When they reached her office, Catherine closed (and locked) the door. She handed Sara a couple of Kleenax.
"Thanks." Sara said, dabbing her eyes.
"No problem." She replied. She sat down next to Sara and asked, "What happened?"
Sara didn't answer right away. "You know the case Grissom, Nick, and I are working on? The one with the 5-year-old girl?"
"Yeah."
"Well her, brother, was found dead in their house. Then when we were processing the scene, Nick found some blood that wasn't the, brother's, and that wasn't Emily's –"
"Emily?"
"The little girl." Sara explained.
"Oh."
"Anyways, we thought it might belong to her, parents. They're still MIA. I ran it through CODIS, but last I checked it was still searching. Then Brass found out that Emily's, father, has been dead for two years."
"So you've been looking for the mother?" It was more of a statement than a question.
Sara nodded. "I went back and narrowed the search to only women."
"And?" Catherine asked when Sara didn't continue.
"And Grissom brought this to me a-a little bit ago." She handed the DNA report to Catherine. (Nick had picked it up before he went to get Cath and Warrick and Sara had taken it from him when she left Grissom's office with Catherine.)
Catherine opened it and looked it over. "You found the mother." She said after a moment. Again Sara nodded. "Who's –?"
Sara slowly looked up at her, her eyes filling with tears. Catherine stared back into her eyes, her gaze never waivering. Suddenly it hit her. Her mouth opened and closed a few times making her look a little like a fish out of water.
"This is, your DNA, isn't it?" Closing her eyes, Sara looked away as tears slipped down her cheeks.
She took a deep, ragged breath and cleared her throat. "…..Yes."
"How, I mean when -?"
"About five years ago. I was invited to a convention, a-an entomology convention. I really wasn't interested, but I'd heard the speaker was really big in the forensics field, so I signed up. Anyways, I met…….a guy there and he invited me out for coffee. We, umm, kinda hit it off…..and he asked me to dinner the next day. He was only going to be in town for a couple of days, so I accepted……and we had a really nice time. Then he drove me home, and…I don't know why, but I….."
"Let me guess, you invited him up to your place?" Catherine finished for her.
"Yeah." Sara replied meekly. An awkard silence fell over them.
After a moment Catherine asked, "Was it Grissom?"
"What!"
"The speaker. At the convention. Was it Grissom?"
"Oh! Uh, yeah! That was the first time I met him." A faint smile appeared on Sara's face as she took a mental trip down memory lane.
This triggered something in Catherine's mind. "Wait. Grissom."
"Huh?" Sara was pulled from her thoughts. Catherine had that look in her eyes, like she was about to solve the biggest case of the year. "Catherine? Hey! Catherine!" Sara could practically see the gears turning behind the other women's eyes. Suddenly, as though a light bulb had gone off in her head, she looked at Sara. "What!" the younger women cried.
Without a word Catherine jumped out of her chair and headed for the door.
"Hey! Where are you going! Can I go with you!" Sara chased her down the hall until they reached the DNA lab.
"Greg!" Catherine called. "Everybody's DNA, who works here, is in the computer, right?"
"Uh, yeah. Why?" Catherine pounced at the computer and worked on it for a few minutes. "What's she doing?" Greg asked Sara, who just shook her head in confusion. At the sound of the printer starting up, Catherine ran over and picked up the sheet of paper it spit out.
She read it over quickly and then stared at Sara. Their eyes locked in what could've been mistaken as a showdown from an old John Wayne movie. Greg looked back and forth between them, then he slowly backed out of the room.