Disclaimer/Author's Note – See Chapter One.

Chapter Ten – Mind of a Killer

'He seemed totally normal, man,' Josh Phelps, the night supervisor of the Playhouse, told Brass and Warrick.

'That's what people said about Jeffrey Dalmer and Ted Bundy,' Warrick said seriously.

Phelps looked confused. 'That guy outta 'Married With Children'?'

Warrick glanced and Brass and rolled his eyes.

'So, when did you last see J.D.?' Brass got down to business.

'Earlier tonight,' Phelps replied. 'He got off around 9. His girlfriend came in and they said something about having 'special plans' for Valentines.'

'I bet they did,' Brass remarked dryly. 'How long has he worked here?'

'I don't know… a year. Year and a half, maybe…'

Warrick took over. 'And he would have had access to customer records in his job? Credit card details, addresses, that sort of thing?'

'Well, if they're regulars, yeah sure. Anyone who comes here all the time usually takes out a membership and pays with their credit card. We keep all their info on file…' Phelps suddenly looked worried. 'This isn't going to be in the papers is it? My boss'll kill me if someone on my shift makes the complex look bad.'

'You know what they say,' Brass told him. 'There's no such thing as bad publicity.'

People are such idiots. They don't understand what's going on in front of them. Life. It's intense. If it's not, then what's the point? If you don't live life on the edge, feel fear and passion and love and hate to their fullest extent, then you're not alive. And if you're not alive, then you're better off dead. Aren't you…?

These idiots don't know what real love or real passion is. They don't understand. So we teach them. Give them a choice. Would you die for the person you supposedly love? If death would be the only way to ensure your lovers release, would you make that choice? Would you say 'Yes, kill me. Let her go.' That's all they would have to do to live…

But they don't. None of them. No one is ready to die for love. Liars. All of them. It's not love. It's lust. Sex. Not what I have with J.D. That's real. I'd die for him. He would die for me. We would kill for each other. That's real. That's love.

It used to be only sex – sweaty and scared in the dark. Caged, a prisoner, unable to break free. No one ever loved me before I met J.D. I was so alone. I could never go back to that. I'd rather cut my own heart out than be without him.

As Sara's eyes traced the scratchy path of Lana's writing, she was frightened by the lucidity of the girl's words. Despite the sentiment behind the words, Lana was obviously intelligent, which was probably the reason she evaded the police for so long.

Sara was also a little disturbed by the fact that some of Lana's words made sense to her. Life did tend to go by unnoticed by many, herself included, and she was only now stopping to wonder what the point of it all was. If she didn't allow herself to live life fully, was she really alive at all?

'Great, Sara,' she chided herself. 'Taking life guidance from a psychotic murderer. Just what you need…'

'Did you say something?' Grissom asked as he entered the room, making Sara jump for the second time in the one evening.

'What did I tell you about sneaking up on me?' she chastised him with a grin.

'You said not to do it at a crime scene. You said nothing about at the labs,' he teased her. 'What are you reading?'

'Lana's journal,' Sara replied, her grin immediately replaced with a look of disgust. 'Scintillating reading. Everything you need for a best seller – love, sex, violence. Even a catchy philosophy – 'death equals love, love equals death'.'

Grissom nodded. 'Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.'

Sara arched an eyebrow at him. 'You really have a quote for every occasion, don't you?'

'I was thinking of having a book published,' was his dead-pan reply. 'Details of all the murders in there?'

Sara nodded. 'Dates, locations, names, detailed descriptions of what was done to each victim. It's… disturbing. Listen to this: 'The fools don't know what their hearts are for, so we'll take them and add them to our own, making our love stronger…' How does a girl get to be so twisted? She's only a teenager…'

'I never cease to be amazed and disturbed by the capacity for violence that some individuals display,' Grissom said. 'The only thing more disturbing is that fact that, some day, a worse case will present itself.'

Sara sighed and glanced back at the diary lying on the table in front of her. Worse than this? Worse than a young girl, corrupted by such evil that she killed and mutilated indiscriminately? Sara hoped, deep in her soul, that she would never come across anything worse than this.

'Anyway, I came looking for you for a purpose,' Grissom's voice broke into her thoughts. 'Catherine and Nick are interviewing Lana Tyler's mother.'

'She wouldn't do such a thing!' Beth Tyler insisted, barely holding back the deluge of tears. 'My Lana's only a child!'

'A child you haven't seen in 18 months, Mrs Tyler,' Catherine replied evenly. 'I'm afraid we have a great deal of evidence against your daughter.'

Mrs. Tyler shook her head as if to clear it of the accusation. Her daughter. A killer? It couldn't be.

Nick leaned forward, gazing at the woman before him with eyes full of sympathy. Sara watched him through the one-way glass of the interview room, using the technique he had used countless times when interviewing victim's families, knowing full well that it was not a technique at all. Nick genuinely did feel sympathy and even empathy for many of the families they came across everyday.

'Mrs. Tyler? Is there anything, anything at all that you can tell us about your daughter that might help us find her?' he asked gently.

The woman looked at him incredulously. 'Do you think if I knew where she was I wouldn't have brought her home by now? She's been gone for 18 months!'

Nick tried again. 'Can you tell us about Lana? About her childhood? Something that might explain why…?'

'Why?' Beth Tyler's voice came out high and unnatural. 'Why my daughter left home? Why she started hurting people? Killing people, if what you say is true? What could I tell you that would explain that?'

'Did Lana have any problems at school?' Catherine took up the questioning again. 'Bullying?' Mrs. Tyler shook her head but remained silent. 'How about her relationship with you?' Again the woman said nothing. 'Her father?'

Bingo. Beth Tyler's head shot up, and when her eyes met Catherine's the CSI saw fear there.

'She didn't have a good a relationship with her Dad?' Catherine suggested.

'He… he's not around anymore,' Beth told her quietly. 'We… we broke up. A little while before Lana ran away.'

'Why was that, Mrs. Tyler?' Nick asked gently.

'He…Lana said… he…' she couldn't bring herself to utter the words. But both Catherine and Nick knew. They had worked hundreds of cases like this.

'Did your husband abuse your daughter, Mrs. Tyler?' Catherine pressed her.

'I didn't believe her. She first told me when she was 15. I thought she was going through a difficult stage… just fighting with her Dad and trying to get back at him.' The tears she had held off for so long finally began to flow down her face. 'When I told her… I didn't believe her, she… she went to school and trashed her classroom. Attacked a teacher and a fellow student.'

'What happened then?'

'She was placed in care,' Beth replied. 'She told social services that the reason for her violent outburst was that her father had… abused her. So they took her into care while they investigated. The school decided not to press charges… Then, I found Lana's diary and it was so… detailed. I knew I'd been wrong…' her words came out as sobs now. 'I knew he'd… I kicked him out, and they eventually let Lana come home. But she had changed.'

'How?' Nick asked.

'She was so cold. Hard,' Beth closed her eyes against the emotions welling out of her. 'She said she hated me. Hated her father. Said we'd never shown her real love. She said she'd have to go looking for it. Said we 'caged' her… I don't know what she meant by that… Not long afterwards, she ran away…'

At the other side of the glass, Sara closed her eyes against the tears in her own eyes. She prayed that Grissom wouldn't notice how the woman's story had affected her. Now she understood the pain, the confusion, the anger in Lana's diary. She hadn't felt like her parents had ever really loved her. She'd been a child of the system, even if only for a short time. She'd been abused. The story conjured up images of Sara's own past that she'd rather not deal with. Things she had shared with almost no one.

But it also gave her a frightening perspective on how things might play out, should Lana be cornered. The girl was desperate. And desperate people did desperate things in certain situations.

Brass and Warrick were half-way back to the station when the scanner crackled urgently into life.

'All units. All units. Unit in pursuit of suspect car - 9-3-6-Mike-Tango-Echo, on Highway 14, two miles north of Vegas. Two suspects are wanted in connection with multiple murders. They should be considered armed and dangerous. Hostages in car. Repeat, two hostages in car. Approach with extreme caution.'

Without pause, Brass spun the car around and sped off the way he had just come.

'Sara, wait!' Grissom called out to the speeding brunette as she raced down the corridor towards the exit.

'Hurry up, Grissom!' she urged him without breaking stride.

'Sara, they haven't even secured the scene yet,' he insisted, rushing out the front door of the building behind her. 'There isn't even a scene to secure yet. It's still driving through the Nevada desert.'

Sara had already reached the Tahoe and was unlocking the door, glaring at him to hurry up. 'Yeah, well it'd be good to be nearby, when they do secure the scene,' she replied, climbing into the driver's seat.

Grissom climbed into the passenger' seat and sighed. Before Sara could back out of the parking space, he placed his hand on hers. 'Sara,' his voice was like a soothing caress, but Sara refused to be soothed.

Sitting back in her seat, she closed her eyes and let out a long, angry breath.

'You have to trust that the Police will get those kids out of the car unharmed,' Grissom told her in the same, soothing voice. 'It's not our job to charge in and save the day.'

'No. We're just the clean-up crew,' she said bitterly, not opening her eyes.

'That's not all we do, and you know it. Thanks to the work we've done, we have enough evidence to put our killers behind bars for the rest of their natural lives. Work that you've done.'

'Too little too late, Grissom,' she replied sadly, pulling out of the lot. 'Too little too late…'

'Hey,' he said softly. When she didn't look at him, he tried again. 'Hey?'

She quickly glanced in his direction and then back to the road.

'You're not getting defeatist on me, are you?' he prodded her gently. He couldn't fathom where this sudden wave of negativity had come from.

'It's just…' she paused, searching for the words. 'I read her diary. Cover to cover. Her words… I don't know how to explain it but… I have a bad feeling about all of this. Like… someone else will die before this is over.'

Brass could see the flashing lights and chaos on the road up ahead. The high speed car chase had been going on for miles, when a patrol car swerved off an access road and into the path of the suspects' speeding Jetta. In his attempt to avoid the cop car, J.D. had overcorrected and crashed his car into a ditch at the side of the road.

As Brass pulled up, he could see several officers, guns drawn, surrounding the car at a safe distance. The reason for the distance became clear as he walked closer to the scene. J.D. was staggering from the car, displaying all the signs of broken ribs, but still aiming his pistol at Darren McKenzie. Lana, with blood oozing from a wound to her temple, had Darren's girlfriend, Lucy, by the throat, pressing the blade of her alarmingly large knife into the girl's flesh.

'Don't come any closer!' she screamed, her eyes wild with rage and with panic. 'Don't come any fucking closer! I'll cut her head off I swear!'

Grissom had never seen Sara drive so fast. He was used to Warrick's somewhat creative driving style, but Sara had always struck him as an unusually cautious driver. However, on this occasion, she drove as though the devil himself were after her.

'Sara, slow down.'

'We're nearly there,' was all she would say.

TBC.