HOUSE OF CARDS
Disclaimer: I still don't own anything you recognise. Funny that.
"Sara, it's me. They've sent me home, so I'm at your place, okay? Um, I guess, just come home when you can. I hope it went all right with Elliott. Love you, 'bye."
Sara fumbled her key a few times, but finally got the door open. As soon as she did, she heard Nick's voice. "Sara?"
"Yeah."
He was standing and heading towards her as she entered. His red eyes betrayed the forced smile. They halted a foot or two apart, looking at each other nervously. "Did it go all right with Elliott?" Nick asked carefully.
"No." Sara shook her head, swallowed, and blinked frantically several times, trying not to meet Nick's eyes. Nick stepped forward and hugged her fiercely. "He brought up all this - all this stuff."
"What stuff?"
"Ecklie's improper conduct charge. The rape cases. Me pulling a gun on that suspect after the lab explosion. The DUI. Everything I thought was over and done with."
"What's all that got to do with anything?" Nick demanded.
"This crackpot theory that I, being unstable - the implication was, more than usual - " Sara tried to sound flippant, but ended up choking on her words. "That I shot that man because of my relationship with you." She attempted to concentrate of the reassuring feel of Nick rubbing her back.
"He tried to tell me that, too."
"Well, he doesn't want me back in the field until I've been cleared by the departmental counselor."
"That's standard practice, isn't it?"
"Yes, but I don't have to like it," said Sara, and startled herself considerably by bursting into tears. "That's not all," she said after a few minutes, pulling away from Nick enough to wipe her face with the back of a hand. "His gun was empty."
"I know. They told me."
Sara sniffed. "It's been a really bad night, huh?"
Grissom had expected to find a message from David Elliott when he returned to the lab, but that didn't mean he wasn't annoyed about it. He ran his unit the way he saw fit and didn't appreciate interference, especially not from Internal Affairs types.
Elliott, who had already had Nick and Sara's personal files sent over to PD, wanted to speak to him regarding the conduct of members of the team. Grissom had a sneaking suspicion that someone was pulling Elliott's strings and that the standard investigation into Sara's use of deadly force was going to turn into a witch hunt. With elections in six weeks, it probably wasn't much of a stretch to suspect that the Sheriff wanted to show he had his finger on the pulse of the city's law enforcement. Grissom sighed. He wouldn't let any member of his team become a sacrificial lamb if he could help it.
He had let those personal files go only with great misgivings, because he knew they didn't tell the full story. Gil Grissom didn't believe in good people's careers being damaged for silly, careless, errors. He believed they'd learn from their mistakes and move on, and by and large his team had repaid his trust in them. What worried him was Elliott getting wind of something like that DUI of Sara's from a few years back on the PD grapevine. He'd have a field day with it.
Grissom rubbed his eyes. He and Greg had had to finish processing Nick and Sara's scene and they'd only just got back. He cursed the fact that IA did not sleep where public relations was involved, not even at five a.m, and picked up the phone and dialled. "Mr Elliott? Gil Grissom, CSI."
As Elliott lay out charge after charge, Grissom found himself glad that the man was not there in person. It was the only thing he had to be glad about. It seemed Elliott had pulled Catherine's and Warrick's files while Grissom had been in the field, and had somehow acquired almost encyclopedic knowledge of a number of incidents that Grissom had chosen either to downplay or leave out altogether, thus acting improperly himself. Warrick's gambling addiction was among the charges, although in greatly exaggerated form. The Kristy Hopkins affair had been dredged up from the depths of time. There was Catherine's relatively minor punishment following what Elliott called "the little incident" in which she'd accidentally blown up the DNA lab. Sara's arrest for driving under the influence was brought up as well, and Elliott even had something to say about the small note Grissom had added to her file when he'd removed her from the case of a girl who'd been raped in her own home and later gunned down in the driveway.
Eventually Grissom found his voice. "My people are good people, Mr Elliott. We're the number two lab in the country. There are countless people behind bars because of my guys."
"A man is dead because of a member of your team, Dr Grissom."
"CSI Sidle acted to save the life of a colleague. Without her, he could be dead now, loaded gun or not." Three times now had Nick had a gun held to his head. Grissom wondered how this would affect him.
"Dr Grissom, perhaps you'd like to explain why you allowed two people who have had an improper conduct charge lodged against them to continue working in the field together."
"CSI Sidle and CSI Stokes work extremely well together, and they get results. I was under the impression that that was what my unit was for."
"The unit must be seen to function in a transparent, professional manner. There have been suggestions of poor conduct at the graveyard shift unit in the past, yet nothing has been done. The negligence of a member of your team caused the death of a rookie CSI six years ago, yet that member continues in a career as a CSI."
"CSI Brown was negligent, and he knows it, Mr Elliott. He lives with it every day. I made a decision not to let him go because I needed him on my team. Also, Mr Elliott, by your own standards, if shooting a man who threatened a colleague with death is a crime, then I imagine you would rather not have had CSI Brown shoot to kill, had he been present at the scene." Grissom was recalling, with every fibre of his being, why it was he loathed departmental politics with a red-hot passion.
"Dr Grissom, this has been about more than the actions of CSI Sidle since I discovered the improper conduct charge in her file. It's about the whole of the graveyard shift unit and the performance of their supervisor."
"I would advise you to check out our clearance rate, Mr Elliott," Grissom responded in the cool voice that Greg, when he thought Grissom wasn't listening, had once described as dangerous. Inwardly, he was seething, and more than a bit afraid. If Elliott so chose, he could take them all down.
Sara was awake when Nick began to whimper in his sleep. Having nothing else to do they'd gone to bed and reassured themselves that they were still alive in the best way they could. Nick had fallen asleep afterwards, but she had stayed awake, watching over him as he slept. she wasn't in the mood for sleep herself.
"Hey." She touched his shoulder gently. "Nick, it's all right." He whimpered again, and seemed to shrink away from her touch, even in his sleep. "Nick, wake up." She shook him with the hand on his shoulder. His bare skin was hot and sweaty.
Nick opened his eyes and stared at her. He blinked, and groanded. "Nightmare... did I wake you up, Sar?"
"I wasn't sleeping," she said quietly, smiling at him. "It's probably just as well."
"Sara, come here." Nick put his arms around her and pulled her down so that she lay on top of him. "I love you. I love you," Nick said fiercely, and his voice broke. "Oh, Sara." He clutched at her and rocked her as though she was a child, his tears dampening her hair as he repeated "I love you" like a mantra through his sobs.
And Sara held him as tight as she could, and wished they could both have peace, and then her tears mingled with his as they lay in the dark and tried not to comprehend the reality of death.
Later, when they both slept, they dreamt of gunshots.
TBC...