Strengths and Weaknesses
Chapter One
"Didn't I tell you?" Sara crowed as she and Warrick stood outside the interrogation room.
"Yeah, well." Warrick replied. He noticed Grissom walking down the corridor towards them; he was absent-mindedly flipping through some papers. "Hey man." Grissom looked up and registered the expression on Sara's face before talking. "You look happy."
"Just cracked a case." She beamed. "We had the guy in there for all of five minutes before he confessed. Warrick didn't think he would." Sara gloated playfully.
"Yeah and all it took was some 'gentle persuasion' on Sara's part." Warrick grinned, ignoring the dagger-sharp looks Sara was throwing at him. Grissom smiled, he knew all about Sara's method of 'gentle persuasion'. "Oh yeah." Sara sensed that the conversation was turning against her. "Are you having breakfast?" She casually tossed the question into the air. When her two male colleagues replied in the affirmative she beamed broadly, turn to Warrick and grinned. "I told you so." Then she turned on her heel and marched off down the corridor, leaving Grissom and a rather bemused Warrick staring after her.
Later that week Grissom found Sara in the break room. She was looking through an old journal; obviously she was totally engrossed in her article because she didn't look up when he entered.
"Coffee?" He offered, by way of a conversation starter. Sara didn't answer but held up her cup to show him that she was set. "I thought I sent you and Catherine home. I said I'd call you if anything came up."
"Yeah. well, you never know when some thing's gonna happen." Sara put down her journal.
"That's why you have a cell phone and a pager." Grissom tried. He wished he hadn't, Sara shot him a dirty look. "Umm. anyway, what are you reading?"
"Nothing really." Sara replied, quickly shutting the journal as Grissom sat down at the table. "Can I help you?" Her tone made Grissom look up. "I was just wondering what you were looking at." He replied weakly. He always felt awkward talking to Sara, especially when it wasn't about a case. Luckily he was saved from further embarrassment by a page from Greg; his lab results were back.
Shortly after he had left Sara drained the last of the cold, bitter dregs from her cup, rinsed it out and headed for home. It wasn't until she was two-thirds of the way there that she realized that she'd left her journal on the table.
Grissom noticed the journal lying on the break room table as he stopped in to wash out his mug. Curiously he picked it up and flipped through a few pages. A small piece of paper marked the article he assumed Sara had been reading - something about photographing evidence. On the next page the paper was a little creased, as if the article had been repeatedly read and turned to. It gave the account of a case involving a young woman who had been beaten and how the evidence had originally been misread, allowing her attacker to go free. Seemed like something Sara would read, Grissom replaced the journal and slowly made his way to his car, not giving another thought to the matter.
The following evening the team gathered in the break room, awaiting their cases. As Grissom entered the room Sara's cell phone rang, she promptly apologized and excused herself.
"Okay. Nick, Warrick, you're still on your hit and run down on the strip. Your victim's at Desert Palms' should be up to talking now. We've got a tough one tonight. Young woman found beaten in her apartment." He handed out the sheets of paper containing their case details. Catherine, a word?"
Nick and Warrick left exchanging furtive glances at one another.
"Keep an eye on Sara for this one. I know she gets involved with all her cases, in one way or another, but I don't want her getting," he paused, searching for the right word. "Emotional." Catherine nodded and made her way out, Grissom meanwhile stood in the doorway waiting for Sara to return so that he could fill her in on the details. He could just make snippets of conversation coming from her and although he wasn't eavesdropping he couldn't help but make out words like 'dangerous' and 'restraining order'. Sara glanced up at him a couple of times and he was nervous that she would think he was trying to listen in. Leaving the door he quickly took a seat inside the break room.
When Sara came in she looked a little flustered.
"Okay?" Grissom asked cautiously.
"Yeah." She replied quietly and took her notes. "Let's go."
Once at the scene Grissom doled out jobs, Sara was taking the photographs. Grissom stood behind her as she examined the body.
"She took a real beating," Sara noted, Grissom could hear the wobble in her voice. "She bit her nails, almost down to the cuticles, no hope of getting her attacker's DNA from there. Hang on." Sara noticed some dark hair caught in the victims ring. "Not her hair color, she's blonde." She decided moving out of the way so that she could bag it.
Catherine was standing in the hallway with Brass and a couple of police officers listening to the boyfriend, Daniel Abbott, giving his statement. "It's so wrong. Why would anyone want to hurt her? God! We had an argument and I told her I needed some fresh air. If we hadn't fought. if I hadn't left her. this can't be happening."
Sara looked up from photographing the young woman to see Catherine comforting the boyfriend in the hallway. "I'm gonna get him." Sara promised the corpse.
Grissom noticed her talking to the corpse. It worried him when she did that; it was a sure sign that she was going to get too personally involved. He tried to push the thought from his mind and went back to dusting for prints along the open window to the fire escape. 'I could have pulled Nick or Warrick from their case.' He thought, noticing a fiber hooked onto a piece of splintered wood. 'She would have suspected though. She's not stupid.' He bagged his newly found evidence. 'No, avoiding it won't help. We just have to wrap this case up as quickly as possible.' He concluded eventually as Sara got up and made her way towards him.
"Whatcha got?" She asked. Grissom held up the bag. "Blue fiber. From our attacker?" Grissom nodded but didn't look at her; he was staring at the window frame. The outside was dusty. "If our attacker used this as the way in or out the dust should have been disturbed." Sara didn't speak. She was calculating something. Carefully she took Grissom's bagged blue fiber and then moved to pick up the hairs she had found earlier. "Vic's blonde." She murmured. "These are black." Grissom watched as Sara stood by the doorway examining both samples, holding them up to the light to get a better look at them. Sara stopped focusing on the evidence and looked straight ahead of her and then walked straight into the corridor.
"I should have gone after him or something, but Jessica was just there up against the wall. She wouldn't move. I let him get away, didn't I? I should have gone down the fire escape after him." Catherine did her best to comfort the man. He wiped away a few tears.
Grissom watched as Sara stalked into the hallway, suddenly he caught up with what she was thinking. Daniel Abbott had black hair and he was wearing a blue sweater. He didn't need to guess what Sara was going to do and so he hurried out of the apartment after her.
"You did this. Didn't you?" Sara yelled walking towards where Daniel was standing with Catherine and the assorted members of law enforcement. A confused look spread across Catherine's face as Sara drew closer. Grissom promptly grabbed both of her wrists from behind. "Don't do this Sara." He told her firmly, she flinched as he turned her around and half- dragged, half-led her back into the apartment. Sara had tears of frustration in her eyes and she pushed some loose hair away from her face. Grissom looked at her for a moment, she was expecting him to say something. Instead he simply laid a calming hand on her shoulder as he made his way past her and out of the apartment to inform Abbott that he was a suspect in their murder investigation.
"She's been in an abusive relationship for some time." Al Robbins moved to show Grissom and Sara the X-rays. Grissom felt Sara tense beside him. "Multiple rib fractures, at varying stages of healing. Pulled her medical records as well, been into hospital three times in the past two months; broken wrist, a sprained ankle and a miscarriage." He pulled back the sheet to reveal a plethora of bruises. "Varying stages of healing." He pointed out the differences in color between the old, yellow, bruises and the new, angry red ones. "Help me turn her." They turned her over to reveal more bruises and some unusual marks on her back. Like the rest of her bruises these small wounds were at varying stages of healing. Sara didn't miss a beat. "Cigarette burns." Grissom looked at Al for confirmation and he nodded. "I did a sexual assault kit on her. She'd been raped." He sighed. "Couldn't get any DNA from her nails, but I did find some blue fibers in her mouth. Cause of death was suffocation; my guess is someone held something containing those blue fibers over her mouth. She'd already been beaten up pretty bad, probably too weak to fight back."
"Thanks Doc." Grissom picked up their evidence and life. Sara paused for a moment at the doorway before continuing. "Are you sure you're okay on this case?"
"Griss, I'm fine. I, I just don't like this." She told him weakly, putting on a fake smile.
They met Catherine at the lab. The fiber from the window matched fibers from the sweater, but as Catherine pointed out Abbott would just argue that it could have gotten there at any time. Luckily the fibers from her mouth would give them something to work with, if they matched it would show that Abbott had suffocated his girlfriend.
While they waited for their results Catherine, Grissom and Sara made their way to the break room. They had barely sat down when Sara's cell phone went off. She moved across the room and answered it.
"Hello? Oh, hi Will." Catherine mouthed 'Will?' at Grissom. He shrugged his shoulders. "Yes. No Jasmine told me earlier. She phoned. I'm okay. I know. There's that, and he doesn't know I'm here." Grissom's ears pricked up and he recalled her earlier conversation when she'd mentioned the words 'dangerous' and 'restraining order'. "Look. Well, can I call you when I get home? Yeah, I'm at work, on a case. Yeah, thanks. You too."
There was a brief silence when Sara resumed her seat at the table, she looked down and fiddled with her phone, feeling her older colleagues eyes on the top of her head.
"Will?" Catherine asked, breaking the silence.
"My brother." Sara replied, finally looking up. Her cheeks with flushed but the rest of her face was pale. She looked a little nervous about something. Grissom opened his mouth to speak but a chorus of pagers going off interrupted him. Their evidence was done.
At the lab Greg had already lined up the fibers under the comparison microscope. Catherine grabbed it and stared down the lense.
"A match." She exclaimed.
"DNA from hair, semen and Abbott match too." He said handing Grissom the sheets. Sara read them over his shoulder.
"Damn! I knew it." She murmured through gritted teeth. She turned and left the lab. Greg watched her go. "What's up with Sara?"
"It's a tough case. She's. she'll be okay." Grissom told him. "Looks like we need to speak to Mr Abbott."
Catherine entered the break room to see Sara sat alone in the corner. "Do you need a lift home?" She asked. Sara didn't answer. "Sara, you okay?"
"Huh? I'm fine. Is the shift over? You got him, right? Abbott I mean."
"Yeah, we got him. Sara, are you sure that you're okay?"
"Yeah. Perfect. Just. I'm. Oh, never mind." Sara stuttered. There were few people in her life that she could open up to. Catherine definitely wasn't one of those people. Not looking back, she left the room.
Once in her car it took her a few minutes to regain her composure. This had been a long, hard night. The next would be better. The sooner she got home, the sooner she could enter what counted for sleep in her world.
Don't worry it gets better. Hopefully I should have the next chapter posted soon. Please read this and let me know what you think of it. Also I don't own these characters, they aren't mine. I'm just borrowing them because I'm too lazy to think up some of my own. Thanks.
Chapter One
"Didn't I tell you?" Sara crowed as she and Warrick stood outside the interrogation room.
"Yeah, well." Warrick replied. He noticed Grissom walking down the corridor towards them; he was absent-mindedly flipping through some papers. "Hey man." Grissom looked up and registered the expression on Sara's face before talking. "You look happy."
"Just cracked a case." She beamed. "We had the guy in there for all of five minutes before he confessed. Warrick didn't think he would." Sara gloated playfully.
"Yeah and all it took was some 'gentle persuasion' on Sara's part." Warrick grinned, ignoring the dagger-sharp looks Sara was throwing at him. Grissom smiled, he knew all about Sara's method of 'gentle persuasion'. "Oh yeah." Sara sensed that the conversation was turning against her. "Are you having breakfast?" She casually tossed the question into the air. When her two male colleagues replied in the affirmative she beamed broadly, turn to Warrick and grinned. "I told you so." Then she turned on her heel and marched off down the corridor, leaving Grissom and a rather bemused Warrick staring after her.
Later that week Grissom found Sara in the break room. She was looking through an old journal; obviously she was totally engrossed in her article because she didn't look up when he entered.
"Coffee?" He offered, by way of a conversation starter. Sara didn't answer but held up her cup to show him that she was set. "I thought I sent you and Catherine home. I said I'd call you if anything came up."
"Yeah. well, you never know when some thing's gonna happen." Sara put down her journal.
"That's why you have a cell phone and a pager." Grissom tried. He wished he hadn't, Sara shot him a dirty look. "Umm. anyway, what are you reading?"
"Nothing really." Sara replied, quickly shutting the journal as Grissom sat down at the table. "Can I help you?" Her tone made Grissom look up. "I was just wondering what you were looking at." He replied weakly. He always felt awkward talking to Sara, especially when it wasn't about a case. Luckily he was saved from further embarrassment by a page from Greg; his lab results were back.
Shortly after he had left Sara drained the last of the cold, bitter dregs from her cup, rinsed it out and headed for home. It wasn't until she was two-thirds of the way there that she realized that she'd left her journal on the table.
Grissom noticed the journal lying on the break room table as he stopped in to wash out his mug. Curiously he picked it up and flipped through a few pages. A small piece of paper marked the article he assumed Sara had been reading - something about photographing evidence. On the next page the paper was a little creased, as if the article had been repeatedly read and turned to. It gave the account of a case involving a young woman who had been beaten and how the evidence had originally been misread, allowing her attacker to go free. Seemed like something Sara would read, Grissom replaced the journal and slowly made his way to his car, not giving another thought to the matter.
The following evening the team gathered in the break room, awaiting their cases. As Grissom entered the room Sara's cell phone rang, she promptly apologized and excused herself.
"Okay. Nick, Warrick, you're still on your hit and run down on the strip. Your victim's at Desert Palms' should be up to talking now. We've got a tough one tonight. Young woman found beaten in her apartment." He handed out the sheets of paper containing their case details. Catherine, a word?"
Nick and Warrick left exchanging furtive glances at one another.
"Keep an eye on Sara for this one. I know she gets involved with all her cases, in one way or another, but I don't want her getting," he paused, searching for the right word. "Emotional." Catherine nodded and made her way out, Grissom meanwhile stood in the doorway waiting for Sara to return so that he could fill her in on the details. He could just make snippets of conversation coming from her and although he wasn't eavesdropping he couldn't help but make out words like 'dangerous' and 'restraining order'. Sara glanced up at him a couple of times and he was nervous that she would think he was trying to listen in. Leaving the door he quickly took a seat inside the break room.
When Sara came in she looked a little flustered.
"Okay?" Grissom asked cautiously.
"Yeah." She replied quietly and took her notes. "Let's go."
Once at the scene Grissom doled out jobs, Sara was taking the photographs. Grissom stood behind her as she examined the body.
"She took a real beating," Sara noted, Grissom could hear the wobble in her voice. "She bit her nails, almost down to the cuticles, no hope of getting her attacker's DNA from there. Hang on." Sara noticed some dark hair caught in the victims ring. "Not her hair color, she's blonde." She decided moving out of the way so that she could bag it.
Catherine was standing in the hallway with Brass and a couple of police officers listening to the boyfriend, Daniel Abbott, giving his statement. "It's so wrong. Why would anyone want to hurt her? God! We had an argument and I told her I needed some fresh air. If we hadn't fought. if I hadn't left her. this can't be happening."
Sara looked up from photographing the young woman to see Catherine comforting the boyfriend in the hallway. "I'm gonna get him." Sara promised the corpse.
Grissom noticed her talking to the corpse. It worried him when she did that; it was a sure sign that she was going to get too personally involved. He tried to push the thought from his mind and went back to dusting for prints along the open window to the fire escape. 'I could have pulled Nick or Warrick from their case.' He thought, noticing a fiber hooked onto a piece of splintered wood. 'She would have suspected though. She's not stupid.' He bagged his newly found evidence. 'No, avoiding it won't help. We just have to wrap this case up as quickly as possible.' He concluded eventually as Sara got up and made her way towards him.
"Whatcha got?" She asked. Grissom held up the bag. "Blue fiber. From our attacker?" Grissom nodded but didn't look at her; he was staring at the window frame. The outside was dusty. "If our attacker used this as the way in or out the dust should have been disturbed." Sara didn't speak. She was calculating something. Carefully she took Grissom's bagged blue fiber and then moved to pick up the hairs she had found earlier. "Vic's blonde." She murmured. "These are black." Grissom watched as Sara stood by the doorway examining both samples, holding them up to the light to get a better look at them. Sara stopped focusing on the evidence and looked straight ahead of her and then walked straight into the corridor.
"I should have gone after him or something, but Jessica was just there up against the wall. She wouldn't move. I let him get away, didn't I? I should have gone down the fire escape after him." Catherine did her best to comfort the man. He wiped away a few tears.
Grissom watched as Sara stalked into the hallway, suddenly he caught up with what she was thinking. Daniel Abbott had black hair and he was wearing a blue sweater. He didn't need to guess what Sara was going to do and so he hurried out of the apartment after her.
"You did this. Didn't you?" Sara yelled walking towards where Daniel was standing with Catherine and the assorted members of law enforcement. A confused look spread across Catherine's face as Sara drew closer. Grissom promptly grabbed both of her wrists from behind. "Don't do this Sara." He told her firmly, she flinched as he turned her around and half- dragged, half-led her back into the apartment. Sara had tears of frustration in her eyes and she pushed some loose hair away from her face. Grissom looked at her for a moment, she was expecting him to say something. Instead he simply laid a calming hand on her shoulder as he made his way past her and out of the apartment to inform Abbott that he was a suspect in their murder investigation.
"She's been in an abusive relationship for some time." Al Robbins moved to show Grissom and Sara the X-rays. Grissom felt Sara tense beside him. "Multiple rib fractures, at varying stages of healing. Pulled her medical records as well, been into hospital three times in the past two months; broken wrist, a sprained ankle and a miscarriage." He pulled back the sheet to reveal a plethora of bruises. "Varying stages of healing." He pointed out the differences in color between the old, yellow, bruises and the new, angry red ones. "Help me turn her." They turned her over to reveal more bruises and some unusual marks on her back. Like the rest of her bruises these small wounds were at varying stages of healing. Sara didn't miss a beat. "Cigarette burns." Grissom looked at Al for confirmation and he nodded. "I did a sexual assault kit on her. She'd been raped." He sighed. "Couldn't get any DNA from her nails, but I did find some blue fibers in her mouth. Cause of death was suffocation; my guess is someone held something containing those blue fibers over her mouth. She'd already been beaten up pretty bad, probably too weak to fight back."
"Thanks Doc." Grissom picked up their evidence and life. Sara paused for a moment at the doorway before continuing. "Are you sure you're okay on this case?"
"Griss, I'm fine. I, I just don't like this." She told him weakly, putting on a fake smile.
They met Catherine at the lab. The fiber from the window matched fibers from the sweater, but as Catherine pointed out Abbott would just argue that it could have gotten there at any time. Luckily the fibers from her mouth would give them something to work with, if they matched it would show that Abbott had suffocated his girlfriend.
While they waited for their results Catherine, Grissom and Sara made their way to the break room. They had barely sat down when Sara's cell phone went off. She moved across the room and answered it.
"Hello? Oh, hi Will." Catherine mouthed 'Will?' at Grissom. He shrugged his shoulders. "Yes. No Jasmine told me earlier. She phoned. I'm okay. I know. There's that, and he doesn't know I'm here." Grissom's ears pricked up and he recalled her earlier conversation when she'd mentioned the words 'dangerous' and 'restraining order'. "Look. Well, can I call you when I get home? Yeah, I'm at work, on a case. Yeah, thanks. You too."
There was a brief silence when Sara resumed her seat at the table, she looked down and fiddled with her phone, feeling her older colleagues eyes on the top of her head.
"Will?" Catherine asked, breaking the silence.
"My brother." Sara replied, finally looking up. Her cheeks with flushed but the rest of her face was pale. She looked a little nervous about something. Grissom opened his mouth to speak but a chorus of pagers going off interrupted him. Their evidence was done.
At the lab Greg had already lined up the fibers under the comparison microscope. Catherine grabbed it and stared down the lense.
"A match." She exclaimed.
"DNA from hair, semen and Abbott match too." He said handing Grissom the sheets. Sara read them over his shoulder.
"Damn! I knew it." She murmured through gritted teeth. She turned and left the lab. Greg watched her go. "What's up with Sara?"
"It's a tough case. She's. she'll be okay." Grissom told him. "Looks like we need to speak to Mr Abbott."
Catherine entered the break room to see Sara sat alone in the corner. "Do you need a lift home?" She asked. Sara didn't answer. "Sara, you okay?"
"Huh? I'm fine. Is the shift over? You got him, right? Abbott I mean."
"Yeah, we got him. Sara, are you sure that you're okay?"
"Yeah. Perfect. Just. I'm. Oh, never mind." Sara stuttered. There were few people in her life that she could open up to. Catherine definitely wasn't one of those people. Not looking back, she left the room.
Once in her car it took her a few minutes to regain her composure. This had been a long, hard night. The next would be better. The sooner she got home, the sooner she could enter what counted for sleep in her world.
Don't worry it gets better. Hopefully I should have the next chapter posted soon. Please read this and let me know what you think of it. Also I don't own these characters, they aren't mine. I'm just borrowing them because I'm too lazy to think up some of my own. Thanks.