Chapter Four
Gil sat at home the next day, looking intensely at the shoe he had placed on his coffee table. When he woke up he had been quite relieved to find that the shoe did in fact exist, and he had not been experiencing strange, fairy tale-esque hallucinations the night before.
Despite knowing that all thoughts relating his situation with Katie to the story of Cinderella were quite ludicrous, Gil couldn't help but wonder how he could use this shoe to trace its owner.
Obviously, taking the shoe to every house in the land, and making all the females try it on, was out of the question. Besides the time it would take, and the doors he would get slammed in his face, in the real world, the shoe would fit more than just one person.
Of course he did have the added advantage of knowing her smile. He was sure he would recognise it again the moment he saw it.
His mind briefly wandered to why Prince Charming did not speed up his search by getting the women to smile at him rather than all of them trying on the shoe. But then he realised that Cinderella was fiction – and that he was quite possibly insane.
-----
Three days after the ball, Catherine had, for the seventeenth time, decided that she was going to call every G. Grissom in the telephone directory, on the off chance that Gil was listed, and had in fact given her his real name.
Like the previous sixteen times, her hand hesitated as it moved to pick up the phone.
"Oh just do it already!" Fay exclaimed from her seat across the room, flicking absently through the daily newspaper.
"What if it isn't him?"
"You say you've called the wrong number, and you apologise."
"And what if it is him?"
"You say hi, you explain what your Cinderella moment was all about, and you take it from there."
"What if I'm not ready for that?"
Fay lowered the paper and focussed on her friend. "Catherine if you weren't ready you wouldn't be so concerned about the fact that you didn't exchange numbers."
"Maybe I'm just trying to get revenge on Eddie?"
"Maybe… But maybe you're just moving on."
Fay offered her a small smile and then returned her attention to the newspaper.
Catherine sighed, found her place in the phonebook, and persuaded her hand to actually pick up the phone. She had dialled only three numbers when Fay swept from her seat and clamped her hand down on the phone to cut off the call.
"What are you doing?" Catherine exclaimed.
"Here's his number!" Fay screamed, shoving the newspaper in front of her.
Managing to pull her confused stare away from her friend, Catherine redirected her attention to the paper, her eyes obeying Fay's finger that pointed to what had caused her outburst.
There, in black and white, was a photograph of her shoe.
-----
On arrival at the police headquarters, Gil was told that Brass was in the middle of an interrogation, and so he made his way to the public waiting area to get a drink while he waited for him.
The waiting area was unusually full – of women - so Gil assumed it must be quite a big case that Jim was working on. He got a soda from the machine, and found an available seat.
Two more women arrived in the next few minutes, and then a further four minutes passed before Jim appeared at the door.
"I'm sorry to keep you all waiting. It'll just be a couple more minutes," he announced to the room as he walked over to Gil.
"What's happened?" Gil asked him, quietly.
"It's a long story," Jim said, beginning to move Gil through the crowd towards the door. "Could you wait for me in my office? I'll be with you as soon as I can."
"Well, I can come back another – "
"No, no," Jim interrupted. "I need to speak with you. Give me ten minutes."
"Okay," Gil agreed, and allowed himself to be ushered out of the door and into the corridor.
-----
Catherine entered the Las Vegas police headquarters and reported to the desk as requested.
"I'm here about the missing shoe," she told the receptionist and was directed to a public waiting area just down the corridor.
The room was lined with glass, and, as she approached, Catherine could see that there were several other women already waiting.
'Surely they can't all be missing a shoe,' she thought to herself as she walked round to the door.
On entry, she counted that there were in fact seven other women in the waiting area, and the majority of them looked incredibly impatient. Wondering what was going on, but not wanting to ask, Catherine quickly found a seat towards the back, away from the others.
Over the course of the next ten minutes, the women were called for one by one by a young male police officer, who managed to calmly deflect each demanding, 'how much longer is this going to take?' in a gentle, soothing voice; promising each time that things were progressing as quickly as possible, and that 'they' were sorry for the inconvenience.
When all of the other women had been seen, and the same officer returned to ask for Catherine, it confirmed that they had all, in fact, been missing a shoe.
Catherine's nerves tripled as she followed the officer along the corridors of the police department. She had been anxious enough about seeing Gil – if that was his real name – again; but this bizarre process now had her wondering what exactly she had wandered into… Had her shoe somehow been involved in a crime after she had left it? Was she now implicated in a one-shoed murder or armed robbery? She knew on some levels that she was probably over-reacting, but anxiety had a habit of suppressing one's logic.
When she was led into an interrogation room, she was sure her heart actually stopped momentarily.
-----
Gil absently drummed his fingers on Jim's desk as he told himself he would give it five more minutes and then he would leave a message for Jim to call him when his case was over.
He need not have worried, as Jim arrived less than a minute after he made his decision.
"Sorry," his friend apologised as he jogged in.
"Are you okay?" Gil asked as he took in the mysterious smile in residence on Jim's face.
"I am," he replied. "Could you come with me? I need you to look at something."
As Gil had learned long ago that it was usually easier not to ask questions of Jim's requests, he nodded and followed his friend through the building, finding himself entering an observation room attached to one of the interrogation rooms.
"Do you recognise anyone?" Jim asked him immediately, tilting his head towards the window.
Gil frowned and turned to look into the adjoining room. He froze when he saw the woman sitting behind the glass.
"All those women," Brass began to explain with a proud grin, "were missing a black stiletto."
Gil's eyebrows rose. "A sudden spurt of shoe theft?" he asked sarcastically.
"No. But clearly a lot of women are careless with their shoes," Brass replied. "I'd intended to speak to them on the phone, but we got busy, so I asked Megan to get them all to come in so I could sort it out after my shift ended."
"Jim… Sort what out?" Gil asked slowly, horrified at where this seemed to be going.
"Well we found a shoe. They wanted it back."
"And how did they know we – rather I – found a shoe?"
Jim shrugged. "I put an ad in the paper. Much easier than going house to house."
"You put an ad in the paper?" Gil asked incredulously.
Jim nodded. "And it worked."
"You dragged every woman with a missing black stiletto down here and interrogated them as if they were a suspect in one of your cases?"
"No, it wasn't that harsh - "
"She's in an interrogation room, Jim!" Gil exclaimed, waving his hand in the direction of the window as he fled from the room.
-----
Catherine looked up, startled, as the door to the interrogation room burst open. She froze, her only movement the smile sweeping onto her face.
"Hi," she breathed, seeing Gil Grissom standing before her.
"Hey," he replied. "I'm sorry about this. I had no idea what Jim was doing, and I don't think he totally thought it through. You're not in any trouble. And your shoe isn't in any trouble. Not that you would think your shoe was in trouble – "
Catherine interrupted as she sensed he was losing control of his rambling. "No one-shoed armed robbery then?" she asked with a small smile.
He seemed confused by her words for a moment, and she cursed herself for making a lame joke, but then he smiled and nodded. "Ah, yeah… Nothing like that. I'll get you your shoe and you can get going."
"Thanks," she smiled. "Oh, I brought the other one in case you need me to prove that it's mine."
"Oh I know that it's yours," Gil replied.
Her heart skipped. "You do?"
He nodded. "I remember you."
It skipped again. "Oh… So, you didn't find skin cells on the shoe, and run the DNA then?" She cursed her lame jokes again.
"Would we have your DNA on file?" he asked, with a mischievous sparkle in his eyes.
She ducked her head, blushing slightly as he played along with her lame joke. "I plead the fifth," she said, looking up at him from beneath her eyelashes.
"That would certainly be an interesting twist on the Cinderella story, wouldn't it? The Prince runs a DNA test on the glass slipper."
"And it turns out Cinders is wanted for armed robbery."
They shared a laugh at this, and Catherine congratulated herself on the less lame nature of that joke.
"You're not wanted for armed robbery, are you?" he asked after a couple of seconds.
Smiling, she shook her head. "No…" Then she ducked it slightly again. "But… maybe for giving misinformation," she said quietly.
He frowned.
"My name's not Katie Flynn," she admitted. "At least, it hasn't been for a few years… I'm Catherine Willows," she said, holding out her hand to him.
-----
Gil took the outstretched hand that she offered, and shook it, remembering the soft touch of her skin from when he had last held her hand as they danced at the ball. His brain was just about alert enough to realise why her name would have changed though.
"Married?" he asked, wishing as soon as he heard the word escape him that he had put it into some sort of sentence rather than just blurting it out like that. "Sorry, I – "
"It's okay," she assured him. "I am married. Recently separated. It is permanent though."
He nodded his understanding, relief sweeping his system.
A silence fell then. Gil couldn't think what to say next. He wanted to know all about her; he wanted to continue what he felt had been starting the night they met; but, particularly given their location, asking all of his questions would certainly seem like an interrogation.
Then one of the things he had been wondering returned to him. "How did you manage to leave your shoe behind?" he asked her.
She ducked her head again, a movement he had come to love in the mere minutes they had been back together. "Oh… er…" Then she seemed to tell herself off for hesitating, and she straightened up. "I left it for you to find," she told him, matter-of-factly.
He raised an eyebrow. "You did?"
A blush tinted her cheeks as she smiled shyly. "I know it's silly, but… The clock striking twelve and me running away… I guess the Christmas spirit was messing with my head… Or the alcohol was," she shrugged. "The next morning, I actually thought I'd dreamt it."
"So did I," he told her.
"Girl loses slipper, boy seeks out girl who the shoe fits… Not really the kind of thing that happens in real life," she laughed.
"Apparently it is, though," he said, smiling with her.
She just looked at him for a second, and he wondered what she was thinking. "Or rather, boy's friend seeks out girl," she smirked.
"Only because boy's friend didn't want to have to arrest boy for going door to door harassing girls," he retorted, enjoying how at ease he felt with her; how natural it felt for him to be himself.
Her eyes caught onto his and her smile widened, and when his mind flashed back to his dreams, he realised where it was he had seen her before; why she had seemed so familiar when he first encountered her.
"Would you like to get a cup of coffee?" he asked her, surprising himself with the offer more than he seemed to surprise her.
"I'd love to," she replied. "… Could I get my shoe first?" she added with a cheeky smirk.
He laughed. "Of course… I mean, we probably should make sure that it actually is yours before we live happily ever after."
She joined in his laughter and he led her out of the interrogation room to find Brass and the 'glass slipper'.
-----
And over coffee they shared their life stories. She showed great interest and knowledge about his career, and he passed no judgemental looks or comments about hers. She explained why she had fled from the ball, and he told her that this was the first Christmas he hadn't worked.
But it certainly wasn't the last. For, that year, Gil Grissom learned that fairy tales – and dreams – actually could come true.
And they did live happily ever after.
THE END