Title Pending
By Jess
Disclaimer: See Chapter Twenty-Three.
Rating: PG-13, for a depiction of a child's death and a little language
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Crime Scene
Grissom pulled into Summerland. Emily lowered her sunglasses down her nose and tilted her head. "Whoa." She stared at the passing houses with awe. The expanse of the lawns, the shiny cars, the deluxe homes, and enclosing brick wall surprised her. She hadn't known of Summerland. "Gaudy," she commented, noticing a fountain in one front yard.
"The rich need a fancy place to play and live," Grissom muttered, looking down at the address on the paper in his lap.
"This isn't fancy," Emily objected. Her eyes caught another fountain, larger this time, with three nude women holding just wisps of stone cloths for coverage. "This is ostentatious."
"Here we go," Grissom said. "Summer Court." He stopped at the stop sign and looked down the street. He didn't even need to know the house number. The flashing red and blue lights directed him to the right. They parked outside 3941 and walked up the large front yard.
Mobley met them at the front door. "She's upstairs." Emily's eyes swept over the sterile interior of the foyer. Everything was white, silver, or black. To the right, a hallway led the kitchen. Two officers were standing there with an attractive man, probably in his thirties, in an expensive suit. Kneeling beside him was a pretty woman in a nice dress, being ignored by the three men she stood with. She had a paper towel in hand and she was rubbing the white tile floor, wiping away some dirt the officers had tracked in.
Emily reached up to touch Grissom. "Griss, look." She pointed at the woman's actions.
He looked over and raised his eyebrows at his intern. "What are you going to do about it?"
She stared back at him incredulously and then sighed. "Right. I'm lead." She stepped off the second stair and said, "I'll be up in a moment." Grissom and Mobley headed up the stairs. Emily approached the four people. "Excuse me, ma'am?" The woman looked up at her. Her tear-streaked face glared at Emily. Emily smiled gently. "Hi. I'm Emily Reese. I'm here to process this scene and, I'm sorry, but you can't clean up right now."
The man heard Emily talking to his wife and turned with a frown. "Excuse me, what are you doing?"
Emily caught him off guard and stuck her hand out. "Hi, I'm Emily Reese. You are?"
"Timothy Harshell."
"Mr. Harshell, I'm a crime scene investigator. I'm sorry to meet you under these circumstances, but this is a crime scene. Your wife, and you, cannot clean anything in this house until we're done."
Mr. Harshell stared at Emily before releasing her hand. "Fine. Margaret, come here." Emily backed away slowly. Margaret Harshell stood and allowed her husband to pull him against her. Emily found her way upstairs. Officers littered the hallway. A few she recognized. They nodded at her, but their eyes fell to the ground. She gingerly walked down the hallway.
She found the little girl's room. From Emily's hips and down, the door was coated with tear-outs from coloring books and paintings. The center one proclaimed "HANNAH" with pinks and purples. Emily stepped inside. The little girl's room was large. The carpet was white, the comforter was white, but the walls were pink and all the accents were pink, too. Toys covered most of the floor. A large bookcase with a stereo and books and toys was to the left, next to the window seat. To the right were a dresser and a closet. On top of the dresser, the small television was tuned to the Disney channel but the sound was off.
Emily noticed a pair of black sandals, too large to be a small child's. She frowned and took small steps to the left side of the room. A blue Jansport backpack was lying on the ground. Emily knelt down and peeked into the open pocket without touching the canvas. Two spiral notebooks and a textbook. The room looked too neat. She set the silver case down and pulled two gloves out. She looked up as she pulled it on to find Grissom in the adjoining room, staring at her.
Grissom spoke softly. "Hannah turned three in February. The parents went out for their anniversary dinner. They left Hannah with a babysitter, who is not here."
"Her things are here," Emily said. "Did they look around?"
"Mobley said his guys didn't touch anything." Emily looked around. Grissom continued. "The parents called halfway through dinner to see if Hannah was behaving for Julie, the babysitter. There was no answer. Julie didn't answer her cell phone either. The parents came home and found their daughter."
Emily knelt down and lifted the dust ruffle. There was nothing but dust under Hannah's bed. She stood up and looked around. "It smells funny."
"There's a dead body," Grissom reminded her. He didn't tell her to come into the bathroom. She was processing the scene in her mind.
"The body's in the bathroom, right?" Emily asked. Grissom nodded. "I shouldn't be able to smell it that much in here," she mumbled. "Not yet." She put her hands on her hips. The bright light in the room caused her to look slender in her khaki pants and black tank top. Her eyes narrowed on the window seat. She stepped over the backpack and lifted the top of the seat.
Grissom watched her move to the window seat. She pulled up with her left hand. Just as soon as the top was up, Emily's fingers dropped it back down. "Shit!" she muttered. Grissom took a step forward. She looked up at him without even the slightest hint of embarrassment and explained, "I think I found the babysitter."
Grissom came forward and lifted the seat. Sure enough, tucked into the eighteen by forty by twenty-four inch space was the baby sitter. Grissom pushed the lid back until it stood on its own. Emily leaned next to him, peering into the small space. Grissom asked softly, "You smell that?"
"Gun powder," she whispered. Her head moved over the length of the body and the sides of the window seat. "No blood." She leaned forward, holding herself up on the lid and the edge of the seat. "Shot in the upper left chest. I don't see an exit wound." She stood straight and looked at Julie's face. She had curly, auburn hair and a spackling of freckles across her pale cheeks. Her blue eyes were open, staring at the Barbie doll in front of her.
"We have a bullet, then," Grissom said. Emily nodded. Grissom touched her arm. "Bathroom."
They went to the other side of the room to the door leading to the bathroom. At the door, Grissom stopped Emily. "Emily, just to warn you, she's..."
"Griss," Emily smiled. "I can handle it."
Grissom started to explain further but she walked into the bathroom before he could reply. Mobley and another officer were there, standing next the bathtub. A few towels were on the floor, pushed against each other and wrinkled. Another towel was folded on the counter. Bath toys were scattered across the tile floor. A light weight settled in Emily's abdomen and grew heavier with each step she took toward the tub. Mobley looked away from her. The other officer studied the ground.
The water in the deep tub was just six inches from overflowing. Sponges, action figures, and toys from Happy Meals floated gently in the water, bumping against the dead body everyone once in the while. The little girl's pink nightgown with Sleeping Beauty's face on the chest glided through the water. Emily bit her lower lip as she stared down at Hannah Harshell. Some of the three year old's blonde curls were matted to her forehead. Her little arms and legs stuck out from her small torso. The tips of her fingers and toes were blue, as were her nose and lips and cheeks. Emily cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. Dark blue marks marred Hannah's neck.
Grissom came up behind Emily. "She was strangled," Emily whispered.
"Babysitter?" Grissom asked.
"No." Emily looked around the bathroom. The room was uneasily cold and quiet. "They were interrupted," she said. She could picture it in her mind's eye. They had stopped playing so Hannah could take her bath before bed. Julie started the water and was more than likely trying to convince Hannah it would be fun. Someone came in. Forcefully? What would possess someone to shoot a babysitter and drown a child?
"Emily?"
Grissom's voice shook Emily out of her reverie. She cleared her throat and said, "Um, pictures."
"You want me to take pictures?" he asked.
"Sure. Yes." She winced and asked, "Could you take Hannah?"
Grissom nodded. He wasn't about to force her to take pictures of the small body. She retreated into the bedroom and began taking pictures of the teenager's body. After a few minutes, she felt a new presence in the room. She looked up. David was standing there awkwardly. She smiled and said, "I should be done in about ten."
"No rush," he replied. He took a step forward. "How old is she?"
"I don't know. Sixteen, maybe?" Emily pursed her lips. "Maybe fifteen. She doesn't have to be old to baby-sit for a few hours." She lowered the camera and took out a flashlight. She started at the girl's shoes. "Did you pronounce them?"
"Yeah." David watched her move the flashlight across the sole of the boots the girl wore. "It's never easy pronouncing a child dead."
"I bet," Emily whispered. She took out her forceps and removed a blue fiber from the buckle on the girl's shoe.
"What is that?" David asked softly, practically entranced.
"Looks like denim," Emily replied. "She's wearing khakis." She continued to move up the girl's legs. At the brown leather belt, she found another blue fiber and an orange one. She bagged them as well but proceeded to find no other fibers. She moved to Julie's well-manicured fingernails and scraped from under them. She sighed and stood up. "All right. Thanks for being patient."
She informed Grissom that she was going downstairs to speak to the family. As she passed by David at the body, she asked, "Do you know the time of death, David?"
He didn't look up. "Approximately two hours ago."
Emily found Mr. and Mrs. Harshell at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the coffee cups before them. Mobley was sitting near them, speaking softly. He ceased when he saw Emily. She smiled and sat across from them. "Could I ask you a few questions?" The husband nodded silently. Emily asked, "How long have you known Julie?"
"Since we moved here," he replied. His voice was hoarse and scratchy. "Four years ago."
"How old is she?"
"Sixteen."
"She's babysat for Hannah before?"
"Yes, of course."
"Has she ever done anything to your knowledge along the lines of inviting friends over?"
"No," Mr. Harshell spoke firmly. "We had strict rules about that. It was only to be her and Hannah, the entire night. Julie knew that."
Emily glanced down at the notes she was taking. "So, you were at dinner and called to check in?"
The mother's voice sounded. "Hannah wasn't always perfect for Julie, especially when a bath was involved. We called to make sure everything was going well."
"So this wasn't the first time Julie had given Hannah a bath?"
"It was probably the third or fourth."
Emily nodded slowly. "No one answered when you called?"
The husband nodded. "We called Julie's cell phone and she didn't answer that either. We left dinner and came home. We found Hannah..." He lowered his head momentarily. "But we didn't see Julie. The detective told us you found her?"
"Yes, we found her."
"She's dead?" he asked. Emily nodded. "Good." Emily's eyes snapped up. The husband glared. "She killed my baby. She let her drown-"
Emily clenched her jaw and interrupted the grieving father. "Thank you for your patience, Mr. Harshell, Mrs. Harshell."
She stood and headed for the front door. She inspected every inch of the door. There were no signs of a forced entry. She stepped onto the lawn and searched the windows and the soil at the edge of the house. She didn't see any footprints. The windows were also clear. It was at the rear of the house, next to the screened patio, that she noticed the doggie door. She knelt next to it and held her flashlight up to it. She touched it with her hand and it swished in front of her. It was large enough for her to fit through, if she squeezed.
A light shined down on her. She squinted up against the darkness of the surrounding night into the second beam of light. "Find something?"
She nodded. "The entire perimeter is secure. No one broke in. But there's a doggy door." Grissom looked down at it from inside the patio. "It's fairly big. I could fit in it, I think, but I'm not sure if a male intruder could."
"Male?"
She blushed. "I think it's a guy."
Grissom nodded and knelt down. "Any physical evidence."
She smirked up at him. "I haven't looked yet." She perused the outside and he searched the inside. They both came up with fibers and hair. Emily went into the house to speak to the parents again. Grissom dusted the doggy door, in search of latent prints.
Inside, Emily stood in the kitchen. "Mr. Harshell, do you have a dog?"
"Yes," he replied, looking away from Mobley. "Well, we did. He ran away about two weeks ago."
"What kind of dog was it?"
"A sheepdog."
Emily nodded slowly. A big dog would explain the big doggy door. "Have you kept the doggy door unlocked since then?"
"Yes," he frowned. "Why?"
Mobley stepped forward. "Why would you keep it unlocked if the dog was gone?"
The man, feeling pressure, almost glared. "Hannah..." He took a deep breath and stammered, "Hannah liked to crawl through it."
Emily lowered her head. There was a large chance that the doggy door was how the perpetrator had gotten into the house. She couldn't picture the parents taking that news too well. "Mr. Harshell, did you leave your patio door unlocked?"
"Yes, I guess," he replied. "We're always going back and forth between the patio and the house. We kept locking ourselves out of the house when we moved here. Now, we just leave it unlocked."
Emily left the kitchen and found Grissom coming in from the patio. He asked, "Anything else?"
She smirked and said, "This is like a midterm. Final." She turned around slowly and said, "I think that's it." She peered up at him. "Is that it?"
He smiled. "If you say so. The house isn't going anywhere."
"But the evidence is."
He raised his eyebrows. "I think I've heard that before."
"If only everyone else listened to you this much, huh?" she teased.
He smiled as they headed for the stairs. "If only."
There you have it. I'll try to update soon. I'm so excited to get this finished, but I'm sad, too. :( But I really want to get to work on Needs. I'm in the mood for some Sara/Nick stuff.
I do have a question for you all, and here is the stuff leading up to it. :) I think this is my favorite chapter, just because I think I finally did a good job of writing a crime scene. My other one is Sara and Grissom's first date. What's your favorite chapter? I'd really like to know; it'll help me figure out what's good, what's not good, was the writing different, stuff like that.
By Jess
Disclaimer: See Chapter Twenty-Three.
Rating: PG-13, for a depiction of a child's death and a little language
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Crime Scene
Grissom pulled into Summerland. Emily lowered her sunglasses down her nose and tilted her head. "Whoa." She stared at the passing houses with awe. The expanse of the lawns, the shiny cars, the deluxe homes, and enclosing brick wall surprised her. She hadn't known of Summerland. "Gaudy," she commented, noticing a fountain in one front yard.
"The rich need a fancy place to play and live," Grissom muttered, looking down at the address on the paper in his lap.
"This isn't fancy," Emily objected. Her eyes caught another fountain, larger this time, with three nude women holding just wisps of stone cloths for coverage. "This is ostentatious."
"Here we go," Grissom said. "Summer Court." He stopped at the stop sign and looked down the street. He didn't even need to know the house number. The flashing red and blue lights directed him to the right. They parked outside 3941 and walked up the large front yard.
Mobley met them at the front door. "She's upstairs." Emily's eyes swept over the sterile interior of the foyer. Everything was white, silver, or black. To the right, a hallway led the kitchen. Two officers were standing there with an attractive man, probably in his thirties, in an expensive suit. Kneeling beside him was a pretty woman in a nice dress, being ignored by the three men she stood with. She had a paper towel in hand and she was rubbing the white tile floor, wiping away some dirt the officers had tracked in.
Emily reached up to touch Grissom. "Griss, look." She pointed at the woman's actions.
He looked over and raised his eyebrows at his intern. "What are you going to do about it?"
She stared back at him incredulously and then sighed. "Right. I'm lead." She stepped off the second stair and said, "I'll be up in a moment." Grissom and Mobley headed up the stairs. Emily approached the four people. "Excuse me, ma'am?" The woman looked up at her. Her tear-streaked face glared at Emily. Emily smiled gently. "Hi. I'm Emily Reese. I'm here to process this scene and, I'm sorry, but you can't clean up right now."
The man heard Emily talking to his wife and turned with a frown. "Excuse me, what are you doing?"
Emily caught him off guard and stuck her hand out. "Hi, I'm Emily Reese. You are?"
"Timothy Harshell."
"Mr. Harshell, I'm a crime scene investigator. I'm sorry to meet you under these circumstances, but this is a crime scene. Your wife, and you, cannot clean anything in this house until we're done."
Mr. Harshell stared at Emily before releasing her hand. "Fine. Margaret, come here." Emily backed away slowly. Margaret Harshell stood and allowed her husband to pull him against her. Emily found her way upstairs. Officers littered the hallway. A few she recognized. They nodded at her, but their eyes fell to the ground. She gingerly walked down the hallway.
She found the little girl's room. From Emily's hips and down, the door was coated with tear-outs from coloring books and paintings. The center one proclaimed "HANNAH" with pinks and purples. Emily stepped inside. The little girl's room was large. The carpet was white, the comforter was white, but the walls were pink and all the accents were pink, too. Toys covered most of the floor. A large bookcase with a stereo and books and toys was to the left, next to the window seat. To the right were a dresser and a closet. On top of the dresser, the small television was tuned to the Disney channel but the sound was off.
Emily noticed a pair of black sandals, too large to be a small child's. She frowned and took small steps to the left side of the room. A blue Jansport backpack was lying on the ground. Emily knelt down and peeked into the open pocket without touching the canvas. Two spiral notebooks and a textbook. The room looked too neat. She set the silver case down and pulled two gloves out. She looked up as she pulled it on to find Grissom in the adjoining room, staring at her.
Grissom spoke softly. "Hannah turned three in February. The parents went out for their anniversary dinner. They left Hannah with a babysitter, who is not here."
"Her things are here," Emily said. "Did they look around?"
"Mobley said his guys didn't touch anything." Emily looked around. Grissom continued. "The parents called halfway through dinner to see if Hannah was behaving for Julie, the babysitter. There was no answer. Julie didn't answer her cell phone either. The parents came home and found their daughter."
Emily knelt down and lifted the dust ruffle. There was nothing but dust under Hannah's bed. She stood up and looked around. "It smells funny."
"There's a dead body," Grissom reminded her. He didn't tell her to come into the bathroom. She was processing the scene in her mind.
"The body's in the bathroom, right?" Emily asked. Grissom nodded. "I shouldn't be able to smell it that much in here," she mumbled. "Not yet." She put her hands on her hips. The bright light in the room caused her to look slender in her khaki pants and black tank top. Her eyes narrowed on the window seat. She stepped over the backpack and lifted the top of the seat.
Grissom watched her move to the window seat. She pulled up with her left hand. Just as soon as the top was up, Emily's fingers dropped it back down. "Shit!" she muttered. Grissom took a step forward. She looked up at him without even the slightest hint of embarrassment and explained, "I think I found the babysitter."
Grissom came forward and lifted the seat. Sure enough, tucked into the eighteen by forty by twenty-four inch space was the baby sitter. Grissom pushed the lid back until it stood on its own. Emily leaned next to him, peering into the small space. Grissom asked softly, "You smell that?"
"Gun powder," she whispered. Her head moved over the length of the body and the sides of the window seat. "No blood." She leaned forward, holding herself up on the lid and the edge of the seat. "Shot in the upper left chest. I don't see an exit wound." She stood straight and looked at Julie's face. She had curly, auburn hair and a spackling of freckles across her pale cheeks. Her blue eyes were open, staring at the Barbie doll in front of her.
"We have a bullet, then," Grissom said. Emily nodded. Grissom touched her arm. "Bathroom."
They went to the other side of the room to the door leading to the bathroom. At the door, Grissom stopped Emily. "Emily, just to warn you, she's..."
"Griss," Emily smiled. "I can handle it."
Grissom started to explain further but she walked into the bathroom before he could reply. Mobley and another officer were there, standing next the bathtub. A few towels were on the floor, pushed against each other and wrinkled. Another towel was folded on the counter. Bath toys were scattered across the tile floor. A light weight settled in Emily's abdomen and grew heavier with each step she took toward the tub. Mobley looked away from her. The other officer studied the ground.
The water in the deep tub was just six inches from overflowing. Sponges, action figures, and toys from Happy Meals floated gently in the water, bumping against the dead body everyone once in the while. The little girl's pink nightgown with Sleeping Beauty's face on the chest glided through the water. Emily bit her lower lip as she stared down at Hannah Harshell. Some of the three year old's blonde curls were matted to her forehead. Her little arms and legs stuck out from her small torso. The tips of her fingers and toes were blue, as were her nose and lips and cheeks. Emily cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. Dark blue marks marred Hannah's neck.
Grissom came up behind Emily. "She was strangled," Emily whispered.
"Babysitter?" Grissom asked.
"No." Emily looked around the bathroom. The room was uneasily cold and quiet. "They were interrupted," she said. She could picture it in her mind's eye. They had stopped playing so Hannah could take her bath before bed. Julie started the water and was more than likely trying to convince Hannah it would be fun. Someone came in. Forcefully? What would possess someone to shoot a babysitter and drown a child?
"Emily?"
Grissom's voice shook Emily out of her reverie. She cleared her throat and said, "Um, pictures."
"You want me to take pictures?" he asked.
"Sure. Yes." She winced and asked, "Could you take Hannah?"
Grissom nodded. He wasn't about to force her to take pictures of the small body. She retreated into the bedroom and began taking pictures of the teenager's body. After a few minutes, she felt a new presence in the room. She looked up. David was standing there awkwardly. She smiled and said, "I should be done in about ten."
"No rush," he replied. He took a step forward. "How old is she?"
"I don't know. Sixteen, maybe?" Emily pursed her lips. "Maybe fifteen. She doesn't have to be old to baby-sit for a few hours." She lowered the camera and took out a flashlight. She started at the girl's shoes. "Did you pronounce them?"
"Yeah." David watched her move the flashlight across the sole of the boots the girl wore. "It's never easy pronouncing a child dead."
"I bet," Emily whispered. She took out her forceps and removed a blue fiber from the buckle on the girl's shoe.
"What is that?" David asked softly, practically entranced.
"Looks like denim," Emily replied. "She's wearing khakis." She continued to move up the girl's legs. At the brown leather belt, she found another blue fiber and an orange one. She bagged them as well but proceeded to find no other fibers. She moved to Julie's well-manicured fingernails and scraped from under them. She sighed and stood up. "All right. Thanks for being patient."
She informed Grissom that she was going downstairs to speak to the family. As she passed by David at the body, she asked, "Do you know the time of death, David?"
He didn't look up. "Approximately two hours ago."
Emily found Mr. and Mrs. Harshell at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the coffee cups before them. Mobley was sitting near them, speaking softly. He ceased when he saw Emily. She smiled and sat across from them. "Could I ask you a few questions?" The husband nodded silently. Emily asked, "How long have you known Julie?"
"Since we moved here," he replied. His voice was hoarse and scratchy. "Four years ago."
"How old is she?"
"Sixteen."
"She's babysat for Hannah before?"
"Yes, of course."
"Has she ever done anything to your knowledge along the lines of inviting friends over?"
"No," Mr. Harshell spoke firmly. "We had strict rules about that. It was only to be her and Hannah, the entire night. Julie knew that."
Emily glanced down at the notes she was taking. "So, you were at dinner and called to check in?"
The mother's voice sounded. "Hannah wasn't always perfect for Julie, especially when a bath was involved. We called to make sure everything was going well."
"So this wasn't the first time Julie had given Hannah a bath?"
"It was probably the third or fourth."
Emily nodded slowly. "No one answered when you called?"
The husband nodded. "We called Julie's cell phone and she didn't answer that either. We left dinner and came home. We found Hannah..." He lowered his head momentarily. "But we didn't see Julie. The detective told us you found her?"
"Yes, we found her."
"She's dead?" he asked. Emily nodded. "Good." Emily's eyes snapped up. The husband glared. "She killed my baby. She let her drown-"
Emily clenched her jaw and interrupted the grieving father. "Thank you for your patience, Mr. Harshell, Mrs. Harshell."
She stood and headed for the front door. She inspected every inch of the door. There were no signs of a forced entry. She stepped onto the lawn and searched the windows and the soil at the edge of the house. She didn't see any footprints. The windows were also clear. It was at the rear of the house, next to the screened patio, that she noticed the doggie door. She knelt next to it and held her flashlight up to it. She touched it with her hand and it swished in front of her. It was large enough for her to fit through, if she squeezed.
A light shined down on her. She squinted up against the darkness of the surrounding night into the second beam of light. "Find something?"
She nodded. "The entire perimeter is secure. No one broke in. But there's a doggy door." Grissom looked down at it from inside the patio. "It's fairly big. I could fit in it, I think, but I'm not sure if a male intruder could."
"Male?"
She blushed. "I think it's a guy."
Grissom nodded and knelt down. "Any physical evidence."
She smirked up at him. "I haven't looked yet." She perused the outside and he searched the inside. They both came up with fibers and hair. Emily went into the house to speak to the parents again. Grissom dusted the doggy door, in search of latent prints.
Inside, Emily stood in the kitchen. "Mr. Harshell, do you have a dog?"
"Yes," he replied, looking away from Mobley. "Well, we did. He ran away about two weeks ago."
"What kind of dog was it?"
"A sheepdog."
Emily nodded slowly. A big dog would explain the big doggy door. "Have you kept the doggy door unlocked since then?"
"Yes," he frowned. "Why?"
Mobley stepped forward. "Why would you keep it unlocked if the dog was gone?"
The man, feeling pressure, almost glared. "Hannah..." He took a deep breath and stammered, "Hannah liked to crawl through it."
Emily lowered her head. There was a large chance that the doggy door was how the perpetrator had gotten into the house. She couldn't picture the parents taking that news too well. "Mr. Harshell, did you leave your patio door unlocked?"
"Yes, I guess," he replied. "We're always going back and forth between the patio and the house. We kept locking ourselves out of the house when we moved here. Now, we just leave it unlocked."
Emily left the kitchen and found Grissom coming in from the patio. He asked, "Anything else?"
She smirked and said, "This is like a midterm. Final." She turned around slowly and said, "I think that's it." She peered up at him. "Is that it?"
He smiled. "If you say so. The house isn't going anywhere."
"But the evidence is."
He raised his eyebrows. "I think I've heard that before."
"If only everyone else listened to you this much, huh?" she teased.
He smiled as they headed for the stairs. "If only."
There you have it. I'll try to update soon. I'm so excited to get this finished, but I'm sad, too. :( But I really want to get to work on Needs. I'm in the mood for some Sara/Nick stuff.
I do have a question for you all, and here is the stuff leading up to it. :) I think this is my favorite chapter, just because I think I finally did a good job of writing a crime scene. My other one is Sara and Grissom's first date. What's your favorite chapter? I'd really like to know; it'll help me figure out what's good, what's not good, was the writing different, stuff like that.