A/N: Here's an update. I hope everyone is still enjoying this story. Thanks again for all the reviews so far!
Chapter 8: Questions
"Hey," Sara greeted, walking over and placing a hand on Grissom's shoulder. She slid into the seat next to him at the table. Greg and Warrick were dumping their trash on their way out of the break room.
"How are you doing?" she asked Grissom, brushing a hand through his hair affectionately.
From the doorway, Greg watched this exchange, noting the way Sara was hovering around the boss; he had seen Catherine doing it, too. The young lab tech coughed deliberately and loudly, causing Sara to look his way. "You know, Sara, I'm not feeling too well myself. Maybe what Grissom has is catching." He couldn't hide the broad grin that was breaking out on his face.
Sara didn't move from Grissom's side. "It helps, Greg, if you don't look so happy when you're pretending to be sick."
He just shrugged at his unsuccessful attempt to get his share of attention from the female CSIs.
Grissom, a tiny smile on his tired face, turned toward Greg. "Remember to page me when you get the blood results we talked about."
"Yes, sir," Greg answered, still smiling as he left the room. "See you later, Sara."
"See you, Greg."
Halfway out the door, Warrick announced, "I'll get to work on those shoe treads and fingerprints, Gris."
"Let me know if you find anything."
"Will do."
Retrieving the bottle from her pocket, Sara opened it and shook two round tablets free. "Take these," she said, dropping them into Grissom's hand. She stood and stepped to the counter, examining the condition of the Chinese takeout bags. The contents included mostly empty cardboard boxes and aluminum trays haphazardly thrown back into their original bags, along with some fortune cookies, pairs of chopsticks, and a wide assortment of unopened sauce packets.
"They're like vultures," Sara complained, mostly to herself, "like they haven't eaten in a week. I hope they left us something." Finally, she happened upon the sack that held her and Grissom's orders. "Ah, here we go," she said, happily unloading the paper bag.
She turned to see him getting out of the chair. "What do you need?" she asked him. "I'll get it."
"I've got it," he assured her. He bent down to the mini-fridge and pulled out his bottle of water.
She looked at him curiously, raising an eyebrow.
"For the pills," he explained, sitting back down
"What's wrong with your tea?"
"Nothing, but I just poured this cup and I didn't think chugging pills with scalding hot liquid was the best idea."
"Good thinking," she answered with a grin.
He unscrewed the top of the bottle and swallowed the two tablets.
"Do you want to start with some soup?" she asked.
"What kind?"
"Looks like.chicken noodle."
The memory of him and Catherine on the side of the road came rushing back, and he quickly lost some of his recently renewed appetite. "No soup," he responded flatly.
"How about some rice?" she suggested, opening the white cardboard box.
"That sounds good, Sara, but I can get."
"Let me heat it up," she interrupted, ignoring what she knew was his offer to serve himself. "Catherine also got some chicken-plain, no sauce. Why don't you try some of that, too?"
"Okay," he replied.
"Just give me a minute." Spooning the food onto a paper plate, she popped it into the microwave. When it beeped, she passed the plate to Grissom at the table. Only then did she locate the carton of vegetable lo mein, empty a portion of it onto a plate, and heat up her own meal. When it was ready, she sat down next to Grissom again and dug in. She hadn't eaten in eight hours or so and she was famished.
Grissom started slowly, avoiding the chicken and just trying the rice at first. His stomach accepted willingly, growling for more, and he stabbed a piece of chicken with his fork. Warily, he chewed and swallowed, and then waited on the reaction from his stomach. The chicken seemed to go down fine, so he pushed some more of the food onto his fork and continued eating.
Sara rapidly cleaned her plate, then went back and reheated the left over lo mein. By this time, Grissom had finished about half of what Sara had put on his plate, and had pushed the rest away.
Greg came in, knocking on the doorframe to make himself known. "Sorry to interrupt, but I knew you'd want this right away," he said, handing a printout to Grissom.
He slid on his glasses and skimmed it, his eyes drifting past the rows of numbers to the identifying name in the leftmost column. "You're sure about this, Greg?"
The younger man nodded. "I even checked it twice."
"Thanks," Grissom replied. He seemed to retreat inward for several minutes, blocking out all the distractions-noise, movement, people-in his surroundings, and just focusing completely. Then he allowed it all to seep back in, starting slowly, but building like a crescendo to a final sudden blast of bright motion and jarring cacophony. He found himself staring into Sara's face and he knew she was waiting for an explanation. He didn't even realize that Greg had slipped out of the room. Finally finding his voice, Grissom filled her in, "Jo-Ann from days found a blood contribution from a male on the walls of the house we processed tonight."
She knew that couldn't be all, so she waited for him to go on.
"There was nothing in CODIS, so Greg compared the blood to the DNA of our guy from the desert. It was a perfect match."
Sara smiled, a revelatory glint in her eyes. "So Joey Winston was killed in that house before being dumped in the desert. We've got one case, not two."
"Well, there's still Nick and Warrick's B and E."
"Yeah, but our murders are connected." She thought for a moment, and then added, "But why dump Joey's body and leave the girl in the bedroom?"
"To throw us off the scent?" he ventured.
Sara was shaking her head. "I don't know, Grissom.we may have to return to that house. Now that we know it was the site of two murders, we might have to recheck the scene with fresh eyes."
"Yeah, but not yet." he murmured, more to himself than to Sara.
She was about to respond when Catherine walked in. "Hey, guys," she said.
"Any luck with Dr. Robbins?" Sara asked.
"Well, he didn't have any thermometers that were fit for human use-living human use anyway."
Grissom glanced from one woman to the other in puzzlement.
"But he did find this," Catherine continued, holding up a small, colorful strip in a sealed plastic wrapper.
"What is that?" the younger CSI wondered.
"It's one of those strip thermometers they use on surgery patients. It sticks to the person's forehead so the doctors can immediately see their current body temperature. Al picked up a couple at some convention. He thought it was a cool little gadget. He had forgotten he had them, but dug one out when I told him about Grissom. Should do the trick and it's easy to monitor, although Al said these things aren't super sensitive. We just have to stick it on."
"I am not walking around with that thing stuck to my head," Grissom said firmly, speaking for the first time since Catherine had arrived.
The women exchanged an amused look.
"You don't have to put it on your head, Gil," Catherine explained. "The doc said you chest would be fine-anywhere on your torso, really."
He looked less than thrilled by that prospect also.
"We need to know what your temperature is, Gil," Catherine insisted. "So."
He glared at her for a little bit longer, then exhaled audibly, surrendering the argument. He stood, and opened the top two buttons of his shirt. Catherine tore the thermometer package, and removed the heat-sensitive strip from its adhesive backing. Pulling his shirt aside, Catherine affixed the strip to left side of his chest, about three inches below his collarbone. Smoothing it into place, she felt the overabundance of heat coming from his skin. "You are hot," Catherine commented.
"That's what everyone keeps telling me," he grumbled.
"Now what?" Sara asked.
"Al said to wait a few minutes for the strip to stabilize. After that it should monitor his body temp fairly well-at least giving us an idea of how high his fever is."
Grissom sat back down, and Catherine joined him and Sara at the table. "Anything new from the lab?" she inquired.
"Yeah," Sara said gleefully, wanting to be the first to share it with Catherine. "Greg and Jo-Ann found blood from the house that doesn't belong to our vic. It's male-and it matches the DNA of our guy from the desert yesterday."
"Joseph Winston?"
Sara nodded. "His mother positively ID'd his body earlier."
"So Winston was killed at the house and then dumped?"
"Evidently," said Grissom.
"But why?"
Her question held the same implication as Sara's had earlier: why hide just one body and leave the other in plain sight?
"Could it be that the killer didn't have time to dump the second body?" Sara offered. "Did Robbins or David tell you how long she'd been dead?"
"Yeah," Catherine replied. "David estimated her time of death to be twelve hours before she was found."
"That should have been plenty of time to transport her somewhere else, if that's what the killer wanted to do."
"Wait, I still don't get this," Catherine began. "The killer stabs Joey Winston and dumps him in the desert, and then five days later murders a woman in the same house? So did Joey or the woman belong there or did the killer just use that house as a place to do his killings? And did he keep the woman there all this time before he killed her?" she finished; she had subconsciously inserted male pronouns when referring to the murderer.
"Too many questions." Grissom mumbled. He seemed distracted, and he had remained uncharacteristically quiet during the heated conversation between the two women. Grissom usually always had something to say about a case.
Catherine looked at him, chalking up his reticence to a combination of exhaustion and illness. "Should we send someone back to the scene to look for evidence of Joey Winston's murder?" she asked. "Maybe something we missed before?"
"Not yet," Grissom said suddenly, repeating his words from before. He voice was determined and loud and took the women by surprise.
"Why not?" Sara wondered.
"I'm waiting on the rest of the DNA results from Greg," he stated, as if that alone were reason enough.
"Grissom, I still don't understand." Sara began.
"There's another." He trailed off, not knowing how to explain it without sounding irrational. An odd mingling of fear and embarrassment played around his face and was reflected in his eyes. He tried to hide the competing emotions, but they remained obvious to the two women watching him expectantly. He gathered his breath and then spoke again, "Let's just say I have a hunch about something and I'm waiting on Greg for evidence to back it up."
Grissom could tell that his two colleagues were struggling not to comment, so he decided to add something before they did, "I know, I know. It shouldn't be about what we think or feel-it should just be about the evidence. But this is different."
Catherine and Sara could tell he was totally serious, so they didn't try to joke. They shared a glance, and knew that they were thinking the same thing: did Grissom's 'hunch' have something to do with that old case or his nightmares?
He was obviously uncomfortable talking about why he had this 'hunch,' and the women knew better than to push him, so Catherine said, "All right, Grissom, we'll wait for Greg's results. How much longer do you think it will be?"
"I don't know. I think they're probably done with about two-thirds of our blood samples." He stood up and grabbed his plate, headed for the garbage can.
"That's all you're going to eat?" Sara asked.
"It's about all I can handle for now, Sara," he admitted.
"Okay," she replied, concerned that he didn't feel up to eating more, but she figured whatever small amount he had managed to get down was good enough for now. She gathered up the rest of the food and put it in the refrigerator with the untouched soup.
"I'm gonna go do a final check-in with the insects and then take a look at the crime scene photos," he informed the other CSIs.
"Wait a second," Catherine said, stopping him. "Let's check out that thermometer first."
Grissom pulled apart the sides of his shirt so Catherine could see. Looking carefully, she read the approximate number off the strip. The line of color had spread into the orange zone, on the high end of the strip.
"Wow, Gil," Catherine reported. "One hundred three or so. When you do something, you really do it big. You hardly ever get sick, but when you do, you take it to the extreme. Al said we don't have to really worry until your temperature goes above one-oh-four, so you're right on the border." She shared a glance with Sara; they both knew they would have to keep a very close eye on him. They didn't want to force him to see a doctor, but they realized his condition was leading them in that direction. "I guess it's okay for now," Catherine continued. "As long as your temperature starts going down and not up any higher."
Unwittingly proving her point, Grissom sneezed into a tissue he pulled out of his jacket pocket. After disposing of the tissue, he buttoned his shirt back up, effectively camouflaging the thermometer strip. "I'll be in my office and then the layout room," he told them. "Catherine, can you check in with Warrick and work on the other evidence from the house? And, Sara, how about working the tire treads and shoeprints from the desert yesterday?"
Catherine nodded, and Sara replied, "Sure, Gris," as the two women followed him out of the room.
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