Albert
Disclaimer: I do not own CSI, nor any other works which may bear a resemblance, intentional or otherwise, to this work.
Rating: T
A/N: I have a flatmate called Alberto. He is a very nice guy, and bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to 'Albert'.
Chapter 3: The Tape
Sara turned the tape over in her hands. Dr. Ross' files on Tommy Raines had been released to CSI early on the day following the murder. Sara had already read the notes and was now ready to listen to the tape of the psychologist's first interview with Tommy. It was dated two weeks prior to the murder.
"Hi Tommy."
"Hi."
"Do you know why you're here?"
"Yes."
"Why are you here?"
"Mommy and daddy want Albert to go away."
"Who's Albert?"
"He's invisible. Only I can see him."
"Okay. Tell me a little more about Albert."
"He only comes sometimes. He does bad things. He likes to hurt people."
"Do you like to hurt people, Tommy?"
"No."
"Is Albert your friend?"
"No." A pause. "He scares me."
"He scares you?"
"Yeah."
"Do you want Albert to go away?"
"Yes."
"Okay. How can we make Albert go away?"
"We can't."
"We can't?"
"No. He'll stay forever."
"How do you know that?"
"He told me."
"Okay." Pause. "Do you want to draw a picture?"
The rest of the interview followed on in that vein. Sara looked at the picture that Tommy had drawn that day. She didn't need a psychologist to interpret it for her.
A little boy with brown hair and a sad face was standing in the middle of the page. On one side were two tall grown-ups with angry faces. On the other side was a pink bundle that looked like a baby, and she recalled from the file that Tommy had a baby sister.
The space between the boy and the other people, and around them as well, was entirely filled with jagged black scribble. Most disturbing of all was the way the baby was almost obliterated by a combination of this and thick red marks the colour of blood.
Sara sighed and set the picture aside, inserting tape number two into the player.
"Hi Tommy."
"Hi Dr. Ross."
"You know you can call me Evie."
"Hi Evie."
"How are you this evening?"
"I'm okay."
"You're okay? Are you sure?" Pause. "Your mother told me you took the fish out of the neighbours' pond and let them die. Is that true?"
"No. It was Albert."
"Okay. Why did Albert take the fish out of the pond?"
"To watch them die."
"Albert wanted the fish to die?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don't know. He thought it was fun."
"Did you think it was fun?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I don't want things to die."
"Has anything else died, Tommy?"
- unintelligible mumble -
"I'm sorry, Tommy, I didn't catch that."
"I said 'not yet'."
"Not yet? Tommy, that's a very scary thing to say."
"I know. I'm scared too."
He was, too. Sara could hear it in his voice. Whatever the truth was, the child genuinely believed in Albert, and believed that he was a killer.
Having listened to the second tape she was ready to move on to the third, which of course wasn't with the file. Grissom had removed it from the scene the night before, marking it as a top priority as a possible 'third witness' to the murder, but when they had played it there had been nothing but static.
They had handed it over to Archie in the hope that he could do something with it, and Sara decided to go and see whether he'd had any luck with his analysis.
"That's the weird thing," Archie told her. "There doesn't seem to be any problem with the tape or the recorder, but all we hear is static. It was only when I worked down to the very bottom of the frequency spectrum that I got anything, and even that was faint."
He leaned over and pressed some keys on the computer.
"I've cleaned it up the best I can. Have a listen."
It was an impossibly deep voice, chanting in a guttural language that Sara didn't recognize. For some reason, it sent chills through her body.
"What language is that?"
"God knows. I've run it forward and backwards, sent samples to the linguistic experts. No-one can place it."
"Turn it off."
"Yeah, it creeps me out too."