DISCLAIMER: I don't own Nick or Sara, despite the fact that sometimes I think Sara's living in my head.
Even with the search warrant she feels like a spy, a voyeur, as she goes through someone else's belongings. There's a strange excitement in the feeling that in the next drawer or the next cupboard she might find the evidence she needs, but there's also almost always guilt. Only when she's sure that the subject has committed the crime does she not feel childishly bad about what she's doing.
This is one of the times she doesn't really mind.
Nick seems to think it's her emotions and her past that make her so damn sure, this time and each time there's a case like this. She prefers her ability to do her job well, although "female intuition" will do at a pinch.
It's not as if he doesn't agree with her, this time. He's just been insisting that he came to his conclusion via the evidence and she's being emotional. He apologised, but only because he didn't want to have to sleep on the sofa, rather than because he thought he was wrong. Besides, Nick hates fights and tension even more than she does, so he's forever setting out to solve the problem. After all, they have a lot of them.
Sara shakes her head. She'll have plenty of time for these thoughts later. Right now she's going to find the evidence she needs to get Lucas Donnelly for the murder of his pregnant wife. They haven't found anything in the kitchen or the living room, and she's getting a little desperate. Nick sets to work in the bathroom, methodically rifling through the cabinets, searching through things, and she goes into the master bedroom. She'll spray it with luminol later, but right now she turns on the light and looks around.
It's a bedroom, like every bedroom of every couple in the world. There's no evidence of a struggle, and nothing at first glance that looks as though it could match the ligature marks on Katie Donnelly's neck.
Sara sets to work, doing what she's done so many times before. She begins opening drawers and going through them, digging through a strangers' underwear and clothing. Drawer after drawer yields nothing, until she lifts a pile of the victim's turtlenecks and finds, face down in the drawer, a photo.
It's a picture of Lucas and Katie on their wedding day. The figures in the photo bear almost no resemblance to the sullen man in the interrogation room, or the pale cold bloodied woman in the morgue. They're happy, this old version of Lucas and Katie, he in his tux, she in a long white wedding dress.
Sara realises there's no wedding photos of Lucas and Katie anywhere else in the house. There's not even any photos of them at all. She wonders not that there are no photos, but that Katie kept this one. Was it her one reminder of happier times?
Sara stiffens, then forces her mind away. She places the photo on the bed, and continues searching.
Still nothing.
She needs something, anything to conclusively tie Lucas Donnelly to the murder.
The desparation and frustration increase.
Three hours in the Donnelly house - it isn't a home - turns up nothing that a jury will convict on. They find no more photos, and no evidence that Katie's pregnancy was even acknowledged. There's no scan photos, no baby books, nothing for the baby who should have been born in two months.
It's chilling, but it's not enough.
After two more shifts they're forced to give in. Wherever Lucas beat his wife, it wasn't in their home. Whatever he'd used to strangle her, to finish the work his fists had begun, he'd thoroughly disposed of.
There's nothing they can do. They're forced to put the Katie Donnelly case on Grissom's fish board, and release her body to the only person who claimed the body: her husband.
When they get home after that shift Sara rages and storms. She's only barely managed to control her emotions till she's home: somewhere safe, somewhere out of the public eye. Nick watches from a safe distance, and when anger gives way to sorrow he holds her tight and manages not to whisper trite platitudes into her ear.
They go to bed and try to forget Katie Donnelly and her baby, but it's one of those cases that won't go away. Maybe if only one of them had worked it it would have been easier, because not only do they empathise with Katie, they empathise with each other and the feelings won't subside.
Staring into the darkness, Sara finally manages to say what's been bothering her the most about the Donnelly case. What bothers her most about all these sorts of cases.
She saw the wedding photo. She's seen too many wedding photos, where one half of the happy couple has ended up dead at the hand of the other, and even more when one has been abused by the other. She's an expert on strangers' wedding photos, and on the typical happy couple photos as well, but she still doesn't understand how what she sees in the photos can deteriorate into abuse, rape, murder.
She wants to believe that these couples never really loved each other, that their happiness was only a sham. Unfortunately, wanting to believe and really believing are two different things.
Nick lies in silence for a few minutes after she's finished her muttered explanation. When he touches her it's to stroke her hair, and the motion is soothing, but it doesn't provide an answer. It doesn't give her what she really needs.
He figures out what she really means and pulls her close, holds her, places kiss after kiss on her cheek. Between kisses he promises her that he loves her, that he'd never intentionally hurt her in any way. Her heart - that "female intuition" - believes him completely. The scientist lodges a protest, and it's one that the rest of her can't quite dismiss.
She manages, after what seems like an eternity, to subdue her doubts and kiss him back. She's remembered that Nick could never hurt anyone, that not only would he not inflict pain on another, he's also incapable of consciously doing so. Nick has to fix everyone, to take care of them - especially her. It's enough, it has to be: nothing other than Nick's promises and her knowledge of him can give her assurance that their relationship will not become like those that become horrific crimes.
She sleeps in his arms for the first time in days, and even though she dreams about Katie Donnelly's death, her feeling of peace and contentment on waking lasts longer than usual. It's enough.
THE END