On the subject of Brass - - remember, they have to at least pretend to be objective on this, otherwise they'd all be removed from the case for personal involvement. So no one can really openly sympathize with Grissom, because it'll make any evidence they collect look suspicious, especially if he's proved innocent in the end.
Sara chapter. Enjoy!
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Chapter Twenty-nine: Pieces of Death (SARA)
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The plywood wasn't giving her anything, and the telephone pole was just a telephone pole. They both had blood on them - - blood that Sara had to assume was Greg's. She swabbed some for good measure, but her heart wasn't in it. It felt so useless, so . . . superfluous. The plywood was cheap plywood that could have been purchased at absolutely any hardware store in Las Vegas, and the telephone pole was the property of the lab, not the killer. She stood with her back to the sun, trying to imagine what Greg would have looked like, pinned to the two of them, his arms raised like a scarecrow's. She shivered, and didn't know if the moisture on her face was sweat or tears.
She hadn't had a chance to cry for Greg yet. Everything was too squashed together. Warrick had barely finished telling them about Greg before Nick ran out, and then it was worrying about Nick, and when Nick had returned, it was just a series of mini-explosions, little confrontations that everyone was too tired to carry all the way.
She had pissed Nick off somehow, and she didn't know what she had said wrong. Just another reason why she wasn't Grissom's people person. Nick had needed her, and all she had done was upset him even more, judging by the look on his face - - the pained, thin, almost steely look of guilt-agony.
"Getting anything?"
She wiped her eyes before turning around. Warrick, his hands in the pockets of his blue windbreaker, staring at the pole and mounted board with an expression she couldn't readily identify.
"Lots and lots of nothing." She handed him the samples she'd already bagged and tagged - - blood and wooden splinters. She sighed. "Almost none of it's traceable." She motioned the board, not wanting to touch it and end up with the blood on her fingertips. "This is generic, and the pole's ours."
"I need you to do me a favor," Warrick said.
"I don't want to go hands-off on this case," Sara said, stripping off the latex. "I may have compromised Lizzie's case but you can't make an argument for me not working Greg's. It's important to me - - it's important to all of us."
"Slow down. No conclusions."
"I'm listening," she said.
"I've got a theory, and I need you to hear me out. Nick's not really functioning right now, and Catherine and I are - - having some problems. She's going to turn it into a confrontation. We're still not cool, okay, but we need to work together on this."
"A temporary truce," Sara said, nodding. "All right. Tell me."
Warrick pulled his hands out of his pockets and began to shape them in the air, constructing his idea with careful points and elegant gestures. He had musician's hands, long and limber. Sara watched them instead of him as he talked, because something in Warrick's eyes was too alive, too vivid. He had snagged back some of the vitality they had all lost over the last few days, and she envied him for it.
"When I called Hodges, he said that it was impossible for Greg to be dead."
"Impossible. Strange word to use."
"That's what I'm thinking. I wasn't worried about it right then - - there were too many other problems. Still are, but I've had time to think. He also kept insisting that Greg wasn't dead, over and over again. That it wasn't true. He was - - agitated, panicky."
She made the connection he was looking for. "You think that Hodges had something to do with Greg's murder."
"Not necessarily. Didn't have to be the murder he had a hand in. He brought up the evidence himself, and asked if that was why Greg died. I told him maybe, and he promised to be here in under an hour. It's been three."
"Greg," she said softly, disbelievingly. "He knew about this."
"Wait a minute, Greg knew about what? The missing evidence? He said he didn't know what happened to it." Warrick put his hands on her shoulders, not giving her a choice about whether she wanted to look at him or not. "Sara, what do you know?"
"We had dinner," she said slowly. "Grissom - - apologized to Greg. And Greg said that he was jumping at shadows, thinking that there was anything wrong with Hodges. Ecklie and Hodges. Said he turned into a conspiracy theorist over night. He - - he guessed it. There wasn't any evidence, but he guessed it anyway. He knew that there was something wrong."
Warrick nodded, his eyes glazing over, thoughtful. "We played pool. He was - - weird. Quiet. Said he'd talked to Grissom and Grissom had called him paranoid."
"We didn't get it, didn't pick up on it. We blocked it out - - we blocked him out - - because there was so much stuff going on. It wasn't important enough, so we just . . . didn't listen."
When she looked back at the cross again, she saw Greg there, arms pinioned and legs tied, dying slowly. How slowly? How much time did he have upside-down like that, dwindling, slipping? How long had he been in pain? Her arms were shaking; her whole body was shaking. She pulled away from Warrick and shuddered, looking at it. It was a mockery. Of God, of Greg, of them, of everything. It wasn't just a murder, it was destruction.
"You talked to Dr. Robbins," she said. It came out like a whisper. "What killed him?"
"Bled out," Warrick said, looking at the cross. She didn't seen any imagination in his face, though, just - - knowledge. Bleak and grim and terrible.
"You saw him," she said, realizing. "You saw him while he was still up here."
He nodded stiffly. "Robbins and I processed. They - - the techs - - they found him. Bobby and Jacqui. I was sleeping in the break room, and they woke me up. I didn't even believe them until I saw it. Dammit, Sara, who does this? Who kills like this? And why Greg?"
"I don't know," Sara said. "But we know who to ask."
"Go," he said. "I'll get some officers to back you up, but get on the road. We can't afford to wait anymore. God!" He pushed his hand against his head in a quick slap so hard that his head rocked back on his neck. "We missed it. We waited so damn long - - he's probably already on his way to - - to Mexico or something."
"I'll get the car," Sara said.
She got the address first, in the cool, air-conditioned sanity of the lab, and then walked outside again, where the sunlight was brutal, merciless, and damning, casting a stunning shadow off the cross at the corner of the parking lot. The sight of it, so crude and so mocking, was already drawing people like flies. Reporters chomping at the bit of the yellow tape, and even civilians. That was what made her actively nauseous as she went to the car, that the same people they worked every day to get justice for would clamor to see not just the bloody cross, but Greg's body.
They didn't shout anything but questions, but she heard the intent anyway:
Bring him out, bring him out so we can see that he's dead. We're still alive, so let's celebrate. He's worm-food, but we're alive. We're walking around, so bring out your dead for show.
They weren't like flies. They were another, more sinister breed of insects, questing for blood, scrounging over the surface of her scene, buzzing and chattering to themselves, as they looked for something on which to feed.
"What's your name?" someone shouted, pointing a microphone at her like a gun, simultaneously threatening and offering. Catch-22.
"Sara Sidle. CSI Three."
She was looking for her keys, almost trying to ignore them.
"What happened here? Have you identified the victim?"
"Victim is Greg Sanders, age 28, DNA technician," she said, and hated the way her voice came out sounding processed and clipped, as if this case mattered no more than any other. She had to pretend, she had to fake it or lose the case entirely, but she didn't have to like reducing Greg to the level of everyone else. No one could ask that.
One particularly brave reporter: "Miss Sidle, was he crucified?"
The air around them stilled, people suddenly quieting, not just wanting any news at all but wanting that specific news. It wasn't just bloody entertainment anymore, they all understood the implications. A crucifixion wasn't a gunshot or a stabbing. It was something wrapped in a cloth of agony and symbolism, something reverent and cruel, and the word came with its own baggage, complicated and individual to every single person there.
Quiet. Needy.
Sara knew that now, if she confirmed what the reporter had asked, Greg's death wouldn't just be any death to them, either. It would be a tragedy, gruesome and horrifying, and a few of them would lose sleep over her words and the singularly powerful image of the malformed cross in the high sun.
But it still wouldn't be about Greg for them. They didn't know him. They hadn't valued his life. The only reason his death would matter to them would be for the gore factor.
She said, "No comment."
The interior of the Denali was cool; sanity come again. She peeled out of the parking lot and they stood around the exit in a flock, watching her. Some shouted, some waved signs. POLICE SECRETS, they blared, and Sara wanted to close her eyes.
The drive to Hodges's apartment complex was longer than she wanted and somehow shorter than she needed. A longer drive would have given her time to think, to get angry, to cry for Greg. To do something, absolutely anything. She need a vacation more than ever. Not just sleep and a shower, but tears and hate. She needed time to hate Hodges for whatever he had done, and time to hate herself for not noticing that anything was wrong.
A shorter drive would have let her put pedal to the metal, to speed and get there as soon as possible, with no time to think at all.
She had too much time to think and yet not enough.
Hodges's complex was a sterile, artificial buildings, with walls that were a weird, plain mix of white and gray. The surface was slick and smooth, almost slippery to Sara's touch as she glided her fingers over it before entering, as if she could get some understanding just by the sensation. Nothing came, and after a moment, she drew her hand back. Nick once told her that people were like their houses, that either the house became the person or the person became the house over the years, depending which was stronger.
Like her old roommate Judy's theory about catching insanity, Nick's words had made her uneasy. She'd laughed it off as folksy saying, but had stared at her apartment that night anyway, wondering who was winning, and decided, after some thought, that she was. She'd painted the walls and put in the bookshelves. She had photographs stuck on her fridge with magnets that looked like different pieces of fruit. She had stamped and imprinted herself all through the small set of rooms.
If the inside of Hodges's apartment was anything like the outside, she could almost sympathize. The colors were strong and the angles were impossibly straight. It would've been hard to win out over that particular complex.
She didn't need to ask for directions, the floors were clearly labeled. She found Hodges's door, and listened before she even knocked, her ear to the satiny-smooth wood.
Then she rapped on it, hard. Once. Twice. She pounded it with the flat of her hand.
"Hodges! Hodges! It's Sara Sidle, open the door!"
Her knocks became more and more insistent, until she wasn't just hitting the door, she was pummeling it. Irrational rage, irrational adrenaline. She was going to kill the door, she was going to beat the shit out of this door, this fucking door that was between her and what she needed to get. She didn't get to stop Grissom from being accused of rape. She didn't get to stop him from being accused of murder, not even by herself. She didn't get to recognize what was coming and she didn't get to save Greg. She didn't even get to save Lizzie Zimmer, who had probably been so close to clueless right up until the time someone raped her - - again - - and killed her.
She hadn't even been able to hold onto Grissom.
But she was going to get in there and she was going to get Hodges. She was going to take out everything on this door if she had to do, but she was going to get inside.
And this is for Grissom and this is for Greg and this is for the blood and the tears and the way Nick looked when Warrick told us the way he looked like he'd fallen and this is for what I said to Grissom and this is for what Nick said to Greg and this is for the press like gnats and this is for this is for me - -
She battered at it, hands feeling like shapeless pieces of wood just attached to her wrists. Lumps. Nerveless, senseless. And finally the door gave way without a single kick, just that awful pounding.
The door swung open, and Sara could see what was inside. Her hands dropped to her sides, suddenly oversized, as if the swelling and bruising were already taking effect.
Her fingers stiff and painful with splinters and blood, she dialed Warrick.
"Change the cops to an ambulance," she said, her voice no longer composed at all but shaky. "I - - I won't need any backup."
"Dead?" Warrick demanded in her ear, so loud and inquisitive that for a second, she forgot that it was even Warrick at all, and it could have just been a member of the crowd in the parking lot. Then her head cleared, and she said:
"Yeah."
"A rose? Like Zimmer and Greg? Sara, if Flowers took care of Hodges, you should get out of there in case he decides to come back - - "
"It wasn't Flowers," Sara said, and knees were almost knocking together in a strange tap-beat, so she just sat down in the doorway, her pants rubbing against the carpet and splinters of wood. He head dropped forward, almost to her knees, as she just gave in to the exhaustion. "He hanged himself."