Some of the characters and situations in this story belong to Alliance Atlantis, CBS, Anthony Zuicker and other entities, and I do not have permission to borrow them. The rest belong to me, and if you want to play with them, you have to ask me first. No infringement is intended in any way, and this story is not for profit. Any errors are mine, all mine, no you can't have any.
Spoilers: General fifth season through "Spark of Life."
This is in response to a private challenge. The story was to include a number of given phrases as well as an appearance by David, and to be G/S.
As ever, many thanks to Cincoflex, without whom this would not exist!
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They were a grim procession. The four of them entered David's apartment building in single file, Brass in the lead and an officer trailing behind. David opened his door at their knock, blinking solemnly at them behind his glasses, eyes lingering on Sara's blank face. "I've been expecting you," he said quietly, and stepped aside to let them in.
David knew the protocol, Grissom noticed as he paused in the living room to look around; the coroner had left the apartment and was waiting with the officer in the hallway, the warrant in his hand but watching the CSIs. There was trust in that gaze, and it made Grissom ache.
Aware of the younger man's affection for Sara, Grissom assigned her the kitchen and bathroom, taking David's bedroom for himself. It was surprisingly messy for someone so unrelentingly tidy in his work - not a disaster, but there were clothes on the floor and a tangle of papers and objects on the dresser. Rebellion? Grissom wondered clinically, figuring that the colonel had probably run a tight household.
He sorted delicately through the stuff on the dresser, finding nothing out of the ordinary - receipts, two watches, a pair of cufflinks, other effluvia. The drawers of the dresser were neater than the rest of the room, socks rolled together, t-shirts folded; the closet, on the other hand, had a heaped floor. Grissom dug through shoes and jackets and a towel, but again nothing seemed out of place. There was nothing under the bed but dust and a small, crumby plate.
As he was pulling out the drawers of the small bedside cabinet, Sara stuck her head in. "He's got quite a collection of knives," she reported quietly, "among other equipment. None of them are a visual match for the stab wounds, but one tested positive for blood, so I bagged it."
Grissom nodded. "He may have cut himself. Anything else?"
"Not unless you count the murder of a perfectly innocent head of lettuce in the crisper," she replied, deadpan. "I'll hit the bathroom."
She disappeared, and Grissom looked down into the drawers. Two paperback books, a box of tissues, an unopened box of condoms, a battered calculator, and half a package of sugar wafers. Grissom shook his head, once again intrigued by the endless variety of the human race.
The living room, when he and Sara got that far, indicated that David's interests lay with classical music, kung-fu movies, and Super Mario Brothers. The CSIs found nothing that hinted that David had killed Abel, and eventually withdrew, Sara waving an awkward goodbye as they headed down the hallway. Brass held his tongue until they were back in Grissom's SUV. "Anything?"
"Sara found a knife with blood evidence," Grissom said. "But a kitchen knife with traces of blood is hardly unusual. We'll check it when we get back."
"You know, David's not stupid, and he's been working with you people for years," Brass said thoughtfully. "He'd have a pretty good idea of how to get rid of evidence."
"You really think he did it?" Sara demanded from the back seat, and Brass raised his hands in innocence.
"I'm just playing devil's advocate here. You know the D.A.'s going to think of it."
"It doesn't make sense," Sara said, frowning. "I mean, David's a coroner. He knows where all the vital points are. He wouldn't need five blows to kill someone."
"Rage killing?" Brass asked.
"If that were true, the first blows would show ecchymosis as well," Grissom pointed out.
"Well, I hope you turn something up that gets him out of the noose pretty soon," Brass warned. "The D.A.'s looking for a goat on this one. Apparently Abel's uncle is a crony of his."
Grissom's lips twisted. "Politics."
xxxx
"The blood on the knife came back as David's." Grissom looked up to see Sara leaning around the edge of his office door. "And O'Reilly wants us both, says something's turned up."
"Hold on, Matt," he said into the phone, then tilted it away from his face. "What is it?"
"A car abandoned on I-15, that's all I know," Sara answered. "I'm assuming it has to do with the Abel case, though."
"Right. You go, Sara, I can't leave right now." He wiggled his fingers at her, and she shrugged and left.
O'Reilly, back from family leave, was waiting for her, his face expressionless, near the small green car parked at the edge of one of the highway's exit ramps. "So what's up?" Sara asked as she approached.
"The car's been here a few days and finally got tagged for pickup." O'Reilly gestured; a bright orange label was pasted to the driver's-side window. "The officer who tagged it ran the plates. It's registered to Susan Methody."
Sara's brows went up. "The missing maid of honor."
O'Reilly nodded. "Have a look at the passenger seat."
The highway patrol officer popped the latch for her, and Sara trained her flashlight beam into the car. A rusty-red splash stood out vividly against the gray plush of the seat.
"Oh, great," she muttered. "It'll have to go back to the garage, but I need to look around first."
O'Reilly snorted. "Good luck," he said dryly.
Sara's own thoughts echoed his skepticism. The shoulder's cement would not hold tracks unless the vehicle was laying rubber, and whoever had abandoned the car had probably just walked down onto the highway and thumbed a ride, never setting foot onto the soil beyond the ramp. But procedure was procedure. She unslung her camera. "What's your next move?" she asked O'Reilly as she began walking along the edge of the shoulder.
The big man shrugged. "Normally? I'd be interrogating the bride-to-be. But a uniform picked up the surveillance tapes from her building and checked 'em. Her building has a good security system; they show her running in bawling, and then coming out again the next morning. And all the exits are covered by cameras."
Sara felt some of the nasty tension of the case ease. "So she does have an alibi."
O'Reilly grimaced. "It's not watertight, but her brother is a better suspect at this point."
The tension came back, redoubled.
Sara paged Grissom when they got the car to the lab garage, but all she got back was a return page telling her to go ahead.
So she did.
The car was actually quite a trove of evidence, once Sara got beyond the fluffy things hanging from the rearview mirror and the stuffed animals in the back window. Beyond the blood spatter, she found a number of brown hairs of two different lengths, some on the driver's headrest and some on the passenger headrest; in the back her ALS turned up signs of sexual activity. The trunk was the kicker, though - not only did it have smears of blood, it also contained what appeared to be Corey Abel's missing shoe.
She dusted for prints, finding plenty in the expected places, but none on the gearshift or on the steering wheel; they were wiped clean. The steering wheel was clear acrylic embedded with glitter, and made Sara's eyes ache.
And on one tire was the distinctive nick visible in the treads from the dump site.
Eventually, Sara ran out of things to search, and packed up her evidence. Plenty of samples for Mia. She glanced at the Trace lab clock as she passed. Well, shift ended an hour ago. I might as well quit for now.
Time was, she would have kept chasing the evidence through the day, but most of it waited on the DNA lab anyway, and - on the advice of her counselor - she'd been making an effort to spend less of her own time at work. Doing so was, by turns, frustrating and boring, but she stuck to the idea grimly. She'd lost control once and had no desire to do so again.
xxxx
"We've got a warrant to search Susan Methody's apartment," Grissom told her that evening.
"I wasn't finished with the evidence from her car," Sara protested, but Grissom shook his head.
"It can wait. O'Reilly is hoping that the apartment will give us a clue as to what happened to her."
"If she was killed in her car, her apartment won't tell us much." Sara let Grissom herd her towards the front door, arguing more for form's sake than anything else.
"She might have been abducted from there," Grissom pointed out. "O'Reilly's getting desperate. Her parents are vacationing in Africa and unreachable, and she doesn't have any other family. None of her friends know where she might be." He pushed open the front door and held it for her to pass through. "Do you want to drive?"
She blinked, surprised, and took the keys he handed her. "Sure."
The apartment was a one-bedroom, about the same size as David's, but very different. Privately Sara thought that it looked like an explosion in a shag factory, but she kept her opinions to herself; Methody apparently went in for the trendy fuzzy fabrics and bright colors. Everything seemed to be cushioned.
This time she took the bedroom and the bathroom, in the unspoken consensus that she and Grissom still occasionally shared. The bedroom was the sort of place that made Sara itch - ultra-feminine decor, with the tastes of someone who was not long out of adolescence. There's nothing wrong with celebrating one's gender, but doing it with hot pink stuffed animals and a Tinkerbell bedspread - Sara shook her head. Even Methody's laptop was pink.
She bagged it, and went on searching, sorting through tangles of jewelry in the vanity and makeup containers on its top. The closet was full of clothes that told Sara that Methody was short and slender, and liked showing off her midriff; the mirror on the vanity was thick-edged with photos, some of which included 'Natha Phillips. Sara pulled one down for a closer look. The two young women were grinning at the camera, arms slung around each others' shoulders, and Sara's mouth tightened sadly at the obvious, deep-set camaraderie between the two. "Why'd you do it, Susan?" she murmured to the photo, then replaced it.
There were a few paperback romances scattered around the bedroom, but Sara suspected that Methody had spent more of her leisure time watching the small, pink TV that was perched at just the right angle to be seen from the bed. Sara pushed aside three sham pillows in nubby velvet and tossed back the rumpled covers, finding evidence of sexual activity, and hairs that she guessed belonged to Methody and possibly Abel.
The space beneath the bed was filled with sweater boxes. Sara found that they contained mostly more clothes, mainly summer outfits, but at the bottom of one she uncovered a man's cable-knit sweater in a deep green. It smelled faintly of cologne, and she frowned. All the other clothing had been put into storage clean. Assuming this belonged to Methody—and it was far too large to be anything but an appropriation from a male friend or boyfriend—why hadn't it been washed first?
On impulse, she bagged it, adding it to the sheets, the laptop, and an array of CD-ROMs.
The bathroom was cluttered with brushes and bottles and more makeup. Sara was collecting a toothbrush for a DNA sample when Grissom cleared his throat in the doorway. "Anything interesting?"
Sara met his eyes in the mirror. "Nothing overt, though the laptop may have more information. There's something missing, though."
"Oh?" Grissom raised his brows.
"No birth control." Sara gestured around the bathroom. "No pills, no patches, no condoms, no diaphragm. Nothing."
"She may have run out. Or used an alternative method."
"True. Or it could have been in her purse. But it still seems kind of strange. Most women I know who are sexually active keep a backup on hand, just in case." It had always intrigued her, on some level, how she and Grissom could calmly discuss subjects that would have most people blushing or laughing, as long as they were job-related. "Any signs of a struggle?" She hadn't seen any when they'd come in, but she'd only given the living room a once-over.
"None. Miss Methody left a cereal bowl in the sink, but that was all." Grissom shifted, glancing at his watch. "Are you almost through?"
Sara labeled the toothbrush. "I am now."
"Let's go get some lunch before we head back to the lab, then. I'm hungry." Grissom turned away, apparently not noticing Sara's wide-eyed surprise. When she didn't move, a mock-impatient "Come on, Sidle," drifted back down the hallway.
I'm going to kill him.
xxxx
She almost protested when Grissom directed her to turn off at a Thai takeout between Methody's place and the lab. Almost.
But they had every right to take a lunch break. And maybe Grissom really was hungry. And if she made too much of a fuss, he might take it personally, and she absolutely didn't want him to know that he was affecting her that much. Professional, Sidle, remember?
So she parked the SUV, and they went inside. Sara placed her order first, and Grissom stirred next to her, but said nothing, waiting until she paid to order his own. They took one of the three tiny tables and settled down to wait for their food.
"Is it all right if we eat here?" Grissom asked casually. Sara waited for him to give some sort of reason, but he didn't.
"Sure," she said at last. "If we take it back Greg'll try to steal some of my noodles anyway."
Grissom made an agreeing noise, and they sat for a little while in silence. He seemed completely relaxed, but Sara found the situation peculiar. It had been a very long time since they'd shared a meal together, particularly alone, and she had to fight discomfort. Oh, relax. He's just as likely to do this with anyone else.
When their orders were called, Grissom murmured "I'll get it," and rose before she could. Returning with the bags, he unpacked them with swift efficiency, parceling out chopsticks and napkins.
The food was surprisingly good for takeout; Sara had enjoyed it before, but didn't often get it since she didn't live in the restaurant's delivery area and the lab was just outside it. Sara found she was hungry too, and made serious inroads on her pad thai, shaking her head when Grissom offered her a share of his food but holding out her own carton in inquiry. He took a small helping, but she still had plenty left over when she was full.
She packed up her leftovers as Grissom finished his meal, and folded her arms on the table. "What are you thinking?" Grissom asked as he closed his container.
"Susan and Abel," she replied, a little absently. "Did they have a relationship behind 'Natha's back, or was it a one-time thing with really bad timing?"
"Stress can do strange things to people," Grissom commented. "A last-minute indiscretion between a bride or groom and a member of the wedding party is somewhat common. Up to and including right before the ceremony."
Sara grimaced in distaste. "That would ruin the big day, big time."
Grissom stuffed his container back into the paper bag it had come in. "When I was working as a coroner, we once had a groom and a bridesmaid come in frozen to death."
"Frozen? How'd that happen?" Sara was intrigued.
"They were found in the walk-in freezer in the kitchen at the reception site. Turns out the bride went looking for her new husband and found the two of them together. Don't ask me why they picked the freezer," he added at her incredulous look. "I don't know, and they were beyond telling."
"So she locked them in?"
"And stormed off in tears. By the time she was tracked down, she was very drunk, and no one found the others until it was too late."
She shivered. "I don't understand how people can be in a serious relationship and cheat on each other."
Grissom tilted his head and regarded her thoughtfully. "Temptation...jealousy...boredom..."
"If you're married, you should try to work it out, Grissom. Running around on your spouse doesn't solve anything." He arched a brow, and she knew that he too was reminded of the swingers they'd investigated not too long before. "I still don't think they were happy."
"Is it cheating if you agree to it together?" he asked, apparently considering the question rhetorical. "Ready to go?"
"Sure." Sara rose and gathered her trash and leftovers.
"Don't leave that in the breakroom fridge until it evolves intelligence, please," Grissom said, holding the door open for her and nodding at her bag of food.
"That was Nick, not me," she said automatically, then glared at him in mingled amusement and outrage. "And you're one to talk!"
"I haven't put an experiment in that fridge since I got the small one for my office," he returned, unperturbed.
She snorted, just as her cellphone beeped. Flipping it open, she checked the number. "Oh, it's Anna Mugumbe. Probably about the Schnitzel case."
"Keys," Grissom said, and she tossed him the jingly handful even as she raised the phone to her ear. The attorney never called them idly, and when she did it usually meant a long conversation; Mugumbe was thorough. The nightshift CSIs, on the whole, liked her—she asked intelligent questions and didn't expect the impossible from their findings.
Grissom unlocked the SUV and they climbed in. Sara fastened her seatbelt, listening to Mugumbe's explanation, and then snapped her fingers at Grissom, pointing to his seatbelt; he tended to forget it. His mouth quirked, but he strapped himself in before starting the engine.
Distracted by the phone call, Sara didn't realize where they were going until she cut the connection and looked around. "What are we doing here?"
"I want ice cream," Grissom said, parking the SUV in the lot in front of a small sweets shop. "What flavor do you want?"
Sara squinted at him, trying to figure out what on earth he was doing. "Grissom, we're going to be late getting back."
He simply arched a brow at her. "What flavor?"
"Oh, for...mint chip." She reached for her wallet, but he was out of the SUV before she even got it out of her back pocket. She sighed in frustration, knowing that if he hadn't waited for the money there was no way he would accept it from her upon returning. But he's not getting away with this. Not after all this time.
Looking around the vehicle, she saw no good place to stash the money so he would find it later; there was no guarantee that he would be the next person to drive it, and he was wearing his jacket, so she couldn't hide it in his pocket. Then she spotted his kit.
Oh, he'll kill me for that. She could feel the smirk forming. But it'll be so worth it. And it wasn't like he was at the start of shift, with a pristine case and sterilized equipment.
Sara glanced at the store and saw Grissom through the window; he was speaking to the boy at the counter. Leaning over into the back seat, she popped the latches on Grissom's case and laid four one-dollar bills in the top tray, then shut it again. Then she settled back to wait.
xxxx
Mia found her not long after they got back to the lab. "I have the results from your car samples," the tech said, her manner more formal than usual.
Sara took the sheaf of printouts. "What have we got?"
"The secretions in the back seat were a match to Corey Abel and Susan Methody," Mia reported calmly. "The blood in the trunk is Abel's. The hairs on the passenger side came from Abel and Methody; the hairs on the driver's side belong to Methody, Abel, and David Phillips."
Sara looked up bleakly, and saw the reserved sympathy in Mia's eyes. "And the blood on the seat?" Sara asked, dreading the answer.
"Susan Methody."
Sara closed her eyes briefly, feeling a muscle flex in her jaw. "Thank you, Mia."
When she opened them, the tech only nodded, and left her.
Sara exhaled, then reluctantly went in search of Grissom.
See Chapter 4