Chapter III

Evidence logged in at the lab, Sara made her way down to the morgue. She moved through the halls, grasping her cell in her hand. She'd missed Grissom again when she'd tried at the crime scene, leaving another message on his voicemail. Approaching her destination, she let out a frustrated huff and placed her cell back in her pocket.

A shiver ran up her spine upon entering the morgue. Tightening her lab coat to ward off the chill of the cold floor, Sara pushed open the doors that led to the washing room where her body was awaiting. It was even colder inside the room and Sara wondered at the changes in temperature her body had been experiencing lately, cold to hot, cool to warm to cold. It wasn't unusual to experience those changes in Vegas, walking into the morgue on a hot day, but that night she felt even cooler, as though the cold had permeated into her being.

Taking a cursory glance around the room, she noticed two other bodies awaiting autopsy, both processed and washed. Outside the room there had been another four bodies lining the hall and she guessed that they were from a multiple she'd heard that Nick and Ray were working with Brass. Her eyes moved to her body, the young Ingrid Polt. Sara pulled up a stool and lifted the sheet, uncovering the corpse. Carefully, she began scraping beneath the girl's fingernails.

Humming under her breath, Sara continued working, the occasional lyric coming out between hums. Her fingers lifted one of the girl's arms and she studied the defensive wounds, puckered red lines covered in blood, contrasting against pale skin. The arm felt cold, even through latex gloves and Sara dropped the arm, letting it fall back to the table.

Fingernails scraped, Sara moved on to the fingerprints. She began to print the girl, carefully lifting each finger, rolling the ink and pressing each digit onto the print card. Her eyes studied each print on the card, taking in the various lines and curves and swirls. She placed the print card onto the table and sat back down in her stool, taking time to look over the body, her eyes moving over the form. Ingrid Polt was a beautiful girl, really, tall, though slightly shorter than Sara, thin, though slightly curvier, with soft, feminine features. Sara took a comb from her kit and combed out the corpse's hair.

Taking the trace and sealing it into several small bags, she put it aside for Hodges. Retrieving a pair of scissors, Sara carefully cut away Ingrid Polt's clothing, bagging each item as she cut. Her eyes glanced over the form, taking in each wound, the red gashes and the purplish blue bruises surrounding. She carefully laid the body out, her two gloved hands delicately trying to straighten out limbs that had settled into rigor. With time, great effort and great care, she eventually succeeded. The body laid flat upon the table, Sara put away all of her evidence, cloths, prints and trace, placing it all by the door and away from where she would wash the body.

She pulled down the hose attached to the shower head and from head to toe, began washing the body down. Blood stained the water as it fell from the body, turning the water first a light red and then fading into pink. Her eyes followed the stream of rose colored water down the drain. Before her, Ingrid Polt's wounds were revealed.

Doc Robbins entered just as she was finishing. He glanced over at her body before moving to one of the already washed bodies. "I'm sorry, Sara. It will be awhile before I get to your body."

Sara smiled slight. "It's alright. I still have to inject plaster into these wounds and make a mold."

Doc Robbins nodded. He moved over her body. "Hmm," he began, "Multiple stab wounds…five to the chest, one to the abdomen, fairly uniform, indicates one weapon. It looks like your victim was stabbed with a sharp, smooth bladed knife. The bruising around these three wounds," he ran his finger in the air over the body, forming a triangular shape, indicating the wounds he was speaking of, "suggests the knife pushed in right to the handle, so the depth of the wound should give you an indication of blade length. Judging by these wounds, I'd estimate that the width of the blade was approximately an inch and a half at its widest point."

Sara grinned. "Thanks, Doc."

He nodded. "Finish up what you need to do here. Are you planning on sitting in on the autopsy?"

She nodded.

"I'll page you when I'm ready to perform it, then."

Doc Robbins left her, pushing his gurney out of the washing room. Sara took a ruler and held it beside one of the wounds, snapping a picture. Doc Robbins was right. The measurement of the wound came in at just under an inch and a half. She repeated the process for the remaining wounds and then stood again, exiting the morgue, returning only a few short minutes later with mix for plaster. She poured the powder into a bowl, adding water, and stirred. When the plaster was mixed, she carried the bowl to the corpse, filled a syringe and carefully began to drip the plaster into each wound.

Her eyes began to blur and glaze over as she began working on the last wound. It had been a long night, preceded by a long flight and her fatigue was beginning to show. She finished up with the plaster and decided to take a short break while the plaster dried. She stood, washing her hands and then pinching the bridge of her nose before she drying her hands. She was tired and hungry and thought that perhaps it was time she ate as well. The only food she'd had in the past sixteen hours had been the food the plane had served on the overseas flight.

She exited the morgue and with weary steps, climbed the stairs to the main level. She wondered if Greg was back yet, but somehow doubted it. Unless he hit pay dirt in the dumpsters right away, he would be awhile sifting through the garbage. She'd take another break after the autopsy, and maybe talk to him then about any possible new evidence or lack there-of. She dropped off the evidence that she had, trace for Hodges, prints for Mandy, fingernail scrapings for the new DNA tech filling position in the ever revolving door since the loss of Wendy, and then continued on.

The television was on in the break room. Bobby Dawson was inside, and so were Nick and Ray. They all greeted her individually and then turned their eyes back to the T.V. Walking over to the sink to fill a kettle and boil water for tea, Sara glanced over at what they were watching. It was ongoing coverage of the explosions at the café off the University of Bern campus. Though curious about what had happened, watching only served to remind her that she had not yet spoken to Grissom. She'd left him three messages. He'd left her that one. She braced her hands on either side of the sink and dropped her head forward.

Taking a few deep breaths, she let her head hang. It had been hours since she'd last attempted a call. He hadn't attempted any in that time. She had time now, she supposed, but no privacy. With Nick here, she was sure she could duck into his office, but for some reason, it felt odd to try to call Grissom from an office he used to call his own. She sighed and pushed herself up, grabbing the kettle and placing it under the tap. She'd make a cup of tea, take it outside, and hopefully, hopefully, speak to her husband.

The voices coming from the screen behind her helped to inform her of what was going on. She could hear a reporter's voice, the accent distinctly female and distinctly British, describing the destruction. She thought back to those few moments where she'd assumed Paris and not Bern and she could almost imagine Grissom's and her haunts blown to pieces. She could picture his cell phone lying blackened on the ground as she tried desperately to get through. Her eyes closed.

"Do they think it's terrorists?" she heard behind her. It was Bobby Dawson's voice.

"Are you kidding? A terrorist attack? In Switzerland?"

Sara winced at Nick's words and then turned, placing her kettle of water on the stove as Ray began, "One definition of terrorism, Nick, as described in the World Dictionary, is 'the systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal.' It also describes terrorism as 'the act of terrorizing.' Though in the United States we tend to think of terrorists as belonging to an organization aimed at targeting western countries for violent attacks as a political means, that isn't always necessarily the case. In fact, that definition is rather narrow in scope. Any person who produces a state of fear may be described by some as a terrorist. Furthermore, if that person believes they have been wronged by a state or institution, and are committing their act in order to make up for, or draw attention to their grievance, they may also be regarded as a terrorist. Bombing a University campus may certainly qualify as an act of terrorism, especially if done by somebody who believes that they are addressing a wrong."

"Yeah, and what does the OED say?"

"It still uses the original, historical definition, 'government by intimidation,' as in the Reign of Terror, from period just after the French Revolution." Ray paused. "See, the definition is problematic. According to the OED, the state is the terrorist, which opposes many more contemporary definitions, which state that a state cannot be a terrorist. States and heads of State have a certain legitimacy, which some believe, excludes them from any definition of terrorism. Various institutions still can't agree as to what constitutes terrorism. It depends on who you ask, but according to some, admittedly a minority, if any person or group of persons decide to address a perceived wrong by carrying out an act of violence and inducing fear, that person, or those persons could be considered terrorists."

Ray paused briefly. Sara watched his eyes turn back to the television. "University campuses have a history of being places where such perceived grievances are addressed. Look at what happened at the University of Alabama last February. A professor killed three colleagues over a tenure dispute. Had she chosen to address the situation in an even more violent manner, trying to create a state of panic or fear, targeting the University and not just those colleagues within her faculty, she may be considered a terrorist.

"In 1992," he continued, "Something similar happened at Concordia University in Montreal. A professor killed four colleagues and wounded one other when facing dismissal for charges of harassment."

"Or the Montreal massacre at l'ecole Polytechnique," Sara cut in, unable to help herself. "The shooting was not done by a professor who perceived his or her self to be aggrieved, but by a man denied admission into the engineering program. He went on a rampage, targeting women for taking what he believed his place in the program. The man, Marc Lepine, had even stated in his suicide letter, that his purpose was political, wiping feminists from the earth. He's considered a mass murderer, but also could certainly be considered a terrorist by many."

She turned away from Nick's smirk, knowing it came from using an example of a man targeting women and glanced at Bobby, whose eyes were darting between Nick and her. She looked to Ray, who only nodded. "That a person could take it one or two steps further and take out their grievance by committing a larger act of violence, aimed at creating terror, is not a big leap."

"Alright," Nick conceded. "It could be an act of terrorism, if that was the bomber's aim."

The room grew silent. Three sets of eyes turned back to the television. Sara's eyes turned to the kettle, listening for the water to begin boiling. She took a mug and placed a tea bag inside. Once the kettle began to whistle, she lifted it from the burner and poured the steaming hot water into her mug. Adding honey, she stirred the blend, opened the refrigerator, pulled out an apple and then took her apple and her mug outside.

The air was cool in the dawn of the early morning hours if they could yet be called that. It was still dark, as dark as Vegas, with all its lights could get at night. There was a bit of a fog, moisture in the air, mist that suggested they may be hit with a bit of early morning rain. She hoped that something could stave it off, for awhile anyways. Greg was still at their scene, working in the dark, beneath neon lights and headlights and street lights. If the rain could hold off until he could also work in sunlight, he may be able to bring in evidence that would disappear if the rain were to begin now.

Sara shivered and took a sip of her hot tea. Her apple went into her pocket, to be eaten in a few short moments. Both hands were around the mug, taking from it heat to circulate through her body. Her wedding ring pressed against the ceramic, bringing her attention to it. She glanced down at it and then adjusted the mug in her hand, grasping it by the handle, freeing her other hand to reach for her phone. She dialed.

Again, there was no answer. His phone was on. It rang its usual five times before voicemail picked up. She left another message, holding her mug to her chest in the fog, waiting to see if it would clear.