Disclaimer/Author's Note – See Chapter One.

Chapter Eight – Investigation

"Oh Sara, it's so good to hear your voice."

Sara fought off the lump that was forming in the back of her throat, choking her. She was glad they were on the phone and not face to face, so that her mother couldn't see the tears that were starting to flow silently down her cheeks.

"Sara? Are you still there?"

Swallowing hard, she took a deep, steadying breath. "I'm still here, Mom."

"I wish you had talked to me earlier in the week. I saw the newspapers."

It took a moment for Sara to figure out what she was talking about. Then the horrible, shameful feeling in the pit of her stomach returned. "You did?"

"I should have tried harder to warn you. Something could have been done…"

"Warn me? What are you…?" Sara's confusion was rapidly making way to anger. "Did you know?"

Her mother's voice was clearly upset when she spoke. "Not exactly. I didn't think they'd actually publish anything. Not without some kind of interview with me…"

Things still weren't making much sense. "Mom. Start at the beginning. What exactly happened?"

Laura Sidle took a deep breath and began. "Just before I called you last week, a journalist came to see me at the house. Said he was doing a piece on the local area – sort of a tourist piece on Tamales Bay – and he wanted to interview as many locals as possible, to get a real sense of the place. I let him in and he started asking questions – innocuous at first, I suppose – about the area, how long I'd lived there, that sort of thing.

"He picked up a picture of you off the mantelpiece and asked me if it was my daughter. I said yes, and he asked me where you were. I told him – I didn't see the harm – I told him that you worked in Law Enforcement in Vegas." Sara could hear the tremor in her mother's voice now, as she too choked back the tears. "He said 'You must be very proud of her.' And I told him that I was."

She was sobbing now, quiet sobs carrying down the line to Sara who matched them with tears of her own. Wiping them away impatiently, she pressed her mother onwards. "What happened then?"

It took a moment for Laura to compose herself, and when she started to speak again, Sara detected not only sorrow in her tone, but shame.

"He asked if you had chosen that life for yourself as a result of what you went through as a child. I knew something wasn't right then. He started asking questions about… about your father and… what happened. Asked if it had affected you… mentally. Questions… so many horrible questions."

Sara shut her eyes, imaging the sorts of things he had asked. "What did you do?"

"I threw him out," her mother replied angrily. "I threw the son of a bitch out. Told him I wasn't going to talk about any of that with him or anyone. He told me, one way or another, the story would run… I just slammed the door on him."

"Have you seen him again?"

"No," she replied. "But I was worried. I knew how upset you'd be if the story was printed. So, I called you…"

And I didn't pick up or call you back, Sara inwardly berated herself. Something could have been done. An injunction of some kind. Or, at the very least, she could have been prepared for what was to come, not ambushed by it in Ecklie's office.

"I'm so sorry, honey," her mom told her.

"I know," Sara whispered. "It's not your fault."

Resentment was bubbling under her cool façade as Catherine sat opposite Sofia Curtis in the layout room.

Sofia was reading through the notes of the case, perusing reports and making notes in tiny, precise handwriting which Catherine couldn't make out from her vantage point.

Without looking up, Sofia began her questioning. "Catherine, can you run me through the events of the case, from the initial call out?"

Catherine was damned if she was going to be helpful. "You have all that information in front of you."

"I'm interested in your perspective."

Narrowing her eyes briefly at the blonde, she shook off her annoyance and tried to be professional. "Grissom and I were called to a 419 in a warehouse downtown. Caucasian male, later identified as Hank Pettigrew, cause of death single gunshot with high performance ammo. Body mutilated post-mortem – acid was poured over his face to conceal identity."

"Says here there was a lot of insect activity on the body."

Catherine nodded. "There was. However, the Doc put time of death at only a few hours before the body was found. The bugs were planted, just like Sara's hair and the beer bottle with her fingerprint on it."

Sofia glanced up. "Where was the hair found?"

"On the victim."

"Only one?"

"Yeah."

"Prints on the bottle, but no DNA inside, right?"

"That's right. Only it was print, not prints. A single thumb print, the rest of the bottle was clean. Clearly planted evidence."

Sofia nodded and jotted another note on her pad. No longer looking at Catherine, she urged her to continue. "Go on."

"We logged the evidence and had it processed immediately. Got a hit of the bottle and the hair immediately. Obviously, Sara's prints and DNA are in the system – just like everyone in the department. Grissom went straight to her apartment."

Again, Sofia looked up. "Alone?"

Catherine shook her head. "No. Brass went with him."

Sofia said nothing, so Catherine continued. "She was groggy, as though she'd just woken up. She couldn't remember the previous twelve hours. Grissom suspected she'd been drugged, so he and Brass drove her straight here for a blood test."

"Grissom drew her blood?"

"Yeah."

"He shouldn't have."

Catherine let out a frustrated breath. "He and Sara weren't involved at the time. There was no conflict…"

"There was still a history there."

"There's a history between all of us. We've worked together for a long time."

"Who ran the tox screen on Sara's blood?" Sofia wanted to know. And for at least the third time in an hour, Catherine fought the urge to punch the blonde.

"Greg."

"Why?"

Catherine sat back in her seat and glared. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"At that point, Greg was a trainee CSI, right?"

"Still is."

"So, why was he in the lab?"

Catherine gritted her teeth. "Sofia…"

"Catherine. I'm not asking these questions for the hell of it. These are things that the Defense is going to question. And we'd damn well better have answers for them, otherwise our suspect is going to walk. Now, why Greg?"

Catherine cleared her throat and answered the question as if she were on the stand. "Greg was still floating between the DNA lab and the field until the tech we hired to replace him had fully settled in. Greg wanted to make sure the job was given a high priority, wanted it done right. So he ran the blood himself. Mia was with him the entire time, assisting and running other evidence."

"So Greg wasn't alone at any point when running the blood?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"And his tests proved conclusively that Sara couldn't have been conscious during the time when the murder was committed?"

"That's correct."

Her answers seemed to please Sofia. "Good." She paused only briefly. "But there's still the problem of Grissom."

That earned her another glare. "What problem with him?"

Sofia's eyes glanced over the reports. "He processed Sara himself, Catherine."

Catherine shut her eyes, inwardly kicking herself. She should have insisted on doing it. "Yes. He did."

Sofia sat down the file and folded her hands together. "No matter how we present that, the Defense will make it look as though Grissom could have manipulated the evidence. It doesn't really matter what he did or didn't do. It's how his actions could be colored by the Defense."

Reluctantly, Catherine nodded.

"Tell me about Jill Davenport."

Catherine took a moment to settle the anger that had risen in her, just thinking about that woman. "I interviewed her myself. She claimed to be genuinely surprised and upset by what had happened. In her statement, she claimed that Sara had gone to the bar to place their order, and that her drink had never left her sight – basically telling us that Sara couldn't have been drugged while she was with her. We now know that she was lying. Sara remembers Jill going to the bar, not the other way around, and the barman working that night has backed up Sara's version of events.

"What the evidence tells us is that Jill slipped the drugs into Sara's drink, waited until she started to get groggy and suggested that she go home and get some rest. By the time Sara reached her car, she was out cold. Jill loaded her in, drove her home, pulled a hair from her head and planted her print on the bottle. She took Sara's gun and reloaded it with high performance ammo. She then dressed in Sara's hat and coat and drove Sara's car to the warehouse to meet Hank. We recovered hairs that are consistent with Jill's from inside the hat, a couple of prints from the steering wheel of the car and her prints on both the bullets loaded in Sara's weapon, as well as the unloaded bullets recovered from the apartment."

Sofia nodded again, at what, Catherine wasn't sure. "Who recovered the evidence from Sara's car and apartment?"

"Brass recovered her gun from the apartment. The car was processed by Warrick and Nick."

"So that just leaves the notes. Only one had prints, is that right?"

"Right. Just one set of prints on the second note."

"Grissom's?"

"Yes, but I was there when he opened the envelope. He did his best to preserve the evidence once he realized what it was."

Sofia's eyes looked weary when they met Catherine's. "I'm sure the Defense gave him a really hard time about that on the stand."

"Ate him alive. About that… and everything else."

Sofia put down her pen and rubbed her temples, as if the whole situation where giving her a splitting headache. "Catherine, there's no evidence that anything was tampered with on this case. In fact, for this whole conspiracy theory to fly, you'd have to believe that the entire lab was corrupt, since the evidence was processed involving at least eight different people."

Catherine sat back in her chair. "I'm sensing a 'But' in there somewhere."

"The fact remains that, if the jury buys for one second the Defense's claims that this lab could fake evidence to protect one of their own, if even one juror decided that there's a shred of reasonable doubt, then Jill could walk."

Sara walked into the lab that night trying very hard to keep her head up, unashamed, but feeling like she was failing miserably. The small, supportive smiles she received from Judy on the front desk, and Bobby as she passed ballistics, did nothing to lift her spirits. And she felt even worse when she spotted Sofia Curtis interrogating Mia in the DNA lab. The ethics and professionalism of the entire lab were being put under the microscope – because of her.

She felt sick to her stomach. Things were not going the way they were supposed to. Jill should be safely behind bars, where she belonged. The lab should be going about its business of bringing justice and closure to those left behind. And she should be moving on with her life, building her future with Grissom finally, after so many false starts and heartaches.

She was so deep in thought that she didn't see the man in question until she almost collided with him.

"Hey," he greeted her softly, his voice hesitant.

"Hey." She could barely look at him. Of all people, she felt she had let him down the most.

Placing his hand on the small of her back, he guided her to his office and shut the door.

"Did you get any sleep?"

He was worried about her. His reputation was being put under the microscope because of her, and here he was, making sure she was getting enough rest.

She shrugged. "Some." Finally, she met his eyes and the love and compassion she saw there nearly did her in. "Grissom, I wanted to tell you how sorry I am…"

He shook his head. "There's really no need. You needed to get some rest. I understand. We don't need to live in each other's pockets just yet…"

"No. That's not what I meant," she told him. "I mean, I'm sorry for everything that's happening. For the investigation…"

He put his hands on her shoulders to silence her. "Sara, how many times do I have to explain that none of this is your fault? If either of us is to blame, it's me. I should have foreseen this. I shouldn't have processed you myself… I just… I wasn't thinking straight and I wanted to be the one to look after you."

He cupped her face with his hand and made her look at him. "Things are a mess right now, but I have to believe in the science. And the science tells us that Jill is guilty. I have to trust that a jury will see that, no matter what antics her lawyer tries to pull."

Sara wished she had his faith, and she wondered when her faith in science had waned. She had always believed in the evidence, but now she couldn't shake the notion that Jill was about to get away with murder, no matter what they said or did.

She suddenly felt suffocated and desperately needed to change the subject.

"I uh…" she began, clearing her throat and switching into professional mode. "I went through those phone records at home. Brass got them to me before the end of shift this morning."

Grissom paused briefly, and she wondered if he was going to chastise her for working when she should be resting. Instead he nodded. "Anything probative?"

"A lot of calls to bookies and escort agencies. A couple of other calls. One that caught my eye was to a Jess Silverton. I checked her address out, and she's located five miles west of where the police found Mikey."

This caught his interest. "How many calls."

"Only one."

Now he looked disappointed. "A judge probably won't give us a warrant based on a single call."

"It's the only address that makes sense," she insisted. "The rest were buddies of his, all within the city limits. If he ditched Mikey out of the car on his way to his current location, this Silverton woman is our best bet."

He nodded again. "Okay, I'll have Brass check it out. Meanwhile…"

Anything he was about to say was put on hold by the chirping of his cell phone. Glancing at it, he saw Brass's name and answered immediately. His conversation was brief and too the point. When he hung up, he turned to Sara and she thought she saw a tiny glimmer of relief in his eyes.

"The little boy's awake."

TBC.