Chapter 5
Sara and Grissom's relationship had taken its last giant step forward the previous April, following the investigation of a patient death in a locked ward at the state mental hospital. It was a case that brought back a lot of memories for Sara. Grissom first became aware of her discomfort shortly after their arrival at the facility when she was asked to remove her uniform vest prior to entering the ward at Desert State. She looked unusually vulnerable—beautiful but vulnerable—to him in her slacks and shirt, without any emblem of the job. She was, of course, as professional and observant as ever, but a hint of her discomfort lingered. With the patients restricted to the unit dayroom, Grissom set Sara to processing victim Robert Garson's room while he and Jim Brass conducted interviews. Not that he doubted her ability to handle herself, but something had her off kilter, and from his perspective, the further he could keep Sara from psychotic murder-rapists, the better.
Later, entering the dayroom together with Sara to obtain cheek swabs for DNA, Grissom quickly surveyed the room, making a best guess as to who would cause the most problem, taking that side of the room himself.
"I'll take Jiminey Cricket." But the elderly inmate sitting quietly on Sara's side had been one of Brass' interviewees and Grissom hadn't seen his file. Not that anyone's files were exactly reassuring. He kept half an ear on Sara as she worked.
"Open your mouth, please. Would you open your mouth, sir?" Grissom was writing in his notebook. Hearing Sara call his name made him lift his head.
"Grissom?" He looked at her. "You take this one." Only later did he learn how close she had come to being bitten.
Back at the lab, Grissom caught up with Doc Robbins and Garson's autopsy findings. Peri-mortem ligature marks on his wrists and ankles raised new questions regarding the last few hours of Robbie's life. And Sara studied the blood toxicology analysis Hodges brought her. It was positive only for olanzapine and ibuprofen.
"His chart indicated at least four other anti-psychotics. Why wasn't he getting those meds?"
Hodges shrugged. "Do I look clairvoyant?"
Jim Brass caught up with Grissom in the corridor.
"News flash from the loony bin. Two reported deaths in the last three years from 'complications due to restraint procedures.'"
"And how many have gone unreported?" Grissom mused.
"The hospital just got off probation. One more death by restraint brings the feds in."
"Good incentive to keep it quiet."
"Or make it look like someone else did it."
"Yeah. Somebody who's crazy."
"Sara found some inconsistencies too. Take her back with you, but Jim, do me a favor?"
"Sure, Gil. What's up?"
"Nothing. Just—stay close to Sara, would you?"
"You bet."
Sofia, still a member of the crime lab team at the time, had been off when they started investigating the Desert State murder case. Following her demotion by Lab Director Conrad Ecklie after she backed Grissom in the political struggle that had resulted in the severing of the night shift team, Sofia was determined to leave the crime lab and get back to her intended career as a police detective. Grissom knew that in the absence of an available position at LVPD, she was interviewing with some of the regional departments—and never had he been so glad to have her cut out of the mix. He wasn't entirely sure he understood why, but Sara and Sofia could be a somewhat volatile combination, and with Sara already uneasy, he didn't want her facing any extraneous stressors, so he, Brass and Sara continued to pursue the case, assisted in the lab by Greg and the Lab Rats. Sofia'd be back on duty Saturday night to help out, if they were still working this case.
Grissom called Sara after getting DNA tech Mia Dickerson's report on Garson's bedding. She was outside the hospital, having just tracked down Unit Nurse Joanne McKay in the smoking area.
"Sidle."
"We've got the DNA results back on the semen from Robbie's sheets. Patient Adam Trent—the nail biter."
"Okay."
"Hey, Sara? I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Wait for me before you go back on the unit, would you?"
"Sure, boss. See you in fifteen."
She met him in the lobby and they proceeded to the floor. Once in Trent's room, they stood together looking at his meticulous artwork, fanciful trees, cats and saxophones transformed into objects of horror and violence.
"This stuff is dark," Grissom commented.
"Yeah. Of course, I wouldn't expect Winnie the Pooh."
"Adam's subconscious was working overtime."
"I'll bet you aced your Rorschachs." She smiled at him then continued, "When I was in fifth grade, I drew a picture of a harpooned whale. Everyone thought I was gonzo, but I had just read Moby Dick. Sometimes a dying whale is just a dying whale."
For a moment Grissom indulged in imagining the lonely, serious fifth grader he knew Sara had been, a fifth grader capable of not only reading but also understanding Moby Dick, yet still a child drawing pictures of the stories she had read. Idly he wondered whether it had been a teacher, foster parent or social worker who had worried the drawing of a whale slaughter meant they had a budding psychopath on their hands. Alone in the hall, he reached out and gave Sara's shoulder a brief squeeze as they went back to work.
In the end, it was sheer stupidity, a thoughtless moment, the result, likely, of getting too comfortable in a dangerous setting, like zoo keepers who lose limbs to cats and bears by walking too close to the bars separating them from the wild animals they work with every day; that and their shared single-minded pursuit of the case, which had nearly cost Sara her life. They were examining the nurses' station and came across locked drawers. Grissom left her momentarily in search of a key, such a little thing, but as they knew too well, most often it's those inconsequential little decisions which are the tipping points for two possible futures.
Grissom returned to find the door to the glassed in room locked against him, and Sara held tight in mental patient Adam Trent's grip, a blade to her throat.
"Open the door. Just open it. Please open," he implored the staff member he'd brought back with him. Standing at the glass, helpless, he glued his eyes to Sara's, allowing everything he was feeling to shine through. Much, perhaps even most of Grissom and Sara's communication with each other took place non-verbally. Their colleagues took the "geek mind meld" for granted. Most strangers didn't notice. But Adam Trent's hyperawareness of it had been unnerving to Sara, even in their earlier questioning of him. Now he honed in on it again.
"Do not look at him. Keep your eyes on the floor." Adam was speaking rapidly, agitated, manic. Sara's gaze never wavered from Grissom's. And then Joanna McKay was against the glass, yelling at Adam, drawing his attention. Sara broke away from Trent, and her attacker turned his blade on himself, slitting his own jugular. Sara opened the door and fled.
Grissom cursed his indecision even as Sara barreled out of the nurses' station and stormed down to the end of the corridor. He stood indecisively, equidistant between a seriously bleeding mental patient and the woman he loved, wishing he were a man who could dash after Sara and pull her into the safety of his arms, wishing he knew whether she would welcome such an embrace. In the end, he did follow her, stopping when he was standing close, not touching her.
"When my father died," Sara told him, "my mother came to a place like this for awhile for evaluation. It looked the same; it smelled the same. It smelled like lies." Grissom ached for the little girl who had seen her abusive father murdered by her mother.
"Are you sure you're all right?"
"Crazy people do make me feel crazy."
"If you want, I can have somebody take your place."
"I appreciate that. I do. I really do. But I kind of made a decision to move beyond that, and I really want to finish this case."
As always, Sara's ability to bounce back, to re-erect her psychological armor astounded Grissom. Their moment of privacy ended abruptly as Nurse McKay barged in on their conversation, and in the blink of an eye his vulnerable and hurting friend had disappeared and Sara-the-pit-bull was back.
"We have rules for a reason!" McKay charged down the hall towards the pair by the window.
Grissom turned to face the rapidly approaching woman and stood, as he did so often, with Sara close at his shoulder. Even in situations like this one in which he couldn't actually touch Sara, the intimacy of her physical proximity brought him a large degree of comfort.
"You people come in here disrupting things. You're unsafe. This is your fault."
Incredulous at the attack from a nurse who evidence suggested was having sex with one of her patients, Grissom raised an eyebrow.
"Really?"
But Sara went for the jugular.
"You seem to take your job rather personally."
"What are you suggesting?"
"That you had an intimate relationship with Adam Trent."
"That's ridiculous."
"Your lipstick is on his underwear."
"I gave Robbie my lipstick sometimes. Maybe he was wearing it when the whole thing…
Grissom spoke up.
"We didn't find any on his lips."
"Well, that's your problem," McKay retorted, then turned and stormed back down the hallway. Grissom and Sara stood silently and watched her go.
As hard as it was for Sara to reveal personal information, opening up to Grissom always seemed to ground her, to have a stabilizing effect. Afraid Sara might still be on edge from the attack, Grissom felt his shoulders tense later that day when Sofia launched into a pedantic and condescending explanation of "acoustic archeology", but Sara responded professionally and patiently, despite the fact he was quite sure she had more than a passing familiarity with the history of the development of the phonograph. He'd stopped trying to figure out WHY Sofia persisted in her low-level provocations of Sara and simply settled for being aware of it the day Sofia had informed him of her intent to return to police work. And for appreciating that Sara so rarely rose to the bait.
The sounds they recovered from Adam's turned pot would never stand up in court, but it did provide one final clue they'd been missing, information which was confirmed by comparing McKay's DNA to Adam Trent's. The nurse was his mother.
