Dead Like Socrates
Author – LadyLuminol
Rating – PG-13
Pairings – Grissom/Sara, possible Catherine/Warrick (I haven't decided yet!)
Summary – When a serial killer is on the loose, you don't want to take any chances…
Author's Notes – New area for me – the multi-chapter. Give me your reviews, and I'll continue if you like it. Also, beware for slight self-insertion (about two lines). Merci beaucoup to my mom – she's a professional landscape architect and gardener – for the info on out poison of choice! And the French translates to 'This is not good. I think that we're not going to like this one'.
Disclaimer (because I always forget it) – I asked for them for Christmas, but I don't see a human shaped present under my tree, so unless Santa really does love Canadians more, I don't own 'em, eh?
Sara Sidle was not usually one to jump to conclusions. That being said, it was a rare aberration of her personality that her next statement came out sounding as it did.
"You've so got to be kidding me!"
"Nope, I'm not," replied the Las Vegas Crime Lab's resident toxicologist, Canadian-born and Scotland-educated Dr. Virginia Pimmett, who preferred to be called Ginny, thank you very much. "I haven't seen this since University, and even then, our professor said that the last time it happened was a ways back in the fifteenth century. This makes me kinda nervous. You said that this wasn't a suicide, and people don't just randomly poison other people with this stuff, because it's tough to make it concentrated enough to stay in the bloodstream like this. I have a bad feeling you have a serial killer. Ce n'est pas trés bien Je pense que nous n'aimerons pas cet un."
"I don't think I understood that, but if it meant what I think it meant, I agree wholeheartedly with you." Sara quickly jogged out of the lab, muttering darkly about bilingual Canadians who couldn't keep their thoughts in one language.
"Hey, Gris! I got that tox screen back from that vic down on Fairmont from Ginny. This is definitely one for the weird files!" Sara quickly jogged to catch up with her erstwhile supervisor, her expression slightly puzzled.
"The vic is Jack Moran, by the way. I just got out of the autopsy. What's so odd about him?" Grissom patiently asked, secretly wondering what got Sara in such a state. She had been one of the more steady CSIs lately, although Grissom was more than moderately sure that it had something to do with her P.E.A.P. counseling and not a natural predisposition to being detached and solid.
"He died of hemlock poisoning. Scary, eh?"
At this revelation, it was more than allowable for Grissom to feel slightly incredulous. "Are you sure? I thought that died with Socrates." He none-too gently nabbed the paper, still briskly walking in the general vicinity of the break room to hand out the night's assignments. "Hmm, either I need to do the paperwork for a new mass spectrometer or we have a serious problem on our hands."
"I'll go with the 'serious problem' option, because it gets worse." Slamming her hands none-too-gently into the glass door of the break room, she shoved them open. Swearing loudly when her wrist cracked, the rest of the team's heads swiveled to look at the two entrants.
"Define 'worse'," queried Grissom as he made a much more calm entrance. "I've never dealt with hemlock poisoning before, and I haven't yet found a reason to look it up." He appeared to be genuinely puzzled as to why the hell someone was using tree bits to kill other somebodies.
"Whoa, stop the presses!" said Nick, his Texan twang coming out forcefully with his declaration. "Hemlock poisoning? Like Socrates hemlock poisoning? Sara, I know you want to get back at me for that last joke, but that's taking it a little too far."
"No joke, Nicky. And Gris, 'worse' means that we can't trace the hemlock itself to a particular plant or bottle. And it's tough to make it into a viable poison. And Ginny's never seen it before except in university, either. She's serious about it being a serial killer; she even switched into French for a minute, and she doesn't do that unless it's major. Her money's on a serial killer." She turned to Grissom, mentally pleading with him to agree with her. "Gris, we're in over our heads here. I don't know what we can do." Tirade done, Sara slumped into an armchair and rubbed her temples as if in the beginning stages of a migraine.
"This is not good. Nick, you've got a trick roll. When you finish, come find me here; the rest of you, you're being reassigned to this case. If this is as serious as Ginny and Sara think it is, we are in deep shit."
For once, everyone was too stunned over the case to notice Grissom broke his language protocol.