Chapter 2 -
Disclaimer – Not mine just borrowed.
A/N – Updates will probably come a lot slower now as I go back to college in a few days. I have to do some actual work this semester, so I'm cutting way back on the writing. It comes second to my exams unfortunately.
Thank you so much for all your feedback. I still say you guys are way too nice to me and I hope not to disappoint if I can help it.
Catherine made her way back to the lab as slowly as she could reasonably manage. She was hoping to delay the inevitable reprimand that would come her way from Grissom. She had known him way too long to find him particularly intimidating unlike some of the labs younger employees. But he could quite easily put both Sara and herself on decomps for the foreseeable future, which was not a pleasant thought.
She had left a very much abbreviated message for Grissom on his desk when he had gone out to talk to Greg about the DNA samples. She had kept it simple, and then immediately turned her cell off. She knew she would probably turn it back on to find a myriad of messages asking where the hell she had been. The idea of now having to explain her whereabouts was not especially appealing.
In the end Sara never bothered to go to her room that night sleep seemed to be evading her despite how tired she was. Her thoughts rattled around in her head and would not let her get any rest. She just kept imagining his response. He'd never struck her as the child-loving type; although Lindsey was the only one she had ever seem him around, and he always seemed fairly comfortable around her.
Having said that she had never thought of herself as coping very well with children and yet with the thought of her own felt she was very slowly coming round to the idea. She was still scared to death, but then again who wouldn't be. The fact that it was his gave her a vaguely satisfied feeling, that even if he didn't want her she still had some part of him to keep with her. In an odd way this thought made her feel a little safer. It seemed strange to her to feel this way, but she comforted herself in the fact that he need never know. That was one of many thoughts that she was not about to share with anyone.
The thought of his reaction just made her nervous. Maybe she could claim insanity and that it was someone else's, or just leave permanently and save herself the trouble of having to lie to his face. Lying to him was not something she was good at, and she could almost visualise him seeing through it immediately. But something stopped her from filling out the resignation slip, maybe it was the kind of perverse pleasure she would get from seeing his first reaction when it became too obvious to hide, because that was the only time she intended on telling him. It would be impossible for her to bring it up herself. Some things are just better left unsaid.
Sara gingerly pushed herself up from her sofa and stretched out the many kinks that sleeping there had caused in her back. Slowly she made her way to the kitchen to find herself a glass of water and an aspirin for her headache. Her lack of sleep was taking its toll, and her only hope was that she could get some kind of decent rest before shift began. Falling asleep at a crime scene would not be a good way of mending things the boss.
Taking a firm hold of her water and heading towards her bedroom to at least attempt a decent rest even though there was no way she thought she was actually going to get any sleep. It seemed a futile gesture but necessary nonetheless.
Catherine all but tip-toed past Grissom's office, hoping to be able to get back to what she had been doing without Grissom noticing. This kind of defeated the point of leaving him a note, but she wasn't really thinking about that by this point. She was shocked out of her sneaky entrance by a voice from the door to her right. Trust him not to actually be in his office when she thought he was.
"Catherine, what is this?" She grimaced silently and spun back towards layout. He didn't look angry anymore for which she was glad. Giving him time to cool down had probably been a wise idea. He now simply looked tired. He was holding her note up towards her and rubbing his forehead distractedly with the other hand. She got the sense he had a migraine coming on.
"I just took Sara home, she's been ill all shift and I didn't trust her driving on her own."
She saved digging into him over the earlier scene for another time. There was no use in making his headache worse than it would already be. Catherine turned to walk back out of the door, "you should go home too, you don't look so great." Grissom frowned at her and went back to his office to rummage in his drawer for his medication.
Something about Sara's sudden illness didn't sit well with him. He didn't think she was the type to shirk her work over a disagreement, yet something just didn't seem right. He had been so distracted by the idea of Sara taking off sick, that he hadn't even thought to ask what was wrong with her. Catherine was obviously not in the sharing mood, as she would normally have given him more details than that. He made a mental note to ask her about it before the end of shift, meanwhile he attempted to bore himself with some paperwork while he waited on Bobby's bullet analysis.
Grissom ended up going home late from shift as usual. Catherine it seemed was avoiding him, that was one mystery he was going to have to leave for later. Bobby however did come back with a ballpark make of gun, just minutes before he was intending to go home. It was another coincidence, one which was very telling of his luck at the moment.
"I checked up on the stria on your bullet. Six lands and grooves which twist to the right. It looks like a Browning. I can't isolate it anymore than that with any certainty." Bobby sent him an apologetic smile. "I ran it through IBIS, it didn't spit anything out, so it was probably a first time offender." He left fairly quickly after his explanation to avoid any repercussions, leaving Grissom to examine the bullet himself, before adding it to his own case notes, and eventually going home.
Brass found Grissom in his office right at the start of the next shift. "I had a little chat with the stable manager. He has a viable alibi, he was up in Laughlin with some family all day, they have all confirmed that. He was very helpful, gave me complete access to all the stable registers and financial information. They have a signing in/out system so that the last person or people back in after a hack in the evening has responsibility to lock-up."
"Responsibility is shared, it's an interesting concept." Grissom murmured and looked up at Brass for the first time from the notes on his desk.
"People have liability for their own horses, but if someone doesn't lock-up they know exactly where to put the blame if someone's horse goes missing."
"Do you have any other suspects, wife, girlfriend anyone else who might have known him well?"
"His wife is being brought in as we speak. I thought you might enjoy an interrogation for the evenings entertainment." Grissom smiled flipping his folder closed and going to follow the detective.
Jeanette Wiesman sat uncomfortably at the metal table in the centre of the room. Her hands were clenched in front of her and she was twisting her wedding ring in an agitated gesture. Her brown hair was just beginning to show signs of grey. It fell in limp waves across her face. She was dressed quite casually and only her body language gave away how much the situation unnerved her. To the average onlooker she would have seemed perfectly calm, like she was going to get her hair cut rather than being part of a criminal investigation.
"So, Mrs Wiesman, " Brass began.
"It's Jean." She shifted uncomfortably in her seat following Brass' pacing with her eyes. "You want to ask me about Rich I guess."
"Well Jean, You guessed right, Anything you want to tell us before we get started?" Brass ceased his pacing to watch her reaction for anything tell tale in her response.
"I don't think so." He was disappointed, not a flicker.
"So, what did you know about your husband's whereabouts?"
"Not much… Look I'll be frank with you, we didn't have the best marriage in a lot of ways." She snorted in a distinctly unladylike fashion "He could have been in Timbuktu for all I knew." She added with a wry smile.
Brass gave a customary disbelieving look, "You mean to say, you didn't know he went to the livery stables?"
"I didn't say that, I just said I didn't know where he was before he died."
"Isn't that picking straws a little." Grissom finally decided to add his input, be it only a short shot.
"You might want to look at work for information about him, they probably knew far more than I ever did about his, uh, extra-curricular activities." She gave the two men a dry smile and got up to leave. "I don't think there is much more I can tell you."
As soon as she had left the room Grissom turned to Brass. "We should go to their house, take a look around. I'll send someone out to talk to the people at his work and process his workstation."
"He worked at an insurance firm about 20 minutes from his home 'LTS Insurance'. In what has to be the dullest job on the planet. Lots of paperwork, can you imagine." He shuddered light-heartedly and opened the door, following Grissom out into the corridor.
He entered the break room to find most of the team waiting on him. Sara was sat in a chair at the head of the table. He assumed she must be better, and had to wonder briefly about her speedy recovery, before he moved onto the nights workload.
"Nick, Catherine could you head over the vic's place of work for me. His workspace will need processing and if you could start interviewing some of the other staff it would be a big help. Warrick, his home needs processing look for anything out of the ordinary, I have his phone records but we'll need to take a look at the possibility of a financial motive.
He then turned to the last person left without an assignment.
"Sara I need you on B&E in Summerlin."
He knew as soon as the words left his mouth that he had just shoved his foot straight into their place. Her earlier benign expression immediately creased with a heavy frown. She was silent for a moment formulating some sort of reasonable response.
"It was our case to start with, wh- … Never mind, you know what, I don't care." She snagged the slip from between his fingers and walked off without a backwards glance. He knew instinctively he had just made things worse, it was pretty glaringly obvious. He had thought that perhaps after her illness yesterday she might appreciate an easy open and shut case, but apparently not. Thinking about it with he should have known better than to assume, with Sara you could honestly never be sure how she would take it.
His mood was not enhanced by Catherine's parting comment.
"That was not a smooth move. I think we need to have a little chat later."
When Catherine made statements like that, it generally meant an incursion into his private life. A subject on which he was not comfortable discussing. She was also not the kind of woman not follow up and make sure that said conversation actually happened. Not that he did much of the talking in these situations. She supplied most of the conversation, and was usually uncomfortably spot on with her observations- and advice when she deemed it necessary to intervene. She had after all done it before. It was an odd talent she had for reading people and situations, as he had always said, she was the 'people person' and as much as he had his own questions to ask her, he was not looking forward to this "little chat". Not one bit.
