Through the Eyes of Another
Chapter 1
Disclaimer: The usual thing, I own nothing. I have no money, if I'd thought this up first maybe I would. then again I'd have been like thirteen then so no one would have listened to me anyway.
Synopsis: Basically Sara sees things through Grissom's eyes (or hears things through his ears) when an accident causes her to lose her hearing.
Grissom stood in the doorway of the break room. Inside were Catherine, Nick and Warrick. For a moment he wondered where Sara was, then he remembered. It was her night off. He'd told her last week she had to take at least one night off, that she was running herself into the ground. His head ached. Maybe he should follow his own advice.
Everyone inside the break room looked half asleep. A fire at a casino off the strip had driven away most of the tourists, the weather was horribly hot, people were staying in, cases per week had almost halved. Almost.
"Warrick. Nick." Grissom's voice caused the assembled group to look up. "You've got a break-in. Catherine, you're with me." He told them handing sheets of paper round. Even in the cool, light, air-conditioned building it was too hot to get much of a response out of the group. Nick muttered something under his breath and pushed out his chair. Warrick followed him out of the room.
"Have fun." Catherine called after them, knowing that moments before Grissom had entered Nick had revealed that if Grissom produced another breaking-and-entering for them Nick would personally see to it that the phrase got a new meaning. She turned to Grissom, "What've we got, boss?" He handed her a sheet of paper. "A threatening phone call! Is this a joke?"
"Catherine, I don't joke." He told her sternly, but when Catherine looked up she could see a sparkle in his eye. "The police received a phone call saying that one of their squad cars was going to blow up. All the cars have been checked, none of them are carrying bombs, or any kind of explosives, but they want us to look into it."
"Let me guess, the tip-off came from a pre-paid cell phone?"
"It appears so, Brass is looking into it."
"Well. better get started then."
Catherine knew that Grissom didn't have to sit in with her as Archie played, and re-played the recording from the phone call looking for any background noise that might suggest where the call was made from. She knew that he had plenty of paperwork that he could have been doing. Despite this she knew that the real reason that he was sitting in with her listening to the recording was because he could.
'Las Vegas Police Department.'
'One of your cars is going to blow up.'
'I beg your pardon!'
'One of your cars is going to blow up. This is a warning.'
'Excuse me sir, can I -'
'I am warning you. Ignore this and people may die. One of your cars is going to blow up.'
They had listened to it several times already. They could hear a slight echo in the background; maybe the caller had been in a hall of some kind, or an empty room. The voice had obviously been distorted, they'd see to fixing that later, at the moment they needed something to help them figure out where the call had been made from. "Go back to the beginning." Grissom instructed, looking thoughtful. It began to play for the third time. "Right, stop now. No go back a bit. There. Stop. What was that?" Catherine looked up. "Can you make it louder?" She asked. She'd barely heard the faint noise. "What is that?"
The little lines on the monitor danced up and down and a gushing noise could be heard, louder now. "Where do you get running water and an echo?" Grissom asked. Catherine raised an eyebrow. "A bathroom." She suggested after a moment of thought. "He made the call from a bathroom."
"And if someone else was running the water then someone else could have heard our caller. Public restroom, possibly?"
"Archie, take out the voices, just play the background." Catherine told him, they'd done this already but now she had more hope of finding something. Archie did as he was instructed. "Take out the water too."
Grissom watched her wondering what she was thinking of, then as it played again it dawned on him. The water had been used to cover up the voice of someone speaking in the background, the voice sounded distant, but they were announcing something, the name of a bar or club perhaps?
'. know it's the best place, welcome to Rain -'
"I think that someone just told us where the phone call was made from. They must have run the water once they realized that the DJ or whoever was about to give away the location." Grissom said sitting back in his chair. Catherine stood up. "I'll go find Brass. He can check out all the bars, clubs and discos with Rain in their name. Maybe we'll find one which matches." Grissom got up too, after asking Archie to run a reverse algorithm on the recording and pull out the voice of the DJ speaking in the background he left, giving the young technician instructions to find him as soon as all was done.
Sara was sitting on the floor of her new apartment; there were boxes all around her. She was trying to remember why she had decided to move and why it had to be the hottest month of the year when she decided to do so. This apartment was bigger, that was true, it was also closer to work and in a better area. It had been a spur of the moment thing. One day she'd been driving home from work, had a craving for some ice cream so stopped into the all night mini-mart round the corner from the lab. Next door to it was an estate agents and she just happened to spot the place in the window. Within a week she'd packed up and left her old home and now she was here. She kept on telling herself over and over again that the spare room was the perfect place to use as an office, she could have a computer and all her forensics books in there and that the extra space meant that she could get some new furniture, but part of her missed the tidily cluttered feel of her old apartment.
She sighed, got up, picked her way through the boxes (since when had she had so many clothes) and found her way into the kitchen. Her fridge hadn't survived the move, it no longer was able to keep things cool and the new one wouldn't be delivered for another week. This meant that anything that she bought had to either be stored in the freezer or consumed as quickly as possible. Standing on the counter beside the sink was a cool- box. It wasn't actually hers, it was Hank's, it had been in her car when they came back from the vineyard when Grissom called her in on her day off, it had never actually made it's way back to Hank after that. She reached in and pulled out a semi-cool carton of orange juice, just as her phone rang.
"Sara Sidle?" She asked checking her watch, who was calling her at this time?
"Sara. I know it's your day off. Catherine's had to go, Lindsey's sick."
"Grissom? Oh. Okay. I'll be there in a bit." She told him before hanging up. She had to smile at the irony of it all. Maybe the cool-box was cursed.
Catherine felt a little guilty about having to leave work. She also felt guilty about leaving Lindsey with the sitter. She'd known that she hadn't been feeling well. But the night was slow, unless something really big came in, no one would miss her. Grissom didn't even need to call in Sara to help him on the odd case they'd been stuck with.
At home Lindsey was in bed feeling really sorry for herself. Catherine once again scolded herself for leaving the little girl at home without her as the child hugged her mother and cried that her head hurt. It wasn't serious, just a stomach bug, half the kids in Lindsey's class had it. By tomorrow the worst of it would be over and by the end of the week her daughter would be back at school. All the same, she had a feeling that something important was going to happen with their case and that she was going to miss it.
When Catherine had told him that she would have to leave Grissom thought nothing of it. Nick and Warrick were working their case, in fact, they were interviewing a suspect at that very moment. Brass was still making inquiries into the club that the call was made from and soon Grissom would be required to go and check out the club for any evidence of their mystery caller. He did not relish the thought of having to go and search through a public bathroom for clues as to the person (or more likely people) who had made the threatening phone call.
The pile of paperwork on his desk was virtually non-existent. He'd worked through most of it that week and there was really nothing left for him to do. Sighing, he got up from his desk and made his way to the break room. It was empty, no sign of anyone else. Looking along the corridor he could see Greg bent over his microscope and occasionally looking up to talk to someone just out of view. Apart from that one tiny movement, the place was deserted. He made himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table, flicking through a forensics journal that someone had left there, it was about six months old and he found himself resisting the urge to make corrections to a theory which had since been proved false.
He couldn't help but think of Sara. She'd moved house, he knew that because she'd had Nick and Warrick helping her move furniture. He'd had Nick tell him about her place and actually found himself hoping that she'd have some sort of house warming, he wanted to know what her new place was like. If it hadn't been for Nick and Warrick he probably wouldn't have found out until some form came his way with her new address on it. He missed their old ways, things had been easy between them, but now conversation was no longer simple and the old jokes were forgotten.
"Gil. Got your club." Brass told him as he entered the room. He checked a sheet of paper and continued. "It's a Rainbow Express. Owned by Mr. Raulez." He gave details of the location and started to leave the room. Grissom made up his mind. "You coming?" Brass asked, turning back when he realized that Grissom wasn't following him.
"I have to phone Sara." Brass looked at him questioningly. "I'm still not sure where the call was made from, it's probably a restroom, but it could be a staff room or a kitchen. I'm not processing the entire thing myself. Catherine had to go home." He shrugged as he moved past Brass and headed away down the corridor.
Sara arrived at the club. It had been taped off although chances were whatever evidence had been inside had been destroyed by the clubbers. Since the voice on the tape had been male it made sense to check the men's bathroom, nobody had said anything about seeing a man using the women's restroom. They each took a bathroom and checked it out. Since the time of the phone call she estimated that approximately thirty or forty men had passed through the bathroom, at least that many. Despite its uselessness prints had to be taken from all the male patrons and prints had to be lifted from the flush handles and taps. It took best part of an hour to process the room, which yielded next to nothing. Grissom seemed more hopeful of finding something and even went so far as to have the toilets checked in case the cell phone that the call had been made from had been flushed. It hadn't.
Sara began taking the evidence back to the cars. Greg was not going to be happy about having to go through all this. Brass was in the club talking to the owner, apparently it was not uncommon to have people making phone calls in the restrooms, the noise from the club made it impossible to hear. As she left Sara noted that the walls were tastelessly painted in gaudy, bright colors. Obviously the walls were part of a general gimmick going on with the name. In the dark she supposed they probably looked okay but with the bright lights on the whole place appeared tacky and dirty. She continued her journey out to the car. Opened the trunk, heaved a box of evidence into place, slammed the door and turned back towards the club. Grissom was coming out carrying his field kit and another, smaller, box of evidence. Then something odd happened. She saw a huge flash out of the corner of her eye, in a moment she heard a loud noise, a 'Whoosh!' combined with someone dropping a load of crockery. She felt a pain in her neck as a force she'd never felt before threw her to the ground, and then all she heard was silence.
TBC
I'd love to hear what you think of it so far. At the moment I'm not sure how it's going to end, but your feedback will probably influence that. I'll get the next bit up ASAP!
Disclaimer: The usual thing, I own nothing. I have no money, if I'd thought this up first maybe I would. then again I'd have been like thirteen then so no one would have listened to me anyway.
Synopsis: Basically Sara sees things through Grissom's eyes (or hears things through his ears) when an accident causes her to lose her hearing.
Grissom stood in the doorway of the break room. Inside were Catherine, Nick and Warrick. For a moment he wondered where Sara was, then he remembered. It was her night off. He'd told her last week she had to take at least one night off, that she was running herself into the ground. His head ached. Maybe he should follow his own advice.
Everyone inside the break room looked half asleep. A fire at a casino off the strip had driven away most of the tourists, the weather was horribly hot, people were staying in, cases per week had almost halved. Almost.
"Warrick. Nick." Grissom's voice caused the assembled group to look up. "You've got a break-in. Catherine, you're with me." He told them handing sheets of paper round. Even in the cool, light, air-conditioned building it was too hot to get much of a response out of the group. Nick muttered something under his breath and pushed out his chair. Warrick followed him out of the room.
"Have fun." Catherine called after them, knowing that moments before Grissom had entered Nick had revealed that if Grissom produced another breaking-and-entering for them Nick would personally see to it that the phrase got a new meaning. She turned to Grissom, "What've we got, boss?" He handed her a sheet of paper. "A threatening phone call! Is this a joke?"
"Catherine, I don't joke." He told her sternly, but when Catherine looked up she could see a sparkle in his eye. "The police received a phone call saying that one of their squad cars was going to blow up. All the cars have been checked, none of them are carrying bombs, or any kind of explosives, but they want us to look into it."
"Let me guess, the tip-off came from a pre-paid cell phone?"
"It appears so, Brass is looking into it."
"Well. better get started then."
Catherine knew that Grissom didn't have to sit in with her as Archie played, and re-played the recording from the phone call looking for any background noise that might suggest where the call was made from. She knew that he had plenty of paperwork that he could have been doing. Despite this she knew that the real reason that he was sitting in with her listening to the recording was because he could.
'Las Vegas Police Department.'
'One of your cars is going to blow up.'
'I beg your pardon!'
'One of your cars is going to blow up. This is a warning.'
'Excuse me sir, can I -'
'I am warning you. Ignore this and people may die. One of your cars is going to blow up.'
They had listened to it several times already. They could hear a slight echo in the background; maybe the caller had been in a hall of some kind, or an empty room. The voice had obviously been distorted, they'd see to fixing that later, at the moment they needed something to help them figure out where the call had been made from. "Go back to the beginning." Grissom instructed, looking thoughtful. It began to play for the third time. "Right, stop now. No go back a bit. There. Stop. What was that?" Catherine looked up. "Can you make it louder?" She asked. She'd barely heard the faint noise. "What is that?"
The little lines on the monitor danced up and down and a gushing noise could be heard, louder now. "Where do you get running water and an echo?" Grissom asked. Catherine raised an eyebrow. "A bathroom." She suggested after a moment of thought. "He made the call from a bathroom."
"And if someone else was running the water then someone else could have heard our caller. Public restroom, possibly?"
"Archie, take out the voices, just play the background." Catherine told him, they'd done this already but now she had more hope of finding something. Archie did as he was instructed. "Take out the water too."
Grissom watched her wondering what she was thinking of, then as it played again it dawned on him. The water had been used to cover up the voice of someone speaking in the background, the voice sounded distant, but they were announcing something, the name of a bar or club perhaps?
'. know it's the best place, welcome to Rain -'
"I think that someone just told us where the phone call was made from. They must have run the water once they realized that the DJ or whoever was about to give away the location." Grissom said sitting back in his chair. Catherine stood up. "I'll go find Brass. He can check out all the bars, clubs and discos with Rain in their name. Maybe we'll find one which matches." Grissom got up too, after asking Archie to run a reverse algorithm on the recording and pull out the voice of the DJ speaking in the background he left, giving the young technician instructions to find him as soon as all was done.
Sara was sitting on the floor of her new apartment; there were boxes all around her. She was trying to remember why she had decided to move and why it had to be the hottest month of the year when she decided to do so. This apartment was bigger, that was true, it was also closer to work and in a better area. It had been a spur of the moment thing. One day she'd been driving home from work, had a craving for some ice cream so stopped into the all night mini-mart round the corner from the lab. Next door to it was an estate agents and she just happened to spot the place in the window. Within a week she'd packed up and left her old home and now she was here. She kept on telling herself over and over again that the spare room was the perfect place to use as an office, she could have a computer and all her forensics books in there and that the extra space meant that she could get some new furniture, but part of her missed the tidily cluttered feel of her old apartment.
She sighed, got up, picked her way through the boxes (since when had she had so many clothes) and found her way into the kitchen. Her fridge hadn't survived the move, it no longer was able to keep things cool and the new one wouldn't be delivered for another week. This meant that anything that she bought had to either be stored in the freezer or consumed as quickly as possible. Standing on the counter beside the sink was a cool- box. It wasn't actually hers, it was Hank's, it had been in her car when they came back from the vineyard when Grissom called her in on her day off, it had never actually made it's way back to Hank after that. She reached in and pulled out a semi-cool carton of orange juice, just as her phone rang.
"Sara Sidle?" She asked checking her watch, who was calling her at this time?
"Sara. I know it's your day off. Catherine's had to go, Lindsey's sick."
"Grissom? Oh. Okay. I'll be there in a bit." She told him before hanging up. She had to smile at the irony of it all. Maybe the cool-box was cursed.
Catherine felt a little guilty about having to leave work. She also felt guilty about leaving Lindsey with the sitter. She'd known that she hadn't been feeling well. But the night was slow, unless something really big came in, no one would miss her. Grissom didn't even need to call in Sara to help him on the odd case they'd been stuck with.
At home Lindsey was in bed feeling really sorry for herself. Catherine once again scolded herself for leaving the little girl at home without her as the child hugged her mother and cried that her head hurt. It wasn't serious, just a stomach bug, half the kids in Lindsey's class had it. By tomorrow the worst of it would be over and by the end of the week her daughter would be back at school. All the same, she had a feeling that something important was going to happen with their case and that she was going to miss it.
When Catherine had told him that she would have to leave Grissom thought nothing of it. Nick and Warrick were working their case, in fact, they were interviewing a suspect at that very moment. Brass was still making inquiries into the club that the call was made from and soon Grissom would be required to go and check out the club for any evidence of their mystery caller. He did not relish the thought of having to go and search through a public bathroom for clues as to the person (or more likely people) who had made the threatening phone call.
The pile of paperwork on his desk was virtually non-existent. He'd worked through most of it that week and there was really nothing left for him to do. Sighing, he got up from his desk and made his way to the break room. It was empty, no sign of anyone else. Looking along the corridor he could see Greg bent over his microscope and occasionally looking up to talk to someone just out of view. Apart from that one tiny movement, the place was deserted. He made himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table, flicking through a forensics journal that someone had left there, it was about six months old and he found himself resisting the urge to make corrections to a theory which had since been proved false.
He couldn't help but think of Sara. She'd moved house, he knew that because she'd had Nick and Warrick helping her move furniture. He'd had Nick tell him about her place and actually found himself hoping that she'd have some sort of house warming, he wanted to know what her new place was like. If it hadn't been for Nick and Warrick he probably wouldn't have found out until some form came his way with her new address on it. He missed their old ways, things had been easy between them, but now conversation was no longer simple and the old jokes were forgotten.
"Gil. Got your club." Brass told him as he entered the room. He checked a sheet of paper and continued. "It's a Rainbow Express. Owned by Mr. Raulez." He gave details of the location and started to leave the room. Grissom made up his mind. "You coming?" Brass asked, turning back when he realized that Grissom wasn't following him.
"I have to phone Sara." Brass looked at him questioningly. "I'm still not sure where the call was made from, it's probably a restroom, but it could be a staff room or a kitchen. I'm not processing the entire thing myself. Catherine had to go home." He shrugged as he moved past Brass and headed away down the corridor.
Sara arrived at the club. It had been taped off although chances were whatever evidence had been inside had been destroyed by the clubbers. Since the voice on the tape had been male it made sense to check the men's bathroom, nobody had said anything about seeing a man using the women's restroom. They each took a bathroom and checked it out. Since the time of the phone call she estimated that approximately thirty or forty men had passed through the bathroom, at least that many. Despite its uselessness prints had to be taken from all the male patrons and prints had to be lifted from the flush handles and taps. It took best part of an hour to process the room, which yielded next to nothing. Grissom seemed more hopeful of finding something and even went so far as to have the toilets checked in case the cell phone that the call had been made from had been flushed. It hadn't.
Sara began taking the evidence back to the cars. Greg was not going to be happy about having to go through all this. Brass was in the club talking to the owner, apparently it was not uncommon to have people making phone calls in the restrooms, the noise from the club made it impossible to hear. As she left Sara noted that the walls were tastelessly painted in gaudy, bright colors. Obviously the walls were part of a general gimmick going on with the name. In the dark she supposed they probably looked okay but with the bright lights on the whole place appeared tacky and dirty. She continued her journey out to the car. Opened the trunk, heaved a box of evidence into place, slammed the door and turned back towards the club. Grissom was coming out carrying his field kit and another, smaller, box of evidence. Then something odd happened. She saw a huge flash out of the corner of her eye, in a moment she heard a loud noise, a 'Whoosh!' combined with someone dropping a load of crockery. She felt a pain in her neck as a force she'd never felt before threw her to the ground, and then all she heard was silence.
TBC
I'd love to hear what you think of it so far. At the moment I'm not sure how it's going to end, but your feedback will probably influence that. I'll get the next bit up ASAP!