Disclaimers: see Ch. 1
Again, many thanks to Psyched, who betaed most of this but won't recognize...well, a lot of it, actually. Any errors are mine.
Welcome to Part 2. I have been overwhelmed by the response to this story so far, and am delighted that so many of you like it so much! You are very kind, and I thank you very much for the wonderful comments you've left. But here's the tough bit--I'm not sure the second half will live up to the first. The last episode of Season 4 made me do quite a bit of rewriting, and the last scene of the episode seems to change the dynamic between Sara and Grissom--but it doesn't show how. So I had to guess. If this seems to veer off a bit, please be patient; I think you'll like the ending when we get that far.
Sara took another photograph of the body on the bed. "Not even close," she commented, and Warrick, who was picking over the array of items on the dresser, grunted.
"Suicide, my ass," he agreed. "Looks like somebody drugged him up and then slashed his wrists for him."
"They didn't even do it right," Sara noted, as the flash went off again. The cuts on the wrists were straight across, rather than running up the arms. "If the vic weren't unconscious..."
"...He could have got help," Warrick finished. He shook his head. "Amateur job, but personal. Look how deep the cuts are."
Sara slung the camera over her shoulder. The battered apartment smelled of sour garbage and stale cigarette smoke under the reek of death--the odor of neglect. Reaching into her vest pocket, she pulled out forceps. "The bed's a mess," she commented, "but it looks like there might be some transfer here."
As she bent over the blood-soaked mattress, Grissom came in. "There's only one other occupant, the victim's daughter. No sign of her, though."
Warrick turned. "Did O'Reilly talk to the apartment manager yet?"
Grissom set down his case. "He's about to. She's done being sick now. You have anything?"
The taller man shrugged. "Nothing much here." His wave took in the dresser and surrounding area. "Want me to tag along?"
"If you don't mind."
"You got it." Warrick left to pursue the questioning, and Grissom crouched down beside Sara.
"What do you have?" He squinted at her hands, then fished in his own vest.
"Hair," she replied, a bit absently. "Long, possibly blond under the blood. Can you--"
Grissom was already holding out the bindle, and she smiled a little. "Thanks."
It was easier, somehow. Their bubble of time out of time in California had changed their relationship yet again, replacing acrimony with something she couldn't quite name, something fragile and as tender as a new bruise. They hadn't spoken of that time--or rather, Grissom hadn't mentioned it. Sara knew she didn't have anything to say. The whole thing was so very private--a long, long look into a life and a past and a vulnerability that he would probably never have shown her if circumstances hadn't forced it. Speaking of it seemed like a violation of the trust that had spurred him to ask her to stay that first morning. She would hold what she knew in silence, and keep his secrets.
She lowered the hair into the envelope and sealed it. Grissom hadn't moved from his position next to her, but it wasn't like before--the high-wired tension between them was absent. The attraction was still there, but it was running below a brief, warm sense of comfortableness, as though they were back at the beginning they'd never quite had, of friendship between equals. Then David's voice reached them from the hallway, and Grissom stood, and Sara pulled her mind back to business.
The victim's name was Bill Stevens. He lay still and pale on the morgue table, the Y-incision in his torso a stark contrast to his graying skin. The two CSIs hovered nearby, expecting confirmation rather than revelation.
"Alcohol and sleeping pills." Dr. Robbins shook his head over the victim's corpse. "Not enough to kill him, just enough to put him out. Cause of death was exsanguination."
Warrick and Sara nodded; no surprises on this one. Robbins picked up one cold arm. "It's impossible to determine for certain whether the cuts were self-inflicted, but my guess is not."
"Since we didn't find a knife near the body..." Warrick trailed off, and the medical examiner snorted.
"Nothing else out of the ordinary. A chronic drinker--" he gestured towards the pan holding the corpse's liver-- "and his lungs show he's been smoking for years, but nothing abnormal. Your answers lie with your killer, I'm afraid."
One corner of Warrick's mouth twitched up, a worried look, and Sara gave him a sharp glance. What's he know that I don't? But she held her peace until they had thanked Robbins and returned to the Trace lab.
"Okay, spill," she ordered, shutting the door behind them.
Warrick blew out his breath. "Geez, girl, don't you ever let anything go?"
"Not when it comes to a case." Sara folded her arms over her labcoat, prepared to be stubborn, but Warrick shrugged.
"You'd have found out anyway when you read the report. The apartment manager says that people have called in noise complaints about Stevens yelling, and his kid yelling back--and in that area that's saying something."
Sara grimaced in agreement. "What's the girl's name?"
"Madelyn--and she's his stepdaughter, apparently, age fifteen. Mom's long gone." Warrick didn't exactly wince, but Sara could see the sympathy behind his eyes. "At the moment she's our primary suspect, so O'Reilly's seeing what he can come up with on both of them."
"And?" Sara narrowed her eyes at him when he didn't respond. "What's the rest of it, Warrick?"
The other CSI sighed. "The manager said that Stevens would beat Madelyn on a pretty regular basis." He licked his lips as fire leapt into Sara's eyes. "You gonna be cool on this one?"
Her mouth flattened. "I can do my job, Warrick." She spun, but halted when he reached out to grab her arm.
"Sara." She hesitated at his tug, then turned. "I know you can do your job. Man, you can probably do it better than anyone here, except maybe Grissom. But I hate seeing you run yourself into the ground over these things."
The tension ebbed from Sara's stance, and she bowed her head. "I know. Sorry, 'Rick."
He turned his grip into a friendly pat. "Hey, no problem. Just...if you need to talk or something..."
Sara looked up again, a slow smile edging onto her face. "I'll keep it in mind."
"You do that." He let her go. "Now, how about those hairs you found?"
Sara found Grissom in Bobby's domain, bending over a pistol with the ballistics expert, but when she rapped lightly on the doorframe both men looked up. Bobby smiled, and while Grissom's expression didn't change, his eyes seemed to warm a little. Or was she imagining it?
"What have you got?" he asked, coming around the table. "Thanks, Bobby."
"The hairs we found at the scene have no DNA tags, but they visually match the samples from Madelyn's bedroom," Sara said, handing him the report as they walked down the corridor. She kept her face calm, but Grissom's eyebrow went up as his gaze shifted from the papers to her.
"What else?" he asked quietly.
Sara kept a tight rein on the fury simmering inside her, and shrugged. "O'Reilly turned up a couple of child abuse complaints against Stevens. Madelyn got taken away from him once or twice, but the system sent her back eventually. The apartment manager says that Stevens beat her."
Grissom's mouth tightened, a brief look of disgust. "Have they turned up any leads on her whereabouts?"
"O'Reilly's going to check out her teachers when school starts in the morning, see who her friends are. She might even show up herself."
"Sounds good. Keep me informed." He gave her back the folder, and stepped ahead.
"Grissom." Her voice made him turn, and she schooled her expression to easy inquiry. I'm just being a friend. "You holding up okay?"
Hidden in the ritual question were a half-dozen meanings--I care about you, if you need help I'm here, you don't have to pretend--but she doubted he'd pick up on any of them. Nevertheless, his face softened a little, from professional interest towards the grief he had hidden as soon as they'd returned to the city. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."
It was a lie, of course, she could see that, but she also saw the calmness, the lack of turmoil. Yes, he was grieving, but not unbearably so. The raw wound of loss that had gaped that first night was closing. She gave him a nod, and let him go.
Grissom shut the door behind him, his gaze falling almost at once to the small pile on his dining table. A couple of boxes, a few books--a handful of things he'd chosen to bring back from his mother's house. Loss weighed on him, and he made a weary mental note to schedule some vacation time so he could go back and deal with the rest of it.
He emptied his pockets--wallet, keys, beeper--and on impulse sat down at the table to sift through the books. One was the coffee-table art book that he had shown Sara...was it just two days before? His sense of time was off kilter, and the switch in his sleeping schedule wasn't helping. In his mind, he heard again Sara's husky request that he tell her about his mother, and he felt again the surprise that his words had come so easily. He'd never meant to speak of her; it had not occurred to him that Sara might be interested.
She was probably just being nice, Grissom told himself. Trying to help along the grieving process. And yet she'd asked intelligent questions, had actually seemed interested in his stories. For a moment he was back in his mother's living room, tasting cocoa on his tongue, feeling the warm presence at his shoulder, keen and kind.
She was such an unexpected blessing. She always has been. Grissom wondered if their involuntary trip was offering him a chance to mend their friendship. Certainly Sara was not so distant any more. And as for...as for...
He didn't complete the thought in words; it finished in brief images, imaginings that he stifled almost as soon as they formed. His hands sorted through the boxes and opened one, and he looked down at the contents, old and fragile-appearing. Fragile in looks, but a core of strength. A lot like Sara, in fact.
He snapped the box shut before his imagination could get out of hand, but a small smile played over his face for a moment. And then he sighed. It was too quiet. I never believed I could get used to having someone around so easily...but I guess I miss her.
Grissom put the box back, and picked up the top book--his mother's Bible. It was covered in grey leather, scratched and scarred from years of use, and the limp onionskin pages tended to fall open at certain places. He paged through it idly, old stories rising to mind as his eyes caught on names; Leviticus, Ruth and her faithfulness; 2 Kings, mournful Ecclesiastes; Amos and Zechariah and Matthew. He paused there, reading a bit, and his eyes narrowed over one of the parables.
When he closed the book, he sat for a long time, thinking.
See Chapter 8