Disclaimer: Do people actually read these things?
A/N: Who would have guessed a fourteen-year-old brain would attract so much praise for fiction Thanks much, everyone! And BTW, sorry I forgot to put the scene change markers in the last chapter.
To rokothepas: Alas, Grissom in his youth, the wonders of season 1 Grissom-ness ... so few gray hairs ;;
Chapter 4.
Sara and Grissom sat in silence, Grissom staring down a microscope. He hadn't yet said a word of their investigation, and Sara was getting more and more impatient by the minute. She sat staring at him, her chin resting in her palm. She watched him turning the knob of the scope, switching the plates, and turning the knob again.
"You know, I really don't get you," she said.
"No one really 'gets' anything, Sara," replied Grissom, not lifting his face from the microscope.
"Well, you mind explaining to me what you brought me in here for? You said we were both heading in the wrong directions to start with. Care to elaborate?"
"I'm getting to it. Give me a minute." Sara sighed and opened the folder sitting on the table in front of her. Flipping lazily through it, she examined Grissom's neat scrawl of notes.
"In there you will find," he began, "my point. I figured the crash was premeditated to end as killings and you thought it was a mere accident. It was a little bit of both." Grissom still hadn't looked up from the microscope.
"You remember the foot prints we found in the bushes right off the road?"
"Yeah," Sara said, looking down at the photograph she had taken of the prints. "What about them?"
"We ID'd the owner. Seems he may have originally left a decoy- a fake dog to be precise- in the middle of the road to distract a car he had timed to be at that exact spot-"
"By timing them every day they went there?"
"Yep."
"Talk about premeditated."
"Well, the car that was supposed to be veered off course at the sight of the life-like dog had been late due to a flat, and the car that happened upon the decoy was almost the same as the car the decoy was meant for. Made by the same company, had the same color even, but the model was a couple years different. Easy to get confused in the dark."
"Motive?"
"Car that was supposed to see the decoy was being driven by the suspect's boss, who had fired him the previous year."
"Ouch." There was a pause. "So what are you looking at?"
"The suspect wouldn't actually confess much- Nick and I made our own deductions- but I picked up a finger print from the decoy we found discarded a few miles away and it appears to match his. I'll probably run it through AFIS, though."
"Wouldn't confess much? What did he say?"
"He said he saw the decoy, knew what it was for, knew the motive, but swore he'd never touched it."
Sara gave an exasperated sigh. "Is it just me or do criminals get dumber every day?" Grissom chuckled.
"Criminals must be getting dumber, because it's definitely not you."
Sara looked up at Grissom, who was still looking through the microscope. A small smile was clearly tugging at the corners of his mouth.
Sara gave a defeated sigh. She had told Grissom that she didn't 'get' him and had intended a point to go with the topic, but she succeeded in veering herself off-course once more.
To tell the truth, she 'got' him a lot more than he realized. The opening statement that should have started a conversation about their current "position" made her feel foolish. Really, she wanted to start easing herself into asking him about the pictures, but obviously that plan of action had failed. She'd have to come up with another approach to an oh-so-sensitive topic. Well, sensitive to Grissom. It was down-right hilarious to her.
At the thought of the picture tacked to her refrigerator door, Sara giggled. Only when she entered the break room did she notice that the pictures had been taken down from the surrounding walls.
"Hey." Sara turned to see Warrick standing in the doorway. "Heard you, Griss, and Nick solved your case."
"Well, Grissom and Nick did. Said the guy who crashed was in the right place at the wrong time."
Warrick laughed. "I guess you've been a little preoccupied lately." Sara didn't need an elaboration to know to what he was referring. She smiled.
"Yeah, I have been."
"I helped Nick take them down earlier. He said it would have just been a distraction to both you and Grissom." A silence fell between them for only a few moments. "Speaking of Grissom, have you-?"
"No. I tried, failed miserably." Warrick chuckled.
"Ya know, maybe he doesn't so much mind it?"
Sara was about to explain to Warrick that if Grissom was as caught up in his work as he had been when she asked him out, then surely he would be infuriated about this. Then she remembered that no one knew she had asked Grissom out, and now wasn't the time to forget self-humiliation. Telling Warrick about the rejection would probably make it worse.
"I think you should just-"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Me? Talk to Grissom about that? No way. He gets uncomfortable just being around me. Talking about a sex-charged dance that never was danced by the two of us- together- would probably give him a heart attack."
"You gotta give the guy a little more credit than that," Warrick said. "He isn't totally sex-less. He's not as anti-everything as he seems. He has a way to detach himself. Sure he'd get uncomfortable talking about it, but add a little humor and who knows?"
"I know, and I'm not going there. It'll smooth over eventually when Nick and Cath get to go question those EMT guys.
"So if the EMT's did do it, it's okay. If they didn't, then you're shit out of luck. It's not lookin' good for you."
"Well, it won't be okay for them. I'll hand them off to Grissom and let him deal." Warrick let out a full laugh.
"You're just going to embarrass him like that? They'd probably laugh him to high Heaven!"
"Like you said, he finds ways to detach himself."
Grissom knew he was attracted odd stares and giggles from nearly everyone he passed, but he did his best to ignore it. He was relieved to find the break room full of his team of CSI's and void of any humiliating pictures. Seeing Sara, however, made him blush furiously. This didn't make his serious expression falter.
"Picked up a case from day shift. Sexual assault of an elementary school student. History teacher is the prime suspect, but there's a large number of people who could have done it or seen it. Sara, Warrick, you're with me. Nick, Catherine, you two have a DB at a grocery store."
"Oh, goody," Catherine said, taking the paper from Grissom. As she and Nick left the room, Warrick looked at Grissom. He sat fuming in his chair, looking down at a folder. He always got angry with cases of infants and children who were abused.
Trying to ease the tension, Warrick said, "So, should we get started?" Standing, Grissom nodded. Warrick and Sara followed.
Grissom looked up from the case file in his hand as he walked, tucking it under his arm. They were headed for the layout room. Because Ecklie had handed the case to graveyard, it had been partially investigated. The photos taken at the crime scene, questions asked of bystanders and the suspects, and the testimonies of the little girl and her parents were in the folder.
Grissom walked around to the far side of the large, lighted table; Warrick and Sara stayed standing on the opposite side. Laying the folder down, Grissom took the photos and began to place them out on the table.
First were the pictures of foot prints found around the crime scene where the young girl was found unconscious by a large group of classmates and teachers. Grissom hadn't been able to go any farther when his phone began to ring. Looking at the screen for a moment, he answered it.
"Grissom ... yeah ... I'm kind of ... right now?" Grissom closed his phone, looking up angrily. "I'll be right back. I want you two to continue laying out the pictures."
With that, Grissom left. Warrick looked sideways at Sara, who shrugged.
"Whatever it was must have been very important for Grissom to walk away from such an important case," Warrick said. He walked around the table to where Grissom had previously been standing and began to lay out the pictures once more. He stopped when he came to a single white piece of paper that had been placed between photos.
"What is it?" Sara said as he peered at it. Warrick carefully held it up. Sara's mouth fell open and she turned a furious shade of scarlet as she saw it. She sat back on the stool next to her and buried her red face in her hands, the heat radiating from them as well.
The picture of her and Grissom dancing she'd been able to handle. But this? She didn't know if she'd be able to get over the image in her head.
Instead of the "OK" picture of Grissom and Sara dancing together, there was now a picture of Sara practically on top of her boss in his office chair. Below the horrifying picture were the words, "GUESS THEY DID GET A ROOM ..."
TBC ...
A/N: Short, I know. I actually planned on it to be longer than this, but the following scene will have to wait til next chapter :) I think it was better to drop it off here anyway. Sorry for the lack of length though!