Last Voice: A Concerto
5: Quasi Recitavio
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"She lived in the building next to where she was found?!"
Catherine gaped at the apartments in front of us.
"Yup," I said.
"And no one bothered to question the occupants or anything?"
"I think they all claimed not to have heard anything. No one asked them if they knew the vic."
"How stupid. I know that. I do." Catherine shook her head and pushed the front door open, revealing a smoky lounge-like corridor.
"It just gets me when it takes so long to get to such a stupid conclusion."
"You told Nick to call when the results came in, right?"
"Yeah. That poor lab tech in DNA is pulling double shifts for this."
I nodded, not only because I knew very well how it felt to pull a double, but also because I was thinking more and more about what it could mean if those results came back with a "yes, these cases have the same non-vic DNA at the scene."
"Hi, Cath. Greg." Sara entered the room.
"Hey, Sara. You wanna go out for a drink after we process the apartment?"
"Nope."
"Didn't think so."
Catherine rolled her eyes. I know, I know, the crush was old and basically over with. After three and a half years it had become more of a game than anything real for me to flirt and Sara to brush me off. I doubted she'd ever really noticed anyway.
That was fine by me. I didn't need any more girl problems.
But, boy, would she be a great problem to have, or what?
"You just show us where it is, Sara."
"Right. Your case, not mine. Yet, at least."
"Nick called you?" Catherine wasn't surprised.
"And Grissom, who was not happy that you didn't go to him first."
"We were getting there," I put in as Sara unlocked the door.
"Sure."
"You're handling that key without gloves."
"Don't worry, it's been fingerprinted already. Landlord gave it to me, and I didn't feel like waiting."
"Anything to keep you out of trouble," Catherine quipped. She pulled her flashlight from her belt. "Ready, Greggo?"
"Ready."
Sara handed me the key. "Good luck. If you find anything that has to do with one 'William Lucas', come get me."
"Who?"
"My vic. I'll be across the hall in apartment fifty-four, asking the guy who found him a few more questions."
"At this time of night?"
"We called ahead. The guy's working second shift, so he hasn't been home all that long."
I grinned, dropping the key into my pocket. "I'll knock three times and wait for you to let me in."
Sara rolled her eyes and started to leave.
"You're supposed to say 'not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin'."
"Greg, I have no hair on my chinny-chin-chin. So, get help Cath."
"Fine."
I turned and entered the apartment.
The moment I passed through the door I swear it got colder. I looked around suspiciously. Was I paranoid, or was something wrong?
Hmm…
Nothing out of place. In fact, it looked a little like my home. Carpeted living room/dinning room and tiny bedroom, even tinier kitchen and bathroom floored with linoleum.
Basically, my place minus one cat, one PS2, and several dozen piles of dirty clothes.
And yet it felt… wrong. Wrong to be there. Maybe it was just because I had an image of the tenant, dead, that suddenly flashed in my mind.
It felt so wrong to be in the personal space of a murder victim.
"Hey, Greg, are you coming?"
"Huh? Yeah, I'm coming."
"I'll get out ALS, you start on dusting."
I nodded, knowing that I was being bossed around, but too disturbed to care. Besides, she knew better than me.
The person who had slept, eaten, cried, wrote, thought, talked to herself, complained about work here had been murdered. Murdered by an HIV positive male.
That snapped me out of my stupor.
"Right," I said, more confidently than I felt, kneeling to pull the latex gloves and printing powder out of my evidence case.
"Red or green?"
"Sara would vote for green," Catherine said distractedly, swabbing something the alternate light source had made visible on the bed sheets. I could guess what, but I asked anyway.
"What've you got?"
"What do you think? I'm hoping there's some DNA left in the newer spots."
"How many are there?"
She counted. "Seven I see. Did someone else live here? Borrow it for a week? Kasey Kinsey was a saint."
I smiled grimly at her recycling of my words. "You're right. I don't know. And there are prints all over in here. I don't think Kasey got out much."
"Check the fridge."
"Excuse me?"
"Check for takeout and things like that. What sort of food a person keeps around can tell you a lot about them."
"Why didn't this place get checked out sooner?"
"Was she in the missing persons database?"
"Umm… no. Well, Nick told me that her disappearance wasn't reported."
"Not to the authorities. Guess she didn't have much in the way of friends."
"She had a laptop," I noticed.
"Go ahead."
It was a very nice, expensive machine. Pentium 3 processor, CD burner, DVD drive built in, web camera nearby.
I really wasn't feeling comfortable as I opened the computer and pressed its power button.
And when I get uncomfortable, I babble.
"Hey, Catherine, do you remember the case with the casino? The one where Detective Lockwood, umm…"
"The Rampart ordeal," she said tightly. "Yeah?"
"Oh, never mind."
"You want to know the rest of it?"
"I know that was off the record, and I wasn't going to say anything, but…"
She nodded, carefully tucking away another swab. "I know what you mean."
I waited as the Windows XP screen disappeared and the desktop loaded. It wasn't password protected. Good. I doubted I could have gotten up the indecency to break it.
"I shouldn't have said it. Just forget about it."
"Nope. You asked and now you're going to listen. How much did I tell you? It's been so long…"
"You told me that Sam Braun and you mom – well – yeah."
"And I went back to Montana from Seattle and my parents made it pretty clear I was on my own, so I went running to Sam in Las Vegas. That's where I met Eddie."
"Right. That's it. You don't have to—"
"Oh, shut up, Greg," Catherine said with a crooked half-grin and a trace of bitterness. "I've told you before, and I'll tell you again: I deal with things. I told you part of the story; you'd like to know the rest. That's normal. That's your investigative side. The short version: Braun is my biological father."
I stopped right in the middle of opening the "My Documents" folder.
I really didn't know what to say.
"I've told you something revealing. You're supposed to tell me something – about your parents."
I licked my lips and opened the file. She'd trusted me, and I wouldn't tell. I could trust her, she wouldn't tell, and she wouldn't feel sorry for me.
"Okay. My parents were killed when I was fifteen."
There. I'd said it.
It felt like I was reciting something I'd memorized, but I'd said it.
I opened a file.
Apparently, Catherine didn't know what to say either.
I read a few lines of the text document.
"Hey, this is fiction. It's a dark and stormy night, and we have a runaway."
Catherine approached, slightly tense. "Yeah. This girl was an author."
I squinted at the screen. "I had a sister who wrote sometimes. She liked to name her characters after real people. Promised she'd put me in a story someday."
"So?"
"This girl, the runaway… she's thinking about her boyfriend. Look at his name."
"Billy," Catherine read. "And Billy is short for William. Circumstantial. Could be coincidence, could mean she just liked his name."
"Could be."
Catherine's cell phone rang.
There were results.
A/N: Tada! Wow, look, that was long. The Rampart thing was sort of spontaneous. I know what Greg's going to share with and learn about the others, but I don't know when. And I will be dragging Warrick and Gris into this soon, don't worry. The chapter title, quasi recitavio, "like a recitation", is supposed to refer to the tones of Catherine and Greg during their talk.
