A/N: Thanks to "Guest" for the reviews, any and all reviews are appreciated and if you don't want to leave a review but still want to comment, drop a PM. Also, finally we're getting into Season 1 of the show. We have many seasons to go before the end of this story.
A/N2: I got the first 4 chapters (and prologue) posted this week. I have no set schedule for posting. It might be a lot of chapters at once. It might be once a week, or every other week. I don't know. If you don't want to miss an update, please follow.
4: A Bad Desire
2009
WLVU Lecture Hall
Day 3
Dr. Langston was actually enjoying talking with Dr. Gil Grissom. His intelligence, his candor and humor, and his honesty was a refreshing change from the other serial killers he had to interview. He had made an appointment to visit privately with Grissom the next day, as for now, he had opened the class to questions.
"Was there ever a time when you were almost caught?" a psychology professor asked.
Grissom sighed as he shrugged, "Every day. If life has taught me one thing is that anything can happen to anyone at any given time. I am no exception. Murphy's law. Occam's razor. Chaos theory. It's all about variables and constants. I was a constant going up against many different variables daily."
"How about other criminals? Did you ever seek them out for partnership?" Langston asked.
"No."
"You never had a partner or any help? No one else knew what you were doing?"
Grissom was silent for a moment. "There was someone. A serial killer. It didn't start off as…mutual understanding, but I did find myself oddly respecting him. I never thought that I would enjoy that kind-of dynamic, but intellectually, I was stimulated. Curiosity…"
"It killed the cat?" Langston provided.
"In a game of cat-and-mouse," he said, "I was both."
2001
He was starting to hate hotel rooms. Even though it had been a luxury room with all the amenities and catered food, Gil couldn't shake the feeling that Paul Millander had followed him out of it and into the lab. With every passing minute he was getting closer to the madman he desperately tried to catch. The case file wasn't helping and neither was the aching in his head and churning of his stomach.
Nick looked worse even though he was lying over the couch in the break room fast asleep. It'd been a very long night and day. They'd pulled doubles.
"What'd you guys do last night?" Catherine asked as she walked into the room. "Hit the town? And why wasn't I invited?"
"Hey," Warrick said from behind a casefile he was reading. "I wasn't invited either. Millander shows back up and these two go at it alone."
"Couple of cowboys," she teased as she poured herself a cup of coffee and offered him one.
He waved it off.
"Where's the boss man?" she asked.
He sighed, saying, "Brass is still under IA investigation-"
"Oh, right, for the Holly Gribbs debacle," she said as she sat down next to him.
"I'm the temp supervisor." She shot him a glare and he only shook his head. "I know, I know. I didn't want it either."
His thoughts were too focused on the file and the notebook he had on the table in front of him. There was something missing, and he couldn't put his finger on it. Not yet. Millander couldn't afford for him to know that one key piece that would tie this all up in a nice little bow; knowing now would ruin the surprise. He breathed out the frustration that filled him and stood.
The men's room was empty. It took him only a couple of tries to open his prescription migraine bottle and swallowed two pills with handfuls of water from the sink.
Splashing his face a few times, he accomplished nothing other than getting his shirt wet. He still felt the nausea induced by the migraine that rose up his chest from his stomach and stung at his throat. He swallowed hard, and felt as it slowly and painfully burned its way back down to the depths of his gut. He kept his head bowed, afraid that if he glanced into the mirror that he would see someone else. See the killer.
"You're back." That was what he'd said to his own reflection in the mirror. It wasn't just a statement about Millander, but the killer inside his own mind.
At the time he did it, he had only seen a shadow of himself. And in that shadow, he'd seen a glimpse of the killer he was trying to envision hoping maybe it would help him capture the man. Instead, he saw himself standing over the victim with the gun in his hand as he pulled the trigger.
The killer inside of him was picking and prying at his consciousness like a spider at a captured fly. He was getting harder and harder to control.
And Paul Millander wasn't helping.
In fact, Millander was making him actually like him. This was starting to become like a game, and he liked games. He just never had anyone to play with before.
Closing his eyes, he tried to close the door in his mind that was threatening to bust open. He couldn't let those thoughts out. That was dangerous. He released a deep strangled sigh that seemed to deflate the inner turmoil within him as he reached for the door.
Going to the break room, he grabbed his notebook and the files. "I'm going home," he told Catherine. "You're in charge tonight."
"Can we make that permanent?" she called out behind him. "You know, we're still down a CSI! Can I start interviewing?"
He ignored her as he kept walking.
The next day, after he had dinner with Catherine, he entered his townhouse and tossed his keys and the file folder on the table. Looking around, he didn't see or hear his dog anywhere. "Edmond?" There was a whimper coming from the hallway by the kitchen. "Eddie?" The A/C kicked on and he felt the cool air blow from the vents as he slowly walked toward the hallway. He saw the backdoor closed but unlocked. He stopped.
His dog whimpered again and he looked towards the phone on the kitchen counter then saw the cord unplugged from the phone jack in the wall.
"Paul," he said as he walked to the middle of the room so he could be seen down the hallway.
Standing in the hall, his hand over his dog's mouth, and holding a gun to his body was Paul Millander. "Mr. Grissom, welcome home."
He looked at his dog and then at Paul, saying, "He won't bite."
Paul smiled slightly as he lifted the gun to him as he let his dog go. "He's not much of a guard dog; very docile. I was able to walk right in."
"That's because he's a good boy," he said as Edmond ran to get in front of him, standing between him and Paul, as he barked. "Nein, ruhig," he said. "Sitz." Edmond looked at him as he sat and waited. "So ist brav." Peering over at Paul, he asked, "What are you doing here, Paul?"
"You speak German commands to your dog?"
He stepped back into the kitchen as Paul walked out of the hall and into the room. "It's, uh, been a long day...Would you like some coffee? I have Instant," he told him, referencing back to one of their meetings.
Paul nodded his head as he kept the gun on him. "I'd like a cup, thank you, Mr. Grissom."
"You can me Gil. You do have a gun pointed at me in my house." He turned around and pulled down two cups and sat them on the counter.
Then he filled a kettle with water and sat it on the burner. Turning back around, he watched as Paul walked around his house, looking at the artwork on the walls: the paintings, the black-and-white photography, and the butterfly casings.
"Did you do all of these, even the paintings?"
"There is nothing on the walls that aren't mine." He looked at his home phone and the disconnected cord. He wouldn't be able to plug it back in without Paul noticing.
"I knew we were both artists. You had an understanding. What did you say...You envied my autonomy?"
The water started boiling and he removed it from the burner at the same time as he turned the stove off. "Is that why you're here, Paul?" he asked as he poured the water into the cups. "You think I understand? Or, that we're the same?"
"Both." Paul leaned down and petted his dog.
He fixed two cups of coffee using the instant coffee grounds he had in a metal container in his refrigerator. "Sugar? Cream?"
"Black is fine."
He gave a nod as he removed a vial from his refrigerator and poured it into his cup and stirred it.
"What was that?"
"Cream. Don't worry, this one isn't yours," he told him as he picked the cup up and took a sip.
He picked up the other cup with just coffee in it and walked around the counter, handing it to Paul before taking another sip and going over to sit down at the dining table. Leaning back in the chair, he watched as Paul took a drink as he stood looking at him.
Gesturing to the couch, he told him, "You know, Paul, the reason Edmond is a good boy is because he's not trained to keep people out of my house. He's trained to keep them inside of it."
Paul walked over to the couch, looking from him to his dog, as he took another drink of the coffee. Then, his eyes started to water. "And why, uh, why-" he went to say before he rubbed at his chest as he took in a breath.
He watched closely as Paul sat down heavily on the couch. He reached up and wiped sweat away from his forehead as his neck grew red. Then his hands shook, a tremor, and he sat the cup down as his fingers released the gun. It dropped to the floor. A leg jerked out as he collapsed back into the cushions unable to move.
He took another drink as he stared at Paul. His eyes were still open, staring into the open room and his breathing was shallow. "Spiders are such radical insects. Eight legs, plural eyes, armored bodies, silk-shooting out of their ass, and best of all: venom. Delivered through stiletto-sharp fangs, spider venom shuts down its victim's central nervous system, rendering it paralyzed-or dead-so that they can turn its innards to mush in order to gulp down the organs. Don't worry, Paul, be glad I'm not a spider. I don't want to eat your organs."
Setting his cup down, he stood as he went to the closet and pulled out a pair of latex gloves, a plastic bag, and flexi-cuffs. He slipped on the gloves and walked over to Paul, grabbed his hands that were rigid and stiff, unable to move, and secured them in front of him using the flexi-cuffs. He then checked his pockets and waistband. His shirt. Nothing, not even a wallet. He grabbed the gun off the floor and put it in the plastic bag.
Sitting on the coffee table in front of Paul, he smirked, saying, "You should've asked for cream. It would have counteracted the toxins in the spider venom." Looking him over, head tilted as he analyzed the body's physical response to the venom, he told him, "You're no artist, Paul, you're an amateur. Modus operandi. Latin for mode of operation. Your methodology had a pattern, a certain way of killing. Sleeping bag in a bathtub, single gunshot wound...Tape recorded suicide. Despite being prolific in forensics, your M.O. gave you away. Your father's murder. Along with paying a homeless man to be on camera. He described you to perfection. Your other mistake was coming into my house. What I do...I've been doing for a very, very long time, Paul, and unlike you, I don't make mistakes."
He got up, grabbed the bag with the gun, and walked back over to the dining table. He put the bag down and picked up a file that he had tossed on top of it when he first arrived home. "You went to the lab and asked for me, waved at the security camera, and then you called my house before you broke in. All of it on record." He held up the file in his hand. It was only then that the question occurred to him. Why? "You wanted to leave an evidence trail."
There were only two reasons why Paul would do that. Both would lead the police to his front door.
He turned and grabbed the bag with the gun and walked over to the closet. Inside on the floor was a safe. Opening it, he put the gun inside it and locked it. He went into the kitchen and grabbed another vial out of the refrigerator and a syringe and knife from the drawer next to it. Stabbing the needle down into the liquid, he filled the syringe. Tossing the empty vial into the trash, he walked over to Paul and inserted it into his carotid artery. Then he used the knife to cut the flexi-cuffs off.
He put the knife away and tossed the gloves and syringe into the trash just as he heard knocking at his front door. He grabbed the cord to the phone and plugged it back into the wall.
It started ringing.
Paul was moving, moaning as he stood and rubbed his head.
Glaring at him, he went to the backdoor and opened it. "I have your gun, Paul. Your prints, DNA...I can implicate you in any crime I want to. So, whatever it was you were planning: Don't."
The knocking grew louder as Paul walked by him. He stopped and with a knowing smile on his face, said, "It's been a pleasure. Until next time."
He watched him leave before shutting the door and locking it before heading to the front.
Yanking the door open, he saw a LVPD Officer Mitchell and Catherine standing behind him.
"Oh, thank God," Catherine said when she saw him. "Your phone's-"
"It accidentally got unplugged. What are you doing here?"
"Hey, Grissom," Mitchell said, "mind if I do a quick check of your place. We have reason to believe Paul Millander may be targeting you."
He moved aside to let the both of them inside as he saw Mitchell's partner rounding the side of the townhouse to the backyard.
"How does a phone accidentally get unplugged?" Catherine asked as she walked past him into the living room.
"When you have a dog that likes to play fetch," he told her as he watched Mitchell going up the stairs to his bedroom with his gun drawn.
"Since when do you have a dog," she said the moment she spotted Edmond. Catherine knelt down and started petting him. "He's adorable. What's his name?" she asked before checking the tag. Staring up at him, she asked in confusion, "Edmond?"
"After Edmond Locard. French criminologist, founder of forensic science." When she only rolled her eyes, he said, "Added bonus is that I get to call him Ed or Eddie as a nickname; it's funny because the only other dog I know is your ex-husband."
She shot a glare at him before saying, "You have one twisted sense of humor."
A moment later Officer Mitchell came back down and then checked the hallway, closet, and then he got to the door for the lower level. "Is there another way to access the bottom floor?"
"Through the garage, but it has an alarm on the door."
Mitchell seemed confused by that but didn't say anything as his partner, Officer Weston, knocked on the backdoor. Mitchell unlocked it and opened the door for him.
"I got nothing. You?" Weston asked.
"All clear," Mitchell said as he holstered his weapon and looked at him. "Why have the only two entrances and exits to the bottom floor locked and armed with a security system?"
He stared at Mitchell as he told him, "That's where I keep my most valued possessions."
"He means his ant farms," Catherine said as she rolled her eyes.
"I moved my ant farm. My pet tarantula, however..."
Mitchell held up his hand as he cut him off, saying, "Wished I never asked. If you want, we can have a patrol parked outside for the rest of the day to ensure Millander doesn't show up."
He waved him off as he said, "No need. I'll set the alarm and," he gestured to Edmond, "I have my dog."
"He doesn't seem like a Cujo. He'll have to be in order to take down a man with a gun and a grudge." She waved at him as she walked with Officer Mitchell out of the townhouse.
He watched them leave and let out a breath as he leaned on the counter. After a couple minutes, he checked the time on his watch and decided to go check on his house guest.
Unlocking the padlock on the door to the bottom floor, he opened it and headed down the steps. Edmond was right behind him. As his dog sniffed around the door, he peered through the window as he flicked on the light. His guest had yet to wake up. The drug dealer, Ethan Humbert, was strapped to the metal table.
"Pass auf," he told his dog as he pointed to the door.
Edmond took up guard at the door as he laid down in front of it.
"Braver hund," he told him before going back upstairs.
Five Months Later
"Catherine, I know I have a four o'clock appointment with the Sheriff. I'm not a child."
"Sometimes I'm not so sure. And your memory when it comes to anything but crime scenes really sucks, you know that? We need this requisition."
He stopped at his desk and packed his briefcase as he cradled his cell phone between his shoulder and ear while listening to Catherine's rant. Sometimes he wished she would realize he wasn't Lindsey and she wasn't his mother. "I'm politically tone deaf, remember? Stuff like that doesn't stick."
"Why couldn't I have been made supervisor? They'd think after months of your aloofness, they'd come to their senses," Catherine huffed out in defeat.
"Yell at them and not at me and my aloofness, which by the way, I'm going to forget to eat if you don't let me go."
"All right, just...call me when you get done to let me know how things went."
"Yes, mother," he ended the call, pocketed the phone, and then grabbed his briefcase.
It had been a long day that started when he had to endure the pleasure of a tedious meeting with both day and swing shifts. Then he had spent the rest of the night going over a stack of paperwork on his desk that needed to be filed by noon. All in all, it was a bad night at work. He didn't even get a chance to help out in the field or look over new evidence or do anything that was remotely interesting.
Ecklie passed him on his way out and smiled. "Don't forget-"
"Four o'clock, meeting, Sheriff's office. I know, Conrad." He hurried to his car and got in, not bothering to greet any of the day shift CSI's going in the building or even buckling his seatbelt until he was maneuvering through the parking lot.
He was hungry, needed to stop at the store, fill up his gas tank, pick up his dog, go home, cook, review the Jacobs/Waters case for the hearing tomorrow, go to the meeting, and then finally try to get some sleep before he had to wake up to do it all over again. A car nearly collided with his just outside the parking lot as it sped through the red light and he laid on the horn until the guy flipped him off, then he laid on it again. Asshole, he thought as he flipped on the radio.
"…traffic backed up on I-515, south bound to Henderson. An overturned water truck-"
He flipped the radio off and cursed under his breath. Guess he wasn't going to take the interstate home.
It was nearly two hours later by the time he got home. He quickly put away the groceries and set the timer on the coffeemaker before he stripped as he made his way to the bathroom. He let out a sigh of relief once he felt the warm spray on his tense muscles. After he was clean, he turned the water off and exited the room with just a towel around his waist. The walk-in closet was down to bare bones except for his only suit that was for the trial tomorrow. His dresser proved more helpful and he pulled out a pair of sweatpants and a worn-down Dodgers baseball T-shirt. The hamper was overflowing with clothes as he threw the towel onto it; the laundry also had to be done.
But now wasn't the time to do anything except sleep. He didn't even care that his hair was still wet or that he hadn't shaved, or even eaten. Dropping into bed, he closed his eyes as he felt Edmond jump up to sleep at the foot of the bed, and was asleep before he realized it.
A few hours later the townhouse was filled with the smell of coffee. A hum of content escaped his lips as he poured himself a full cup before hitting play on the stereo. Plácido Domingo's heart-wrenching singing of "O tu che in seno" solved the silence problem the townhouse was having. He was exhausted. He'd only slept for three hours before the alarm woke him. The meeting was in two hours. The laptop was lying on the coffee table, waiting for him to turn it on and start working again. His e-mail account had to be overflowing by now. The numerous emails from various book publishing agencies, entomology and forensic organizations, magazines and journals, and his junk mail were going to be interesting seeing how he had forgotten to check it in weeks.
A light rain was starting to come down outside; the steady tapping of it on his window behind the sofa helped calm him. Edmond laid his head on his lap and he petted him as he sipped on the coffee and waited for the computer to start up. As he waited, he debated about what to do first: update the forensic entomology textbook he was putting together or review his slides for the hearing. It should have been a simple decision: the slides. But it wasn't like he hadn't gone over them a hundred times already. As of now, his memory wasn't failing him, but he was deadlocked on the textbook. So, he decided to review the slides.
The home page popped onto the screen and he quickly typed in his screen name and password. There were fifty unread messages? After he deleted everything that was junk mail, he was satisfied with the remaining nineteen still left. Nine were from Entomology organizations like AAFS and CAS, seven were from various publishing agencies, two were from Barnes & Nobles, and the remaining-
-He froze.
An email was titled "Been a long time, Gil." The sender was Sara Sidle.
The bright screen of the computer called for his attention, but he placed it on the coffee table, picked up the coffee cup, and walked to his office so he could review his notes without distractions. The computer in his office didn't have internet access and was only meant to be used to get work done, not surf the net. The Jacobs/Waters hearing was tomorrow and he had to prepare.
"Been a long time, Gil."
He couldn't believe it. She was trying to get back into contact with him now. It'd only been a few short years, but so much had happened in that time. He'd always enjoyed his privacy and now was not the time to consider inviting her back into his life. He was just getting used to her being gone. Going into his office, he shut the door. The sound of his cell ringing echoed through the townhouse and fell onto deaf ears. In his head all her could hear were Plácido Domingo's voice singing:
~"O tu che seno agli angeli. Eternamente pura, salisti bella, incolume dalla mortal iattura, non iscordar di volgere Lo sguardo a me tapino, che senza nome ed esule, In odio del destino, chiedo anelando, Ahi misero, La morte d'incontrar. Leonora mia, soccorrimi. Pietà del mio penar! Pietà di me!"~
It took the third attempt, and the barking of his dog, for him to hear it through the closed door and hyper focused mind that had been consumed in his work. Getting up, he hurried down the hallway to his kitchen where his phone was charging on the counter. He looked at the display and cursed under his breath.
Answering it in mid-ring, he said in his most tolerated voice, "Catherine."
"You only have an hour until the meeting; please tell me you didn't forget."
He wrinkled his head in confusion. How was it three o'clock already? "I'm leaving right now," he said as he picked up his keys off the counter and stared at the clock on the microwave. It was a couple minutes after three o'clock.
"…-are you even paying attention to me? Grissom?!"
He pulled the phone away from his ear and went to hang up on her, but decided against it. "If you want me to get there on time then I suggest we hang up now." With that, he ended the call.
As soon as he stepped out of the Sheriff's office with a migraine forming at the back of his head, it was six o'clock. A two-hour meeting was not his idea of a good time especially when he only said one sentence during the entire ordeal. Being a supervisor sucked. Being hungry sucked. And being hungry, tired, and having a head that pounded with every step really sucked.
"Hey, Grissom, got a minute?"
He eyed Brass who poked his head out of his office and sighed. "Is this about a case?"
Brass shrugged. "Yeah, kind-of." He groaned as he rubbed the kink out of his neck. Brass smirked at him as he said, "Do you need me to carry you? You look like hell."
And he felt like hell too. "Didn't know this was a beauty contest." When was the last time he had a full eight hours or more of sleep? Two weeks ago? "So," he said as he stepped into Brass's office, "what's this about?"
Brass closed the door before walking around his desk and sitting down. "What else? Political BS and the growing fear in the citizens of Sin City. We recently had a call, well, not we, more like the Governor, Mayor, the Sheriff, and then me."
He nodded. "I remember his pager going off during the meeting. He said something about the FBI." He closed his eyes and shook his head.
Brass sighed. "We're getting the bigger guns from the Vegas field office."
The mention of the FBI made him visually flinch. "Why? We don't have any cases that need the involvement of the Feds." The way Brass was starting to pale around the edges made him trail off. "Do we?"
"The FBI sure thinks so."
He narrowed his eyes as he tried to read Brass but the migraine and everything else coursing through him was making it hard to think straight. "It can't be Millander. We can handle him ourselves if he's-"
Brass shook his head. "It's not Millander." He took a deep breath before saying, "The Mayor doesn't think we're handling the serial murders of the women being strangled-"
The world seemed to fade around him; he eased out a breath as Jim's words became muffled. Jim was speaking to him but he couldn't hear a word. Sound was gone, mixed with the ringing and rush of blood in his ears.
Brass was eyeing him with concern as he said, "-no need for us to back off as of yet, but the Sheriff wanted all the supervisors and higher-ups to know. I thought you'd rather hear it from me than Ecklie or someone else."
He still wasn't processing anything right. His head was about to explode from the migraine. "Thanks for the heads up. I-I, uh…" he didn't know what to say. He hadn't actually heard what Jim had said to him and it'd been a long time since he had learned to read lips.
Brass nodded. "You okay?" He tried to pull off the sarcastic tone and smile, but it seemed to lose itself in the midst of the situation.
He gave a nod. "My shift starts in a few hours." Standing, he didn't even wave 'bye' to Jim or say anything else before he was out of the office.
He entered the crime lab with heavy, long strides. He caught himself scoping the place out like he'd find a bomb under one of the tables. The lab was safe. As he approached his office, he caught a few people whispering to each other. He spotted his team waiting in the break room for him to hand out assignments.
Covallo was waiting at his office door. "Grissom, do you have a minute?"
He opened the office door as he gave a nod. He entered and leaned against his desk as he waited for the Director of the lab to sit down. Whatever it was, it had to be about the serial killer terrorizing Vegas. It hit the press. It wasn't long before he found out he was right.
"The FBI will be arriving early tomorrow morning after your shift ends. I've given them free range here at the lab. I'm expecting everyone to welcome their presence and to accept their involvement." Covallo paused as he gave him a pointed look. "I don't want a repeat of Millander. Is that clear?"
He was slightly offended by that statement, but nodded in agreement anyway.
Covallo stared at him for a long moment before telling him, "They specifically requested you, and your team, to head-up the forensic investigation. Once they are here, your team will be off any and all cases that aren't directly involved with the pursuit and capture of this serial."
"We were already working the case-"
"And now it's a collaboration, with us taking the lead."
He stared at the Director as he was trying to read between the lines of political bullshit. "We will be the ones held responsible if this falls apart."
Covallo looked pointedly at him and said, "You will be held responsible, Gil."
The air was sucked out of his chest as the door burst open and an angry and stern looking Catherine charged into his office. She went to open her mouth when she spotted the Director sitting in the chair she was about to toss across the room. "Oh, I didn't know you had company."
"I was just leaving." Covallo stood and walked to the open door. Before he left, he turned and said, "Good luck." He then disappeared down the hallway.
Catherine closed the door and turned back around. The fire was lit in her eyes as she crossed her arms. "I said to call, you didn't. Then I try to call you and you ignore me!" When he didn't say anything, she threw her arms up in frustration and fell into the chair. "Well?!"
He decided then and there to knock the winds out of her sails. "The FBI will be arriving in Vegas in the morning; when they do, we'll be off all new cases that don't pertain to the pursuit and capture of our serial killer. Those were Covallo's words exactly."
Catherine seemed to shrink in size, or it was because she was no longer panting with pent-up rage. "Please tell me you're kidding. Not that we can't handle it, but let's face it Gil, when it comes to serial cases, you lose perspective."
He tried to relax his jaw and fingers. Catherine didn't know the impact her words had on him. She was right.
"I would never kid about that. And there's no need to worry about me. We're just going to…" Collect evidence, look at files, and hope they didn't get themselves killed? What was he even trying say? His head was a jumbled mess at the moment. "Review evidence and-" he stopped.
Catherine's lips were moving but he couldn't hear what she was saying. He did his best to keep up, all he could make out was the end. She asked if he was okay.
He shook his head and sat down in the chair. "I'm fine, Catherine." It was a lie. He wasn't fine; on the contrary, he felt as if he were in purgatory. No heaven, no hell, just...stuck.
He was losing his hearing.
Later that evening he was in the autopsy room staring at a body that couldn't possibly be human.
Then Doc Robbins confirmed it. "If anything, I know two unequivocal truths: Desilva's head does not belong to this body. And the reason I know that is because the torso is not human."
He shook his head slightly as he looked at the massive torso and asked, "Then what is it?"
"I don't know. You're going to need an anthropologist."
He gave a nod as his eyes skimmed over the body. In his mind, he was imagining hair on the body, taking in how, in appearance, the animal looked human. "I have a theory," he told Robbins as he looked up at him. "They're primates, the next closest living relatives to humans, and they eat bananas."
Robbins smirked, "What are gorillas?"
"I need an anthropologist who has a knowledge of primatology. It's a good thing I know a Wildlife Biologist."
Getting to his office a while later, he opened his rolodex and found the number. Hopefully, she was still in the United States. He sat down at his desk and picked up the phone to dial the number. A man answered the phone and he hesitated a moment before asking for Sara, letting the man know that he was a forensic scientist who needed her expertise on a case. The man, Hank, told him that he would relay the message to Sara himself. He left a callback number and hung up the phone.
She called him back almost awhile later. He was in luck. She could be there before the end of his shift as she was actually in Alaska at the moment and could catch a plane in an hour. Before the end of his shift, he was once again in the morgue with Doc Robbins as Sara walked around the table, examining the torso they'd found in the desert.
"Pelvic girdle and spine are curved and upright, quadrupedal. Left and right femur and humerus are derivatives of the tarsius...Nice theory about it being a gorilla because it is a gorilla." She looked over at him and said, "Bushmeat hunters thrive on murdering gorillas for profit. The amputation of the hands and feet were for trophies, or novelty items: ashtrays. American fetishists would pay up to ten thousand for the head of a lowland gorilla. The skin: purses, shoes, boots. Genetically, gorillas are 92.7% identical to humans. It's sickening."
"How did it end up in the Nevada desert," he asked.
"He was probably killed in Cameroon or the Congo then transported to the port of Los Angeles. Dismembered, packaged...loaded onto a small plane, where they dumped what they couldn't sell. Good luck finding the plane." Shaking her head, she told him, "I'm going to have to dismember him even more for purposes of disease control. Per the CDC, I have to take samples and then dispose of him immediately. Excuse me," she said before she turned and left the room.
He followed her out into the hallway.
She heard him coming and stopped and turned around as she said, "You know, Gil, after all these years of studying our planet, animals, and trying to save what's left of it, I've come to the conclusion that humans are our worst enemy. We don't just kill each other, but we have to kill everything else. The very thing that gives us life...And for what? That gorilla was killed so someone somewhere can have an ashtray, to put ash in from a cigarette that when inhaled, causes cancer. It seems sometimes we only evolved into an advanced species so we could learn how to kill and destroy everything more efficiently."
He worked his jaw as he understood her anger. He'd told her once that when man-kind died out, the earth would thrive. She had come to figure that out for herself. "I'll help you, uh...dispose of the gorilla," he told her when she gave him a look.
Letting out a breath, she told him, "Thank you."
"Come on," he said as he turned back to the autopsy room.
She was right behind him.
He invited her over for dinner that Sunday evening, a vegetarian lasagna with the garlic bread that she so loved. As she entered his house, he heard Edmond barking.
Smiling at the sight of his dog as he walked over to her, tail wagging, she said, "You got a dog? He's beautiful. A Boxer?"
"Very good. He's excited to finally meet you."
As she petted Edmond on his head and scratched him behind his ears, she asked, "You talk to him about me?"
He didn't know if that was a good or bad thing, but from her teasing smirk, he figured it was good.
As he watched her, his mind drifted back to three years ago.
He never took work off for his birthday, but it just so happened that he had the weekend off. Sara also had no plans, so when she came up to grab a drink, he told her, "You know... tomorrow's my birthday. I'm off work and thinking about doing something."
"What'd you have in mind?" she asked.
"Did you know that I'm a member of the Las Vegas Astronomical Society."
She smiled at him as she said, "I did not know that. You want to go stargazing?"
"You want to come with? It's actually a camping trip at Lake Mead. There will be plenty of hiking as well, and I will be taking my telescope."
Her answer was quick. She didn't even have to think about it. "I'd love to go."
"Great."
Hours later they pulled into the campground for Lake Mead and followed the directions to the parking lot. Despite having the weekend off, he could still be called in at any time so he'd driven his work truck. In the back was a tent and their bags and gear, along with his field kit.
He got out and looked around at the open desert and hills that lead up to the mountains and then out across the valley toward the lake. As he sat down inside the back of the truck and changed his shoes as he put on a pair of hiking boots, he looked over at her and asked, "Is this your first time camping?"
"Am I that obvious?"
"You're eyeing that tent like it's a UFO."
She looked over at him and said, "I'm thinking about the ground."
He reached into the back and patted a thick roll of padding. "I promise, you'll feel as if you're sleeping on a cloud." Grabbing his backpack, he threw it over his shoulder and then grabbed his baseball cap.
As they hiked, they didn't talk much unless he pointed out to her every species of insect he spotted as well as the plants.
"I didn't know you were a botanist too," she said as he spotted a group of Oleanders.
"My father was," he told her. She just looked at him and he walked on, but not before warning her about the Oleanders.
A while later, at the campsite, he turned his Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap around so he could adjust the sights on the telescope as he told her, "Jupiter at opposition means that the Earth will be between Jupiter and the Sun. It's rising in the east as the Sun is setting behind us and it will remain visible all night. Its four largest moons and cloud bands will be...easy to see…" he trailed off as he saw her smiling at him. He stepped away and said to her as he gestured to the telescope, "Have a look."
She stepped up to the telescope and closed one eye to look through the eyepiece. He knew what she was looking at. She could see the Great Red Spot, the various colors of its atmosphere: beige and greys and orange and reds. And orbiting it in somewhat of a jagged line were four moons. "Oh, wow. The moons are Lo, Europa, and...what were the other two?"
"Ganymede and Callisto," he told her.
"Ganymede, the Greek legend who was the son of Tros. Zeus made him pour his wine, like a servant."
He didn't miss a beat as he said, "A compliment. Legend is he was the most loveliest of mortals. Carried off by the Gods due to his beauty so he could be among the immortals."
"And Callisto?" she asked.
"A nymph, daughter of King Lycaon. Zeus transformed himself into Artemis in order to seduce Callisto. She got pregnant with Zeus's child and was expelled. Hera, the wife of Zeus, got upset and transformed her into a bear. Later, just as she was about to be killed by her son, Arcas, when he was hunting, she was set among the stars as Ursa Major, "the Great Bear". She was the bear-mother of the Arcadians."
She shrugged and said with a smirk, "So, Callisto was the first Momma Bear."
He looked away as he thought about that and then smirked. Then he turned his eyes up to look at the evening sky. They've been spending a lot more time together lately. He found himself trusting her more and more over the last couple years. Despite her anger with him at times, he knew that she wasn't placing blame or judging him for any of his deficiencies. She was angry; angry with life, with herself, and it came out all wrong.
They fell into a rhythm that he couldn't explain. It was a familiarity. They were comfortable in just being who they were with one another. She knew he needed time for his mind to catch up with his heart. He needed patience and understanding. He needed her trust.
And now, here they were. He didn't want her to leave, but she would. One day, she'd be gone and he knew it. He usually wasn't the one to initiate anything physical between them, knowing that it had to be her choice, but right then he didn't know what else to do to show her how he felt.
It took him a moment, more time than it should have for him to move her hair off her cheek with his left hand, to cup her chin with his right, and as he looked into her eyes, closed the distance between them as he kissed her.
Sara was sitting across from him at the dinner table, talking about her experiences since she last saw him and all he could think about was the ring on her left ring finger. She hadn't worn it at the lab, but there it was now.
"So, I uh, heard you talked to Hank."
He took a sip of the white wine she had bought and said, "He answered when I called for you."
The look she had in her eyes told him everything. A + B=Engaged. He wanted to be happy for her, and he was. Still, it was all he could do to not get up and walk away. The feeling that crept up into his throat wasn't one he was familiar with. It felt like hate. Not for her, but for Hank.
He felt as if he was fire.
~"Hey little girl, is your daddy home?
Did he go away and leave you all alone? Mhmm-"~
"We've been together for a while now. Over a year. He's a decent guy," she was saying.
"That's good," he said before he downed the wine in the glass and then grabbed the bottle to pour himself another drink.
Most people probably drew conclusions from previous relationships. Cause and effect. What's "Past is prologue", as Shakespeare wrote. It didn't only pertain to him, but to everyone. His problem was that he had no past relationship to draw from when it came to...this.
This fire that was burning through his head.
~"I got a bad desire
Oh oh oh, I'm on fire-"~
She was having a hard time looking at him when she said, "It's weird, you know, I can't help but think that the only reason I can be with him is because of you. You showed me that I deserve better than I ever thought. I bet you're wondering why not you, huh?"
He shrugged as he said, "I'm wondering about a lot of things."
~"Tell me now, baby, is he good to you?
And can he do to you the things that I do? Oh no-"~
"You made me feel like I was being kept out of the loop. Like I couldn't be trusted despite you saying that you did. I know you value your privacy, and that's fine, but...It often felt that you were hiding things from me. Omission of truths is still lying. I need to know who I'm with. I know that I will never be able to know you. And, I will never be considered beyond the surface for you. I've been looking for my definition of home for a long time, Gil. Your home will always be yours; it has no room for me."
She was right, about everything. He was very secretive and she deserved so much better. She could never know who he truly was. He realized she was waiting on him to say something in return. He had no idea what to say. No experience to draw from. He was completely out of his depth.
~"I can take you higher
Oh oh oh, I'm on fire-"~
There were other things to draw on, like books and music. His mind was racing to find something to say that would best express his thoughts and his own understanding of what she was trying to tell him. What was she trying to tell him? She needed to know that he had room in his home for her. Not his physical home, but his life. She wanted him to be her home?
When she had dreamed of her future, it was with him. Then reality came crashing down. She'd written that in her letter to him years ago. She wanted him to be her dream and her reality.
What he landed on was a song lyric. "'Between our dreams and actions, lies this world"...Bruce Springsteen."
"Bruce Springsteen? That-that's great," she said. In other words, no it wasn't.
He dropped his head and knew that wasn't what she wanted to hear. With every mistake he made, he knew that he was losing her. He had to figure this out. It was a problem and he was good at solving problems. This was a problem with trust as the variable. Trusting someone wasn't a constant. It could change.
Question: Could trust be a constant?
The solution would have to be that not only would she trust him going forward, but that...it wouldn't happen again...Right?
~"Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby
Edgy and dull, and cut a six inch valley through the middle of my skull-"~
Letting out a breath, he looked up at her and said, "Are you telling me this so that it will be avoided in the future, if we had a future together? I don't know what to tell you-...I'm sure there are many things I need to tell you. I didn't even think it was an issue because we all have things, secrets...It's only natural. Just know that I will always be honest with you. I always have been."
Was that even the right conclusion?
She frowned in confusion at him. He wasn't right. He wasn't making any sense. That wasn't anything she wanted to hear.
"Aren't you the one that says everyone lies? Gil, I tried with you. I felt safe here, for the most part. But underneath, I kept feeling like it couldn't be trusted. I can't live like that."
~"At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
And a freight train running through the middle of my head-"~
She was his only friend. The only woman he ever wanted in his life, and he realized she was saying goodbye. And he would let her go.
Without knowing it, she could feel who he truly was underneath: a killer.
~"Only you can cool my desire-"~
And because of that, she was in love with another man. With Hank.
~"Oh oh oh, I'm on fire-"~
When a bullet impacted skin, it transferred its energy into the body. It was all about kinetic energy. The energy possessed by an object due to its motion; a function of the object's mass, represented by M, and velocity, V, which formed the equation: KE = 1/2 MV2. While the bullet's mass played an important role in gunshot wounds, the most critical variable was the bullet velocity. Doubling the velocity would quadruple the kinetic energy.
The bullet that entered his body was a contact wound, but there would be no visible stippling. The wound channel, the path it took once it entered, was straight to his heart. It was a penetrating wound. He was bleeding internally.
She was the only one who could stop the bleeding.
~"Oh oh oh, I'm on fire-"~
It hurt. His body was convulsing around the wound. Progressive pulsations and contractions. He felt his blood run cold. Organs and muscles damaged. He couldn't breathe.
Crippling. Paralyzing.
He couldn't tell her what she needed to hear. He had no words. No quote to ease her fears. No words to make her see that he loved her and had loved her for such a very, very long time.
He watched her go, waving "bye" to him and petting his dog before she left. Once the door shut, and he heard the deafening silence that followed, he truly understood for the first time in his life what it meant to have loved and lost. It was a bullet to the heart.
Answer: A heartbreak could kill.
He felt like he was dying.
~"Oh oh oh, I'm on fire."~
Checking his watch, he saw it was going on midnight. The lights from the neighboring apartments were all out and the street lamp over the entryway had been broken earlier that day. There was cloud coverage but no rain and it was cool. He had to wear a jacket. In his jacket pockets were two syringes and a pair of latex gloves. There were booties already over his shoes.
The front door to the bottom floor apartment opened and he watched as Syd Goggle carried out two bags of trash and tossed them near a dumpster. The serial killer's stroll was light, easy, and he never looked around to make sure he wasn't being watched. Confident that he would get away with killing five women. Women who's only sin was not wanting him.
~"Once upon a time you dressed so fine
Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People call say 'beware doll, you're bound to fall'
You thought they were all kidding you-"~
Crossing the parking lot, he pulled out the latex gloves. He blew into them before slipping them over his hands. By passing the front door, he walked around the side of the building to the sliding door in the back. In the darkness, he stopped and listened to the night and watched the neighboring windows. Still no lights. No movement. He could hear Mr. Goggle inside. His television. Through the blinds of the sliding door, he could see into the living room and through to the kitchen.
~"You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hanging out-"~
Mr. Goggle entered from his bedroom with a laundry basket. He'd seen him taking down a load of laundry several hours ago. It would be done by now, and he was going to retrieve it. Watching him leave the apartment, he saw he left the front door open. Again, overconfidence.
He entered through the front door and looked around. He saw the forensic books, hair clippers, and a box of gloves on the counter. Going over to the radio, he pulled a CD out from his inside jacket pocket, Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, and put it into the player and waited.
~"Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging your next meal!
How does it feel?-"~
Syd Goggle dropped his laundry basket inside the door and shut it closed as he looked around in confusion. But, he didn't look behind the door. Pulling the syringe from his pocket, he stabbed him in the back of the neck. Goggle reached back like he'd been stung and was trying to swat away what had stung him as he turned around.
Upon seeing him standing there, his eyes widened before his body swayed and hit the floor.
~"How does it feel?
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone-"~
He fireman carried Goggle's heavy slack body into the bedroom and dropped him onto the bed. Normally, he would take him elsewhere, to his house, or his warehouse out in the middle of the industrial desert. There was no time for that. He also wanted to do it there, in his bed, like he'd done all those women.
Taking the white gym towels out of the laundry basket, he went back to the bedroom and tied his arms to the bed and then stuffed a white towel down Goggle's throat. Then he got on top of him and hit him.
~"Ahh you've gone to the finest schools, alright Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the street
And now you're gonna have to get used to it-"~
First hit was always free, there was no blood. Yanking the cord out of the lamp by the bed, he twisted the ends around his hands and then wrapped it around his neck, strangling him. Goggle tried to fight back, as all he could do was choke on a scream. After his eyes rolled back into his head, he released the cord and pulled out the other syringe.
~"You say you never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize-"~
He jammed the needle into Goggle's neck and watched as he jerked back awake from the adrenaline. He tried to struggle under him, thinking he had strength in his body to fight back, but he was wrong.
It was all a lie.
He hit him again.
~"He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say, "do you want to make a deal?"
How does it feel?!-"~
Then he hit him again. Feeling the fire burst up through his heart and out, he hit him over and over again until his face was a bloody mess. Grabbing the cord, he twisted it once again around his bloody hands before wrapping it around Goggle's neck. Staring down into Goggle's scared and dazed eyes, he showed him what the rage of a real killer looked like.
~"How does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
A complete unknown, like a rolling stone-"~
He strangled him until he passed out. Then, he revived him again. There would be no blissful, peaceful sleep for either of them tonight. Not until he was done. Not until the fire was extinguished.
He was just getting warmed up.
~"Ah you never turned around to see the frowns
On the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you-"~
Hours later, he was called out to the scene of a homicide: 420. The sun was coming up over the buildings as he spotted the police cars, Catherine's work truck, and the FBI. He grabbed his field kit out from the back of his truck and slipped on his sunglasses as he headed toward the front door. Catherine was examining the trash by the dumpster and bagging individual ketchup packets that were inside the trash bags.
~"You used to ride on a chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discovered that
He really wasn't where it's at-"~
Ignoring her and Special Agent Culpepper who was walking his way, he slipped under the yellow crime scene tape. He nodded to Officer Mitchell and Weston and then stopped long enough to slip on a pair of booties over his shoes and pulled on a pair of latex gloves before removing his sunglasses.
"Hey, Grissom?!" Culpepper called out. "This the guy, right? The security guard. Syd Goggle-"
~"After he took from you everything he could steal!
How does it feel?-"~
He saw broken glass from the sliding door scattered over the floor. It'd been broken from the outside. Point of entry. Taking pictures of the door, the glass, and then the interior of the living room. He collected the evidence that would implicate Syd Goggle was the serial killer they've been after: the Strip Strangler.
Going into the bedroom, he stood at the foot of the bed and stared down at the lifeless body.
~"How does it feel?
To have on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone-"~
Goggle was bound to the bed frame by his own sheets. A white towel was stuffed down into his throat and it was soaked in blood. His face was unrecognizable. Taking pictures of the body, first from the foot of the bed, and then from above as he grabbed a chair and stood up on it to get an overhead shot, he heard Catherine walk into the room. He got down off the chair and went over to the body that David had already released and removed the white towel.
Clicking on his flashlight, he looked into his mouth and told her, "He's missing his teeth."
~"Ahh princess on a steeple and all the pretty people
They're all drinking, thinking that they've got it made
Exchanging all precious gifts
But you better take your diamond ring, you better pawn it babe-"~
Catherine stared at the body and shook her head. "Now, this...This was rage. Someone beat this guy to death."
He flinched at her words as he stared down at the body. There was nothing. He felt no pain, no guilt, no remorse. Just...sorrow. Not for Syd Goggle.
For himself.
~"You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him he calls you, you can't refuse-"~
He'd never been so angry in his life. The rage he inflicted onto Goggle had even surprised him. It was out of control. He remembered as he looked down at him, his hands on his neck, his fists pounding into his face, that the person he saw wasn't Syd Goggle. It was some man he'd never met before in his life but who's last name would soon be Sara's.
Goggle strangled women who rejected him.
He had strangled Goggle for Sara rejecting him. All he felt once the fire burned away was sorrow. Dejection. It went deep and it was suffocating.
~"When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you've got no secrets to conceal!
How does it feel?-"~
He was drowning. Drowning in the depths of the darkness that he'd fought so hard to not let himself fall into. The abyss. What did Nietzsche say about the abyss? "Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster...For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
~"Ah how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home-"~
Worst of all, he felt so lost. Directionless. Who was he now? Was he really a monster? Just another killer? Could anyone ever really love him?
Question: Did he actually know how to love?
He had so many questions and no answers. The only definitive information he had was that she was gone. Sara was gone. She had taken a flight back to her new life, to Hank, in Alaska.
He left the apartment, passing my Special Agent Culpepper who tried to grab a hold of his arm to stop him so they could talk. He shrugged the hand away, put on his sunglasses, and ducked back under the crime scene tape just as the press arrived. Culpepper and the Mayor would take care of the press. Getting back into his truck, he started it as he let out a deep breath and turned on the A/C.
Sitting there, all he could think was that he was going to miss her. Very much.
~"Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone."~
TBC...
Disclaimer: Songs used/mentioned: "O tu che in seno" sung by Placido Domingo (I hope I got the Spanish lyrics correct, I had to copy them from a website and since I'm not a Spanish speaker I trusted what I was given). "I'm On Fire'' and "Dead Man Walkin'" by Bruce Springsteen. "Like a Rolling Stone," by Bob Dylan.
"O tu che in seno" translated from Spanish to English: "Oh, you who have ascended, forever pure, to the bosom of the angels, lovely and untouched by mortal sorrow, do not forget to look down on me, unhappy wretch, who, nameless and exiled, the prey of fate, longingly seeks to encounter death, unfortunate that I am! Leonora, help me, have pity on my anguish. Help me, have pity on me!"