Chapter XXXIV

The Case Doesn't Solve Itself

Sara Sidle was perched on a stool in one of the layout rooms. The blinds were drawn and the door was shut. Usually this was a signal to the rest of the lab that ALS was in use and if the door was opened, the light sensitive chemicals that were in use would be ruined. Sara hadn't touched her ALS since she'd arrived; she just didn't want to be disturbed. It was just her and the evidence. She had finished processing the evidence that Warrick had brought in from Lofty's apartment, and was running evidence against Chapelle, the only suspect they had in custody. Off to the side there were a scant few items collected from the debris in Morton's room. If she had bothered to check her watch, she would have realized that she'd been closed in with the evidence for a solid hour.

It was a good thing for Sara, though, that Catherine had kept an eye on the time. She had also kept a weather eye on the layout room and knew that no one, not even Sara, used ALS for an entire hour with no break. She opened the door, quietly, and frowned when Sara didn't even turn. The woman was bent over a microscope, her hand flying over a sheet of paper, taking notes. Catherine came up behind her, and touched her shoulder, "Sara."

Sara whirled around, one hand on her chest, the other on her gun. Catherine was a little frightened to find that the other woman's brown eyes were wide and just a little panicked. "Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. Are you okay, Sara?" Catherine wanted to kick herself. Of course she'd scared the woman. The last person who'd sneaked up on her from behind had almost killed Sara.

There was something else there, though. Even after Sara had relaxed, there was still tension in her shoulders and shadows in her eyes. "Hey," She put her hand back on Sara's shoulder, "Are you okay?" While Sara's words, steady and firm, said one thing, her eyes, deep and full of barely controlled pain, said another. Catherine leaned against the counter. "You've been in here for an hour , Sara, and God only knows how many hours you've put in today." She watched the other woman shrug and check her own watch. "Oh. Well, the case doesn't solve itself." She shook her head, "I heard about what Hart did to you. I'm sorry, Cat." Catherine shrugged, brushing the incident aside, choking down her own anger. "It's no big deal." Sara rolled her dark eyes, "Come on, Catherine. I've been on that side of your temper before. Ranting will do you good. I'll even let you blame me. It'll be just like old times." Catherine chuckled, "No. It won't. Back then you didn't have a seriously protective girlfriend with a gun."

She caught the wave of anger and sadness in Sara's eyes and watched the other woman's face go stone hard and unreadable. "Oh, honey, did you and Sofia have a fight?" If it was strange that she was comforting the woman she'd once pushed Grissom to fire, neither Catherine nor Sara made note of it. "I don't want to talk about it."

As the mother of a teenage daughter, Catherine heard that line a lot. "Spill it, Sara. Tell me why Miss I-Take-Crap-From-Nobody is sulking in a lab." Sara glared at her, "I'm not sulking and why do you care anyway?" As soon as the words, hot and angry, left her mouth, Sara's eyes went wide. "I didn't mean that." She dropped her head to her hands. "We haven't had a fight." Catherine, still smarting from Sara's scathing -but perfectly accurate- words, gave the other woman a small hug. She heard the 'Yet' that Sara was silently screaming. She kept one arm slung over Sara's shoulders. "You haven't had lunch. Store all of this away and we'll go grab something and trash women and how awful they are." At that, Sara raised a brow, "So you finally heard about Cami and Wendy, huh?"

Catherine's brows knit, "What about them?" Sara smiled, though the motion didn't chase the swirl of emotion from her eyes. "Cath, your house is too far from the Luxor for you to live in the land of denial." The thin mask of humor held firm and she smiled, "Now you said something about food?" It was so easy, Catherine mused, for Sara to pretend everything was fine, even when she was hurting so badly her eyes silently screamed. She smiled. Catherine both felt sadness and pride for her younger colleague.

Her office was empty and as silent as a tomb, but she didn't mind. She preferred to do this work here. It kept it more clinical, she could pretend to pull away from it, to leave it behind her when she went home. She didn't want the human cancer of the Gods of Vegas in her home. Her part in the investigation was over, more or less, but she was compelled to do more. She looked through all of them, each member of their sick and twisted little club. Some were just...kids, confused and scared. They had thought it was all talk, just a game. She had names, so so many names, to apply to the screen names now; the youngest of them was eleven and the oldest was no more then twenty-seven. Had she ever been that young? Weariness settled into her body and she felt years older than her true age. The weight of the darkness before her made her older, more jaded then she'd ever really wanted to be. That was why she'd never committed herself to profiling. If she had to spend all day, every day, of her career wading through the blood-drenched psyches of rapists and murderers, she would have given it all up years ago.

Agent Hart wanted her to do a full evaluation on Kevin Chapelle. She closed her laptop, signing off of MySpace, blocking the pictures and rants of troubled people out of her eye line. The last few lines that she had read haunted her,

'The world, this city walks all over everyone. If you're not pretty, if you're not rich, you're nothing. The Gods of Vegas finally stand up for the little man, for the under dog and instead of being hailed as heroes, they're rotting in prison. They stood up for themselves and suddenly they're a threat.'

Cami sighed, she had an appointment with a boy, who wasn't even old enough to buy cigarettes. He'd killed forty-seven people. What was this world coming to? She slid her laptop into her briefcase and stood. She took a deep breath and left her office, locking her door behind her. This case, she told herself, wouldn't solve itself and if she could help, she would.

Sybil Hart didn't play good-cop-bad-cop. She was a Federal Agent, that always made her the scary bad-guy. She didn't need back up. She ate little wimps like this for breakfast. No case solved itself; she'd broke hundreds of cases by pressuring little pricks just like this. He looked small, she mused, in his orange clothes. They'd taken his belt and shoe strings from him, and were keeping him away from the general population...and sharp objects. She'd dressed for intimidation. She had her black, no-nonsense power suit on. It screamed 'Government', which was what she had been going for. Her badge and ID were prominently displayed.

"So, Kevin, do you think Terrorism is a joke?" She waited a beat, "No, you think murdering innocent people is some kind of game. I saw your website. You bragged about killing twice as many people as your friend, Daniel. That makes you top dog, doesn't it? Are you proud of yourself?" He didn't answer, his lawyer and advocate, each on one side of him, frowned. "Throttle back there, Sparky," Deidre Harmon, one of the nation's top defense attorneys, scowled, "All you've got is a scared boy and an email address. In this day of hacking and identity theft, that's not much." Sybil eyed the other woman, "I bet you're doing this gratis, aren't you, Harmon. Looking to splash your name across national headlines again I bet you've already outlined your statement to the press." She crossed her arms, "Won't work this time, this punk is going down. He killed forty-seven people." She glared at the boy in question, "And has no more remorse than you or I would about stepping on an ant or swatting at a mosquito." On the other side of the boy was Arthur Dent. Dent sighed, "Let's get down to why we're here. Is there a deal or not, Agent? What do you want, names, plans, what's on the table?" Sybil shook her head, almost amused. "Deal? Who said anything about a deal? We have the names, we have the plans. This is just a chance for him to confess and save the tax payers a chunk of money." She sat down on her side of the table, "Of course, since a blog is a written and there's visual record of said crimes, I really don't think we need it."

Harmon was, as Sybil knew she would be, ready for that move. She whipped out a packet of papers, "Motion to Suppress the MySpace account, and since your entire fishing expedition was based on that, you've got no choice but to dismiss." She didn't even bother to look over the papers, "My team of Federal prosecutors will look over your little motion, and so, I suppose, will the Federal judge. You can pull every First and Fourth Amendment speech out of your bag of tricks, but when the judge and jury sees him gloating over the destruction, celebrating the deaths he caused..." She smirked, "Well, Nevada still has a death penalty, doesn't it?" Her face might have been calm, but her mind was four steps ahead, plotting and planning, preparing a statement, writing a brief to her superiors, seeing the jury send the little bastard to jail.

She left them there, hearing the frantic boy's shouts behind her. She smirked, he would cave and give them everything they had and everything they didn't.