Disclaimer: I do not own CSI or the characters, except for those implanted into the story so that it makes sense.
Summery: A teenage girl apparently commits suicide, leaving the CSI team to investigate the events prior to her death. Meanwhile, Warrick and Nick make a bet on what happened to a missing showgirl.
Spoilers: We'll say this is set sometime during season 7, so there might be the occasional reference to an earlier episode but no obvious spoilers that I can think of.
Pairings: This is not a fluffy/shippy story but, as written by a GSR fan, there will probably be slight Grissom/Sara hints (nothing more than is in the show)
Research: I did my best to make this story as plausible as possible, which including researching a number of things. Having said that, I am not perfect and I imagine there are several mistakes in this. I am also an English writer with no American beta, so I apologise for any "English-isms" which I apparently use.
The silver 2002 Lexus sped down Palm Street with such an ease it impressed the driver, Casino owner, Robert Delquisk as his hands clutched the leather-bound steering wheel. Though a fairly recent addition in the forty something man's life, the car was fast becoming his pride and joy. Slowing down as the beauty approached his white-brick mansion of a home; Delquisk's eyes darted nervously towards the glove compartment. Inside, he knew, was the .38 pistol revolver he had bought solely for the protection of his daughter. At just fifteen years old, Anna Delquisk was pretty sensible for her age. She was smart and as beautiful as her mother had been when she was younger. Delquisk supposed the main thing that had prevented him from buying a gun before was the memory of his wife, Elaine, being shot dead some seven years earlier. She had been devoted to the police force and less devoted to being a mother. So since then he had vowed to be the best father a little girl could wish for. He was not a violent man and he certainly hoped Anna would not grow up to be involved with guns and such. Yet he had known it right from the minute she came to him for help that she wasn't asking for his usual method of throwing money in the vague direction of a problem to make it go away. Anna was serious, and scared. She needed the protection that, rich as he was, her own father could not give her. A weapon such as the revolver would be of much better use to the girl should she ever need it and he hoped to God she wouldn't…
Owning a gun wasn't really a big deal in the state of Nevada- lots of people had one for piece of mind. That was all he wanted- to know his daughter, his sweet little daughter, was in no real danger. The difference between wrong and right didn't come into it when it came to protecting Anna. He hadn't remarried since Elaine's death and the young girl was all he had left. Under the circumstances, whatever little of them he knew, he thought he was being quite rational.
His hand pressed against the glove compartment, forcing it open. He was tentative and discreet about reaching in and pulling out the package containing the gun. For a while he just sat it on his lap and stared at it.
How much protection would a teenage girl really have from a gun? Would she know how to use it? Could she defend herself if it ever came to it?
Robert was apprehensive about giving a revolver to a child. Good intentions or not, the casino manager in him told him he had to find out what sort of trouble Anna was in before he gave her the weapon. Gun fights had happened in his casino before and he had the luxury of security to sort it out- no-one ever got hurt. But a teenage girl shouldn't own a gun for any reason at all. What sort of trouble had she got herself into? Perhaps he had been in 'act now think later' mode when he had hurried out to purchase a gun before he knew the extent of her problems.
Surely nothing could be so bad a fifteen year old girl would need a gun to act as her protection.
Removing the keys from the ignition, Delquisk pushed open the car door and got out. In one hand he held the Lexus' keys; in the other was the carefully held, fatal packaging. He took one, two steps towards the house before stopping and looking up at it. It was indeed a vast house, fronted by an open wooden porch and with a pointed roof of the same red-brown colour. It might have been a big house for just him and Anna to live in, but he had earned every brick of it. Tonight, however, something about the house struck him as odd. He took a few more cautious steps towards it, staring at it as though it was about to come alive. Having never been a superstitious man, Delquisk was immediately against the idea of a premonition. Yet he did not dismiss the odd feeling the house had as he stepped inside, calling up the stairs to his daughter, "Anna! Anna, could you come down here please?"
At the bottom of the stairs, he paused and looked at the gun package he still held awkwardly in his left hand, then he called out once more, "Anna?"
Looking around as if to check that no-one else was there, he dropped the package on the oak telephone table and started up the stairs. Having a bedroom at the back of the house sometimes meant Anna didn't hear him. This was often the case if she was playing loud music, though he didn't hear anything and it must have been approaching midnight anyway. Perhaps she was asleep. He reached the closed door of her room-no music.
"Anna?" he said, lowering his voice even though he had to wake her to talk with her. She had been so vague during their talk over supper. All he knew was that she was in real danger. The room was in darkness when he entered and he hated to disturb her should she indeed be sleeping, but this couldn't wait. The crystal chandelier fixed dead-centre of the ceiling flickered on gradually, until at last the 'peaches and cream' bedroom lit up. Delquisk's eyes fell on the empty white chrome double bed where he had expected to find Anna at this hour. He stepped further onto the plush carpet-more oatmeal than peach- calling out her name.
Nothing.
Another step put him beside the bed. That's when he saw her. She looked angelic as ever hanging from the silver chrome curtain rail that separated her en suit from her bedroom.
It was one of those nights when, with lack of better things to do, CSI supervisor of the night- often referred to as 'graveyard'- shift, Gil Grissom was attempting paperwork. It seemed to the entomologist that Las Vegas was dead. The joke had amused only Grissom himself when he had shared it with his team earlier that evening in the break room of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department's crime lab.
"You sound like you've been taking comedian tips from Greg," Sara Sidle had remarked, though he had meant it more in irony than he imagined ex lab-tech, Greg Sanders would have done.
Dead as 'the city that never sleeps' was, Grissom still had an unpleasant-looking pile of paperwork stacked up on his desk that he really would have tended to had the entrance of Catherine Willows not disturbed him. The female, red-blonde in hair colour and dressed casually for work in a loose jacket over a turquoise blouse, stepped gingerly towards him, "Hey, Brass just paged me. We got a female DB, Palm Street."
Slowly removing his wire-framed reading glasses, Grissom glanced down at his own pager sitting on the desk in front of him, "How come I didn't get told?"
Catherine shrugged, failing to hide the smug look that had taken shape of her face, "Does it matter? We need to get down there," she waited until Gil had vacated his seat and was heading for the door of his office where she stood before adding, "Big place we're heading to apparently, you think we should bring someone else along?"
Grissom, already out of the office and heading to the building's car park, replied passively with, "Bring whoever you can find. I think Sara and Greg are somewhere around."
"I'll go find them then, shall I?" she said to herself.
About half an hour later, a black Tahoe pulled up outside Robert Delquisk's mansion of a home. Grissom and Catherine got out of the front, followed by Sara and Greg in the back. Noticing Captain Jim Brass under the faint porch light, Grissom headed his way.
"Gil," the detective greeted him "female DB. Looks like suicide. Poor girl's only fifteen."
Silver tool-box-like field kit in hand, Grissom's eyes scanned the front of the house, "Who found her?"
"The father, Sofia's in there with him now," Brass supplied.
As the rest of the team reached the two men on the porch, Brass instructed them to follow him. All four CSIs made their way upstairs and into what appeared to be a regular teenage girl's room.
"This could be Lindsey's room," Catherine said, observing as much as the messy-yet-organized chrome furnished Peach and white bedroom as possible.
Of course, she had meant it hypothetically but that didn't stop Grissom from pointing out what was wrong with her statement.
"With the addition of an en suit," he said, snapping a few photographs of the young, fair-haired corpse hanging from the curtain rail.
"And this wardrobe!" Greg called from where he stood by the open closet "Man, if you can afford clothes like this then you're earning way more than what I am."
Catherine didn't bother to point out that she probably was earning a considerable amount more than him. Either way, she still couldn't afford most of the flashy labels she caught sight of in the closet.
"When did you become the expert on female clothing, Greg?" Sara joked, an almost unnoticeable flirtatious tone to her voice.
The brunette CSI then moved to take a look at the body. To Grissom she said, "What are you thinking?"
Her supervisor stared at the white desk stool kicked away on the floor before turning to face Sara, "That this wasn't a suicide."
"How come?" she asked, slightly annoyed that she had not yet come to this conclusion.
"Take a look at the stool. If she had stood on it, tied herself to the rail and then kicked it away, we'd expect it to fall forwards-"
"And this one is at an angle," she said, proudly finishing his sentence.
Grissom nodded, "Yes."
"So…we got a name for her?" Catherine asked from behind them.
All three turned to look at Brass who was still hovering in the doorway.
"Anna Delquisk," he answered.
"Delquisk?" Catherine stepped forward, leaving Grissom and Sara to begin searching through the bed-side cabinet "Not Bobby's daughter?"
"That's the one. You know Robert Delquisk?" the detective asked.
The criminalist gave a nonchalant shrug, "Sure I do, used to come in the French Palace," she paused as if waiting for a reaction and added "Long time ago…"
"Would you say Mr. Delquisk was the kind of man who could commit murder?" Grissom said, not really asking the question, more implying that it was true.
Obviously finding the question bizarre and unanswerable, Catherine shrugged again, "I'm no expert in psychology, Gil, but he never seemed violent..."
The smug smile Grissom wore told her he had reason to suspect. She was about to question his findings when Greg yelled form the other side of the room. Curious, all three CSIs, plus the Captain, crossed the room and found the newest addition to their team crouched on the floor pointing his flashlight under the bed. Sara, following the light source, knelt down beside Greg and retrieved the object he had found with a latex-gloved hand. She held the plastic bag up for everyone to see, "I could be wrong but-"
"Cannabis," Greg finished, causing all four to look in his direction.
"Forensics journal…toxicology," he said as if answering the 'and how would you know?' looks he was getting.
Grissom removed his camera from the strap round his neck and handed it to the nearest person (in this case Catherine), "Finish photographing for me."
His gaze then fell on the only other female present, Sara Sidle sealing the plant material in a paper evidence bag so to prevent the decay that would occur in a plastic one, "Sara, check the area where she was found. Dust the stool for prints…that kind of thing."
She nodded obediently, though still seemingly fazed at how little she had worked out herself.
"Greg, keep searching the room for evidence," he instructed the younger man, before turning to Captain Brass stood behind him, "I'd like to speak with Mr. Delquisk."
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