Disclaimer: CSI does not belong to me. But if it did… (Wink-Wink)
Timeline: AUFifth Season, After Nesting Dolls.
Author's Note:I would like to thank Alison, for beta-ing this for me. You are amazing! Thanks for helping me with this! You also have the patience of a saint to deal with me!
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Sins of the Past
Chapter One
The city of Las Vegas, Nevada was living in a state of fear. A serial rapist was on the hunt and not since the "Strip Strangler" case had there been this much publicity or pressure on the LVPD to find the perp. There had been seven reported cases, so far; one attack a day for the past week and the violence was escalating with every case. The sheriff made the decision to call in the local FBI for assistance. An agent had already made a profile, describing the assailant as a Caucasian male, between the ages of 30-40, with a possible history of abuse as a child. The bottom line was if he wasn't caught soon, the rapes would turn into murder.
Despite the large number of victims, there was little evidence for the investigator to work with. Even the victim profile was of little help; selfless, Caucasian women in their later twenties to mid-thirties weren't exactly uncommon in Vegas. The Agent in Charge and the LVPD Sheriff decided that they should review cold cases in the state, to see if they could match the M.O. and signature and turn up some new evidence. Their search had revealed nothing matching these rapes in Nevada. The two departments had then made the choice to search the neighboring states' cold cases. The feds, with their farther reaching grasps, took Utah, Oregon, and Idaho, while the police department took California and Arizona.
Homicide detective, Jim Brass sat at his desk, reading through file after file. California's database was undergoing reformatting, so the state had had to send over paper files. The man's office was filled with roughly, 30 boxes and over two hundred manila folders. With a sigh, Brass shut the file he had been reading and put it back into the box that sat beside his chair.
One box down. He thought, taking a sip of luke-warm coffee from the mug that rested on the corner of his desk, and kicking the finished box across the room, to the only empty corner.
Brass stood, stretched, and bent down beside the next closest box. When he stood, the contents of a thick file slipped through his grasp and fell to the floor, scattering the reports and pictures.
"Shit!" He said out loud.
The man put the rest of the files on his desk and fanned them out. Locating the empty folder, he removed it from the pile. His eyes caught the name on the tab of the folder and he blinked. Am I reading this right? He wondered, his stomach beginning to turn with the knowledge he refused to believe. SIDLE, SARA typed in bold letters, was staring at him like a death warrant. The detective knelt down by the scattered papers and swallowed down a surge of bile as he began to read.
By the time he had finished reading the first report he had picked up, written by a S.A.R.T. nurse, he felt something wet trailing down his cheek. Brass brushed it away and realized that he was crying. With a long, heavy exhale, he picked up the polaroids and looked at them. Sara was small and frail looking in each picture. The writing on the white strip said that she was only nine-years-old. Bruises marred her face and neck; her dark eyes were hollow and empty. He flipped through the rest of the photos quickly; all of them detailing more of the same: angry bruises and horrible cuts that stood out on various parts of her body. One picture in particular stood out to him. In the middle of one of the bruises on her temple, a design could be made out clearly. He had seen that same design, some sort of crest, on all of the recent victims.
Brass felt cold as he realized the signature was a match; he no longer had to go through any more files. He had found the one that could break this case. More tears fell down his cheeks as he gathered the file and got to his feet. The man ignored them as he took out his pager and sent out a page to the swing and night shifts of the LV Crime Lab. Since the case was so large, both shifts had been assigned to work it so that there would be coverage around the clock. Through the glass walls of officer, Brass saw Sara and Gil Grissom heading down the hall to the conference room.
This was going to be one moment in his life that he would never want to repeat.