Author's Notes: I'm on a roll! Shoot, gotta knock on wood in case I jinx myself. Enjoy this chapter and thanks for the kind feedback thus far!
Giving Up
by Kristen Elizabeth
"Do you feel sufficiently lawyered-up, Dr. Forbes?" Brass leaned across the metal table in the interrogation room. "Can we talk about Julia Sommers now?" When the man glanced at his attorney and said nothing, Brass went on. "Well, I don't need to tell you about DNA. You're a doctor."
"I'm a psychiatrist."
"Tomato, to-ma-toe, right? You know how DNA works." He slid a copy of the damning report across the table to Forbes and his lawyer. "Long story short, we found a pubic hair on the clothes Julia Sommers was wearing when she died. It's a match to the DNA sample we took from you, remember?" He paused. "Being such a smart man, how do you explain that?"
Lawton cleared his throat before taking a sip of the water he'd requested at the start of the interview. His eyes slid over to Grissom who sat next to Brass. "All right. Yes, I had a relationship with Julia Sommers."
"You raped her," Grissom clarified.
"No, that was someone in her dorm. I had a relationship with her."
"A doctor/patient one, yes." Grissom shook his head, sickened. "You violated that and took advantage of a vulnerable woman. I call that rape."
"The state of Nevada doesn't," Lawton's lawyer spoke up.
"What about the psychiatric board?" Brass asked.
Lawton narrowed his gaze in on Grissom. "Are we only talking about Julia Sommers, Dr Grissom?"
"You tell me."
"He's not telling you anything else." The lawyer stood up. "He's given you an explanation for your circumstantial DNA findings. So unless you're ready to arrest my client, we're leaving."
Grissom watched Lawton follow his lawyer towards the door. The whole scene was frighteningly familiar. The guilty man, his lawyer, a dead young woman and unwanted thoughts about…
"Dr. Grissom," Lawton said, looking back over his shoulder. "If you see your colleague, Miss Sidle, please tell her we miss her in group."
"Don't make any vacation plans, Dr. Forbes," Brass called out. The door shut behind them. For a long minute, there was silence.
"You should have arrested him," Grissom finally said.
"For what? Questionable ethics?" His friend crossed his arms. "What was that last bit about Sara?"
Standing up, Grissom slid the DNA report back into his folder. "How should I know?"
"Oh, hell." Brass let out a harsh chuckle. "I should have guessed. You don't get into a pissing contest with just any Joe Suspect. So, let me guess. Her suspension…punishment for something relating to Dr. Forbes."
"Sara's not on suspension."
"Then how come no one's seen her for three days?"
Something in the question made Grissom eyes grow wide. "No one? Has she called anyone? Contacted anyone at all?"
Brass frowned. "I can only speak for myself, but I haven't talked to her."
Grissom pushed the folder into his hands. "I have to go."
"Gil, what's going on?" Grissom was already out the door. Brass waited a second before pulling out his phone. "This is Brass," he said a second later. "Send a unit over to CSI Sidle's apartment. Verify her whereabouts." There was a pause. "I don't know the address. Look it up!"
Getting a call from a co-worker wasn't a totally rare occurrence, but it was rare enough to confuse Sara when she answered her phone and discovered Greg on the other end.
"Sara," he started, his voice coming down from what could have described as panicked. "You're okay."
"Um…yeah." She swallowed a bite of the bean sprout sandwich she'd made for lunch. "Why wouldn't I be?"
He let out a long sigh. "Grissom called a second ago and asked if I'd talked to you in the past couple of days. I hadn't, so I got a little worried."
She smiled. "Thank you, Greg. But I'm fine. Just bored out of my mind."
"Well, you're the one who dipped into your vacation time."
She licked the corner of her lip. "Is that what Grissom told you?"
"Yeah. So, why are you at home instead of on a cruise, sipping margaritas in the presence of several loin-clothed natives?"
"I get seasick?" Sara set aside her sandwich. "Greg, I really appreciate you worrying about me, but…" A knock on her door interrupted her. The knocking continued, getting louder. "Um…I'll call you right back. There's someone at my door."
"I'll be waiting," she heard him shout through the phone just before she hung up.
Sara crossed to the front door and peeked out the peephole. Through the little glass, she could see Grissom pacing back and forth in front of her door wildly. She took a step back from the door, her heart suddenly pounding.
The knocking started again, even more insistent. "Sara!" she heard him yell. "Sara, open up!"
She looked around, to make sure there were no bras or other embarrassing items strewn anywhere. Juvenile, sure. But better than Grissom accidentally sitting down on a pair of her panties.
After unlocking the deadbolt, Sara pulled the door open. She said nothing in greeting; she simply waited.
Grissom's face upon seeing her was a mixture of emotions, none of which Sara could definitely decipher. When he reached out and grabbed her shoulders, she honestly wasn't sure if he was going to hug her or strangle her.
"You're okay," he breathed. He moved his hands up to cup her face. "You're okay."
"Why wouldn't I be?" His hands were hot, or maybe that was just her. His touch was so sudden, so unexpected, that she wouldn't have been at all surprised if her cheeks were flushed. "Grissom…what are you…" She couldn't finish the sentence. There was something in his eyes, something primeval, like he'd released a gate and couldn't be held responsible for what it had held pent up inside of him.
Before she could think of anything to say, he stopped her from thinking at all by pressing his lips to hers in the hottest, hardest kiss of her life. It was the kiss of a desperate man, savage and selfish…and not how it was supposed to happen.
She pushed away from him with both hands to his chest. Instantly, she regretted her rash decision. She should have let him keep kissing her, no matter what might have brought it about. It was the realization of a dream, after all.
"What are you doing?" Sara asked, touching her lips. "Grissom? What's going on?"
"The case…" he started, his words broken up by excess emotion and perhaps by the realization of what he'd just done. "He…today…he said…he hadn't seen you…I hadn't seen you…and with the other girl…maybe girls…I thought…I was worried…"
"Don't you mean concerned?"
Grissom shook his head. "Worried. About you." He sucked in a breath. "I thought…he'd killed…" He stopped.
"You…interviewed Lawton today," she surmised. "He made some comment about me, probably asking where I've been since I haven't been to a group session since you suspended me. And you assumed…" Sara let out a bitter chuckle. "Without any better evidence than that, you assumed that he had killed me and dumped my body in the desert. God, Grissom." She turned and walked towards the kitchen. "If I'm blinded, you're at the very least near-sighted."
"Near-sighted?" he managed to protest, having regained some of his breath. "You're still standing up for the man, even after the DNA test proves he took advantage of Julia Sommers."
"That's all it proves!" She yanked open her fridge and pulled out a beer. "But even if I didn't have the utter lack of evidence on my side, I know him, Grissom. He's not a murderer."
"Didn't you used to think the same thing about your friend in the D.A.'s office?"
Sara slammed the bottle opener onto the tile counter. "Why are you doing this to me!"
"What am I doing, Sara, besides trying to put a cold-blooded killer behind bars?"
"You've decided that the one man in my life who hasn't rejected me, cheated on me, or plied me with alcohol and raped me, is a killer, and you're doing everything in your power to take him away from me!" Sara refused to cry. He'd seen her cry before; it hadn't changed things then. It wouldn't change things now. "Why are you so determined to keep me alone and miserable?
Grissom, realizing the door was still wide open, closed it and faced her again. "Sara, that's not what I'm doing."
"Then what are you doing?" She lifted her shoulders. "What are you doing, Grissom? Why did you come here? Why did you kiss me when you know and I know and everyone knows that it doesn't mean anything to you!"
"You don't know!" he shouted back.
"I don't? Then it does mean something? What, Grissom? What does it mean?"
He stared at her; the moment hung between them, so thick that it crowded out all the air in the room. Finally, when neither one of them could breathe anymore, he let it go, plunging both of his hands into his curls. "Sara…I can't say what you want me to say."
"That I do know," she said, quietly. "But just…tell me something."
"What?"
"Tell me now, so I can know, once and for all…if you can't say it because you don't feel it."
Her answer came through his silence.
Closing her eyes for a few painful seconds didn't make the dead quiet any easier to bear. When she opened them again, he was looking away from her. Nodding continuously, Sara walked back into the living room, passing right by him, and opened the front door.
"Bye, Grissom," she whispered.
He was only gone for five minutes when there was another knock on the door. But it wasn't him coming back; it was just a uniformed officer, sent by Brass to check up on her. And that was when Sara started to cry.
Sara was in his head and she wouldn't get out. After leaving her apartment, Grissom tried going back to work, but the absence of her car in her parking spot only served as a reminder of the past half-hour. He turned his car around before he even parked in his own spot.
He couldn't fathom spending another night alone in his townhouse. Catherine had taken Lindsey to L.A. for the weekend. Brass was working. The guys…they were co-workers. Not friends exactly. Grissom nearly slammed on his brakes in the middle of heavy traffic when he suddenly realized he had nowhere to go.
Somehow, he'd finally done it. He'd made his life's work his life. He barely knew anyone outside of the lab, and those he did know had been connected to the lab at one time or another. Was it Eric Hoffer who'd said "with some people, solitariness is an escape, not from others, but from themselves…for they see in the eyes of others only a reflection"?
If that was true, what vision of himself had he been trying to escape for so many years? Maybe it wasn't a vision, but the lack of one. He'd moved like a ghost through life, the unseen observer, documenting, memorizing, but never participating. Was that why he held back from others? To keep from seeing their vision of him, which might be nothing at all?
But that wasn't true of Sara. There had been a time when he had looked into her eyes and seen a picture of himself that he liked. But now…her eyes were empty. He'd done it to himself. Whatever vision of Gil Grissom she had now was only a portrait of the man who'd kept her at arm's length for six years.
He couldn't internalize this. He needed help, another person's opinion. Someone who could look at him and see past the walls and defenses. Someone who knew him, despite all his best efforts to remain a mystery.
That was how he found himself at Lady Heather's Dominion.
Lawton's house wasn't hard to find even though Sara had never been there. He was listed right there in the phone book. Forbes, Lawton P, 2612 Mountain View Court. It was a large white structure, identical to all the others around it. Suburban Las Vegas; all the comforts of upper middle class living in the heart of the desert.
She parked on the street, paused to slip her cell phone into her back pocket, and got out, making no attempt to avoid walking across the carefully irrigated green lawn. There was a car in the driveway that she assumed was his. It was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was doing its best to fry anyone who stepped foot outside.
Sara rang the doorbell once, twice, three times before the door opened to reveal Callie. Having never seen the woman outside of the counseling office, Sara was a bit taken aback.
"Sara," Callie greeted her warmly. "What brings you here?"
"I need…to speak to Lawton," she said. "It's an emergency."
"Come on in, honey. It's boiling out there." Callie ushered her into the foyer and closed the door behind her. The house was spacious, but cool; Sara couldn't help but wonder how much his utility bill was. "I'm sorry, but Dr. Forbes isn't here right now. He's at his lawyer's." Callie paused. "This whole business is so awful. I just don't understand any of it."
Sara nodded. "Will he be back soon? I really need to talk to him."
"I don't know. I'm just here to drop off some papers." She pointed to another area of the house. "The kitchen's through there; you can leave him a message if you want."
"Thanks." Although she wandered through strange houses all the time, it was different when it belonged to someone she knew. Sara entered the kitchen, impressed again at all the space. That was one thing she'd always dreamed of having, a large kitchen. She wasn't much of a cook, but she figured if she had the space and the equipment someday, maybe she might be more inclined to try.
She found a pad of paper and a pen by the phone and had just started jotting down her number when something hit the back of her head so hard that everything went black.
To Be Continued