I don't own CSI. Just this story.
Catherine looked up from the paper to the boy in front of her. "Robert?"
The boy made a small sound. His chin was touching his chest and his big pointed ears poked through the thatch of unruly blond hair. "What was that?" Catherine asked.
He looked up then, blushing automatically, lighting his hollow cheeks on fire. "Bobby. No one calls me Robert."
Catherine tried to smile, but to her it felt more like a grimace. "Okay then, Bobby. Can you tell me what happened next? After you were separated from the girls?"
Bobby's blue eyes looked directly at Catherine, yet they seemed to be looking at something past her. Something only he could see. "We were brought – kind of thrown down into that little dungeon thing. It became our home. Our 'haven'. Stupid, right? Anyway, we couldn't believe that we still had Katie, and we wanted to keep it that way. Katie was smart; she had been in fights before. We were just farm kids."
He took a deep breath and looked at Catherine apologetically. "You've probably heard this lot, but man, Katie and Jordan look alike. So Jordan just kind of did all of Katie's jobs."
"What kind of jobs?" Catherine saw immediately that this was the wrong question. The boy, who had been relatively calm before, now looked frightened and (was she misinterpreting this?) a little embarrassed.
"There were men always coming to the main place – the little shed thing on the property. Every night – or at least we thought it was every night – we'd go there and there'd be men and they'd pick us." Tears were coming to his eyes now, trailing through the dirt that was left on his face. "Katie and Jordan stood next to each other, and Jordan would take all Katie's 'jobs'."
A small sob escaped his lips, and his hand went immediately up to his mouth as he cringed. His eyes met Catherine's startled one and he tried to relax. "Poor Jordan." He finally managed to gasp. "Poor guy. He's good-looking too, so he went a lot anyway, and then taking all Katie's...well, he was out almost every night."
Finally, Catherine asked the question that had been bothering her for a long time. "Why'd you do it?" Stupid question, she chastised herself immediately, they're much to young to be taking on full-grown men.
But Bobby answered anyway, his eyes looking directly at Catherine's with a painful intensity. "That's how we got food. We did a job, we ate for the night."
Grissom had been warned not to interview anyone - that they were frightened of men. They had told him even more times that he should not go near the girl. So of course, he interviewed the girl.
He sat down across from her, studying her before he said anything. She was small, her body straight and narrow like a boy's. He could see how she could have been mistaken for one. Taken Catherine's advice, he had looked at her doppelgänger beforehand. They did look remarkably alike.
"Katie?" Grissom tried to keep his voice soft and even. The girl strated slightly before looking at him and smiling. She was very pretty, though half-healed buises obscured part of her face. "Can you tell me what you did during the day?"
The girl relaxed, glad the question was simple. "We slept a lot. We kind of piled on top of each other to keep warm, but we managed not to freeze to death. It's much warmer here then in New Jersey." Her voice was light, with a slight affliction to it, making in cound musical.
"After we slept, we'd talk about...well, just about anything un-important. We'd all known each other for a while, so it wasn't like we were strangers. We alked about school, sports, stuff like that. Families was a pretty common subject. What they were doing and our memories of them." She smiled again, her eyes flicking towards the door.
"We also sang. Quietly, very quietly. We didn't want them to hear us, or else we'd be in Trouble. Bible songs, and church music. Songs we all knew. I guess we all hoped God would help us out."
Grissom thought of something, going with it even though it was completely off-subject. "Honey ―" she cringed at the word. "Katie, can you tell me how you go those bruises?"
Katie's hand went up to her face subconsciously. She let it fall back into her lap. "At night, whenever we weren't pick to go, we'd do tests. Just a lot of ways to make us more...what that word? Compliant? We couldn't fight back ― first because we were too scared and later because we were too tired." she looked towards the door. "I'm really tired."
Katie looked back at Grissom. "Sir, when are we going home?"
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