Title: Dreamers on the Rise
Author: Cropper
Pairing: GSR
Rating: Mature for Profanity, Graphic Imagery, and Adult Situations
Disclaimer: See Prologue
A/N: Thanks to Cheryl for the outstanding beta work on the G/S relationship snippets and holding my hand through some of the more intimate moments.
Summary: "To men I am still the mean between a fool and a corpse."Also Sprach Zarathustra - Freidrich Nietzsche
Chapter Six
A Man Saw A Ball Of Gold In The Sky
A man saw a ball of gold in the sky;
He climbed for it,
And eventually he achieved it -
It was clay.
Now this is the strange part:
When the man went to the earth
And looked again;
Lo, there was a ball of gold.
Now this is the strange part:
It was a ball of gold.
Ay, by the heavens, it was a ball of gold.
Stephen Crane
"Jesus said, 'Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest'."
The Gospel of Thomas (5)
You were forewarned, you pestilent worm. I showed you all that I could do, all that was in my power. Tremble before me, you lowly sycophant. You have drained your last ounce of life from my earth; you shall bespoil mine eyes no longer. On your knees, you mongrel, beg for a morsel, a scant crumb from my bountiful table. Crawl before me and lick my feet, you worthless cur. Your world, your hollow world of vanity and self-adoration has vanished in a puff of my vengeful disdain. I have become, I have overcome.
Cower, foul beast. You shall be my highest triumph. All I have done and all that remains fall upon your shoulders. You showed me the way though you know not what you have done. You, in your ignorance and blindness, saw not what you were creating by your indifference. Mine shall be the most sublime revenge, the tenderest of horrors as I watch the light fade from your eyes and blood dampen the dust. You cannot escape. Your fate is sealed. I have become, I have overcome.
Red Lion has come.
Fear me.
"Grissom." His voice was a deep growl, heavy with sleep and spent passion. A warm hand slid across his stomach, toying with the silken trail of fur leading from his belly button to far more impressive sights safely hidden beneath the blankets. He placed his hand over hers to still her roaming fingers while listening distractedly to the voice leaking from his phone.
"Forty-five minutes. Don't start without me," he grumbled sternly before ending the call.
He closed his cell, tossed it back on the nightstand and, before Sara fully realized that he was even moving, pounced. She suddenly found herself trapped beneath a very solid mass of warm, wholly masculine, Grissom. Oh, yes, his confidence as a lover was definitely growing. This new, playfully aggressive side of his personality bubbling to the surface was an incredible turn on and Sara felt her thighs growing damp with renewed sparks of arousal. Soon, very soon. Their time was rapidly approaching.
His large hands cradled her head as he brushed back her wildly disheveled hair and caressed her lips with sweetly chaste kisses. "That was Brass. We have to go."
"Judge Simmons?" Her voice was muffled, hidden beneath his adoring mouth.
"Mmmhmm," he mumbled, his beard tickling as he slid down her jaw to explore the tender skin of her neck. "An anonymous caller phoned in the location to 911."
Sara released a soft moan of pleasure. "Desert?"
"Yup." He reluctantly released the succulent flesh of her slender throat, rolled from the bed and headed towards the bathroom. Sara lingered, admiring the view.
"Hey Gris, where'd those scars come from?" she suddenly asked, curious about the smooth, white, pencil-thin scars marring his buttocks and upper thighs. She had first noticed the faded blemishes while caring for him after the accident but had never thought to ask how he had acquired them.
"What scars?"
"The ones on your butt and the backs of your thighs."
He twisted his torso in an attempt to see his rear end. "I wasn't aware that I had scars back there."
"None of your various lady friends over the years ever mentioned them?"
"Sara," he softly chided, shaking his head in gentle exasperation. "Aside from you and various health care professionals, my mother is the only other woman who has ever seen my naked tush." He paused, a wave of sadness breaking softly over his features. "As for the scars, they are probably from my father. Sometimes he spanked me so hard that the belt broke the skin." He shrugged, trying to downplay the significance of both the marks and his admission.
"I'm sorry, baby," she whispered, standing and crossing the room to embrace him gently. "I didn't mean to stir up bad memories."
He accepted her hug and buried his face in her hair. "I came to terms with the abuse years ago. It's just not something I care to discuss."
"If you could go back, would you change it?"
He pulled back slightly and gave her a quizzical look, not fully understanding her question.
"If you could turn back the clock and change things, would you change how your father treated you?
"I might turn back the clock but I doubt that I would change anything."
"Why?"
He sighed, hoping he would not sound as desperate and needy as he felt. "It is all part of what made me the man I am today. If I did change something, I would not be the same man. And, if I weren't the same man, you might not love me. Sara, having your love is worth all of the abuse, disappointment and personal failure I have ever suffered."
Sara's eyes welled with tears and she held him tighter. She knew Grissom loved her, but until that single, solitary moment in time, had not known just how deeply he cared, just how much she meant to him. She had not known that such depth of emotion actually existed outside of smutty, overly-romanticized, bodice-ripping novels featuring impossibly handsome tyrannical heroes and wickedly alluring heroines waiting ever so patiently for the hero to fall hopelessly in love with them and gallop off into some clichéd pastel happily ever after. Sara mulled that thought over in her mind, trying not giggle at the obvious comparison she had just made. Grissom would shit if he knew that she had been mentally comparing their relationship to an overused plot-line from a silly romance novel.
She allowed a soft smile to flit across her generous lips as she snuggled closer. For a small blissful eternity, they simply held each other, reaffirming their feelings, their love, before separating to prepare for their journey into the most lonesome of deserts.
As she gathered her clothes and headed to the bathroom for a lightning quick shower, she could not resist the temptation to question him further. She was still curious about one of his earlier comments. "Gris, if you wouldn't change anything that happened in your life, why would you want to turn back the clock?"
"To give us more time," he answered simply.
Warrick was carefully assembling klieg lights and Nick unpacking the camera equipment when Grissom and Sara arrived at the scene. In the pale, pre-dawn light, the desecrated body of Judge Simmons lay as still and forlorn as a weathered mahogany cross. Her nude, sand-blown body was face down on the barren desert floor, arms outstretched and feet crossed; the crystal champagne flute rested by her right hand, the earthenware basin and loofah by her left. A rock resting at her feet secured the corner of a note rustling in the cool night breeze and cradled two faintly glimmering golden keys.
Grissom simply observed, saying nothing, taking in the portrait of madness the Red Lion had painted.
"What are you thinking," Sara asked softly.
"'And whoever does not want to die of thirst among men must learn to drink out of all cups; and whoever would stay clean among men must know how to wash even with dirty water.' Also Sprach Zarathustra," he recited in a strangely melancholy tone.
The three other members of the team looked at each other before Nick sighed. "All right, I'll bite. What does Elvis have to do with all of this?"
"Elvis?" snorted Warrick, biting back a chuckle as Sara tried valiantly to repress a smirk.
"Yeah, Elvis," retorted Nick defensively. "Everyone knows Also Sprach Zarathustra was the music he played before his concerts to make his grand entrance. It was the music from 2001: A Space Odyssey."
"You are correct, Nick," Grissom began. "However, I was referring to the nineteenth century philosophic text by the same title that was written by Freidrich Nietzsche. The orchestral piece to which you are referring, a symphonic poem inspired by Nietzsche's work, was composed in 1896 by Richard Strauss. The music was indeed used in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was also inspired, at least in part, by Nietzsche's book. And, Elvis was not the only entertainer to incorporate the "Dawn Movement" into his live performances. Professional wrestler Ric Flair uses the same passage when taking to the ring."
"You're kidding, right? Ric Flair?" Nick was having a hard time envisioning Grissom kicked back on the sofa dressed in faded sweatpants and a stained undershirt, beer bottle resting on his belly while watching professional wrestling on television. His mind refused to conjure such a contradictory image of his Shakespeare-quoting, classical music-loving, fastidiously groomed superior.
"Why not?" Grissom shrugged. "Even I occasionally feel the need to indulge in a little willing suspension of disbelief." Fighting a smirk he turned back to the body just as Doc was approaching. He glanced over his shoulder at Nick. "You coming?"
Warrick leaned closer to Sara. "How can you live with that guy? Does he blurt out obscure factoids while you two are getting busy?"
"Actually, he is very quiet and doesn't say much at home, or in bed for that matter." Sara replied thoughtfully.
"Yeah, he saves it all up to torture us," groused Nick. "Come on, let's get to work."
Nick ambled off to join Grissom and the Coroner while Warrick and Sara took the perimeter. As Sara walked off she thought back to what she had revealed to Warrick and Nick. It was true; Grissom was an extraordinarily quiet man within the confines of his own home. He was not necessarily distant or aloof, he just did not say much. She knew that part of the reason lay in the fact that he was raised in a silent household and had lived alone for almost thirty years. She also knew that he had been forced muffle his cries as a child lest his father hear him and beat him even more savagely. What she did not know was why he never uttered a sound while making love.
Gris..." she ventured one morning, as they lounged quietly on the sofa, basking the simple pleasure of relaxing together. "You don't have to answer this if you don't want, but why are you so quiet in bed?"
He flushed bright red, a slow burn that started on his neck and spread through his beard and up his cheeks before finally branding his ears a flaming cherry hue. He blew out a long breath before summoning the courage to respond. "Before you, sex was always, unfortunately, a solitary pursuit. I saw no need to further humiliate or remind myself of that fact by vocalizing my momentary pleasure to an empty room. It was a release, Sara, nothing more."
"And now?"
"Huh?"
"Well, you aren't exactly flying solo anymore."
"True"
"Why are you still so quiet? You don't make a sound."
"I don't know," he sighed. "Too repressed...embarrassed, I guess. I don't want you to think I'm some moaning, groaning sex-crazed pervert trying to make up for years of lost time."
"Baby, I already know you're a sex-crazed pervert. I just want to hear the moaning and groaning once in awhile. It would be a huge turn-on."
Sara allowed a private smile to cross her lips as she searched the windswept landscape. Grissom was loosening up a little more every day, losing some of his more staid inhibitions, evolving into a more robust version of himself as past injuries finally healed and were sloughed off, forgotten among the new memories, the new dreams, he was realizing with Sara. The little boy within would never totally disappear but he was happier now, more at peace, content and comfortable with himself for the first time in forty-five years.
Grissom stood silently as Doc Robbins efficiently performed his initial observation. "It's pretty much the same as before, Gil. Skull bashed in, throat slit, taser burns on the neck..."
"Wait a minute. There was nothing about taser burns in the other reports."
"I was going back through the photos for my final sign-off when I noticed them. The killer was very clever because he hid the burns when he slit the throats. He got careless this time."
"Either that, or he does it in the dark."
"Excuse me?"
"He does it out here in the desert somewhere at night." Grissom grew pensive as he pondered the possibility, rolling it around in his mind, weighing it against what he knew and, yes, felt about the Red Lion. Somehow the thought of their killer sacrificing his victims unto himself on a stone alter by the light of the moon seemed to fit. "Well, those burns do answer one of the many questions I had about this."
"What's that," Doc asked as he motioned to his assistants to lift the body onto the gurney and entomb all that was left of Judge Simmons in a black rubber shroud.
"How he subdues them. He doesn't drug them, the tox screens were clean. Besides, I'm pretty sure that he drinks some of their blood so he wouldn't taint it with narcotics or opiates. He doesn't restrain them. There are no bruises on either the arms or bodies to indicate that they were held down in any way. He shocks them so they are immobilized, yet conscious, while he batters them."
Doc heaved a great sigh. Even with all he had seen in his many years on the job, man's inhumanity to man still had the power to confound and greatly trouble him. "All right, Gil, I'm going to head back and get started on our Judge. I'll see you later."
Nick turned to his boss. "You really think he's drinking the blood?"
Grissom nodded; preoccupied with the morbid profile he was assembling in his mind.
"You thinking he's a vampire? I haven't seen any of the usual occult stuff we would normally find with something like that."
"No, not a vampire, Nick. I think he is interpreting the Bible literally in his quest to overcome."
"Overcome what?" Sara asked as she and Warrick rejoined Grissom and Nick.
"Himself." He shook his head to clear his thoughts and addressed the members of his team. "Are we through here?" He received three affirmative answers. "Good. Let's go. By the way," he asked as if noticing for the first time that he was missing a couple of employees, "where are Catherine and Greg?"
"Brass was able to convince a Judge to cough up a warrant so Catherine is checking out Cephas' place and Greg is going through his locker and desk at the station," supplied Warrick.
Grissom sat in his darkened office, illuminated only by the muted spectral glow of his desk lamp. He needed the dancing shadows to absorb the Lion, needed the bleakness, the blackness to enter into that horrifying heart of darkness. He had teetered on the edge of the abyss before, had trembled on the lip, wavering, always wavering, wondering whether the plunge was worth the price of his humanity, his soul.
He found himself upon the brink once again, a precipice he had not tiptoed since Dr. Lurie had threatened to topple him over with a timeless rage and need he had understood all to well. He felt the frightening familiarity returning, an unwanted ethereal wraith, as he studied the nine notes left by the killer. Each in itself was an ageless gift waiting to be unwrapped, its secrets probed and plundered by an ever-restless mind.
The Red Lion was a Biblical scholar, or, at the very least, someone very familiar with the scriptures. Perhaps at one point he had studied formally, either as an undergraduate or a seminarian, and had even considered heeding the call to minister to other wondering spirits. And yet...his actions and his words bespoke of a total loss of faith, but in what? Was he disillusioned with God or merely the strictures of organized religion? Was society, Nietzsche's much reviled state, responsible for his fall or was it something more personal, something deep within the Lion's own personality that had sent him scurrying into the depraved depths of his tortured conscience? What was the trigger? What had sent him over the edge?
Grissom pondered these questions as he carefully reread each note, trying to glean the killer's motivation from the nine neatly typed pages, all precisely labeled by victim and where each had been found. All were properly accredited to Nietzsche and all had been pulled from the Zarathustra text.
XXXX
Dr. Jonas Garrish – Abduction Note:
"You have served the people and the superstition of the people, all of you famous wise men – and not truth."
Dr. Jonas Garrish – Arson Note:
"That everyone may learn to read, in the long run corrupts not only writing but thinking. Once the spirit was God, then he became man, and now he even becomes rabble."
Dr. Jonas Garrish – Body/Dump Site Note:
"It was ever in the desert that the truthful have dwelt, the free spirits, as masters of the desert, but in the cities dwell the well-fed, famous wise men – the beasts of burden. For, as asses, they always pull the people's cart."
XXXX
Reverend Michael Hubbell – Abduction Note:
"I am moved to compassion by these priests. I also find them repulsive; but that matters least of all to me since I have been among men. But I suffer and have suffered with them: prisoners they are to me, and marked men. He whom they call the Redeemer has put them in fetters: in fetters of false virtues and delusive worlds. Would that someone yet redeem them from their Redeemer!"
Reverend Michael Hubbell – Arson Note:
"Behold these huts which these priests built! Churches they call their sweet-smelling caves. Oh, that falsified light! That musty air! Here the soul is not allowed to soar to its height. For thus their faith commands: 'Crawl up the stairs on your knees, ye sinners'."
Reverend Michael Hubbell – Body/Dump Site Note:
"God is a thought that makes all that is straight, and makes turn whatever stands."
XXXX
Judge Alethea Simmons – Abduction Note:
It is the annihilators who set traps for the many and call them 'state': they hang a sword and a hundred appetites over them."
Judge Alethea Simmons – Arson Note:
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truths than lies."
Judge Alethea Simmons – Body/Dump Site Note:
"And you, red judge, if you were to tell out loud all that you have already done in thought, everyone would cry, 'Away with this filth and this poisonous worm'."
XXXX
He sighed with frustration and removed his glasses to massage his temples. A headache of epic proportions was lurking behind his forehead, battering him mercilessly. The answer was hiding in these notes, in the various items left at the scenes. Grissom just could not put the puzzle together. The only common variant seemed to be that the killer believed them all to be harbingers of falsehood and misguided wisdom. Had philosophy destroyed his faith in religion? Had he then turned to the secular to find value, only to be disappointed once again?
Why did he drink the blood? He did not think that the reason was sacramental. The disciples drank of Christ's blood to gain life eternal, entry into the kingdom of God. The Lion thought himself to be a god, an immortal being. The answer lay deeper, tangled in why he felt compelled to bathe in the urine of his victims. There had to be a reason why he drank the blood of those he deemed inferior and bathed in their defiled waste. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that while the three victims were representative of all that the killer thought amiss with society at large, they were largely incidental, a necessary sacrifice to the Lion's ultimate goal, whatever that might be.
One thing he did know, however, was that Cephas was not the Red Lion. Cephas, while a braggart and a blowhard, had neither the intelligence nor the subtlety to so precisely orchestrate a crime of this magnitude.
There was a quiet rap on his door and Sara poked her head inside. "You okay?" she questioned, concern evident in her hushed tone. "You look like you're lost in something pretty deep."
"Just trying to figure this guy out and not having much luck. You?"
"Oh, I went over to dispatch to talk to Jimmy. I thought we could use some background on Cephas," she said brightly.
"He have anything interesting to say?"
"Yeah, he said plenty but I don't think it will help us a whole lot"
Grissom raised a solitary eyebrow to question her further.
"He just basically rambled on about what a dick Cephas was in high school. Come on, let's go get some coffee. We are all going to meet in the conference room to compare notes."
He nodded and rose painfully to his feet. She gave him a worried once-over which he dismissed with a rueful shake of his head as he reached a hand down to massage his aching knee. "Just a little tired." He glanced towards the open door to make sure no one was within ear shot. "We should have slept instead of...gratifying our more primal instincts."
Sara flushed, glowing softly in the muted light of his office as he walked towards her. "Probably. But what we did was a hell of a lot more fun than sleeping," she muttered softly. Grissom gave a small grunt of agreement as they headed down the hall to join the others.
Catherine spoke first once the team, sans Greg, finally assembled. "Okay, I checked out Officer Cephas' apartment. It's a typical man joint. He has dirty shorts on the bathroom floor...Speedo-type bikini briefs, I might add...,"
Nick coughed, "Banana hammocks," into his hand. Catherine was unperturbed by his childish antics and smoothly continued her recitation.
"...condoms and lubricant in the nightstand, a lot of condoms and lubricant in the night stand, and girlie magazines under the bed. He has photos of himself with Hollywood celebrities plastered all over his walls and even his high school diploma is sitting in plain sight. Oh, and there is at least one mirror in every room. This guy has some serious self-love issues."
"Anything to connect him to this Red Lion character?" asked Warrick.
"Nope," she said, blowing her hair out of her face. "We didn't find a thing other than a roll of duct tape that is being processed now. We even went through his records looking for a storage space or something like that and found nothing. If he is the perp, he is doing a damn good job of covering his tracks."
Nick turned to Sara. "Did you find out anything from Jimmy?"
"Not really. Cephas was your typical bully in high school. He was a big jock and liked to knock the geeks around. You know the type." She seemed to have finished but suddenly remembered something. "He also gave me the recording of the latest 911 call and I gave it to Archie. Archie said that there was nothing of real interest on the previous tapes; nothing unique that would identify the caller. He did say, however, that he thinks they all came from the same person and is working with dispatch to see if they can trace the calls. They were all very short so even with Caller-ID he is not holding his breath because the numbers were blocked."
Warrick spoke up. "I checked out the cat's ride. It's nothing special, a low-end Beamer, and it was clean. No trace of blood and no sledge hammer or taser. I did do a search to see if he had a second vehicle registered here or in California but no dice."
"Nick?" prompted Grissom.
"The blood and urine belonged to the vic. No prints or epithelials on the cup, bowl or loofah. No prints on the note or the keys, either." He paused, brows knitting together. "What do the keys stand for?"
"Keys to the Kingdom. St. Peter, remember?" answered Grissom.
"Which is why she was found face down while the other two were face up. St. Peter was crucified upside down."
Grissom nodded, affirming Nick's deduction. He was not surprised that his team had found nothing to tie Cephas to the killing spree; he already knew that Cephas was not the man they were looking for. He looked around the room. "Where's Greg?"
Catherine looked around the table as well, seeming to notice for the first time that the youngest CSI was nowhere to be found. "I sent him off to search Cephas' desk and locker at the station. He should have been back long before now."
Greg chose that moment to make his entrance. His face was red and he was breathing heavily as if he had run all the way. "We found a note in Cephas' locker. The Red Lion has him."
Greg handed Grissom the evidence bag containing the note while the others turned to pelt Greg with a host of questions. Grissom read the note and regarded the far wall with blistering intensity before slapping his hand forcefully against the table with a resounding CRACK.
"I know who the killer is," he announced, dropping the note on the table and rushing out the door, leaving five flabbergasted criminalists in his wake.
And if three wishes came into my life
I'd say one was to gaze into your eyes
And I'd say two, would be turning back our lives
Three's a long time you know for that kind of wind to blow
Long time ago we were dreamers on the rise
Long time ago we were dreamers on the rise
To Be Continued...