Congratulations to everyone who caught the Biblical references. Yeah, a lot of that will show up in this story - - I first came up with the plot after watching Passion of the Christ - - so, yeah.
And I'm a little worried about this new strict enforcement of the ratings policy - - I've rated this as PG-13, but do you think I should up the rating to R? It's gotten about as graphic as far as violence/sexuality goes as it's going to get, but do you think I should change it just to be safe? What are your thoughts?
Okay - - Catherine's up, and then we get Warrick, then Nick. And I had fun with this chapter, so I hope that you enjoy it.
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Chapter Eighteen: Words Fall (CATHERINE)
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She turned, knelt, and photographed the white rose.
She hadn't seen the body. The body was gone long before she got there. Warrick had the pictures, and Catherine didn't have to ask how Lizzie's corpse had looked.
She didn't remember Warrick ever having to throw up at a crime scene before.
It looked like a standard rape/murder scene, and she tried not to think about when this all became her standard. The room was trashed, the drawers turned inside-out, the sheets bloodstained. She'd lifted filaments of strapping tape off the bedroom's single chair. Warrick joined her as she lifted the white rose off the bedspread and dropped it into a plastic bag.
"I was wondering about that," he said. The line of his mouth was straight and set. "Why leave a flower?"
She handed him the baggie. "Not sure. Maybe the killer was a boyfriend." They hadn't said Grissom's name yet, even to mention in conjunction with a list of suspects, and she didn't want to bring it up. The white rose's presence gave her some hope.
"White roses," Warrick said, examining it through the clear shield of plastic. "Symbolic, maybe. They use white roses at some funerals. And then - -" He laughed, almost self-consciously. "There's Matthew Flowers, the rose killer."
She shook her head. "Flowers is a tabloid phenomena. He must have spawned a dozen copycat crimes. I'm willing to bet that he doesn't even exist."
"It isn't his usual locale, true," Warrick said, "but he's not supposed to have one. Every profile on the guy says that he moves. Less likely to get caught. And when you don't have any signature other than a rose - - it's pretty easy to not be profiled."
"He's a myth," Catherine said. "And if we go to Covallo or the DA and start talking about Matthew Flowers killing Zimmer - - we'll be laughed out."
"I just hope we can get something off it." Warrick slid it into his kit, and turned to the rest of the room. "This place is a mess. You want to call it?"
"I'll give it a shot." She walked him to the front door. "Killer came to the door, knocked. Zimmer must have recognized him, because you don't let strangers into your hotel room."
"Not in Vegas."
"So she let him inside - - presumably without too much fuss, or the people in the surrounding rooms would have heard something and called the management."
The opening lounge had a distinct lack of disarray, so she let Warrick trail behind her into the bedroom suite, where the carnage began.
"She took him into the bedroom, or he took her into the bedroom."
"Did Zimmer have a boyfriend that we know about? A husband? A girlfriend? Anybody?"
Catherine flipped through her file, the sheets of paper skimming between her fingers. Photos, scans, recent addresses. A copy of the accusation against Grissom, even. Nothing about any romantic attachment in her life. "Not that I can find. So we'll assume that it's just a friend, or, at least, some kind of acquaintance."
"Okay. Keep going."
"Either way, both of them got into the bedroom. And he subdued her - - probably hit her over the head, I'm guessing, so he could tie her up and gag her before she screamed." She examined the bloody sheets. "I can't prove whether or not the hit was severe enough to kill her, but by the quantity of blood, and the strapping tape, I'm guessing that it was just a precaution."
"Good guess," Warrick said, folding and bagging the sheets as he listened.
"Zimmer wakes up, panics."
"I think that's a good guess, too."
She closed her eyes and tried to identify with Lizzie. Trapped within her own skin and her own hotel room, reliving something, if Sara was right about Lizzie being attacked before, terrified and maybe feeling warm blood work down her cheek from her temple. Or down her collarbone, from the base of her skull. The body - - Lizzie - - had been naked, shown signs of abuse.
"He rapes her," she said, eyes still closed. "Probably while she's still in the chair, but we found her on the bed, so - - he moves her. Maybe knocks her out again, or maybe she's just weak enough by then for Gil to carry her. He ties her to the bed, and, according to the coroner reports - - slits her throat. And that's where we get the blood spray on the sheets. So, the question is, why did he move her?"
"From chair to bed?" Warrick was looking at her with an odd, unidentifiable expression in his eyes. "Not sure. There's got to be a reason."
Catherine tried again to picture Lizzie, this time in the bed instead of the chair. Frightened, dazed, bloody. . .
"Can you tell me what the body looked like?"
Warrick coughed a little into his hand. "Bad shape. She was - - tangled in the sheets, and the blood was everywhere. Naked. Eyes closed.""Where was the rose?"
"Between her legs. Upper thighs, with the blossom inwards and the stem facing her feet."
She exhaled, bringing her hand to her face as if to shield her eyes from the realization. "Deflowered," she said. "According to Zimmer's accusation, she was a virgin when she was raped the first time. The killer this time was the rapist from before - - the bloody sheets, the rose - - it's all an over-dramatization. You know, a maiden ravished."
"Our killer's a drama queen," Warrick said, disgusted. "Symbolic flair."
"I don't know what scares me more," Catherine admitted. "That he did it, or that I figured it out."
"Hey," he said gently. "It's your job. I didn't even think of that. Guess I didn't do enough theatre in high school. Good going. That'll give us something to add to the profile. Every little bit helps. I'll get Greggo started on the blood and epithelials from these sheets as soon as we hit the lab again. Grissom - - I can't even think about what to say to him about this."
She tugged at her sleeve, moved her rings around her fingers. Nervousness coming out in restless motions of her hands, and she thought she'd cured herself of that long ago. Thought that she'd become the kind of woman who didn't need to be nervous, scared, or intentionally cruel, but she'd been all three in the last few days. Maybe she wasn't who she thought she was.
"I don't know either," she said.
"Everyone's been up to bat but you. This hasn't rippled you yet. You're still distant."
"Warrick, about what I said earlier - - about you and Grissom - -"
"It's fine," he said. "It was true, anyway." But his voice was colder than it had been a moment ago, when he'd been reassuring her that she was only doing her job.
"It wasn't true," she insisted, though it had been, and they both knew it. "It wasn't, and I'm sorry I said it. I was just - - upset. This has all been stressful enough, for everyone. And I'm not even in the center on this - - I can't imagine how it feels to be Grissom right now."
"You - - you said his name."
"Grissom? Yeah, I just mean, I can't think about what it would be like - - to be a suspect in all this. He could lose his job if this goes much further, and - -"
"I don't mean just now," Warrick said. He shifted his weight, foot to foot, and didn't look at her. He stared at the carpeting instead. It was floral-patterned. She wondered if the false flowers were wilting from the heat of his gaze. He looked uncomfortable when he looked up again. "Earlier," he said. "When you were reconstructing the crime, you said his name."
"Don't be ridiculous," she said, but a sudden cold fear rocketed through her. She turned to examine some evidence, but she couldn't even see what she was examining through the gauzy veil of her fear. Had she said his name? Had she?"
"You were walking through the whole thing," Warrick continued, and she wanted to turn and slap him, make him stop, do absolutely anything to just make Warrick Brown shut up and stop talking about a stupid slip of the tongue that she probably didn't even make and certainly hadn't meant, but her hands were trembling, and she was biting through her lip so hard that her mouth was wet with blood instead of cosmetics, and Warrick kept talking.
"You were talking about how he moved her to the bed, and whether or not he would have knocked her out again, and you said maybe she was weak enough for Grissom to just move her. Well, Gil. You said Gil. Not 'the killer.' Not perp, suspect, anything like that. You said his name."
She leaned against the dresser, her hip bumping against one of the open drawers.
"I didn't mean to."
"Do you think he killed her, Catherine? Because if you do, you should stop now. I'll call Sara - - or get Nick to fly out of Boston - - and someone else can help me with his. Greg, even. But not you, not if you're already convinced that Grissom killed her."
"I thought about it," she said, trying to be calm. She still wasn't looking at him. "And I know you did, too. Don't lie and say that you didn't."
"Sure I did," Warrick said, unmoved. "He's the only suspect we can even figure in right now. But I'm not the one who prejudged him in a walkthrough. So I'm asking - - do you think that Gil Grissom walked into this hotel room, raped Lizzie Zimmer, slit her throat, and left a white rose on her bed? Do you think that's what happened?"
"I don't think that," she said, and turned to see him. "But I don't know what I think."
His eyes were unreadable as he touched her lip. "You're bleeding, Cath. Go out to the car. There're some napkins in the glove compartment." His fingers came away, the smooth latex now red with blood, and he peeled the gloves from his skin. Couldn't let the samples get contaminated with her DNA.
"Warrick?"
He wasn't looking at her. He was hunting through his kit for more gloves. "Yeah?"
"What do you think about all this?"
He snapped the gloves out of the plastic and pulled them on. The warm, comforting tone of his skin disappeared under the blank white latex. For the first time, she hated them. They were too sterile, too unworldly. They made Warrick, who always looked like he understood her, untouchable. They pulled him away, forced him to look distant.
"I'm going to wait and see what the evidence tells us," he said.
She hated him for that, too. What a noncommittal answer. He was dodging the question. And even if it was professional, she still hated him for it. He didn't have to be professional around her, he just had to answer her questions. All she'd wanted from him was honesty, and all she was getting was his coldest reception. She hadn't condemned Grissom. She'd just slipped, that was all.
The words had just fallen out. It wasn't important.
She went out to the car and held the napkins to her lips, and looked at her reflection in the rearview mirror. A middle-aged woman with perfect makeup, and a bunch of Wendy's napkins held up to her bleeding mouth. Pale eyes wide with fear. She almost didn't recognize herself.
What on earth was she turning into? Who was she anymore?
"I just want this all to go over," she said quietly into the silence of the car. "I just want things to get back to normal. But I can handle this. I know I can. I don't have to let it get out of control."
When she took the napkin away, a drop of blood ran down her chin and splattered against her clean white shirt.
The woman in the mirror was crying.