XIII - FLOATING THEORIES
Grissom was making pancakes for Lindsey when Catherine wandered into her kitchen at 4:30 that afternoon.
Lindsey, who had been chattering non-stop for the 35 minutes Grissom had been in the kitchen, greeted her mother with a big grin, before turning back to Grissom.
"So, Uncle Gil - you know what Suzy told me? She said that spiders were the bane of her existence, and that she would be perfectly happy if all the spiders in the whole entire word just disappeared!" She tried to snap her fingers and almost fell of the stool for her effort. Grissom looked at Catherine over Lindsey's blonde head, and tried not to scowl at her amused smirk.
He realized Lindsey was waiting for a response from him, and he looked back down at her. Her blue eyes gazed at him appealingly, her face a mask of outrage she obviously expected him to share at Suzy's insane declaration. Instead, Grissom just smiled at her.
"So, what did you do?"
"What did I do?" She threw her hands in the air in disgust only an eight year old could muster. "What would you do, Uncle Gil?" Grissom took a breath preparing to answer, but Lindsey just rushed on without him.
"I told Suzy that without spiders the whole entire world would be overrun by all sorts of bugs and insects, and some of them a lot worse than spiders! I told Suzy that she didn't know anything about ecol'gy and said spiders were great! I even told her that my mom's boyfriend had a tarantula - that shut her up real good." She beamed up at him, and Grissom smiled weakly back. Catherine had walked over to the little girl and was playing with her hair, eyes twinkling at Grissom's obvious discomfort.
"Wow." Grissom finally responded, inadequately, but Lindsey didn't seem to mind. "Uncle Gil, you are mommy's boyfriend right? Not just her boss anymore?"
"Uhm - I feel a little old to be called a boyfriend, Lindsey. But I guess, in the context you mean, yes." Grissom swallowed uncomfortably at met the little girls blue eyes again.
She grinned. "That's what I told Daddy, but he didn't believe me. He got real mad and said that mommy would never dare date you. I told Daddy that you were here all the time, and that you even had sleepovers. I like it when you're here, Uncle Gil."
Catherine's hands had stilled in Lindsey's hair, her eyes wide as she stared at Gil. Grissom looked at her and shook his head, then looked at Lindsey. "I like being here, Lindsey." He smiled then, and slid the last pancake onto the stack, turning off the oven as he did so.
"That's good." Lindsey trailed him to the table, sitting daintily in her place and picking up a fork. "Do you love my mom?"
Grissom looked at Catherine and smiled. "Yeah. I love your mom."
"Do you love me?" Lindsey looked at him seriously.
Grissom looked at her just as seriously. "Yeah, I love you too." He grinned when Lindsey beamed at him.
"So, now you have two girls to love, and before you had none. Isn't it nice?"
"Very nice." He turned to look at Catherine, his blue eyes intense when they met hers. "I'm a lucky man."
* * * * *
"What a waste of time!" Warrick muttered. He and Brass were on their way back to the station, having just spent over an hour interviewing the manager of Tippen's Slaughterhouse. They had come up with nothing - no names, no hints, nothing.
"Not really. At least, we can almost certainly cross them off the list of suspects." Brass' voice was level, and he glanced at Warrick as he pulled out of the lot. "I guess Grissom didn't need to worry about you being a target here."
Warrick laughed softly. "Considering half the plant is black, I guess not." He looked out the window, admiring the lights on the strip as they drove by. "So, here we are - back to square nothing."
"Something will turn up, Warrick. These crimes weren't well planned out - they're all based in emotion. Something is bound to give. Grissom said we'd layout the scenes tonight, and go from there. It's not like you to be so - negative."
Warrick sighed. "I know. I just have a lot on my mind." He glanced at Brass. "How do you do this, day in and day out, and not lose your basic faith in humanity?"
Brass snorted. "Who says I have faith in humanity? You know what I have faith in Warrick? What I believe in? I believe the sun will rise tomorrow. I believe that given the choice of doing something selfless or doing something selfish - most people will choose selfish. I think most people - if they thought they could get away with it - would be a lot more violent than they are now. I think if most people weren't so scared of the repercussions, there would be total anarchy."
"That's pretty harsh." Warrick twisted sideways in his seat and looked at Brass.
"After 30 years on the job, it's allowed."
"My sister thought the direct opposite of that." Warrick stated quietly. "She believed in the inherent goodness of people."
"I didn't know you had a sister." Brass looked at Warrick in surprise. He had always thought the young CSI was almost as intensely private as Grissom, just able to hide it better behind his cool façade and humor.
"Delia. She was murdered about twelve years ago. It's the anniversary of her death in two days. She was my twin." Warrick's tone was soft and sad. Brass felt for the young man.
"How did she die?"
"She was an active member of my grandmother's church, and joined a missionary away team to South Africa in 1990, just around the time Mandela was released and the country was in the death throws of apartheid. She was shot by a farmer at a peaceful pro-democracy demonstration in Johannesburg."
Brass slanted a glance at Warrick, his expression thoughtful. "Hate crime." He sighed. "I'm so sorry Warrick. That's a terrible way to die."
Warrick shrugged. "I told her not to go, but she wouldn't listen. She wanted to help. They were going to build a couple of churches in the shantytowns while they were there." He was looking at his fingers intently. "Anyway, thanks for listening. I've been thinking about her a lot today."
Brass reached out and squeezed Warrick's shoulder gently. "Understandably. You can talk to me anytime you want, Warrick. I want you to know that." Brass looked at his watch. "We still have a couple of hours before shift starts. Let's go grab something to eat."
Warrick smiled. "Thanks Brass."
* * * * *
Grissom was already in the layout room when Sara, Nick and Greg arrived. "Hey Grissom. You're here early."
Grissom looked at his watch. "Only 15 minutes. I wanted to get everything ready so we can get this show on the road - Mobley is screaming for blood. Besides, you're here early too." He smiled at them, and returned to the photos he had been looking at. "How are you feeling Greg?"
Greg rolled his eyes. "I'd feel better if Dr. Mellows would let me drink coffee again. I'm really getting sick of decaffeinated herbal teas and fruit smoothies." He walked over to the table, looking over Grissom's shoulder. "Those photos from the New Age store?"
Grissom nodded. "Also, from Lifestyles and the murders from last night. Besides the obvious links to the three, I'm still trying to figure out what's the purpose behind this."
Warrick and Brass walked into the layout room, and Grissom sniffed appreciatively when he saw the tray overloaded with Starbucks. Greg groaned.
"Hey guys. We brought coffee for everyone. The slaughterhouse angle doesn't look like it's going to pan out - nothing really suspicious jumped out at us. Greg, we brought you a strawberry-kiwi fruit smoothie." Warrick looked up when everyone started laughing, smiling when he handed Greg his drink. "What did I miss?"
Greg grimaced good naturedly. "I was just saying how much I wanted a coffee - but this is nice, thanks."
Brass had moved to the opposite side of the room, and pulled up a stool. His gaze was traveling over the various items sitting on the table before him, and he cracked his knuckles. "Where's Catherine?"
"She should be here soon. Lindsey's babysitter was running late." Grissom turned to his fellow CSIs. "Okay, let's get going. Starting with the Magikal murders. What do we know?"
"The murders took place three days ago. We know our victims were attacked between 6:30 and 7:00, all deaths verified to that time." Sara began. "As far as we can tell, there were at least three separate weapons involved - two rifles and a magnum. From the Bible quote painted on the wall, we can assume the attack was religiously motivated. Various prints - hand, finger, foot - have come back as unknown."
"Anyone run the prints against our unknown guy at Lifestyles, or the other handprints at Lifestyles?" Greg interrupted.
Grissom looked up at his team, eyebrow cocked. "I guess the silence answers that. Okay, so Greg - when we're done here, that's your job. Run all the prints from the three crime scenes against each other, see if anything sticks."
Greg nodded. "I'll see if the wire from Lifestyles and the murders last night matches against each other as well."
"All three crimes seem to have some type of religious or biblical connotation to them. Should we be seeing what right-wing religious groups have been active in the area recently? Check the letters to the editors section; see if anyone has been more vitriolic than usual against certain groups?"
Grissom nodded at Nick's question. "I'll leave that to you, Nick. Good idea."
Warrick was looking at the time lines of the first two crime scenes. "I don't think it's the same people involved in the Magikal murders and the attack at Lifestyles. The timeline is too similar. The victims were still on fire when the manager showed up to open the club - around 7:00 pm. The two scenes are too far away from each other for it to be feasible that they went on a shooting spree at Magikal and then made it to Lifestyles in time to burn everyone up."
"Point taken. So, we need to either find a common link from the murders from last night, tying all three cases together, or we need to disprove once and for all they are connected." Grissom sighed, and pinched his nose at the bridge.
"Do we have anything on the 911 call - where they able to provide us with anything at all? Triangulate an area for us? Anything?" Sara looked at Brass for this information, and Brass shrugged.
"They weren't able to trace the call, but they did tell us it was made within a ten mile radius of the murders."
Sara walked to the back of the room as Brass talked, quickly grabbing a large map of Las Vegas. She spread it out on the opposite end of the table. "So, the victims were murdered here." She indicated on the map. "Outside of the city."
Nick and Warrick both walked over to her, studying the map as Sara spoke. "This is basically desert. It was - what - 15 miles outside city limits, right Nick? So, the 911 call could have been made from a car leaving the scene of the crime."
"Doesn't make sense." Nick replied. "She was whispering like she didn't want anyone to hear her. If she was in a moving car, the other people involved would have been with her, and we would have heard the motor on the tape."
Warrick frowned thoughtfully. "Isn't there an old commune out in that area? A couple of farms and geometric houses? They were in the paper last year - the city was trying to evict them."
Brass nodded. "Yeah. I remember that. They built the geometric homes without getting permits, and the city was trying to force them out on the grounds they weren't authorized to build there. It was straightened out when the commune coughed up the money for permits, plus a fine for building without them, and the matter was dropped."
"Where would they be in conjunction with last night's murders?" Grissom asked. He too was looking at the map.
"I've driven past the place before. I'd say it's in the general area - say 5 to 6 miles east of the scene? Well within the parameters of the call." Warrick tapped the map in the general area with his finger. "Let me go see what I can pull on them from old files. I'll check out the archives on line for the newspapers." He looked at Brass. "They were in the papers when - last spring, right?"
Brass nodded, and Warrick stood. "I'll go start right now. We're done here, right?"
"For now." Grissom nodded.
Grissom was making pancakes for Lindsey when Catherine wandered into her kitchen at 4:30 that afternoon.
Lindsey, who had been chattering non-stop for the 35 minutes Grissom had been in the kitchen, greeted her mother with a big grin, before turning back to Grissom.
"So, Uncle Gil - you know what Suzy told me? She said that spiders were the bane of her existence, and that she would be perfectly happy if all the spiders in the whole entire word just disappeared!" She tried to snap her fingers and almost fell of the stool for her effort. Grissom looked at Catherine over Lindsey's blonde head, and tried not to scowl at her amused smirk.
He realized Lindsey was waiting for a response from him, and he looked back down at her. Her blue eyes gazed at him appealingly, her face a mask of outrage she obviously expected him to share at Suzy's insane declaration. Instead, Grissom just smiled at her.
"So, what did you do?"
"What did I do?" She threw her hands in the air in disgust only an eight year old could muster. "What would you do, Uncle Gil?" Grissom took a breath preparing to answer, but Lindsey just rushed on without him.
"I told Suzy that without spiders the whole entire world would be overrun by all sorts of bugs and insects, and some of them a lot worse than spiders! I told Suzy that she didn't know anything about ecol'gy and said spiders were great! I even told her that my mom's boyfriend had a tarantula - that shut her up real good." She beamed up at him, and Grissom smiled weakly back. Catherine had walked over to the little girl and was playing with her hair, eyes twinkling at Grissom's obvious discomfort.
"Wow." Grissom finally responded, inadequately, but Lindsey didn't seem to mind. "Uncle Gil, you are mommy's boyfriend right? Not just her boss anymore?"
"Uhm - I feel a little old to be called a boyfriend, Lindsey. But I guess, in the context you mean, yes." Grissom swallowed uncomfortably at met the little girls blue eyes again.
She grinned. "That's what I told Daddy, but he didn't believe me. He got real mad and said that mommy would never dare date you. I told Daddy that you were here all the time, and that you even had sleepovers. I like it when you're here, Uncle Gil."
Catherine's hands had stilled in Lindsey's hair, her eyes wide as she stared at Gil. Grissom looked at her and shook his head, then looked at Lindsey. "I like being here, Lindsey." He smiled then, and slid the last pancake onto the stack, turning off the oven as he did so.
"That's good." Lindsey trailed him to the table, sitting daintily in her place and picking up a fork. "Do you love my mom?"
Grissom looked at Catherine and smiled. "Yeah. I love your mom."
"Do you love me?" Lindsey looked at him seriously.
Grissom looked at her just as seriously. "Yeah, I love you too." He grinned when Lindsey beamed at him.
"So, now you have two girls to love, and before you had none. Isn't it nice?"
"Very nice." He turned to look at Catherine, his blue eyes intense when they met hers. "I'm a lucky man."
* * * * *
"What a waste of time!" Warrick muttered. He and Brass were on their way back to the station, having just spent over an hour interviewing the manager of Tippen's Slaughterhouse. They had come up with nothing - no names, no hints, nothing.
"Not really. At least, we can almost certainly cross them off the list of suspects." Brass' voice was level, and he glanced at Warrick as he pulled out of the lot. "I guess Grissom didn't need to worry about you being a target here."
Warrick laughed softly. "Considering half the plant is black, I guess not." He looked out the window, admiring the lights on the strip as they drove by. "So, here we are - back to square nothing."
"Something will turn up, Warrick. These crimes weren't well planned out - they're all based in emotion. Something is bound to give. Grissom said we'd layout the scenes tonight, and go from there. It's not like you to be so - negative."
Warrick sighed. "I know. I just have a lot on my mind." He glanced at Brass. "How do you do this, day in and day out, and not lose your basic faith in humanity?"
Brass snorted. "Who says I have faith in humanity? You know what I have faith in Warrick? What I believe in? I believe the sun will rise tomorrow. I believe that given the choice of doing something selfless or doing something selfish - most people will choose selfish. I think most people - if they thought they could get away with it - would be a lot more violent than they are now. I think if most people weren't so scared of the repercussions, there would be total anarchy."
"That's pretty harsh." Warrick twisted sideways in his seat and looked at Brass.
"After 30 years on the job, it's allowed."
"My sister thought the direct opposite of that." Warrick stated quietly. "She believed in the inherent goodness of people."
"I didn't know you had a sister." Brass looked at Warrick in surprise. He had always thought the young CSI was almost as intensely private as Grissom, just able to hide it better behind his cool façade and humor.
"Delia. She was murdered about twelve years ago. It's the anniversary of her death in two days. She was my twin." Warrick's tone was soft and sad. Brass felt for the young man.
"How did she die?"
"She was an active member of my grandmother's church, and joined a missionary away team to South Africa in 1990, just around the time Mandela was released and the country was in the death throws of apartheid. She was shot by a farmer at a peaceful pro-democracy demonstration in Johannesburg."
Brass slanted a glance at Warrick, his expression thoughtful. "Hate crime." He sighed. "I'm so sorry Warrick. That's a terrible way to die."
Warrick shrugged. "I told her not to go, but she wouldn't listen. She wanted to help. They were going to build a couple of churches in the shantytowns while they were there." He was looking at his fingers intently. "Anyway, thanks for listening. I've been thinking about her a lot today."
Brass reached out and squeezed Warrick's shoulder gently. "Understandably. You can talk to me anytime you want, Warrick. I want you to know that." Brass looked at his watch. "We still have a couple of hours before shift starts. Let's go grab something to eat."
Warrick smiled. "Thanks Brass."
* * * * *
Grissom was already in the layout room when Sara, Nick and Greg arrived. "Hey Grissom. You're here early."
Grissom looked at his watch. "Only 15 minutes. I wanted to get everything ready so we can get this show on the road - Mobley is screaming for blood. Besides, you're here early too." He smiled at them, and returned to the photos he had been looking at. "How are you feeling Greg?"
Greg rolled his eyes. "I'd feel better if Dr. Mellows would let me drink coffee again. I'm really getting sick of decaffeinated herbal teas and fruit smoothies." He walked over to the table, looking over Grissom's shoulder. "Those photos from the New Age store?"
Grissom nodded. "Also, from Lifestyles and the murders from last night. Besides the obvious links to the three, I'm still trying to figure out what's the purpose behind this."
Warrick and Brass walked into the layout room, and Grissom sniffed appreciatively when he saw the tray overloaded with Starbucks. Greg groaned.
"Hey guys. We brought coffee for everyone. The slaughterhouse angle doesn't look like it's going to pan out - nothing really suspicious jumped out at us. Greg, we brought you a strawberry-kiwi fruit smoothie." Warrick looked up when everyone started laughing, smiling when he handed Greg his drink. "What did I miss?"
Greg grimaced good naturedly. "I was just saying how much I wanted a coffee - but this is nice, thanks."
Brass had moved to the opposite side of the room, and pulled up a stool. His gaze was traveling over the various items sitting on the table before him, and he cracked his knuckles. "Where's Catherine?"
"She should be here soon. Lindsey's babysitter was running late." Grissom turned to his fellow CSIs. "Okay, let's get going. Starting with the Magikal murders. What do we know?"
"The murders took place three days ago. We know our victims were attacked between 6:30 and 7:00, all deaths verified to that time." Sara began. "As far as we can tell, there were at least three separate weapons involved - two rifles and a magnum. From the Bible quote painted on the wall, we can assume the attack was religiously motivated. Various prints - hand, finger, foot - have come back as unknown."
"Anyone run the prints against our unknown guy at Lifestyles, or the other handprints at Lifestyles?" Greg interrupted.
Grissom looked up at his team, eyebrow cocked. "I guess the silence answers that. Okay, so Greg - when we're done here, that's your job. Run all the prints from the three crime scenes against each other, see if anything sticks."
Greg nodded. "I'll see if the wire from Lifestyles and the murders last night matches against each other as well."
"All three crimes seem to have some type of religious or biblical connotation to them. Should we be seeing what right-wing religious groups have been active in the area recently? Check the letters to the editors section; see if anyone has been more vitriolic than usual against certain groups?"
Grissom nodded at Nick's question. "I'll leave that to you, Nick. Good idea."
Warrick was looking at the time lines of the first two crime scenes. "I don't think it's the same people involved in the Magikal murders and the attack at Lifestyles. The timeline is too similar. The victims were still on fire when the manager showed up to open the club - around 7:00 pm. The two scenes are too far away from each other for it to be feasible that they went on a shooting spree at Magikal and then made it to Lifestyles in time to burn everyone up."
"Point taken. So, we need to either find a common link from the murders from last night, tying all three cases together, or we need to disprove once and for all they are connected." Grissom sighed, and pinched his nose at the bridge.
"Do we have anything on the 911 call - where they able to provide us with anything at all? Triangulate an area for us? Anything?" Sara looked at Brass for this information, and Brass shrugged.
"They weren't able to trace the call, but they did tell us it was made within a ten mile radius of the murders."
Sara walked to the back of the room as Brass talked, quickly grabbing a large map of Las Vegas. She spread it out on the opposite end of the table. "So, the victims were murdered here." She indicated on the map. "Outside of the city."
Nick and Warrick both walked over to her, studying the map as Sara spoke. "This is basically desert. It was - what - 15 miles outside city limits, right Nick? So, the 911 call could have been made from a car leaving the scene of the crime."
"Doesn't make sense." Nick replied. "She was whispering like she didn't want anyone to hear her. If she was in a moving car, the other people involved would have been with her, and we would have heard the motor on the tape."
Warrick frowned thoughtfully. "Isn't there an old commune out in that area? A couple of farms and geometric houses? They were in the paper last year - the city was trying to evict them."
Brass nodded. "Yeah. I remember that. They built the geometric homes without getting permits, and the city was trying to force them out on the grounds they weren't authorized to build there. It was straightened out when the commune coughed up the money for permits, plus a fine for building without them, and the matter was dropped."
"Where would they be in conjunction with last night's murders?" Grissom asked. He too was looking at the map.
"I've driven past the place before. I'd say it's in the general area - say 5 to 6 miles east of the scene? Well within the parameters of the call." Warrick tapped the map in the general area with his finger. "Let me go see what I can pull on them from old files. I'll check out the archives on line for the newspapers." He looked at Brass. "They were in the papers when - last spring, right?"
Brass nodded, and Warrick stood. "I'll go start right now. We're done here, right?"
"For now." Grissom nodded.