a/n: This is my take on Grissom's thoughts after tonight's episode, LocoMotives. No beta, so all mistakes are mine.
disclaimer; the characters are not mine.
Revelations
When I first opened that letter from Williams, I didn't know what to think. It was busy around the lab, so my first thought was how the lab could cope if I left for a few weeks. The mini crime scene killer was on the loose, killing left, right, and centre. It was really starting to bother me that as hard and as fast as I worked, the guy still had time to sit around on his over-creative ass and make meticulously perfect copies of his grisly work.
But then I got to thinking; ever since Nick's abduction the team had been working really well together. And after Jim's incident, we were all getting really close. And maybe…maybe they could do better together without me instead of me being a primary. Maybe I was getting out of whack, stuck in a groove in the case that was leading me around and around in circles, like the rack of a pulley. The killer was just pulling the rope, spinning the wheel and leading me around and around and around…
The team could get a fresh perspective. Sara already had a few leads on the disposable cell phone. After all, maybe if I got up out of that pulley, they could spot the fingerprints I'd been sitting on the entire time. I began thinking that maybe going to Walden Pond to study mosquitoes would be a good thing. A break, a hiatus…come back with a new disposition and a clear head. Okay that, and hopefully no West Nile.
That had been what was going through my head when Sara walked into my office that night, I was reading Thoreau's 'Walden Pond', reading up on the area they wanted me to analyze. She'd noticed how distant I was, even going as far to throw in a dig about me being a misanthropist. Later that night I pinned her to my apartment wall and kissed her senseless, trying to cipher some of that defiant, decided personality that I admired into my own head. To be able to make my mind up in a split second and be right 90 of the time like her…I'd do anything for it.
But in the morning when I woke up next to her, sore but sated, my mind still hadn't been made up. I had no idea what to do. My mind was in turmoil through the next little while, though the whole Mickey Dunn case. I was stuck between going and staying and time was running out before I had to accept or decline. I was 'off' on the case, and I could tell that it bothered Sara that I was so distant. I had convinced myself that it was the cases that had me churned up inside…That the pressure was getting to be too much, that it had finally caught up to me. I thought that the over time and the extra seminars I had going on were putting me on overload.
But when the latest mini crime scene killer case came around, everything changed.
People say that many deluded serial killers and murderers can identify with Holden's character from 'The Catcher in the Rye'. Even as ten year old boy, not knowing this information, I found myself identifying with his character, too. Maybe that's why I can find myself identifying with many of the killers and criminals I come across. So when I found out that the killer was into locomotive models, I knew exactly how he felt.
"I know what it's like to get lost in little things," I had heard myself telling Brass. A few moments after Brass left, I found myself still sitting there in the interrogation room, wondering what I really meant by saying that.
A year ago, I was lost. I knew I was lost. I was somewhere that I had been stuck in for years, somewhere I thought I knew well. But when Nick was abducted and my mother fell ill I realized that that world I had been lost in wasn't the same old routine place I thought it was. It was scary and unfamiliar, like a room plunged into darkness. My little solitary life of bugs and cases was gone and I had no idea what to do.
Then I found myself finding consolement in Sara. She took my hand through the darkness and I was suddenly in a new place, but I was no longer alone. God, being with her was so much easier than being alone. She'd shown me how lost I had been. I woke up one morning and realized how self centered I had been for the last fifty years. My only concern had been me, and now I found myself caring for her. And in caring for her, I found myself having a little of that 'Sara empathy' for victims.
So later when Catherine and I were talking, I was still thinking about her. Catherine found the fact that 'Max' was an unintentional killer funny. But I didn't see it that way. I could identify with him once more. He had spent his whole life unnoticed, living with guilt and trying to live the only way he knew how. The one day his life had changed. Much like mine.
"You look tired," Catherine had commented. I agreed. I knew what she meant. Not just physically tired. Catherine knew I was burning out. Just then, Sara had walked in. She looked good, the usual bags under here eyes almost nonexistent. She had cracked the case with the disposable cell phone number and the SWAT team was on their way to catch him. Finally.
I stayed in my office after they both had left. I pulled out the Williams offer once more, staring at it. It made sense to go now that the identity of the mini killer had been discovered. Suddenly, my computer had alerted me that I had an email. Popping it open, I found a message called; "I CONFESS TO THE MURDERS OF IZZY DELANCEY…" and it went on to list the victims of the mini killer.
I clicked on the link to see him sitting in his workshop. He was talking about how he was good with his hands. Like I had been in my younger days. He knew what it was like to be me. He said that whenever people opened their mouths, lies were sitting inside, waiting to sprout wings and leave. I could see what he meant. He said he hid from people, because they could not be trusted.
It's funny how I have some of my most important personal revelations when listening to killers. Because when he mentioned love, I finally knew what had really been churning me up inside. It hit me then.
Somewhere between being lost and now, I had fallen in love with Sara.
I jumped as I heard a gunshot from my laptop, and I saw the killer's camera spatter with his blood. There was no way I'd end up like that. That wasn't me anymore. I wasn't lost and I wasn't found yet. I was in limbo, looking for somewhere to go. Follow Sara and go somewhere completely unfamiliar, or go back to my old ways and end up like this man, laying dead across his computer. Risk. Once again it had come down to risk.
A few moments later, I found myself opening a new email message.
To: prof.mortonwilliamscollege.cld
From: ggrissomlvpdlab.le
Dear Professor Morton,
I'd be highly honored to accept your invitation…