Chapter Fourteen
Author's Note: Papa Olaf's quote comes from Ivar Aasen's 'Norwegian Proverbs'. It's in the public domain.
II
Home.
The Norwegian sky hung above him, and Greg watched the clouds float across it, perhaps carrying rain. The air seemed heavy, almost looming. He breathed it in slowly, smelling the trees and grass and summer.
'Home,' he thought again and his blood hummed. From this land, his grandparents had come. It was almost as if his DNA felt it had come home. An illusion, probably, brought on by too many stories by Papa Olaf. But still, this was a kind of home.
Another kind of home was Las Vegas. Another kind of family, the lab. A family with two missing members.
He watched the clouds loom and wondered if perhaps he should have stayed in the lab. Perhaps there he could have been of help now, instead of sitting on a bench in Norway, watching people swarm in the main street on a midday summer day. Observing to keep his mind still, to keep the worry at a distance.
It felt an oddly Grissom thing to do.
'Speaking of Grissom,' he thought and saw Sara exit the hotel and spotting him. Dressed in grey and white, she looked pale in the sunlight, almost a ghost.
"Hey," she called, crossing the street and taking a seat next to him. "Wanted some fresh air this morning?"
"Yeah. I knocked on your door, you didn't answer."
"I was probably sleeping still," she said after a moment, but something almost like guilt clung to her. Guilt for sleeping as Warrick and Catherine were in danger? Guilt for not being there, in Las Vegas?
"Trouble falling asleep?" he asked and she let out something much like a snort.
"You could say that."
He gave her a sideways glance. She looked distant and he wondered if that was how she coped. Being CSI had seemed such an adventure, a chance to be Greg the Solver, but he hadn't realised how much there was to cope with. Under a microscope, everything looked more distant. Up close, you realised blood belonged to a life.
"I called Nick," she said and he nodded, having done the same. "They've found Warrick's car."
"I heard. Grissom with you?"
"I think he's still sleeping."
The clouds caught up with the sun and the shadow fell over the day. The leaves rattled slightly in the wind, an almost ominous sound. He wondered if it was heralding doom. In the stories from Norway Papa Olaf had read to him as young, the wind often spoke. Perhaps it still did, only people had since forgotten the language.
The hotel door opened again and Grissom came out and Sara tensed, leaving Greg to wonder. Grissom's eyes seemed to seek her out, but she looked away as he walked purposely over.
"Sara, are you..."
Grissom's gaze finally landed on Greg and his face seemed to slam shut, becoming guarded. But for a moment, something almost like boyish insecurity had been there.
"Um..." Grissom started, gaze flickering between Sara and Greg. "I heard from Nick."
"We know," Sara said evenly, her voice betraying nothing and thus far too much.
It didn't take a trained criminalist to see something was in the air between those two. Greg wasn't surprised, even if a small part of him felt faint disappointment. Sara and Grissom and Grissom and Sara, commonly gossiped about among the lab techs. Once, he had perhaps thought about Sara for himself. Perhaps he still did, deep down.
"Anna's boyfriend wants to talk to us," Grissom went on, eyes now firmly on Sara's face. "I thought maybe it would take our minds off... Everything."
Sara nodded, finally meeting Grissom's glance and something unspoken passed between then, not for the first time. They often seemed to speak with glances rather than words. Whatever it was this time, Grissom was the first to look away and at the sky.
The sky opened and the rain fell.
It was still raining when they arrived at the home of Erik Haugli, Anna's boyfriend. He too lived in what seemed a better part of Oslo, windows tall and open to the light. The flat screamed male, a huge television and several posters of a soccer team named 'Vålerenga'. Only a few pictures hinted of a female presence. Anna's ghost.
Grissom had called Brass on the way over, and the lack of news had left him looking more worried than Greg could remember seeing his supervisor before. Every now and then he would also look at Sara, and something almost soft would cross his face.
"Thank you for coming," Erik said, giving all of them a handshake. Only a faint hint of accent clung to his words, but he looked the stereotype of Scandinavia - blond, tall and blue-eyed.
"We understand you already spoke to the Norwegian police?" Grissom asked, sitting down. Sara took a chair on the other side, leaving Greg to take the middle.
"Yes. I thought maybe you knew more."
"We can't discuss an ongoing investigation." Grissom managed to sound slightly apologetic, giving what could pass for a smile. "I understand you study medicine?"
"Yes. She died from an overdose of something, didn't she? The police kept asking me about access to drugs."
"Do you have access?" Sara asked bluntly, her voice hard. Sometimes, she seemed to address suspects as if she was accusing someone else through them, someone who had hurt her. Greg wondered who it was.
"Only supervised," Erik said calmly. "I didn't call you over for that. I got a card yesterday. From her, sent from New York. The airport, I guess."
He got up and picked something off a bookshelf, holding it out to Grissom.
"Greg, could you...?" Grissom asked and Greg nodded, snapping his gloves on and taking the card. The letters were cursive and flowery, the words Norwegian. He could make out a few words, and the picture showed the Manhattan skyline. A typical card from a tourist, only she may have been dying as she wrote it. He put it into a plastic bag carefully, wondering if she had been happy as she wrote it.
"Thank you," Grissom went on. "Why did you give this to us?"
"You're the experts flown in," Erik said with a shrug. "You always go to the experts if you want results. Have you found her father?"
"She told you about him?"
"Yeah. She was so happy. I kept telling her he probably just wanted a kidney from her or something, but she wouldn't listen."
"Did she tell you who it was?" Greg shot in, peeling his gloves off.
"No. Just that he was well off in Las Vegas. He was going to take her gambling and horse riding." Erik shook his head. "You'd think with the mother she had she'd learned that people could hurt her by now."
"Mrs. Jensen told us Anna had received a letter from her father, but we've been unable to find it. Do you have any idea where she might have stored it?" Grissom asked, but Erik only shook his head again.
"I wish I knew, I would have given that man a piece of my mind."
Hostility, Greg noted. Maybe enough hostility to want to make Anna too sick to meet her father? Giving her an overdose by accident?
'You wouldn't even be considering these things a few years ago,' his mind whispered and he shut it away. Innocence was for the children, laughing in the summer wind.
He tuned back to the conversation as he realised Grissom was thanking Erik and they walked out into the light rain. The trees were glistening with water, occasionally letting go of drops. The air was thick with the smell of wet earth, fresh and distinctive.
"You think the card really is from her?" Sara asked as they headed towards the car, looking firmly at Grissom.
"We'll have to find out. You can drive, Greg. You know the way."
They drove to the Majorstua police station, the day starting to fade all around. Greg knew without even looking at his watch. The lighter shade was evening, the sky become paler as a sign of coming night even if the sun would still be up. It was a gentle sort of light twilight, even the rain soft.
Anna's home, this city, for eternity. Her ashes had come home to rest her, even if her blood could not. He wondered if she had been happy here, even in the rain, even without the father.
A few wrong turns later, he pulled the car up in front of the police station and they went in, being greeted by Detective Bjørnvik, who took the bagged card with a few muttered words about arrogant youth. Greg surmised it hadn't been too popular that Erik had given them the card first rather than handing it over to the local police. Grissom stayed behind for a few minutes to make a few calls, leaving Sara and Greg to stand outside in the rain, neither seeking the shelter of the car.
"How are you doing with not thinking about it?" he asked softly and she gave him a grimace.
"I've tried to keep my mind of it," she said and bit her lip.
"Maybe they just ran off to get married?" he suggested. "Sorry. Bad joke."
She looked at him, rain in her hair, affection in her voice. "Don't ever stop making bad jokes, Greg."
He tried to think of a bad joke to reply with when Grissom came barging out, a sun on his face.
"They have been found. They're all right," he announced, making both stare at him.
"Warrick and Catherine?" Sara asked breathlessly. For a moment, she was the image of beauty and happiness, eyes bright and on Grissom.
"Yes. They apparently managed to escape from a house on the property of a John Keyes, and were found wandering in the desert nearby. No sign of the owner. Brass has an APB out on him."
"Thank God," Greg breathed. They were safe. They were all right.
Sara gave him a hug and Grissom was beaming and the rain fell on, and for one moment, Greg knew how Anna must have felt when a letter from her father had arrived.
One moment of getting what you had desperately wanted, one moment of thinking all was right with the world.
And in the back of his mind, something Papa Olaf had said echoed with the beating of the rain.
'The summer moments always pass quickly.'
