. But if I get the chance to say goodbye, I guess what comes afterwards can’t be too bad.”

The next question was desperate, one a child would ask. A child who didn’t understand.

“Couldn’t you stay?”

Nick’s laugh that time was genuine. “Of course not,” he said, as if surprised that Grissom had asked. “That’s not how things work, you know that. And you wouldn’t want me around like that, anyway. Too complicated, messy, and unscientific.” His voice was gentle, and he laughed again. “Jeez, Grissom. You want me to be Patrick Swayze or something?”

“We’d still want you around.”

“No, man.” Again, that gentleness. “I’m done seeing through the glass darkly. That’s your stuff to do, now. Try to convince yourself that this didn’t even happen - - I know you can. In fact, I know you will. If you think of it at all, just think about at night, right when you’re falling asleep. Good monsters. Good miracles. Not just the stuff we see.”

“Nick - -“

“Gotta go now, Grissom. I think I might see you around, eventually.”

A single tear was warm on his cheek. “Goodbye, Nick.”

“Goodbye, Grissom. Take care of yourself.”

A few seconds later, there was nothing but a dial tone, and Grissom was well on his way to convincing himself, once again, that the dead never called home.

And he continued to believe it the rest of his life - - except in the night, and then, it was nothing more or less than a comfort.