Chapter Thirty
II
Fear was a claw, cutting blood and flesh and bone, leaving traces of pain as it tore. Fear was the weakness of every human and never had Gil Grissom felt as human as he did now.
She had gone to a crime scene alone. She had gone alone when Alan Keyes was out there somewhere, with a will to kill. She had gone alone and could have robbed him of her forever more. She had given him this fear.
And then she had merely called him to tell him where she was and that they should come, as she had found something. Nothing more, nothing less. Professional, sounding so much like him he'd wanted to throw the phone at something. She should not be like him, wandering into a Syd Goggle just to talk.
No Catherine there for her save as he'd had and the drive felt like every moment was a thorned eternity.
"She didn't say what she'd found?" Nick asked again, eyes on the road, hands relaxed on the wheel.
"No," Grissom said shortly. The scientist in him should be wondering about that, speculating, but all he could feel was the claw.
'This is why you stayed away from her embrace,' a part of him thought. Fear of losing Sara, his co-worker, was darkness and despair. Fear of losing Sara, his lover, was insanity and obsession.
He breathed, watching the houses stream by, little hives, each with a different hierarchy, a different pattern. You could not study one human and understand the rest, not fully. He could not study Dr. Lurie and understand himself, understand his pattern with Sara. He could not study other women in his life and understand her. She was no Catherine. Catherine had lingered by him, always a step away, but never demanding him, the Grissom away from all his roles. Sara... Of all the men she might have had, she demanded him.
He still did not understand why. And as long as he did not understand, there was always the fear that she might leave him. Another claw, another pain.
The Keyes' residence hovered ahead, speaking of riches and prosperity, though not overwhelming fortune. A good living, with land owned to make money from. What hive had the Keyes' house been, he wondered. Violent? Normal? Detached? Abusive?
Only one member of the family left to tell now.
Sara was already waiting for them, leaning against her car, almost beaming as they pulled over.
"Just in time, guys!" she called. Nick looked amused. Grissom could hardly breathe, the claw becoming anger, filling him, grounding him to humanity.
"Just in time for what?" Nick asked, exiting the car and slamming the door behind him. "You look way too happy and rested. I hate you."
"Thrill of discovery, Nick. You should try it some time," she teased, and somewhere in the dark corner of his mind, Grissom noticed again how she almost seemed happier with other people and he wondered once more why she had demanded him, pushed him, pursued him.
"Ow!" Nick exclaimed, feigning hurt to her remark.
"Hey Grissom," she said, now turning to him, the smile still hovering on her lips.
"What are we here for?" he asked, keeping his voice even. She narrowed her eyes slightly at his tone, but didn't lose her happy smile.
"I kept thinking maybe we'd missed something," she said, beckoning them inside. "Alan Keyes seemed to be echoing Anna's murder just a tad too much with his victims. So I thought maybe he had a way of knowing how to recreate it."
"An accomplice," Grissom said slowly, remembering his own speculation.
"Or a source," she replied, the stairs creaking under her as she strode up them confidently, looking almost at home in a murderer's home. But then, perhaps that had been all the home she had known, growing up. "I went through his room again and I found something."
"We combed through every room here," Nick protested, looking slightly alarmed at the thought of having missed something.
"True. But sometimes, context is everything," she smiled, looking at Grissom with eyes so bright he nearly lost his breath. "I found this."
"A book?" Nick asked, looking at the bedside table she indicated and reading the title. "Norwegian fairytales?"
"Yes," she said empathically and Grissom stared at her, for a moment lost in the discovery.
"Anna's fairytale?"
"Huh?" Nick looked confused, gaze flickering between the book and Grissom.
"When we were in Norway, Anna's grandmother told us of a particular fairytale Anna was very fond of," Sara explained, lifting the book carefully with a gloved hand. "Context. So I opened it and stuck between the pages I found Anna's letter to her father."
She held the sheets of paper out to him, and Grissom slapped on his gloves and took them carefully, feeling how light Anna's death sentence felt between his hands. The start of all this, flowery letters spelling out words that would doom so many.
"I glanced at it," Sara went on, sorrow laced with her words. "She mentions her upbringing and fairytales being read to her. I guess Alan bought the book so he could read to her too, do what he'd missed."
"A sentimental killer," Nick muttered, shaking his head.
"A sentimental father," Grissom corrected. "He killed when he wasn't a father anymore."
"I also found this," Sara said as she held out a slightly faded snapshot. Young Alan Keyes and a blonde, beaming at each other, hands clasped. A normal, happy couple in a snapshot of life.
"Anna's mother," Grissom guessed, noticing a passing similarity with Anna. So this was Cecilie, the ghost of the tale, never present, but always haunting.
"Yes," Sara replied again. "Notice the building in the background? That's the Royal Castle. Grissom and I walked past it a few times while there."
He remembered. Sun in her hair, smile on her lips, his hands on her skin. If anyone had taken a picture then, they too would have seemed a happy couple in a snapshot of time.
Memories froze the moments. Time teared them down.
"There's a public park there," Sara explained to Nick, who nodded. "And then I looked at Alan's t-shirt."
Nick tilted his head. "Yeah, it's got writing on it. Las Vegas... PD! What?"
"What?" Grissom echoed, almost yanking the photo out of Sara's hand and looking for himself. "Las Vegas PD."
"But wait a minute... Alan Keyes was never in law enforcement according to anything we found," Nick objected, looking at Grissom. "Right?"
"Right," Sara agreed before Grissom could say anything. "But maybe a friend was. A friend who would lend it to young Alan so he could impress Norwegian girls, maybe?"
"A possible source," Grissom muttered, mostly to himself. An accomplice, a source, a friend? Two to hunt rather than one?
"Yes. And if we find Alan's friend, maybe we'll find Alan," Sara said, sounding grimly satisfied.
"Good work, Sara," Nick complimented, smiling at her with affection and Grissom felt another sharp claw in his flesh.
"Nick, bag this stuff, see if there's anything else. Sara, a moment please?" he asked and she nodded, following him to a large library of dust and silence. "What are you doing?"
"What?" She looked confused at him. "I looked for evidence. My job, remember?"
"You went alone in a case with a killer who's already shown an affinity for going after CSIs! Sara, you could have..." he trailed off, refusing to say, refusing to acknowledge what might have happened. "Catherine went alone and that damn near cost her her life and Warrick's!"
"Give me some credit, Grissom. There was an officer here," she said calmly, crossing her arms.
"The officer could have left. You should have called me, or Nick or Warrick or Catherine. Dammit Sara, your life on the line is not going to make the dead living again or their voices heard louder!"
"Our lives are on the line ever day. It's called living," she replied, still in her calm voice. "Why are you giving me this speech? This case of all cases is personal to all of us and I haven't stepped more out of line than anyone else."
'Anyone else isn't you. Anyone else wouldn't kill me by dying,' he thought and stared helplessly at her.
"Right," she said after a moment of silence and turned to leave. He grabbed her arm, feeling everything in him like a raw wound, bleeding as he pulled her close and kissed her hard. It was more a punishment than a caress, but her lips were soft and yelding against his anyway and he knew he didn't deserve her, had never deserved her, and yet, he wanted to claim her, have her, be with her.
"What did I do wrong?" she whispered against his lips, taking his head in her hands.
'You scared me,' he thought, but didn't say, merely kissed her again, desiring to rest in her until beasts and claws had been eroded by time and their bones would turn to earth together.
She slipped out of his grasp, looking at him with affection and sadness and a hint of anger. "You have to talk to me sometimes, Grissom. That is not negotiable."
He looked at her as she walked out, leaving him with the books and silence in Alan's fading hive. Here a murderer had been shaped and only the traces of the process remained for them to pick through. All humans were shaped by their hives, their purpose, their hierarchy. But it was always possible to find a new hive and be shaped anew, for those who dared.
Perhaps Alan had not.
Perhaps Grissom did not.
He walked out, the footsteps slowly fading and leaving only the dust.
