Title: Cold Cases Revisited
Summary: Mysterious messages are being sent to Catherine at the lab. Could these be the clues she needs to finally help her solve the murders of her best friend and ex-husband?
Rating: T
Pairings: Probably going to be Grillows
A/N: Um, if I confuse you with when exactly this would be taking place I'm sorry. For the purpose of this fic, everyone will be one team working together on the graveyard shift. And Lindsey is a teenager by now, or at least a pre-teen. And somehow Catherine has her own office. This is my first CSI fic, so reviews would be extremely helpful! I hope you enjoy it!
Disclaimer: I do not own CSI or any of its characters
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Catherine Willows sat in her office sorting though the enormous pile of mail on her desk. She tossed a couple of envelopes aside one after another until she suddenly stopped, a curious look adorning her face. In her hand she held one suspicious looking letter without a return address.
Catherine sat up straighter in her chair and examined the letter with intrigue as she flipped it over and unsealed it apprehensively. She turned it over and let the contents spill out onto the table in front of her before picking up the contents and starring at them mystified.
There were three photographs. One was of her best friend from when she was an exotic dancer; the other was of her ex-husband. She stared at Eddie and Stephanie's photos curiously and soon realized that she hadn't looked at the other picture. She picked it up and became even more confused when she found herself staring at a picture of …herself.
The crime scene investigator in her taking over, she turned it over to examine it more carefully in search for any clues as to what this was supposed to mean. There was only a single word scrawled on the back in a neat cursive script. She read it silently to herself. 'You'
'Well what is that supposed to mean?' Catherine thought to herself. 'It is a picture of me.'
She decided to do the same to the other pictures and turned them over to find that they also had words scrawled on them as well, in the same neat cursive script as the other.
They contained the words 'are' and 'next'. She quickly combined the individual words together in her head. The message was clear. 'You are next.'
A sudden knock at her door startled her out of her thoughts and she hastily shoved the pictures back into the envelope and put it safely in the top right drawer of her desk.
"Come in!" she called to whoever was at the other end of the door. The door opened and Catherine smiled up at Nick. "Hey!" she greeted.
"Hey!" replied Nick in response, "Grissom's handing out assignments," he said, gesturing towards the break room with his left hand.
"Okay, I'll be right there." Catherine watched Nick shut the door behind him as he headed towards the break room. She looked down at the drawer which contained the mysterious message and sighed. 'Well, time to get to work.' she told herself and headed after Nick down the corridors of the lab, pushing all thoughts related to the past five minutes out of her head.
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She had tried to focus all of her attention on the evidence laid out neatly in front of her on the long table, but she was having difficulty concentrating on anything but that message. At the crime scene she had collected evidence without thought, taking photographs of anything and everything. She wasn't paying attention to the little things around her like she usually did. The little things that could break a case. Thinking about it now, she didn't even remember what the house had even looked like. Luckily she was working with Sara, so she didn't have to worry about her missing anything.
'Speak of the devil,' thought Catherine, as Sara strode into the room.
"Anything interesting?" asked Sara, looking along the length of the table at the evidence.
Catherine didn't know how to respond to that. She had been in that room for almost twenty minutes, yet she hadn't even begun to analyze the evidence right in front of her face. "Uh, not yet…" she took her gloves off with a snap. "I'm gonna go get some coffee." Sara responded with only a nod of her head and something that resembled an 'uh huh', her head never lifting up from the evidence on the table.
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Catherine flopped down on the couch in the break room and rested her head against the back of the coach, exhausted. She caught sight of the clock on the wall and read the time. Her shift ended in five minutes. She decided that she wasn't going to get anything productive done in the next five minutes and paged Sara to tell her that she was headed home.
She made it to the front doors, but was stopped by the calling of her name from someone at the reception area. She walked up to the counter.
"This came for you." said the lady cheerily as she handed Catherine an envelope without a return address.
Catherine's eyes widened, "Who gave this to you?" she asked.
The lady shrugged her shoulders slightly. "I don't know. It was just here when I came back from my lunch break."
Catherine didn't respond and pocketed the envelope. She would open it when she got home.
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Catherine closed and locked the door to her home before sitting down on her living room sofa. She leaned over her coffee table and opened the envelope, once again watching as the contents spilled out in front of her. This time there were no pictures. Only a necklace.
She picked it up hesitantly and held it in her palm as she examined it closely. After she had memorized the emblem hanging off of the silver chain she put it back in its envelope. She had never seen that symbol before and it didn't bring any memories back to her. 'So what does it mean?' she thought desperately as she stood up and decided to go to bed before she passed out from exhaustion.
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The shrill ringing of her phone awoke her and she reached blindly for it in the darkness of her room.
"Willows." she answered a bit groggily.
It was Grissom. He needed her at a crime scene.
"I'm already on a case." she informed him. He told her that it was taken care of and he had gotten Warrick to work the case with Sara. Catherine was about to protest, but before she could, he explained that there was an exponential amount of blood spatter and he needed her there to work it with him. She agreed and hung up the phone, shoving her face back into the softness of her pillow before forcing herself to get up.
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Catherine pulled up to the crime scene fifteen minutes late. Grissom had woken her up pretty early compared to when she usually woke up. Even if working the graveyard shift meant that she woke up around the same time some people went to bed. So early in fact, that she had time to see her daughter off to school, something she hadn't been able to do in a long time.
Her daughter had missed the bus that morning and she had to drive Lindsey to school herself, which just so happened to be inconveniently located in the opposite direction of the crime scene. While that should have been something to be glad for, instead she would have preferred on this particular day to have someone commit murder a little closer to the school. At least until Lindsey could get her license.
She pulled up about a block away from the crime scene and got out of the car. She made her way instinctively over to the rear of the car and opened up the back to retrieve her kit. After grabbing that, she shut the door and made sure everything was locked before making her was hurriedly over to the yellow crime tape. As she neared the crime scene, she took in everything around her. The buildings were tall and close together, definitely a place you wouldn't want to be walking around in at night, especially with the lack of street lights. She ducked under the crime tape and entered into an alley. It was so narrow she could barely make out the figure of the corpse on the ground beside Grissom.
Grissom tuned around slowly upon hearing Catherine's familiar footsteps and went back to observing the body. Catherine was surprised when Grissom didn't comment on her tardiness, but instead kneeled down beside the body. "She's been here a while." commented Grissom.
Catherine took a step closer to get a better look and grimaced at the smell. Not only was the body sprawled out in front of an overflowing dumpster, but there were flies and other bugs crawling all over the body, in and out of the various lacerations and cuts running up and down the entire length of her body.
He was right about the blood spatter. Almost the entire length of the alley walls were covered in blood. Different forms of spatter and blood drops were on the ground all around them. As Grissom collected one of the bugs and placed it gently in a jar, Catherine took an even closer look at the body. She examined the body with here eyes, starting from her feet and working her way up. She had no shoes on, and judging by the skin, or lack there of on the bottom of her feet she had been running away from something or someone for quite a long ways. Her legs seemed almost dislocated, but they would have to wait to see what damage was actually done to this person in the coroner's report. She glanced over the upper body quickly, which seemed to be okay, as far as a dead body's torso could be, and gazed at something around the victim's neck.
It was the same necklace she had been sent the night before.
Catherine froze and stood up abruptly. Her unexpected movement caught Grissom's attention and he tilted his head up to look at her. "What's wrong?" asked Grissom. Catherine said nothing as her breathing became irregular and she took a couple of uncontrolled steps backwards. The look of dread on her face was something Grissom had never seen on her before and he got up to stand next to her. Before he could do anything to calm her down, Catherine turned around and left the alley hurriedly. Grissom went after her and found her leaning on a wall just around the corner. "Are you okay?" asked Grissom as he put his hand comfortingly on her shoulder. Catherine looked up from the ground to look him into his eyes.
"Yeah," she replied unconvincingly, "Everything's fine."
Grissom had never seen Catherine react this way at a crime scene before. Even when she first started, and it made him feel a little uneasy. "How about I collect the rest of the evidence and meet you back at the Lab," reasoned Grissom. "I'm almost done anyway." Catherine simply nodded her head and walked slowly back to the Denali. Grissom watched her for a while and then turned back towards the crime scene to finish the job on his own.
Catherine made it to the car and went to open the door when she felt a cold hand come up and cover her mouth. She jumped in surprise and elbowed her attacker in the head, putting all her weight into it. He faltered back slightly before lunging at her full force, knocking her against the Denali, and before she knew it a soft cloth was being pressed tightly against her nose and mouth. She had no time to react as her body relaxed and her world turned black.
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A/N: Okay! So what do you think? Good? Bad? It's been awhile since I've even read a fic for CSI, so I'm a little rusty when it comes to this show, but I still love it. Keep me motivated and leave a review. Anonymous reviews enabled as well!