Dividing Lines
Disclaimer: I do not own. If I did, Sara would never be in this situation.
Spoilers: In A Dark, Dark House, Targets of Obsession, All For Our Country, and perhaps some others.
A/N: I had a few issues with the season finale and tried to write something that would respond to those issues. This takes place towards the end of In A Dark, Dark House.
Dividing Lines
There were lines you do not cross, not as a cop, a crime scene investigator, a professional, or a person. Those lines are instilled into you, as you grow and as you learn. Daily, she sees reminders of those lines on the yellow tape surrounding a crime scene. It's written on police tape, Do Not Cross, meant to serve as a warning to the public, but still, an ongoing reminder for the rest of them. The tape was down now. The scene was released. The line is still there.
She is standing on the line, hovering. Look down and she might see the line. She pictures it as yellow, like one of the solid yellow lines on a highway, like police tape rolled out on the ground, the words in bold below her. DO NOT CROSS.
Small, slow, careful steps move her forward. In her mind, she stares down at each step as she crawls ahead. Her foot covers the yellow and splays out at each side. Is there any significance in her foot being wider than the line? Like maybe the line can't encompass everything? Her toes land on a black letter and she is reminded again of what it means to be balancing on such a line. She is tip-toeing like a tight rope walker, unsure of which way she will fall. Another small step moves her that much more forward. It used to be so simple in her mind, right and wrong. Once she would have stood so firm on one side, a defensive line could not have broken through. So much has changed since then. So much of her has changed. She's never quite seen a situation from this angle before. Close, but there is just enough variance to make this different.
They were searching for the truth right? She thought they were. That was their job, seek the truth, whatever it may be. Ethically, morally, the importance of truth had been etched into her heart. It was who she was, how she defined self as it pertained to her being. It should have been easy, for all of them. It was anything but easy, and why? Was it that they did not want to know the truth? What were they willing to compromise? What were they compromising?
She trusted the members of her team. A week ago, she would have denied, vehemently, that Ray could murder someone. She trusted him. She saw the profound good in him. She could not picture him killing a person, monster or no. The evidence suggested he did. Blood spatter had Ray above a man, no, correction, above a serial killer, pounding his head against a floor. The autopsy had Ray punching the man in the kidney, several times over. The scene had Ray propelling the man over a railing, killing him. The evidence on the body had the man restrained at one point.
Or did it? There were ligature marks, but no evidence of any restraints at the scene. The marks matched flex-cuffs, but Ray's flex-cuffs were all accounted for. She'd checked herself. Greg couldn't believe she would check Ray's kit, but she had. She had to check. She needed the truth to deal with the implications. It wasn't just Ray. Greg had asked her if she would check if it was him and she would. She would check if it were any of them, Ray, Nick, Catherine, Greg, Jim. Perhaps Greg should have asked if she would check if it were Grissom. That would have been much more difficult to answer. She thinks she would, but even she is not sure. She knows Grissom, and she knows she would trust him with anything. She knows that, were he in the position Ray was in, he would not have killed Haskell. He may have fought him, may have gotten a few licks in, may have even smashed Haskell's head against the floor, but Grissom would have stopped. Grissom would have realized his position, come back from that moment of insanity he may have felt and stopped. If she were the one in that house, tortured, violated, the way Ray's ex-wife Gloria had been, Grissom would have protected her, tended to her, done anything to defend her, taken out his anger on Haskell, but he would have stopped. Pushed to the extreme, Grissom still would have stopped when he had the man restrained, or shortly after. She has to believe that he would have stopped. He would not have removed any ligatures he may have gotten on the man unless the man's condition warranted it, nor would he have let his rage and passion drive him past a point he could not have returned from once those bonds were removed. She may not have checked Grissom's kit, but she wouldn't have had to. With Grissom there would be no question.
Why Greg couldn't understand the need for her to know puzzled her. Shouldn't they all need to know? He wanted to be blind to the truth. She could never let herself be blind to the truth. Not for any of them. Not even for Grissom. Reflecting on it, faced with that decision if it had been Grissom, she thinks she may have checked. Knowing the truth when it pertained to Grissom had always been more important. She would have to know. She would have to know in order to deal. It might destroy her, but she would still have to know.
It seemed so easy for the rest of them. Easy in the way it was uneasy for her. It should have been easy to think the other way, the way they always had, the way that was supposed to be instilled in them. Things that bothered her slid right over them. Brass had shrugged when she spoke of the ligature marks, but his eyes told her not to question it. She had never seen his eyes so dark and she wondered what he might be doing for Ray that he hadn't done for Warrick, even when Warrick was innocent, even when Warrick had spent years going after vigilantes, cops or otherwise. She wondered what Brass might be doing that he hadn't done for Stuart Gardner, another man who had ended the life of a serial killer, or in that case, two. Brass had Ray's back, that much was obvious. It wasn't supposed to work that way, but Brass had Ray's back. He knew that it was not right for police officers or those working with them to take the law into their own hands and yet… What was it that he was doing for Ray that he, in all likelihood, would also do for the rest of them? He will not tell her what she needs to know.
Catherine looked as though she may question the report she wrote up, question the condition of the body, question those same ligature marks that bothered Sara, but Catherine still wrote the report suggesting self defense and signed it, as though the truth had been found, or as though the truth did not need to be found. Greg seemed to believe whatever he wanted, as though the real truth was of no consequence. He signed the report as well. Nick hadn't signed off on the report, but only because Nick didn't work the scene as it pertained to the death of Haskell. Nick had only worked the scene as it pertained to the life of Haskell. Still, he was in the same corner as Brass and Catherine and Greg, across the same line, backing up Ray, telling her not to question the suspicious circumstances surrounding Haskell's death. Apart from Brass, he was Ray's biggest defender, the sidekick who missed the show, the voice of consequentialism, a Texas drawl arguing the phrase, "the ends justify the means." A serial killer was dead. A man who lured away couples, who killed men and tortured women for days before killing them, who stabbed Ray and who escaped from prison, free to torture, rape and kill again, had been killed. They should not question it. He got what he deserved. He brought it on himself. Is it really important how it happened? Did it matter that Ray may not have really needed to defend himself when he was defending his ex-wife and defending society?
Did it matter? Yes, she thinks. It does. The truth matters. She stares down at the form and knows that the truth matters. Grissom taught her that. She wonders, even as she knows, what he would do in that situation. What would Grissom do? What would Gil do? Would the criminalist and the man make different decisions? No, she thinks she knows what he would do, criminalist and man. Grissom would present the truth, because, ethically, it is the only path he sees leaving his beliefs intact. Gil would present the truth because that is the essence of his self, what she loves about him, what she fell in love with. She needs him. She longs for him, not as she normally does, but as a moral fiber, someone to follow, to stand beside her when she wants to check a kit, or needs to know the truth. He is so much her compass.
She needs a compass. To her, the line has ceased to be distinct. It is fogging a little before her. The words she once imagined so sharp are blurring. She is still tip-toeing the line like a tightrope, but she isn't sure on which side she should put her foot down. She is caught in a dilemma. Ethically, is should be clear. They have a system of law in the country to prevent men from taking justice into their own hands. Courts were created for such purposes. All men have rights, even those who have spent their lives taking pleasure in violating and infringing on the rights of others. She knows what side she is obliged to step down on. She knows the side that will not compromise her own image of self. Yet, if those suspicions she holds were to be found true, a good man would be imprisoned for taking the life of an evil man. Ray is good. She knows this with every fiber of her being. Ray is a good man. Given the trauma of Ray's experiences with Haskell, is it right for Ray to be imprisoned for killing Haskell?
What bothers her most is the ligature marks. The evidence indicates that Haskell was restrained. The evidence says Ray carried Haskell and propelled him over a rail. The evidence suggests Ray did not need to do what he did. What bothers her is that Ray may have released a man he had in custody, a man who would have seen a courtroom, who would have been executed legally, to kill him in a blind rage. Where is the good in that? What would she be defending? That you could kill a man, an evil man, in one blind moment of rage because the moment called for it? Perhaps Ray had only saw a monster, in the way her mother had in her sleeping, unsuspecting father. It was different though. Ray is not burdened with the same disease. He does not suffer from delusions or hallucinations. He has a gene linked to violent behavior, one that he, himself, refuted the significance of under oath. Ray may have killed someone in a rage. He may have lost himself in a moment and though she may understand it, she is not sure if she could honestly or sincerely defend that. People had to be responsible for their actions. Moments lasting seconds change lives. People don't get a pass on those moments just because they last only seconds, or because almost everybody in the world would justify certain actions. Haskell wanted Ray to kill him. It was obvious in the way he taunted Ray. Haskell wanted Ray to lose control, to succumb to his baser self, to discard humanity and kill him. Ray didn't have to. Haskell won.
She sighs and goes over everything in her mind again. A fight. Blood, multiple donors, little belonging to Ray. Ligature marks on body, but no ligatures at the scene, though it was almost too easy to imagine the first responder removing them, almost too easy to imagine him compromising himself. Still, no ligatures. Flex-cuffs accounted for. Victim, who had undergone significant trauma, found at scene. Broken rail. Body found on stairs. Markings across back showing nothing behind back at the time of the fall. Blood pool. Only Ray's footprint in the blood pool, though Greg had effectively argued the action could still have been part of an ongoing fight. Nothing proven either way. The truth is concealed among the lines on the report. The evidence suggests, but does not prove. Her suspicions are suppositions for the moment. There is nothing on the report that she can really take issue with, apart from, perhaps, the term, self defense, and she is not really sure she is ready to take issue with it. The same choice lies before her.
Her pen hovers above the page. She can not add anything to the report that is not in there. The tip hits the paper and she falters, momentarily. What is she compromising? If she crosses this line, where will the next one fall? Will it be easier to cross, and if so, what are those implications?
Her eyes scan the report again. Everything on it is the truth as was interpreted by the team, the team she trusts. Perhaps it is not for her to seek out anything beyond this. Perhaps it is for Ray to say what happened, to reveal what is hinted at by lines around two wrists on a corpse. Perhaps it is for Ray to disclose what she wishes she did not suspect. She tells herself that she has to trust that he will. She knows that he could because she still believes that Ray is a good man. Whatever line he may have crossed, he would never ask anybody to cross it with him. She will place her trust in him. The only thing left is to sign on the line.