Chapter 4
It was supposed to be a happy day. She hadn't remembered the plans in all of her own preoccupation, but walking into the break room brought the situation home in a hurry. The room was filled with bright balloons and streamers, and Catherine was standing in the chair to hang a bright banner which declared "Happy Birthday Greg!" She and the rest of night shift had been planning this for the last month, and she had completely let it slip her mind. The guilt took her by surprise, and gave her something more to focus on than her suspicions about her supervisor.
Sara was more than grateful that she'd already bought and wrapped Greg's gift, and the CD was sitting in her locker. She really didn't even recognize the name of the group, but the band on the cover had looked suitably disreputable, and the salesman had assured her that anyone with blue spiked hair would love it.
"You're here!" Catherine called back over her shoulder. "Thank God. Hand me that tape before I fall and break my neck. Lord knows we don't need another investigation on the schedule tonight; I think there must have been ten folders on Grissom's desk.
Absently, Sara handed the tape up to the elder woman and watched as the banner was secured. Catherine then jumped down to the floor with the same dancer's grace that she had always possessed and Sara had always envied. If she moved like that, would Griss…
There was no point in thinking along those lines, though. A glance at the clock told her that they would be swarmed with people in the next few minutes, so she retreated to her locker to get Greg's present. By the time she got back, not only had Greg made his appearance for his customary start-of-shift cup of coffee, but at least half a dozen others had arrived to wish him well, steal some cake, and drop off a gift or two. The room was loud and happy, and the exact opposite of Sara's mood. With a deep breath, she stepped into the break room and plastered a smile on her face. She felt like Barbie, but it would have to do.
"The kid's growing up," she said as she handed Greg his gift.
With a bashful smile – something totally at odds with the Greg she knew – he accepted the CD and obligingly tore off the paper. The grin on his face was enough to tug a genuine smile out of Sara as he pulled her into a quick, affectionate hug. "How did you know?" he asked with his expression nearly glowing. "This just came out a week ago! I was waiting for payday to get it."
"Now you can buy more hair gel instead," she told him, deadpan. He only grinned more widely and hugged her once more. For some reason, the gentle contact felt good. How long had it been since anyone had given her a hug? Despite the confusion of the room around her, the way all the voices seemed to blend together instead of making sense, she found her spirit's lifting. A face might be worth a thousand words, but a hug was apparently worth ten thousand. She felt worlds better than she had when she'd arrived.
"You okay?" he asked with a curious expression.
Sara became aware that she was not only tolerating Greg's open display of affection, but was actually hugging him back. She was further gone today than she thought. "Rough day," she explained with a smile that threatened to flip upside down at the soft compassion in his eyes. "I guess I needed a hug."
He squeezed again before letting her go. She stepped back and watched as other co-workers approached and gave him gifts, a hard time, or just a brief acknowledgement. Greg might be the resident clown, but he served a much more important purpose than many of them realized. Sara knew he was the one who often gave hope to them when there was none, and kept the mood light with his free-spirit attitude and careless nature. He was an element of balance in the lab, and in his way as important as Grissom and his experience, or even Ecklie and his politics. Everyone had their place, and she was glad to see that Greg was being recognized for his. One day a year, everyone deserved this.
Too quickly, it was time for shift to begin. The staff migrated back to their work areas, and Grissom came in with his handful of assignment sheets and stern demeanor. He acknowledged Greg with a quick "happy birthday", and even smiled when Greg snapped off a smart salute, but Sara wasn't oblivious to his missing the party. She didn't think it had a thing to do with paperwork, but rather with the fact that there were so many people there, and so many things going on at once. If her suspicions were true, then there were a lot of things that had fallen into place. She set about observing – what she was best at – to determine if she was correct.
Watching him carefully, she noted that he barely glanced at the sheets, instead focusing on each face as he addressed his team. She also noted that his attention shifted only when that person's did. When he was looking at Catherine, she glanced over at Warrick, and Grissom's eyes went there to follow the discussion. When Warrick referred to Nick, Grissom's glance followed once more. Always attentive, never wavering, and carefully focused, she realized that it was more than simply interest or even respect which earned them his undivided attention.
Grissom wasn't just watching their faces; he was watching lips. If she hadn't spent so damned much time in the last two weeks doing the same thing, she might have missed it. But she had learned that when voices were fuzzy, or blurred by the constant ringing in her ears, that watching expressions and words made the sounds make sense. She had felt like an observer at a tennis match on occasion, with her head turning this way and that, but when conditions were loud or more than one person was talking, she'd had to find a way to figure out what was being said. Her ears hadn't done it, so nearly automatically her eyes had taken over.
Apparently, she wasn't the only one relying on eyes to hear the story.
Catherine and Nick were paired together on a DB just outside the city line, and Warrick was assigned to a missing person reported from the Tangiers. That left herself and Grissom, and she wondered momentarily whether she would be solo while he shuffled paperwork or if he'd dare to be alone with her for ten seconds. Somehow, she thought the former was more likely.
"We're together," he said as he glanced over her way. "I need your help on a rape case from down on the strip."
She nodded. "Got it covered."
"Sara… this is a tough one. If you'd rather I assign Catherine…"
She shook her head automatically. "I can deal, Grissom. Professional distance all the way." She almost believed that until she read over the sheet. "Fifteen," she said softly.
"Yeah." He moved closer, and she noticed that he was within an arm's reach and yet he still didn't take his eyes from her face. Not her eyes; her mouth. He was watching every word she spoke. Her suspicions grew stronger by the second. "Runaway. She was looking for a job, and she got more than she bargained for."
Sara cocked her head sideways and then decided to test her theory while still feeling out the case. "So you don't think she put herself in the position deliberately?" she asked, turning towards the table and walking over to get some cake. Grissom followed, keeping her face in view. Interesting.
"I don't think that was the kind of job she was looking for," he told her. "She was dressed in overalls and a flannel shirt; I stress the word 'was'. The hospital has already run a kit on her, and it's probably on Greg's desk by now, but I need someone to talk to her. She sure as hell won't talk to me or brass, and Catherine…"
"Catherine's a mom," Sara said with understanding. "She's more maternal than objective when young girls are involved."
"Exactly."
Sara turned again, picking up a bottle of water to take a drink and then deliberately leaving it near her lips, partially obstructing Grissom's view. She wasn't playing with him – really – but a scientist didn't make a hypothesis based on one test of a theory. She was simply giving her research multiple trials; she had to be sure. "So you don't think I'll fall apart on this?" she asked.
His eyes narrowed for a moment, and she could almost see him putting the words together in his mind. "Hmm?" he asked, as though he had merely been distracted.
It was time for the final analysis. Moving her lips clearly, allowing no sound to come out, she formed the words, "Do you think I can handle this?"
His expression cleared and he seemed to relax. "I know you can," he said simply. "I'm heading down to the strip to work the scene, and you can meet me there once you finish the interview. She'll be in the hospital for a few days, or until they find her parents. She still hasn't given them a name or location."
"Whatever she ran from must be worse than a rape," Sara reasoned. She'd seen too much to believe otherwise. Unfortunately, she was almost to the point where she expected the worst.
"I don't doubt it," he admitted. Then he sighed heavily and for just a moment looked away from her. "Sara, I know that I tell you not to get too close, but…"
"What?"
"Brass says she's really scared. I guess that sounds trivial coming from me, but anything that shakes Brass has to be just this side of hell. I don't want you in over your head, but I think she will need a gentle touch."
"You don't think I'm gentle?" she asked, her tone was clearly sarcastic but she was too offended to care.
"I thing… maybe this time we'll have to get close, or she won't tell us anything. You care about victims, and yes, sometimes too much. But in this case I think she needs that. She doesn't need to be mothered, but she could use some righteous anger on her behalf. I don't think she has it for herself."
Sara released the breath she'd been holding. "I got it. When I finish at the hospital, did you want me here or at the scene?"
"Call me when you finish, and I'll let you know where I am. I don't know how long it will take."
She nodded at that. "Thanks, Grissom."
"For?" He looked confused.
She couldn't really tell him why she was grateful. Was it that – unknowingly or not – he'd just confirmed to her something that was deeply important to him? Was it that he was trusting her not to get in too deep when he knew she had in the past? Was she just grateful that he was willing to admit she was the right person for something, or even that he was willing to work with her? She had no idea; she just knew that she was grateful to him for… something. "For caring about a kid, I guess," she finally decided. "With all you've seen, it's so easy to forget they're people. I think… I know that I respect you more for treating the living differently from the dead."
"I think there was a compliment in there somewhere," he muttered dryly.
"There was. See you later, Grissom."
He nodded at her, but she didn't hear him say a word as she left the room and headed for her car, and then the hospital.
Grissom sealed the last evidence bag and tossed it in the storage container with the others. He had more blood, semen, and other bodily fluids in that box than he really wanted to admit. He tried to remind himself that this was his job – this was how they put away the bad guys. He tried not to remember that a fifteen-year-old girl had been at the center of this piece of hell.
He grabbed the box and took it to the Tahoe, grateful that he'd finished the scene before Sara had completed her part of the assignment. He really hadn't wanted her to see that. He hadn't much wanted to see it himself. He could take a corpse full of various larvae any day over the actual scene of a crime. His imagination was too good at piecing together the whole picture from the scattered pieces. He knew what had happened in that dingy room; he knew it, and he hated it.
He didn't bother with the radio on the way back to the lab. Music was in and out to him, and served only to remind him of what he was losing. Of all the things he would regret the loss of, music was high on the list. There was also the sound of birds in the spring, the cry of a jaw fly, and a child's delighted laughter. So many sounds, he decided, that he didn't want to lose. If all went well, he wouldn't. If. But he had learned a very long time ago that a person couldn't put stock in "if".
"If all ifs and buts were candy and nuts, what a very merry Christmas this would be," he muttered softly. He didn't bother with citing a source; no one was there to hear it.
He pulled in to the parking lot just as his cell phone began to ring. He flipped it open with one hand as he turned off the Tahoe with the other. "Grissom."
"Where are you?"
It was so like Sara. No preamble, no explanation, and no excuses. "At the lab," he answered in kind, trying to make the call as brief as possible. Despite having the unit up as loud as possible, phones still gave him considerable difficulty.
"Say again," she requested. Then, after a short pause, "My battery must be low; I'm getting a lot of static."
Grissom didn't hear static from his end, but he repeated his answer more clearly, and asked her to join him at the lab. She agreed, and none too soon he was flipping the phone closed. Within half an hour, he was tackling the box of evidence with more precision than speed. He didn't want to miss anything as he prepared the evidence for Trace.
"Hey."
He glanced over his shoulder as Sara walked in. She was dressed in jeans and an old seventies-style blouse. It wasn't what she'd been wearing when he had seen her that morning, but stranger things had happened than a woman changing clothes on shift. He really didn't think much past that. "Can you grab that dish?" he asked as he gestured with his expression towards the counter to his right.
Wordlessly, Sara grabbed the requested dish and held it out automatically as he swabbed the inside of one of his collection tubes and then rubbed the substance – semen in this case – over the brown gel in the dish. It would take a couple of days in the incubator, but soon they would know if the man who had produced this fluid had anything growing in him besides pure evil. A disproportionately large number of sex offenders had various sexually transmitted diseases, and some were even registered with the health department. He would take his clues anywhere he could get them.
For her part, Sara didn't say a word as she assisted him with transferring evidence into appropriate containers, marking and labeling items, and generally making his job a lot quicker and easier. This was probably one of the things he enjoyed most about working with her. She didn't demand a lot of conversation, and she didn't press him for details on a case where each and every piece of evidence was proof that a child had been attacked. In fact, until he was ready to initiate the conversation, Sara said nothing at all.
As they bagged the last of the evidence, she gave him an encouraging expression and he took a deep breath before he began. "Thanks," he said simply.
"It's my job," she told him with a shrug.
He shook his head. "Not just the help; the lack of inquisition."
"Yeah, well, I've talked enough today," she told him softly. "And listened too much."
"How bad?" he asked, knowing she was referring to the hospital interview. He really didn't need to ask, but he wanted to give her an opportunity to talk if she needed to. Sara took these cases to heart – as did he, when children were involved – and he knew it couldn't have been easy for her.
"She'll be admitted for a few days," Sara said, her voice monotone. "They're taking her to the OR later today so they can sew up some things. I guess the docs got the bleeding under control, but wanted some antibiotics in her before they did much more."
Grissom nodded; it wasn't an unusual procedure.
"She was able to describe him, at least for the most part. Oh, and you were right. She wouldn't let any man get within screaming distance of her, not even Brass. They finally figured out that she wasn't just faking the fear when she threw up all over everyone."
Crossing his arms and leaning a hip against the counter, Gil stopped and looked at Sara. There had been something in her voice beyond the detached recitation of fact. She had him worried. He didn't know what he would do when – if – those auditory clues were lost to him. They had often turned the tide in an investigation, just as they now told him that his CSI wasn't nearly as calm as she appeared.
"The MO is what we expected. High school student left home because her stepfather was beating her mom and mom wouldn't leave. She made it this far from God-knows-where – I'm still running missing persons reports, but we won't know anything from pictures because her face is a mess. Anyway, when she got to the strip some nice man told her that he had a place for her to stay. Once the doors were closed… well, let's just say that she won't believe that line twice. I guess someone finally acknowledged the screams, because she said he finally ran off and left her. She didn't remember much after that. God, I'm surprised she stayed conscious that long."
"How serious are the injuries?" he asked. He wasn't referring to the normal battering that most sexual assaults caused, but anything outstanding which might affect her long-term recovery or their investigation.
"Concussion, possible internal bleeding," Sara listed. "One arm is broken, and she has swelling in one side of her pelvis that may indicate fracture. They aren't seeing any brain damage in the CAT scan, but they won't be able to get her into MRI until morning."
He sighed, and wished that any of it had been a surprise. But, he had seen the scene. He had known before he asked what type of condition she'd likely be in. He had seen the wrecked room, the torn covers on the bed, the overturned chair, and most of all the blood. "I'm sorry," he told her softly. He hated to have sent Sara into that.
She shrugged her shoulder, but the look in her eyes was at odds with the casual motion.
He let out the breath that he had subconsciously been holding. There wasn't going to be a scene after all; not from Sara anyway.
"Grissom?"
He inclined his head to show that he was listening.
"I really want to get this guy," she said simply. "For her… and for every other scared kid out there who trusts a little too much. Shit, that kind of trust should be guarded, not exploited. We can't let this guy get away."
Gil nodded his agreement. "Well, we have more than sufficient evidence, regardless of whether or not she decides to file charges. She's a minor, so the DA can do that for her, and if we can lock this in with DNA and priors – which I'll be willing to bet is in here somewhere – she won't even have to think about taking the stand."
"It'll be harder without a name," Sara reminded him.
"So let's get one. How long would you say she's been on her own?"
She thought a moment. "Not long; she isn't paper thin yet. I'd say under two weeks, but three at the outside."
"Any accent to speak of?"
Sara shook her head. "Hard to say; her mouth is so swollen that the words weren't distinguishable."
"Okay, then we start in the middle. Two-mile radius, check for missing persons fitting her approximate age and height. Then we'll run ten, then twenty, and so on until we find something that fits. If her face isn't close enough to compare, we'll look at last names – likely to be different if her mother remarried – and there's always hair color in case she hasn't dyed it."
"And fingerprints," Sara added. If she's from California, most of the kids are printed in grade school as part of the ID programs."
"So we get to work," he decided.
"Overtime," she told him, but there was no trace of her usual grin.
"We'll find him," Gil told her softly. Hell, nothing else in his life was going right at the moment; something had to, eventually.
