12- "Coffee and Geometry"


Taña returned to reading Livingston's laptop, trying to find a clue of his death. Blunt force trauma, a unique body dump site. Perhaps a personal necessity killing, perhaps he was pressuring someone and in the heat of the moment the other person felt they needed to kill him and improvised with some kind of object that was within reach. It could have also been an accident, but the body dumping proves slight malicious intent.

After scanning his recent internet sites visited and checking his email, she decided to open his Word Pad and see how is novel in writing had been going. There were many stories on there, many just mere beginnings of a novel, but the one that stuck out was this suspense novel he had been writing and was pretty far into.

She began reading and two hours later finally finished.

Greg poked his head into the office. "Is there a reason a 'déjà vu' just paged me?"

Taña nodded and gestured him over, "This novel is bizarre, Greg. It bares a strange, eerie resemblance to his own death."

"Really?" Greg said, leaning over her to get a good look at the laptop, his head coming over her shoulder to read.

"So, the main character in this story is a married author, right? On his second marriage, happy and all of that is flushed down the crapper when they go on a trip with his slightly emotionally estranged son to a... get this... zoo."

Greg raised an eyebrow.

"Now, his son is in his late teens, so he obviously doesn't dig the whole 'zoo' thing, but is struck by an attractive zoo-keeper. The funny thing is, the hot shot daddy author is too, causing an even deeper rift in the family. Now, the story is told by the perspective of the author man, who strongly suspects a relationship between his son and the attractive, always remains nameless zookeeper, so when he finally goes to confront his son and this zookeeper, he winds up falling even further in love with the zookeeper, and by that I mean about a five page love scene. You following me so far?"

"Classic love-triangle with a 'close encounters of the furred kind' twist. Sure, I'm following." Greg said, leaning in closer for the ending as Taña shot him a look but didn't say anything.

"So, he's desperately in love with this unknown zookeeper, but his son is in love too, but not to who he thinks... then, the story takes an odd turn."

"What's that?"

"So, something changes the zookeeper halfway through their love tryst, and she starts blabbing about how the man she really loves actually loves someone else."

"So, okay: son and father fall in love with zookeeper, son gets it on with zookeeper, then dad gets it on with the zookeeper, then zookeeper admits to dad that she is really just in love with the son, who loves someone else."

Taña shook her head, "We never find who her love is. He died before he could write the end. And get this, the last sentence is: 'My Lady walked away, leaving me for a man I could never know, and an anger that filled me with such a fury that I knew I would find this man, and I would kill him, or myself.' Now, this sentence was written not like any of the rest of the story, and words were spelled wrong, as if he was so angry not to bother to spell check."

Greg whistled, "Like, maybe he started to write a story that ran slightly adjacent to his life, but then..."

Taña finished his sentence for him, "Maybe he began to not know which was which."

"A twisted reality." They both stated at the exact same time, then both said, "Oh, shut up."

"Hey kids," Catherine said as she stood at the door, with an eyebrow lifted. "Sorry to interrupt."

They shot each other a look and realized the position they were in, really close, their lips were only two centimeters apart, smiling because they just hit a slight break on their case. That didn't look good.

They repelled away from each other like the wrong ends of magnets, both stammering, "No, no, no, nonononono."

Catherine smiled in a coy way, "Uh-huh. Right." Her voice was so thick with sarcasm that it seemed to drip onto the floor. "So, what did you two find?"

"His novel is strangely reminiscent to his life... and death."

Catherine looked pensive, "I was just going to head over to interview the wife again, about an odd bank bill. Who wants to come?"

Greg jumped up and walked towards her and didn't even immediately notice that Taña did not follow him. "What are you doing?"

"I am going to stay here and try to read more in on the unfinished book. Jack Livingston had some dark, dark thoughts."


The interviews gave them no more information, and the days slowly passed. Taña continued to believe the novel held some sort of hidden clue, and read it onto the verge of memorization.

Greg read and reread the files, trying to find a loophole. It was a while later, a month actually, when the case had to be closed, and another month after that Greg and Taña finally began to think differently.

Actually, it was just Taña. Greg was on break, drinking his coffee and reading yet another surfing magazine when Taña ran into the room, but she had done it so silently that Greg was startled by her saying: "I got it!" He spilled his drink all over his shirt.

He moaned in pain as he stood up, steaming, emotionally and physically.

"It burns!" He grunted, and Taña said, "Okay, I don't want to know about your numerous STD's, Greg." He rolled his eyes. "You never quit, do you?"

She smiled, "Heck no. Where's the fun in that?"

Greg paused, then said, "You know... you're going to make one lucky man very, very confused one day."

She winked, "So, I caught a break in the Livingston case." She spun around to grab file behind her, and when she whipped around Greg was blotting his shirt off with a napkin.

She rolled her eyes and walked towards him and said, "That's not going to work. Coffee stains. Your teeth, your clothes, your breath, coffee stains everything. I never will drink the stuff, even though it is almost a regulation in the bureau that you have to."

He continued to blot, and Taña continued on about the case, and he continued to not listen to her.

"So, I rented some of Livingston's books from the library and stuff, mostly romance novels, very boring and more graphic than I thought. Anyhow, I- are you listening?"

Greg was still blotting. He grunted an answer, clearly showing he wasn't listening at all. Taña narrowed her eyes at him, but he definitely didn't take the hint. Her patience ran dry.

"Jus take the shirt off!" She snarled at Greg, who shot her a surprised look.

"Oh, baby, who told you I dig the dominate type?" Greg smirked back, still blotting and irritating Taña more because he wasn't listening to her, so she walked over to him and started to grab his shirt.

"Excuse me, what are you doing?"

"I'm taking your shirt off."

"Might I ask why?"

"Because now this room smells like sweat and coffee and it is giving me a headache, and because you are using your one brain cell to blot your shirt and not to listen to me."

In one fluid motion, she slid his shirt off his torso and threw it behind her.

Grissom was walking over to the break room, and passed by a window just as Taña was pulling Greg's shirt off. He did a quick double take and stopped in his tracks.

"Do they teach you this stuff in the FBI, or are you just naturally good at turning me on?"

"Greg, you are built just like a DNA strand: skinny and boney."

"Ouch. Science insults. Well, you're built like a ribosome. Skinny on top, wide on the bottom. Y'know, like a schmoo."

"That's not true."

"I know, but how many cell organelles can you compare to a human body?"

Grissom decided to skip coffee that break.


Greg, dressed in a lab coat and his stained jeans, sat across from her and said, "So, what is so important that you interrupt my coffee break to rip my shirt off?"

"So, I was reading the unfinished novel when I started to think like an author. This was a classic love triangle, but it was actually a love quadrilateral because the unknown zookeeper's love was in love with someone else."

"A love quadrilateral? Why don't you just say square?"

"Why do you care?"

"Nothing. So, tell me more of this love parallelogram." He smiled in a cocky way and allowed her to continue.

"Anyways, what I said before, I had rented his books and profiled him sort of off of them. In all his stories, he always made a simple plot twist but made it seem like it wasn't, then I realized something: we should compare this to his life. Zookeeper; wife, Vivica; and son, Jeremy. Then, it hit me like a drunk driver."

"What?"

"On the second page of the novel, like it was staring at me the entire time. It said Jeremy was from his first wife, and that makes the interview make sense."

"What interview?"

"The real reason I had purposefully separated Jeremy and Vivica during the first interview was because Jeremy had put his hand on her thigh while trying to comfort her. Not a very son-like thing to do, but I immediately dismissed it because I thought she was his mother, but," she held up a certificate for divorce photocopy, "I found this baby staring at me and I realized something else, too."

Greg was definitely getting interested, "What?"

"Vivca Livingston is only 29 years old. I just thought she was fifty with some silicon and internal staples, when it turns out she's just young. So, I'm thinking the zookeeper really loved the son, but the son loves the mother!"

She sat there proudly, like she had just won a contest. "So, four vertexes on the love quadrilateral gives us four suspects, and the zookeeper is the obvious choice because of the dump site, but we need to go interview Jeremy first, to find out who the zookeeper is."

Greg just sat there, staring at her, "And, you are basing all of these suspicions on...?"

"A pat on the thigh."

Greg smiled, "I thought it was all based on geometry."

She looked at him, annoyed, and the stare she gave him made him clear his throat and say, "Okay, let's go interview!"


Sara awoke the next day, the sun in her face, feeling very hung over.

Then, the night's events crashed onto her as she looked to her left, where Gil slept soundly.

Shit.


"Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night."

-Rodney Dangerfield