Chapter Four

The ride back to the lab had been a quiet one. Grissom drove because Emily did not seem capable of letting go of Nick. So the younger CSI had seated himself in the backseat with the shaken prosecutor. The only sound from the backseat was Emily's quiet sobs which she was trying desperately to get under control.

Nick was going back and forth between his annoyance at Grissom for pushing Emily to an emotional breakdown and his relief that they might actually get to the bottom of this confusing ordeal. He wasn't sure what was going on though it seemed that Grissom had a fairly good idea. He was somewhatfrustrated that Grissom had not been more forthcoming with his thoughts. They were supposed to be working on this case as a team, but during these past couple of hours, Nick was feeling very much like a spectator.

When they arrived at the lab, Emily was escorted to Grissom's office, where Brass was waiting for them. Grissom had notified the detective of the situation from the car and asked him to meet them at his office.

They chose to meet in Grissom's office out of a professional courtesy to Emily while also reasoning that it would be a less intimidating environment than an interrogation room. The goal was to make Emily feel safe and comfortable enough to talk freely with them.

Grissom sat at his desk and Brass reclined against the bookcase behind him. Emily sat across from them and Nick seated himself in the chair next to her.

Grissom leaned forward and rested his elbows on his desk. "Okay, Emily. Can you please tell us what you know? Who's after you? Do you know who killed Adam Pryor?"

"Before I say anything, would you please tell me where you heard the names Peter and Hannah? How do you even know about them?" she asked. She had managed to pull herself together, and even though she looked slightly disheveled, the initial fear that had ruled her had lost its hold and she had regained her confident demeanor.

Grissom hesitated for a moment but decided to answer her question since she was about to freely answer his. "We found an old picture of them in the breast pocket of Adam's shirt and we're fairly certain it was placed there by the killer. We're assuming that it's relevant to Adam's death although we're not certain how."

Emily digested this information for a moment. She exhaled slowly, shifted her eyes to the floor, and began to speak.

"Okay, in order for this all to make sense, I need to tell you about Hannah Douglass. She was the second child born to Richard and Susan Douglass of Pocahontas, Arkansas. She had a brother named Peter who was six years older. When she was born, Peter was immediately taken with Hannah. He loved her more than anything. As they grew older, they became inseparable. Best friends. They relied on each other for survival because life in the Douglass household was not easy."

"Richard Douglass was a hard, cruel man who delighted in the torment of his wife. He was both verbally and physically abusive towards her until she became a hollow shell of a woman. Of course to the world, Richard presented a different face, that of a loving husband and father. He would cry on the shoulders of various townspeople about how his wife suffered from depression and nothing he could do would cheer her, and they would comfort him and tell him how wonderful he was to stay with her through these hard times. So it came as no surprise to the townspeople when Susan Douglass took her own life."

"What people didn't realize was that Susan did not take her own life. Richard had killed her - staged it to look like a suicide. Peter and Hannah, who were 16 and 10 at the time, knew it though. Peter, afraid for his life and the life of his sister, made an effort to convince the townspeople that Richard had killed his wife but to no avail and only succeeded in earning a reputation as a troublemaker."

"Up until this time, Richard had been only mildly abusive to his children because he had preferred to focus most of energy on his wife, but Peter's accusations against Richard changed all that. Instead of beating Peter, who Richard knew was more than capable of fighting back, he locked him in the basement and proceeded to punish his son by beating his daughter. This produced the desired effect. For the next two years, Peter toed the line in an effort to keep his sister safe. He took his beatings without a fight because he knew Hannah would suffer all the more if he did."

As she finished saying this, Emily unconsciously rubbed the wrist of her right hand. She paused for a moment, her eyes transfixed by the sight of her own foot pawing at the floor. Finally, she exhaled heavily, cleared her throat, and continued.

"When Peter turned 18, Richard kicked him out of the house and told him that if he ever set foot inside it again, it would be the last thing he ever did. So Peter left. He moved one town over and got a job. The thought of leaving his sister to live alone with Richard tormented him though. When he could get the chance, Peter would meet her during the lunch hour at school to see how she was doing. He never risked coming to the house."

"For the first couple of years, Hannah was okay for the most part. She suffered no serious physical abuse, just the occasional broken nose and sprained limb, and she became adept at covering up her bruises. She also managed to survive under the constant emotional abuse to which she was subjected. Things changed though when Hannah went through puberty. "

Emily shifted in her seat and the level of tension in the room rose exponentially. Just like in the courtroom earlier that day, Emily kept her audience captivated by her words. It was amazing how she could sit in that chair and relate such a horrible story of abuse while keeping her voice calm and melodic.

"Richard started to look at Hannah differently, noticing that she no longer had the body of a little girl. He took advantage of that body repeatedly because he could. She wasn't strong enough to stop it."

Emily stopped her narration for a moment and raised her eyes to meet Grissom's. She had an almost defiant look on her face as she addressed him. "You may ask why Hannah didn't try to get help for herself, but you have no idea what it's like to live in an environment like that. To be bombarded on all sides by various types of abuse. To be lorded over by a man so cruel, so controlling, so completely terrifying - all the while knowing that if she made one misstep in his presence, she would pay for it with her life."

Lowering her eyes again, she added, "Besides, she knew no one would believe her if she tried to tell them. The town still considered Richard to be a saint and he would have found a way to twist Hannah's accusations to make himself look like the innocent victim. That's just the kind of manipulator he was."

Again, Emily paused for a moment. She smoothed her jeans with the palms of her hands in a symbolic gesture to smooth her nerves before resuming her narration.

"Peter was her only confidante, but Hannah was afraid to tell him what Richard was doing to her, because she knew he'd do something rash in order to protect her. She wouldn't risk his life in that way. She counted the few hours a week they spent together dear to her because they gave her the strength to survive. Instead, she tried to find ways to avoid Richard. She learned his schedule, analyzed his moods, and did her best to avoid situations that would end in abuse. It worked most of the time."

"About a month before her high school graduation, Peter came to Hannah with a carefully devised plan of extraction. He had been saving his money for the past six years and had enough saved to help them disappear. Everything had to be perfect because they both knew what would happen to them if they were caught. They would only get one chance."

"The departure date was set for the last day of Hannah's senior year. She left for school as normal but never arrived for her first class. Peter picked her up just outside of the school and they sped out of town without a backwards glance."

"They drove all day and all night, stopping only out of necessity until they reached Salt Lake City, Utah. Once there, they changed their names. And so, Peter and Hannah Douglass died and Adam Pryor and Emily Trent were born." Emily paused for a moment to wipe her hand across her forehead.

"We got an apartment together in Salt Lake City. I got a job and started saving money for school. I needed to live in Utah for awhile in order to establish residency and qualify for a cheaper rate at the state university."

"Once I started college, Adam moved out and joined the police academy. We decided that we'd be harder to track if we no longer lived together. Plus, we wouldn't have to make up a story to tell people when asked why we were living together. We even limited our contact to a phone call once a week and never met in public."

"When I graduated from Law School, the DA's office in Las Vegas offered me a job. Instead of coming with me, he got himself transferred to LA. We figured it was a good time to create more distance between us. It would be easier to keep our former lives a secret if we weren't worrying about running into each other in the same town."

"We called each other every other week and if we did meet in person, it was always in a different town. That photograph you found was from when we met up in San Francisco. I had always wanted to go there. It was taken in the Japanese Tea Garden like I said before. In fact, we were supposed to go back there, but I had to call him last week to say that I couldn't go. Too much going on at work. I told him that he should go anyway. He needed a break. He was always such a hard worker."

Emily shook her head in confused frustration. "Adam was so meticulous about all of the details. We even got our filmed developed in San Francisco so no one back home would see us together. I don't know why he left the photo in his car like that. I keep all of my pictures locked up."

"Maybe Adam's not the one who put it in the car." Grissom suggested.

As she considered this, weariness started to settle on Emily and she moved her elbow to the chair's arm rest and placed her head in her hand. Her voice had lost some of its calmness as she quietly said, "We thought that we'd accounted for everything. We even had a warning phrase that we could use to alert the other one if he ever showed up in one of our towns. Even though we had made new lives for ourselves, we never let our guards down. It's been ten years since we left that town. Yet somehow he found us. He found Adam, brought him here, and killed him just like he said he would. Now, it's my turn. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that Daddy always keeps his word."

This pronouncement sent a chill running down the spines of the men present. No one spoke for the longest time as their minds seemed to have temporarily lost the ability to form words. Instead, the men silently considered the profound effect that her story had on them.

Nick was nauseous almost to the point of being sick right there in Grissom's office. The story of her abuse at the hand of someone who should have been a protector hit home in an all-too familiar way. No one, especially a child, should ever have to suffer like that. A burning desire to find her abuser and make him pay for the atrocities he had inflicted upon his daughter began to rise in his chest.

As the only father in the room, Brass' thoughts immediately turned to his own daughter and their tumultuous relationship. No matter how mad she made him, he could never, ever, hurt Ellie in the way that Emily's father had hurt her. Fathers don't treat their kids like that. The knowledge that a man could have a wonderful daughter like Emily and yet treat her in the manner he did made Brass' blood boil.

Though he pitied her, Grissom was filled respect for Emily's inner strength. He had noticed how she had completely disassociated herself from what had happened to her as a child. Those things had happened to Hannah, not Emily, as if they were two completely different people. It was a coping mechanism that seemed to have worked fairly well for her and the scientist found it entirely fascinating.

After a few moments of silence, Grissom spoke up. "I'm going to assume that you don't have a picture of your father that we could use. Do you think you could describe him to a forensic artist so we could be on the look-out for him?"

Emily gave a weary nod. "Definitely. I see that face at least once a week in my nightmares."

The casual way in which she said this struck Grissom. He wondered what it must be like for her to have lived in constant fear of being discovered for the last ten years. He marveled at her ability to sit here in his office so calmly, with the knowledge that her brother was lying on a slab in the morgue, without completely succumbing to the fear he knew she must be feeling.

"Nick, will you take Emily to see our artist?" Grissom asked.

"Sure thing." He stood up and Emily did likewise. Nick wrapped a protective arm around her and they left the office together.

Grissom pressed his fingers together, considering the story that had just been related to him. Feeling as if he had just aged ten years, he asked Brass,"You ever hear anything like that before?"

"No way. That's the kind of stuff that television movies are made of." the homicide detective remarked dryly.

"Unfortunately for Emily Trent, it's all too real." Grissom sighed.