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The Ice Man Cometh
The beer was warm; she knew she should have refrigerated it as soon as she had returned to her apartment from the store. Even in the depth of winter in Las Vegas a warm sun prevailed, on days leaving a sticky humidity in rooms and bringing sweat to the foreheads of children playing outside in the street. Still, Sara Sidle often found herself surprised at the extent of the desert climate in the area, even five years after her move to Nevada. The six-pack had only been on the bench for half an hour, tops.
Sara sighed, flipping the top of one of the bottles and chucking the other five into the fridge, which was noticeably bare; she closed the refrigerator door with the heel of her foot and made her way to the sofa, sinking into the plush cushioning with a deep sigh and a certain relief.
Switching the TV on she made a fruitless effort to concentrate on the mindless infomercials on the screen, but it was futile, her head was too full of more pressing matters. She brought her hand up to her temple and massaged it, trying to organise the thoughts as they stormed about in her head.
It wasn't as if she couldn't handle her work or even in that case separate her personal life from her professional one. But the lines blurred somewhere along the line, maybe it was the amount of alcohol she knew she was consuming of recent times, maybe it was the fact that every time she slept she knew she'd wake up in a sweat jolted out of subconscious fears by nothingness. She hated nothingness. Waking up every day to an empty apartment and quiet rooms, and nothing there to get rid of those fears. The fact that it was daylight may have helped, she was saved the skin crawling terror as she fumbled for the light like in the days after her move into fostering. But empty houses, even in daylight, had an eerie haunt to them. At least, hers did.
And the thoughts, the emotions, rampaging around and never getting out – Sara knew she was headed for disaster. Starting with finishing this bottle. She took a swig, and grimaced. The beer was in no way as heavy as she needed. Sara left the beer bottle on the table and headed for the alcohol cupboard, drawing out a bottle of rum, and pouring two parts into a glass followed by two parts of diet coke. Taking a hit, she closed her eyes as the rum burned its way down the back of her throat, and she revelled in the aftertaste, so dizzyingly strong.
Returning once more to the sofa she lay back and kicked off her shoes, finishing both glass of liquor and bottle of beer, and sinking into a light sleep. With that night off shift, she had two days to melt away.
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When she woke it was not from a nightmare but instead the insistent ringing of her phone. Her living area was dimly lit, a familiar orange colour soaking over the furniture. The Las Vegas sun was setting.
A long, lanky arm swung over to her bedside table where her phone buzzed, jumping around on the wooden tabletop as if it were a flea in a fit, and she shifted up on her elbows to answer it.
"Sidle."
"Sara?" Well, that voice woke her up. But who else had she expected it to be other than Gil Grissom?
"S'me."
"Uh, Sara, I know it's your night off, but we've had another case come up and Graveyard is short of CSI's-" Damn. Why did she still feel so drunk?
Sara contemplated, for the shortest amount of time, telling him that she was unwell. Going into work almost drunk after her DUI was not going to be a good look, especially to the man on the other end of the phone.
"I'll be right there."
Why, she wondered as she pulled on her jeans and some dark sunglasses and picked up some cough lozenges on the way out the door, do I have to be such a workaholic?
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"So here we have Lasland, referred to by that name to avoid confusion with Lapland, the lap dancing sensation down on Sahara …because nobody would want to stray in there," Brass shot Warrick a sly grin, turning on his heel to face his colleagues when they had reached the body. "And here, folks, is Santa Claus."
Jim Brass, Warrick Brown, and Sara Sidle had come to a stop in front of the body of an overweight man wearing the full red and white get-up. His beard was askew revealing a black stubble and grimacing young lips, his eyes wide and lifelessly staring upwards towards the icy apex of the cavern ceiling, and in his chest was a deep, bloody hole the width of a hi ball glass. Sara turned her head to look at his face horizontally.
"Christmas is over, apparently." She drawled, thoughtfully.
Warrick sniggered, "Tchyah." He knelt down by the victim to take a look at the wound.
"How long has this guy been out?"
David looked up at the CSI on being addressed, checked the reading again and then turned back to him. "Over 24 hours. The average temperature here in the dome is about 23 degrees Farhenheit, so it's hard to tell."
"Thanks, David." He acknowledged the coroner and squatted by the body, taking a closer look at the wound. Jim Brass wasn't going to stick around for the psychobabble.
"Okay, Guys, I've been coping with some very traumatised Santa's Elves tonight so if you'd be so kind to do your magic, after this I'm going to take a small coffee break."
"Donut run, Jim?"
"Ha, ha." Jim replied in a snarky tone, walking off in the direction of the exit, and Warrick spoke up after doing a once over of the body. He noticed a small liquid patch on the man's crotch.
"Hey, Sara? I think we got some vaginal discharge here." Warrick said, not looking up, removing a swab from his kit as he did so. Sara made a face.
"You are kidding."
"Looks like Jolly Old Saint Nick didn't just hit it off with the kids," he grimaced, looking up to her.
"Sounds great," Sara grimaced, "I think I'm going to take the perimeter on this one."
"It's your funeral."
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"Did you know that Saint Nicholas' jacket was originally green, not red?" Dr. Robbins shifted a tray of instruments across to the autopsy table andd then looked over the body to Grissom. "Coca-cola changed it to red as a marketing strategy; and it just seems to have stuck."
"What are we talking about here?"
"Coke."
"Al, it's too early for riddles." Gil said, beginning to get exasperated. "Whatd'ya got?"
"Look up his nose."
Grissom complied, and raised his eyebrows at what he found. "The cartilage separating his nostrils is receding."
"Septum nasi, it's called. Chronic intranasal usage of crack cocaine degrades it, sometimes even making it disappear entirely. Not only that, but this guy has the 'itchies'."
"Huh?"
"A lot of junkies have uneven patches of skin, caused by scratching – scabs, flaky epidermis, etcetera. It's common to itch a lot during usage."
"And you know this, how?"
"It's amazing how much you learn on the NDPA seminars." Dr. Robbins gave his colleague a satisfied grin, and then continued. "Anyway, I sent a urine sample off to Greg – it came back negative."
"Oh?" Grissom's eyebrows were disappearing into his hairline.
"Not only that, but I tested his hair and all of it is clear; all except halfway down."
"So, if average hair growth is 6mm a week…how long is his hair?"
"2 inches."
"In imperial?"
"5 centimetres?"
"Alright. So this guy hasn't been using for roughly…" Grissom paused, calculating. "5 weeks."
Doc Robbins nodded. "I'd say so."
"Thanks, doc."
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"I thought you were swamped?"
Gil Grissom was working over the autopsy notes in context to the crime scene drawing he had collected from Warrick, and looked up to see Sara Sidle leaning in the doorjamb of his office. "We slammed three cases in two nights."
Her raised eyebrows didn't seem to denote an expression of impression. Rathermore a cynical surprise. "Personal Record?" Gil replied with one of 'those' looks and returned to his work. Sara shrugged. "Well, I didn't come in here just for the purpose of disturbing you, just so you know. Our vic was a guy named Liam Jerome, and apparently Santa wasn't his first get-up."
Grissom looked up at her again, gesturing for her to take a seat. "I'm listening…"
"He has three previous jobs all involving dressing up as mascots for kids. First job was as a Chipmunk in Anaheim – three guesses to where in Anaheim you'd dress up as a Chipmunk."
"Thunder mountain. Everybody knows Disney's Grand Adventures," He threw her a smug half-grin. "'Speshly me."
Sara returned the grin. "I thought so." She returned to the file, and then brought up another name. "Next was a mascot for a San Francisco Baseball team. Not the Giants."
"You know the Giants?"
"No, I googled the team. Baseball may be a 'beautiful game', but I'm more for chess."
"And you lived in San Francisco…"
Sara ignored the gibe and moved on. "Either way, the guy obviously liked kids. A lot." On his questioning lifted eyebrow, she added, "Doc Robbins told me he found split ends. Split ends that Herbal Essences won't stop…"
She let the statement settle, an underlying scientific message that both of them had encountered before on cases involving sexual deviants. Grissom narrowed his eyes at her pensively. "Maybe he liked kids a lot more than normal."
She nodded in acquiesce. "It's possible."
"This could be a good motive for somebody to stab him in the chest. But again, so could being a born-again addict. So, on the third day of christmas my true love gave to me: two b-story motives, a frozen corpse in an ice dome. And twelve Santa's elves." Gil quipped, as Sara nodded, half of her mind beginning to notice the dull headache developing in the core of her skull and slowly working its way behind her eyes. Wearily, she shared an ironic smile with him and then stood, asking the rhetorical question he'd left her to ask;
"So, where does that leave us?"