Notes: RainbowsnStars - - don't worry, this isn't going to be purely Grissom-angst. Everyone else (and Greg, have no fear) will get their share. And more than their share, probably. I'm a cruel person. Really glad everyone liked the chapter-conversation between Flowers and the other guy. Go ahead and make guesses on the identities of everyone in the conspiracy. It'll be fun. For me, anyway.
Actually, you'll probably get most of them right . . . but there are going to be a few surprises.
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Chapter Eight: The Greatest Treason (GRISSOM)
- -
Grissom went home that afternoon, shortly after he became weary of sitting in the break room, watching people watch him. Only Greg and Sara had actually come inside to say anything at all, Greg with some awkward eloquence, and under the pretense of giving results, and Sara with an intensity that he had rarely seen, under the pretense of looking for Greg. She had seemed thinner than he remembered, almost fragile, and when she had bit her lip and faced him, he had looked elsewhere.
Tiger, tiger, burning bright.
"I'm sorry this happened to you," she'd said, to start with.
He had been able to thank her, and she had, indeed, grown brighter. Eyes darker than his own had been lights against his skin, warming, shining - - but not comforting. Not comforting, at all. Nothing was comforting, particularly not light. He did better in the dark.
He left the lab to escape gazes and misplaced consolations.
The little girl with the jump-rope had gone inside. No one was watching him, and he settled his head against the cool oak of the door, letting out a strangely whispering breath against the wood. He turned the key in the lock without looking, and almost fell into his townhouse, the sparse furniture and the neutral shades peaceful to his sun-sore eyes.
"God," he said, half in prayer. "What a day."
Migraine medication. He found it, and dry-swallowed two. Second time in a day, when he usually didn't take more than two a year.
"Well, desperate times, desperate measures."
He collapsed against the couch, feeling suddenly boneless, and tilted his head as far back against the cushions as it would go. The muscles in his neck stretched and moaned softly in protest, but he kept going until all the give from the pillows was evenly spread out. He kicked the loafers from his feet and raised his legs onto the rest of the sofa, closing his eyes to blot out the sight of the ceiling. He wished the other sights were as easy to remove.
He had not raped Lizzie Zimmer. He had not.
But now that the suspicion was cast on him, it was too easy to imagine how he could have done it. Because she had wanted him, and in retrospect, it was noticeable. Her pretty face, her pale skin the color of china, and her slim hands. He thought about what they thought he had done to her, and blood rose to warm his face, and he couldn't think anymore, just closed his eyes against another migraine and the dark, bleak repetition of images: her blood, her nails on his skin, her screams. His hand against her mouth. Her face like broken china.
His damn answering machine light was flashing again. He thumped his hand against the wide blue button, and listened.
Greg. The boy sounded nervous, slightly panicky. "Grissom? Griss? Pick up, it's really, really important - - dammit." The last word was muttered softly, under his breath. "Call me. I'm still at the lab. Something's wrong. I mean, something else is wrong. And I think it has something to do with you.
End of message; then another.
Greg once more, saying, "And where's Nick, anyway? He hasn't been around all day. Has something happened? Do you know?"
That was all there was. He listened to the shushed whirring sound as the answering machine rewound its tape, and he deleted both messages. His hand hovered over the phone to call Greg - - he owed Greg something, at least, after the boy had nervously come into the break room to offer his loyalty like some anachronistic knight errant. But the pain behind his temples was fierce, and he dropped his hand down to his side, the image of Lizzie Zimmer's broken skin still fresh in his mind.
He called Nick, who would have no questions.
Nick answered, sounding groggy. "Stokes."
"It's Grissom. Are you in Boston yet?"
"Only about another half-hour of flight. I'm eating peanuts and talking to a lawyer. Is there something you wanted?" Nick sounded guarded; almost tense.
"Is there something you can't say?"
"There's a lot. Listen, I should probably go. I'm going to get some more sleep on the plane so I can be fresh for the wedding rehearsal tomorrow. Best man, you know."
A cover story. He hadn't thought of that - - but he should have. He should have been the one holding things together, but instead, he was letting it all fall apart underneath his fingertips. Like Sara. He never should have said those things to Sara when she stopped by looking for Greg. He should have kept his mouth shut, or been rude, or been anything but what he was. He shouldn't have been so weak around her - - shouldn't have:
His voice, so begging, so needy, asking of Sara what he hadn't asked from Greg, but had gotten anyway. "Do you believe them?"
Her voice, intense, focused. "No. Never."
"Thank you, Sara." He never should have smiled at her. Never should have let that glimmer of affection - - of longing - - of. . . love? - - show in his eyes, as he knew he had. "That means - - that means a lot to me."
Shouldn't have.
"Hey, man," Nick said, uneasily. "Still with me here?"
"Sure," he said, pulling out of his reverie. "I like your cover story, by the way."
"Well, it's been a long time coming. I always knew old Steve was really finding something special with Lindsey Willows, and now I know I'm right."
Grissom smiled. "Don't play it up too much, Nick. Stay low-profile, and I hope you can turn something up. Good luck."
They said their goodbyes, Nick sounding determined again, Grissom settled the phone back in the cradle and held his head in his hands, wondering what he was doing with Nick. Nick wanted approval. He wanted - - encouragement. Trust. And Grissom was giving it to him, so he was happy. Nick probably understood that he was the one who was trusted, the one who was sent east on a pilgrimage for truth. Nick was getting what he wanted.
And Grissom had given it to him so selfishly.
As T.S. Eliot had said, the last temptation was the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
He felt suddenly woozy, and sat down hard in the chair by the phone, screwing his eyes shut and throwing his head back against the cushion. This is my last temptation. This is my greatest treason. What I'm doing here is wrong. I'm doing the wrong things. Something about this is worse than I've realized, and I'm handling it wrong. I'm not doing the right things, but I don't know what the right things are, and something's going to happen. I can almost hear it starting - - a smell like lightning, a taste like burning metal . . . oh God, the hum of machinery under the ground . . . the bright crimson blood. . .
He shook his head, and it was like shaking an Etch-a-Sketch: the thoughts fled. He wasn't prone to omens, and the persistence of the images was . . . unsettling.
He should call Greg. If sending Nick to Boston on a wild goose chase for all the wrong reasons was his greatest treason, then maybe, calling Greg would . . . balance the scales. Right thing; right reason. Maybe he would feel more confident, then, in his ability to handle the situation. Maybe his hands wouldn't feel so close to shaking.
He picked up the phone again, and hesitated.
Am I afraid of this?
Am I afraid of calling him? What
am I afraid that he might know?
Everything, he thought, his muscles locking in terror, everything! What if he knows everything? What if he knows? What if he saw something when we talked and he knows now - - knows me, knows everything? What if he knows - -
Knows what? the rational part of his brain retorted. What on earth is there to know?
Sara - -
There's nothing to know about Sara, he told himself sharply. There's nothing. I don't have to care about that right now. I'm strictly entitled not to think about that right now. Nothing happened, and nothing's going to happen. Nothing ever happened between us, not ever. Not here, not last year, and not - - not in Boston - -
That was, of course, what he was afraid Greg had somehow discovered.
Boston, Harvard, 1998. Not Lizzie; but Sara. Not rape; but . . . pursuit. That he had been offered a teaching position - - forensics science - - at Harvard was no secret. That he had refused it was also no secret; the records were there for everyone to see, and he had, at least, told Catherine about it. What he had never mentioned - - what he did not know if anyone else had found out - - was that he had been carefully warned off from the position, even though he'd had no thoughts of taking it.
The administration had not noticed how he looked at the girl in the front row with the long brown hair and the delicate smile, but someone else had.
A law student, a teaching assistant, young, slim, and dark-haired, with a voice too cultured by half. Grissom had suspected some kind of British ancestry in him, but he had been thinking about other things when the T.A. had approached and warned him against taking the job offer. He hadn't wanted money - - it wasn't blackmail. He had simply told Grissom that the lecturer's lingering glances at Sara hadn't gone unnoticed, and asked that he not take the job for that very reason. Rumors could be started. Professors weren't supposed to sleep with students, the T.A. had said with a smile, and after all . . .
He hadn't asked for money.
"What do you want?"
That smile. "Control, Dr. Grissom. I take psychology in addition to law, and with so many things out of my control, it's refreshing, in a way, to be sure that I can understand and take advantage of something."
He had been the kind of young man likely to sleep with a professor for the top grades, and then report the same professor for indecent conduct, always managing to come out smelling like roses. Grissom had had enough sense to be wary of him, if not afraid - - the young man hadn't wanted anything that was too expensive to give.
He didn't take the job, and as the years wound by, and he never heard from the boy again, he knew that it had been a one-time occasion. He was never going to be blackmailed for having an attraction to his student, as much as he had worried after calling Sara to Vegas.
Nothing happened.But now something might. All the seeds were planted, and if that young man - - so determined to make lawyers deserve their nasty reputation - - was still in Boston, still circling Harvard, he might hear, and might, again, take advantage of his control. Grissom was sure that he hadn't mellowed with the added years.
He was confident that that T.A. had become a success. He'd had the right traits to be successful: amorality, and fearlessness.
Yes, he would have made a terrific lawyer.
But Greg wouldn't know about that - - that couldn't be what he had been so anxious to talk about. He certainly hadn't heard about the T.A. from Nick, because he hadn't known where Nick was, and if there had been another media squall, Grissom would have been phoned about it eight times by now.
Whatever Greg wanted, it was about something concerning Greg, personally.
With that thought in mind, he was able to call. "Greg?"
"Grissom. Thank God." If Greg had sounded nervous on the machine, he sounded now like he was almost sweating with tension. "You got my message?"
"Yes. What is it? You sound - - nervous."
"I am nervous. Something's wrong here. Listen, I can't tell you what, and I know that sounds stupid and vague, and it is stupid and vague, but it's true. You haven't seen the way they're acting. The things they're doing. They're too close. They aren't actors, and they can't keep up the fiction well - - it's what they aren't saying, and I've been alone enough today to think about it, and something's wrong with them."
"Greg, you're babbling. Calm down." He didn't have the strength for this. "Who are you talking about?"
"Ecklie and Hodges. There's something going on there."
"Greg, if you called me just to tell me that you've heard some kind of off-the-wall gay rumor about Ecklie and Hodges - - "
"I didn't. There's not one, so you know. In fact, from what I've heard from Bobby and Archie, no one even remembers the two of them being so. . . so amiable with each other. I mean, Hodges is an asshole, and so is Ecklie, but I saw them, and they were fine with each other. They're acting like they have a secret, and Hodges was pretty smug about getting to discuss it in front of me - - I mean, of course, he was, he's just the kind of guy to want to get some walkie-talkies and get code names if he ever had something going behind the scenes - - he was flaunting it, and it was making Ecklie nervous."
"You're still babbling."
Greg swore softly into the telephone, and Grissom frowned. Greg had never done that before; cursed, yes, but not at him. Not in that quiet, intense manner.
"Are you getting any of this, or should I just go bury my head in the sand like everyone else? Surrender to the fact that it might just all be my neuroses?"
"No, Greg," he said. "I'm getting it. But you have to understand - - nothing you're giving me is concrete. You said Hodges was flaunting something in front of Ecklie, and it was making Ecklie nervous. That's all circumstantial. What did they say? Tell me what they did. Give me some evidence to work with."
Greg sounded almost desperate. "Grissom, sometimes there isn't any evidence."
"There's always evidence."
"Not when the crime hasn't happened yet!"
"Greg, you're sounding like a psychic on a bad day," he said, and it came out sounding sharper than he'd intended. "You can't see omens everywhere you look. I know the situation is tense, but - -"
"But you don't believe me. But you just think I'm overreacting. Dammit, Grissom, I came to you. I told you that I was on your side, and you can't even believe me enough to watch out for them. . ."
That cursing again. That high, almost panicky anxiety.
Greg quieted without being spoken to, and the line was deathly silent. He could hear the hum of passing electricity. "Fine," Greg said. "Fine. Okay. I was just trying to help, you know that, right, Grissom? I was just trying to help."
"I know, Greg," he said, as gently as he could. He shouldn't have snapped at the boy, not when Greg was so obviously earnest. "Take care. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Fine," Greg said again, and Grissom was suddenly drowning in the silky silence of the dead line.
He put the phone down, and stared at it for a long time.
You can't see omens everywhere you look.
The hum of machinery - - of conspiracy - - the smell of lightning and a coming storm, and most damning of all, that scarlet pattern of blood. . .
You can't see omens everywhere you look.
I was just trying to help.
The last temptation is the greatest treason. . .
"I'm not going to think about this," he said into the pure quiet of his apartment. "I'm not going to think about this."
And so he didn't.