This story is based on characters created by Anthony E. Zuiker for the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
Ghost (Part 12/26)
by Cheers
Monday Morning 07:43 AM
The DNA results started to come back. He had compared the two hairs Nick had sent from the suspect vehicle to the hairs from Grissom's comb and found a perfect match. Greg felt his heart sink further and further as each new sample of blood tested came back with the same result.
Compiling the reports into a single folder, he set out from his lab to find Catherine. No way he was going to beep her with this.
Monday Morning 07:46 AM
Larry Collins was working in Trace when the samples from Grissom's case came in. The samples from the suspect vehicle, the toothbrush and comb Greg sent over from DNA, and the few tape-lifted samples from Grissom's house sat on his lab counter. Like everyone else in Criminalistics, Larry wanted to be a part of finding out what had happened to his boss.
Grissom was the kind of man that other guys wished they could be more like. He was a legend. Larry didn't deny that he felt that way. Not in the privacy of his own thoughts, anyhow.
Someone was going to uncover the crucial piece of evidence that would tell them where Grissom was. Was is selfish to want to be that guy? Probably, he decided. But selfish or not, Larry really did want to be the guy who broke the case. Not just because it would mean maybe saving Grissom's life, but because it would mean other people at the lab would give him some of the same respect Grissom enjoyed.
He had heard the hushed conversations in the break room and listened to everyone go on about how they just wanted Grissom to be okay. Perhaps they all did, but everyone likes to make a mark, to be the hero. That sort of thing seemed to come so easily to Grissom. Maybe … well maybe now it was Larry's turn to shine.
Monday Morning 07:48 AM
"Day three," he managed to choke out with an extremely dry mouth. A small sliver of sunlight made its way to the bottom of the mineshaft. Gil moved to sit in the warm glow of the sunshine. He only had a few short hours of direct light each day. He had to take advantage of it.
He worked on his makeshift sling again. It was the only thing that he had tried since finding himself down here that seemed to work, but using the sling was wearing on him. His shoulder and ribcage ached. He was becoming weaker with each passing hour and didn't know how long he could keep it up.
Broken ribs kept him from raising his right arm above the level of his shoulder but with a web tied from his shoe laces and secured to the metal loop at the end of his belt he had been able to fashion a decent sling. Using the sling underhanded, he was able to get enough velocity on the rocks and throw them high enough into the air to do some good. Gil thought that if he managed to send rocks up on the ledge above his head often enough, he would disturb enough earth that anyone looking down into the shaft would realize something or someone had recently fallen in. The trick was to keep from being hit by the rocks as they rolled back down the slope again and dropped back into the shaft. He remembered just how long the drop was.
The wind had been knocked out of him when he landed at the bottom of the shaft. He had lain still for a long time to recover from the fall and waited for the sickening nausea to subside enough to sit up. Once he was able to move around, he had begun to explore his prison. It had taken him half a day to determine that he was in some kind of mining pit. The support timbers had degraded to such a degree that Gil had concluded it was abandoned. The bottom of the pit was much wider than the opening, which made a nearly twenty degree slanted turn at about fifteen feet above the bottom of the shaft. The walls inclined inward at nearly the same slope. Climbing out would be nearly impossible even for someone in good health and uninjured.
In his current condition, Gil was trapped. He had been for three days.
He had a compound fracture of the left radius and ulna sustained in the fall into the shaft, at least one broken rib, perhaps two, and he was pretty sure his nose was broken. The progressive dehydration and insidious fatigue compounded by constant pain made him a poor candidate to successfully scale a flight of stairs. That thought brought a half smile to his face. No point in completely losing his sense of irony.
Gil didn't like his chances. The amount of blood he had lost should be sufficient to arouse significant suspicion if someone knew where to look. But the odds that his team would find the car used to bring him to this place were not in his favor. There was no way to climb out and no way to communicate with the world outside the pit except to yell, but by now his voice was all but gone. The base of the shaft couldn't be seen well from the entrance above. He estimated he was at least twenty feet below ground level, maybe more. His attacker had planned this dump well. Gil had to give him that.
His initial search and multiple subsequent searches of the shaft reinforced the feeling of entrapment. There was a small horizontal tunnel that extended into the ground approximately eight inches from the base of the shaft in the west wall, but the opening was far too narrow to allow passage of a man. The purpose of this tunnel was a complete mystery to him. Perhaps it was an air shaft to allow fresh air to reach the bottom of the pit when machinery was in use, or perhaps it had provided a conduit for power cables or pipes of some kind. Besides this tunnel, a few assorted bits of rusted metal, rotting timbers, and rocks, there wasn't much in the way of help for him.
He had been dumped there to die. The good news was that he wasn't dead yet. The bad news was that if someone didn't find him soon, he would be.
Monday Morning 08:12 AM
Sara sipped at her coffee and stared at the screen as the computer ran through the myriad prints that made up the AFIS database. It had been hours since Mandy had inputted the handprint from Grissom's front door. Everyone knew that an AFIS search could easily take days, but Sara knew that Grissom probably didn't have that kind of time.
Why was it taking so long? Thirty-six hours. Everyone knew that there were only thirty-six hours after a disappearance to find someone with any real chance that they might still be alive. After that the probability of finding Grissom alive dropped precipitously. They were at hour fifty-six now … and counting. "Damn it," Sara said to the empty room.
What was it Warrick had said last night? That Grissom thought he would leave CSI and no one would notice. No cake in the break room, he'd just be gone. How could Grissom think that he could just walk away and no one would care? What the hell was he thinking when he said that? A single tear ran down her cheek. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"Hey. No emotions in here."
Sara looked up and saw Grissom leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed, a knowing half-smile on his face.
"It's taking too long," she told him quietly. "Fifty-six hours…."
"You can't get too close to the victim."
She looked into his blue eyes. "He's special to me. I can't help it."
He blinked at her. "It's just a case, Sara."
"Not to me," she said softly, another tear finding its way down her face. "Not to any of us. You should know that."
She closed her eyes once more, trying to force the tears to stop. When she glanced up again, he was gone.
Sara looked back at the computer screen, willing it to tell her something, anything. "Come on," she said through gritted teeth. As if taking her command literally, the displayed graphic began to flash and the computer beeped at her.
AFIS had found a match.