Warrick Brown was exhausted. He'd been at the lab processing evidence from the last case he worked. He'd hit a wall and decided to consult his superior colleague, Catherine Willows. When he reached her office, she greeted him with her usual warm demeanor. "What's up 'Rick? Your 401A giving you trouble?"
He smiled at her chipper greeting, but decided to stay focused on the issue at hand. "Well, my 401A turned into a 419, but something doesn't fit," he replied.
"Well, lay it out for me. What have you got so far?" was her considerably more professional response.
Together they went over the evidence he'd processed. Catherine pointed out the pieces that didn't fit. The clothes from the vic had markings on them that looked suspiciously like tire marks. Upon comparison, they appeared to match the vehicle left at the scene. The victim's body had been found in the vehicle. To further complicate matters, Doc Robbins' autopsy report cited cause of death was complications from an acute staph infection. Doc also noted several bite marks about the victim's chest. Tox came back showing traces of a substance known as hirudin in the victim's blood stream. All this in addition to the obvious contusions from the vehicular impact that indicated he was outside the vehicle and not in it as he'd been found. Upon hearing this, Catherine decided it was time to consult Grissom, so she paged him since he was out on location.
While waiting for Gris to get back to them, Warrick decided to probe into Catherine's earlier chipper mood.
"So," he said, starting out cautiously, "looks like my shift is turning into a double. I can run it down for Gris if you need to go, and give you and update tomorrow."
They'd settled in the break room to wait, so he stretched his long legs to rest on one of the unoccupied chairs on the other side of the table. "You seemed chipper earlier. Have good plans for after shift?"
Catherine studied Warrick before she answered him. He was slunk down into his chair, head back, eyes heavily lidded, his right leg crossed over his left, while his right foot rhythmically bounced off his left. From his body language, she couldn't tell if he was probing or just making small talk to pass the time. He seemed agitated, but she didn't know if that was frustration from the case or if he was simply tired. At the same time, she knew he was keenly perceptive, particularly when it came to her. Outside of Grissom himself, no one at the lab knew her either better or longer. She decided to play it safe.
"I may have had tentative plans for a date, but you know how that goes. The job," she responded shaking her head. At this, Warrick snorted as if to say 'yeah, tell me about it' while Catherine continued. "Linds has a sleep over tonight, so I'm good. Besides, I paged Grissom to my number not yours, so he's gonna call me anyway."
"Yeah, I hear you, but you shouldn't have to cancel your date." Warrick lifted his head and eyed her as he continued, "One of us should get lucky. I got this."
His green eyes darkened and his pupils dilated just barely as he held her gaze. If Catherine weren't a seasoned CSI, she would have missed it. As it was, it sent a slight shiver down her spine which she struggled to hide. They flirted all the time, but this time seemed different. He seemed to be testing her, probing their boundaries. She'd heard from Nick and Greg about that his marriage to Tina had been going south for a while. She'd initially been upset about the marriage to the point of refusing to probe her own feelings on the matter. She had been hurt that he hadn't shared how he was feeling before he got married. She could have told him that his were all the wrong reasons to go into marriage. Her own marriage to Eddie was proof enough of that. She worried about him, but figured he should make his own decisions without her help. If he needed her, he knew he could talk to her. Seeing as he hadn't talked to her about it since, she figured he either didn't need her input or he was embarrassed about it. Either way, she would respect his boundaries and his privacy. Prideful herself, she recognized it in others when she saw it. She smirked at this thought, and Warrick pounced on it thinking it was in response to his innuendo.
"What?" he asked.
Just as she was about to give a witty comeback, Grissom stepped into the door way of the break room. "You called," he stated simply.
He stood in his black loafers, navy cotton slacks, black button down shirt, and a forensics department issue windbreaker poised as if ready to turn around and disappear at any second.
"In that much of a hurry to get out of the field Grissom? I only paged you 20 minutes ago. I figured you'd call first." needled Catherine.
He waved her off in annoyance, "I was already on my way here. What have you got?"
She caught his eye and silently questioned his agitation as she explained their findings. Grissom just stared at her listening intently to her explanation of the case. 'He couldn't possibly be that upset about missing dinner with me,' she thought. She shook her head at the thought as she finished her explanation.
This time Grissom caught the motion and questioned it. "What?" he queried her.
Snapping her eyes to his, she said somewhat meekly, "Nothing. Just trying to figure out this case. So what do you think?"
Gil Grissom was an extremely observant man. Part of that was due to his personal nature, and part of it due to his training. Still another part was due to how in tuned he was to his best friend and one of his favorite CSI's. He knew when Catherine was hiding something, but he put it aside to deal with later as she didn't appear to be upset, just distracted. He was already distracted by the plans he'd made for their time together this morning. They had so little time together in spite of the team being back together. It was his night off and he'd spent most of it putting together plans for breakfast with Catherine and later activities involving Lindsey. She and Catherine were still going through some rough patches, so he tried to provide a buffer as often as he could. It helped Lindsey to open up to her mother more, and helped her mother to worry just a little bit less. He tried to keep his own feelings about Catherine out of it, but he'd missed her and was having a difficult time hiding it. He just hoped she didn't read too much into it when she'd probed his eyes as she handed him the case files. If he let his guard down even just a little, she could read him like a book.
Warrick observed the exchange between the two people he considered family. He was accustomed to their silent exchanges bread of years of friendship and working together. Yes, Nicky was his best friend, but he trusted no one, save his grandmother, more than he trusted the two people with him in the break room at that moment. Trying to build relationships outside of the lab was a struggle even in the best of times. His failed marriage was a testament to that, as was Catherine's many run ins with the losers she'd managed to date, and Grissom's apparent complete lack of social life. These people understood his situation better than anyone, even Nicky, in spite of his incident with Kristie. Nicky was still optimistic about matters of the heart in spite of all he'd been through. Right now Warrick was questioning everything in his life, and a chin up from Nicky wasn't going to help. He needed a more mature point of view. He needed Gil and Catherine. Giving himself and internal mental shake, he re-centered his focus on the case.
"Yeah, Gris, what do you think?" he interjected to get the other two back on track as well. Seems they were all a little distracted tonight.
Grissom switched his focus to the other Level 3 CSI in the room and noted his exhausted position. Remembering this was pushing Warrick and Catherine into a double shift, he mentally sealed off his own agitation and focused on the case.
"I'll need to see the body to confirm, but from the elevated levels of hirudin in his blood, I'd say your vic suffered a fatal homeopathic error in judgment." Without another word, he turned around on his heel and headed for the morgue.
Catherine and Warrick exchanged looks. She rolled her eyes, while he just smirked. Each knew they were expected to follow Grissom and that he was probably headed to the morgue where he would continue explaining his theory. Warrick groaned and shifted his tired body to a standing position.
He gestured toward the door and said to Catherine, "Shall we?" She smirked, shook her head, and preceded him out the door headed toward the morgue.
By the time they reached him, Grissom already had the drawer pulled out and was questioning Al Robbins about his findings as he stood over the body.
"Just as I thought," he murmured as they walked up pulling on latex gloves.
"I count 10 bites." He stood up and gestured for the other two to take a look. "Al, did the vic show signs of a heart condition or any arterial anomalies?"
Doc Robbins consulted his notes before answering, "Given his age, weight, stomach contents, and genetic background he presented with an amount of plaque in his arteries commensurate with his lifestyle. He was probably pre-hypertensive, but lack of other drugs in his system suggests it was undiagnosed. In other words, he could have been a walking heart attack, but no more so than 75% of the adult US population." he concluded.
"Was there any indication of any medical procedures, particularly venous or arterial in nature?" Grissom queried further.
"There was no indication of any procedure what so ever. Almost as if the man had never seen the inside of a hospital."
At this Grissom pursed his lips and asked, "Do we have an id?"
Al reached for another sheet in his notes and replied, "These just came back. Got a hit off the dental work. Vitaly Ulyanov."
Noticing the excited glint entering Gil's eyes, Catherine piped up. "You wanna clue us in Grissom?"
Remembering this was their case, Grissom turned to Catherine and Warrick and began to explain his theory in more detail.
"Hirudin is an anticoagulant found in leeches. Medicinal use of leeches has been prevalent for over 2000 years, but they are used as a means to different ends depending on where one comes from. Our Russian friend here probably knew he had a heart condition, and it is a common practice in Russia to treat hypertension with leeches. Unfortunately, whomever he consulted over did it. If done correctly, the procedure is supposed to be done with 6 leeches at most, but optimally 3. Which reminds me, Al, " he turned to Doc Robbins who was listening to his intriguing dissertation, "Can you tell if all of the bite marks were from the same time period or if some were older than others?"
Once again, consulting his notes Doc said, "Well, now that you mention it, I did note that the bulk of the bites were at least a week to ten days old, but these three," he indicated with his hand as he continued, "appeared to have been inflicted perimortem." At this, Grissom took on an 'a ha' expression and continued, "I suspect the staph infection was the result of improper care of the older bites and the perimortem bites were a sordid attempt to 'fix' the problem. Once that didn't work, seems our perp tried to make things look more accidental. I suggest you find out where to get leeches in the area. I have some names you can check first. And then see if we can get a list of names of who's been buying. Then we need to tie a buyer to the victim."
Catherine shuddered, having never been good with the creepy crawlies Grissom was renowned for loving so much, she definitely had no interest in pursuing the lead on blood suckers. "Ookaay," she let out on a long breath, "War, you track down the leeches. I'll try to find out who this guy knew."