6- "Suspect Number Two"
Taña was pissed. Of all the people in the world, of all six billion of them, she magically ends up with the one man she had hoped would be crippled with erectile dysfunction and die a terrible death.
Okay, so she didn't really want the guy to die. And she had to admit he still was as cute as she remembers, but that was no excuse to the nasty way he had acted towards her.
Greg was pissed. Of all the people in the world, of all six billion of them, he had to run into the one woman he had finally given up on, and could never forget.
And she looked good.
Graduation day. D-day. He had to tell her.
Greg walked quickly through the crowd, his graduation robe billowing in the wind as he weaved his way through the crowds of chattering teenagers.
Then there she was. Walking towards him, as a crowd, a huge crowd, of people... his friends, stood behind her, laughing. They were laughing at her! She knew. Now she really knew.
Those faces, breaking in huge smiles, laughing at Taña, who was walking as fast as she could towards him. How could those cruel people be his friends? How could they? How could he even stand being around them? Was it really him who thought of this terrible idea? Who knew it could go this far?
How could he?
Taña finally reached him, crying, and yet her face remained focused on him.
She tried to say something, but she couldn't, but she finally could mutter one thing, the last thing she would ever say to him.
"Do you want to know the sad thing? It's not that I thought it was true, it was that I wanted it to be.."
She turned her back, and didn't even say goodbye.
And still, in the back, they laughed.
How could they be his friends?
How could he?
Grissom shook from the slight daze he was in and walked to his office, where Taña sat, completely calm, in the chair in front of his desk, as if nothing had happened.
He sat down, looking at her cautiously, as if a sudden movement would startle her into another Anti-Greg frenzy. She remained calm and smiled coolly.
"So, I have read your file." Grissom said, straight back to business, "A masters in Criminal Psychology, training at Quantico, already assisted on a stalker case. How is your field work?"
"Criminal Profilers commonly don't really do field work. They do revisit Crime Scenes, but that is long after the CSIs do."
Grissom revealed a crime scene folder from the drawer of his desk. He handed it to her.
"I want to see you profile."
She shot him this look, a look Grissom would become familiar with, where she seemed to be reading him, looking right through him.
"Of all of the crime labs I get sent to, I get the one where the senior doesn't believe in profiling."
Grissom felt a stab of self-consciousness, wondering if he was that easy to read.
She looked down at the crime scene photos, read the notes. Time passed, yet neither Grissom nor she moved. He watched her with his calculating stare, and she absorbed the photos and the interviews with incredible speed and interesting faces. One picture of a dead body could bring nothing, but a different angle of the same picture could make her face break out in an odd, almost satisfied smile. More time passed. She read over the suspect's history, more interviews.
How much time passed, Grissom didn't know, nor did he care, watching her was almost hypnotizing. He had given her a file on three suspects, crime scene photos, and victim history and crime description. The case was already solved, but he hid the information from her.
"Well," she said, breaking both the silence and Gil's strange trance, "I can only determine so much from these pictures. Your murderer is young. Inexperienced. This was a murder of what the killer felt is necessity, maybe she saw his face, maybe she heard his name, but he felt he needed to end her life for his protection. Sexual assault could mean many things, but reading suspect #1's and comparing his background to #2's and #3's, I can clearly exclude number one and three."
Grissom jolted at that. He had given her a case of a woman who was raped and killed and the main suspect was a man who lived in her apartment complex who was found with the knife in his car. Of course, he was suspect number one. The real killer was number two, the young car waxer who claimed she had lead him on, but in reality he had raped her, and only after he finished did he consider killing her. He had stashed the knife in a man's car while it headed through a car wash, knowing the man was from the same apartment complex from his parking permit.
"But, the knife was found in #1's car..."
"Planted. I don't know how, but psychologically number two is a classic case of a rapist. I would recommend checking him out first, perhaps saving you a lot of time, but I know this case is already solved."
Grissom smiled. The woman was smart.
"You pass, for now. We will see what will happen in the field."
She smiled and stood up and shook his hand and as she walked out of the door, she turned around and smiled, "I know it wasn't in there, but I can make a sure bet that your killer drove a blue car. A small car. Probably a small Toyota or Honda."
He shot her a look.
"Tricks of the trade. Humans are creatures of habit." She shut the door lightly and left Grissom to his own very confused thoughts. He searched through the other papers that he had not given her through the rest of the night and, right when he was about to give up, he saw it:
...SUBJECT bought a blue HONDA ACCORD in 1997...
He smiled and put the papers back. He will have a lot more to learn from Taña Szmerka.
Sara smiled as the Spinner Dolphins put on quite a show. It was near closing time again, and Nevina and her new daughter were showing off in an impromptu dolphin dance.
After Sara had saved both dolphins' lives, Nevina had been strangely attracted to Sara, as much as a mammal who lives in water could be to a land-dwelling mammal.
And the little dolphin, Sara, was too.
Sara was against it, but the vets along with the zookeepers insisted on naming the baby after Sara, and who was she to stop them? They at least stopped calling her "The Cop."
And as Sara and Nevina clicked in a playful way, Sara the Human felt like she was finally home.
But she still felt empty...
"White women call this the silent treatment... and we let them think we don't like it."
- "Kill Bill Vol. 2"
