Author's Note: I hope that I don't offend anyone with the subject matter of this chapter. I neither condone nor discourage the things mentioned in here. I simply felt that this might be something our team might encounter and chose to use it as such. I have to thank my Betas, Moongirl and Smry, for their wonderful insights and painless critique of this long awaited chapter. I know that it has been awhile and I promise to get the next chapter out sooner...I hope. And finally, to my husband, Terry, who is my own personal Grissom...thank you for everything.
Chapter 4
Allusions of Heaven's Gate
The morning air was just as chilly as the atmosphere in the Denali when Grissom and Sara arrived at the crime scene. After his little attempt at conversation, the silence had been deafening.
And the drive long.
Grissom had never looked forward to arriving at a scene. Today, however, he would say that he was relieved to be there. He knew the animosity that Sara directed towards him was his own fault. He didn't blame her for feeling the way she did, but did she have to give him the cold shoulder the entire trip? God, she was stubborn. That could be both good and bad, depending on which side of her feelings you happened to be on the time.
Pulling up to the small parking area near the scene, he had barely turned off the ignition before Sara had her door opened and was out of the SUV. He got out just as Brass walked over to them. "What've we got, Jim?"
"Hiker and her boyfriend decided to take a sunrise walk to Mount DeHostis. You know, beat the heat and everything. Decided against it and took the loop trail instead. Guess she didn't think to bring a flashlight, though. Stumbled over what she thought was a log or something. That was until she got a closer look. Found body number one."
"Number one? How many are we looking at?" Grissom asked, not knowing if he really wanted to hear the answer.
"Last count, 8. And that's not all. It looks like all of them are kids. Teenagers are my guess. Not the least of it, thought. We may have a satanic or cult killing here."
"What?" Grissom asked, a little incredulous.
Brass switched into briefing mode. "Seems like all of our vics are dressed alike. Black hooded sweat suits and high top sneakers. Oh, yeah, and the large pentagram made of stones on the ground in the middle of them kinda gave it away."
Just as Brass finished his recitation, the rest of Grissom's team arrived.
Grissom knew that this one would be tough. Call it a gut instinct. Kids were always hard to deal with. But, he also knew he had one of the best teams in the nation. They would do their respective jobs and not let emotions cloud any of their judgments. At least not while they were working the case. Feelings would come later; in private where they could battle the monsters they faced everyday. "Okay, this is just another scene."
Everyone nodded in the affirmative.
Brass interrupted, "We may also have a spectator. Uniforms found a smoldering fire about 500 feet in behind some boulders. Main scene's about 1500 feet in, down the ravine."
"Alright, Catherine, you and Sara work the perimeter, 2000 feet radius. Warrick, you and Nick are with me," Grissom directed his crew. He turned his attention back to Brass, "Jim, has David arrived yet?"
"No"
"See if you can get a hold of him and let him know that he's going to need some help out here. Have you started interviewing our hiker?"
"Already on it. I've got the new detective, Wayne Phillips, interviewing her."
"Okay, then, let's get to work," Grissom charged and moved to start walking to the scene. He was stopped by a hand on his arm. He turned and looked straight into the eyes of Catherine.
"You wanna tell me why you have me and Sara working the perimeter?" She said in a huff. Indignation was evident on her face.
"I just thought that you and Sara would be better on that. Once you get done, you and Sara can join us, I'm sure that we'll still be working the main scene," Grissom offered.
"It's just that we could get some of day shift to do the perimeter. Or at least some cadets," Catherine interjected.
"This is our scene, not day shifts and besides, since when do you question my choice of assignments, Catherine? If we need additional eyes, I'll call in the cadets. But not until we absolutely need it. Understand? The more people we have mucking around, the greater the chance of contamination. I won't risk that with this case. The sooner we get started on this scene, the sooner we can start finding out who and why. Okay."
"We'll talk about this later."
"I'm sure we will," he replied and turned and walked down the ravine.
GnS
30 minutes later, Sara stood up from the crouching position she had been in. Dropping the camera so that it hung around her neck, she swung her baseball cap back around to shade her eyes and looked towards Catherine, "That footprint that we found ought to be set by now. It was a good thing the ground's soft up here or we never would have been able to mold it."
Catherine turned towards the other woman. "Huh?" she replied, lost in her own thoughts. She'd been watching the remainder of the team work the main scene, silently stewing over the fact that she had been put in her place by Grissom.
Sara just let Catherine's gruffness wash past her. "You know, footprint, soft ground, mold," she gestured towards the off-white circular mass of dental stone.
Catherine allowed her gaze to follow Sara's extended hand. "Oh that, yeah. Good thing." She returned to watching the remainder of the group. That was where she belonged, down where the action was at. She was a senior CSI, for christ sake, not some newbie, fresh out of the lab. "Damn, we should be down there, helping out. This is just where some teenagers got a little cozy away from Mommy and Daddy."
"We don't know that, Catherine, and we won't until we process all of the evidence," Sara said, hiding her disgust with the older woman. Working a scene didn't seem good enough for Catherine, unless it was a high profile case, unless it was one that would further her career. "We'll be down there in a few minutes and then we can help. Right now, this is where we need to be."
"You're starting to sound like Grissom now. He start rubbing off on you, huh? That must have been some conversation on the ride out here," sarcasm dripped from Catherine's voice.
Her irritation with the blond woman finally got the best of her, "You don't need to be such a bitch, Catherine. We've only been up here a half hour. There are8 bodies down there. And they'll still be there 10 minutes from now," Sara charged, her face blushed with anger and frustration. Catherine's whole diva act was getting old, fast. "I don't sound like Grissom. Just because I happen to care about this case and not whether or not it will help my career does not make me an unemotional, uncaring automaton."
"Okay, okay, Wonder Woman. Sorry I came across as diva-like. I care about this case just as much as you, I just hate it when Mr. Gil Grissom, forensics god, thinks that the case is something that poor little women can't handle," Catherine said in way of apology.
Sara had turned back to the footprint mold and began to carefully lift the dental stone fixture up. "If that's your version of an apology, I accept," she threw over her shoulder. Turning, she displayed the mold to Catherine. "Perfect," she said while flashing one of her rare smiles.
"Perfect," Catherine exclaimed while viewing the object. "Now, let's pack up and get down there. You never did say how the conversation with Grissom went, did you?
"What conversation? Mr. Roboto said all of three words to me, maybe," Sara stated.
"He did what?" Catherine whined, "I'm gonna kill that man. I told him he needed to talk to you, tell you how he feels. Hell, I told him he just needs to acknowledge the fact that he has feelings. But does that Discovery watching, puzzle doing recluse ever listen to me? I swear, if he didn't already know that you were outside the interrogation room, I'd tell him just to see his reaction."
Sara stopped in her tracks and whipped around to look at the other woman, flabbergasted. "What in the hell do you mean he knows that I was outside the interrogation room?"
He knew.
And now she knew that he knew.
Now the dance that they had been doing around each other for years would take on a whole new meaning.
"Calm down, okay. Yes, he knows that you were there. And he knows that you heard what he said to Dr. Lurie. Believe me, if he had known you were there, he would have never said a word," Catherine revealed. Her face softened as she looked at the terrified woman before her. Grissom had really done a number on her with his on-again, off-again flirting. Catherine understood that he was scared, but fear had its limits. "He doesn't know what to do, Sara. That's why he hasn't been able to express to you what he wants. How he feels."
Sara couldn't believe where this conversation was rapidly heading. "Apparently he doesn't have a problem telling complete strangers how he feels. Murder suspects, co-workers, the airhead of a clerk at Blockbuster. Seems like everyone but me."
"You want to know why that is? Why he can say stuff to others instead of you?
"I don't know if I can handle this, right now," Sara replied as she sat on a boulder, attempting to regain the somewhat fragile grasp she had on her emotions.
"I know that you've been through quite a bit lately but I think you'll be able to handle this," Catherine reassured her college.
"You have no idea what I've been through, Catherine, and I don't know how much more I can handle in this lifetime," Sara shot back in a dazed voice.
"God, you are one of the strongest people I know. I don't give out compliments very often to women. I have that whole competition thing going on," she attempted to bring some lightheartedness into the conversation, "but you are by far the strongest female person I know."
"Then you don't know very many female persons," Sara muttered under her breath.
"I'm going to pretend that I didn't hear that," Catherine remarked. "The reason our favorite bug freak can't tell you how much he feels is because you're too powerful to him."
"Excuse me, powerful?" Sara asked, baffled.
"Yup. You, my dear, have all of the power. You can hurt him if he allows it. He cares so much about you that if he ever lets you in, and something happens, he'll lose it. He's been hurt before, badly. And he doesn't want to go back there. When it all boils down, he's scared Sara."
"So he can tell you instead of me? What does he expect me to do?" Sara questioned, "I don't know how much longer I can wait for him, Catherine."
"He'll come around, eventually," Catherine offered, "I just don't know when. Besides, he didn't tell me. I figured it out. I've watched you and it's pretty evident to everyone, except him. And I've known Grissom for awhile. He can't hide much from me."
"Well, since nothing was said on the ride out here, how about we just drop it and head down to the rest of the group?" Sara said in a vain attempt to change the subject. She knew that once Catherine got it in her head about something, not much on the face of the earth could steer her away from it. She hoped that this time would be different. "Did you get some shots of the pentagram from up here?"
Catherine could take a hint. "Okay, I understand. No more Grissom-feelings talk. But don't forget what I said, Sara."
"I won't. Now can we get past this," Sara acknowledged. She so wanted to leave this topic, this area of conversation. She had never had any girlfriends in her life and had never had anyone to talk about the heartaches either. She didn't feel comfortable with it.
"Yeah," Catherine let her off the hook. The girl really needed someone to talk to, she thought, but for now, I'll let it go. "And I got those shots so let's get down there."
GnS
Grissom looked up from the body of the young woman at his feet to see Catherine and Sara approaching the main crime scene. In the hour it had taken them to process the auxiliary crime scene, the rest of the crew had managed to finish with one pair of the teenage victims.
"What have we got, boss." Catherine attempted to make up for her earlier hissy fit.
"Four pairs of bodies. One boy and one girl, each around the pentagram. So far, we've managed to process one of the couples. Each body is dressed in black sweat suits with hoods. Hoods are pulled up and tied under the chins. We've found heavy-weight plastic on their faces also."
While Grissom was running down what the rest of the team had found so far, Sara took the time to glance around the scene. "They all look like they're sleeping. Like they all just decided to lie down and take a nap."
Grissom looked her way.
"I'm not getting this, man," Nick broke in and said. "Why would four couples of kids want to off themselves like this? They should be getting ready to go to homecoming or prom or something."
Warrick felt the same. "Maybe they got involved with something that got out of control." he said as he took a picture of a cluster of candles. "Looks like a satanic ritual."
Grissom countered, "a pentagram and candles do not a ritual make." He turned his attention back to Sara. "What makes you think that they just laid down, Sara?"
Sara forced herself to look at the man who held her heart. It was getting harder and harder to be around him without letting herself wallow in self-pity. "Well, I haven't seen any signs of a struggle and they would have had to dress themselves in the sweat suits. Or did you find evidence that they didn't dress themselves?"
"No, we didn't. but then again, we've only gotten to one of the couples so far. Does this remind anyone of anything?" he asked, knowing that Sara would figure it out.
All of them looked at the three other couples, the gears turning in their minds. Sara finally spoke up, "Heaven's Gate."
"That's what I saw. The pentagram is still puzzling, though." Grissom acknowledged. Sara had confirmed what he had been thinking since they arrived. The scene reeked of being staged but like Sara had noticed, no signs of struggle could be found. "Let's see what the rest of these guys can tell us. Warrick, how about you and Catherine take the two near the uppermost point of the pentagram?"
"Okay, boss," Warrick returned and moved off towards the bodies with Catherine.
"Come on, Nicky, we'll take the ones on the left." Sara declared before Grissom was even able to say a thing. She was afraid that he would try to pair her up with him. And knowing that he knew made thingsso muchharder. She had spent the better part of four years dealing with her feelings for the man and she had finally decided that the only way she would be able to survive was to put the ball in his court. So she had.
And there it stayed.
Grissom watched with longing as Sara walked away from him, Nick trailing after her. He had planned on pairing himself with Sara in an attempt to spending time with her. He had used that ploy before and it had always worked...until now. "Um, okay. I'll finish up on this pair and then we'll meet in the middle."
GnS
Two hours later, the crew had finished processing the four pairs of victims and had gone into the center of the scene. Grissom looked at his crew, knowing what was going through their minds. What had happened here was one of the three things that made him angry. Someone had taken advantage of these kids, have gotten them to take their own lives, or at least that is where the evidence was leading him.
"Okay, David and his crew have removed the bodies so we can finish the scene. Nick, you've taken all of the pictures of the pentagram?"
"Yeah. I took up close and even managed to get a psuedo-arial. There's something odd about that pentagram, though."
"What?"
"I noticed that there are bundles of clothes at each of the points. Maybe each of the victims changed clothes here."
"Well, we'll wait and see when we get back to the lab. Let's each take a bundle of clothes to process and then head on in to the lab."
The group broke up and each approached a bundle.
As Sara crouched down to get at the pile of clothing, she reached out and grasped a corner of the cloth.
"Oh shit," she exclaimed as she peeled the corner back.
TBC