Title: All the King's Men
Author: Laura/Caidreabh
Category: Casefile, Grissom/Sara UST/RST
Rating: R for some tough subjects.
Summary: When a little girl is kidnapped, the team uncovers a family's deepest secret, and Sara is forced to tell her own.
Disclaimer: I don't own CSI or any of it's characters. I just have some fun with them now and again.
Author's notes: I started this as a spec script, but I'm away from home and I left my draft 3,000 miles away. So I started it again as a prose fic. There will probably be another incarnation of this story in teleplay format at some point in the future. For right now, it's a WIP.
Quote that goes well with this story:
"Careful the things you say,
Children will listen.
Careful the things you do,
Children will see, and learn."
--Children Will Listen from Into the Woods
All the King's Men
The laughter of the children could be heard from down the street during recess at the Meadowview Day School. From the sound alone, one would imagine happy preschoolers clambering over monkey bars an on jungle gyms. The poignant truth was that they did so slowly an laboriously, with permanent braces guarding their fragile bones and teacher's aides watching their every move. These children were too young to understand the limitations on their body-- yet here at this school were children with cerebal palsy, autism, and down's syndrome.
But today, while children played in the sand and played tag on the field, the aides were preoccupied with their own game of hide-and-seek. One of the most beloved children at the school, Annie, was missing. They had assumed at first that she had just wandered off, but only a few minutes of searching were spent before a rip in the chain-link fence surrounding the property was discovered.
The two aides working that day, Morgan and Christine, filed a missing-person's report at five o'clock that day. They waited nervously as the police arrived and began to block off the crime scene.
The Las Vegas night-shift forensic unit waited in the parking lot after having been called to an all-hands case. Shivering in the slightly cold night air, they listened to the briefing while waiting impatiently to get to their work.
"So who's our missing person?" Warrick enquired.
"A five year old girl, name's Annie." He paused a moment and continued uncomfortably. "She's been deaf since birth. Has Down's Syndrome, to top it off."
At this, Sara glanced worriedly at Grissom, who gritted his teeth and gestured to his team to follow him into the school.
Inside, the two college-age girls sat, visibly nervous. Behind them, a middle-aged woman paced across the primary-colored rug, distraught.
"He broke in near the back side of the field," one of the girls began, as the team filed in, before they could ask any questions.
"He?" Grissom asked.
"Well... I just assumed he was male... I have no real idea," the girl stammered in response.
"You are-- Morgan?" Grissom guessed, looking at the papers he was holding on the clipboard in his hand.
"No, I'm Christine. Call me Chris, though. This is Morgan." She gestured to the girl beside her, who nodded.
"Chris, can you show me where you think the break in occurred?" Grissom asked. She got up and walked to the door.
"I'll come and help," Sara offered, grabbing the field kit.
"Good," Grissom said. "Warrick and Nick, you cover the playground where Annie was last seen. Catherine, help Brass with the witnesses."
"Right." Catherine nodded.
Grissom could see the place where the fence had been cut through from several yards away. It traveled around the entire perimeter of the school, which bordered streets on two sides, a residential house on one side, and a rather dirty alleyway in the back. It was on the street near the alley that the perpetrator had entered.
Chris hung back from the fence once they reached the area. The wire had curled over and dug itself into the ground, tearing up the sod. The exposed earth had turned to mud due to the uncharacteristic rainstorm earlier that day.
Sara set the field kit down a few feet away, then approached carefully and kneeled down by the mud, knotting her forehead as she began to concentrate on the scene before her. "Footprints," she said, tracing them with her finger a few inches above them in the air. "I'm guessing a male, size 10 shoe."
"Only traveling in one direction," Grissom pointed out.
"Yeah. My guess, climbed over the first time, had to cut the fence to get the girl out."
As she spoke, Grissom walked several yards down the fence and began to climb over it. To do so, he had to tightly lodge his fingers within the links of the fence. As he ascended, his jacket caught on a rough end of a protruding wire. He unsnagged it before finishing his climb by resting both palms of his hands on the top bar of the chainlink fence.
Watching as he did this, Sara understood.
"I'll dust up and down the fence, look for partials. And handprints on the top rung. That as well as search for any stray fibers our perp might have left behind."
Grissom nodded. "Good. Get those footprints in the mud, as well."
Still on the opposite side of the fence, Grissom walked down the road back towards where Sara was standing. She had already started her printing, and she smiled at him through the fence. Grissom kept walking, focused on the road beneath him. He stopped abruptly a few feet past the tear in the fence. "A car was here," he remarked, as he gestured toward a faint outline on the road's surface. "This area of the road isn't as dark. Less rain fell on it." He took out a tape measure and began to take down the dimensions of the lighter area, then began his search for prints on the fence.
The two worked in silence for the better part of an hour before sealing up the last of the evidence and walking back to the main building of the preschool. Nick and Warrick had completed processing the playground and were now scouring the building itself. Catherine stood by the filed kit, organizing the evidence that the two had collected. Brass stood, watching, near the two younger witnesses, who were whispering nervously in low tones. The looks on their faces betrayed their fear, both for the missing child and of the official-looking people scouring the territory. The girl's mother continued to pace, her face betraying the effort it took to process what was happening.
Sara walked over towards Catherine and placed the evidence gathered near the fence with the evidence taken from the playground. After a quick word with Nick and Warrick, Grissom decided that they had completed their initial evidence collection. As the rest of the team finished packing up, Catherine walked over to and shook hands with the two young women.
"Thank you," she said. We'll be in touch with you if we need your help again. And if we have any further information regarding Annie. I understand you both were close to her." The two girls nodded in appreciation, but only Chris could say thank you in return.
Catherine attempted to speak with the girl's mother once more, but she was met with hostility.
The evidence was sent to be processed the moment they returned from the scene. Without anything else to do, the team sat in the layout room as Grissom went over the background they had to the case.
"The missing child, Annie Peseo, is five years old, average size for a person her age, and has brown hair and blue eyes. She lives with her mother, Sophia Peseo, 42. Her father, Caesar, 27, moved out last month."
"Cradle snatcher," Catherine remarked.
Grissom gave her a warning glance as he continue. "Annie's mother has already been questioned-- she was at the school when we were processing the scene. Her father, however, has not been located. The only other people in direct contact with our victim were the aides at her preschool, who we have also talked to already. She was last seen twelve hours ago at one in the afternoon, giving us a window of approximately twelve hours to find this girl."
As he handed around the paperwork concerning the case, Grissom's beeper sounded.
"Trace has our fibers back from processing. Catherine, would you go get the results? Nick and Warrick, process the partials Sara and I collected. And Sara, can you go see if Greg has done our DNA samples yet?"
The team went to their individual tasks, while Grissom went to seek out Brass. He found the homicide detective in his office, wearing a very tense look on his face.
"Have you contacted the father yet?" Grissom asked as he entered the office and pulled out a chair on which to sit.
"No, not yet. We have his last known address-- an apartment off the strip-- but it looks abandoned and empty-- like someone left on vacation and just never came back. That, of course, is making me wonder if this was a parental kidnapping. But according to the mother, he left because he wanted no part in Annie's life."
"I'd like to talk to the mother. Is she still here?"
"She's waiting outside for any news regarding her daughter. She's calmed down a bit, but she's still distraught."
Fifteen minutes later, Grissom found himself seated on the opposite side of the desk in the interrogation room from a puffy-eyed, middle aged woman. Brass was standing several feet behind him. The woman looked at him hopefully.
"Have you found my daughter yet?"
"No." Grissom shocked himself by the harshness of his own voice. "No. But we're still looking. For missing persons cases, the first twenty four hours are key. Your daughter was reported missing a little over twelve hours ago. There's still plenty of hope."
His words had done nothing to help relieve the woman's fears, but Grissom decided to hazard a few questions anyway.
"Sophia-- you can help us find your daughter. You need to tell us all you can."
She stared at Grissom, eventually responding. "What do you need to know?"
"When was the last time you saw your daughter?"
She cleared her throat. "Yesterday, when I dropped her off at preschool. She din't want to get out of the car,she wanted to stay with me. She had--"
She paused for a moment to rub a tear into her cheek. "She had this book, a book of nursery rhymes. And she loved to look at the pictures. She was holding it in her lap open to a page-- it was Humpty Dumpty. And she kept reciting it over and over, pretending she was reading. She's finally learning to speak, and to read lips-- she's... she's deaf, you know."
Grissom nodded with a look of understanding. "Yes, I know."
Here Sophia gave a half-smile, at both the memory of her daughter and the understanding of a stranger. She continued. "But it was just the last two lines. And she'd get me to say it with her. I'd go, real slowly so she can read it, 'All the king's horses an all the king's men...' And then she'd say 'Couldn't put Humpty together again!' Just like that. Real excited, in that high-pitched funny voice of hers."
Grissom nodded once more. He opened his mouth, about to ask another question,when he heard the door open and Sara's footsteps behind him. He turned around, and Sara handed him a computer printout. "Greg processed the DNA samples. He compared them to the DNA of Annie that we got off a hair found on some of her clothing. Over half the markers match-- it belongs to one of her parents. We're guessing it's the fahter's, but a sample of your DNA, Mrs. Peseo, will tell us for sure."
Grissom shifted in his chair, taking in the information. "Mrs. Peseo, do you have any idea why your husband would do something like this?"
She suddenly seemed panicked, the fear and worry for her daughter now replaced with a new type of fear altogether. "No!" she exclaimed. "I have no idea! Leave me alone! Stop asking me questions-- No! STOP!"
Author: Laura/Caidreabh
Category: Casefile, Grissom/Sara UST/RST
Rating: R for some tough subjects.
Summary: When a little girl is kidnapped, the team uncovers a family's deepest secret, and Sara is forced to tell her own.
Disclaimer: I don't own CSI or any of it's characters. I just have some fun with them now and again.
Author's notes: I started this as a spec script, but I'm away from home and I left my draft 3,000 miles away. So I started it again as a prose fic. There will probably be another incarnation of this story in teleplay format at some point in the future. For right now, it's a WIP.
Quote that goes well with this story:
"Careful the things you say,
Children will listen.
Careful the things you do,
Children will see, and learn."
--Children Will Listen from Into the Woods
All the King's Men
The laughter of the children could be heard from down the street during recess at the Meadowview Day School. From the sound alone, one would imagine happy preschoolers clambering over monkey bars an on jungle gyms. The poignant truth was that they did so slowly an laboriously, with permanent braces guarding their fragile bones and teacher's aides watching their every move. These children were too young to understand the limitations on their body-- yet here at this school were children with cerebal palsy, autism, and down's syndrome.
But today, while children played in the sand and played tag on the field, the aides were preoccupied with their own game of hide-and-seek. One of the most beloved children at the school, Annie, was missing. They had assumed at first that she had just wandered off, but only a few minutes of searching were spent before a rip in the chain-link fence surrounding the property was discovered.
The two aides working that day, Morgan and Christine, filed a missing-person's report at five o'clock that day. They waited nervously as the police arrived and began to block off the crime scene.
The Las Vegas night-shift forensic unit waited in the parking lot after having been called to an all-hands case. Shivering in the slightly cold night air, they listened to the briefing while waiting impatiently to get to their work.
"So who's our missing person?" Warrick enquired.
"A five year old girl, name's Annie." He paused a moment and continued uncomfortably. "She's been deaf since birth. Has Down's Syndrome, to top it off."
At this, Sara glanced worriedly at Grissom, who gritted his teeth and gestured to his team to follow him into the school.
Inside, the two college-age girls sat, visibly nervous. Behind them, a middle-aged woman paced across the primary-colored rug, distraught.
"He broke in near the back side of the field," one of the girls began, as the team filed in, before they could ask any questions.
"He?" Grissom asked.
"Well... I just assumed he was male... I have no real idea," the girl stammered in response.
"You are-- Morgan?" Grissom guessed, looking at the papers he was holding on the clipboard in his hand.
"No, I'm Christine. Call me Chris, though. This is Morgan." She gestured to the girl beside her, who nodded.
"Chris, can you show me where you think the break in occurred?" Grissom asked. She got up and walked to the door.
"I'll come and help," Sara offered, grabbing the field kit.
"Good," Grissom said. "Warrick and Nick, you cover the playground where Annie was last seen. Catherine, help Brass with the witnesses."
"Right." Catherine nodded.
Grissom could see the place where the fence had been cut through from several yards away. It traveled around the entire perimeter of the school, which bordered streets on two sides, a residential house on one side, and a rather dirty alleyway in the back. It was on the street near the alley that the perpetrator had entered.
Chris hung back from the fence once they reached the area. The wire had curled over and dug itself into the ground, tearing up the sod. The exposed earth had turned to mud due to the uncharacteristic rainstorm earlier that day.
Sara set the field kit down a few feet away, then approached carefully and kneeled down by the mud, knotting her forehead as she began to concentrate on the scene before her. "Footprints," she said, tracing them with her finger a few inches above them in the air. "I'm guessing a male, size 10 shoe."
"Only traveling in one direction," Grissom pointed out.
"Yeah. My guess, climbed over the first time, had to cut the fence to get the girl out."
As she spoke, Grissom walked several yards down the fence and began to climb over it. To do so, he had to tightly lodge his fingers within the links of the fence. As he ascended, his jacket caught on a rough end of a protruding wire. He unsnagged it before finishing his climb by resting both palms of his hands on the top bar of the chainlink fence.
Watching as he did this, Sara understood.
"I'll dust up and down the fence, look for partials. And handprints on the top rung. That as well as search for any stray fibers our perp might have left behind."
Grissom nodded. "Good. Get those footprints in the mud, as well."
Still on the opposite side of the fence, Grissom walked down the road back towards where Sara was standing. She had already started her printing, and she smiled at him through the fence. Grissom kept walking, focused on the road beneath him. He stopped abruptly a few feet past the tear in the fence. "A car was here," he remarked, as he gestured toward a faint outline on the road's surface. "This area of the road isn't as dark. Less rain fell on it." He took out a tape measure and began to take down the dimensions of the lighter area, then began his search for prints on the fence.
The two worked in silence for the better part of an hour before sealing up the last of the evidence and walking back to the main building of the preschool. Nick and Warrick had completed processing the playground and were now scouring the building itself. Catherine stood by the filed kit, organizing the evidence that the two had collected. Brass stood, watching, near the two younger witnesses, who were whispering nervously in low tones. The looks on their faces betrayed their fear, both for the missing child and of the official-looking people scouring the territory. The girl's mother continued to pace, her face betraying the effort it took to process what was happening.
Sara walked over towards Catherine and placed the evidence gathered near the fence with the evidence taken from the playground. After a quick word with Nick and Warrick, Grissom decided that they had completed their initial evidence collection. As the rest of the team finished packing up, Catherine walked over to and shook hands with the two young women.
"Thank you," she said. We'll be in touch with you if we need your help again. And if we have any further information regarding Annie. I understand you both were close to her." The two girls nodded in appreciation, but only Chris could say thank you in return.
Catherine attempted to speak with the girl's mother once more, but she was met with hostility.
The evidence was sent to be processed the moment they returned from the scene. Without anything else to do, the team sat in the layout room as Grissom went over the background they had to the case.
"The missing child, Annie Peseo, is five years old, average size for a person her age, and has brown hair and blue eyes. She lives with her mother, Sophia Peseo, 42. Her father, Caesar, 27, moved out last month."
"Cradle snatcher," Catherine remarked.
Grissom gave her a warning glance as he continue. "Annie's mother has already been questioned-- she was at the school when we were processing the scene. Her father, however, has not been located. The only other people in direct contact with our victim were the aides at her preschool, who we have also talked to already. She was last seen twelve hours ago at one in the afternoon, giving us a window of approximately twelve hours to find this girl."
As he handed around the paperwork concerning the case, Grissom's beeper sounded.
"Trace has our fibers back from processing. Catherine, would you go get the results? Nick and Warrick, process the partials Sara and I collected. And Sara, can you go see if Greg has done our DNA samples yet?"
The team went to their individual tasks, while Grissom went to seek out Brass. He found the homicide detective in his office, wearing a very tense look on his face.
"Have you contacted the father yet?" Grissom asked as he entered the office and pulled out a chair on which to sit.
"No, not yet. We have his last known address-- an apartment off the strip-- but it looks abandoned and empty-- like someone left on vacation and just never came back. That, of course, is making me wonder if this was a parental kidnapping. But according to the mother, he left because he wanted no part in Annie's life."
"I'd like to talk to the mother. Is she still here?"
"She's waiting outside for any news regarding her daughter. She's calmed down a bit, but she's still distraught."
Fifteen minutes later, Grissom found himself seated on the opposite side of the desk in the interrogation room from a puffy-eyed, middle aged woman. Brass was standing several feet behind him. The woman looked at him hopefully.
"Have you found my daughter yet?"
"No." Grissom shocked himself by the harshness of his own voice. "No. But we're still looking. For missing persons cases, the first twenty four hours are key. Your daughter was reported missing a little over twelve hours ago. There's still plenty of hope."
His words had done nothing to help relieve the woman's fears, but Grissom decided to hazard a few questions anyway.
"Sophia-- you can help us find your daughter. You need to tell us all you can."
She stared at Grissom, eventually responding. "What do you need to know?"
"When was the last time you saw your daughter?"
She cleared her throat. "Yesterday, when I dropped her off at preschool. She din't want to get out of the car,she wanted to stay with me. She had--"
She paused for a moment to rub a tear into her cheek. "She had this book, a book of nursery rhymes. And she loved to look at the pictures. She was holding it in her lap open to a page-- it was Humpty Dumpty. And she kept reciting it over and over, pretending she was reading. She's finally learning to speak, and to read lips-- she's... she's deaf, you know."
Grissom nodded with a look of understanding. "Yes, I know."
Here Sophia gave a half-smile, at both the memory of her daughter and the understanding of a stranger. She continued. "But it was just the last two lines. And she'd get me to say it with her. I'd go, real slowly so she can read it, 'All the king's horses an all the king's men...' And then she'd say 'Couldn't put Humpty together again!' Just like that. Real excited, in that high-pitched funny voice of hers."
Grissom nodded once more. He opened his mouth, about to ask another question,when he heard the door open and Sara's footsteps behind him. He turned around, and Sara handed him a computer printout. "Greg processed the DNA samples. He compared them to the DNA of Annie that we got off a hair found on some of her clothing. Over half the markers match-- it belongs to one of her parents. We're guessing it's the fahter's, but a sample of your DNA, Mrs. Peseo, will tell us for sure."
Grissom shifted in his chair, taking in the information. "Mrs. Peseo, do you have any idea why your husband would do something like this?"
She suddenly seemed panicked, the fear and worry for her daughter now replaced with a new type of fear altogether. "No!" she exclaimed. "I have no idea! Leave me alone! Stop asking me questions-- No! STOP!"