Glad to have the new readers!
Butterflied - - Yeah, there is something of a WCR relationship going on here, but it's not going to come up front. It's more of Catherine wanting Warrick, and Warrick knowing that. Also, they get subtext. But it's not going to be written out like the GSR.
patch-puppy - - Well, Sara wasn't really bleeding, she just felt like she had Grissom's blood on her hands, but the blood comes up in both places because they feel like they've gone against Grissom, and feel guilty about it.
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Chapter Nineteen: Wants and Needs (WARRICK)
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"Grissom, talk to me."
"I don't really have anything to say, Warrick."
He'd do anything for a reaction. Anything. He was desperate to get something from Grissom, anything that actually had some emotion behind it and not just the blankest type of apathy. He sat there, folded his hands, and stared at the man in front of him - - the man who had saved his job when it needed saving, the man who had given him second chances when he hadn't deserved them, and the man who was unraveling in a methodical fashion right now, falling to pieces one moment at a time.
He said, "I heard you slept with Sara."
He was hoping that it was the one thing to prompt something adamant from Grissom. Come on, Warrick thought, tell me it's none of my business. Or tell me you didn't. Or tell me you did. Just say it with some damn feeling behind it - - any feeling at all.
"We didn't get that far," Grissom said. His voice was still slack. "We were interrupted."
"I also heard that you weren't too much surprised by a bunch of people bursting into your townhouse and telling you that Zimmer was dead."
"That's true."
"Gotta ask you why, Griss. We need answers on this."
"I wasn't surprised to learn that she was dead because I killed her," Grissom said in a perfectly rote tone of voice. "I killed her, and I raped her, if she was raped, and I robbed her, if she was robbed, and then I went back to my house to sleep with Sara just in time to find myself accused of murder."
"That a confession?"
"No," Grissom said. "It's not."
"Good. Because a false confession could be considered perjury, if you were ever up in court. And Zimmer wasn't robbed, but she was raped."
"Of course she was," Grissom said. "That's even more incriminating for me, isn't it? And I'm going to take a stab at it and say that you probably didn't recover any trace of semen from Zimmer's body. Nothing that could rule me out as a suspect."
"We recovered semen," Warrick said, and enjoyed the start he got out of Grissom. "It's with Greg."
"Good. He'll get whatever he can out of it, I'm sure. In the meantime, am I under arrest?"
"We don't have any evidence to hold you, Grissom," he said, "and I know that you know that. You've done this job long enough to know that. And you've known us long enough to know that we wouldn't hold you even if we had enough evidence."
"That's a dangerous stance to take. A person could lose his job."
Warrick looked at Grissom's pale, emotionless blue eyes.
"Is that all you're worried about, Griss? That maybe you could get knocked down a peg over this? This thing's escalated, it's not what it was. We're in a worse-case scenario here."
"I know that, Warrick. Like you said," and that time, there was a faint hint of bitterness in his voice, "I've worked this job a long time. I know what constitutes hell on earth."
"Greg will prove that you're innocent."
"Greg won't find my semen in Lizzie Zimmer," Grissom said, on automatic function again. "But you and I both know that that won't be enough to secure my innocence. People still remember the Strip Strangler case. You could get semen anywhere in Vegas."
Warrick snapped the case-file closed. "Don't be pessimistic."
"Hell on earth," Grissom said. "Worse-case scenario."
"I don't think that you killed Zimmer," Warrick said from between his teeth. "Brass doesn't think that you killed Zimmer. Greg doesn't think that you killed Zimmer. I don't know if Nick's heard or not, but I'll give you a signed guarantee that even if he has, he wouldn't think that you killed her. And Sara doesn't think that you killed Zimmer, and I know that's what you care most about."
Grissom's face betrayed nothing. "You didn't mention Catherine."
"I thought about it. And I know you did, too. Don't lie and say that you didn't."
"You're right," Warrick said. "I didn't mention Catherine."
"So Catherine believes I'm capable of murder."
"Catherine's a little confused right now," and he was making excuses for her, like he often found himself doing, and hated it just enough to need to do it more, "and she doesn't really know what she believes. This has been hard on her, too. This thing has been hard enough on all of us."
"I told Greg that it wasn't his problem," Grissom said musingly.
Warrick didn't see how that was significant, but Grissom had sounded contemplative, at least, and contemplative was a step up from bland. "Then you were wrong," he said. "This is as much Greg's problem as it is yours. No one can help it that you let us build our lives around you, and now we're all falling down."
"I wasn't aware of this importance."
"You should've been. Sara's in love with you - - and yeah, don't give me that look, you know it and the entire lab knows it. Catherine was in love with you, and if she's going to pick someone now," he added, thinking of the look in her eyes when she studied him, "it'll just be because she knows you're not in love with her. You've got everyone desperate for your approval - - you really think that's a normal working situation? Don't you think we've gone a bit beyond that now? You know us too well. You should've realized that we need you."
"That's a lot to put on a person, Warrick," Grissom said. "Especially me."
"Tough," Warrick said. "You didn't earn it, we gave it to you. So try for a little more feeling when you tell me that you didn't kill Zimmer. And then tell me that you didn't."
Grissom leaned across the table and looked Warrick in the eyes. The apathy was gone, replaced by a dark intensity that Warrick had only seen once, but couldn't remember where. Grissom's hands curled over the table into fists and he said:
"I didn't kill her. I never touched her."
"Good," Warrick said. "That's what I want to hear. And if you can keep saying it like that, we won't have too many problems."
Grissom leaned back. "No, Warrick. I think we're going to have problems no matter what."
"What do you want us to do?" he asked, not knowing how to respond to that. Pessimism was one thing - - he knew how to combat Grissom's bad attitude well enough - - but that dark, out-of-nowhere foreboding in Grissom's voice was something he hadn't seen coming.
Suddenly, he remembered where he'd seen that intensity before. Greg, of course, when they were shooting pool. Greg had made his shots that way, leaning over the table, not looking like the skinny DNA tech, not looking vulnerable or quirky, but just looking focused, all that spastic energy channeled into a single strike of the cue.
But Greg had tapped the eight ball in before he'd meant to, and Warrick didn't want Grissom anywhere near any kind of eight ball.
"You're in charge of the unit," Grissom said. "Assign the cases. You and Catherine can keep the Zimmer case, if you want."
"You sure you want Cath on it?"
"Yes," Grissom said sarcastically. "Because I'm sure that it would really be confirming my innocence to have it get out that I took the person who doubted me off the case. Yes, the press would enjoy that. And of course it would play up well in court."
"You're not going to go to court," Warrick said quietly. "Greg can prove that you're not guilty."
"And if Greg can't? If you can't find anything?"
Warrick ignored him, mostly because he didn't have an answer to that question. If there was nothing to be found, then the case would go cold, or Grissom would be arrested. If the case went cold, then Grissom still might be fired due to the veil of suspicion that would always hang over him unless they found the real killer. And if Grissom were fired, then nothing would be able to hold them together. Because they all really had built their lives around Grissom, they were dependent on him for love or approval. It was all in Sara's smile, Greg's eyes, Catherine's voice, Nick's movements, and his own thoughts. If Grissom went down, they'd all go down.
There wouldn't be a way out.
It would end the world, he thought. There'd be nothing left.
"We'll find something," he said, and then a thought occurred to him. "Hey, Grissom - - do you know anything about white roses?"
"They symbolize death," Grissom said. "And they were used prominently by Matthew Flowers, the obviously-named rose killer."
"Catherine says he was a myth."
He smiled. Catherine may have said that Flowers was just the product of the tabloids, but Grissom had brought him up with little prompting. They both thought that Flowers was real - - and then his mouth tightened. There it was again - - needing Grissom's recognition, needing his agreement. He used to be self-sustaining. He didn't use to need anyone. But Grissom, who still didn't need anyone, had somehow become valuable.
"That's a theory," Grissom said, unaware of Warrick's thoughts. "But I've studied a few of the rose cases, and they seem valid enough. It's likely that a few of them were copy-cats, but in the cases where DNA or fingerprints were left behind, they all match up to the same person."
"Flowers?"
"That's the name we know he's always used," Grissom said. "But Flowers is probably an alias, and his DNA isn't traceable. It just matches up to the other cases. There's never been any way to find him. Why the question about the roses?"
"We found a white rose at the scene," Warrick said, and dug through the file to pull out one of his photographs. He slid it across the table. "Between Zimmer's thighs."
"Deflowered," he said. "It's almost a pun." Grissom pushed the photo away without studying it.
"That's what Catherine said, yeah."
"Keep Catherine on the case. Keep Greg on the evidence. And tell Sara - - tell Sara that I'm sorry. I shouldn't have taken advantage of her like that."
"Will do," he said, standing. He offered his hand to Grissom, as if they'd just met. Grissom looked at him for a second, surprised, and then shook it. He clenched Grissom's fingers as hard as he could. "Don't go away on us, man." He was surprised by the desperation in his voice. "Stay here. We need you."
"I'll do the best I can," Grissom said, with a small smile. "Can I leave now?"
"Yeah. As acting supervisor, I'm giving you some time off."
"I'll take it," Grissom said. "Watch out for them, okay, Warrick? If Flowers, or someone emulating Flowers, is doing this, then it's not likely to stop soon. Matthew Flowers has a history of going overboard, and I don't want anyone else getting hurt. So tell everyone to be careful."
"We'll watch our backs. You watch yours."
"I don't want to look at my back right now," Grissom said. "There's already a knife sticking out of it."
"What do you mean?"
"You couldn't do something like this without an inside man," Grissom said simply. "Someone had to know when the investigation was wrapping up on the rape charge, and someone had to know me well enough to understand where to hit, and how to hit the hardest." He smiled wearily. "I'm starting to think that Greg is right," he added softly. "This has gone further than I thought it would - - and someone meant for this to happen. Someone I trusted."
"That's impossible," Warrick said coldly. "We wouldn't do that to you."
"Nothing's impossible, Warrick."
It was his confidence that made Warrick stand up in disgust. Grissom had moved in seconds from asking Warrick to protect the team from telling Warrick that someone on the team was working against them. And he didn't doubt it in the slightest - - Grissom actually believed it. Grissom, the center of their universe, believed that one of them was some kind of - - saboteur. Which was ridiculous, because it was impossible. They couldn't turn against Grissom anymore than the earth could just decide to spin away from the sun.
"You're looking for a traitor, Grissom? Maybe you're the one who's against us." He slammed his palm against the table. "We need you."
"I know," Grissom said.