This story is based on characters created by Anthony E. Zuiker for the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Ghost (Part 9/26)

by Cheers

Monday Morning 04:27 AM

The evidence examination table glowed up at him as he laid out the print impressions and shoes on it. Warrick had finished making impressions from two pairs of Grissom's shoes: some tennis shoes Grissom had put some decent wear on and a pair of loafers Warrick had seen him wearing at the office several times. Nick had been right. Grissom's shoes did have a unique wear pattern, ball to outside edge of the foot, the left shoes more so than the right. That pattern matched one set of shoe prints from the landings in the stairwell of Grissom's building. Warrick had been able to lift them using the electrostatic dust-print lifter. They were a size eleven, as well. Same shoe size as Grissom wore. There was no doubt about it - Grissom had gone down the emergency stairs recently. If the blood Warrick had collected from the handrail matched Grissom then it was a good bet that he was injured the last time he made the trip.

There was another set of impressions that didn't match Grissom's size and wear pattern. These were a size thirteen with a more normal wear pattern on the soles. By the looks of the tread, they were work boots of some kind. Warrick would have to go through the shoe tread database to be certain.

When he looked up from the shoe impressions, he found Sara standing just inside the doorway. Her expression was unreadable.

"How long have you been there?" Warrick asked.

Sara tilted her head a little. "Long enough to see you make the match."

"What'd you find with the prints?" he asked her.

"The handprint from the door isn't Grissom's. Mandy's running it threw AFIS. No hits yet. Some of the prints on the banister in the stairwell match the handprint. Whoever it was took the stairs out."

"What about Grissom's prints?" Warrick pressed.

"Positive match to the bloody fingerprints," Sara said solemnly, "both in the hall and in the stairwell."

"Yeah," Warrick said, returning his attention to the evidence on the table. "It was Grissom going down those stairs all right." He fell silent. They already knew something bad had happened. It just felt like every new piece of evidence was another nail in a coffin nobody wanted to think about.

"Hey, Warrick, did you ever think about it?" Sara asked, almost as if she could read his mind.

"About what?" he responded suspiciously, a little startled by the coincidence.

"What it might be like after," she replied.

"What? After he left CSI?" Warrick said, knowing they were talking about Grissom. "No."

Sara moved into the room and stood across the table from Warrick. She picked up one of Grissom's shoes to look at it more closely. "I never did. I figured he'd always just be here. Like, he belonged more than any of us."

"I know what you mean. He lives and breathes this stuff." Warrick said, nodding toward the table.

"I didn't understand that. Not really." Sara confided. Her voice was filled with what sounded to Warrick like regret. "I've said some pretty awful things to him."

Warrick's eyes narrowed. "No way."

"For real," she said, meeting his gaze squarely.

"Like what?" Warrick wondered aloud.

She set the shoe back down on the table. "I accused him of partiality," Sara confessed, "of not having any feelings."

"Who, Gris?" he replied, a little surprised. "He feels it, believe me."

"I know," Sara nodded. "I do. It just seems like he …." She paused, not sure where to go with her thought.

"Controls it - holds it in," Warrick finished for her. "Yeah, I know it seems that way. I guess he does. But he has his outlets."

"Rollercoasters?" Sara asked.

"Rollercoasters," he confirmed with a little smile, remembering his own trip on the tracks with Grissom.

"I told him once that I wished I could be more like him," she continued after a moment. Her voice filled with emotion. "Feel nothing, care less." Sara brushed a tear off her cheek as if it were offending her. "Truth is, I do want to be more like him. I do because he does care. He believes in himself, trusts his instincts - trusts his friends." She folded her arms protectively.

"He trusted me when no one else did," Warrick told her.

"Like me." It wasn't a question but a statement. Warrick could see the honest regret in Sara's face.

"I didn't mean that," he said immediately. There was no need to open old wounds.

"I know. That doesn't make it any less true," she said softly.

"Look, Sara," Warrick told her. "Gris took a chance with me. He went against orders. I told him I wouldn't let him down again. It's been one of the hardest promises I've ever made, but it's a promise I've tried to keep."

"Because you made it to him?"

"Yeah," he said, nodding slowly, "because I don't like the idea of letting him down any more than you do."

They both fell silent again, listening to the hum of the light from the evidence table and dealing with their own private feelings.

Finally Sara asked the question she knew no one wanted to ask. "What if we're too late?"

"I can't think about that," Warrick said firmly. He didn't want to have to deal with the implications of that. He had a promise to keep. There was no way he was going to let Grissom down again. "We'll find him," Warrick told Sara. "We have to."

Monday Morning 04:39 AM

The Sheriff, Brian Mobley, and Conrad Eckley were waiting for Catherine when she and Nick got back to the crime lab. The men stood in Grissom's office and turned to look at her as Catherine and Nick approached the door.

Catherine saw Eckley and the Sheriff a split second before Nick did and pulled up short. Nick noticed she had stopped walking and looked at her. He followed her gaze and realized Grissom's office wasn't empty.

"Nick," Catherine told the junior CSI, "why don't you find out what Sara and Warrick have now. Tell them I'll see them in a minute."

"Sure," Nick told her, looking from the visitors back to Catherine. "I'll be just down the hall if you need me." With that, Nick set off to find Sara and Warrick. He had a pretty good idea what this visit from Eckley and the Sheriff was all about.

The Sheriff nodded to her as Catherine stepped into the office. "Catherine."

"Sheriff, Conrad," she greeted them coolly. "What can I do for you gentlemen?"

Eckley glanced at the Sheriff. He looked too smug for Catherine's liking. Conrad didn't say anything.

It was the Sheriff who was going to tell her the bad news. "I'd like to talk about Gil's case," he started. "I think there's some important decisions we need to make at this juncture in the investigation."

"Politic to the last, aren't you Brian," Catherine replied.

"I think it would be better for all concerned if Conrad and his dayshift team took over the investigation of the case," Mobley told her. "You're too close to it."

"That's not going to happen," Catherine informed them. Before the Sheriff could interrupt her she went on. "No one is more motivated than we are. And if Gil has a prayer in hell of being found then we need some people with an honest desire to find him."

"You don't think I want to find Gil?" Conrad asked, sounding wounded.

Catherine turned to face Eckley squarely. "I don't suppose you've told the Sheriff about the page you received on Saturday."

By the look on his face, Catherine knew that he hadn't. "I thought so."

"What page?" Mobley asked, obviously confused.

"Look," Conrad began.

Catherine interrupted him, "Grissom was paged about a case on Saturday afternoon," she told the Sheriff. "When he didn't respond to repeated pages, the office paged Conrad. How many times since Gil has worked here has he failed to answer a page, Conrad?"

Eckley shuffled his feet nervously. Catherine didn't bother to wait for an answer.

"I'll tell you. None." She turned her attention back to the Sheriff. This was obviously news to Mobley. "If Conrad had bothered to tell someone about that we could have been on this case as little as twelve hours after we think Gil was attacked, not fifty." Catherine wasn't even bothering to keep the bitterness out of her voice any more.

"Look, Brian. I'm staying on this case. If it were any one of us out there, even Conrad," she gave the dayshift supervisor an angry look, "Gil would be the first CSI on board and the one to work the hardest to find out what happened." Her voice was filled with her conviction. "This is Grissom we're talking about. I'm not leaving him out there without exhausting every tool at my disposal. Every member of this shift feels the same way."

The Sheriff looked from Catherine to Eckley and back again. She could practically see the wheels turning in his head. He nodded as he came to a decision. "All right, Catherine. You stay in charge of the case, but I want you to keep me in the loop. Don't use Gil's example as a model on this. I want regular updates on the progress you're making."

"I'll keep you posted," she told him. "You have my word."