Introductory Note: I wrote my first fan-fic as a teenager — at the time I had never heard of fan fiction as a genre. In the grips of typical teenage angst, I fantasized about running away from home: just getting on my bicycle and riding away. Instead of acting it out, I merged this fantasy with a 007 novel I was reading, to write myself into the story, rather than just passively reading. Thus began a pleasant past time, and eventually I found other people who enjoyed writing fan-fics, too. Unfortunately, that first fan-fic has disappeared in the dust of time... [Disclaimer: any references to real people are fictional, and represent only the thoughts and opinions of the speakers rather than those of the author. Specific apologies to Jerry Bruckheimer, Tony Hillerman, Thomas Harris and Ian Fleming, without whose inspiration I would not have written this hack story...]
Captain Brass picked his way carefully through the underbrush towards the crime scene he had been told was in this direction. While returning from another call south of Las Vegas on I-95, the homicide detective had heard the dispatcher reporting a body spotted by a tourist helicopter. It was located by one of the myriad dirt "roads" that led from the highway up into the foothills of the northern Mojave. After the local deputy sheriff responded from the other end of the county, Brass had volunteered to investigate the scene just a couple of miles up the road from where he was traveling. For all they knew, the "body" could still be alive and time could be of the essence. Brass called Grissom's cell to have him stop by on his own way back from their previous call — regardless of the condition of the "body"," it couldn't hurt to have a crime scene investigator around to gather evidence. A voice broke through the noises of his slow progress.
"I wouldn't go over there if I were you."
Brass squinted up from the winding edge of the bajada to the origin of the voice. Upon a steep alluvial hill carved into the sandstone by flash floods, a woman sat calmly beside a clump of desert grass, apparently studying an insect crawling across a grey-green blade. She was casually dressed in an oversized raglan-sleeve nightshirt over top of ridiculously short jeans offering "full flood view of bony ankles. Clad in tight-fitting Chinese canvas tennis shoes, her sockless feet seemed incongruously small for her long legs. As she sat cross-legged, Brass could see the cheap mottled soles were worn smooth. Windblown and loose, her long wavy brown hair stuck out in all directions as if searching in vain for a good brush. She reminded him of the housewives that answered early morning doorbells when he came to tell them bad news. None of his colleagues knew, but he secretly found himself more attracted to these ordinary real women than those starlet beauties who toughened their skin under the damaging neon rays of the Strip. His 'erotic fantasies' revolved around quiet suburban life untouched by the seedy corruption that he fought on a daily basis.
"Why not?" he asked.
"There's a dead body over there."
"I'm a homicide detective," he replied.
She now turned to look at him with wide blue eyes. "Ah, well then. That saves me the trouble of finding a phone." She gestured over the hill, saying brightly, "There's a dead body over there for you to look at." Her eyes clouded slightly as she spoke of the corpse.
"You wouldn't have anything to do with it, would you?" Brass asked dryly, finding the tone of the conversation bizarrely mundane, considering the morbid subject.
She grimaced. "As little as possible. I just found it a little while ago. Checked just to make sure it — she — was dead and not hurt."
"And who might you be?"
"That— I'm still trying to figure out." She held up a finger calmly, "First question: is she alive? — answer: stone cold, slightly desiccated so no use trying CPR." She held up another finger. "Second question: where is a phone to call 9-1-1? — No immediate answer, even after I climbed this little hill to look. But a third question: where am I? Followed shortly thereafter by: who am I? I was still trying to figure out precisely those answers when you happened along so precipitously. So now you know what I know. What next?"
"Next, you come down here and show me this body."
Her frank eyes struggled to deny his demand; she wanted to cooperate, but her calm demeanor masked a real horror of the situation. It was a coping mechanism he'd seen many times before — a widow trying to make tea for him with shaking hands just after he had informed her of the husband's demise... His heart ached to sympathize, but his feet shuffled impatiently at her hesitation.
Eyes widened in panic. "Look out behi—" she exclaimed.
Too late, Brass heard the rattle at his feet and realized he'd moved entirely in the wrong direction as the sharp sting of fangs sank through the flesh of his ankle.
"—nd you!"
Time crawled Hollywood-style as he processed the next few moments. As the woman leapt down the slope towards him, a rock whizzed past his sore ankle squarely hitting the fat triangle of the snake's head. Brass tottered a few steps away from the viper and sat down heavily on the slope behind him. The woman gently gripped under his arms to drag him a foot or so sideways next to a boulder against which he could lean comfortably. Although stumbling awkwardly to her knees, she did not hesitate before ripping his pants' leg open with her teeth and wrapping the ends around his calf, trying to tie them together. When the length proved inadequate, she tore off her own shirt to use for the job, tying the ripped ends into a snug fit, as tight as a blood-pressure cuff. Then she reached a wobbly hand towards his holster. Too late, he slowly raised his hands to prevent it, but instead of pulling his gun on him, she grabbed the cell phone clipped at his waist and started dialing 9-1-1. The pain in Brass' ankle hit him in a wave of agony, drawing out a groan.
He heard the faint voice of the dispatcher, "9-1-1, what is your emergency?"
"Rattlesnake bite," she responded breathlessly. "I sure hope you can trace this call. I have no idea where I am — in the desert somewhere."
He groaned again, shifting his weight, trying to remember through the haze of pain what mile-marker it was where he had left the highway. The phone slipped from her fingers into his lap as she grabbed his foot to move it gently down the slope. "Keep still. You must remain calm. You'll be OK," she said soothingly, although she teetered slightly off balance.
Just then, Gil Grissom rounded the corner of the alluvial ravine, following Brass' footprints to the scene. When the CSI night shift supervisor had parked by the unmarked sedan, the detective was nowhere to be seen, nor was he even answering the cell phone. Grissom resorted to his evidence tracking skills to find him. The sight of a disheveled and half-naked woman with feverish eyes bending over Brass' groaning form made him drop his kit and reach for his weapon.
"Stop. Right. There." he commanded, using his best managerial voice, which brooked no opposition from the CSI's he supervised. Grissom's rapid heartbeat roared in his ears, threatening what was left of his hearing, so drastically reduced recently by a congenital problem.
She glanced at him, then back at Brass. As she reached towards the downed cop, Grissom might have shot her, but he was too far away to be sure of a clear line of fire. In the back of his mind, he realized he hesitated also because he never wanted to be the cause of any body lying in the morgue.