Illusion of Life
By Camilla Sandman

Spoilers: Season one and two references sprinkled around here and there

Disclaimer: *looks sad* If they were mine, I'd wuv them forever and ever and ever and… What? Oh right, reality. CSI is Alliance and CSB's. Them rich. Me not rich. But one day…

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Chapter Five

"I don't believe this," Nick muttered angrily. The younger man stared at the burnt car with a mix of anger and frustration, eyes gleaming darkly in the half-lit garage.

Grissom understood the sentiment all too well. Warrick's car was a shadow of its former self, burnt nearly to a crisp and only a part of the back remained unscathed. The registration number smirked up at them, the dying grin of a lead going nowhere.

"They torched the car." Nick shook his head. "Damnit!"

"There might be something that fire didn't completely ruin. Take it apart and see what you can find."

"Yeah," Nick agreed. "No wonder it took a while to find the damn car. It's not a car anymore."

"Grissom!"

Sara bolted into the garage like a bolt of lightning, the energy sizzling from her nearly enough to power a house. Her hair had fallen into her face again; he resisted the urge to reach out and tuck it behind her ear.

"I found something on the victim's clothes. You might wanna take a look."

"Let me know if you find anything," he instructed Nick, and followed Sara. She nearly dragged him through the hallways, striding at a speed he could barely keep up with without running.

"We couldn't get any shoeprints good enough for comparison off the clothes, but I went back and looked at the impressions of the shoe tips – some of the substances from the boots transferred to the victim's jacket. Take a look," she declared as she pushed the door open, coming to an abrupt halt by a microscope. Greg hovered nearby but didn't actually approach.

Grissom bent down, trying not to be distracted by Sara leaning in so close she was just a breath away.

"You're looking at sawdust and blue paint!" Greg declared triumphantly a second later. "As well as some good old-fashioned mud."

"Thank you, Greg," Grissom muttered, adjusting the lens. "I would never have guessed."

"There was sawdust on his jacket and on his pants. I think it came from more than one boot," Sara said softly. "Not long before the murders, the killers stepped in sawdust."

"But where?" He looked up, meeting her glance. She seemed aflame with energy over the discovery, as she always did, and the sadness in her eyes was almost impossible to see. Unless you knew where to look. And he had always known, somehow.

He sometimes wondered if she saw through him as easily and the thought both scared him and thrilled him beyond belief. Catherine he knew where he had, a good friend, comfortable and easy to be with.

Sara was different. He felt alive when she smiled at him, frustrated when she pushed him, worried when she didn't. He couldn't figure her out and sometimes, he couldn't even figure himself out when she was near, much less what he actually wanted.

Sometimes it seemed so easy. Sometimes it seemed so damn complicated.

He suddenly realised Greg had been talking, and that they were both staring at him, waiting for a reply. If it was the hearing that had gone for a minute, or if he had simply been too wrapped up in his own thinking was hard to say.

"Hmm," he offered, hoping it would serve.

"Yeah, I don't think a sawmill is likely either," Sara added. "Workshop, maybe?"

"Could be."

She smiled hesitantly; he returned it with as much feeling as his tired mind could muster. He could feel a migraine coming, and his body was crying out for sleep, nearly overwhelming anything else.

One of these days, he was going to sleep for a week, dreamlessly.

Except there was always a case. Always a murder. Always the whispers of the dead and the tears of the living.

*****

There were always tears.

Catherine had seen many get the news of a death of beloved – too many, she sometimes thought in the sleepless nights – and always, the tears were there, cried or uncried. They clung to the air and the skin, drowning all other emotions.

Even murders cried for their victims. Or perhaps they cried for themselves. Long ago, when she had realised the tears never ended, she had made a decision to never linger. To cry her tears and dry them and never look back. Never look back.

It was a kind of life. It wasn't the life Eddie had promised her or the one she had dreamt off when she was young and her life was a future, not a past. But it was life and Lindsey and that was enough.

James Rodriquez was dead, and his mother had no life anymore. Catherine could see it in her eyes – the light was gone, the soul had crumbled. Deanne Rodriquez wouldn't recover from the death of her son, not truly. Too many tears would always linger in the air.

"He can't be dead…"

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Rodriquez," Catherine said again, knowing how futile the words seemed.

"I thought he had just gone to stay with a friend… I didn't…"

"Do you know anyone who might have wanted to hurt him?" Brass asked. Catherine hated him for asking, even though she'd asked it many times herself.

"No… He was a good kid. A good kid…" Deanne Rodriquez stared ahead, eyes filled with tears that wouldn't fall. "His father died two years ago. James was all I had."

"We'll find who did this," Catherine promised. For James. For Warrick.

"Did he… Suffer?"

"No." The lie was easy, rolling off the tongue. The truth would bring tears; the lie might give some peace in the empty nights to come. At least Catherine hoped it would. It was all they could offer after death – closure and the chance for peace of mind.

"The other man – you said he tried to help my son?" The woman stared at her hands, nails digging into her palms. It looked painful; the skin was white and drained off blood where the nails pressed in.

"Yes, Mrs. Rodriguez."

"I hope he'll be fine." The nails had broken through the skin now, and blood seeped from within onto the skin. Deanne seemed to merely stare at the blood, making no moves to stop the bleeding.

A drop of red, red blood glimmered in the light and fell to the carpet. And then, at last, the tears fell too, and the mother cried helplessly. Catherine eased down next to her, holding the crying woman and whispering words of nothing.

She thought of Lindsey and all the shadows in the dark that could hurt her little girl. She thought of Warrick and all the shadows she intended to chase away from him. He would live, she would see to it. They would all live, damnit, because her life wouldn't be life without them.

Deanne sobbed quietly, her body shaking with the effort to breathe. Brass was looking away, perhaps having seen one too many scenes like it. Slowly, the sobs became gasps, became mere breaths, became silence. A light bulb flickered on and off, about to die, but fighting to live on.

"Thank you," the mother whispered. It was a dismissal and Catherine eased away. Brass expressed condolences and the need to be in touch later and then they were outside in the stifling hot air.

"A good kid." Brass shook his head. "Boy scout, active in the local church, good grades, never been in trouble with the police…"

"Race," she muttered, managing to cram as much spite into the word as she could. "Nothing to do with who he is and everything to do with how he looks. That's why he died."

She looked at the house again, imagining Deanna Rodriguez clutching pictures and treasured possessions inside, discovering that even when you thought there were no tears left, they fell anyway.

"I'm gonna see if we can track down any neo-Nazi groups in the area. Some of the guys working with gangs might have an idea," Brass said. His hand brushed against her arm for a moment, offering brief comfort. She appreciated the thought, but her body longed for someone else's hands to brush against her skin and assure her all would be fine.

She watched him take off, then wandered to her own car. The air hissed around her as she walked, hot and bothersome. Behind her, she heard something that could have been a soft cry of anguish, a cry of a mother's loss of a child.

She didn't look back.