Clearing up a few things that I've missed:
Yes, technically I don't think Robbins could have knelt down. I missed that. They don't do much with his prosthetic leg on the show, and it tends to slip my mind.
Regarding the upside-down-crucifixion: I'm Protestant, not Catholic, and while the story of Peter is pretty well-known in the church, I doubt that too many people who hadn't been to church or studied religion would have heard of it - - and no, people aren't usually required to study Christianity in the U.S.
Thanks for all of your reviews - - really, really appreciated. Grissom chapter, then Nick's next.
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Chapter Twenty-seven: Little Boxes (GRISSOM)
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Interrogation rooms were like little boxes, opening one after another, each with their own surprise.
Nameless techs who went over his clothing with Luminol and ultraviolet lights. Others, who wanted scrapings from underneath his fingernails. As eerie as they were, Grissom felt safer in the boxes than he did in the halls. Passing between rooms, he saw the glances as detectives crossed their path, the slight side-step that they would do so their feet would carry them a little further away from Grissom. He had been through these rooms before as a suspect when Lizzie was murdered, and even one, earlier, when her accusation had first come to their attention, but he had never been rushed through so many, never been checked so thoroughly, and never been told so little. He was given only apologies when he asked at first, and as he grew more persistent, his accompanying officer asked if Grissom were sure he wanted to continue his cooperation. Grissom said yes, and at last grew silent, just letting them work around him and on him, orchestrating his motions through the labyrinth of little rooms.
There were no answers for him; no explanations. It was as if there were none at all to be given. He assumed that this was part of the ongoing investigation in Lizzie's death, but he couldn't understand the sudden chill in everyone's mannerisms, let alone the disgust and fear mixed with it. Lizzie had been dead two days, and unless the knowledge had just been made public, things should not have changed so drastically overnight.
He didn't know that Greg was dead until Brass, in the last of the little rooms, told him.
His reaction was nothing but unadulterated shock. Grief would probably come later, but for the moment, all he could think about was how impossible that seemed, but the reality around him continued to move and make sense, even without Greg. The table was solid under his hands, the metal still offering a smeary reflection of his face. Brass looked unnerved and stricken - - all natural reactions. Grissom searched desperately for something out of the ordinary, eager to point towards it and use it as proof that this was just a dream, but he found nothing.
Clinically, looking down at the dull reflective surface of the metal table, he watched his own expression change from shocked to sorrowful.
"How?"
"According to the doc, blood loss got him before anything else, but it was like one of those stories about a man in a burning house. You know the ones."
Grissom knew. Man runs into his burning house, breathing smoke all the way. He catches fire midway through his run, and then the house falls on him. The cause of death is a mystery. He didn't like the implication directed at Greg, so he pressed further, hoping for a more gentle clarification.
"What were the other factors?"
Brass's face crinkled, the lines becoming deeper. "We've been avoiding this discussion all morning, Gil, but I should have guessed that you'd make us talk about it. All right." He cupped a hand over his cheek, in a strangely childish gesture, as if to muffle his words, pointing them only at Grissom. "It happened in the lab parking lot." Brass pulled a sheet of laminated paper from a manila folder, stamped with a round seal that Grissom recognized instantly: a coroner's report.
Brass reeled off a list of injuries until Grissom was dizzy, his head aching with sympathy for Greg, and the gnawing grief starting to set in on him. Greg. It didn't make sense for Greg to be dead, let alone murdered, that was just not the kind of thing that happened in an orderly and logical world. Greg wasn't a child, despite Grissom's tendency to see him that way, but Greg was young - - and that youth was coupled with a kind of innate innocence that made him seem even younger than he was.
Had made him seem, Grissom thought, sickened. All past tense.
"Bruising around the ankles," Brass continued, winding down, "and - - the pierced wounds in his hands."
Grissom blinked, trying to clear away the vision of Greg holding grape juice and grinning. "Wounds in his hands? What kind?"
"He was crucified," Brass said weakly. "Hung upside down from a - - a makeshift cross. Telephone pole and plywood. Nails through his hand, and his feet tied. Do you know what that means? Is there any reason for it?"
He told Brass about Saint Peter.
"Guess someone just cast you as Jesus, then," Brass said.
Grissom stared at the table, waiting to see what his reaction would be. He had none. He was still taunted by the pictures in his head of Greg, flashing back and forth between the bright, effervescent young man with coffee and conspiracy theories to an imagined figure, cruciform, tied and nailed. His throat felt swollen, as if talking would be hard, but the words kept coming out, almost of their own volition.
"Was there a rose?"
Brass blinked, and pulled a photo out the folder and tossed it at Grissom.
It was the same white rose he had expected. The petals looked heavy, almost glossed. A J. F. Kennedy rose - - complete with a waxy white blossom and all the inherent symbolism of death. Grissom turned the photo in his hands, rotating it until he got a clear idea of where they had found the rose. It looked almost planted in the wood - - the killer had slid it through the gap between plywood and telephone pole. One of the petals had a drop of blood on it like dew. Grissom turned the photo over before handing it back.
"You want to tell me about the rose?"
"I didn't leave it there," Grissom said, leaning forward to look earnestly at Brass. "I would never have hurt Greg - - and I would not have killed him."
Brass avoided his gaze. "That's not what's suggested in these reports. Several witnesses in your lab stated that you used him as part of an experiment without his express consent - - something about a mildew infection. They also cite occasions in which you were - - verbally abusive. Hostile."
"The experiment," Grissom said, his voice growing louder, "was two years ago, and it was part of an ongoing investigation."
"And the hostility?"
"I don't appreciate this interrogation, Jim. You know as well as I do that this has been blown out all proportions. I've argued with Greg, yes, and I've said some things that I regret . . . especially now . . . but it was rudeness, not hostility. He is - - was - - an exceptional DNA tech on his way to becoming an exceptional CSI. He was a goodhearted kid with a great sense of humor, and he was the only one to see what was coming before it got here."
"What do you mean?"
Grissom closed his eyes, shutting out Brass. "He tried to tell me that something was wrong. He called me the day after all this started to tell me that he had a bad feeling that - - that someone was trying to set me up. I told him that he was being paranoid."
"Did you have any further contact with the victim after that phone call?"
"Please don't call him 'the victim'," Grissom said, and added, "Yes. Yes. I saw him a few times at the lab, and the three of us went out for pancakes the night Warrick and Catherine did the press interview."
"Three?"
"Greg, Sara, and I."
Brass nodded. If he wasn't openly sympathizing with Grissom, some glimmer of it came through in his eyes, and Grissom nodded back, getting it. Brass had to treat him like a suspect. They didn't have a choice in that matter.
"Was there anything else? Any other meetings?"
"No. I - - he left the diner early that night. He didn't look like he was feeling well. And after that, I went home myself. I didn't come into the lab after Lizzie died. No - - I haven't talked to him since we had dinner." Grissom laughed suddenly, hating the rough, scratchy way it came out of his throat. "I told him that it wasn't his problem. That it was my problem."
"I don't get it, Gil."
"He died," Grissom said softly, "because of my problem. I didn't kill him, but it's still my fault."
"God, Gil," Brass said, shaking his head. He started to say something, but then stopped. "That's all for right now. We don't have any evidence to tie you to the crime."
"I want to see him."
"Warrick? Yeah, we could do that."
"Warrick, yeah, but later. I want to see Greg."
"That's not a good idea."
"I don't care if it's a good idea or not. You can't really stop me from seeing him, not legally. I may be a suspect, but I'm also listed as one of his emergency contacts, and don't you think that getting killed is enough of an emergency to let me in there, then nothing is. I want to see what someone did to him." He was surprised by the grim intensity he heard in his own voice. It was what he'd heard so often before when he'd tried to talk to the families of victims - - the darkness that urged people on towards vigilante justice. "Let me in."
"You're listed as an emergency contact," Brass said, "but Nick Stokes is listed as the primary, and he hasn't gotten here yet. Warrick's calling him, but he wants the team together before he breaks the bad news. Legally, Nicky's allowed to see Greg before you are."
"That's a technicality that we have never applied when dealing with the families of victims."
"But you weren't a member of Greg's family," Brass said.
"His parents are dead, he was an only child," Grissom said, voice rising, "and the only family he had was on this shift. Let me see him, Jim, or I swear - - "
"Fine. I'm not going to fight you right now. It's just not worth it."
Brass kept his hand on Grissom's elbow as they trekked once more through the maze of hallways, as if he were restraining Grissom from some suicidal leap out the nearest window. The door to the morgue was cool steel, pale gray and impressive. Brass pushed the door open first, and Grissom followed right behind him, shouldering his way in. Little boxes, he thought, little rooms.
Robbins was working over an autopsy table, and his head turned when they entered. His face looked ashen. "Gil? You shouldn't be here."
"I wanted to see Greg before you performed the autopsy," Grissom said, his voice surprisingly steady. "And I know that you haven't performed the autopsy, because Nick hasn't seen him yet, and you can't autopsy on an identified body until the primary contact has been notified."
"Is this what we want, Captain?" Robbins asked, looking past him to Brass.
"He's within his rights," Brass said, "but I told him that it's not a good idea. He didn't listen."
"Show me."
Robbins moved away from the table and Grissom felt himself recoil as every muscle in his body tried to move away from what he could see on the table. It was Greg, yes, but it wasn't Greg as he had last seen him. Grissom couldn't count how many bodies he'd seen in his lifetime. He'd seen bodies skinned, bodies mutilated, but he'd never seen one that made him so inherently repulsed. In death, Greg had lost everything that had held him together in life. That fragile, intense vitality had vanished, leaving behind hazel eyes without any spark, a mouth that couldn't smile, and hands that couldn't through themselves through the air in extravagant gestures. Greg had been negated.
Reduced to zero.
He saw all of what Greg wasn't before he saw what Greg was. The blood and the bruises. The holes in his hands from nails.
And it was insane that anyone could possibly think that he could do this. He didn't have the capacity in him to destroy someone so completely. He didn't think that he could kill someone, let alone kill them so brutally. He hadn't ever liked violence, and the levels that it brought people to. He would not have done this - - could not have done this.
"All right," Grissom said, "I understand now. Thank you."
"What were you trying to understand?" Robbins asked.
"How someone could do this to him. And I understand - - that I can't understand. I just know that this happened because of me. Because I couldn't keep my team safe from my problem. I thought that it wouldn't affect them if I dealt with it alone, and now I've already lost Greg."
A different voice said from behind him, "I didn't know. No one told me until I got here." Nick was in his view, suddenly, pressing forward to look at Greg's body with the most terrible sadness on his face that Grissom felt like his own feelings had just been rendered invalid. Nick's grief was open and violent. "I didn't know," Nick repeated. "I just wanted to apologize."
Nick stared down at Greg and said nothing at all for almost a minute, the rest of them waiting.
"I was going to apologize," Nick said brokenly. "We had a fight. I was going to apologize when I saw him today. Be friends again."
His hand slid over the sheet next to Greg's hand, not touching the body, but skimming the surface close to it, his fingers trembling.
Grissom watched as a single tear rolled down Nick's cheek.
"To apologize," Nick said, his shoulders shaking. "That's all."