A Shoulder to Lean On
Part Two
Notes and disclaimers in part one
Part Two
***
Warrick would be lying if he said he felt well rested when he arrived at the crime lab later on that same day. He wasn't normally a man who had trouble sleeping, but when he'd arrived home that day, laid down on his bed and closed his eyes, his dreams had been filled with images of Sara, her eyes filled with tears, her face drawn with pain. He'd seen her arguing with Hank, his imagination easily filling in the words he hadn't been able to hear, and his dreams had taken him into the future, allowing him to see Sara, a baby in her arms, but no smile on her face, instead tears rolling down her cheeks.
He'd tossed and turned and slept fitfully, worrying about her, and when the alarm went off, it had been a relief.
He'd showered and dressed as quickly as possible, grabbing breakfast on the run, a slice of toast, eating it in his car on the way to the lab. Once there, he didn't, as was his custom when awaiting a new case, go straight to the break room where Grissom usually gave out assignments, or to Grissom's office, to get his pick of the cases. Instead, he wandered the halls, looking for Sara, eventually finding her in one of the layout rooms, packing up the evidence of the case they'd finished the previous day. "Hey," he greeted her, coming in and leaning his hands on the table, relieved when she looked over her shoulder at him, tossing him that easy smile of hers, the same kind of smile that she used to give him all the time.
"Hey," she said, going back to piling files in the evidence box. "You're here early."
He wasn't going to let her away with that. "So are you."
She glanced over her shoulder at him again, her smile faltering momentarily. "I couldn't sleep," she shrugged, a thin line of tension appearing between her eyes, and he pursed his lips, moving closer towards her.
"There's a lot of that going around," he observed, and this time when she looked up, she held his gaze.
"You don't need to worry about me Warrick," she said, keeping her voice low, her eyes every so often darting towards the door, as if she was afraid that someone would walk in on them, or worse, be lurking outside, ready to overhear. Though, Warrick noted, this was the CSI lab, and stranger things had definitely happened.
"I know I don't need to," he countered straight away, having learned from long experience that the only way to win an argument with Sara was to cut her off before she got a good head of steam going. "And yet I find myself doing it anyway." The last was said with a wry smile, a teasing lilt to his voice, something that had her looking down at the ground, then looking up at him through her eyelashes, a blush coating her cheeks, a blush that only intensified when he continued with, "How are you?"
She nodded. "I'm fine Warrick. Really." He must have looked sceptical, because the last word was tacked on after a slight pause, and the usually taciturn Sara Sidle, the woman who would rather have teeth pulled than talk about her personal life, continued doing just that, even if she didn't look at him as she spoke, even if she went back to packing up those boxes with more concentration than the task really deserved. "I actually think it helped… talking to someone about it…" She chuckled during another pause where her hands stilled, but her head stayed lowered. "Thank you, by the way."
Somewhere in the conversation, he'd ended up standing right beside her, his feet moving him of their own free will, and now his hand discovered a will of its own too, reaching up and closing over her shoulder, touching down for a second, dropping almost at once. "Any time." She glanced up at him quickly, her cheeks scarlet, and he nodded seriously. "I mean that, you know."
"I know." Her work done, she closed the lid of the box, looked around for a pen to write the case number on it. Noticing one nearer to him, he grabbed it and held it out to her, her fingers touching his briefly as she took it from him. "Thank you," she said, scribbling down the letters, and Warrick noted, not for the first time, but knowing better than to say anything, that whoever might be looking for the box in future might have difficulty reading the writing. "But we've put this one to bed, now all we need to do is get it to the vault." She sounded triumphant, flinging the marker onto the table and moving to lift the box, stopping only at the sound of Warrick's rather alarmed voice.
"Let me get that," he said, leaning across to take it from her as he spoke, and she looked at him with surprise stamped all over her face.
"I can lift a box Warrick," she told him, but he was already lifting it, testing the weight, realising that indeed, it was as heavy as he'd thought it was, and that there was no way in the world that he was going to let her lift it.
"In your-" he began, biting the comment off before he complete it, but from the grin on her face, she knew exactly what he was going to say, and she was hugely amused by it.
"In my condition?" she asked, keeping her voice low, but this time, she didn't look towards the door, didn't take her eyes, dancing with amusement, off his. "Is that what you were really going to say, in my condition?"
He sighed, shaking his head. "Sara…"
"It's fine, it's fine," she chuckled, holding her hands up. "It's actually kind of sweet…"
He rolled his eyes. "Man, you're killing me here," he mock-grumbled, and was rewarded by another peal of giggles, one that she quickly cut off, narrowing her eyes at him, even though they were dancing, even though she was smiling.
"That's nothing," she told him, "Compared to what I'll do if you say something like that in front of the others."
She was dead serious, and he tilted his head, looking curiously at her. "You do know this isn't the kind of thing you can hide for long, right?" he asked, keeping his voice deliberately light, and she nodded.
"I just need a little while to get used to the idea before I tell anyone," she told him. "That's all. You wouldn't-"
"Sara." He cut her off before she could even finish the question and her expression was instantly contrite.
"Sorry."
"Your secret is safe with me," he promised, before turning, heading for the door. "Come on, let's get this to the vault then find out what we're doing today."
As it happened, they didn't have to look far to find their assignment, rather, it found them as they were coming out of the evidence vault. "Hey, I was looking for you two," Nick said, waving a piece of paper in his hand. "Gris wants us working together."
"Us three? Together?" Sara's surprise was stamped in every syllable, and Warrick couldn't blame her. Usually, Grissom split them up, two of them working with either him or Catherine, the odd time giving one of them a solo case, or letting two of them work together. Warrick couldn't remember ever working with both Sara and Nick on the one case.
"Kinda a surprise, huh?" Nick's teeth flashed white in his face as he fell into step beside them. "DB at a warehouse just outside of town… I got the directions here."
"I'll drive," Warrick said instantly, out of long habit, and the annoyed look that Nick flashed him made him grin. "You can navigate. Sara can sleep in the back." It was a joke, but when he looked over at Sara, any semblance of mirth vanished. She had paled considerably, and wasn't looking as if travelling anywhere was in the cards anytime soon.
"I'll pass, thanks," she said, holding up one hand, something that was supposed to be a smile on her face. "I've driven with you before. Besides, there's something I've got to take care of here…" She glanced over at Nick, who was frowning slightly at her. "You got those directions?"
He nodded, handing her a slip of paper. "Copied two sets, just in case," he told her. "You ok Sara?"
She nodded, smiling brightly at him. "Just have a call to make, that's all," she said, and Warrick had to give it to her; the girl was smooth. Only for he knew what was the matter with her, only for her face was so pale, he would have bought it completely. "I'll meet you guys out there."
With that, she was gone, turning on her heel and walking quickly away from them, and Warrick didn't take his eyes off her until she was out of sight. Once that was done, he shook himself slightly, glanced over at Nick, then took a step in the opposite direction. "You ready?"
Nick nodded, but his expression was slightly preoccupied. "Hey man," he said as they walked. "Mind if I ask you something?"
Warrick shrugged. "Shoot."
"You noticed anything off with Sara lately?"
His face schooled into a blank mask, Warrick made a show of searching his memory banks, finally ending up looking at Nick, shrugging his shoulders. "Off? What do you mean?"
"I dunno…" They'd reached the locker room by now, were grabbing badges and jackets. "She seems quieter… even for her. Ever since she broke up with Hank…"
The name evoked a snort of disgust from Warrick's lips, he couldn't help it. Nick looked surprised at his vehemence, so Warrick did some fast thinking, rolling his eyes. "Jerk," he decreed, because that much was evident, even without his new knowledge. "She's better off without him."
"No argument here," Nick agreed. "And I thought she was ok with that you know? But lately, it's like there's something else going on with her, and I'm not sure what it is."
Warrick shrugged again. "Look, if there's something wrong with Sara, I'm sure we'll find out what it is sooner or later."
He thought that was an innocuous enough statement, but whatever way he'd said it had Nick's head turning sharply to him, had his friend's eyes boring lasers into his. "You know something," Nick said, and it was a statement, not a question. "You do."
For a long moment, Warrick didn't speak, because he didn't want to lie to Nick, but there was no way that he wanted to betray Sara's confidence either. Eventually, he settled for running a hand over his forehead, through his hair. "We need to get to that crime scene," he said simply, and Nick didn't look happy at the non-answer, but he didn't call him on it either.
Instead, the journey to the crime scene passed as these things normally did; the two of them chatting about sports and time off and Grissom and Catherine's case, a dead body at a movie theatre, something that led to more than a little hilarity because neither of them could really picture Grissom inside a movie theatre. They must have delayed at the lab more than either realised, because by the time that they made it to the warehouse, following Nick's directions to the letter, Sara was right behind them, and they walked up to O'Riley as a trio, Nick taking care of the greeting, Warrick of asking who called it in, while Sara was silent, something that Warrick tried very hard not to notice and failed utterly.
"Passing motorists heard gunshots," replied O'Riley. "First officer did a drive up. Found the scene, called in the word. I hope you brought extra supplies."
"Why's that?"
They were the first words Sara had spoken since back at the lab, which the part of Warrick's brain that wasn't involved with working the scene registered. "You're going to be here a while," O'Riley told them as he opened up the warehouse door, exposing something that none of them had ever expected to see.
It was your standard warehouse, high ceiling, corrugated iron walls, completely empty, so that their voices would echo off the walls. There were two things that seemed out of place though. One was the body lying face down on the floor, a pool of blood around it. The second was the sunlight streaming in through the bullet holes on the wall, shafts of sunlight coming from every direction, landing in seemingly a thousand different places. O'Riley looked from CSI to CSI, while they looked into the centre of the room in stunned silence, and it was Nick who spoke first.
"Looks like a war zone."
He could have taken the words right out of Warrick's mouth, but the words had the effect of breaking their paralysis, making them move carefully towards the body, whether to avoid the pools of light, as if they were the vampires that Day Shift sometimes not so playfully called them, or to avoid disturbing evidence, Warrick couldn't tell. "We got an ID on the body?" he asked.
"No cash, no ID," O'Riley replied. "Just a driver's permit."
If there were any words that Warrick hadn't wanted to hear out of the burly detective's lips, those were they. "Driver's permit," he echoed dully, leaning forward, looking at the body and ascertaining that yes, the kid really did look that young, if not younger.
"Driver's permit? What is he, sixteen?" Sara asked.
"Fifteen and a half," O'Riley told them, and Warrick just about kept back a wince. "Timmy McCallum. Coroner's on his way."
Warrick glanced up at him. "Tell them to watch their step. There's casings and blood everywhere." O'Riley nodded, making his way outside to wait on the coroner, and Warrick stood, glancing from Sara to Nick and back. "Divide and conquer. Inside or outside?"
He was looking more at Sara, who once again seemed to have paled significantly, and from the way that her gaze shifted more and more to the body, Warrick had a good idea as to her preference and the reason why. So he wasn't really surprised when she promptly replied, "Outside perimeter," turning and following O'Riley's footsteps without giving them a chance to argue with her. She did, however, give Warrick a grateful look as he turned, or, he thought to himself, that could have been just his imagination.
"I'm Dennis Rodman," Nick said, turning and following Sara out, and Warrick nodded, looking at the body, and speaking his own preference, even if there was no-one there to hear him.
"I'll take everything below the knees."
The next few hours passed mostly in silence, with Warrick painstakingly marking each fallen casing, pouring the contents of the many beer bottles littered around the body into containers, marking each one neatly, then bagging the bottles, marking them too. As he did that, Nick was up and down ladders, marking every bullet hole with rods, a back-breaking job that he loved and that Warrick hated with a passion. They traded comments back and forth every now and again, loose theories and notions of what could have happened, but nothing serious, following Grissom's maxim of evidence first, theories last.
Through it all, Sara stayed outside, only coming in when both he and Nick were just about finished. In her hand, there was a long pole, which Warrick couldn't connect to the case, and nor could she from her question. "Hey guys? What do you make of this piece of bamboo? I found it on the roof."
Nick's answer was immediate, and had he been a shade slower, Warrick would have made the same comment. "Bag it."
"That's funny," Sara said, in that Sara-tone that indicated it was anything but. "Very funny." Warrick had been moving towards her, intent on getting a closer look at her, seeing if she was all right, even if the comment, and the tone in which it was uttered, spoke volumes on that particular score, but he paused when he saw something on the floor, something shiny and small, like a piece of glass. He was moving in for a closer look when Sara noticed something herself. "Did you get the hole in the ceiling?"
"You find anything else up there?" Nick asked, and that did get Warrick's attention, because the thought of Sara climbing up on that roof, walking around up there – and come to think of it, how the hell did she get up there in the first place? - in any circumstances, let alone in her condition - and he knew he was going to catch hell if she ever heard him thinking that, but he didn't really care - frankly gave him hives.
"No," Sara answered, and Warrick bit his tongue, instead focussing on his discovery.
"Got some shards of glass," he told them. "Clear in colour. Mixed with some small pieces of black plastic." Standing then, he looked around at Nick, just coming down his ladder. "You almost finished with that? What's your count?"
"Yeah," Nick told him. "109 rods."
Warrick knew it was going to be a big number; not that big though. "109 bullets?" he echoed, and Nick gave him a knowing look, followed immediately by a question.
"How in the world do trajectories occur fifteen to twenty feet off the ground? Horizontally?"
Sara was as baffled as he. "What in the hell went on here?" she wondered.
All Warrick could do was shrug his shoulders, looking at the carnage around them. "I don't know," he murmured. "But it's gonna be hell finding out."
No-one disagreed with him.
***
Warrick and Sara headed back to the lab first, leaving Nick at the crime scene, collecting up all the bullets to give to Bobby Dawson. He'd complained at first about being left to do such a menial job, but as Warrick pointed out to him with an evil grin, what went up had to come down; namely the 109 rods that Nick had put around the walls. Having come with Nick, Warrick therefore caught a ride back with Sara, and much of the initial part of their journey was spent speculating about what might have happened in the warehouse, throwing ideas and theories around, in gleeful abandon of Grissom's "evidence first" maxim. It was only when they were almost back at the lab that Sara glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, her expression suddenly serious. "Thanks for letting me take the perimeter," she said, and he shrugged, not having thought much of it at the time, save the obvious.
"Not like there was a stampede for it," he observed, truthfully as it happened; the perimeter was always the least sought-after job on a crime scene.
"True," Sara murmured, biting her lip, then looking over at him sharply as if something had just occurred to her. "You don't think Nick found it weird, me looking for the outside?" Warrick looked at her, debating whether to tell her of his conversation with Nick, perhaps hesitating a moment too long, because she looked at him sharply again, the car swerving slightly before she righted it. "Warrick?" she asked, more than a little alarm in her voice, and he sighed.
"We were talking on our way to the scene," he told her. "He's noticed that you haven't been yourself lately, asked me was it just him."
"What did you tell him?" Her voice was sharp, and he held up a hand, as if to ward off any accusations she might direct his way.
"I didn't tell him anything Sara… you know better." In spite of his words, his tone was gentle, and that must have registered with her, because her expression was one of instant contrition.
"I know… I'm sorry…"
Warrick waved a hand to indicate that she shouldn't worry about it. "I told you I wouldn't tell anyone, and I won't. But I think he knew that I knew more than I was telling him…"
He was unsure of how she was going to take that, and he was spared some reaction when she pulled into the CSI parking lot, pulled into a parking space there. Staring straight ahead for a long moment, she rested her hands on the steering wheel, arms locked dead straight, and Warrick could see her shoulders rise and fall with several deep breaths. Finally, she turned to look at him, a forced smile on her face. "It's ok," she said, and he wasn't so sure who she was trying to convince. "I expected this… it's ok."
The previous day, he hadn't wanted to touch her, was afraid that it might cause her to break. Today, he was beyond such concerns, wanting only to comfort her, and he reached out almost without thinking, his hand landing on her shoulder, squeezing gently. When she smiled in response, it was a ghost of a smile, but it was a genuine one, and he dropped his hand quickly, not wanting to push his luck. "You know I'm here for you," he said. "If you want to talk… or whatever…"
Her smile broadened, to be something much more approximating what he was used to from her. She didn't speak, just nodded, and he nodded back, and in unspoken agreement, they got out of the car and began taking out the evidence.
Despite the serious atmosphere between them in the car, once they hit the open air, it was back to normal, carrying in their field kits, shucking their jackets in the locker room. "So," Warrick said conversationally, after a look around to make sure that they were alone. "I take it you don't want the autopsy?"
He regretted his teasing remark when he saw the effect it had on Sara; her face paling, having to swallow hard as she looked up at him. Nonetheless, she gave him a rueful smile, even though it looked rather forced, as if she was swallowing lemons. "No," she agreed, nodding her head nervously. "It's… em… it's all yours." Warrick couldn't even smile, so worried was he by her reaction, and she reached up to rub her forehead, bringing her hand down to wave him away. "Go," she said. "I'm fine."
"You sure?" He knew she was telling the truth when he found himself on the receiving end of the patented Sara Sidle glare. "OK, OK, I'm going…" He made it to the door before he turned again, looked at her sitting hunched over on the bench, elbows on her knees, running her hands through her hair, pushing the strands back almost fiercely, holding it there. "You'll page me if you need me?" he asked softly, and she looked up at him, nodding tiredly.
"Go," was all she said, and he went, because he was having the uncomfortable urge to lift her into his arms and carry her home to put her to bed, and he was fairly sure that if he looked at her a second longer, that that was exactly what he would do.
Instead, he made his way to Doc Robbins's autopsy room, where they were both surprised by what they found on the victim's body; bruise marks the like of which Warrick had rarely seen, save on torture victims. Cause of death was as expected, a single gunshot wound to the chest; what was less so was the angle of the wound, a downward angle of twenty five degrees in a room with a roof angle of forty five meant that the shooter was ten to fifteen feet tall. Aside from the bruises and the gunshot wound, there were other abrasions, what Doc Robbins termed 'Boys will be Boys stuff' but Warrick couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to it than that.
He finished up with Doc Robbins, did everything that he was supposed to do, and he was fairly sure that no-one would have seen anything in his demeanour that indicated he was anything other than wholly absorbed in his work. He knew better though, knew that while much of his thinking was devoted to the case, there was a small part of it that was thinking about Sara, worrying if she was all right, worrying about what would happen when people found out about her, wondering how she would handle being a single mother, what might happen if Hank changed his mind. He tried to stop thinking about her, to push her out of his mind completely, but nothing worked, and he decided that he might as well seek her out, see if actually seeing her would put his mind at ease. After stopping at the photo lab, he even had himself an excuse to do just that.
Thus it was that he found himself wandering the halls of CSI, finally finding her in a room with the door sealed off with crime scene tape. She couldn't have announced her desire for privacy more if she had the door alarmed, and Warrick made his voice light when he announced his presence. Not that it was a hard job; after all, she was trying to fingerprint the bamboo rod that she'd found on the roof of the warehouse, and the perfect opening line came without thinking.
"This where the limbo party is?" She looked up at him and smiled, a sight that eased Warrick's worries considerably. She looked relaxed, or at least as relaxed as Sara ever got when she was working. "Can I come in?"
He barely waited for her "Yeah," already ducking under the crime scene tape when it came, and as he walked over to the bench, she continued, "Sorry, I don't want everyone in here."
He wasn't sure if that was because of the work that she was doing, and how she didn't want to explain how this related to their case, or because of personal reasons, but she was looking so like her normal self that he didn't think twice about not asking her. Instead, he showed her the photographs in his hand. "Well, I've got your one-to-ones. The tire treads, there's nothing specific here."
Sara was as pleased over that as he was. "Bummer."
There was a bright side though, one that he showed her. "But the shoe prints that you took, they look interesting. It looks like five suspects walked in, and four ran out." He'd marked them on the photographs, and she grasped the implication immediately.
"Four guilty people out there somewhere."
"No doubt." He nodded slowly, then, unable to ignore the proverbial elephant in the room, he tilted his head towards the bamboo stick. "How's it coming with your big bamboo here?"
He regretted the question when shadows seemed to fall across her face. "Well," she said, sounding disgusted. "I have black lung from all the powder, and not a single print, nothing, nada."
Warrick considered a moment, then something obvious occurred to him, something so obvious, he was sure she would have done it, but asked her anyway. "You test for GSR?" She looked at him blankly, and he realised with a shock that she hadn't tested for it, something that surprised him to no end. "The place was riddled with bullets," he added. "It wouldn't hurt."
If she was annoyed that she'd missed something so obvious, she didn't show it, just smiled. "Wouldn't hurt," she echoed, and without further ado, they got down to the business of testing the pole.
As they worked, they talked and he told her about the autopsy, what Robbins had told him, leaving out as many of the gory details as possible, though her stomach seemed to have recovered in the last couple of hours if the grin she gave him was anything to go by. "Think Nick's done collecting those bullets yet?" she asked him with a wicked grin, and Warrick chuckled, recalling Nick's face as they'd left.
"I think the bullets were the easy bit," he told her. "Getting the rods out of the walls would have taken longer."
Sara nodded, holding a swab up to the light, as if that would help her see if there was any GSR evident. "I wonder how the bullets got up so high," she murmured. "You saw the height of the roof."
"Yeah…" Warrick dragged the word out, glancing over at her, then purposely looking down at the wood as he asked his next question. "Sara, how did you get up on that roof?"
He looked at her when she answered, saw her shoulders rise and fall in a shrug, and she was concentrating hard on the bamboo too, something that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, all the more so when she actually spoke. Her voice was casual, too casual he knew at once. "There was a ladder going up the side of the building," she told him, her voice airy, but his jaw dropped anyway.
"In your-" He realised instantly that his voice was just a little too loud, perfectly audible from the hallway, and she did too, narrowing her eyes and throwing a pointed gaze at the door. Dropping his voice, he set his jaw, all but hissing, "In your condition?" at her, and a smile spread across her face, followed by a loud laugh.
"I knew you were going to say that," she said, not pausing as she rubbed another swab on a section of bamboo. "I saw your face at the crime scene; you looked like you were going to explode."
"Do you have any idea how dangerous it was for you to climb up there?" he demanded. "You should have let me or Nick do it…"
"Warrick." Her voice was strong, even if quiet. "I'm pregnant. Not incompetent." She held his gaze, long enough so that he would get the message, and he sighed, nodding once to let her know that he agreed with her. "Besides which," she continued, "Of the three of us, I'm the lightest… which also makes me the safest choice to go up there. Doesn't it?"
It was a logical argument, one that he had no answer to. "Sara…" he breathed, and she shook her head, forestalling further argument.
"Look, Warrick, you've got to trust me… I'm not going to take any risks, put myself in any danger. If I need help, I'll ask for it… but you can't keep on like this for the next few months… you'll drive us both crazy."
He chuckled wryly, because he knew that much was certainly true. "Yeah," he said, almost under his breath, and when he met her gaze, he saw a curious glint in her brown eyes. "What?"
She shook her head again, looked off above and to the right of his head. "I guess… I'm just wondering why you care so much… why this means so much to you."
Put so baldly, he had no real answer to give her, didn't know the answer himself, just knew that it did. So he can up with the best answer he could, the one that came off the top of his head. "I just want to look out for you, that's all," he told her. "I think you need that."
"I need a friend," she countered. "Not a mother hen." He grinned, so did she. "You think you can be that?"
He nodded. "I can be that."
Then, just like when they got out of the car, they dropped the subject, because they'd reached the end of their respective sections of the pole, having finally met in the middle, and neither of them had found GSR. Sighing, Warrick made what he was sure was going to be an unpopular suggestion. "Maybe this has nothing to do with the case. Maybe it was just a piece of debris left at the scene."
"No." Sara rejected the notion straight away, not even having to think about it, with the same vehemence she usually displayed when opposing having to do an experiment involving meat of any kind. "No no no no no," she continued. "I'm not quitting. No, I am in too deep."
With that, she picked up the bamboo and headed for the door, leaving him mystified, and with no choice but to follow her, seeing her walking down the hallway very carefully, the pole almost long enough to hit off the walls. "Where are you going?" he called, and she half-turned to answer him, only slightly slowing.
"Trace," she called back. "Maybe Hodges can find something." Knowing that she must really be desperate if she was voluntarily calling on Hodges for help, Warrick chose not to comment on it, distracted by how she nearly poked some poor unsuspecting tech's stomach out as she tried to turn a corner with the pole. "Coming through," Sara called, a little late for the tech who dodged just in time, with a stifled exclamation of "Whoa!" Sara didn't even apologise, barely gave him a look, just saying, "Careful people, easy…"
All Warrick could do was look at her and smile, surprised once again at the lengths that Sara would go to when she was chasing a hunch. She was completely indomitable, indefatigable, any other in- you cared to mention, and while he was amused at the doggedness with which she was pursuing this particular piece of evidence, there was a larger part of him that was happy to see her so passionate about something, especially after her apathy of the last few days, the tears and the hurt that he'd been witness to in her living room the previous day. Even if this turned out to be a wild goose chase, it was her wild goose chase, something she'd been able to sink her teeth into, something to make her forget her worries for a while, and that, Warrick knew, was priceless.
His thoughts were interrupted when the tech that Sara had nearly eviscerated came up to him. "Hey Brown, PD called. Mrs McCallum's there."
"The mother," Warrick sighed, the mention bringing him crashing back to reality; interviews with grieving relatives were never his favourite things to do. "Tell them I'm on my way."
End part two.