Disclaimer: They're not mine
Rating: T or PG-13 for language and violence
Summary: It's 2am. The doorbell rings. A baby is crying. What are you going to do? W/S with GCR moments and a major case
Thank you to all the reviewers of my last stand-alone (yes, it is a stand-alone) 'Unless'. Again, a whole bunch of truly fantastic reviews from people kinder than I probably deserve so I'm thanking y'all – csi-sam-sanders, Kelly, Cheryl, Megara1, sidle girl, fredchester (pleased to see a budding fic up from you there), Joyce and Joyce3 (are you not one and the same person?), MissyJane, nick55, icklebitodd (thanks for reviewing NorthWest, too), Aleja21, iwantboromir and Review1234 (who I've been waiting to return from holiday until I posted up.) Feedback is greatly loved as you can clearly see. Who doesn't like feedback?
This is my epic-long fic. You'll soon see, I do love my quotations here. And, before I forget, for all GCR fans – if you're coming here in search of a GCR fix, you'll have to trawl through a lot of WS first. If you don't want to do this, hold out until about chapters 12, 13 and 16 where I reckon I'll be putting in the main bulk of the GCR. Yes, it's a long fic.
And one last thing (future A/Ns will NOT be this long, I promise) – if you like/love writing original fiction, there is a new Live Journal community called "write impulsive" with an underscore between the words. Please do check it out – more people could just make it wonderful. I'll get on with the story now. I hope, more than ever, that it hasn't been the biggest anti-climax. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx
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Wake The Hope. Chapter One. Knock Knock
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"Yet will that beauteous image make
The dreary sea less drear
And thy remembered smile will wake
The hope that tramples fear"
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
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Jim Brass shields his eyes with a hand as the orange-yellow light from the rising sun glances off the approaching Tahoe. The residents living on the same floor as this morning's victim huddle behind the yellow police tape that flickers slightly in the rare Las Vegas summer breeze. In dressing gowns, they whisper amongst themselves, gossiping and grumbling about how long they have to stand outside – some of them have to get to work in a few hours, you know. Brass knows, but then again, this is his work and he gets this every other day.
"Yo, Brass - where's the DB?" Warrick calls by way of a greeting, strolling up to the apartment block entrance where Brass is standing. He's closely followed by Sara and Grissom, who locks up the car.
"Third floor – apartment 216." Brass gestures up the stairs. Warrick nods, smiles and begins to climb them.
When Sara reaches the third floor not too long after him, Warrick is standing in front of the open door to apartment 216 without going on. She joins him by his side and looks in.
"Huh – killer didn't waste time hiding the body," she comments lightly.
"Nope."
Just a little in from the doorway sprawls the body of a young woman, late twenties, still in her pyjamas with a slashed neck and blood pooled around her.
"You wanna take the hall?" Sara deadpans a rhetorical question; she is already stepping neatly around the body and the blood, setting her kit down on a clear space on the floor. Warrick jerks his head in a nod – it's just another day.
"Katie Taylor, 27. Neighbour found her when passing on the way to work – the door was already open and Katie was already dead, lying out here." Brass' briefing comes. The pair of them, already stuck into their work, hear his voice and the two sets of footsteps, both his and Grissom's, coming down the hall before they see either one.
"Lives alone?" Grissom asks, stepping into the apartment to look more closely at the girl.
"Yup," is Brass' short reply.
"Neighbours hear anything?" Grissom presses, not looking up. Brass flips through his notebook cursorily.
"A lot of crying at about 2 in the morning, although more than one of them have mentioned it sounded more like a baby crying."
"Any babies in the building?"
"Nope. Mostly single young people and the elderly."
Sara puts down her brush from dusting the door for prints.
"Wipe down – over the whole door." she muses, a hint of surprise. "The guy's thorough."
"How do you know it's a guy?" Grissom asks immediately.
Warrick laughs from the doorway and shakes his head at Sara. "Never assume, Sar." he tells her wisely. She rolls her eyes and pokes her tongue out at Warrick.
"I know, I know – sorry."
Grissom sighs a sigh reminiscent of a weary father keeping his two kids in control but Brass only grins at the bickering between the team, the kind of thing he's grown to love being part of, before he heads back down to talk to more neighbours leaving the three of them get back to work and quickly forget about anything else.
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"I think it's safe to say she died of exsanguination. A smooth blade, like that of a fairly large sized kitchen knife, cut through the chords, the trachea and oesophagus, slashing the left subclavial artery and both anterior and exterior jugular veins." Doc Robbins points at the thick red rift in the victim's white neck. Sara nods.
"Pretty straight forward," she remarks. "Any sexual assault?" He looks at her over his clipboard.
"Yes, quite a violent rape resulting in internal lacerations," he informs her.
"And can we get some DNA off of that?" she asks hesitantly but his answer is as expected.
"Attacker used a condom."
"Great." she mutters and, thanking Robbins vaguely, leaves the room.
-
Warrick rubs his eyes and furrows his brow in concentration. His eyes sting under the artificial light – he needs some sleep soon but sleep tends to be hard to come by when you've got an infuriatingly meticulous rapist and killer stalking the city. It's their second night of working this case and they've gotten nowhere with it still. The other person in the room sighs and tosses the set of photos back onto the table in frustration; Warrick looks up from his own examination of the very little evidence and offers her a half-smile.
"We've got nothing to work with here," she says despairingly. He shrugs, trying to keep optimistic – well, one of them has to.
"Never stopped us before." he comments.
"No prints, no DNA, no forced entry, no CCTV, no witnesses, no fibres," Sara reels off the list in exasperation. "We've had pretty little to work with before, Warrick, but this really is nothing."
"Okay, so it's a tough case," he relents and sighs, himself. "Let's just hope that Nick and Catherine have got something better." Sara rubs the back of her aching neck and slouches tiredly in her chair.
"Or worse," she mutters darkly. Warrick grins, shakes his head and turns back to frown at his work.
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"What've ya got for me, Al?" Catherine greets as she breezes into the autopsy room.
"Marcia Keating, 30. There was some blunt force trauma to the face pre-mortem, indicative of fists but C.O.D. is exsanguination – smooth blade, most probably a large kitchen knife, sliced through the chords, trachea and oesophagus. Vic bled out through left subclavial artery, anterior and exterior jugular v – " Doc Robbins pauses and narrows his eyes at Catherine.
"What?"
"Déjà vu. Have you spoken to Grissom about this?" He asks. Catherine looks at him carefully.
"No..." she answers slowly and with suspicion. Why would she? She's a supervisor now, just like him.
"He's handling a case exactly like this one – got called in the other night," he explained.
"And let me guess – no prints, no DNA, no forced entry at the scene?" Catherine says, rolling her eyes slightly when he nods. "Oh boy. We've got ourselves a serial rapist."
"A serial killer," Robbins furthers. "Go talk to him about it."
"I'm on it. " Catherine calls back, already heading out of the door. "Thanks Al!"
Doctor Al Robbins stares at the autopsy room doors that swing to a shut after the whirlwind that was CSI Willows. "Anytime," he answers quietly in the empty room and rolls Marcia Keating away into the locked and labelled drawer just below Katie Taylor's.
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