Part four
Catherine and Grissom entered the lab, finding a confused looking Greg on the floor.
"What happened, are you alright?" Grissom asked, while helping Greg get back to his feet.
"The note, I, it just… exploded."
"What?" Catherine looked slightly confused at Greg. "Paper can't explode. What did you do with it?"
"Well, I photographed it, I dusted it for prints, checked if I could make out anything else, and than went to type the paper and ink used. So I dissolved part of the note in water, and it just exploded. There must have been some kind of chemical on the paper, something that reacts with water. Good thing I was wearing gloves though, there's barely anything left."
"I wasn't", Catherine said, looking slightly nervous at her hands.
"Keep them away from water, we'll have to find out what kind of chemicals were on the paper, before we know how to safely get them of your hands, just sit down, and touch nothing. Greg, let's get to work…"
Two hours later everybody was sitting in the conference room. After some testing, they had managed to get the chemicals of Catherine's hands and Grissom had called a meating to go over the evidence they had collected so far.
"So he used kalium-phosphorite, it reacts with water, and then, boom… We'll have to assume he has at least some basic knowledge of chemistry," Nick said.
And it's personal, know we know for sure he has it in for Catherine," Warrick added
"Did you make a list of people who might hold a grudge against you?" Sarah asked
"Yes. I did, Brass is looking into it, but unfortunately the list is endless, I helped to put away a lot of people who undoubtly are not very happy about it."
Grissom looked up from the papers in front of him. "We can probably shorten that list quiet a bit. We're not looking at some random idiot. We're dealing with someone who is intelligent, who knows how not to leave any traces behind, possibly someone with knowledge of forensics. I'll talk with Brass about it, in the mean time, lets get back to work, unfortunately this is not our only case."
As everybody cleared the conference room Grissom took Catherine aside.
"Catherine, go home, get some rest, this wasn't exactly a quiet day at work."
"I'm going to send Lindsay to my sister, what if this idiot shows up at my house? If he knows where I work, he might know where I live. I can't risk anything happening to her."
"Would you like to come and stay with me for a while, just till we solved this. I have a very comfortable bedroom."
"I don't want to let this idiot scare me out of my house, I'm not going to give into it. But thanks anyway for the offer. I'll see you tomorrow."
A couple of hours later Catherine is sitting on her couch staring at the TV, but not really watching it. She couldn't help going over the list of possible suspects in her head over and over again. Who would want to do this? Somehow of all those people on that list none of them seems to be a very likely suspect. She sighs as she turns off the TV and the lights, she might as well go and try to get some sleep.
She's half-way up the stairs when she hears a noise coming from up-stairs. She hesitates, inwardly cursing herself for getting this paranoia, takes another two steps and then decides to go back down, to turn on the lights, hoping it will make her feel better. As she turns around she suddenly feels two hands on her back and before she can react she falls down the stairs. In a reflex she tries to put up her hands to break her fall, but with one arm immobilised by her sling, she barely manages to break her fall and she blacks out