DISCLAIMER!
I do not own any of the CSI characters in this story as they are property of CBS. All other characters are my own original creations and any similarities between these and anyone living or dead are completely coincidental.
This is my first fan-fic so I hope you enjoy it! Please r and r.
HELL HATH NO FURY
Prologue
Somewhere outside in the darkness a woman screamed with false fear, her falsetto voice breaking the calm of the street. The figure hunched over his desk glanced up briefly, then sighed. He'd been playing the game for nine hours and was no closer to winning than when he'd started. The only thing keeping him staring at the flat screen was his pride, refusing to be beaten by his flatmates. If nothing else, college had taught him the importance of unhealthy competition.
The clock told him it was after four, but he was still alone in the house. Four floors of creaking floorboards, thin walls and drooping ceiling tiles revealed every footfall, every grunt, and every movement that the other males in the house could make. But now there was nothing but heavy silence.
A cartoon footballer blinked at him and his attention was instantly brought back to the never ending screen of results and game plays. Four keystrokes later he was smiling as his team headed to the top of the league. As he danced wildly around the messy bedroom his eyes fell upon a photo lying on his desk, partially obscured by a pile of unopened textbooks. He picked it up and grimaced at the smiling blond staring back at him. It was one of the rare photos they'd had taken together and for a second they'd looked happy.
"Fucking psycho" he muttered, dropping the photo into the overflowing bin and stamping it down against a disguarded noodle concoction. A floorboard creaked below him and he called out an insensitive greeting to whoever had returned home. No answer.
Frustrated he threw his tatty robe over his holey boxers and pushed open his bedroom door, staring out into the dark hallway.
"Chris?" he called. Still nothing. He slowly padded to the top of the staircase and peered down. The living room light was still burning where he'd left it, casting an unearthly glow across the rest of the ground floor. Cursing his paranoia, he stormed back into his room; slamming the door behind him angrily and throwing himself face down on his bed. He felt the sticky warmth spreading beneath him before he felt the pain. Trashing wildly he tore at the spiked metal bed sheet, trying to rip it from his flesh. As his vision blurred his eyes fell on something tacked to the window, illuminated by the moonlight.
The smiling face bore down on him, but for the first time he saw the cold reality behind her baby blue eyes and the crossed fingers intertwined with his.
Part One: Lost Souls
Gill Grissom knelt down beside the bed and immediately regretted it. The curious stain on the bed sheets hadn't been bloody fluid as he'd first imagined, but was actually excrement mixed with pungent urine. He coughed slightly and turned his head under the pretence of examining the blood pooling under the victims right arm.
"Pretty nasty huh?" Brass interjected, wrinkling his nose at the mangled body. Grissom sighed,
"Ingenious actually. Creating a sheet comprised entirely of jagged metal. The spikes wouldn't have killed him, his human nature to fight them away did. The more he struggled the more entwined he became and the faster his blood pumped. He killed himself."
"Either way it's a pretty nasty way to go." Brass nodded towards Catherine Willows who was attempting to find a clear path to the body.
"Let me guess," she said, shaking a sticky sock from her boots in disgust, "Frat house?"
Brass grinned and pointed towards the faded banner hung between posters of naked women.
"Any idea what happened?" she asked to no-one in particular.
"Rest of the guys came home about 6am but no-one thought to check on him till 8am when he didn't show for breakfast. Apparently he never missed a meal."
Catherine took in the bloated stomach, caked in blood that stood out from the boys' lanky frame. "Now that I believe." She commented dryly. Like all the other night shift CSI's she dreaded cases that fell on the borderline of shifts. Technically anything reported after 7am went automatically to day shift, but since the coroner had placed time of death before 5am, this one fell under their jurisdiction. Tired and cranky from a night spent searching for a not so missing persons, all she wanted was a hot bath and bed. Unlikely, she moaned inwardly. Snapping on a pair of latex gloves she knelt beside her supervisor and followed his glance under the bed.
"Got something?" she asked. Grissom reached forward and carefully pulled a curly black hair from the worn carpet.
"He doesn't have curly hair." Catherine commented, glancing back at the short, slicked down hair of the deceased. "Girlfriend?"
"Boys say he hasn't had one for a while." Brass answered, shrugging in the direction of the open door where three terrified looking young men stood, all shaking beneath their robes. Catherine knelt back on her heels.
"You guys know anyone with long curly black hair?" she called back towards the scared clutch. They exchanged nervous glances then the smallest one spoke up.
"Yeah, he has a couple of friends with curly hair. They're always around here though."
"He didn't tidy often." Another added a noticeable tone of disgust in his heavily accented voice. Catherine smiled.
"We're going to need to talk to you guys lateron...why don't you get dressed?" she suggested. The boys nodded and quickly fled, desperate to leave the increasingly strong smelling crime scene. Grissom picked up the camera and began carefully snapping pictures of the body and surrounding area.
"You know, it's going to be impossible to find foreign evidence here." Catherine said testily.
"There is always something." Grissom replied, handing her a pot of florescent powder and a brush. "Just a case of finding it."
*
Coroner Robbins pulled back the sheet and smiled slightly when he saw Sara Sidle twist uncomfortably.
"Never amazes me the lengths some people will go to inflict pain upon another. This is brutal in its execution, definitely a crime of passion."
Sarah swallowed, "Not my idea of passion." She muttered, forcing herself to look down at the mutilated body on the slab. The boy, no older than 20, had been slashed several times, not deep enough to kill him, but enough to inflict serious pain. His hands had been bound, as has his feet, with barbed wire causing the skin to blister and cut whenever he struggled. Most disturbing, however, was his penis, which had been severed and then forced down his throat.
"Cause of death?" she asked. Robbins pointed at the cuts,
"He would have bled out if he hadn't suffocated first. I found an abundance of vomit in his throat, nasal cavity and mouth. I should imagine having his own genitals stuffed down his throat made him vomit, on which he suffocated."
"Wouldn't you?" Sara asked. She cast her eye down the blood sodden body and noticed something unusual. Robbins followed her gaze and smiled.
"Good eye I was wondering when you would notice that. I'm not sure what it is exactly, it's been sown under several layers of skin. Not overly well either. I can cut it out now you're here." He said happily reaching for a scalpel. Seconds later a flap of jagged skin was cut in the victims' stomach and a bloody piece of shaped stone removed.
"It's a stone heart." Sara exclaimed. Robbins held it to the light and nodded his agreement.
"Looks…expensive, machine made not by hand." He added. Sara took the heart from him and dropped it into an evidence bag.
"It's a message." She said slowly, holding the bag to the light.
"Of what?" Robbins asked.
"Heart of stone."