Chapter Eleven

The sun gleamed off the yellow crime tape, signalling morning and daylight. No bogeymen, no shadows to hide monsters. Only the telltale signs of their destruction and malice remained.

Warrick felt something much like fear in the pit of his stomach as he surveyed the crime scene. Another CSI attacked. Sara would live. Holly had not.

"Man…" he muttered, shaking his head. Catherine sent him a sympathetic glance, telling him she felt the same thing.

"Anything from the neighbours?" she asked, bagging one of her swabs.

"One thinks she saw a blue car parked outside last night, but she didn't get a good look at it. There are a dozen different tire tracks out there. The power loss was from an overload in a transformer."

"Coincident or planned?"

"Pretty big coincident."

"Yeah," she agreed. "But how would he know the transformer would overload?"

"Connections. This guy drove a BMW. He's got money. Anything useful in here?"

"I got some blood off the fridge door," she announced. "He came in, she slammed the fridge door in his face, goes for a weapon…"

"He intervenes," Warrick cut in. "Slams her to the floor, explaining the blood we found by the counter. He takes his gun now, drags her to the bedroom…"

"Explaining the trail of disturbance," Catherine continued. "She resisted. He throws her on the bed, hard. Puts down the eyes. He's probably carried them in his pocket, explaining the fibre Nick found on them."

"He lifts his gun…."

"But the daughter has followed. Maybe she hid in the car, wondering what her dad was up to so late. She enters the room. 'Daddy, what are you doing?' He freezes."

"Can't kill in front of a child," Warrick finished. "He hits Sara over the head instead and heads out. But he forgets the eyes. John Linman's eyes."

"And Grissom comes."

"She knocked over a plant as she struggled," he observed.

"Yeah. I took some samples of the earth. Our killer might have stepped in it."

He nodded, taking in the evidence, trying not to think about how Sara must have felt.

"Are you all right?" he suddenly asked. Catherine shrugged.

"Brings back memories."

Their glances met, and he saw echoes of grief in her eyes for a moment, entwined with determination and steel.

The shrill sound of a phone tore through the silence, causing Catherine to nearly drop her gloves.

"Catherine," she snapped into the receiving end. "Hey Nick. A-ha… Silk fibre? Our man has expensive taste. Really? All right, get back to me."

She hung up with a loo of slight triumph. "The fibre is silk, colouring pale yellow. From a tie, most likely. We might be able to find out where it came from. It's expensive. Pure silk."

"Yellow silk tie, red BMW… This guy is money. What bugs me… How did he know where Sara lived?"

"Followed her?"

"Dangerous. Who do we know that know people in the police force and the big electricity companies that know how to get confidential information from them?"

"Journalists," they both said at once.

"You check out who on that list of red BMW owners are journalists, have a daughter and money to burn," Catherine directed. Despite her grimness, he could detect the same enthusiasm she always had when she could see a path leading to the killer.

"I'm on it."

He sent her a smile as he walked out, back into the warming sunlight. It felt brighter now. They would catch this guy. He had tried to kill Sara and failed and now the evidence was against him.

No more playing bogeyman. It was time to catch a human.

II

He didn't notice the sunrise.

Grissom stared at the words of Oscar Wilde again and again, as he would any piece of evidence. There was something there, a clue in the words. A little breadcrumb that could lead to the path.

Some love too little, some too long,

Some sell, and others buy;

Some do the deed with many tears,

And some without a sigh:

For each man kills the thing he loves,

Yet each man does not die

"You killed someone you loved, didn't you?" he asked the silence. "Did you cry? Or did you feel nothing?"

"Am I interrupting your conversations with the invisible men?"

He looked up, seeing Sara leaning against the wall, hair still slightly wet from a shower and the smell of freshness about her. There was something so endearing about the sight he could feel a smile creep onto his lips.

"Hey."

"Hey," she replied. "Nice bathroom."

"Thanks," he muttered, and eased his glasses off. "I… umm… Did you sleep well?"

"Yeah. Did you stay up all night?"

"I went to the lab and got all case files," he answered. "The killer knows me."

"What makes you believe that?"

"The evidence." He held up a paper, victim's names written in bold letters. "John Linman had his head bashed. Joanne Harris had her head bashed. Steve Johns did not."

"He wasn't the target," she muttered easing onto the couch next to him.

"No. I was. He took a swing at my head…"

"And mine," she reminded him.

"I know," he said quietly, staring at her bruised temple. "He's telling me a story. He came after you because of me. 'Each man kills the things he loves'."

"Love?"

He nodded ever so slightly, seeing her eyes widen slightly. Her lips parted and he resisted the urge to part them further, to caress her soft lips and claim them as his.

"So who did he kill that he loved?"

Her question interrupted his distraction, and he focussed his attention back onto the paper.

"A wife, perhaps. A child."

"No," she replied. "His eyes were pained when he saw his daughter. I didn't see his face, but his eyes spoke volumes. He couldn't kill a child."

"But he could have killed as a child. 'Some kill their love when they are young'. It's in the poem."

She leaned forward to look, her arm brushing against his. He clenched his jaw as he noticed another bruise around her wrist, dark purple with black specs. He couldn't resist reaching out, taking her wrist gently in his hand.

"Ow," she muttered.

"Sorry."

"Do you believe it?" she asked suddenly.

"What?"

"That each man kills what he loves."

"Sara…" he began, just as the phone gave an insistent ring. He picked it up with a sigh. "Grissom."

Sara studied his face as he spoke, distracting him somewhat. He wondered what she looked for and if it was something he could give her. At least she looked rested, but her eyes were pained

He hung up and smiled. "You didn't only get glitter under your fingernails. You caught some skin, too."

"Lucky me," she muttered darkly.

"Hey." He squeezed her hand gently. "It's evidence we can find him with."

She nodded. "The trail of breadcrumbs leading to the gingerbread house."

"To push the troll into the oven."

"The witch, Grissom. To push the witch into the oven."

"The witch…"

He almost leaped for the papers stacked on the table, sorting through until he found what he was looking for.

"The witch. He called her the witch."

"Who?"

"Helen Clarkson. Her son Mark broke her medicine bottle and she died feverish. Heart failure. It was almost as if she had burnt up from within. The kid was never punished. The evidence was against him, but emotions were stacked high in his favour. I was on the forensics team."

"What happened to him?"

"He was adopted. There was no real family to take him in."

"One that got away," she said, eyes hardening.

He thought of the deaths and the fever and the blood and little Mark, dark blue eyes shining with excitement. One that got away to kill again.

But not Sara. And he was going to make damn sure it would stay that way.

Not all things loved died.