Slip 'n' Slide
Disclaimer: Not mine. Probably not yours either.
A/N: Response to 7-7 YTDAW Challenge. The use of the rubber spa is for entertainment purposes only. As this is fiction—I made it up and mean no ill intent toward the producers or procurers of rubber hot tubs.
Sara frowned as water ran down the wall.
"Oooh, Newton's been at it again." Greg sniggled, "when gravity attacks, more at 11:00." Sara shot him an exasperated look and whispered, "watch it Greg, we've got company" as she motioned to the small crowd gathered behind the yellow caution tape. "What?" Greg tried to sound hurt, "how come only Grissom gets to open investigations with a pithy witticism?"
Stepping back, the two surveyed the bizarre scene before them. The two deceased, a man and a woman, lay sprawled in the middle of a residential road. The bodies lay roughly 20 feet from the side of an apartment building, down the side of which a steady stream of water flowed. Appearing to be in varying stages of undress, what little the bodies were wearing was drenched.
"Well, this doesn't look like a suicide," Greg suggested, pulling out a camera. "Jee, ya don't think?" came Brass's sardonic reply as he joined the two CSIs. "You know Sara, when I called out the dream team, I didn't think I'd be getting Captain Obvious." This warranted a chortle from Sara and the appearance of Greg's lower lip. "Grissom's off tonight and Sofia pulled a trick-roll—so you get me and Greggo. So what do we know so far?"
"Unfortunately, your super friend here knows about as much as I do at this point. I do know that one of the looky-loos behind the tape identified the male as Trevor Pate, apparently he lives in the apartment building. Same witness says he's seen him coming and going with the girl, but doesn't know her name."
"Anyone see 'em fall?" Sara probed. "Not anyone who's admitting to it. Though, it is 4:30 in the morning. An overachieving jogger almost tripped over the couple and called it in. I'm guessing the sirens brought out the crowd."
Turning her attention back to the modest cascade of water streaming down the side of the apartment building, Sara's brain began jogging through scenarios. "Hey Brass, do we know if this place has a pool on the roof?" Sara looked over her shoulder at Brass, shoulders raised in question. "I'll grab a uniform and the three of us can take little walk and see if we can't find the source of that leak."
Disappointingly, the apartment, did not have a rooftop pool. However, the scene on the roof proved even stranger than the one on the ground.
"What is that thing, a bounce house?" Sara asked to no one in particular as she, Brass and the officer stepped over various items of clothing as they approached an inflated object on the far end of the roof. Upon closer inspection the three investigators found that the object was about a quarter full of water.
"I think its one of those inflatable hot tubs." Stepping closer, Brass continued, "Oh yeah, that's exactly what this thing is. An, uh, friend of mine has one of these things. You just inflate, fill with water and turn on the little pump here and voila—instant party in an oversized cozy."
"I've found our water source," Sara pointed to a running hose on the side of the spa. Walking around to the side facing the edge of the building she whistled low, "we've got a breach in the railing here—looks like this is where the two went over. The ground leading from the spa to the edge of the roof is also wet."
Processing the scene took the remainder of the night and Greg found himself pouring coffee in the break room at the beginning of the next shift with little more information than he had the night before. Sipping the brew, Greg felt his phone vibrate against his hip. Flipping it open, he chuckled at the text message:
MT SRA WREHSE ASAP. WR SHRTS. BRG GGLES
Greg let out a hoot as he entered the police warehouse next to CSI, "Oh please, sweet Sara, tell me we are about to have a little James Brown celebrity hot tub."
She turned to him with a smirk as he joined her beside an inflated and full, rubber hot tub. "As I was sloshing around in my bathtub this morning after shift, I had an idea. A few phone calls and a favor or two later, here we are and you are just in time to help participate."
"Enlighten me, my little mermaid."
"Well, what do we know? Half-clothed dead couple—who, we've learned, thanks to Doc Robbins, died from the impact of falling five stories—so we know they didn't drown or get hit by a car. We know they fell from the roof and not a window because you recovered fibers from both of their vestments that were snagged on the edges of the broken railing. We also know that when we found it, the spa was only about a quarter full—but it did not have any leaks and the running hose suggests that they had a ready water source." Sara turned to Greg and raised an eyebrow.
Greg considered the spa thoughtfully and walked its perimeter pushing in at the sides as he went. The sides yielded and bounced back, causing the water to slosh around inside. "Gimme a clue."
"I think your buddy Newton might have been friends with Mic Jagger."
Looking between Sara and the spa Greg shook his head and began to grin. "Okay, so we also know from the way the railing was breached and where the couple landed that the two didn't just fall over the side—there was some momentum to it"
"Yes—and I did a little research on this particular brand. Turns out there is a pending lawsuit against the company. Apparently, the edge has been known to dip when too much force is placed on the side expelling water and its occupants over the side."
"And you think these guys were up on the roof doing a little midnight skinny dipping, and did something to somehow, send enough water over the edge to propel both of them out of the spa and over the edge?"
"Well, Greg, that's what we are gonna find out—sans the skinny dipping" and Sara tossed him a helmet. "I love physics, but safety first."
"Man, what I do for science." Greg buckled his helmet while appreciating Sara in shorts and a jog top as she cued the video equipment.
Despite the whimsical nature of their experiment, both CSIs were all business once they got inside the tub. "So we need to figure out what they could have possibly been doing to get the tub to tip." Explained Sara as she began walking through the waist deep water around inside circumference of the tub. For several minutes, both Sara and Greg tried various strategies with no sign of yield from the tub.
As he bounced against the side of the tub, a thought occurred to the neophyte investigator. "Sara, didn't we find some of the couple's clothes on the roof of the building?" "Yeah—looks like they tossed off their shirts before jumping in." "What activity can motivate two people to carelessly throw off items of clothing?" "Oh, oh, no," Sara began to catch on to Greg's thinking. "You think they were, uh—" "Doing the nasty aqua man style when they went over? Yeah—maybe, the, uh, repeated motion at the edge of the tub over 10 or 20 minutes might have built up enough motion and force in the captive water been tip the lip."
"Very good Greg, but do I even want to know how you propose to prove this?" Sara asked as the two stood regarding the side of the spa.
"Well, I can guarantee that it won't be nearly as fun, but we could just simulate the action, leaning on the edge and see what happens." Despite Sara's skepticism and distress over what all of this was going to look like on videotape, she had to agree that Greg's idea was probably the way to go.
The two took what they thought might be the most opportunistic positions and after some experimentation, found a configuration that began creating a significant amount of water displacement and resulting tidal action. Ten minutes later, Greg felt the spa yield at his back, and the tub tipped shooting both he and Sara over the edge and across the slick warehouse floor.
Coming to a stop halfway across the floor and laughing, Greg sat up to orient himself to discover Sara, a couple feet from him holding her arm awkwardly, a look of miserable pain on her face. "Sara—Sara are you okay?" "I think we need to go to the hospital" was her reply through gritted teeth.
At the end of shift, Sara found herself back at CSI, standing in Grissom's doorframe, left arm bandaged and in a sling. Hesitantly, she cleared her voice, "Uhm, Grissom, I have the incident report."
Expecting disappointment from her supervisor, Sara was not surprised when he motioned her into the office, asking her to close the door on the way in. She dropped her head and placed the form on his desk as he asked her to have a seat. Struggling to find a comfortable position with her newly immobilized arm, Sara let out a sigh and looked up to find Grissom gazing at her with compassion.
"Griss, I'm so—" "Sara," he interrupted, "you did a great job. Greg told me that you guys figured out it was an accident—only crime committed being terminal stupidity on the part of the victims. Your creative thinking and initiative cracked the case" he paused, looking at her injured arm, "and apparently a little more—you okay?" "Yeah, luckily, its just pretty badly bruised, which is more than I can say for my ego." Sara gave him a watery grin.
"With the exception of swimming while there wasn't a lifeguard on duty, you guys followed all safety percautions, Sara. Here, this might help." Grissom slid a video across the desk to her. "I asked Greg to do a thorough write-up with a footnote explaining that the video equipment malfunctioned."
Touched by his sensitivity Sara smiled, "Thanks Gris, I really appreciate it."
"You know, you can't drive with that thing." He motioned to her arm, "Wanna ride home?" Sara could hear the shyness in his offering. "Actually, that would be great. Greg offered—but if I have to hear a recap one more time, he's going to need a trip to the hospital" She groused, getting up as Grissom turned off the desk lamp and grabbed his briefcase.
Noting goose bumps on Sara's free arm, he pulled his coat of the rack and draped it around Sara's shoulders. As he looked downward to avoid he hurt arm, Grissom couldn't resist a grin. Stepping back, the grin reached his eyes as he bit back a full-blown Grissom smirk.
"Sara, are you sure you didn't hit your head?" he practically chortled.
Having no idea what he was getting at she began to answer in the negative as she looked down over her body trying to determine what was so funny.
If an on the job injury and a suddenly attentive boss weren't enough to fluster Sara, what she saw was. The hospital had given her some scrubs to replace her wet clothes. Tying the draw-string on the pants had been a little difficult with one arm and she couldn't get it tight enough for the pants to sit at her waist. Instead they had slipped below her waistline just barely revealing the waistband of her undies that repeated, "Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday" in red print across the top.
Looking up at Grissom with wide eyes, cheeks quickly becoming as red as the Wednesday, she caught a definite twinkle in her supervisor's blues, "It's Monday," Grissom said with a shrug.