Title: Slipping Away
Disclaimer: Sadly, I don't own any of the characters or anything else from the show... if I did, I probably wouldn't be sitting here writing this fiction :P
Pairing: None
Rating: T - You know, just to be safe
Summary: It's not a murder, not a suicide, but a natural cause death... one that will soon cause major problems for one of the CSI's.
Chapter 1 - The Cough
CSI Greg Sanders really wanted to do a good job on this case, after all he was working with Grissom. He was delighted to have found the tissue lying on the victims counter, hoping some DNA could be taken off of it. He leaned over to get a closer look before bagging it, feeling proud at what he'd found.
((A Few Months Later))
Three girls walked down the hallway of their school, hoping the class they wanted to go into was open. They had just passed in a large assignment a few days before and wanted to know what their mark on it was.
When they walked into the classroom, they didn't see their teacher.
"Darn! I need to know if I failed that or not," one of them said.
They turned to leave but one of them didn't move from the spot where they were standing.
"Just check on his desk, I'm sure our assignments are here somewhere... I really want to know what I got on it," another of them said.
They rummaged around their teacher's desk until one of the girl's finally gasped.
There was a body on the ground under the desk, it was a teenage girl that looked no older then 13.
"I can do this," Greg coughed, "You can put me on the case."
Grissom shook his head.
"Greg, look at you. You're in no condition to even be at work. What with that cough and the fact that you're completely exhausted--which is very unusual for you. Just see a doctor, and get some rest okay? There will be other cases, this is Vegas after all," Grissom explained.
Greg claimed once more that he was fine, but Grissom didn't change his mind, leaving Greg nothing to do but go home. He walked away, still coughing.
Greg had been coughing a lot lately, but he didn't think of it as anything more than a cold that he couldn't shake. After all, he didn't have the best immune system in the world, so he was probably just having a hard time fighting it off.
He watched as Grissom assign the case to Nick and Sara, the case that he wanted to work on.
"I'm perfectly fine..." Greg said to himself, "I could have taken that case."
Grissom gave him the rest of the day off to go and see a doctor, but Greg just left and went home. He knew that there was nothing wrong with him, Grissom was just being overly-cautious.
For hours, he mindlessly flipped through channels on his television, not really paying attention to what he was watching. During one of the commercials, he found himself falling into one of his coughing fits once again, this time feeling a pain in his chest. The more he tried to stop coughing, the more he coughed.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, his coughing ceased. Greg felt relieved, but this was short-lived as he looked down at his hand.
Red.
He'd just coughed up blood.
"The vic's name is Lori Burns, she was found dead under her science teacher's desk. Three of her friends found her here while they were looking for their assignments. I'm off to have a chat with the teacher, so you two have fun processing here," Jim Brass said to Nick and Sara as they arrived on the scene.
Brass walked off to question the teacher, Mr. Waterson who taught in the classroom where the DB was found.
"When were you in your classroom last, Mr. Waterson?" Brass questioned.
The teacher looked at the clock, and then looked back at Brass.
"2 hours ago. It was lunchtime. I was marking the assignments, didn't have a class after that so I decided to come home," Mr. Waterson explained.
"When was the last time you saw Lori?"
"That was also at lunchtime, her twin sister Tori and her always sit in my classroom at lunch and eat... sometimes they'll even write things all over my boards... takes forever to get all of that stuff off though," Waterson explained, "today was just like any other day. They ate their lunch in here, because you aren't allowed to eat in the hallway. They wrote a few things on my board, and then they left when the bell rang."
"And you left after that to go home? Since you didn't have a class?"
Waterson nodded.
"Then why was your door unlocked?"
Waterson shrugged his shoulders. "I haven't got a clue. I was sure I locked it when I left."
Brass continued his questioning, while Nick and Sara took photographs of the DB and the surrounding area.
"It looks like someone shot her," Sara pointed out, "Hey... what's this black stuff on her hand?"
Sara pointed to the black smudges that coated the victim's palms. Nick bent down to get a closer look, but was unsure of what it was. He snapped a few photographs of it.
"She's so young... she had a whole life ahead of her that was taken away. Some people just make me sick..." Nick said, half to himself as he and Sara continued to process the scene.
Nick looked on the floor on the other side of the desk.
A black white-board marker.
"I think I might have found what that black stuff is," he said as he put on his gloves to retrieve it.
"And what's that?" Sara questioned.
Nick picked up the marker carefully and held it up to show Sara before putting it into an evidence bag.
"Hmm, could be," Sara replied.
