Part Ten - Drowning
(One Hit Wonder)
When Sara left the hospital - and she had no earthly clue how long she was standing in that corridor, watching the officer reading Melissa her rights, looking at her through the wired glass door, wondering what the hell had made her do it - she had no destination in mind, no grand plan as to where she was going to. It shouldn't have surprised her therefore, when her car seemed to steer itself to North Trop Boulevard and the CSI lab, because this place had always been her sanctuary, the place she knew she would always be assured of a welcome. Except that she didn't really have a reason to be there at the moment; it was the end of the shift, the case she was working on was all tied up with a neat little bow, and she could go home if she wanted to.
Except she didn't want to go home. She knew that Hank was still working, so there was no chance of him coming over, curling up on her couch with her and making her forget all about her worries, or at least letting her get them out of her system. The moment that thought hit her, her stomach, in knots since she'd worked out that Melissa had lied, twisted once again, because she knew instinctively that she didn't want to talk to Hank right then. She knew that he'd be perfectly solicitous, kind and caring, that he'd do anything to make her feel better. Any woman on the planet would be grateful to have a man who would smother her with that kind of attention, but Sara knew, from the deepest part of her soul, that were she to be faced with that right now, she wouldn't be able to take it. She'd push him away, push him away hard, and that would make the two of them feel worse.
That knowledge didn't sit well with her, any more than the knowledge of what Melissa had done, so she pushed it out of her mind for now, telling herself that she was just upset, that she didn't really feel that way about Hank, and it was just her mixed up emotions talking.
In any case, he was working. He wasn't available, so it didn't matter anyway. The thought of going home to her empty, silent apartment wasn't appealing either; knowing that she would be able to hear the walls whispering to her, telling her that she should have left well enough alone, that she should never have re-opened the case. Those whispers would war with her conscience telling her that she did the right thing, that she couldn't have done anything else, and she'd spend a restless few hours tossing and turning and trying to relax until her next shift.
That might have explained why she found herself drawn to the lab, except that she didn't want to talk to anyone there either, especially Nick, who had warned her in not so many words that she might be biting off more than she could chew with the case. Even he couldn't have guessed what she'd found, and she was sure that he'd undoubtedly want to talk to her about it, make sure that she was ok, and she was pretty sure that his friendly concern would provoke the same reaction as Hank's solicitude.
She heard his voice as she walked down the hall, and she acted on instinct, ducking into the locker room, sinking down on a bench there, wishing she knew what she should do, how she should be feeling. On one hand, she'd solved her case, gotten to the root of the situation. That was her job, what she was paid to do, and she should feel good about it. On the other hand though, she'd just put a good friend of hers in jail, and as someone who tended not to make friends easily, tended not to trust people easily, that smarted.
There were two things though, two sentences spoken in that hospital room, that disturbed her more than anything.
The first had been spoken by her, in response to Melissa telling her that she still believed in justice. She'd felt the final piece of the puzzle clicking into place then, said it as the thought occurred to her. "You never expected to live, did you?" Doc Robbins had told her the odds of the operation's success; she knew that Melissa had to have known them too. It was the only thing that made sense. Melissa had thought that she was going to die, and she wanted Sara to uncover the truth after she was dead.
Which threw Sara into a tailspin, because Melissa was her friend. She'd been worried about her, had spent every minute of Melissa's operation with her stomach in knots, had gone to the hospital to seek out Doctor Stewart the second she'd calculated that Melissa should be out of surgery. By some stroke of luck, Melissa had survived, but if she hadn't, she'd banked that Sara would still seek out justice for her dead friend, and then that she wouldn't keep what she found to herself, even if it meant besmirching Melissa's memory.
Melissa was her friend, and Sara couldn't believe that she'd put her in that situation.
Any more than she could believe her reaction to it, because she knows no matter the outcome of the operation, she would have re-opened the case. And if she'd found out the truth, she knows she would have fought long and hard with her conscience over what to do - let sleeping dogs lie, or tell the world what Melissa had done.
But Melissa hadn't died, and she'd turned her friend in.
What kind of friend did that make her?
The other words that were stuck in her head were Melissa's final words to her. "Out of all the CSIs, I knew I could depend on you."
Meaning that not only did Melissa know that Sara would leave no stone unturned in her search for justice, but that Melissa also thought Sara would have no qualms about turning her in.
What kind of friend did that make her?
Sara sucked in a deep breath, pushing her hair back away from her face, telling herself sternly that she needed to stop analysing this so much. She'd done what she had to do, the only thing she could do.
She'd done her job.
Suddenly though, she found herself wondering if that was all it was cracked up to be.
Her thoughts were interrupted as the locker room door opened, and she looked up to see Grissom standing there. He paused for the briefest of seconds before going to his locker, beginning to take his things out of it, and he didn't speak at first, which suited Sara fine. She knew that Grissom, and perhaps Warrick, were the two best people at CSI to come across when she didn't want to talk to anyone; both men adept at reading the signals and circumspect enough not to push her.
Which is why she was surprised when Grissom finally spoke. "Nick told me about the Winters case," he said, all the while concentrating on the insides of his locker. "You ok?"
She was nowhere near to being ok, and she didn't even try to deny it. Instead, she side-stepped the question, telling him, "The cop read Melissa her rights right there in the hospital room. You think you know somebody."
She'd thought she'd known Melissa, the brave D.A who loved her husband, lost him tragically, and got on with her life in spite of the aftermath.
Just like once upon a long ago, she'd thought she'd known Grissom, had thought that she was in love with him. Had known it as a matter of fact. Then she'd come to Vegas, filled with hope, worked with him on a daily basis, and she'd begun to question whether they could ever have a future together. Then she'd realised that they didn't, not as anything more than friends anyway, and she'd moved on with her life.
"I never think that," Grissom told her now, and she looked up at him curiously.
"Ever?" Her voice was flat, and she didn't look at him for long, because she knew from that brief glance that he was Grissom at his most Grissom-like, dispensing wisdom in the form of haikus, and she knew damn well that she wasn't going to get a straight answer out of him.
There were a lot of straight answers that she'd never got out of Grissom, much to her disappointment, and that had played a large part in her deciding to move on with her life, forget about him.
"When I was a kid," she found herself saying, as she remembered the first time in her life she'd ever felt like this, that sense of disappointment, the knowing that she'd got someone who meant the world to her into trouble. " I was playing hide-and-seek one day and I found this plastic bag under my big brother's bed. I thought it was a bag of dirt so I took it to my mom. Turned out it was his bag of weed. He was grounded for a year." She could still remember the furious screaming, the walls of the bed and breakfast fairly shaking with its force, her parents furious, her brother equally so, calling them hypocrites. She remembered her own tears, feeling that it was all her fault, remembered her brother telling her as much, her mother later on telling her that it wasn't. She remembers how her brother barely spoke to her for weeks, her big brother that she thought hung the moon and stars.
"The best intentions are fraught with disappointment."
There was the haiku that Sara had been waiting for, and it had the ring of the familiar about it. "Emerson?" she guessed.
"Grissom" he replied, the quiet word making Sara turn to look at him. He lifted an eyebrow, but said nothing more, and in the absence of any response on her part, Grissom slowly turned and walked away, leaving her sitting there on her own, surrounded by her own guilt and ghosts.
She could have been sitting there for minutes or for hours, but eventually she pulled herself up, pushing her hair back from her face, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. Sitting here wasn't going to do her any good; she might as well try to go home and get some sleep, or failing that, read a book, go out for a walk, anything but sit and brood over things. Maybe she'd call Hank after all, see if he was due a break any time soon.
She opened the door, stepped out into the bright hall, still lost in thought, not looking where she was going. Thus, she was most surprised when she walked into someone, apologies automatically spilling from her lips as she looked up into the concerned brown eyes of Cyrus Lockwood.
***
For one of the few times in his life, Cyrus wasn't looking forward to going to the CSI lab to be walked through a case, not even when the case involved spending time with a certain dark-haired CSI that he'd long since been carrying a torch for. He hadn't wanted this case; no-one in the homicide department had wanted this case, but he drew it for a couple of reasons; firstly, he hadn't been in Las Vegas during the original investigation three years ago, secondly, he was the last guy in, the low man on the totem pole, and thus got the jobs that everyone else declined.
Not that this was going to be a hard case; far from it in fact. The evidence was, allegedly, neatly tagged and catalogued, and knowing that Sara was in charge, Cyrus didn't doubt it. They had a confession, made to the same CSI. All the pieces had fallen perfectly into place, except for one important thing.
The murderer was a respected District Attorney, and she'd damn near gotten away with it.
That's why Mobley had given him the case, even though strictly speaking, there was no need to have a detective looking over it at all. As far as Mobley was concerned, Melissa Winters had hoodwinked the police department three years ago, and he wanted to find out how the hell it happened, and make sure that it didn't happen again. Though he hadn't said as much to Cyrus, his implicit instructions had been "Don't screw this up" and Cyrus knew that he was going to have to give a full account when next he saw the Sheriff.
Which is why he was at the CSI lab now, even though it was pretty near to the change of shift time, even though he himself could have been on his way home. He could have waited until the next shift, but this way he got to go home afterwards, have some dinner, catch some sleep before facing into reporting to Mobley, both of which were sound ideas, if not absolute necessities.
The lab was as quiet as he expected at change of shift time, and he saw a few faces he recognised, but not the one that he was looking for, and when he saw another face that he knew, he called out. "Hey Stokes."
Nick turned around, head still stuck down in the folder that he'd been looking through, holding up a finger to indicate that Cyrus should stay silent for a moment. Cyrus did so obediently until Nick looked up, giving him a distracted grin. "Hey man. What brings you here?" He looked at his watch as he spoke, as if to confirm that it really was the time that he thought it was.
"The Winters case," Cyrus said flatly, even the name of the case depressing him further. Nick seemed to know what it was all about, because his eyes widened in recognition and he nodded. "I just thought I'd stop by to see if Sara's still around."
The second he mentioned Sara's name, he remembered who it was he was talking to, and realised that he might have made a slight tactical mistake. Ever since Nick had found out that he was interested in Sara, he'd had immense amounts of fun bringing her up in conversation with Cyrus just for the pleasure of seeing his reaction, every so often dropping hints that he thought they'd be good together, that he was going to try to set them up. Most of the time, Cyrus just kept his mouth shut, not saying anything, hoping that Nick would get bored with it, but so far every time he thought that that might have happened, Nick would do it again.
But not now, and Cyrus realised when he saw the look on his friend's face that it was a measure of how bad Sara must be feeling over this, and how worried he was about her, that he just shook his head. "She's probably around here somewhere," Nick told him simply. "But I don't know… she's taking this pretty hard."
"Yeah," Cyrus sighed. "I thought she would be." Because he'd seen the two of them together, Sara and Melissa, only a few months ago when the three of them had worked together on the prosecution of Nicole Exmoor and Chuck Darwell, the two teenagers who had killed Mandy Kirk. The details of the case were enough to make his stomach turn, even now, but Melissa hadn't turned a hair, and faced with Nicole's tears, her obvious remorse, had done what she could to help out both teens, allowing them to plea-bargain for far lighter sentences than they might have otherwise expected. Both Cyrus and Sara had argued in the teens' favour, recognising the unusual circumstances, both believing that this was in no way a pre-meditated crime, and Melissa had been willing to listen to them, had believed in them. There had been quite a bit of media interest in the case, and many a prosecutor would have used it to make a name for themselves, but not Melissa, and that had impressed Cyrus to no end.
But what most stuck in his mind from that case was the snapshot of Melissa and Sara sitting side by side in the courtroom corridor the morning of the preliminary hearing. They'd been there before he arrived, so he'd had to walk the length of the corridor to get to them, so he had plenty of opportunity to observe them. They hadn't been talking about the case, he knew that for sure by the smiles on both their faces, by the way that Sara threw her head back and laughed over something Melissa had said. He'd thought that he'd seen Sara relaxed, during the brother and sister like banter that she'd engaged in with Nick the first time that he'd met her, but seeing her like that, he'd known that he'd been wrong. Not only that, but he'd also got the impression that the Sara Sidle that most people talked about - workaholic, prickly, quiet, stand-offish - was a mask that she wore, and that the woman who was shooting the breeze with her friend was the real Sara. He'd wondered what it would take to get her to look at him like that, and when he'd approached them, seen her mask of professionalism slip back into place, he'd wondered if he ever would.
And now she was faced with testifying against the very woman who she'd been gossiping happily with only a few months ago. Why wouldn't she be upset?
"I know she went to see Melissa in the hospital," Nick told him, and he nodded, having known that already. "But not if she came back." He shrugged. "Sorry."
Cyrus waved his hand. "It's ok. I'll take a look around, see if I can find her. If not, it'll wait."
Nodding, Nick turned, giving him a jaunty wave as he walked off, leaving Cyrus to wander the labs, looking for Sara. He checked everywhere he could think off, all the places around here that he'd previously seen her, but there was no sign of her anywhere, and he was just about to give up, resigning himself to having to find her again later that he literally walked into her.
One look at her confirmed the need for Nick's worry. Not only was she pale, but her skin was actually drawn, her eyes unfocussed. She'd taken two steps out of the locker room when they met, and she walked right into him, completely unaware of the fact that he was there. Even when she looked up at him, apologising profusely, he had the unsettling feeling that she wasn't quite sure who he was, that as far as she was concerned, he could have been anyone.
"Hey, it's ok," he told her quickly, stopping her in mid-flow, holding up both his hands. "No harm done."
She gave him the barest hint of what might have been an embarrassed grin, but it was gone too quickly for him to be sure. "I should be more careful," she murmured, looking down at the ground. He had the suspicion that she wasn't just talking about looking where she was going, but before he had the chance to ask her how she was, she looked up at him, blinking as if seeing him for the first time. "Hey Cyrus. You here on a case?"
He nodded, almost hating to do it, because while it had seemed like a good idea at the time, after seeing her, the last thing that he wanted to do was question her about the Winters case. Since she'd asked him though, he had no choice but to tell her. "Yeah," he said slowly, and he thought that he might have seen a hint of understanding flicker in her eyes. "I'm looking for you actually."
Her lips vanished into a thin line, and she sighed almost violently, causing him to curse Mobley for assigning him to this case. "You're on the case?" she asked, her voice brittle as fine spun glass, giving him the uncomfortable feeling that she could shatter and break if he pushed too hard.
"Mobley's orders," he said. "I was hoping that you'd be able to walk me through it," he continued. "But if you're on your way out … "
He was giving her an out, but she didn't take it, instead squaring her shoulders, visibly pulling herself together. "It's fine," she told him. "Come on." With that, she was off, long strides eating up the corridor as she lead him to the evidence room, locating the box expertly, pulling out a folder with photographs and other sheets of paper protruding from it. She dropped it on the table, resting her hand on it for a moment before looking up at him. "I think I'm going to need some coffee for this," she said. "Care to join me?"
Notwithstanding the fact that he never would have said no to an invitation like that, at that precise moment in time, Cyrus wouldn't have dreamed of denying her anything that she needed. So he told her, "I'd love some."
She led him down the hall to the break room, where she poured them two steaming mugs of coffee, as he sat down at the table, leafing through the evidence in the folder. She seemed to relax more when she took her first swallow of coffee, and upon his first swallow, he could understand why. "This is good coffee," he observed, receiving for his trouble a quick flash of a genuine Sara Sidle smile.
"Greg's pride and joy," she told him. "Blue Hawaiian, 40 bucks a pound, hand-picked, the finest that money can buy." She spoke with the air of someone who was merely quoting that which she'd heard a thousand times, and there wasn't a hint of a smile in her voice. That much of pleasantries over, she reached for the file. "So, what do you know about the case?"
Cyrus shrugged, trying to recall. "Not much," he admitted. "Home invasion, husband was killed, she was shot, perp was never caught."
"Right." Sara nodded, shuffling through the photographs. "Well, when Melissa had her operation, the bullet that was removed was in perfect shape. We cleaned it up, ran it through IBIS, got a match, to a liquor store robbery in Henderson six months ago. Roger Wilder, who Melissa put away for assault five years ago. Three weeks after he got out of jail, Melissa and her husband were shot."
"So you liked him for it." It wasn't a question, but Sara treated it as one.
"Who wouldn't? Except that he said that he just broke into the house, smashed the place up, and the gun just fell from the coffee table." Cyrus made a noise of disgust, and she grinned as she took a sip of her coffee. "Yeah, that's what I said, but I couldn't prove it, or disprove it. So I went back to the crime scene photos, where I'd already noticed something that Flannery had missed-"
"Flannery?" That was a name that Cyrus hadn't heard before.
"Terry Flannery, original CSI on the case. He retired straight after, moved back to California." Cyrus nodded at that piece of information, figuring that the old police aphorism, that the guy you didn't want investigating your murder as either the rookie straight out of the academy or the guy who was a day away from retiring, was true for CSIs as well. "There was shoring, an abrasion ring, around Victor Winters's wound. The only way you get those is if the victim's back is pressed up against something, so Victor Winters couldn't have been standing up like Melissa had said. And when I went back again, actually looked at the shirt he was wearing … I found this." She slid a photograph across the table to him, a man's shirt with horizontal bloodstains. "If he'd been standing, the blood would have dripped vertically," Sara told him, though he'd already figured that one out. "The only way that these stains could have been made was if he was lying down when he was shot."
At this point, Sara took a shuddering breath, following it with another sip of coffee. "So I knew that Melissa had lied, and all the evidence was pointing in one direction."
"Melissa."
"Melissa. I went to see her, told her I knew what had happened. She admitted it, that I'd been right about everything. She said that it was an abusive marriage … that she didn't want anyone to know what he did to her. The shot didn't kill him straight away … he reached out, got the gun, and shot her too … so she hid the gun … thought she'd be able to go back and get rid of the gun later. She knew Flannery wouldn't look too hard, that he'd believe her Seems she uh … she thought that she wasn't going to survive the operation." Sara's eyes, which had previously been going between the evidence folder and his face, now slid away entirely, fixed on a point just beyond Cyrus's head. "And she knew … that she could count on me to find out what really happened." She shrugged, her voice sounding as if there was a bitter taste in her mouth, and Cyrus didn't think it was anything to do with the coffee.
"There was nothing else you could have done Sara," he told her after a long silence in which she still didn't look at him. He knew it was the wrong thing to say when she laughed bitterly.
"I could have minded my own damn business," she said, still not looking at him. "Left well enough alone … but I had to get justice."
Cyrus frowned. "You can't blame yourself for this Sara," he told her. "You did the only thing you could do."
"Did I?" This time, she met his eyes, almost in challenge, and he didn't back down.
"Yes."
She held his gaze for a long moment before she looked down. "You know," she said softly, a mirthless chuckle accompanying the words. "I keep thinking about something Warrick said to me once … he was acting supervisor, I was running with a case and I went into the evidence locker without telling him, ran a check on some stuff … I told him not to make me feel bad for doing my job. He told me that if it was my job, I wouldn't feel bad about it." Another humourless chuckle followed. "Who knew he could be so wrong?"
"You can't think like that Sara," Cyrus told her, leaning over the table, wanting to reach out and touch her but not daring to, knowing that that would be crossing a line. "Melissa had a choice … she could have done a hundred different things. She chose to commit a crime, she chose to cover it up. You did what you did because you were trying to help a friend. You can't be responsible for the evidence you find."
This time, there was a touch of humour in the smile. "You sound like Grissom," she told him, and while it could have gone either way, he decided to take that as a compliment.
"It's a bad situation," he told her. "But there was nothing else you could have done."
Her lips twisted bitterly. "If there was nothing else I could have done, then why do I feel so bad?"
"Because she was your friend," he said quietly. "Because you trusted her." He paused, not speaking until she looked up at him again. "And because you're human," he said when she did, holding her gaze steadily. "This wasn't your fault."
Her eyes stayed locked with his for a moment longer, then she looked away, reaching up with one hand to cover her face briefly. She seemed to have trouble deciding what to say next, shaking her head in mute frustration, and deciding that they'd done enough for now, Cyrus stood up. "Go home," he suggested. "Read a book, watch a movie, have dinner … forget about this for now."
Sara looked up at him and smiled, and while it could have been his imagination, her eyes looked clearer, her face not as pale as it had been. "That sounds like a good idea," she allowed, standing up too, gathering the evidence together, sliding it into the folder. "I'll send you over copies of this later on."
"Take your time," he told her. "Mobley can wait."
She grinned at the words. "I'll tell him you said that," she mock-threatened, and he grinned back at her, walking around behind her, dropping a hand onto her shoulder as he did, squeezing it gently. He was at the door when her quiet voice stopped him. "Cyrus?" He didn't say anything, just turned and waited, looking expectantly at her. It seemed to take an age before she spoke, and when she did, her words were so quiet that he could barely hear her. "Thank you."
Once again, he didn't speak, just nodded in acknowledgement and smiled, walking out and heading home.