Title: Bright Lights; Dig City Author: Jayke Manners
Category: Drama / Angst
Spoilers: Only received up to end Season 4 in Aussie – so pretty much anything up to there…
Disclaimer: Not mine. Am I the only one who needs a drink after writing this sht?
Summary: Casefile / Angst / GS
Sorry it's taken so long to update, real life is getting in the way. This is a fairly intense chapter, though not as angsty filled as I'm sure you'd all like. But trust me, it's imperative to the story and there is so much more ANGST to come if ya'll can hang with me – you'll be glad (I hope) Up with the rating too. Please let me know what you think, I really appreciate all your comments and advice! Thanks to all who have already, especially my regulars, you guys ROCK!
I'll try to repost faster next time so get ready for some SERIOUS S & G torment! YAY!
TWENTY SEVEN
Grissom leaned back in his chair, relieved to be secluded in the dark comfort of his office. Corbett was being put through the intake, although he hadn't been formally charged, it was all still necessary and at least gave Grissom and Brass time to collect their thoughts.
A feeling of trepidation trickled once again through Grissom's veins, he could feel it running in his arms and prickling the tips of his fingers. 'By the pricking of my thumbs,' he thought. Grissom struggled to remember where he had seen the man before - he was familiar, but in the way a line from a song or a movie is remembered, and for the life of him Grissom couldn't remember the title. But there was something around Corbett's eyes, the light, almost grey liquid gaze that pulled at a thread of thought. A long, weary sigh passed through his chest and from his lips. The memory wasn't the only information evading him.
There wasn't enough evidence.
He'd spoken to Brass and Catherine before they decided to detain Corbett. Having lived through the release of Lurie and too many others like him, Grissom was hesitant, to say the least, about bringing Corbett in so early. 'The likelihood of gathering conclusive evidence any time soon?' Brass had asked. The resulting expression had ended up with them all, well, here. Now Grissom and Brass were only moments away from an attempt to bluff him into, if not a confession, then hopefully a big enough slip to help them gather further evidence. And at least now the guy knew he was being watched. He would try to maintain a normal lifestyle, attempt the pretext of innocence, but he would fail. The terrifying truth about 99.99 of serial killers, the compulsion to kill is relentless - there would be no denying his compulsion. If they didn't nail his ass now, that's when they would pounce.
Grissom leaned his head into his hands. Something else was bothering him, though he had tried to ignore it. Sara's Tahoe, it was still in the parking lot. That meant she was still here. Shit. His mind played over the past few weeks, her erratic behaviour, growing progressively worse until the outburst at the LV High locker room. He remembered the conversation in his office he desperately wanted to forget, the empty bottle he had disposed of in the trash in his kitchen. Coming in to see her the next shift, the first thing he'd noticed was the jacket, still gathered around her shoulders. Grissom could only pray it was protecting her now.
Brass interrupted his thoughts, "You ready?" He stood at the door, coffee in one hand, a bulging file in the other.
"No."
Brass smiled ruefully, "Well, it's now or never."
Grissom nodded. He again reconsidered his next request, the words feeling traitorous on his lips, "Brass," he said, "I need you to have Sara's file brought over."
Brass narrowed his eyes, "What?"
"I need…"
"I know what asked for," he replied. "I'm just wondering if you do."
He sounded resigned, "I'm her supervisor, I'm entitled to look at whatever…" Once again Grissom was cut off at the pass.
"Don't give me that shit Gil," he said. "Your jurisdiction has nothing to do with it." He moved a little further in to the office, "Does Sara know?"
The look Brass received was enough. "You're sure you wanna do this?"
No, Grissom was not sure. But if he wasn't about to get the truth from Sara, then he would have to find it elsewhere. She'd closed him off, closed herself to all of them, and if she had worried him before, now she damn well scared him. Grissom nodded, "I'm sure."
Brass half shrugged, an eyebrow raised, a tilted head. "Ok. It'll be here." He nodded his head toward the door and Grissom rose to follow. Passing through the doorway, Brass turned, eye to eye with the troubled blue reflection. "Griss…A word of advice? Don't go looking for what you're not prepared to find."
Grissom winced, pausing a moment before following the detective down the hall. By the end of the day he would see into the depths of his worst nightmare. How could anyone possibly be prepared for that?
TWENTY EIGHT
Corbett sat forward in his seat, leg jumping to a nervous beat beneath the table. He had an off-kilter manner about him, rather sharp cheekbones below eyes that seemed as if they might easily tear. His mouth was small, teeth straight and white, he probably had them cleaned twice a year, right on schedule. He was tall, taller than either Brass or Grissom, and his hands were large enough to snap a pole, or a neck, yet there was a delicacy that was completely out of place. Polished fingernails, hair combed to perfection. Clothes neat and pressed. A man of opposites.
Corbett's eyes darted from Brass to Grissom, occasionally flicking to the long mirror that covered the left wall of the interrogation room. He'd seen enough movies to know what lay behind it. But that was not what caught most of his attention. Along the opposite wall and most of the one behind, Grissom had assembled the whiteboards from Lab Three. Corbett tried not to look at them, but constantly, like a moth to a flame, his eyes were drawn – pulled toward the faces and the scribbled evidence of their existence. His fingers began a ballet of their own.
Sixteen faces stared without seeing, but Grissom could feel their gaze, could hear their chilling cries. "This is the one," they silently screamed. "Don't let him get away, not again. Not again." He turned toward Brass, waiting his turn to dance with the devil.
Brass kept his eyes steady, boring holes into the jittering wreck before them. If this wasn't a man hiding something then he was a monkey's ass. There was a pile of duplicate pictures resting on the table, only slightly out of Corbett's reach. They had been placed purposely, Jessica's hidden at the bottom, the stack askew enough for more than one face to be seen. In his hand, Brass held a similar, yet horrifically different group to those faces that hovered around them. These were the autopsy pictures, taken just before each of the 'babies' were examined. To put it nicely, they were enough to make your common everyday Joe lose his lunch.
Brass lay them on the table in front of them one by one, like a deck of cards, with slow, deliberate precision. Corbett blanched. "O…Oh…Oh, my God. This is it… why I'm here?" He turned with desperate eyes to Grissom, "Y…You think I did…" he glanced at the pictures once again and appeared to gag, "…this?"
Brass had to admit, if he was guilty – the guy was doing a damn fine job of acting innocent. All the signs were there – fear, confusion, agitation – his goddam blink rate was through the roof. Well, at least he was verbal. Brass sat back and waited for him to talk himself into a hole, or at least close enough to one for Brass to push him into.
Corbett's eyes and leg were still jumping around the room, "Why? I mean how.. I didn't know any of these girls." Brass raised his eyes slightly, but then had to admit, Corbett was facing away from the picture of Jessica Andrews, and she wasn't exactly recognisable in her 'other' photograph. Corbett continued, his tone pleading, "You can't think… I don't understand. I'm not that kind of person. I…" He again looked at Grissom, "You don't remember me, do you?"
At this, Grissom lifted his head. Until now, he'd been keeping it low, avoiding a confrontational stare, but Corbett had gained his attention. Rather than answer, he tilted his head in question.
"You came to my apartment, when the Meade boy was killed last year. At Parlance Place."
Grissom remembered the case. A nineteen year old boy was found dead in the swimming pool, weighed down with a cement block tied to his neck. They'd canvassed the rooms in the complex, it was a closed community, but lower in the budget range. Thirty-two units, most occupied by either working-class Las Vegans or college kids out partying for the holidays. But they didn't get to #32. It had been relatively simple to find the culprit, he was discovered in #14 with a confessional note, an armload of substantiating evidence and the most convincing testimony – a bullet in his brain. Lovers tiff. Not exactly Romeo and Juliet.
Corbett continued, "You came inside, remember? You gave me your card…" He petered off, a helpless gaze falling to the photographs and quickly to his hands.
Grissom nodded, the memory sinking in slowly, like molasses from a jar. Unit # 7. In his mind, he re-entered the apartment. It was dark, the shades were drawn to prevent the sunlight wreaking havoc with a struggling air-conditioner. It wasn't a search as such, more of a routine visit, since the lover had already been found a few hours ago. But the blood-spattered apartment was directly above and Grissom wanted to see if a pattern had seeped through the floor/ceiling. More for his curiosity than anything else. Corbett had been co-operative, nice even. Offering them coffee and cake. Sara had declined politely, instead following Grissom as he walked to the bathroom and discovered the smallest speck of blood on the ceiling above the shower, directly underneath the area of the dead Romeo. Sara had spoken to Corbett, "You might wanna call the super, that's gonna get worse." Corbett nodded with a look of sickness covering his rather delicate features. Grissom handed him a card, they left. It had been a lacklustre appearance. The thought that Grissom had been inches away from this guy, right in the middle of his killing spree, sent waves of fury and frustration through him that he found hard to disguise.
Grissom glanced briefly at Brass before he spoke, "Unit seven. Bloodstains on the ceiling."
Corbett smiled, relieved. "I'm just a school teacher Mr Grissom. You've seen my home, I have nothing to hide. Please… I would never do these things."
Grissom returned the smile, but there was no humour in it. "We all have something to hide, Mr Corbett." He held the man's gaze as it faltered, eyebrows coming together in a confused pattern.
Brass interjected, breaking the moment between the two like a twig snapping in the night-darkened forest. "So Roger-boy, if you're such an open book, you wont have any trouble telling us what you were doing snooping around after hours in the boys locker room? Not really the kind of hang out one would expect from a science geek. Hell, I'll bet you weren't even allowed in one when you were running around in your jocks." A corner of his mouth raised, mocking, "No offence, but you don't exactly look like the college football hero type."
Corbett shook his head, "I… I don't know what you're talking about."
If Brass was hoping the guy would take the bait, it was in vain. He pushed anyway, "Late evening, deserted locker room. Janitors' gone for the day, kids all pissed off home. Well, maybe not all of them." He left that one hanging for a moment before adding, "You sure you didn't take a little trip into the gym? I dunno, maybe for a few samples to add to your collection?"
"My collection?" Oh lord, this guy deserved an academy award. "Collection of what?"
"DNA." Grissom spoke the letters like he was stating the time.
Corbett turned his gaze, "DNA?"
Grissom started slowly moving the original photographs around the table, softly tracing the outlines of faces, leafing through the pile with an almost seductive touch. "When we pulled them out, they all had a story to tell." He glanced at Corbett, whose gaze had fallen to his hand on the table. "But the problem was, none of the tales were true. At least, not at first." He continued pawing slowly through the pictures, still on the first few victims, with the exception of Jessica. "All the DNA was different. All the hairs, the fibres, not a single one matched. But you know what we did find out? They all came from the same place. You see, mould has a signature, just like any other species By dissecting the components, we can trace it to a single location, or in this case, all the way back to the Las Vegas High locker room."
Brass kept his tone quiet, noticing the effect Grissom was having. "Seems kinda coincidental doesn't it?"
But Corbett didn't answer, he was too engrossed in the hypnotic rhythm of Grissom's hand as it moved the pictures from one pile to another. He continued his leafing, but as he neared the last few victims, instead of placing them together, he moved them to the opposite side. With gentle caresses, the redhead fell to his right, then the brunette, the black. All peering out from behind the last, eyes like lanterns in the dark. His hand hovered a moment, holding briefly above the image before he revealed the picture of Jessica. Her face shone out like an angel, and Grissom's tender stroke ran down her cheek.
"Jessica."
All three men reacted to the whisper that escaped Corbett's lips. All three tried desperately to hide it. "So you knew this one?" Brass asked the question.
Corbett snapped out of his trance, and was instantly back to the bundle of nerves. "She, she was in my biology class. C minus. I still can't believe what happened… when she went missing the whole school reacted." He offered another smile, "She was very popular."
"I'll bet." Brass couldn't hide the sarcasm.
"I didn't kill her." His voice was becoming less frightened, more agitated.
"You know what interested me?" Grissom directed his question at Corbett. "No evidence." Corbett's eyes met his own. "No beating, no strangulation. Single skull fracture, back of the head. And she was buried. Six feet under. Whoever it was that killed her, took the time to give her a proper burial." His fingers began the gentle stroking of her face once again, "My guess? Whoever did this, didn't mean to do it. It was an accident. A fit of rage, or maybe she slipped and fell during an argument..."
Corbett shifted in his seat, a hand subconsciously falling to his lap whilst the other remained on the table, fingers pointing toward the photograph. "I know what you're doing Mr Grissom. It won't work. It can't work, I had nothing to do with this."
Grissom nodded, seeming not to listen. "It's a fine line, isn't it?" He was asking no one in particular. "Between love and hate. You put so much effort into hiding it, into keeping your thoughts from everyone around you. Pretending to be normal." He smiled and a small laugh escaped his lips, then as quickly as it arrived, the smile faded. "But inside… inside it's like a fire burning out your heart. Every time you look at her, every time she passes you in the hallway and doesn't even bother to acknowledge your existence. After all of the sacrifice, and the pain and…" Grissom's voice was becoming strained, his eye twitching in the attempt to maintain control.
Brass shot a worried glance in his direction, but it passed unnoticed. Grissom continued, the final words were forced out through clenched teeth, "You give everything you have, your dreams, your thoughts, even your breath. Every moment you exist you're doing it for her. Every time your pulse jumps in your neck, it's because she's alive. You'd do anything, give her everything… And then the bitch doesn't even have the decency to stop and say 'hello'."
His eyes were steely now, his hand had stopped it's movements on the picture, every muscle seemed to strain against the air. He breathed in and out a few times, trying to settle his voice, "So one day, it just… becomes too much. You try and tell her, but what the hell does she want with an old man? She rejects you, maybe laughs in your face, tells you what a fool you are. You can't bear it, can't stand knowing that she's out there, alive and loving someone else while inside your dying, hell you're already dead it's just that your damn heart wont stop beating... So you go to her again, only this time it's worse. Because this time you've already touched her, you already know how it feels to hold her, the warmth of her. But she yells at you, fights. Hits out and says she's gonna tell, she's gonna tell the whole goddam world and you're finished, you're done. Finally everyone will know your dirty little secret. You try to stop her, try to shake the thoughts out of her brain, to just make her stop screaming." Grissom's hand clenched into a fist and he pounded the table, once, hard. Silence settled across the room. Brass moved in his seat, not really sure what he was getting ready for.
Slowly, Grissom's fist opened, and his next words were calmer, quietly drifting across the table. "But then, suddenly, it's over. You look down and she's just staring up at you with wide eyes, with this… look on her face. She's so surprised…" Grissom's voice trailed away, eyes fixed on the photo, breath leaving him in quiet release. He didn't look up at Corbett, who was having enormous difficulty maintaining his composure. His eyes had filled with tears, the hand on his lap now gripping his thigh.
Grissom turned to the other photographs, his left hand pushing them around whilst the other remained on Jessica's image. He sniffed before continuing, "But now there's a hole in him. This gaping space that no matter how hard he tries, he can't fill up. All the hookers and liquor in the world aren't enough." Brass noted the changed of pronoun, but remained silent. "Until one day," Grissom played with the pile until he came to the second victim and slowly dragged her from one side of the table to the other, "someone else appears. Just like Jessica."
The room fell silent, all that could be heard was the ragged breathing of Roger Corbett. For what felt like an eternity the three sat, Brass waiting on Grissom, Grissom waiting on Corbett, and Corbett lost in his own world where anger, love and hate crossed lines of evil into a living hell.
Just as Grissom was beginning to think he had failed, that his journey into this man's mind had all amounted to nothing, that the sickness that rose in his throat at the thought he possessed the ability to do so was threatening to explode, Corbett spoke.
"They're all the same you know," he whispered. "In the end."
Grissom didn't reply. He cast a half-glance at Brass, who looked like he was about to jump out of his chair and throttle Corbett to death, then began leafing through the photographs as Corbett rambled on.
"They all cry, tell you they love you. That they're sorry." He gave a sharp, sudden laugh, "but they're just liars. And there's nothing worse than a liar. They just… tell you what you want to hear. Stupid. Little. Liars." He fell silent, simmering in barely restrained hatred, his anger flowing into the room and filling it until it poisoned the air.
Grissom swallowed, trying to control his emotions, wanting to simply reach for Brass' gun and eliminate this evil presence from the world. But the scientist in him, the law abiding Criminalist, couldn't let it happen – there were too many questions to be answered. His hand paused when it reached the redhead and once again, there were two piles of photographs. He touched the picture with a single finger, before moving it to the space in between. He asked the question softly, genuine curiosity filling his voice, "What I don't understand, is what happened… here." Grissom's eyes showed none of the anger, none of the repulsion, only a sympathetic question, a desire for the truth.
Corbett seemed to ignore him, reaching instead to draw the picture of Jessica to his side of the table, his own hands stroking the image with a tenderness a monster had no right to possess. "My girl who got away," he said.
Brass snorted, acerbic. He knew with that simple action, he had broken any relationship that might have been tenuously established, but he was beyond caring. As far as he was concerned, the guy had confessed, and even if he didn't follow through on a written admission of guilt, with this sort of nutcase, circumstantial evidence and a kick arse lawyer would be more than enough to put him away for life. He virtually spat the words out, not bothering to hide his disgust. "I'd hardly call dying at the hands of a homicidal maniac 'getting away'."
Corbett just looked up at Grissom, and smiled.
