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Dec 30"Case closed," Nick said proudly, slapping his hands together.
"Yeah?" asked Grissom, smiling. It relieved him immensely to know that Matthew hadn't been the perp.
"Yeah. Matthew's roommate Brandon has a riff with Todd the jock, gets into a fight with him, slams him into a wall a little too hard. When he ends up dead, the dude drags him up to the dorm room and pretends he doesn't know anything about it, because Matthew's out of it on…that drug. Whatever that was."
Grissom nodded, furrowing his eyebrows. "Whatever that was. Is Matthew still here?"
Nick shrugged. "Maybe. He might've left already."
Grissom nodded and quickened his pace past Nick toward the room where Matthew was being cleared. He found him shrugging on a stylishly ragged coat.
"Hey. Matthew."
Matthew turned around, looking surprised to see Grissom.
"Hi," he said, taking Grissom's hand and shaking it lightly.
"I hear you're free to go."
"Yeah," Matthew said, smiling nervously.
"I'm glad to hear it," Grissom told him. He looked around the empty hallways before continuing. "Are you…all right? After all that happened?"
Matthew sighed, running one hand through floppy brown bangs.
"I think I am. I miss seeing Katie. But since she's been gone…I mean, totally gone…"
Here he paused to look pointedly at Grissom. He knew that Matthew was talking about the time travel that they had both once reveled in, Grissom more briefly than Matthew.
"…now that she's totally gone, I can finally let myself grieve, you know? I can finally let myself accept this."
"That's great, Matthew."
Matthew smiled slightly. "Look, Dr. Grissom…can you tell me what happened to Katie's dad? Paul Rush?"
Grissom reached up to adjust his glasses.
"Paul Rush is in the hospital, Matthew. He'll probably be there for, uh, some time. The doctors say that he's in a coma."
Grissom's eyes met Matthew's, and he knew that this would be their shared secret.
"Do you think he sees her every day?" Matthew whispered.
"I do," Grissom said. "I think he sees her every day."
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When he got home, Sara was scribbling furiously on a yellow legal pad. She was sitting on the couch in a tank top and jeans, her hair slightly curly and held back sloppily in a ponytail. Grissom had to pretend that the sight of her didn't make him catch his breath.
"How's the novel coming?" he asked.
Sara snorted, her pencil never pausing.
"You know I hate it when you call it a novel."
"Well, whatever it is, it's going to be great," he said, walking over to sit beside her on the couch. She had just received a grant to research and write about the psychology of kidnappers and the study of hostage negotiation.
"But," Sara continued, gazing at her notes pensively with the pencil resting against her mouth, "thinking about it as a whole, I'm not sure where I want to put my most important points, you know? Do I catch the reader's attention at the beginning with something striking, or do I put it at the end and leave a lasting impression?" She parted her lips and chewed on the pencil's eraser, just a little. It drove him crazy when she did that.
"So what do you think, baby? You're the scientist. Which are more important, beginnings or endings?"
Trying to keep his expression professional, Grissom brought his hand up to play with a stray curl behind her ear as he gazed at her notes. When he finally looked back up at Sara, she was smiling her impish half-smile.
"Beginnings," he said. "I think beginnings."