Disclaimers: see Part I
II
Sara parked her SUV neatly between the police car and Grissom's vehicle and hopped out, fishing out her sunglasses against the rising sun. Grissom was already crouched over the corpse, and she could see the tweezers in his hand. It never ceases to amaze me that so many bugs can exist out here in the desert. What do they eat when there's nothing dead around?
Her mouth twitched in amusement. There was always something dead around.
Brass waved her over; he hadn't gotten as far as putting a handkerchief over his nose, but she could see the distaste on his face from yards away. "I think we might have found your missing husband," he told her as she came up. "No ID, though."
"Not mine," she pointed out dryly, and leaned to get a better look at the corpse, maintaining a careful distance between herself and Grissom.
"If Sara's husband were to go missing, he wouldn't be found," Grissom commented, holding up something with many legs and examining it before dropping it in a jar. "She knows how to hide bodies."
Brass snorted; Sara ignored both the joke and the response, and stepped carefully around to the other side of the corpse, taking in details. "Plaid shirt, dark slacks, slippers," she noted. The body was face down. "Dark hair. Sure looks like our guy." She looked up at the detective. "Just like Mrs. Torono described. But who goes missing in carpet slippers?"
Brass shrugged. "She said he was just going out to get some milk. Maybe he didn't want to bother finding his shoes."
"He was beaten pretty severely," Grissom said, straightening. "Here comes David."
The coroner's van crunched to a stop behind their vehicles, and Sara stood up. "I already got photos, Sara," Grissom added. "Could you take the perimeter, please?"
"Sure." She paced a ways away to begin her sweep. Behind her, Grissom packed his bug jars away and headed for his vehicle.
They met again in the coolness of the morgue, with Catherine joining them. "Cause of death appears to be internal hemorrhaging," Dr. Robbins told them, indicating the bruises still visible on the decaying corpse. "Several broken bones. This man was beaten to death."
"Do we have a positive ID?" Grissom asked.
"Still waiting on dental records," Robbins said, but Catherine handed Grissom a photo.
"Eyeballs say this is our guy," she said. Grissom looked down at the picture--a tall man with his arm around the shorter Mrs. Torono, both of them smiling at the camera.
"Looks like it," he agreed. "Sara, what did you find at the scene?"
"Tire tracks for a late-model sedan," she replied. "They do match Mrs. Torono's car, but they're a match for a lot of other vehicles too. Nothing much else; the wind probably took it all away."
Grissom frowned, agreeing. "It looks like Mr. Torono, or whoever, was out there at least a week."
"Well, that fits the timeline," Catherine pointed out. "What else, Doc?"
Robbins moved over to the X-ray display. "Was Mr. Torono a participant in extreme sports?"
"Not as far as we know," Sara replied.
Robbins switched on the display's light. "Well, then, I'm not sure how to explain these." The films were of arms, legs, ribs. "You can see the healed fractures here, and here," the medical examiner said, pointing. "His nose was broken more than once, and his jaw has an old hairline fracture."
Sara's gut began to twist as she recognized the pattern. "Usually I see this sort of thing on extreme athletes or construction workers, people like that," Robbins went on. "But you said that Mr. Torono was an accountant?"
"It looks like abuse," Sara said, her voice harsh. "Long-term abuse."
The others turned to look at her. "It's not from childhood," Robbins said tentatively.
"You're thinking the wife?" Catherine asked, incredulous. "She's half his size!"
"All it would take would be for him to not defend himself," Grissom said austerely. "In fact, her size would make it easier if he was taught not to hit those weaker than himself."
Sara shrugged. "It's only a theory," she said, half-defensive.
Catherine shook her head. "I can't see it. How could a small woman inflict that much damage? And why didn't someone notice?"
"Why don't they notice when a husband beats his wife?" Sara returned. "He probably made the same excuses."
"Remember what you said about the head case, Catherine?" Grissom added. "Crime of passion?"
Catherine spread her hands. "If you say so," she conceded. "But we still have to prove it."
Two days later, Grissom was sorting reports in the breakroom when Sara came by.
"Hey, Grissom." Her voice was perfectly casual, but when he glanced up, he saw that her gaze was slightly unfocused, as though she didn't want to see him clearly. "I need Greg's report on the swabs from the post office case."
Grissom flipped through the folders he was carrying. "It must be on my desk. Right on top, in fact." He tamped down his worry at the oddness of her behavior. "Go ahead and get it; I'll be along in a couple of minutes."
She nodded, and pushed away from the door. Grissom gathered up a last folder and left the room, heading the long way around to his office so he could stick his head into Ballistics. Through the glass of the center room, he saw Sara being detained by Nick, hauled gently into one of the labs to peer into a microscope.
Ballistics was empty; a sign propped on one of the counters read "Gone for Coffee, Back in Five." Grissom snorted to himself. Five minutes from when?
As he left Ballistics, Warrick nearly ran him down. "Right, Brass, I'll be right there," the younger man said into his cellphone, then snapped it shut. Already past Grissom, he spun in midstride. "I think I found that poem you were looking for, Griss," he called back. "It's on your desk." And he was gone around the corner.
Shaking his head at Warrick's energy, Grissom turned towards his office, curious to see what his volunteer researcher might have come up with.
Sara slipped into the shelf-crowded room, eyes fixed on the stacked desk. She didn't really need to talk to Grissom about the report, and all in all she'd rather be out of his office by the time he arrived. It was easier that way.
The top folder on the center pile was thin, but she expected that; what she didn't expect was the single sheet of paper inside that bore only a block of print, rather than the neat array of data her eyes were anticipating. She skimmed it quickly, confused, then went back to try to make sense of it, speaking the words out loud as the rhythm compelled her.
"This living hand, now warm and capable/Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold/And in the icy silence of the tomb,/So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights/That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood/So in my veins red life might stream again,/And thou be conscience-calmed--see here it is--/I hold it towards you."
An odd little silence hung in the air when she finished speaking. She frowned down at the paper, bewildered by its presence in an office dedicated to science, then looked up.
He was so pale that she took an abortive step forward, afraid that he was going to pass out. Grissom had one hand against the doorframe and was leaning hard on it, his eyes fixed on her with a peculiar agony.
Puzzled, disturbed, she cleared her throat. "Griss?"
His mouth moved, as though he were grasping after words, and finally he blinked. As he straightened, the phone on his desk rang, and they both started.
Grissom shook his head sharply, as though trying to shed something, and strode forward to snatch the phone off its cradle. "Grissom...yeah..." Tucking the headset between shoulder and ear, he drew the folder from Sara's hands, replacing it with one from his desk. "No, that was last week." His voice was irritated.
He grimaced at Sara, lifting his hands in a helpless gesture and then moving the phone away from his mouth. "I'll talk to you later," he hissed, and returned to his conversation. If she hadn't been paying attention, she would have thought his earlier... shock? Yes, it was shock...had been her imagination, but something in his posture told her it had happened. She nodded automatically, and left his office with her file.
It took Grissom almost five minutes to finish what he considered to be a completely unnecessary phone call. He hung up the phone and sat back in his chair, taking off his glasses and tossing them onto his desk. One hand rose to pinch the bridge of his nose. Of all the things to have happen--
Warrick's ear for poetry was exact. The Keats fragment was indeed what had been taunting him with phrases that sang under his consciousness and then vanished the instant he tried to focus on them. A shudder ran down Grissom's spine at the memory of the words spoken in Sara's unique pattern. Coming on top of the dreams--which still bothered him--the whole thing was downright eerie. And, given the dreams, all too appropriate. That was exactly how he'd felt, dreaming; that he would do anything, give up anything, to save her, and yet he had turned away so often.
He glanced at the pile of paperwork with distaste, and then lifted his eyes to the door. Sara had shut it behind her. Just as well. I need time to think.
He sighed, and closed his eyes briefly. The Debbie Marlin case had forced him to a number of acknowledgments about himself, most of which were distinctly uncomfortable. It was true, what he'd told Dr. Lurie; he hadn't been able to take the risk. But...things change. And the risks he'd thought insurmountable before were beginning to look less so.
It had all seemed like some impossible bright dream, he remembered; the idea that his former student, his CSI, his friend, might actually return the emotions that ran deeper than flirtation. And then she'd given him an opening, and he'd backed away.
She's perfect. She always has been. We're so much alike--and if anyone could understand the demands of this job, she would. Terri Miller's refusal, silent and pointed, had left a bitter taste in his mouth and a bruise on his ego, if not his heart. But Sara--Sara knew what the work was like, and was just as intent on it as he. Sara, who was brilliant, who was passionate, who took his breath away...who understood him on levels that no one else did. I don't understand why she is attracted to me--if she still is--but I'm beyond questioning it.
...Is she? Still?
Grissom wondered if a second chance was possible. He'd all but destroyed their friendship, he knew that, but while Sara seemed to have retreated into a cool professionalism, tempered with flashes of their old camaraderie, she was still there.
This is ridiculous. His burst of bad temper evidenced itself only in a sharp sigh and a frown. He'd been mooning after the woman for years on end, and the Marlin case had only served to point out how time was passing. I've been regretting this for too long. How much will I regret it later if I do nothing at all?
So...how do I go about this?
Grissom wasn't sure how to begin. On the one hand, he badly wanted to repair their friendship, whether or not she was still interested in a deeper relationship. But doing so might take a long time, and he didn't want to take the risk of losing her to someone else. Both at once, then. He was briefly tempted to send her anonymous gifts, but figured she would find it more disturbing than romantic. That's all she needs, to think I'm a stalker.
He knew he'd hurt her, and not just with his refusal of her dinner invitation. He wasn't stupid; he figured that the rumor mill had informed her of his...interest...in Lady Heather, and guessed that it had stung her as much as her paramedic boyfriend had stung him. The question she'd asked him weeks before, about her chances for the promotion, had hit him with a pain that had left him breathless; it had also pointed out to him how wide the gap between them had become.
He could, he reflected, simply lay the whole issue out before her, and let her make a choice. But something in him warned that things were still too fragile for that. If I'm going to take this risk, I want the odds to be as good as possible. Better to try to strengthen their bond a little first.
So he made a stop on the way home.
Sara caught the white oblong as it slid off her locker shelf, and flipped it over, puzzled. A card? It's not my birthday.
Whoever had poked it through the vent in her locker door had not labeled the envelope. She sat down on the bench and slid a finger beneath the flap; it opened easily, and she pulled out a card that had a cartoon drawing of a busy-looking young lady with an oversized magnifying glass. Opening it, she was mildly stunned by the words inside. "I saw this and thought of you. Good job on the grocery store case. Grissom."
What is this, some new management technique? Or has he finally gone around the bend? She stared at the card for a long moment, closing it to look at the picture and then opening it again to reread the words. Finally, she slid it back into the envelope and put it on her locker shelf again, baffled.
"What's up, Sar?"
She turned to smile at Nick. "The usual," she said dryly.
"Spend the day with your police scanner again?" he asked, opening his own locker. Sara watched, but nothing fell out.
"Very funny," she said, giving him a mock-annoyed glare. "As a matter of fact, I went out with some friends."
"Ooh." Nick's face lit up and he gave her a teasing grin. "Any of 'em single?"
She rolled her eyes, smirking. "One is, Nick, but I don't think he's your type." His choke of laughter cheered her. "See you in a few," she added, closing her locker and leaving him behind.
Rather to her surprise, Grissom assigned her to the same murder he was working on, though he sent her ahead when the Sheriff cornered him on the way out of the building. She was already hip-deep in processing by the time he arrived at the scene, and they spent almost an hour working on different parts of the victim's house before ending up in the living room. Glancing over as Grissom lifted a print from the coffee table, Sara finally spoke. "Thanks for the card."
From her angle, she could see only his profile, but it was enough; she saw the corner of his mouth tilt up. All he said, however, was "You're welcome."
Once upon a time, she would have asked him if he'd given all the others cards. This time, she just let it go. If he expected questions, he didn't show it, and they finished processing the house in a peace that had become all too rare lately.
"Hey, Brass." Sara leaned back in her chair in the breakroom, fiddling with her lunch and listening to Brass' tinny greeting on her cellphone. "Paperwork's done, and Griss says you can bring Mrs. Torono in for questioning." Catherine passed by outside the window and waved, her eyes lingering on Sara just a little too long. Sara waved back, resigned, and chatted with Brass for a moment before signing off.
She knew Catherine and Grissom were watching her; Catherine, because of Sara's sensitivity to domestic abuse, and Grissom for whatever obscure reasons of his own. It was true that abuse cases tended to get to her, but she could tell that they just didn't know how she was going to react to a possible reversal of the common pattern.
And she let them wonder.
If it was abuse, there's no way Mr. Torono was going to admit it to anybody. The idea of a man being beaten up by a woman half his size--and his wife, at that--would not go over well with most other males. It's that code they have, she thought, mildly baffled by the behavior of the opposite sex, the power plays and the displays.
It had occurred to her, on one of the slow dim mornings while she waited for elusive sleep, that she didn't often see Grissom show overtly masculine traits. It wasn't that he was not completely male; but unlike Nick or Warrick, he seemed to have no need to prove it. Of course, they were younger, but Brass, who was older, stalked around projecting unconscious, solid masculinity. Grissom didn't seem to...bother, most of the time. As though he had no need to participate in the semi-aware competition that the male gender so often had running. As though he had no feeling of inferiority. It's kind of refreshing, actually. Nice change from the macho studs who can't forget it.
And yet, there were moments when it flashed out...when anger or some indefinable stimulus moved him to remind those around him of his gender. Not, generally, with belligerent suspects; he didn't need to, he was usually secure in his position as one in possession of evidence that would support his point. But she remembered the time Warrick and a cop they were investigating got into it in the hallway, and Grissom had flashed out of the lab to face down a man younger and taller than he. With ease.
It was different, then. That had been not long after she'd arrived, when they were still easy with each other. Before Grissom retreated into himself and things started to slide.
Sara toyed with her spoon, scooping up a bit of fruit salad and then letting it fall back into the container. He was acting so weird. It was like he didn't realize we knew he was having trouble hearing us. None of them--not even she--had quite dared broach the subject with him. And then he'd taken a week off, ostensibly for a visit to relations, and had returned with a beard, better hearing, and a new attitude. None of them knew what to make of that, either.
She remembered what he had been like when she first arrived--not exactly open, but not so isolated. He'd aged since then, though she thought the beard suited him very well.
I wish...I wish we could talk like we used to. Just talk, just share things. She sighed and dropped the spoon back into the bowl.
The breakroom door swung open, and Grissom came in, carrying a paper bag. Sara straightened in her chair, a little taken aback at the materialization; she'd been so absorbed in her thoughts that she hadn't seen him coming.
"Hey," he said brightly. He smelled of the outdoors.
"Hey," she returned, expecting him to sit down. She put the spoon in her mouth so she could use both hands to put the lid on the bowl.
Grissom didn't sit, instead sliding the small bag across the table to her. "These are for you," he said, eyes crinkling at the sight of her--gaze startled and inquiring, and mouth full of flatware. "Bagels and cinnamon cream cheese."
Taken aback, Sara fumbled the spoon out of her mouth. "For me? Grissom, what--"
Already halfway out the door, he glanced back. "You don't eat enough," he said, his tone still cheerful, and then he was gone.
Sara stared after him, flabbergasted.
TBC
