DYING
Chapter 3
By ProWriter11
69 HOURS EARLIER . . .
Grissom rolled his Tahoe into the garage so fast he nearly ran it through the back wall. Jim squealed up behind him in a black Ford sedan. There were four police units in the street, six cops challenging the presence here of the unknown vehicles. Brass stopped to identify himself. Grissom sprinted around the back of his SUV, barking his knee on the back bumper. He slammed through the access door to the kitchen.
Shit! It was unlocked. Why hadn't she done what he asked?
"Sara!" he screamed, his heart shriveling when he got no reply.
He began a room-by-room search.
"Sara! For God's sake, honey, where are you?"
No one in the living room.
No one in her office.
No one in his study. Or in the kitchen. Or the dining room. Or the half bath.
He sprinted up the stairs.
"Sara! Please. Please, answer me."
Silence.
No one in either guest room, either guest bath.
He burst into the master bedroom and heard a classic rock station blaring music from the master bath. He remembered Sara's new toy, the waterproof radio that hung from the showerhead.
"Sara! Sara!"
Somebody jerked open the bathroom door.
Sara, her skin wet, wrapped in a bath blanket, her hair dripping on her shoulders.
Grissom stood there for a millisecond, trying to remember how to breathe, trying to lower his pulse rate, trying to recall how to say a prayer of thanks.
He gave up and simply pulled her into his arms.
"Thank God. Thank God."
Sara returned the hug then pulled her head back to look at his face. She saw raw emotional turmoil there. She ran a hand over his sweat-dampened forehead, ran a hand through his matted hair, told him without words that she was fine, that she loved him.
He buried his face in her neck so he could feel the pulse there, assurance she was alive.
"Why didn't you answer me?" he asked, more frightened than accusatory. "I was searching the house for you, screaming for you. When you didn't answer, it scared me to death."
"In the shower. Didn't hear anything until you were pounding up the stairs. Then I got scared, so I didn't come out until I was sure it was you."
They held one another a few moments longer.
"What is it, Gil?" she said, finally. "What was in the box?"
He told her.
And then he felt her begin to tremble.
Or maybe it was him.
Or both of them.
68 HOURS EARLIER . . .
"Natalie's right where she's supposed to be, still schizophrenic, still unresponsive," Brass said. "Her doctors say she's had no visitors and no contact with the outside world by letter, phone or computer. She doesn't talk to anyone. She doesn't even sing that stupid sawdust thing any more. They're certain she couldn't have done this."
Grissom called Catherine. It was a good thing she was on his speed-dial. He had Sara's right hand wrapped up in his left and wasn't about to let go to do something as mundane as punching a number into a keypad.
"Found anything?" he asked.
"No, not really," Catherine said. "I think we need to document it and take it apart, piece by piece. Gil, is everything all right at home?"
"Yeah," he said. "I'm coming back now."
He snapped the phone shut and turned to Sara.
"I'd like your eyes and mind on this, too," he said. "But I don't want to push. I mean, uh, I don't want to ask you … I don't want to bring back …"
She put two fingers over his lips to silence him.
"I can't work the case because I'm not employed at the lab any more," Sara reminded him. "I can look, but I can't touch. And if it's too much, I can leave."
"Promise me you will, uh, leave, if it gets to be too hard?
"Yeah."
"Maybe you should bring a good book," he said. "You might be waiting in Catherine's office for me for a while."
"I could just come home," she said.
"No, not without me. You don't go anywhere without me."
She looked at him skeptically.
"Yeah, okay," he said, an acknowledgment. "So I don't want you out of my sight."
"It's nice that you care," Sara said. "Personally and professionally."
Grissom drew her into his arms again.
"Don't you ever forget it," he whispered.
Grissom was watching Sara's face closely when she first saw the new miniature. She had never seen the first one, the one that forecast her ordeal in the desert. He hadn't wanted to show it to her, and she never asked to see it. She would have been forced to examine it, of course, if Natalie's case had gone to trial, or a competency hearing, but neither event had been necessary, and Sara had been spared.
He was ready to pull her out of the layout room – carry her out, if necessary – the moment she showed the least bit of apprehension over the new model. But he saw none. Her brow knit, and she cocked her head, examining the little scene from all angles.
"Should I be put out that mine isn't as elaborate as the others?" she said with just a hint of a crooked smile.
Grissom relaxed marginally.
"Well," he said, "on the other hand, you're the only one who gotten two."
"Was the other one better?"
He didn't respond. How the hell do you evaluate whether one death threat is "better" than another?
"We have this fully documented?" Grissom asked Catherine.
"Photographs and videos," she said with a nod.
"Then let's take it apart," Grissom said, snapping on latex gloves.
First he had to dismantle the cage. It was easy enough to do. It appeared to be metal but turned out to be balsa wood painted battleship gray. The hardest part of this stage was to separate the glued parts without breaking any of the pieces of wood. Catherine and Nick did the first check on each piece, catalogued them and turned them over to Hodges in Trace.
Once the top and four sides of the cage were gone, Grissom used a scalpel and tweezers to loosen the doll from the glue holding it to the floor. He straightened the doll and laid it on the table, donned a pair of magnifiers and picked up a pair of scissors. He glanced up at Sara and shrugged.
"I'm afraid I've got to undress you in public," he said.
She smiled at him. "I'll get over it," she said.
He remembered how he'd found a partial print on the doll at the death scene of another Dell foster child, Trevor Dell. There wasn't enough print to make comparisons, but Wendy had found epithelial cells identifying the miniature killer as a woman. It helped break open the case. Maybe lightning would strike twice.
After agonizing minutes of magnified examination of the new doll, Grissom shook his head and sighed.
"Nothing."
Sara picked up the scalpel and gently tapped the floor of the dismantled cell. She and Grissom looked at one another.
"Hollow," he said and immediately set to work to get inside.
When Grissom finally lifted the rectangle of metal that represented the floor, he gasped. He felt Sara flinch and pull back. From Jim, "Oh, my God." From Catherine, "Oh, no."
The floor hid supplies for a torture chamber. Weapons called maces, with heavy heads at the end of long handles, built to deliver lethal blows. Whips. Chains. Knives. Saws. Power drills. Tree pruners. Hedge clippers. Even a chainsaw.
Grissom slammed the metal floor back over the display, jumped up and turned to find Sara. She was standing behind him, rigid.
He moved to her.
"Sara?"
She transferred her eyes from the layout table to him.
"Why?" she said. "What have I done?"
"You survived the first time," he said. "Somebody didn't like that."
He enveloped her in an embrace, a gesture meant to convey the promise that nobody would ever again get to her without going through him, and nobody would get through him.
It was, he would discover soon, a promise he couldn't keep.
TBC