When Sara entered the break room, the other CSIs quieted down immediately. She stopped at the door for a second, unnerved, but decided to continue as if nothing had happened.
Taking a seat, she set the file in front of her and opened it up, trying to concentrate on the words but not really reading them.
"Hey, Sara, did you get what you wanted from Gahagan's computer?" Jonas queried gently, his head lowered slightly to meet her eyes, and then raised when she looked at him.
"I did, thanks, Jonas. The hack you gave me did the trick," she replied with a warm smile. He returned it with a wide grin.
Jonas Whitmore was a relentlessly plain man in his late forties, a shy, laid-back investigator who specialized in anything to do with computers. He held two post-graduate degrees from MIT and had to be frequently reminded that the Red Sox played baseball and the Patriots played football, not the other way around. In her first weeks here, he had harbored a crush on Sara, but it had quickly given way to a warm affection and the closest thing to friendship that either of them could attempt.
Next to him, Maggie stretched a rubber band on her fingers, squinting and aiming at Alec, who was absorbed in the editorial sections of the day's Boston Globe. She let the elastic go, but instead of hitting Alec's newspaper, it zinged over Sara's shoulder, clipping her hair and just barely missing her cheek before it finally smacked against the cabinet.
Maggie snickered, trying to bite back the grin that threatened to split her face, and slumped in her chair slightly when Alec merely gave her an annoyed look over the top of the newspaper. Sara placed her hands flat on the file, trying to quell her murderous thoughts. Maggie was the youngest CSI in the group, having graduated BC just last spring and joined CSI in the fall. Her father was a homicide captain, one brother was in Vice, and another worked in narcotics. The rest of her very large Irish Catholic family was spread out through Boston's governmental and ecclesiastical infrastructure in a way that made it impossible to get anything done in Boston without going through at least one of them.
She was also an ambitious, relentless flirt whose attentions were currently focused on Alec. That alone would have guaranteed a distinctly uneasy working relationship with her, in Sara's mind, if she hadn't taken to mimicking Alec's opinions as well - one of which was an utter hatred of Sara.
Alec Tremain had the kind of features and build that screamed English country gentleman. He was Oxford-educated, coldly intellectual, and a ruthless politicion. He was also a brilliant CSI - in fact, his solve rate had been the stuff of incredulous water-cooler gossip and there had been no doubt he would succeed as night shift supervisor someday in the near future.
At least, not until Sara had arrived.
Since then, Alec had faced unexpected competition for the number one slot, and so far, he was losing. Thomas Roman, the night shift supervisor, had rather decidedly transferred his attention to Sara after her first week in Boston, and her subsequent promotion to the key position on the team, vacated the week before she'd arrived, had been an unforgiveable transgression in Alec's eyes.
Sara's thoughts wandered through the maze of interpersonal relationships on the night shift, and she let them roam as if she were analyzing a network of people involved in a crime. But all too soon, they bumped up against the rigid wall in her mind that cordoned off other thoughts on interoffice relationships, and she harnessed them again carefully, re-focusing on the final report of Gahagan's embezzling that she hoped to put in the out box when the night's briefing was over.
"Good evening, everyone," Thomas called cheerfully as he entered the room and sat down at the head of the table.
Boston's night shift CSIs might have their personal squabbles, but every single one of them was dedicated without question to their shift supervisor. He had been a CSI for longer than most of them had been alive, and had an international reputation in the field for his specialty in forensic psychology.
Maggie sat up straight, Alec folded the newspaper carefully and set it down, Jonas tucked the hand-held gadget he'd been playing with into a pocket, and Sara closed the file to give her full attention to the older man.
"Jonas, Maggie, you have a body found at Boston Sand and Gravel," he began, sliding the assignment slip across to Jonas as primary.
"Suspicious circs?" Maggie asked, bouncing in her seat like an overeager terrier. She had only started doing murders last month.
"The body was found buried under over a ton of gravel," Thomas replied dryly. "I think that fits the definition of suspicious circumstances."
"Partial decomp," Jonas read with a sigh. "We're going to smell all week."
"Lemons," Sara suggested with a smile that quickly turned sour as the memory tracked itself to its source.
"Lemons?" Maggie asked, looking to Alec for an answer. He didn't oblige her, but Thomas did.
"It's the only thing that really gets rid of the smell," he explained. "Jorgensen is waiting for you at the scene."
"I'll drive," Maggie said, and was out of the room before Jonas had even finished standing.
"Better hurry, Jonas, she'll leave you behind," Alec commented sarcastically, and Jonas rolled his eyes as he left the room.
"Alec," Thomas continued, "it looks like your penthouse burglars have struck again. The Four Seasons, this time. Apparently, they took over ten thousand dollars' worth of jewelry."
"It seems they're escalating," Alec observed, taking the assigment slip. "That's the second hotel this week."
"My thoughts exactly. The mayor is concerned about the effect this will have on tourism, and the chief of police is beginning to lean on CSI," Thomas told him. "Am I clear?"
"Crystal," Alec responded promptly, and stood. He paused for a moment, obviously interested in hearing what Sara had received as an assignment, but Thomas merely looked at him, and the younger CSI exited with one last glance in Sara's direction.
"Sara, how is the colloquium planning going?" Thomas asked, and Sara narrowed her eyes in confusion at the abrupt change of subjet.
"It's going well," she answered warily. "I have an appointment with someone from the chemistry department at Harvard tomorrow to see if we can use one of their labs for a few of the presentations. Phillip Rosten in particular wanted a fume hood for his talk."
"I'm not even going to ask," Thomas said with a wry chuckle.
For the past month, Sara had been working in conjunction with Carl and Marianne, the swing shift supervisor, as well as professors from MIT and Harvard to set up what would be one of the largest forensic science colloquiums in the country - if not the world. It promised to function both as a knowledge exchange and recruitment center for students attending New England's numerous colleges and universities.
"Ah...apart from that, things are progressing...do we have a crime scene tonight?" She finally gave up on the small talk; Thomas knew perfectly well how the colloquium planning was going. He received memo updates twice a week.
"How are you doing, Sara?" he asked bluntly, going straight to the point.
Ah. So that was what this was about. And she knew exactly where the place the blame. "Talk to Carl?"
"We care about you," he parried.
"I don't believe this," she muttered under her breath, rubbing her hand over her face and pinching the bridge of her nose. "I'm fine. We've had this conversation before, Thomas, and my answer is the same. I'm fine."
"You're not wearing your wedding ring."
Now she was pissed off. "It kind of comes with divorce. Do we have a crime scene?" she snarled through gritted teeth, her body shaking with emotion.
"Multiple homicide," he answered, sliding her the assignment slip, apparently sensing that he had not only crossed the line, he'd nearly gone over a cliff.
"I'll drive," she snapped, taking the assignment slip and stalking out of the room.