Title: Manufactured Catalyst
Author: FatesFolly
Summary: When a complicated case forces the CSI team to call in a criminalist with a speciality in criminal psychology, this stranger uncovers just as much about the team as the crime and forces them to re-evaluate relationships. (Casefile with eventual romance.)
Disclaimer: I own nothing (aside from Charlie and this plot). I just innocently borrow with good intent to return physically unharmed. (Mentally unharmed I can't guarantee.)
A/N: Since this plot is a bit AU, I'm going to say that it takes place between "What's Eating Gilbert Grissom" and "Formalities", leaving the team still together, Greg still needing to pass his final proficiency and Grissom's "guys who got away but I eventually caught" tally at two for two.
Chapter 3 - Chasing Rainbows
Here brown eyes were cold and vacant, staring into oblivion with a glassy, unblinking gaze. Head resting on her outstretched right arm, her full, pouting lips were parted slightly and blood dribbled from the corner, forming a puddle on the ground. One crimson patch merged with the others, forming a stagnant pool under her slender body, soaking the bottle-blond curls that tumbled from her scalp. Both of her palms were facing upwards, as though with her last efforts, she had been reaching for the sky. She must have been a beautiful woman.
"Lacerations to the face, chest, hips and lower abdomen. Cause of death appears to be a slash that severed all major arteries in her neck, causing her to bleed out. Rigor and lividity are set, indicating that she hasn't been moved. Liver temp puts the time of death at roughly one hour ago." The young coroner rattled off all of the facts in a few shaky breaths. "Her throat was slashed straight through to the spinal cord." Obviously disturbed at the gruesome crime scene, the young man handed over a few papers to Grissom.
Taking the papers, Grissom nodded in response, looking them over quickly before he began to snap pictures, the bright light of the flash illuminating the dark street. The term 'laceration', though technically accurate, was an understatement. The woman's hips had been sliced into so deeply that some portions of skin were only hanging on by thin strips of tissue. Her chest and abdomen sported equally brutal slashes, and although they were deeper, they were far fewer in number. The face though, that was the worst. The woman's features were mostly a bloody pulp, although each cut seemed to be strategically placed in some cryptic pattern.
"No witnesses, no signs of car tracks or footprints. It's like the perp is a goddamn ghost." Brass shook his head in frustration, turning to Grissom. "You and Sanders the only ones on this one?"
At hearing the sound of his name, the former lab-tech looked up. "No, we paged Nick and Sara since they're back at the lab." Greg looked a little pale, but was managing to remain composed, keeping his voice even as he spoke to the detective.
"All right. So, Greg, what do you see?" Grissom looked over to the younger man from behind the lense of the camera.
"Well," Greg began, looking critically at the body and the surrounding area, "The blood spray is contained to this area, directly above the body." He pointed to the dark red splotches on the cream stucco of the alley wall. "So, the vic didn't move after the first blow was struck. Judging by the amount of blood, I'd say that the first blow was the killing blow, the slash to throat." Taking a deep breath, he continued, bending down to look closer at the woman's body. "No defensive wounds on her hands, so she probably didn't fight with her attacker. They probably snuck up on her from behind." He glanced at the wall again, then at the ground around him. "There's no spray from the lacerations on her chest or abdomen, so they were made Post-Mort. And, like Brass said, no tracks, no trail."
"That you can see.", Grissom added. "Good Greg, now, let's find the invisible." Putting the camera back up to his eye, he continued snapping pictures.
Beaming from the compliment, Greg nodded, opening up his kit and retrieved a brush and a jar of black powder. Carefully loading the brush and readying it to dust the nearby surfaces, the sound of another Tahoe pulling up was heard. Before the vehicle was even fully stopped, the door was flung open then slammed shut, the pounding of footsteps on the pavement soon echoing through the night.
"Don't touch her yet!", came an almost frantic cry. Charlie came running up, easily weaving her way through the police line without losing speed. Her stop came so sudden that Greg was sure he heard skidding. "I have a theory. Please tell me that nobody touched her." Voice having returned to normal, Charlie waited patiently for an answer, being careful to remain directly in front of the yellow police tape so as not to disturb the scene.
"I ... I only did a preliminary examination. I had to touch her, but I didn't move her from the original position, I swear!", the coroner stammered, obviously startled by the sudden outburst. "Honestly . . . wait . . . who are you?"
"Oh, this is Charlie. The criminologist from New Jersey?" Greg looked up, brush still poised in midair. "Charlie, David. David, Charlie."
"Mmm hmm." Panting slightly from her sprint, Charlie's eyes immediately locked onto the body, eyes scanning it with practiced ease. She fell silent, slowly and carefully making her way around the woman's corpse, cautiously sidestepping any possible evidence. It was then that Greg noticed that she was carrying a small pad of paper and a pen. Occasionally she'd break eye-contact with the corpse long enough to jot down a quick note or make a small sketch. The entire time, her lips moved ever-so-slightly creating a wordless monologue.
David looked over to Greg, "Did I, um, did I do something wrong?" He fiddled uncomfortably with his clipboard.
"Nah, this is how she is. I think." Greg grinned and shrugged, turning to the nearest surface to begin dusting for prints.
Grissom meanwhile had never paused in his diligent picture taking, paying close attention to throughly document the scene from every angle. He had expected Charlie to arrive with Sara and Nick, so her presence was no surprise. Out of the corner of his eye, he'd allowed himself to sneak a peek at the petite woman. But his attention was soon diverted as the two other CSI's came loping up.
"Hey, got the page." Sara ducked under the tape followed closely behind by Nick, surveying the scene as she made her way over to Grissom. "Same MO as the other three?"
"Looks that way." Grissom relayed all of the information that they had garnered from the scene and the body to Sara and Nick. The two others listened carefully, then opened their own kits and set to work gathering evidence and recording data.
"Hey, boss, sorry 'bout Charlie. She kinda jus' bolted before I even had a chance to put the Tahoe into park. That's actually the reason we got here so fast, I think she woulda grabbed the wheel from my hands if she weren't in the back." Nick shook his head, chuckling.
Shrugging, Grissom turned to Nick with his usual deadpan expression. "It's her job."
Without another word, the four CSI's meticulously worked on processing the scene. It was a good forty-five minutes before any of them spoke, the silence broken by Charlie.
"I was right." She took a slow step backwards, studying the body again. "She's positioned. I wasn't sure from the photos I looked at back at the lab, but seeing a victim here in person, I'm positive of it."
"But lividity is fixed, and this position is natural for a body that fell to the ground from a standing position. It doesn't even look like she was moved when the killer cut open her front." Sara frowned at the other woman, raising an eyebrow in doubt.
"Not the entire body. Just the head, the arms and the hands. Notice how the eyes are open and the face is looking downwards?" Charlie pointed her pen to the victim's head, "It's as though the killer wanted her to show shame. But do you see the way the palms on both hands fingers are facing upwards with the fingers slightly curled?" She pointed the pen again, "It's as though she's trying to grab for something. Something above her that she can't see because she's looking below her. The three other victims were positioned the same way. It's hard to tell because each woman landed differently and the killer didn't move the body itself." She tucked the pen neatly behind her right ear as she moved her gaze among the four CSI's. "It's symbolic."
"Of what?" Greg furrowed his brow, looking up from his work to stare at Charlie.
"Well, that's where the wound patterns come from. Once again, it's hard to see the pattern because each victim was laying differently and the killer had to alter the cuts to fit the position the woman was in. But they all exhibit the same basic pattern, also symbolic." Looking down at her notes, Charlie tapped each point as she spoke it. "The lacerations on the chest always intersect the breasts in some way. The lacerations on the lower abdomen tend to be in the vicinity of where the female reproductive organs are found. These slashes tend to be deeper, in one victim actually hitting her uterus. The hips are also targeted, although the cuts are more slicing, almost to the point of removing skin to make the hips narrower." Taking a soft breath, she continued, her eyes seeming to light up with each word she uttered. "The marks on the face were harder to place. You see, they're not as much cuts as they are disfigurements. The cheeks, nose, eyes, lips, essentially any portions of the face that contributes to feminine beauty are mutilated to remove attractiveness. Those mutilations varied greatly on each victim, because each woman had a different facial structure."
"He's trying to remove femininity." Sara sneered in disgust, rage boiling up in her eyes.
With a noncommittal blink, Charlie turned to look at Grissom. "Doctor Grissom, would you like me to continue with my assessment?" Upon receiving a nod of consent, she spoke once more, her voice holding a certain fire that had been absent until she arrived on the scene. "The killer strikes from behind. At first, it might seem that one would choose such an attack because it's easier, especially if you're physically weaker than your victim. However, the depth and the severity of the lacerations show that the attacker has suitable strength to overpower a victim. Factoring in the facial mutilations, I believe that the attacks are being made from behind because the killer doesn't want to look at the victim's face. It's not due to cowardice or remorse however, more out of loathing and disgust. With many serial murders, you see a distinct escalation of violence as the killing progresses. But, as gruesome as these cases are, the violence has remained equal in all four murders. These are carefully thought-out, almost done in a systematic way. Similar to a fugu-like reaction. Something must have happened to trigger the first killing, and each time the event has occurred since then, another murder is committed. However, these were planned long before the killer actually acted upon their psychotic urges."
"So our killer is, in effect, trying to destroy the entity of femininity? Interesting. I've heard of trying to destroy an aspect, but never an entity as a whole." Grissom turned to look at Charlie intently. "Good work."
"Yeah, but what does he look like? I mean, now we know how he thinks, but that doesn't help us when we still have no evidence." Sara crossed her arms over her chest, obviously becoming more frustrated and impatient with every passing moment.
"Not to fear, Greg is here!" The former lab-tech grinned, holding up his tweezers. Between them was a single hair. "Now, while this hair is blond, like our vic, it's straight, unlike our vic. And since it was the only hair nearby and out of range of where our vic fell, it could be from our mystery suspect. Kinda long for a man though."
"Wow Greggo. I'm impressed. We might make a CSI outta ya yet!" Nick grinned at Greg, walking carefully over to examine the hair for himself before it was bagged. "Now, go send that to yourself to analyze." He chuckled at his own joke, while Greg only rolled his eyes.
"That, my dear Nick, is now Mia's job." Greg gave a nod of satisfaction, carefully placing the hair into the proper plastic bag.
Seeming to be unfazed by the light banter around her, Charlie shook her head. "I can see why you'd assume that the killer is female. The angle of the slits in the throats of the three autopsied victims would place their murderer at about 5'8", a little below average for a man. Also, the upper-body strength needed to slice though human flesh so deeply with one stroke would be indicative of a male." She turned, eyes looking over the entire team with an impassioned and steady gaze. "But you're wrong. Your murderer is female."
A/N: The plot thickens. Sorry if the combination of casefile and romance is a bit aggravating if you were specifically looking for one or the other. Next chapter should add to the more personal plots better. To Monika and thehoodedsweatshirt: don't worry, Charlie will have a chance to "talk" to both Grissom and Greg at least once before the case is over.