Title: Journey of the Lonely Whale: Evolution (Month 12)

Author: Lisa (ljkwriting4life)

Rating: M. This story contains strong adult themes including references to violence, sexual references, and coarse language.

Pairing: Gil/Sara

Summary: One year since re-marrying, Gil and Sara return to San Diego to fulfil work commitments. While Sara becomes involved in a case that stirs memories of the past, she is also pushed by those around her to consider her future and her place in the world.

Notes: The JOTLW series aims to fill a gap between Immortality and CSI: Vegas. It does foreshadow CSI: Vegas and refers often to storylines established in the original CSI.

FIVE

"Christ," Sara said under her breath as she walked under the crime scene tape in her vest, carrying her silver kit and her black camera bag, with her gun holstered on her hip.

It was Monday afternoon. Sophie was beside her and she had driven them to the scene in one of the lab's cars, and Lochie was there already with Aaron, coming out of the two-story house. It was the solemn look on Lochie's face that had caused Sara to react. Beside her, Sophie grimaced. A large contingent of media were pressed against the tape and were setting up vans across the street, and the journalists had been joined by a group of neighbours. Cameras and a hundred eager eyes were watching their every move as they met on the front path in a huddle. They kept their backs to the street and their heads bowed, and they spoke in quiet voices.

"Here's what we've got," Aaron said. "One occupant dead, Chloe Rollins, fifteen. Mom got home from work, parked in the driveway, and came in through the front door. For whatever reason, she didn't drive into the garage, maybe she noticed the door open. She found her daughter and called 911. Says Chloe was home sick from school. Single mom, only child, mom's a schoolteacher and came home as soon as she could to check on Chloe when she didn't answer her cell phone."

"Where is the mom?" Sara asked as she looked around. The mother's car and the coroner's van were side-by-wide in the driveway, but there was no sign of an ambulance.

"Rushed to hospital, possible cardiac problems," Lochie said grimly. "She's in shock."

Sara sighed and nodded.

"It looks like the daughter might have caught someone unawares sometime earlier today," Aaron said. "Front door's been forced. Could be your guy. Sara, I know this is your first homicide with us in the field, but can you take the lead here? I want to go to the hospital, talk to Mrs Rollins as soon as I can. I want a tight scene here everyone, nobody talks to any of these other people."

"Yeah, sure," Sara said, eager to help and happy to take responsibility for Lochie and Sophie.

"Thank you," Aaron said with a muted smile. He touched her arm briefly in thanks, before he left, and Lochie and Sophie squared up to her expectantly. Sara looked into Lochie's nervous eyes.

"Is there a print?" Sara asked. She kept the reference vague and her voice down in case the media were using directional microphones. Lochie barely nodded, but the answer was clear enough.

"Can I deal with that?" Sophie asked hopefully. "I did the others."

"Okay," Sara said. "Lochie, you start with the front door, I'll take the body."

"It's bad," Lochie warned her under his breath.

Sara nodded and offered him a brief but reassuring smile. She had seen a lot of bad.

"Before anyone moves," she said. She put her kit and her own camera on the ground. "Sophie, take out your camera and hand it to me."

Sophie frowned, but she nodded and did as she was told. They stared at Sara as she hunched her thin frame down over the camera and took a few steps away from them. She pretended to fiddle with the instruments and removed the lens cap as she turned it on. When she thought she was in about the right spot she waved Sophie over and handed her the camera.

"I'm going to pretend to show you something about this camera now," she mumbled in Sophie's ear as she stood very close and gestured to the screen. There was nothing wrong with the camera. "I want you to lift it slightly right now and take some pictures of this crowd. Now."

"Right," Sophie said when she cottoned on. She bit her bottom lip and took some photographs as Sara stepped around the camera and pretended to shift one of the dials on the lens.

"Good, okay," Sara announced after a moment. She turned back to Lochie, grinned, flapped her arms out and more loudly announced, "All fixed".

"Subtle," Lochie teased under his breath as Sara picked up her kit and led the way inside.

"Thank you," Sara quipped happily.

"I got some too, when we first showed up," he added. "I wasn't so subtle."

"That's fine, I'm just teaching you some of my tricks while I can," she said. "You won't always feel comfortable to point and shoot." She gestured to the door, and left Lochie to it.

She and Sophie hugged the walls as they passed, and Sophie stopped at the scattered dirt in the hall, in approximately the same place that the other footprints had been left at the other two homes. The shoeprint had been disturbed by at least one person, maybe the mother, or a paramedic, or by the perp himself, if he really had been caught by surprise.

Sara locked eyes with the coroner at the bottom of the stairs as he stood. Sara had been introduced to Michael the previous week but this was her first time meeting him in the field, and she could see right away what had happened.

"Christ," she said again. "He had a knife with him."

"Indeed," Michael stated. "Fast and furious, I'd say."

"Shit," Sara whispered. She looked at the distance from Chloe's body, lying face-up halfway up the stairs, to the smudged print on the hallway floor, to the open door, and she saw it happen.

An unwell teenager, upstairs in her room, listening to music or mucking around on her tablet in bed, enjoying her day if she was well enough to do so, hears the front door open. It's too early for her mom to be home from school yet but maybe she came home during the lunch hour or a free period to check. She walks toward the stairs, laughing at how silly that is. She's fine. She's fifteen.

Mom? Mom, you didn't have to come all the way back here. I'm not that sick, honest.

Mom? Is that you?

…Mom?

"He had to have had the knife on him," Sara said. "There would not have been enough time to get to the kitchen and back, but we'll run down every room just in case. Who turned her?"

"Not sure. The paramedics who came for her ended up taking the mother very quickly, a medical emergency. Aaron said he's going to track them down to ask. There's a chance whoever did this turned her, just to check she was gone. Poor kid looks scared, don't you think?"

"Scared?" Sara asked. "She would have been terrified." She gestured to the body, to the bloody handprints on the pink singlet top and terrycloth lounge pants with love-hearts all over them. The handprints would belong to her mother, or the paramedics. "I'm afraid to ask how many times."

"At least ten times, probably more," Michael said. "I had a quick look once Lochie took the early photos, but it felt better to lay her back, as I found her. There's no question she would have died face-down. Multiple visible wounds to the back, but see these defensive wounds? She tried to fight, get back up the stairs at least. Nothing good ever comes from running back up the stairs."

"Instinct," Sara said. "She would have been trapped, surprised just here," she said as she gestured to the area between them. There was a wall directly across from the stairs, it was part of the hallway and did not open directly into any of the other rooms. Sara could see the entrance to the living room and kitchen a couple of metres further down the hall. Chloe just had nowhere else to go.

"Aaron said this could be the third," Michael said. Sara pursed her lips and nodded. She looked over her shoulder as Sophie approached.

"There's no real shoeprint," she announced. "Not like the others. If it was there, it's been scattered, but the dirt looks the same. I'll document and collect." Her eyes darted anxiously toward the body. Based on their conversations over the previous week, both Sophie and Lochie had been called out to deceased persons on the job, but nothing reflecting this level of personal violence. "So," Sophie continued as her eyes widened at the sight. "There was a two-and-a-half-month gap between the last two, but it's only been two weeks since the last one. That's not good, is it."

"No, it's not. Are you getting that feeling again?" Sara asked seriously, genuinely curious.

"Sort of," Sophie admitted. "But I think that's because what was ominous or perhaps what just felt inevitable in that other house, is a reality in this one."

"Yeah," Sara said softly. "Look, when you're finished with the print, we need this whole hallway done, walls and floors, and the banister of these stairs. We'll have to do the whole house."

"We'll be here all night."

"Yeah, we will," Sara said on a sigh. She reached for her phone. "I'm calling everyone in."

She would call Nick to do just that, and then she would call Gil, to apologise profusely.

Sara let herself into the apartment with her keys. It was three in the morning. Gil had left the lamp on in the living room as they often did, allowing her to see the dim and empty open space for herself. She eased the door shut and locked it, then tried to open it again to double check it was locked. When they were hunting for apartments she had pushed for one with good security and she was glad that she had. The secure entrances to the parking garage and front lobby downstairs and the deadbolt on her own door was reassuring, and she put her forehead to the closed wooden door and briefly closed her eyes. Her bag slipped from her tired fingers onto the floor and stayed there.

Sara then opened the nearest other door, stepping into the bathroom directly from the entrance instead of walking through the bedroom and wardrobe to get there. She wanted to minimise the chances of waking Gil up. She could hear his deep, steady breathing coming from the bedroom. He had left the bathroom door adjoining the wardrobe and bedroom open, and the door from the bedroom to the living area was open too.

Sara brushed her teeth and her hair. She scooped her hands under the tap and had a decent drink of water. She reapplied deodorant and used a cleansing wipe on her face. That would do for the day, she decided.

She stripped in the bathroom, taking everything off except her black singlet top and undies. She extracted her bra from underneath her singlet without taking the top off and sighed at the relief of it. She tried not to picture a blood-stained pink singlet top that was not so dissimilar to her own, and she abandoned her clothes on the bathroom floor. Laundry was a problem for another day. She walked back into the front hall, past the kitchen and into the living room to turn the light out.

Bad decision, she realised immediately. They often left it on for a reason. The apartment collapsed into darkness. Sara blinked rapidly and waited for her eyes to adjust. They had only lived there for a week. A minute earlier she would have sworn under oath that she knew exactly where everything was, but suddenly she wasn't confident in making it into bed without serious injury.

Once her eyes recovered from the shock, she realised there was some light coming in from outside. Gil had left the blinds to the patio open, but because they were four stories up it wasn't as though there were any streetlights shining directly in on them, just a general dim glow from somewhere below. It was enough for Sara to make out the door to the bedroom, and the outline of the bed beyond that, and as she calmed down she realised she could follow the sound of Gil's breathing. She checked the patio door on her way, and yes, it was also locked.

She shuffled around the edge of the bed and peeled back the covers. Gil was sleeping on his side, facing her. She was too tired to be too delicate about waking him up at this point, but she did feel bad when she collapsed into bed more heavily than she had hoped, and she heard his deep breathing startle, then stop. He let out a long sigh. He was awake, but he sounded relieved.

"Sara?" he mumbled. His large, warm hand slid over her hip and low around her belly.

"Mm," she hummed, closing her eyes as her body tingled and soaked up the warmth of his palm. He tugged on her and she happily shuffled around with him until he was comfortably spooning her from behind and holding her with his strong right arm. It could get heavy, and she helped move it to where she was most comfortable, but she liked this feeling of security. She remembered those early days when they first started falling asleep together. She remembered how unusual it had felt to feel so safe. It had been like that in Costa Rica too, and on the boat, and it was still just like that.

She sighed deeply, and a little too loudly. She immediately didn't even know how to interpret the sound she had made, so she wasn't surprised when Gil spoke again.

"Are you okay?" he asked. He sounded more curious than worried.

"I think so," she whispered, just as tears pricked at her eyes. "Long day."

That, and she did not like frenzied stabbings. She wasn't sure how to feel about her first homicide back on the job being something so familiar. Sophie and Lochie might not have seen it up close before, but Sara had. Her father would have been terrified when he realised that knife was coming for him too, if he ever did realise it, but she was too tired to talk about it again, and Gil knew.

"Saw you on the news, with your groupies," he mumbled. "Breaking story. Only fifteen?"

"Yeah, and a big house. Took forever to process, found very little, just lots of blood," she mumbled in reply. Gil just hummed. He knew the routine all too well. He could probably conjure up a decent mental picture of the scene and sketch it on paper just from what she had said and the exterior of the house he had seen on the news, without ever having set foot inside before.

"What's the time?" he asked.

"Three in the morning. Sorry."

"S'okay. Is the mother alive?" he asked. "News said, she was critical."

"Ahuh," Sara said as she yawned loudly. "Don't know if she'd want to live, though. Can't tell you anymore. Pillow talk, bad. Very tired now, day off today, pulled a double, Nick's orders. Shh."

Gil chuckled and nodded. He raised the hand at her back and swept some of her hair aside so he could lean in and kiss the back of her neck. Sara sighed again, this time it was a sweeter sigh.

"You like the new hair," she whispered happily.

"Honey, I love the new hair," he assured her. "Go to sleep, I've got you. You're home."

"Mm," Sara hummed. She felt Gil stroking her stomach, and fell asleep.

Sara enjoyed walking through the park in the afternoon. Because it was a Tuesday, it seemed quiet, and she was content for Gil to show her around. Calling it 'the park' didn't do it justice, either. It was ginormous. It included the San Diego Zoo, it was adjacent to a naval medical centre, a sports precinct, and a golf course. The park also contained more than a dozen museums, a performing arts complex and pavilions, walking tracks, and a range of specialised gardens, from Japanese to desert.

However, it did not surprise Sara in the least, when Gil declared his favourite area to be the botanical building and lily pond that Nick had also mentioned. The botanical building was stunning. From the outside it looked like an old-fashioned butterfly house, but it contained more than two thousand plants and seasonal flowers they could observe. The lily pond that stretched out in front of the building was in fact a reflecting pool, perfectly reflecting the image of the building and nearby plants and the blue sky on the water's fragile surface. Sara took some photographs with her phone and urged Gil into a selfie that captured the landscaping and their relaxed smiles.

"This is a lovely way to spend the afternoon," she declared as they meandered hand-in-hand past the performing arts building and a museum, toward the Japanese garden that Gil wanted to show her too. He was walking through this park every day, but it was Sara's first time and she was happy to be led. "It does feel strange though," she admitted. "Not to be rushing back to work."

In Vegas, she would not have taken the day off after pulling a double, not after a homicide. Sophie and Lochie would still have gone into work after a sleep-in and would already be analysing the trace evidence and eliminating the fingerprints of Chloe's mother and the paramedics, and Aaron would be briefing them on the information he had gotten from the mother and the police.

"Nick's orders," Gil said. He sounded all too pleased about it.

Sara pressed her lips together to stop herself from laughing.

"And uh, how much did you pay Lab Director Stokes to give me these orders?" she asked.

"Absolutely nothing, I'm innocent!" he insisted with a happy laugh. "All I know is what you told me, which was no overtime. So, we can't do much about that, you may as well enjoy the day."

"I'm trying," she promised. "It was easier last week when I was just in the lab and helping with some interviews and admin. I did enjoy my sleep-in. Thanks for staying in bed with me."

"Yes, that was such an ordeal," he said, in a voice laced with sarcasm that made Sara laugh.

"I've missed this pace," she admitted as they ambled along the path. "I don't know what I ever had against days off."

"If I remember correctly," Gil said. "Your appreciation for leaving work on time and taking your days off began around the time you realised I could cook and deliver a great back massage."

"Accurate," Sara confirmed with a laugh as she squeezed his hand affectionately. "Maybe you could demonstrate on my neck and shoulders when we get home."

"I won't say no," he assured her.

They walked quietly around the Japanese garden together, and Sara took some more photographs, including one of Gil after he wandered off along one of the narrow paths and paused in the middle of a bridge to look out over the shallow water and rock garden. He didn't seem to know she was taking the photo of him, and he seemed lost in thought, but that was normal for him.

Sara caught up to him and asked another passing tourist to take a photo of them on her phone as well. They had a collection of photographs of themselves at places all around the world now, stored on Gil's laptop, her tablet, and backed up onto their cloud, and Sara would transfer these as soon as she could. She also had a lovely collection of photos of Gil on the boat that she had taken over the year. She'd showed them to him after copying them to his laptop and he'd claimed surprise, but she did not believe he hadn't known she was taking any of them.

He had photos of her too, including hard copies from their life together in Vegas, and letters she had written him from Costa Rica after she left. Love letters she would be embarrassed to read again. They were normally kept in the safe on the boat but he had emptied the safe and brought those things with him to the apartment, which for the time being was more secure than the boat.

"Sara," he said softly as they made their way back out of the garden. "Do you like it here?"

"Define 'here'," she said, but she thought she knew. He wasn't just talking about the park.

"San Diego," he said. "Do you want to get a home here, something we can lease out ten months of the year? I've been looking at property values and one day soon we'll be priced out of this city, for good, and I'm not talking about big houses, I'm talking about studio apartments. Ideally, we'd want at least a separate bedroom. Think of what we're paying to lease here for just a month."

"I know," Sara said, but the reality was the profits from the sale of his townhouse in Vegas six years ago and the meagre profit from the sale of her own small condo the previous year didn't come close to buying them a place on the coast, even with their other savings added into the pot. "I do see Nick's point about it," she said, recalling their extended conversation about the market over the last Friday's dinner. "But we'd need to look at how well leasing it out would cover the mortgage, for how many months of the year, and what we would do if we couldn't lease it for that time. It could tie both of us down to working, here. Do you worry about us not having that certainty?"

"I worry about you not having the security, in future," he said softly. "Don't you?"

"I wouldn't call it a worry," Sara said. "I think about it sometimes, but it's never kept me up at night. When we were on the boat I barely thought about it. We have money in the accounts, and investments, and we can always find places to lease wherever we need to stop. If we own a place, we're locked in to always coming back, and we'd have to maintain it, and maintaining the old boat is work enough. So, no, I'm happy with the way things are. The one or two months of the year that I'll do at this lab, or frankly any lab in the country that will have me, so that I could get a job if I ever need it, is my security, it's all I need. Don't let Nick get into your head. I love him but he's risk-averse and traditional and he's on a completely different bus, Gil. There is no way he would cope with life on the boat like we do. I want to see how we go with these marine research grants we're going to apply for, and if we can get funding through a university or non-profit collaboration, or even some federal funding off our own backs, then we can be out on the boat twelve months of the year doing research and writing up papers for another few years, without any worries. So, let's do that, yeah?"

"You're sure?" he asked warily.

"Positive!" she insisted with a broad smile. She relaxed when he put his arm around her and guided her out of the park and onto Sixth Avenue. It wasn't far to walk from there. "Gil," she added once they had re-entered their apartment and Gil moved to boil water for afternoon tea. "I want you to know that I spent all night last night crouched by the body of a girl who was stabbed multiple times, and it's easy enough to imagine that if things were different that could have been me, it could have been me that mom killed like that, instead of dad. I'm choosing to see it as an important reminder not to get too close here, that my time here is only temporary. I'm trying to do that."

"I understand," Gil said seriously as he looked at her, tender and thoughtful. "Decision made, then." Sara nodded eagerly. Yes, and like so many of their decisions, it was the right one.