Disclaimer: I don't own it, I don't pretend to own it, and I don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.
Thank You: Stelmarta for being there! Mom because I love her!
Special thank you: Duchess of Hell and Saryn this is for ya'll so's I don't keep ya hangin'
Chapter Four
As Sara awoke she immediately became aware of two things: firstly that this was not her bedroom and secondly that she was not in her apartment. This discovery was followed by an investigation into who precisely owned the building she slept in; burying her head in the pillow solved this problem. Only one man in her aquaintance wore Chaps cologne by Ralph Lauren, mixed with Irish Spring soap: Nicholas Stokes.
Now, becoming alarmingly aware that she was not wearing the clothing that she knew she'd fallen asleep wearing, Sara thought her way through the manner in which she ended up in Nick's bed. Concluding that she'd not did not sleep with the man, nor had he been in the same bed with her, calmed her racing heart somewhat and she was now prepared to face the day.
Showering was lovely, she decided, and the individual who invented the massage showerhead should be hailed as saviour of humanity. Nick had been incredibly thoughtful, leaving out soap, shampoo, conditioner, a razor, and even a little shower thingy that made lather if you rubbed it with soap and squeezed it. She once again did a mental inventory and concluded that she had not slept with him; his thoughtfulness was simply that, thoughtfulness. More impressed with him this afternoon that she had been last afternoon she decided not to give him a hard time about bringing her to his apartment instead of taking her to her own. Being waited on was divine, an indulgence she rarely got to indulge in.
Feeling human once again, Sara dressed, in the Texas A&M Aggie t-shirt and slightly oversize jeans that were folded neatly on a chair in the bedroom. Not hers, but comfortable, and felt ice water trickle down her back. He had undressed her, of that she was sure, had he seen the marks that ran down her back?
They were the evidence of that time long ago when she hadn't been quite as introverted as she was now, not as careful who she associated with, not as discriminating about her boyfriends. Taking a deep breath she forced herself to relax. Even if he had, they were nothing to be ashamed of. All kinds of decent people got hard knocks in life. It wasn't her fault that the school of hard knocks chose to leave a permanent diploma. Was he repulsed by the marking? Or had he resolved to make an issue of it, tell other people about her 'issues' and make her try to 'confront her demons' like a certain other CSI who still resided back home in San Francisco?
Breathing deeply, she gathered her thoughts and forced her heart rate to settle. Nick was a decent, hardworking, intelligent man. He wouldn't think the less of her if she chose to keep her little secrets secret. He wouldn't use the knowledge to take advantage of her; he wouldn't be like the scum-of-the-earth idiot who'd done that to her back, he didn't think there was anything legal about drugs or take a belt to his women when he was angry.
'No' she said firmly to herself, 'I will not indulge in a pity party. I'm gonna walk out there like a normal human being and be nice because Nick's taken his time and effort to make me comfortable in his home.' Before doubts could cloud her mind she grabbed the doorknob, turned it, and pulled the door open.
"Hi" her voice was about an octave too high.
"Hi"
Nick was standing in front off the kitchen sink, shirt off, with razor in hand and face half-covered in white shaving cream, barefoot.
"Sleep Ok?"
"Yeah, I did. Thanks. I really appreciate the…stuff" she waved her arm in the vague direction of the bathroom.
Damn him. Damn the man to hell and back. He had to know what kind of affect pulling his shirt off to bare that magnificent chest had on a woman whose body had treated the male species as an infectious disease for the past ten or so years. The fact that she'd not melted into a puddle at his feet was nothing short of a miracle. Where the hell had these sensations come from? This was Nick, annoying, arrogant, insulting, Don Juan to the last hurrah Nicky.
"Oh yeah, don't mention it. You looked like you needed a break." He swished the razor in the artificial puddle filling the sink and tilted up his chin "Taco?"
She looked at the stovetop, in a pan was browned taco meat, and on the counter was a pile of limp, shredded lettuce and a cubed tomato. "I don't eat meat"
"I know. There's beans and rice in the other pot."
Her knees turned to jell-o. "You cooked? You didn't have to cook!"
"Well I did eat your lunch. Besides, I just pulled it out of the freezer and heated it up. It was nothing fancy." He swished the sink again, "Your stuff's in the dryer. I got most of the bloodstains out of the shirt, but I'm afraid the jeans are a total loss."
"That's Ok; I don't think I'd wear them again anyhow, but thanks for doing it."
"No problem, I know the feeling." He swished one last time and tapped his steel razor on the metallic edge of the sink. It pinged like a little bell. One hand blindly reached for a dishtowel, Sara plucked one off of the countertop and put it in his hand. He turned and grinned, rubbing the excess shaving cream off his face "Thanks"
Out of nowhere her hands started shaking; her eyes burned with unshed tears, her whole body just started shutting down. The reaction stress of what she'd seen, and done, in the past eighteen hours smacked into her and ran her over like a freight train smashing a penny on the rails.
"Aw, c'mere. I know. It sucks don't it?" Nick folded her into his arms, and shushed her, saying soft, reassuring nonsense while Sara sobbed out her pain and frustration from scientifically analysing the final remains of a horrific scene. Coming back to herself, she just wrapped up in the feeling that she wasn't alone. Nick's arms were around her, his chest hair tickling her arms and neck; he was rocking her, back and forth just like she was a child, and rubbing her back in slow smooth circles.
Her back. The scars. The little ridged hiccoughs in the rhythm of his hand as he comforted her. Involuntarily she stiffened, muscles going piano string tight. She pulled her head off his shoulder, looking him in the face. They were almost exactly the same height, there was no way she could miss his expression. It was fear, and anger, and worry, but most of all it was sympathetic.
He knew, he'd seen them, there was no way he could have missed it or she misunderstand his expression. She pushed, just a little, with her hands on his chest and he let her go quickly, backing off and giving her space.
"Thanks," she whispered, almost saying 'for not mentioning it' in her next breath.
"No prob" He understood.
Within an hour they were on the road, and within two Sara was being duly impressed with the ATF and the large amount of man hours they'd spent painstakingly re-creating the crime scene from her millions of photographs.
They'd been digitised, expanded and carefully tacked together in the precise order and at the precise distance that she'd taken them. Walls were simulated by multiple plywood sheets nailed to sawhorses; the ceiling was two-by-fours nailed with foot long square pictures in the gaps. The floor was laid out with precisely four inches of space between photographs. All in all it took up most of the available space in the CSI garage.
"Wow"
"Thanks," this was ATF special agent James Fredrick Hawkins, called 'Jim' by his friends. "I have to hand it to you, this was a brilliant idea."
"It was Grissom's idea, this way the scene can't get compromised any more than it had." She walked carefully through the field of photos. "This is really incredible."
"Hey they're your pictures."
"Yeah, but it's your work." She surveyed the floor, "Absolutely incredible. Remind me to call on the Federal Government more often if this is what I get."
"Yeah well Mr. Grissom doesn't strike me as the type to accept help all that frequently." Jim said wryly.
"Griss? What? Oh, yeah the court order thing." She picked her way back to the front of the garage. "We've had some bad cases with the Feds, it gets a little…frustrating."
"The Strip Strangler?"
"Was it that obvious?"
"Yeah," he shrugged his shoulders, "We're not all career-minded, power hungry egotistical bastards."
"Sorry"
"No offence." He shoved his hands in the pockets of his rumpled grey slacks. "Anything else you need done?"
"You got a tape measure?"
"Yeah, sure. It's over there on the table."
"Great." She fetched the measure and a pad of paper and a pencil.
"You're going to need a hand with that."
"Are you volunteering?"
"I've got two of them" his hands came back out of the slacks and he displayed them for her to inspect.
"That you do. C'mon."
About ten minutes later, sweating from the lack of air conditioning and the exertion of balancing precisely while holding a small metal tab between thumb and forefinger, Jim raised his head and asked, "What exactly are we doing?"
"Measuring"
"Measuring for what?"
"Me," she shook hair out of her face and sat back on her ankles. "I'm technically a physicist. I calculate how the little pieces got to where they are and where they were to begin with."
"How does that work?"
"Well given that the scene is a three dimensional canvas, it involves quite a bit of Calculus, but basically I use the laws of the conservation of momentum and trace my way backwards to the point of origin."
"Trying to explain blood spatter spots?" Catherine, looking a great deal more dishevelled than she normally did, set her tool box on the floor in front of the pictures.
"Not too successfully. You wanna take it?"
"Sure," Catherine grabbed her tool box and demonstrated. "Watch me. We push the box five inches this way and ten inches across. It ends up here. We go back to the beginning and push it twenty five inches at an angle of twenty-three and a half degrees and we end up in the same place."
"Yeah, that's triangle vector stuff. A squared plus B squared equals C squared, sine, cosine, tangent, and all that crap."
"Right, now let's add a third dimension." She picked up the box. "Five up, five forewords and five to the right, now, if we can trace this position" she shook the box, "back to this position" she moved it to where she originally placed it, "then we can determine the height, weight, and actions of the person to whom the body part belongs."
"Wow"
"Technically this blood stuff is Catherine's job, but the math that's involved with a scene this big is a bit much for only one person. I was trained to do this, so we're working together. " Sara shrugged her shoulders to clear out the knots.
"What do you usually do?"
"Metallurgical analysis and materials identification," at his blank look she clarified, "I figure out what all the little pieces were made out of and how they got there."
"Remind me to never take the crime lab techs for granted again. Y'all are incredible."
"We try." Catherine smiled warmly, "Are you up to any more or do you mind going to help Grissom with the bodies?"
"Well, considering that I made a C in math in college I think I'm gonna go check out the bodies and leave you ladies to do the real work, Ok?" he shook his head a little in awe of the task ahead of the two women.
"Suit yourself." Sara snapped the tape measure shut. "I appreciate the hand"
"Anytime," He walked in the, blessedly, air-conditioned building that housed the Las Vegas medical examiner's office. A tall black man, Warrick Brown, his mind spit out absently, stopped him.
"Hey you're Special Agent Hawkins, right? Grissom's looking for you; he's in exam room four."
"Thanks, Warrick…right?"
"That's me"
"I'm Jim, ATF," they shook hands, "Which room is room number four?"
"All the way down the end." Warrick pointed to the hallway on the right, "and you might want to breathe a little before you get in there. It's getting a bit whiffy if ya' get my drift."
"Got it"
