Sara spent the rest of the night working on the newly arrived rape kit. The victim, a nineteen-year-old by the name of Susan Akers, had insisted on sending a short note with the evidence from her body. It said only, "Whoever works on this evidence . . . Get this bastard for me. Please." Sara held the note gently and closed her eyes. "I will, Susan. I will."
She slowly emptied out the large bag, leaving a number of smaller packages, and did a mental inventory. Seven manila envelopes marked "Hair," each with a short description and the collecting doctor's initials, and another ten matching envelopes containing fibers. Three covered swabs, one each for oral, vaginal, and anal biological evidence. Two more manila envelopes marked "Fingernail Clippings," one each for the left and right hands. Finally, a carefully packed vial of the victim's blood. She nodded her approval, acknowledging that the hospital had done an adequate job collecting evidence from Susan Akers.
She began by ferrying the blood and fingernail clippings to Greg in the DNA lab. "Fast, please, Greg," she added. Greg, always willing to put in a little more effort to make her happy, nodded and pushed aside the other evidence he had been about to start on. Relieved that she would soon know what there was to know, Sara smiled, patted his cheek, and headed back to the lab where she had the other evidence spread out.
"Hair, hair, hair . . ." she mumbled to herself as the opened the first envelope, which bore the note "Known victim sample, head." After a few minutes taking notes on its characteristics, she did the same with another hair envelope, this one marked "Known victim sample, pubic," then the last known hair, marked, "Known victim sample, eyelash," and finally moved to the unknown hairs. "Unknown, victim pubic region." "Unknown, stuck to victim's back." "Unknown (possible eyelash/brow), victim neck." "Attacker, pulled out by victim."
Sara sighed. Judging by just the amount of hair she'd received, there was going to be a mountain of evidence for her to deal with tonight and tomorrow. She briefly considered the prospect of pulling a voluntary double-shift, but decided against it. Neither her patience nor her attention span would last that long after tonight's happenings. She would do as much as she could in the next four hours, then go home, sleep, and come back to work early tomorrow.
The though of going home caused her blood pressure to rise. Home was with Grissom, whom she was currently angry at. Why did they spend all of their time between shifts – and often during them – fighting? Wasn't the fighting supposed to happen before the romance? Or happen once and then everyone lived happily ever after? She shook her head, laughing at herself. How could she expect a relationship between her and Grissom to be anything resembling what it was supposed to be?
She gave up on trying to think about it and turned back to the evidence. Giving each of the unknowns a basic examination, she was soon able to draw some preliminary conclusions, based on characteristics she observed. The unknown pubic hair did not belong to the victim, nor did the unknown facial hair. The hair found on the victim's back was a head hair and wasn't hers either. In fact, it was microscopically similar to the hair known to have come from the attacker, and so Sara noted, "probably attacker" on the envelope. She smiled grimly. This was good – the attacker had left behind all sorts of pieces of him.
She jumped a foot in the air when Nick popped his head through the door and greeted her. "Jesus, Nick!" she exclaimed, turning around to face him.
"Just wanted to check on my favorite woman with a hair trigger."
"Shut up," she snapped back. "Do I look like I want to talk about that? No, I don't," she answered for him. "I look like I'm working like hell to sort out this evidence so I can TRY to nail the bastard who raped Susan."
"Who's Susan?'
Sara rolled her eyes. "The VICTIM, Nick. Remember, the girl who was raped tonight? Or did you drop that out of your brain in favor of Sara-and-Grissom gossip?"
Nick winced, knowing she was right. "Sorry, hon. I'm paying attention now, ok? What have you got?" Sara ran through the conclusions she'd drawn from the hairs that had come in the rape kit and he nodded continually. "So you have three samples that are probably from the perp," he summarized.
Sara nodded. "Yeah, hopefully. The DNA's with Greg right now." Then, before she could stop herself, she blurted, "Is Grissom still working with Meghan?"
Nick grinned. "And Caine, yeah. And who's thinking about gossip now?" Sara scowled at him and he said, "Oh come on, Sara. You have to know that there's nothing going on between them. It's not like we've even seen her since before you guys got together."
She snorted. "Ever heard of e-mail? They could still . . . oh, never mind. I don't want to talk about this, I told you."
"You started it."
"Shut UP!"
"Ok, ok," Nick said, raising his hands in surrender. "I'll go check on Greg. You just let me known when you've got your claws sheathed again." With this, he fled.
"I'll show you my claws, Nick – just say one more word!" Sara shouted after him. When he was out of sight, she set back to work on the pile of evidence in front of her. "Ok, hair done . . . fibers now."
Taking a look at the pile of envelopes containing fiber evidence, and considering the amount of time the lesser amount of hair evidence had taken her, she threw herself down on the nearest couch and groaned.
