Tattered and Broken, Stolen.

By: iferleigh

Rating: T (for now, just in case.)

Disclaimer: I am in no way nor form associated with anyone from CBS or CSI or Alliance or anyone pertaining to the successful hit show that is CSI: Crime Scene Investigations. I am not Anthony Zuiker and I will never be him though it would be quite lovely to be as good as him. He's made a damn good show, don't you think? Not my property and never will be.

Note: This fiction piece was not and is not intended to make the character Sara Sidle look bad. I think she's a damn good character and she adds just as much as anyone in the cast, but it just helped with the drama. And besides, I liked Catherine first. And Grillows a.k.a. PureJoy.

Thank you so much for the comments. It's driven me to work faster before my exams on the 13th.

Chapter Four: Priority Case

The trio walked in single file, feeling everyone's veiled stares as they passed. Gil Grissom's office was obviously not sound proof and they knew everyone else had heard their little "misunderstanding". Grissom found himself shooting glares at the lab techs he caught gawking. He knew he had successfully fed gas to the fires of gossip. He was trapped.

"We'll finish this later," Grissom muttered to Sara as Jim went into the break room where the rest of the team waited. Greg, Warrick and Nick sat around the table, waiting to be handed out their assignments that night. The three immediately lowered their eyes the moment Sara and Grissom came in. They clearly did not want to be a part of the little show.

"I got a call tonight and…" Jim began but Greg raised his hand.

"Aren't we waiting for Cath?" If looks could kill the young CSI would have withered away and died in an instant as Warrick and Nick turned to him.

Jim looked uncomfortable. "I'll get to that…Just a few minutes ago we got a call from Lily Flynn…"

"Wait, isn't that Cath's…" Greg began.

Jim nodded. "Mother, yes, and she's out of town. She said she's been trying to reach Catherine since this morning but couldn't, she's been trying since this morning and Lindsey is at a friend's house for the weekend, she doesn't know. We called her and checked on her and yes, she's okay…"

"What about Catherine?" Warrick asked, his face clouded with worry. He observed the always together captain move uneasily. Something was not right.

"We sent two uniforms to check and found no response, the Denali, hers, was parked out front, her doors were locked and nothing seemed out of place…"

"What about Catherine?" Nick asked. "She's okay, right? Just sick so she's not in tonight…"

Jim looked at him for a second before turning away. "They couldn't find her…"

"What?" Nick and Greg said at the same time, their voices higher than the other.

"The officers found drops of blood in the living room and called it in," Jim said, his face unusually stonier than usual. "The call came in just now and you guys are on shift, but Ecklie…"

"Does not have the right into this case," Grissom said, speaking for the first time since coming in. His face was cold and impassive as he looked at Jim. "The call came in our shift and we will process this and we will handle this. Not Ecklie, no Ecklie. He doesn't touch the evidence, doesn't breathe on it or come near within ten feet of it."

"Griss," Jim began but his friend shook his head.

"I don't give a shit, we're handling this case and that's final. If he has a problem, let him come to me and I'll deal with him," Grissom said with more authority anyone ever heard from him. He turned to Greg and Nick "Greg, Nick, I want you in that house---collect everything, blood, epithelial evidence, hair, fiber, prints---everything from top to bottom. I want all possible evidence here and I want it all to be top priority, whatever case we might have pass it to swing or dayshift. No one let's this case go until we find out what's going on."

Nick and Greg nodded. "We're on it."

"Warrick," Grissom said, turning to the African-American who wore a mask of worry and confusion. "Process the perimeter, the garage, the Denali or whatever you might find outside."

Without a word, Warrick left the room, his face cold and grim with determination.

"Jim, call Lindsey, but don't worry her. I want to see the evidence before we raise alarm," Grissom said to the Detective. "Let her stay with her friends for now, she's safer there and call Lily and see if she's reached Catherine or not."

"What about you?" Jim asked. "And Ecklie?"

"I'm heading to the house," Grissom said as he started to leave the room. "And Ecklie can raise hell for all I care, we need to find Catherine we will find her."

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Sara said, her voice smaller than before, sounding a little unsure.

Grissom turned to her. "I—I don't…Process the scene with the rest, do what you can or help Warrick. I don't know…I'll see you."

Sara looked at him, her eyes both sad and hurt before turning away and heading out.

Grissom shook his head as he watched her walk away.

"You okay?" Jim asked in a low voice.

"I'm fine…" he said, his hand running through his salt and pepper shaded curls. "I—I just…Cath—she should be…Catherine should…"

Jim nodded, seeing how lost his old friend was. He couldn't believe that for the first time he saw doubt, anxiety and even fear among other things appear in his blue eyes. Jim confirmed then, as he had always suspected, that his friend did feel more than he let on towards Catherine. He suddenly felt sorry for his friend who was clearly suffering. "I know. She'll be okay, Gil. She'll…"

Grissom looked at him, steeling himself, his face turning impassive and emotionless. "We have no time to waste, Jim. If something's wrong then we need to work hard and fast if possible."

Jim nodded, seeing the mask Gil Grissom had put on so suddenly. "I'll make some calls."

Nick pulled the Denali over across the road and got out. Wordlessly, he, Greg and to his surprise earlier, Sara retrieved their kits from the back. They crossed the road and were met by Detective Vartann who looked unusually grim, which didn't surprise Nick who was aware of the detective's flirtations with the missing CSI.

"I was told you guys were handling this one," Vartann said, looking back at the house.

"Yeah, no way we're letting this go," Nick answered for his group. Sara was quiet and cold while Greg seemed to have slipped into a melancholy state since finding about Catherine. Nick had understood the younger man's reaction since it had been Catherine who trained him well. She was a good supervisor.

Vartann nodded and lead them to the house, slipping into the yellow police crime scene tapes. "The first officers on the scene are there waiting, there's blood in the living room and signs of possible struggle were present, but not much. Just the small blood puddle, drops and the disturbances are minimal. But you guys can confirm that."

"What about upstairs?" Nick asked as they entered the house.

"They're waiting for you to check it, no one went up," the detective said, now standing in the living room. Blood was minimal but it was there along with smudges and possible fibers.

"I'll take the room upstairs," Nick said to Greg and Sara. "You two okay down here?"

Sara nodded. "I'll process with Greg and document the scene."

Nick nodded and left with Vartann, both talking in low tones as they walked away. Greg turned to the small puddle of blood, around were spatters not far. The puddle was smudged, leaving a possible print on the floor. "Blood not enough to be threatening or fatal. Catherine's?" he started to tae pictures of the scene while Sara bent down to the blood.

Sara nodded. "Maybe, but if that's hers then that's not such a bad thing. It means she's not dead or seriously hurt." She too a swab from the puddle then stopped. "Possible palm print with partials of the fingers…" she stared at the blood. "Looks like a slip, you know, a hand trying to get leverage then it slips." Greg took a picture with the scene marker.

"Maybe we can run it through the database," Greg said hopefully. "Maybe she had an accident and slipped, you know…"

Sara looked at the bloody print. "Palm looks too big to be Catherine's"

Greg's face fell. "Oh…" he looked to the side and too out his tweezers. "I think I've got hairs here," he said as he tweezed a fiber near the blood. "Skin tags and I've got a lot," he looked at Sara, thinking what she was thinking, their minds practically synchronized as they processed the evidence mentally.

Sara looked at the strand. "Black, skin tags present and…it was pulled out," she said, frowning. "Sign of struggle? She must have pulled them off and there are a lot so she worked hard for them…"

"She was fighting, she wasn't going without a fight," Greg said as he slipped the fibers into a small evidence paper bag. "That's Cat all right." He smiled faintly as he thought of the spitfire that was his boss. "She's too tough."

Sara nodded. "She fought whoever was here. Keep going, we need to find out if all this blood is Catherine's, if she fought then there's a good chance she got a good hit at the perp too."

Grissom headed into the house, his heart beating fast against his ribs. He could almost feel the void, the emptiness of the house knowing that Catherine wasn't there. He nodded to the officers as he passed, not waiting or looking for anyone as he continued to make his way into the house.

He came in and realized how much the place had changed. The decorations were different now and the pictures that hung on the walls were gone. He felt a twist in his stomach as he fought the emptiness he felt as he saw the bare wall where a picture of Catherine, him and a seven year-old Lindsey used to be along with the other family pictures Catherine had loved. "Almost like goin' home to your real family. You come in and see them immediately that you just have to smile…" he remembered her saying that about the wall of pictures and memories.

Now it was gone.

Why?

"Griss," Greg said, his kit in hand with Sara following behind him. "We're going back to the lab. You took a while so we decided to go ahead."

Grissom nodded. "Did you get anything?"

Greg looked down. "Yeah, blood, hairs with skin tags, a piece of torn cloth….and a syringe." He looked down at his collection. "There's a bit really. That's a good thing, maybe the guy was too sloppy to notice what he was leaving behind."

"Or Catherine fought hard," Sara said in a normal voice which surprised Grissom

"Other signs of struggle? Other than the blood and torn cloth?" Grissom asked, looking at Sara who was looking around, avoiding his eyes.

"We got smudges of blood with a possible palm print, uh, a disturbance in the rug where I almost tripped though that might not add much and well, just a few stuff knocked down by the stairs," Sara said. "But we're sure she fought. The skin tags proved she pulled them out."

"All right, process it and if anyone tries to stop you like Ecklie tell him I gave explicit orders and keep going and have them call me," Grissom said. "Examine the blood and the palm ASAP and give the syringe to tox for a full panel."

Greg and Sara nodded. "Nick's still upstairs. We'll grab a patrol car because we rode with him. We want to get the processing started as soon as possible which is now."

Grissom nodded. "I'll see you later. Put everything in top priority and rush. If possible Greg I'd like you to work at it with Wendy, you know your capabilities and we need you on this. For Catherine."

Greg nodded. "I'll do it. Of course I will."

The two left, but not before Sara gave Grissom a vacant look before going ahead and following Greg with an officer. Grissom shook his head and went in. He looked around the living room, trying to imagine what had taken place, but couldn't.

The place was too bare for him aside from the small portion of blood and there were some things that seemed out of place, but other than that nothing else was off. He mused that if it hadn't been for the blood then no one would have thought something was seriously wrong.

He proceeded up the stairs and fond Nick in the bed room that was obviously Catherine's. Nick looked up as he went through her clothes. "I think this place was untouched. The bed is messy but it might as well be Cath's doing. There's no semen, no blood. Nothing except her cell phone which could have been left here earlier before the attack. Maybe it all happened downstairs."

Grissom looked around the room. Her shoes for work lay by the bed. "She was here."

Nick looked at him.

"The shoes, her shoes are positioned as if she just slid them off and left them there," he said, nodding towards the black boots. "She was here."

Nick nodded and looked over at the bed. "The bed bothers me…"

Grissom looked at Nick with an odd look.

"No, not like that," Nick said. "I mean, the sheets are twisted and…it looks odd. I know what an unmade bed is but I can't be sure…"

"Jimmy Tadero once taught Catherine that if something doesn't feel right, it probably isn't, she believed that and she's proved him right before. One time she proved it right landed him in jail," Grissom said. "She was here and…I think this is where it started too."

Nick walked around the bed and with his latex gloves he pulled out an earring. "She was wearing these last night," he said, showing a gold hoop earring. "Maybe she…"

"Was having a drink," Grissom said, noticing the yellow mix on the bedside table. "A screwdriver, I assume. She was here…"

Nick looked at Grissom. "Now how the hell did I miss that?"

Grissom shook his head. "You were looking at the other side of the room. I don't expect you to have eyes in the back of your head."

"You guys process the blood yet?" Sara said as she came in to the lab where Wendy and Greg sat processing.

"Remember we found blood on the floors? We had two to work on but since it was blood we really couldn't tell if it was all Cat or not." Greg handed her a results sheet. "First one we processed was Catherine's and we found traces of saliva with her blood…"

"What?" Sara said, shuffling through her file. She pulled out pictures. "Blood and saliva from the spatter and it's all hers." She looked at the pictures. "Look at this." Wendy and Greg leaned in to see what she was pointing. "The blood, the spatter, it's consistent with a horizontal spray…she could have been lying down."

Greg nodded, seeing he scene as his mind conjured up images. "And he hit her so…the force was enough to draw blood and she spat it out…a clue?"

Sara nodded. "She wasn't going down without a fight." She looked at the file. "Process the rest of the DNA. Catherine might have left us something else."

Just then the machine beeped and another results sheet appeared. Wendy picked it up and read. "You found traces of saliva and blood too and it's an unknown male. Maybe she hit him back and made him spittle or something."

Sara looked at Greg and nodded. "I'll go see what Jacqui got from the print."

The brunette headed out, determined to find something from what they collected. She and the strawberry blonde may not have always connected, save for some moments they shared sometimes, but she knew well enough that even in the most distressing events, the blonde was capable of putting her CSI mid into the works. She was sure Catherine left something more than blood, hair and saliva. She would get the prints and whoever had Catherine.

Grissom and Nick looked around the room. "There's nothing much here," the supervisor said. "Except that all the physical evidence we found say that it started here."

Nick nodded. "Let's see…" he turned to the doorway, imagining Catherine there. "She comes in, a drink in hand then…what? She slips her earrings off and makes her way to set her drink down…slips off her shoes and…then what?"

Grissom looked at the spot where her shoes had been.

By the bed.

His mind began working. "She's just had a long day, long shift. She wants to unwind and relax, get some sleep since Lindsey isn't here for her to worry about."

He turned, already seeing a shoeless Catherine standing not far from him and Nick, the younger CSI's mind was conjuring up the same image. "She turns to the closet then what?"

They both see Catherine turn to the closet.

"No shirt, no jeans, not even socks," Nick said, looking around the room. He walked over to the closet doors. "And I don't see any rack of clothing disturbed here. It's like she didn't even touch anything here, which might mean she didn't go in or wasn't able to."

Grissom went into the bathroom, his senses immediately assaulted by the scents of the bathroom. Women's scent, he knew from the bottles of perfume, powder, lotion and powders on the vanity that made the bathroom smell somewhat sweeter. He wished he didn't have to go in, not because he didn't want to violate her privacy but because it simply reminded him too much of her. It was all too Catherine. "No signs of the clothes she wore last night here."

Nick nodded. "She's still wearing her clothes from last night then. He didn't give her the chance to change." He watched Catherine moved in front of the closet. "Maybe he waited for her." He watched, imagining a figure waiting in the closet, in the dark recesses, waiting for his moment.

The conjured image of Catherine Willows that both men had made in their minds stood in front of the closet doors, opening them, unsuspecting. Then a figure leapt out, trapping her, holding her into his grip. The Catherine they imagined struggled and fought, making them both fall onto the bed.

"Then what happens?" Nick asked, snapping Grissom out of his trance as he imagined what could have transpired hours before.

"She fought him hard," Grissom said, his eyes watching as Catherine fought back. He looked around. "The cell phone…What about the cell phone? Where did you find it?"

Nick walked over to the side of the bed and pointed a few inches away from a pillow. "Right about here. I was planning on checking the records at the lab tonight."

"Let me see it," Grissom said, the image of Catherine with her predator disappearing. Wordlessly he took the bagged cell phone from the CSI. "I want to see who she called last. If she called 911 then we've got a time frame." He scanned her cell phone. "We've got voicemails from Lily and Brass; they said they tried contacting her."

"Who did she call last?" Nick asked. "911?"

The supervisor looked at what the screen before him bore, staring, not believing what he was reading.

"Griss?"

Grissom looked at him. "The last call she tried to make..." He looked at the screen and the time records. "She tried to call me."