Autor's Note: I apologize for not updating sooner. I really do hate RL. Anyways, many thanks to my betas and to those who have reviewed. It means a lot. This has a spoiler for anyone who has not seen "Burden of Proof."
Chapter Three
Tough Case?
The afternoon was pleasant and bright. The one thing that she hated about working nights was that everyone else was on a totally different schedule than she was. Her dates, if they did not land on a day she was off, usually consisted of a forty-five minute lunch break at about two o'clock. Today was one of those dates.
Catherine waited patiently in the lobby of the steakhouse. She had overslept and thought that she was going to be late for lunch. The door behind her opened and she turned hoping that he would be walking through them. She smiled broadly as he appeared holding a single yellow rose out to her.
"Have you been waiting long?" he asked before placing a kiss on her right cheek.
"Just a few minutes. I thought I was going to be late, again," Catherine replied accepting the proffered rose. She held the fragrant rose to her nose as he talked to the host.
He was different from the other men whom she had dated in the past. He let the relationship go at its own pace instead of pushing it forward. What mattered to her the most was that Lindsey really liked him. Of course, the messages that he left on her machine before he left for work and holding doors for her may have been a small part of why she liked going out with him, too.
"Are you going to stand there all day, or do you want to eat?" he teased looking at her fondly.
Catherine started at the sound of his voice. She walked to him and gave him a kiss, "Thank you."
Catherine and her date were led to a table and they sat down. Several minutes later, they ordered their meals and chatted about the week that had passed since their last meal together.
"Tough case, huh?"
"Uhh, Give me a straight-ahead murder any day."
"Well, you wouldn't be human if it didn't affect you."
"I heard about you and [pause] Sara."
"Sara, you know. She gets very emotional."
"Are you in denial? No, that's. No, no. Way too analytical. Wow, you got burned bad, huh. Welcome to the club. I've- I got third-degree burns from my marriage. Happens to everybody. Everybody just moves on."
"Good. LetÕs move on."
"But you have to deal with it. You have to deal with it first. You have to deal with it. You have to deal with it before it goes away.
"You are the supervisor. You have responsibilities; people are making a family around you whether you like it or not, whether you give them permission or not.
"We don't have to go to the Grand Tetons together. Just every now and then you gotta lift your head out of that microscope."
Grissom woke up suddenly; he hated dreams like that. Especially the ones that used his own memories. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and pulled a grey t-shirt over his head. His alarm clock went off at that moment. He also hated waking up before the alarm. Shutting off the alarm on his way out, he thought back over the past shift.
After the briefing, he told Catherine to go home early and for once, there was no argument from her. He stayed behind to do some paperwork. Warrick and Nick went back to the hotel ballroom leaving Sara to take whatever case came up.
Sara had stopped by at eight-thirty to see if he wanted breakfast. He was tempted to accept her offer but in the end decided to go home instead. An hour and a half later, he closed the last file in his inbox and left.
It was now four in the afternoon and he wanted to talk to someone. As he dialed the familiar number, he tried to find something to eat. 'I need to go shopping,' he thought as he poured the last of the orange juice into a small juice glass.
"Hi, we're not in right now. Leave your name, number, and a short message. We'll get back to you if we feel like it."
The answering machine. 'She must have changed the message this week,' he mused. "Cath, it's, uh, it's me. I was hoping you wanted to grab something to eat, but... Anyway, I'll see you tonight."
Grissom turned his phone off and tossed it on the couch. It seemed that every time he called her she was either going out, or already out. In his mind, he knew that was a good thing given how introverted she had become during the months following Eddie's death. A small part of him felt guilty that someone else was pulling her from her self-erected shell. Deciding to not go down that road again, Grissom opted to shower and pick up groceries for the week.
Catherine's mind kept wandering back to the case. It was one of the few times that the whole team was actually working on the same case, but that wasn't why she kept thinking about the case. The method, or rather the methods, used told her that the killer wanted to be noticed. What seemed impossible was the way the crime scene had apparently been staged. Things just didn't add up; something had to be missing or hiding under their noses. She stared at her dessert, idly moving it around the plate as she mused.
"Am I boring you?"
"Wha- no, George. It's just been a long week."
"Cath, it's only Monday. If it's already a long week, maybe we should take a weekend and do nothing together." George Watson was a handsome, easy-going man. He was always quick to laugh and smile. "Tough case come in last night?"
"Yeah. I'm sorry; I just can't stop thinking about it. Guess I've been poor company today."
"Nonsense." George took her hand in his and looked at her, his blue eyes twinkling with laughter. "Time spent in your company is always time well spent."
Catherine chuckled; she could not help it. George was good for her in many important ways. One of which was that he understood what it was like to have a job that could consume all your attention at a moments notice.
"Come on, let's get you home. You need your rest if you're gonna catch the bad guys." He signaled for the check and requested some containers for their leftovers.
Two and a half hours and nap at George's townhouse later, Catherine waved good-bye to George as he drove off. She shut the door with a faint smile still on her lips. She set her keys on the table next to the answering machine. Looking at her watch, she had enough time to take a brief nap and shower before going in to review the case. That was when it hit her. 'Oh no. How am I supposed to get to the lab?'
She showered and changed in record time all the while admonishing herself for being so forgetful. The message light blinked on and off waiting to be noticed. Catherine picked up the handset and started to dial the number for a cab when she saw a red digit flashing at her. She hung up the phone and pushed the button to listen to the message.
"Cath, it's, uh, it's me. I was hoping you wanted to grab something to eat, but... Anyway, I'll see you tonight." Grissom's disembodied voice filled the silent living room. He had called several minutes after she had driven off to meet George. It was now six o'clock. She dialed his number as quickly as she could.
The phone rang three times before he answered. "Grissom."
The dinner crowd had arrived and the parking lot was filled to capacity, but her car was nowhere to be seen. The sun had started to sink in the sky by the time Catherine walked out of the manager's office. An hour and a half passed by and with every minute that went by, Catherine became more frantic. She had been so distracted that afternoon that she had just blindly accepted George's offer for a ride home.
The call to Grissom had lasted only a couple of minutes and after hanging up she started to fume. Finally, she got to the point where she needed to let it all out.
"Why didn't you remind me that I had driven out to meet you?" Catherine didn't even bother to say hi, she just started yelling at the first sound of her date's voice.
"Catherine, calm down. I looked for your car when I arrived. I didn't know you were at the restaurant until I saw you through the window." George's calm and even voice came over the line. He appreciated the fact that Catherine felt comfortable enough in their relationship to just lay into him, even when he did not do anything to deserve being the focus of her frustration. "When I saw you, I assumed you had taken a cab."
Catherine was silent for a moment. She had taken a cab to meet him several times before, so it made sense that he would just assume that she had done so again. She still wanted to blame the nearest person other than herself, but she couldn't. It wasn't his fault that she was unable to rest during the day. She should have taken a cab instead of driving.
"Hey, you still there?"
"Yeah. Thank you, George."
"For what?"
"For listening and being willing to deal with me." Catherine felt herself become calmer as she talked to him. It felt good to have someone she could just vent out to again.
"Hey, that's what I'm here for. Do you need a ride into work?"
"Uhm, no. I'm having dinner with Grissom in a little bit. I'll just grab a ride home from someone," she lied. She hated lying to him, but she was not ready to let everyone in on her secret yet.
"You sure?" Catherine could tell by his voice that he was not sure if he could quite believe her.
"Yeah, I'm sure. Thanks for offering though."
"Just remember, I'm only a phone call away."
"Okay. Good night, George."
"G'night, Cath."
Catherine's eyes were scaring Grissom. He had rarely seen the look in her eyes. The last time the look of complete loss had shown was when she had to tell Lindsey about her father. Grissom prayed that he would never see the look of devastation and fear again. "Cath? Are you okay?"
"Wha-?" Grissom's voice broke the trance that she was in. She saw the worry etched in his face and knew that he thought something was wrong. Perhaps there was, but she didn't want to face it in the middle of a crowded parking lot.
"Are you okay?"
Catherine looked up at her supervisor for a moment or two before answering. "Yeah. It's just that I really, really liked that car. You realize that this is the second time since I came to Vegas that something of mine was stolen."
"The second time? You didn't tell me you had something stolen before."
"It was a long time ago," she said softly. Sooner or later, it would have to come out, but she had a puzzle to work on. Putting on a smile she said, "Come on, I need to report my car as stolen, and that's gonna take at least an hour and half if not longer." Catherine turned around, walked back to Grissom's Tahoe, and waited for him to get in. They had two and a half hours before their shift started and already she knew it was going to be a long night.
The layout room was quiet as the two elder members of the lab examined everything in front of them. They had laid out all the facts they knew so far and none of it made any sense. All the guests had been accounted for. The night before, Nick and Warrick had examined the ballroom for any sign of a break in, or break out as the case may warrant.
Grissom laid the evidentiary report on the table expecting Catherine to say something. A moment later she suggested, "Someone could have hidden inside that- what did Archie call it?"
"A Dalek," Grissom said as he turned his attention back to the report in front of him.
'A Dalek. How on earth could a mutated saltshaker give kids nightmares?' Catherine thought. She had a hard time trying not to laugh as Archie filled them in on what a Dalek actually was- a thirty some year old relic from a science-fiction television show. Archie had assured both scientists that "Daleks were dangerous creatures that wanted to dominate time and the universe." Afterwards he sheepishly admitted that it was only a television show. He then promptly left them alone after making each of them promise not to tell the others about his confession of nightmares.
Had the others been in the room, they would have thought something was wrong between the two. However, Nick and Warrick were back at the hotel, examining the electrical power box for the ballroom in the hopes of finding something that might explain how the ballroom had been the only room that lost power. Sara was sorting through all the fingerprints that had been gathered the night before.
Grissom observed his companion for a moment or two after finishing the report. She was studiously looking at the crime scene photos. He knew something was bothering her, but he had no clue as to what it could be. They had barely talked to each other since her ex-husband's death and every time he tried to ask how she was doing, she would just give a weak smile and say that she was doing just fine and not to worry about her. Today, when she had called him, she had sounded a touch embarrassed. Usually she would explain what had happened, but this time she was keeping the details to herself. It was as if she was hiding something.
He knew that something had happened a few months earlier that made a difference in her attitude. She was being secretive, but she also seemed to have recovered from the shock of suddenly becoming the only parent for her daughter. Catherine never told him about her new boyfriend. Not that she ever really did, but she would always answer her co-workers questions or would beg out of breakfast with the team because she was meeting someone. This time the entire team had to learn about the presence of someone named George in her life from her daughter, and that had only happened two weeks ago.
"Catherine?"
"Hmm."
"How did you get home?"
"What were those fibers that you found on the Dalek?" Catherine asked changing the subject without looking up from the photograph of the victim's body. Grissom looked at her suspiciously for a moment. The answer was quick and evasive- not at all like the Catherine he had known for so many years.
"Nick said that the fibers I found were yarn."
"Yarn?"
"Yep. Dyed wool, to be precise." It took Catherine scarcely a second to digest the information. Grissom decided that the subtle approach was not the way to go as she had avoided all questions about her life outside of work and Lindsey. "So, you and George. Things going okay?"
Catherine stared at the photograph in her hand. She mentally winced at the quiet, yet blunt, way he asked about George. She knew everyone was curious about George, but she just wasn't ready to open up again. She was still hurting and wanted to keep one of the few things that were maintaining her sanity to herself for once. Keeping her expression neutral she responded, "Yeah."
"That's good." Both lapsed into an uncomfortable silence that was only interrupted by the flipping of papers and sounds from outside the room. They worked that way for another twenty minutes, each wishing that something would happen to break up the mood in the room soon.
Before it could get any more awkward in the room, Sara knocked on the door to get their attention. "Brass just called. He has another 419 at Morphy's Costumers. Says the guy was robbed- both his wallet and the safe are empty."
