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 for the wonderful reviews
Chapter Six
Warrick never understood why they called the interrogation room a 'fishbowl'. Intellectually he knew that observing someone while they couldn't see or hear you kind of put them in a fishbowl, but who the hell thought up such a crazy idea? It was probably a CSI on duty too many hours with too much coffee and not enough breaks.
He was the requisite CSI sitting in on interrogation while Brass ran through as many people he could find that were placed at the scene during the time of the explosion. He was supposed to be looking for evidence, of what he wasn't all that sure, but Grissom sent him here and he went as the boss demanded.
"So Mr. Fitzpatrick you were in the line for the teller. You had your back to the incident, but had seen the suspect before you turned around. Is that right?"
"Yes, I uh, well she was a pretty little thing I just sent me eye around a bit, if you know what I'm saying." Mr. Fitzpatrick was visiting from London. He had been in the process of getting pounds exchanged for dollars when the explosion happened.
"Can you describe her?"
"About five foot flat, um, she wore a dress, flowery bit, an' sandals. She looked a tad on the plump side, but still pretty fair."
"Thank you Mr. Fitzpatrick, anything else you remember, anything at all."
"No really, sir, I wasn't paying too much attention 'till everything hit the fan, if you get me drift."
"Thank you."
"Anytime, I have to give you yanks some credit, I been real impressed with the way you've handled this, especially in the wake of the September eleventh attack."
"What were you expecting, FBI agents smoking cigarettes and shining lights in you face?" Brass asked wryly.
"Well…"
"This isn't a terrorist attack Mr. Fitzpatrick; someone just watched too many hours of Headline News and got a crazy idea." Brass got up to let the man out of the room, "even if it was, which thank God it wasn't, we can actually behave ourselves in a civilized manner. Even Americans can be polite."
"So I see, well I hope I was of some assistance Mr. Brass"
"Every little bit counts," Brass let him out of the room and turned to the invisible window on the right side of the room. "Well?"
"Nothing. Crazy Brits," Warrick punched the intercom button. "Who's next?"
"Ooo we're getting to the good stuff here, bank manager, security guys, and the closest person we could find from the scene" Brass slumped back down in his chair. "Grissom wants in on this lot, something about evidence and impressions."
"Well that's Grissom for you," The door to the fishbowl opened, in popped Sara, who'd been out processing spatters.
"Hey War, what's up?"
"Thirty seven people who said they didn't notice anything until the crap hit the fan. Three people who noticed nothing suspicious about our perp, and two people who said she was plump, pretty, and wearing a blue cotton dress."
"Oh boy, I can hardly breathe but for the excitement. At least this lot is supposed to be more interesting." She plopped down into one of the red plastic chairs in the observation room and propped her feet up on the window ledge. Today she'd chosen a red turtleneck sweater and black khaki's. She wore her omnipresent black boots and was twisting her hair into a clumsy ponytail. It was a far cry from the oversize guy jeans and Aggie t-shirt Warrick knew she'd worn after her unexpected tête-à-tête in Nick's apartment.
"So," he leaned casually back on the wall "Never knew you were an Aggie fan."
"A what?" her booted feet slipped and slammed into the floor.
"Texas A&M, the Aggies, if I'm not mistaken that's Nick's alma mater." Warrick oh-so casually dropped into the seat beside her.
"Hey, my stuff was all messy and he loaned me some clothes. Don't go reading into things." He watched her expressions. They worked together a lot; Grissom claimed that their styles meshed really well. Warrick sometimes fancied that he knew almost every expression on her face, from disgust and anger to happiness and satisfaction at a job well done. This one was that deer-in-the-headlights look Sara got when she was stalling for time to think up an excuse. Interesting, he mused, very interesting.
"I didn't say I was reading into anything, but Nicky-boy might be." Her ears all but twitched in their eagerness for more information.
Aha, Warrrick thought, that got the perky little radar stations up and running. Her eyes briefly widened, her nostrils flared, and by God if she didn't start to breathe shallowly and much faster.
"What that supposed to mean?" Her tone was sharp and dismissive. Ok, she was taking the confrontational knack, but her voice was still a little too airy, and it was pitched a bit high too. Bingo.
"I'm just saying that he doesn't loan that t-shirt out for anyone who walks in the door. He won it off a frat brother in a bull riding contest. There was a Big Time macho thing goin' on there."
"Bull riding?"
"Yup, the same frat buddy who lost his shirt to him also owned a ranch down in Midlothian. The whole lot of them went down during the summer break and did cow herding. I wouldn't be surprised if he could saddle up and ride real well." He deliberately pitched his voice lower for that last innuendo and had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes dilate and colour begin to flush into her cheeks. "Well I gotta get going; Griss wants that security tape done before the next shift."
Warrick pushed his way out of the observation room and was accosted by an eagerly waiting Catherine just feet from the swinging door.
"Well?" she asked eagerly, tapping her foot. "Did they?"
"Nope," Warrick grinned, triumphant, "but there is definitely something going on between them and of a not-just-friendly manner."
"Damn," she cursed "how much do I owe you."
"I believe we agreed on twenty."
"Bloodsucking vampire," she insulted him cheerfully, digging in her purse "I coulda sworn they'd gone ahead with it. The man's practically salivating. Are you absolutely sure?"
"See for yourself," he said amicably, "but I'm tellin' ya: they didn't do it."
"Damn it, what's it gonna take? I have half a mind to lock them in the fishbowl and steal their clothes. I could have sworn that sending them home together after that scene would do the trick, but man, are they stubborn."
"Chill Cath, you know Sara. She's got that fight or flight thing going on for her. If she's not running as fast as she can, then she's gonna rip out his hair if he gets too close. She's like Grissom, shuts down like a steel trap if you get too personal." Warrick settled against the wall, "Nick's acting pretty strange too, all restless and crap. She's driving him nuts and he can't stop it."
"If he can't get her to open up a bit and relax then no one can. I swear he's the next most charming guy in the world"
"And who would the first be?" Warrick grinned and arched his brows.
"You, Warrick Brown, and you damn well know it." She sighed in a frustrated tone, handing him the bill "I don't think I've bet on a couple since High School." She glared, but she still smiled cheerfully in return, "Go ahead and wish me luck, I'm going to go shake some sense into her if it's the last thing I do."
Warrick did nothing more than chuckle, as Catherine stalked into the fishbowl. He wouldn't want to be in Sara's shoes at this moment. Affectionate and caring Catherine may be, but she was as tenacious as a bulldog and twice as mean. Nick and Sara would end up together if only to get Catherine to quit bugging them about it.
Sense was not to be shaken in, Warrick's off the cuff analogy was apt, Sara was more like Grissom than anyone but the man himself. Catherine had the benefit of knowing Gil for years; she could read his moods as easily as her own. For all intents and purposes, however, Sara was no more readable than a concrete wall. They spent two hours in the observation room with no more than four words spoken that weren't strictly work related, essentially "Hey Catherine, what's up"
Sara was absorbed, almost entirely, on her last conversation with Nick. She wasn't so stupid that she missed Warrick's innuendo any more than her involuntary response to it. That he had noticed didn't bother her quite as much as she thought it would. In fact she was in the process of convincing herself to maybe use him as a sort of sounding board. He knew more about Nick's personal life than she did, and, scarily enough, she trusted him. The only stumbling bock she could see was her own, admitted, inexperience with personal relationships and general distrust of the whole "boyfriend/girlfriend/significant other" idea itself.
Somehow, someway, Nick Stokes had got her scheming little hormones to sit up and take notice after almost a decade of repression. It wasn't that she'd hadn't had a date in ten years, she wasn't that far gone, but the last man she'd really taken a shine to turned out to quite a bit more of a handful than she expected, and that was being kind about it. Nick was different though, she'd known him much better and trusted him a lot farther than she'd trusted any man, except Grissom, but he didn't really count. Not in the way she was thinking.
She was in fact thinking so deeply about the whole situation that it took Catherine's urgent poking to draw her out of her little brown study to what was actually going on in the world.
"Hey! Sara! Hello? Earth to Sara, please respond"
"Hmm?" she murmured.
"Where the hell have you been?"
"Right here, why?" Catherine rolled her eyes.
"Gil's doing something funny; I can't quite place it though. It's like he's trying to send us a message, but not want anyone to know about it."
"Catherine, I've know him long enough to know that if he wants us to see something we'll see it, and if he doesn't then we're just screwed anyhow because he can't define it well enough to project. If he can't do it, no one can."
Sara slid back in her chair and not so incidentally, her thoughts, although paying more attention to Grissom's bizarre behaviour now, than she'd been doing before.
Catherine was caught for a second, reminded about just how little she knew about Gil's relationship with Sara. They sometimes acted like two halves of a very odd whole, and Gil's praise of her, while never effusive, was nonetheless representative of more true admiration and respect than sometimes Catherine thought Gil showed her. There was a level of trust in that relationship unparalleled anywhere else in CSI, and it threw her sometimes that she considered herself one of Gil's closest friends, yet knew next to nothing about the 'other woman' in his life.
"His hands" Sara said suddenly, "there's something funny about his hands."
"What? Did he cut himself or is he pointing or what?"
"Not his hands, like physically, it's the way he's using them. Look at the witness." Sara slid forewords, "It's like he's counter-punching or…his hands that's it! Catherine look at the witness's hands! Right there on his right front knuckle, it's a fight bite. He hasn't said anything about a physical confrontation; Griss wants us to check it out."
"How? We're here, he's there, and we don't even know if Grissom wants us in there at all anyhow."
"I got an idea, hold on."
Caught in a cyclone of Sara Sidle assumptions, subliminal messaging, and intuitive leaps, Catherine could just sit there as Sara raced out of the observation room to a destination unknown. She watched again, looking for signs of whatever it was Sara'd seen but saw only Grissom, acting more than a little oddly, even beyond his usual quota of weird.
