Disclaimer: These characters are the property of CBS, inc.
Spoiler: Unbearable.
Sorry I did post earlier. I was out of town for a couple of days. You probably didn't think Grissom deserved this much punishment, but the energy generated from Unbearable continues to flow. I can't find a way to inject humor currently so you are only treated to a rather tense, scary narrative. I hope it keeps you engaged. Your reviews are what make this worthwhile. Please keep them coming. Thanks
Sheila
Afraid of the Light
Chapter 7
Deputies walked in with grocery bags and put them on the table. Brass looked up in surprise, and peered into one of the bags. It was full of sandwiches and chips. Another bag held several sodas. A third deputy followed with a large thermos of coffee and cups.
"Hey fellas, thanks a bunch," Brass said. One deputy turned to him and said, "Not from us, Captain. A suit out of New York bought it."
Brass wrinkled his brow and looked at Grissom. Grissom shrugged and returned to watching Hatfield through the two way mirror. Hatfield had lost his stiff posture and now leaned over on the table, his head resting in his folded arms. Hours of questioning had left all of them with nothing but exhaustion.
Danny leaned against the wall, eyes closed. His shirt was loose, hanging out of his pants. An earlier confrontation with Brass now left him silent. He had wanted to go in once more, but Brass could sense that Danny would bring nothing but frustration with him into the room. Brass argued that meaningless bursts of anger at Corcoran were not going to serve them in the end. Grissom was surprised when Danny backed down. The young man had actually listened to Brass rather than brazenly surrendering to his impatience. His respect for the FBI agent was slowly growing.
"Danny!" came a shout from down the hallway. Danny's eyes popped open and he stood up straight.
"Come on, Taylor! Jesus, they pay me to find people, you know!" The voice was growing closer. Danny nervously ran his fingers through his hair and smoothed his shirt. Brass looked on with interest.
A man of broad stature appeared in the doorway. He had dark features, and weary eyes. Nattily dressed in a dark suit and tie, he took a moment to survey the room.
"Jack!" Danny responded. "What are you doing here?"
"You haven't answered your cell phone in two days." The man spoke in a deep, gravelly voice.
Danny grabbed at his pants, searching his pockets for his phone. Jack pulled it out of his suit coat and handed it to him. "I picked it up in Vegas when I went looking for you."
"I'm sorry, boss. I…forgot about it."
"Yeah, I know." He hefted a duffle onto the table. "Vivian went over to your place and packed up a few things for you."
Danny's eyebrows jumped. "She did?"
"We don't want you running around smelling like line-up at the soup kitchen. You need fresh things. Figured you could trust Vivian with your secrets. The rest of us do."
"You came to Reno to bring me fresh clothes."
"No, I came to Vegas to check on you. You are on a case and you lost contact with your supervisor. I am in Reno because you seem to feel free to prance around the country at will without notifying anybody."
Grissom could spot a blush growing on Danny's olive skin.
Jack Malone stopped looking sternly at his young agent, and turned to greet the other men in the room. "I'm Jack Malone, head of missing persons for the New York office." Grissom and Brass extended handshakes. "I've been introduced to you all informally through Danny over the last week whenever he deigns to honor me with a phone call."
Jack was ready to say more, but his eye caught the man in the mirror. He walked over and looked at the resting Hatfield Corcoran. He put one big hand on the mirror and stared at him intently.
"Jack's been tracking him for years. Could never get serial crimes interested in him. We had no physical evidence." Danny explained.
Jack turned to the men. "I understand that he took one of your criminologists; woman named Sara."
Grissom nodded.
"Got anything out of him?"
"No."
"But you have his tapes, right? The tapes are the key."
"Yes, Agent Malone, they are. Thank you for illuminating us. We were stumped." Brass growled.
"You and I going to have a pissing contest? You think we want different things here?" Malone's eyes narrowed. Danny stood between them watching as if a game of tennis. "Because, I think you are tired and frustrated, and I hope to hell you're not too stubborn to accept a little help."
Brass looked away. "All we have are those damn tapes, and there's not one thing we can do with them."
"Trade them for Sara." Grissom was startled by Jack's rather familiar use of her name.
"What? We set up a VCR in his cell, and let him watch footage of the women he helped destroy."
"Something like that." Jack set his chin, his eyes never leaving Brass
"We don't have the right. What about the families of those poor girls?"
"We use the tapes, bit by bit, confirming the information he gives us as we go."
Grissom cocked his head. "So we let him watch, say 15 minutes, in exchange for information about Sara and his partner. Then if it pans out, he gets 15 minutes more."
"You got the gist of it, Dr. Grissom."
Grissom thought this over carefully, worrying his lips with his teeth. "It turns my stomach. He gets rewarded with the images of the women he helped to torture."
"It stinks. The idea that we would allow him to see those girls again is out of the question." Brass' face was turning red.
Malone's hands landed on the table and he leaned forward. "She's somewhere cold right now. She hasn't eaten in three days, nothing to drink in two. She can't rest because of the cold and the hunger cramps in her belly. And he's watching her, waiting for the moment when it's safe to take her; when she has no more strength to fight him."
Brass scrambled across the table at the FBI agent. Danny caught him in the middle of the table and was rewarded with a right to his chin. Grissom had Brass by the shoulders, pulling him back to into his chair while Jack Malone stood there with a face of stone as if nothing had occurred.
"She has another 24-48 hours tops. No way he's going to keep her alive two weeks. Everything Danny tells me about her makes me think she's a fighter. She's not going to
give in to him."
"We would need the family's permission before he could see those tapes, wouldn't we?" Danny looked confused.
"I talked to them already. They've been in touch, curious about Corcoran's arrest. Three families said no, but two, Geneva's mom and Frederika's father, said yes. They want to help catch him."
Grissom closed his eyes. The idea was no longer hypothetical. This ethical minefield was set before them, and saving Sara required that they wind their way through it.
"What do you think, Jim?"
"I think we'll be making a deal with the devil, and I hope to God that we don't see him in hell." Brass pushed away from the table and left the room.
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The polyester fill scratched on her bare skin, but the covering provided her with much needed warmth. With as little movement as possible, over hours, she had ripped a hole in the bottom of the mattress, worming her hand through the metal frame. After several hours, she was able to get one hand completely through the mattress and the frame. She was able to reach all the way to the cold concrete floor. As quietly as possible, she began to twist at bars, hoping to find a loose one. With stiff fingers, she pulled and twisted until she found one the moved. She had physics on her side, but she wasn't sure about time. Still, she began twisting and twisting the bar, hoping she could cause enough friction to eventually pull the bar free from the frame. For a long time, she lay still, her arm extended through the mattress, twisting on the metal bar. Her fingers ached, but she continued to work long past the time she lost the feeling in her fingers.
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Grissom sat outside in the sun. He held in cup of coffee, and sat, eyes pointed down at the sidewalk, watching a small army of ants carrying a potato chip. He felt pain in his stomach, and couldn't remember when he had last eaten. He had tried one of the sandwiches Jack Malone brought, but two bites and he felt too nauseous to continue. Thoughts competed in his head, and he couldn't organize them. His feelings had long since broken through the gates of his heart. They continually assaulted him in ways he wasn't prepared to handle. It was all he could do to keep from losing his composure.
Grissom knew it when the New Yorker sat down next to him, but did nothing to acknowledge it. He heard a heavy sigh, and turned to see Jack Malone sitting there with his own cup of coffee.
"I can't get over the fact that ten hours ago, I was freezing my butt off at JFK, and now I want to go grab a pair of shorts."
Grissom turned his attention back to the ants.
"So I make a pretty good first impression, huh?"
Grissom snorted and shot Malone a look. "This isn't some kind of game for us, you know. She's very real to us. We have been a part of each other's daily lives for the last five years. Do you understand that?"
"I think I do."
"I will do anything to get her back. I will do what is unethical. I will break the law. I will risk my career. None of that matters to me. But I won't pretend that this decision won't have implications for lives beyond this police station."
Malone nodded. "Good. What we're going to do is ugly, it's important to remember that."
"I should be the one to go in."
"Yes, he likes you. He'll believe what you have to say."
"15 minutes and no more for each correct piece of information he gives us."
"Sounds reasonable."
Grissom chuckled. "None of this sounds reasonable, Malone."
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She drifted in and out of sleep inside the old mattress. Things were beginning to blur: reality vs. fantasy. Unfortunately, neither world offered her any comfort. Crushing terror existed inside of her body as well as outside.
She saw herself standing at the top of a hill. It was a dusty hill littered with yellow grass. It was cold, and she hugged her body tightly. There was danger all around her. She couldn't see it, but she could feel it. She looked down the hill and saw her friends. First she saw Nicky and Warrick. And she began running toward them. Catherine appeared with Greg and Brass. Danny walked by like a regular employee. But no matter how hard she ran, she couldn't actually catch any of them. She called their names, screamed at them, but they were oblivious to her presence. She tried to grab Danny but he was always beyond her reach. Frustrated, she ran away from them, across the field. She saw Grissom up ahead sitting at his desk, and she raced for him. He didn't respond to her repeated cries for help. She reached him, grabbed a hold of his desk, and started yelling. He didn't blink, and so she cried and she begged and she pleaded with him. She walked around the desk and touched his face. It was soft and furry. She held onto his neck and pleaded for his help. Finally she got a response. A single tear fell from an eye and slid down his cheek. Then he was on his feet and gone. She sat on the ground and wept with despair.
She pulled herself out of that nightmare and back into her conscious one. Hour by hour it was getting harder to concentrate. She had become accustomed to the pain in her abdomen, but the thirst burned her throat. She stretched her aching fingers and returned to her work on the bar.
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Danny ran down the hallway and burst into the room. He strode up to the TV/VCR and hit the power.
"No!" Hatfield yelled.
"Victor Ramirez is dead. The partner you gave us is dead and has been for five years. False information and no TV, Hatfield."
Grissom shook his head and groaned. Hatfield turned to him and pleaded. "That's the name he gave me. It's the name I know him by. Please! I'm not lying to you."
Grissom shrugged. "If your information doesn't help us find Sara, then it's no good. That's the deal."
Danny was in his face. "Hey Hatfield! What if I hurt you the way that you and your buddy hurt those girls? Would that help? We could keep the tape running. You could scream along with the girls. How about it, Hatfield?"
For the first time, Hatfield actually lost his composure and started to shake. Grissom grabbed this opportunity. "All right, this is it. Spill it all; everything you know. All bets are off. If you don't, I swear I will leave you alone in this room with Agent Taylor for an hour. He ran out of his medication four days ago. Are you ready for that, Hatfield?"
"This is not my fault."
Grissom slammed the table with his fist. "All of this is your fault!"
Hatfield winced.
"You have thirty seconds to start talking before I get up and leave you to the Orphan Boy."
Danny smiled and folded his arms across his chest. This was the most useful he felt in three days.
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The procession of vehicles rolled into the yard of an old ranch, lights flashing, and sirens.
Grissom let Brass and his men set a perimeter and begin a search. Malone and Danny joined in while Grissom grabbed his kit, and followed behind. The ranch house was old and abandoned yet it was clear that someone had been there recently. The boarded up front door had been pried open, and freshly split boards littered the porch. Grissom knew that this would have only been a pick-up point for Hatfield's partner. He would receive Sara, wait until Hatfield left and then proceed to his place with her. Grissom knew it was on him to discover the next step in this process. He needed to link the trace evidence to Sara's location. It was all they had to go on. Carefully, he put down the kit, and with yellow tape, he cordoned off the house. Catherine was flying in along with Warrick and Nick. Together, they would conduct the most important crime scene investigation of their lives.
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TBC
