Disclaimer: I don't own CSI or any of its characters.
Summary: While swing shift has to work on several killings of a serial murderer,
everybody starts to wonder if Greg and Sara are not telling them something. (Sara/Greg)
A/N: Thanks to FongSaiYuk319 for beta-reading! Remaining mistakes are mine :)
Thank you for your reviews!
Chapter 3 – Get along
Sara and Greg talked, just talked.
Sara had thought before that talking would only bring the issues in her head to the front of her mind, and that they would torture her afterwards even more, but she felt that it did her good. It felt good to have these things out of the system.
She had also been slightly surprised that Greg had meant his offer seriously. She had called him and he had asked her if he should come over to her, or if she would like to come over to him. She had picked the second possibility, somehow not ready to let him, Greg, into her apartment, her personal space.
So she drove to his place, the imagination of Greg hastily tidying up his apartment slightly lightening up her mood, although she did not know if his apartment really resembled the messiness of his hair.
However, when she rang at his door, he opened it smiling. He ran his hand quickly through his hair nervously and gave her a sign to come in.
When she had sat down in his living room, he disappeared into the kitchen, but returned only some seconds later with two hot cups of coffee that he had obviously prepared before she arrived.
He handed her one of the cups and sat down comfortably. "So…you wanted to talk."
Sara took a sip from her cup. "Well, I hope I didn't wake you, did I?" she began.
Greg grinned in a way only he did. "Who needs sleep?"
And then she began to talk, slowly, cautiously, at first. But as the last bit of awkwardness disappeared, Sara took the risk – as it felt to her – and told him what haunted her and Greg listened.
Catherine entered the break room to find Warrick was sitting comfortably on the couch while Nick was emptying a cup of coffee into the sink with a disgusted expression. He looked up, saw her, and pleaded, "Please, can you make a request to Ecklie to transfer Greggo to our shift? We're in real need for his coffee."
Ignoring his question, Catherine greeted both of them shortly. "Talking of Ecklie, he has made an order that I take over the lead of the shooting cases," she started and continued with a soothing voice after seeing Warrick's and Nick's disappointed expressions, "Sorry, guys. I know it is, it was, your case, but," she sighed, "you know Ecklie. 'People are scared', 'Mass-murder', 'High-profile case', you know how it works." The both men nodded reluctantly.
"So, where do we stand?" Catherine wanted to know, returning to business.
Warrick stood up, went to the table, and picked up three files that had been lying piled up on the table. He opened all three of them and laid them next to each other on the table so that the photos of three men could be seen. The photos had obviously been taken by the police.
"We just got those files," Warrick explained, pointing to the table. "They're the files of the three victims of the shootings."
Catherine strode slowly to the table, picked up the files one after the other, and browsed in them. "They all have criminal records." She stated the obvious.
Nick nodded. "And that's the only link we have between the victims so far, apart from the face that they're male."
Warrick continued, "All three have been shot with the same weapon. We found no foreign DNA, which, of course, is no surprise. You usually try not to leave your DNA for someone to find when you shoot somebody."
"Warrick found a fiber on the clothes of the third victim, but it was a simple cotton fiber, nothing that could give us a clue," Nick added.
Catherine sat down on the couch. "What about the weapon?"
"A very common one, there are thousands of them alone in this city," Nick answered.
"If ballistics hadn't confirmed that the third victim has been killed with the same gun like the first two, I would have guessed that it wasn't the same killer," Warrick said.
"Why?" Catherine inquired.
Warrick showed her a photo of the scene. "This shooting happened differently. The first two victims had been shot in the back of their heads, meaning the killer had been standing directly behind them, and it happened in a crowd of people. The third victim had been shot from a farther distance, and in a less frequented street, though there was still an eye-witness."
At this moment, Catherine's cell phone rang. She answered it and listened to the voice on the other side of the line. Warrick and Nick watched curiously.
"We're on our way," Catherine announced and shut her cell phone. She looked at her co-workers. "This guy has just given us another opportunity to catch him. There was another killing."
Greg walked down the hallway in the crime lab, looking for Sara. It was still some time until the beginning of his shift, but he had come in early in hopes to meet Sara, who was well known to arrive extra early, before their shift started. He hoped to catch her because he might not have an opportunity to talk to her once they got started. They both would work on the murder of the woman they had gotten the day before, unless a new urgent case came in, but that would not be the perfect time for talking either.
He had been surprised – positively – that Sara had called him. And he had been relieved that she had decided to open up a little to him. They had talked about the latest case and about other ones and about the impressions that it left in both their minds. Greg had somehow been relieved that he was not the only one who could not go completely emotionless about the work.
Altogether, they had spent a comfortable day at Greg's place and Sara had went home in the late afternoon thanking Greg for the nice day, although seeming rather unsure what else to say.
With all these thoughts going around in his mind, Greg looked into the locker room and then into the break room, but he still didn't find Sara.
So he finally settled down in the break room as it was still half an hour to go until his shift. The lab seemed quite quiet that night.
After some minutes sitting there on his own, Greg got bored and decided to brew some coffee, as he knew that Sara liked it very much. When he thought of that he had to grin. So he was just doing it to please her? He poured some water into the coffee-maker, chuckling to himself.
In this moment a familiar voice caught his attention. "I arrive just at the right moment," Nick said, laughing. "Could you share some of your valuable coffee? I have a serious withdrawal."
Greg laughed. When the coffee was ready he handed Nick generously a cup of it. He took a cup himself and sat down on the couch.
"How was your day?" Nick asked, drinking a large gulp contentedly.
Greg had a hard time to avoid spilling his coffee. "Fine," he answered monosyllable.
"Since when are you so short spoken?" Nick asked chuckling.
Taking it as a rhetorical question, Greg changed the topic. "How was your shift?"
Nick frowned. "Don't know if you've heard, but we have a serial killing going on. Some mad guy is shooting people all over Vegas."
They talked for some minutes until Nick had finished his coffee and decided to leave. "I have been pulling doubles the last days and I have to catch up some sleep," he stated, sighing.
"Then you shouldn't have drunk coffee, you know," Greg said, laughing.
Nick got up from the couch. "Couldn't miss the opportunity to get some of yours." He walked towards the door of the break room waving Greg goodbye.
Shortly after Nick had left, Greg walked to the locker room, continuing his search for Sara.
She was standing in front of her locker, similar to the day before.
"Hey," Greg called softly. "Where have you been?"
Sara looked to him, frowning. "None of your business," she said coldly and Greg wondered what had happened in the few hours since they had parted. He tried to let this wondering not reflect on his face and pretended to not have heard the coldness in Sara's voice. She just sometimes acted this way and he did not want to let himself be scared away by that.
"Want some nice, hot coffee?" he tried to sound cheerful.
Sara closed her locker and walked by him. "Later maybe. Shift's gonna start now; Grissom's waiting."
She walked out of the room and made her way to the pre-shift meeting, Greg hurrying after her. She regretted having snapped at him some moments earlier, but she had just been caught off guard by his question and had brought up her almost automatic snappish answer.
She had begun to wonder if it had been a mistake to talk to Greg. She tried to get this thought out of her head and kept telling herself that it was nonsense and that she should stop questioning every decision, every move she made into the direction of another person.
Grissom was already waiting for them. Sara sat down and Greg seemed as if he wanted to sit down next to her, but then he reconsidered and remained staying next to the door. Sofia came in last and closed the door behind her.
Like Greg had expected Grissom simply told him and Sara to continue to work on the murder of the woman after Sara had shortly summarized what they knew until then. Grissom and Sofia went out to another homicide and Sara and Greg set to work.
After a thorough examination of the pictures they had taken on the scene and of several things they had found there, Greg made his way to the DNA lab, while Sara went to visit Hodges in the trace lab.
Like Greg had expected – he realized that his expectations became reality quite often that night – Sara and he had not talked about anything else than the case. Not that Greg was opposed to that. He wholeheartedly wanted to solve this as fast as possible, but Sara's behaviour at the beginning of their shift did not want to get out of his head.
He entered the DNA lab and Mia looked up from the piece of paper she had been reading.
"Hey," she greeted him.
"Do you have something for me?" Greg asked.
"There were several samples of foreign DNA on your DB and all from the same person, male. But that's all I can tell you. He isn't in CODIS," Mia replied, indicating to the paper she held. Greg took it and looked shortly at it.
At the same time Sara was standing in the trace lab. "Cotton?" she asked.
Hodges nodded. "Cotton. Used to make clothes, blankets …"
"Indeed?" Sara cut him off sarcastically.
"Simple cotton," she muttered turning to leave the room. "Damn."
"This is no way talking around her, Ms. Sidle," Hodges called after her.
Sara decided to go without casting him a fierce glance and walked back to the room where she and Greg had spread the evidence, hoping he had more luck in DNA.
In the pre-shift meeting of swing shift on the next day, Catherine surprised her co-workers right at the beginning. "It isn't a guy, who killed the fourth victim," she stated.
Nick looked puzzled.
"It's a woman."
She let this fact sink in, before she continued, "The description we got from one of the witnesses wasn't really useful, only thing she said was that it was a guy of average height and that she couldn't see his face, because of the darkness. But we have another statement and the man is sure that it was a woman. He said it was easy to see, just like the killer moved."
"But ballistics confirmed again, that it was the same weapon."
"A whole crowd of witnesses stated that it was a guy who killed the first victims."
Warrick hold up his hand, three fingers outstretched. "Three possibilities," he said, "first: a whole crowd of people were wrong, second the witness of the latest killing is wrong, third: there are two killers using the same weapon."
TBC