Chapter 6- Reaction shots
Catherine pulled up behind a trio of police cars and an ambulance, all their lights blazing. Not even bothering to park her car, she pulled up parallel to a red zone, jumping out the moment the car came to a stop.
"Lindsey!" Frantically looking around for any sign of her daughter, she alighted upon Hailey sitting in the ambulance, one hand holding an ice pack up to her head.
"Hailey, honey, what happened? Where's Lindsey?" She ran to the teen, placing a hand on her shoulder. It was meant as a comforting gesture, but the moment Hailey felt the touch she burst into tears.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I couldn't stop them, couldn't do anything but watch." Hailey was shaking now. Forgetting the ice pack she wrapped both arms around herself in an effort to stop.
"Couldn't stop who, Hailey?" Unable to get a response from the girl, she turned to the paramedic standing next to her. "What the hell is going on?"
The paramedic obviously didn't know who she was. Calmly, he told her all that he knew.
"Someone found the girl, collapsed in front of the theater. When we got here she was starting to come to. She had a nasty abrasion on the back of her head where something hit her. When she could talk, the first thing she told us is that her friend had been kidnapped. Wouldn't..."
Catherine didn't hear anything after the word kidnapped. Lindsey, kidnapped. Someone had her little girl. She stumbled backwards, and would have fallen if a uniformed officer hadn't caught her. She recognized him vaguely from past crime scenes.
"Mrs. Willows, why don't we sit down?" He led her to the curb, just a few steps away. "Can I get you some water, or anything?"
"My daughter. You can get me my daughter. I don't need anything else." She looked away from him. Catherine knew none of this was the young man's fault. He was only trying to help, but she had nothing to spare for civility. She had nothing, period. A part of her was busy making plans, thinking of the calls she needed to make and the clues she should be searching for. Mostly, though, she was frozen. All the thoughts running through her head, she didn't know which ones to follow. Which ones would get her daughter back. Wrapped in a fog of pain, she even forgot about the pain of the girl seated just a few feet away.
Hailey couldn't stop the shivers that coursed through her body. Wave after wave hit her, until she couldn't keep her hands on her body and they hung at her side, fluttering helplessly. She didn't notice, though. Except for the brief moment when Catherine appeared in front of her, Hailey's mind was stuck in a continuous loop, playing the kidnapping over and over. Sometimes she saw it the way it happened. Sometimes she changed it, in her mind. Did something different that changed the outcome. Moved quicker, fought harder, screamed louder. In her mind, she had saved Lindsey, all this was just a nightmare she would wake up from it tomorrow.
Warrick and Sara were on their way to the mall. The only thing they had been told was that a teenager had been reported missing and another teen was injured. A slow night at CSI meant that Greg was tailing along. Sara pulled into the first available parking spot, and the three CSIs walked into the shower of red and blue swirling lights. Detective Fellows, a new transfer from Washington DC, was in charge of the scene. Sara went over talk to him, while Warrick headed towards the ambulance to interview the witness. Greg followed him.
Her head was slumped, and she was leaning against the tire of the ambulance as if it was the only thing holding her up. Warrick almost didn't recognize the woman who he had worked alongside of for almost ten years. Then she moved, just the slightest bit, and he knew.
"Catherine." He knelt down in front of her, lifting her chin with his hand until her eyes met his own. They were filled with unshed tears, and that scared him. Never had he seen Catherine cry. Not when she was going through her divorce, not when she had been attacked at a crime scene. If Catherine was this upset, something was horribly wrong.
"Cath, what's wrong?"
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. A deep breath taken and she was able to force out a whisper.
"Lindsey. They took Lindsey."
"Oh God, Cath." He didn't know what to say, so went with his first instinct and enveloped her in a hug. He held her as tightly as he dared, as if he could infuse her with his own strength.
Greg stood back, frozen with shock and unsure of what he should be doing. A soft sound from behind spurred him into action.
"Greg?" It was so quiet he didn't recognize the voice until he turned around. It had never occurred to him, when learning that Lindsey was the missing teen, that the injured witness might be someone they knew too.
"Hailey. Oh, Hail-bop, are you okay?" He practically jumped into the ambulance, shoving the paramedic out of his way.
"Greg? I can't change it. I keep trying, but it comes out the same every time." She wasn't looking at him, wasn't really looking at anything. Her eyes were glazed, her skin cold to the touch. It scared him, the flat tone of voice, the empty stare. Greg reached for his cell phone, dialing the number of the one person who Hailey needed most right now.
"You've reached the phone of Jim Brass. I can't be reached right now. I'm either interrogating a suspect or vacationing in Aruba. Please leave a message, and I might get back to you."
Greg didn't even bother leaving a message. He just dialed the next number he thought of.
"Grissom." The night shift supervisor was in his office, signing his name to the two thousand pages of paper stacked on his desk. At least that's what it felt like to him.
"Griss, its Greg. Do you know where Brass is?"
The words themselves were peculiar, Greg asking him for Brass, but it was the tone in Greg's voice that had Grissom removing his glasses and offering a puzzled look to the empty office. "Why?"
"He's not answering his phone. Is he there at the station?"
"I believe he's interviewing a suspect with Nick, on that arson case. What is this about, Greg?" Just a hint of exasperation sounded in his voice.
"It's bad, Grissom. You're going to have to come down here, but first we need to find Brass." The pressure of the situation gave Greg's voice an air of authority it didn't usually have when speaking to his boss.
"Who is it?" Grissom steeled himself for the worst. Don't let anyone be dead. Let this be something I can fix. Not Sara, please don't let it be anything to do with Sara. Not any of the others, either, but Sara was his first thought.
"It's Lindsey. She's been kidnapped. Hailey was with her, and she's pretty shocked. Catherine's here too, arrived a few minutes before we did." There was talking in the background, and a muffled response from Greg that Grissom couldn't make out. "The ambulance is leaving, taking Hailey to Desert Palms. I'm going to go with her. Warrick's with Cath, and I don't think he's going to leave her. Sara's gonna need help processing the scene." It was as close as Greg had ever gotten to giving Grissom an order.
"I'll be there as soon as I can. First, I have to find Jim."
Jim, it turned out, was all too easy to find. A few simple questions asked of the receptionist confirmed that he was in interrogation room 2, with CSI Nick Stokes. Grissom flagged down an officer as he walked towards the room. Knowing both Jim and Nick, the moment they learned of what had happened they would be out of the room and the suspect would be forgotten. This way, someone else would be able to watch him when everyone else left.
Grissom paused outside the door for a moment, trying to figure out the right thing to say. Hesitantly, he opened the door.
"Let's skip the whole made up alibi crap, and try the truth this time." Brass was leaned forward in his chair, staring at the man across the table from him like he was gum on the bottom of a shoe. He didn't seem to notice when Grissom entered the room. Clearing his throat to catch Brass's attention, Grissom spoke.
"I need to see you out in the hallway, Jim."
If it was anyone else, Brass would have been angry. Interrupting an interview was a procedural no-no. You never knew when a person was about to crack, and stopping at the wrong moment can destroy a case. Grissom usually only intruded on an interview in progress when he was bringing news of case affecting evidence, or to ask a seemingly innocent question that broke a suspect's story. Brass assumed that this time was no different. He stood up and walked towards the door.
"You too, Nicky." Now that was odd. Both Brass and Nick aimed questioning looks at Grissom, but he just motioned to the door. There was no way he was talking to them until they were in the semi privacy of the hallway.
"Could you please stay with Mr. Renado, officer?" The cop obliged, entering the room they had just vacated.
"Make this quick, Gil. I almost have this guy. What do you know about the fires?"
"This isn't about the fires, Jim. It's nothing to do with the case, in fact." He was stalling, still trying to put off the events that he knew were coming. It had been hard to listen to Greg on the phone, but to relate the story out loud would be immensely more difficult. Gil Grissom wasn't a man who made friends easily. There were only a few, and most of them worked with him every day. If he had to pick a best friend it would either be the man standing in front of him, waiting for him to speak, or the woman at a crime scene, waiting for news on her daughter. Still unsure, Grissom reverted into supervisor mode. He focused on the facts.
"The arson case is being put on the back burner. A new case has come in, and I'm putting everyone on it." It helped to think of it that way, as another case. Not as a girl that he had known since birth, frightened and locked up somewhere.
"Gil, I know you don't want Ecklie to get the lab supervisor position he's up for, but that doesn't mean you should try to bluff your way into the spot. Last I checked, you don't have the authority to take me off a case, or put all the labs resources onto one case."
"Not even when it involves your niece?"
With that one question, Brass's whole demeanor changed. Where he had been both annoyed and amused at his friend's behavior, now every muscle in his body was tense and he leaned forward, ready to run at a moment's notice.
"What about Hailey?" The question came from Nick, who had remained quiet until this point.
"She's alright, mostly." Grissom quickly reassured both men. "A bump on her head, possible concussion. Lindsey is missing, though, and presumed kidnapped."
Brass relaxed the slightest bit, reassured that nothing life threatening was wrong. It was all he could focus on, at first. But then the rest of Grissom's information sunk in. Lindsey. Catherine.
"Does Catherine know?" Nick asked, the shock clear in his voice.
"She's at the scene now. I'm on my way, I'll call you when I have more information." He needed to be there now, needed to find evidence that would lead to a suspect, to Lindsey.
"I'm coming with you," Nick declared. Grissom shook his head.
"Greg is on the way to the hospital with Hailey. I need you to drive Brass there, so that he makes it as a visitor and not a patient."
Nick looked at the captain, and had to agree with his boss. No way should Brass be behind the wheel right now. "Anything else you need me to do?" Nick needed to have a task. He couldn't just sit around and wait for news.
"Stay with Jim and Hailey. If she's released, bring them back here. Someone is going to have to get Hailey's statement, and the sooner we can talk to her the better." More then any other crime, time was critical in missing person's cases.
"Alright." Nick walked down the hall to the locker room, to retrieve his car keys, leaving Grissom and Brass alone.
"I can't imagine what Catherine's feeling right now," Grissom commented absently.
"I can." To lose a child is the worst kind of hell imaginable. It didn't matter how it happened, or what age they were. Brass could attest to the fact from experience. He still woke up at night sometimes in a cold sweat, wondering where Ellie was, what she was doing. Right now, though, he had another girl to worry about. Nodding his head at Grissom, Brass walked to the entrance and out the front doors, knowing that Nick would catch up to him.
To be continued...