A/N: I posted 2 chapters this week, please be sure to read chapter 12 first. Thanks.

Ch. 13:

There was a news helicopter circling above the scene, news vans parked behind the yellow tape, and correspondents from various news outlets lined up down the interstate. "This is a circus."

"Yeah, well," Nick said as he kept working, "at least they can't say we aren't being transparent."

Catherine shook her head as she went back to examining the body. Julia Holden had been buried in a shallow grave and they were working on being extra careful as they dug her body out of it. Nick was currently working around her arms as Warrick was working the perimeter. She was at her head, and the moment she had cleared the face of the dirt and sand, she knew who it was that she was face-to-face with. Her features were undeniable as Julia Holden's face had been burned into her mind as it had been in everyone else.

"You said an anonymous tip came in?"

Brass was kneeling next to her, watching as they worked. "At exactly 10 pm. I got Rodriguez working on obtaining a copy of the 9-1-1 call from dispatch. He'll have it sent over to Archie at the lab to analyze."

"I'm wondering how she was found. The grave's shallow, but not dug up. Nothing exposed."

"The only way the caller knew exactly where to find the body was because he or she was the one to put her here."

"Exactly," she said as she pulled her flashlight to get a better look at Julia's neck. They had spotlights but there were still shadows. Tilting the head to the side, she saw the abrasions around the neck. "Looks like she's been strangled." Letting out a breath, she told Brass, "David said he couldn't get TOD due to the liver being decomposed. That happens 24 to 72 hours after death. But, her body is still intact, including her nails and teeth which would have fallen out by now. If she had been buried here for over a month, she'd be liquified and there would be nothing left but bones."

"You're saying someone stopped the decomp process in order to bury her here and then call in the tip? They wanted her to be found like this?"

Once again, she looked around at the gathered media presence, heard the whipping blades and motor of the helicopter, and said, "It's the attention. If we found bones, we wouldn't know who this was for days or weeks. Cause of death would take even longer. This way, we know immediately who it is and how she died. The news is all over it."

"I found a tie."

Both her and Brass looked over at Nick who pulled a tie out of the grave. It was solid blue and looked familiar, but many men had blue ties. "Anything else?"

"There's a tag still on it. The kind used at the dry cleaners," he said as he laid it on the plastic sheet he had next to him and took a picture. "Her wrists are bruised, cuts in her palms," Nick said as he bagged the tie. "It looks like she dug her own nails into her hands. There's blood under her nails. Super Dave will collect samples from under her nails then we'll see if it's all her DNA or…" he looked across the body at her as he said, "not."

They also had bugs. Lots of bugs. "We could really use a forensic entomologist right about now."

Nick smiled softly but it never reached his eyes. "Yeah." He stood and went to put the collected evidence in the back of the SUV.

Warrick watched him walk away before saying as he held up an evidence bag, "I didn't find any tire treads or shoe prints, but I did find some beer bottles not too far away and a small fire pit. This isn't a place anyone normally hangs out—" he said as he gestured around the open desert. "I can't see anyone who's homeless walking this far out to make camp. And I'm not finding any evidence of a rave. Could just be from a hiker."

"Or, if the killer came out here regularly, then…it might have a special meaning for them and why they chose this spot to bury the body." She stood as she looked around the desert. In the far distance to the southwest was the state prison and further north on the interstate was Indian Springs and the Air Force base. "Maybe a prisoner who would look out his window and see nothing but this area of desert, or, a bored Airman who would come out here to camp and drink?"

"Whoever it is, let's hope their DNA is on file and we get a hit off these beer bottles," Warrick said as he started for his SUV to deposit the evidence.

She watched him leave and then went back to the body. They found a body and more evidence, but in her gut, she knew something wasn't right with any of it. Someone stopped the decomp process, most likely by keeping the body on ice somewhere. Then brought her out here to be found intact, all the evidence of her death visible along with her face. They left a tie, most likely the one used to strangle her with, in the grave, dry cleaning tag included to make identification.

"This was expertly done but sloppy at the same damn time."

Brass stood as he said, "I'll get that dry cleaning tag number and start checking around."

She had recognized that tie. It was Grissom's. She just knew it. "Start with the cleaners that Grissom frequently uses."

"Which is?" Brass asked.

Giving it some thought, she told him, "The Perfect Touch Cleaners off Flamingo. He had me pick up his suit there once for court because he was running late. It's open 24-hours."

Brass wrote that down and then headed towards his car.

While getting ready to leave his house, Sara had a call come in. Since the rest of the night shift was working the scene where Julia was found, Sara took a 444, an officer involved shooting, on the northside of Las Vegas. Before she'd gotten the call though, they had an argument. She wanted to go with him to his mother's house and he didn't. His reasoning was that, though he appreciated the gesture, it wasn't the right time. He most likely would be there for the rest of the night and into the morning. There wasn't anything she could do and it'd be uncomfortable and awkward. He just didn't see the point.

Then she said, "You want me to be a part of your life, but then you push me away."

"I'm not pushing you away," he'd told her. "I'm just not ready—"

"For your mother to meet your mistress?" she asked angrily.

He stilled as he stared at her in shock before shaking his head in confusion. "What did you just say?"

Why had she said that? Only the news referred to Sara as his mistress, and they were wrong. Just because…Then he realized that the only reason for her to say such a thing was because she must have thought that she was his mistress.

Stepping closer to her, he told her, "You're not my mistress." She actually huffed out a bitter laugh at that as she crossed her arms over her chest. A clear sign that she was getting defensive and didn't believe him. "Sara…" he shook his head as he told her, "you were never my mistress." Once he got close enough to touch her, he cupped her face in his hand as he kissed her forehead. She still hadn't dropped her arms. Rubbing his thumb over her cheek, he said, "That required me and Julia actually having a commitment to one another. We didn't. When I met you, I knew that I'd meet my wife. I wanted you so badly…Why'd you think I got your phone number?" She finally relaxed as she wrapped her arms around him. "I didn't date, but…I asked you for your number. I wanted to call you so I could talk to you, send you gifts and to visit you in San Francisco. Out of all the people I could have gotten to conduct the investigation into Warrick's gambling after the Holly Gibbs shooting, I called you. I wanted you to come to Vegas. And then when you decided to stay…"

He felt her tears on his neck as she buried her face against his skin as he held her into a tight hug. It'd been so hard for him to express to her everything he felt that she had no idea what he felt for her. How important she was to him. He couldn't let her leave without knowing. He'd given her his heart and it was about damn time he let her know it with more than just sex.

"I'm so lucky I found you," he told her. "You were the woman I fell in love with but thought I could never have. I was so afraid of our relationship ending that I kept us from truly being together and I'm so sorry for that. You're more than my lover, more than my girlfriend, you're my best friend, and you were never, and you will never be, the other woman. There will never be another woman besides you. And I'm going to work extremely hard to make sure I keep that promise. I don't want anyone else—"

She finally shut him up with a kiss. He needed that or else he would have kept going on and on. Once it started coming out, he couldn't stop it. Soon he would have been quoting every love sonnet he could think of to express to her how much he loved her. Moaning into the kiss as she deepened it, he pulled her closer as his head started to spin. He needed to breathe. He also needed to stop kissing her or else—

The way she was moving against him wasn't making it easier. He knew that in high stress situations, or after a death, people experienced increased need for sex. It was human nature and right then he was wanting to throw her down on the bed or—

He shoved her against the wall and kissed her again in desperation. Her body was in a frenzy moving against him as her hands were already working on his belt. He'd just gotten dressed, just got out of the shower, their hair was still wet, but if she wanted a hot and fast quickie then he wasn't going to deny her what she wanted. He undid her jeans and yanked them down long with her panties, his nails scratching down her skin leaving marks. Once he got her pants off, licked her until she was panting with need before he stood, grabbed her thigh and lifted it up to hook around his hip.

Without warning he pushed into her, making her gasp then moan as she grabbed his hair and pulled. He was so hard, and she was so wet, that it wouldn't take long as he worked himself in and out of her at a fast and desperate pace. Her hand went between them, rubbing herself at the same brutal speed as she supported herself up on the wall with her death grip on his shoulder. He was moving faster, and harder, deeper until she screamed out.

"Oh—fuck, Sara," he gasped breathlessly into her ear as he came right behind her.

Then he heard laughter. His own mixed with hers before she kissed him. Soft, wet kisses that he smiled into as he kept chuckling as their kissing was all he heard in the room.

Then the phone rang again. It was her cell phone this time. Pushing him away, he finally dropped her back to the floor as she stumbled over on wobbly legs, grabbed the phone, flipped it open, and put it to her ear. "Sidle."

Seeing her like that made him laugh harder. Her blouse was wide open, exposing her bra, and she was naked from the waist down. He wasn't complaining. As she took the call, he went to the bathroom to clean up. Walking in a few seconds later, she was buttoning her blouse as she told him, "I have a 444." She had her jeans pulled up to her hips, but they were open.

He handed her a wet washcloth before zipping up his pants. "Anyone we know?"

She cleaned up and then threw the washcloth at him as she said, "Officer's Mitchell and Weston. Neither were hurt."

He caught the washcloth and tossed it into the sink as he breathed out a sigh of relief but still felt so useless. He should have been going with her to the scene. "I hate this."

"I know, but once you're cleared, you'll be back and—"

"It won't be the same," he said as he leaned against the bathroom counter and looked at her. "Everyone in the department, the lab…They know everything. Our entire private life open for the world to see, our friends and family to see—"

"I don't like it any more than you do," she said, cutting him off as she stood in front of him, "but so far everyone we've worked with has been supportive and understanding. It's everyone else that's the problem."

Reaching out, he grabbed her by the waistband and pulled her closer to kiss her. This wasn't just about him. Julia's death had been like a bullet shot at his chest. The ramifications of it had spread out like bullet fragments which inflicted damage on everyone in his life. Sara, his mother and daughter, and the lab and everyone in it. His possible involvement in a murder cased doubt on the entire lab and the police department. Everyone was getting hit with shrapnel and were bleeding. He just hoped that his proven innocence would stop it. Then they could heal. They couldn't start healing until this was over.

She slid her arms around him one last time, giving him a hug, before grabbing his hand to pull him with her out of the bathroom. They had to leave.

He'd gather up his jacket and keys and wallet while she grabbed her keys and bag then they left his house. There had been a constant press presence at his house but now it was worse. They were no longer down the street, but on the sidewalk and in his yard, as they nearly pounced on him and Sara in the driveway.

She got the door open to her car and he held it for her when a cameraman got too close. He put his arm out to keep him away. He didn't say anything, only shook his head at him in anger. The fact that the camera was in his face did little to dissuade him. Once Sara was behind the wheel he told her, "Love you, drive safe. If you need anything—"

"I can say the same to you." She then saw the camera over his shoulder and frowned slightly before meeting his eyes. They were only on her. "Love you too."

He shut the door and then pushed the cameraman away again, shaking his head as he headed towards his car. This was ridiculous. He really didn't want to threaten any of them with a lawsuit or anything, and there was such a thing as "freedom of the press" but this was getting to the point of harassment. He couldn't even breathe outside without a camera in his face and questions being hurled in his direction.

"Dr. Grissom, are you aware that your wife's body has been found?"

"—how are you going to explain this to your daughter?"

"—was being with your mistress more important than being with your daughter—"

He got into his car and shut the door, ending the questioning as he started the car and waited for them to move. When they didn't, he shifted the car into drive and started forward down the driveway. They finally got out of his way. Glancing over, he saw his neighbor's door open. He was standing out on the front steps watching the whole thing unfold live and in person.

He was going to have to move.

Everyone was going off in different directions. Warrick with the beer bottles, Nick with the tie, and she was in M.E.'s office with the body. Dave had given Nick all the evidence that he'd collected off the body including the nail scrapings hours ago, and Doc Robbins was finishing up the autopsy. Once she was done there then she would go visit Greg who'd sent her a text. He had results.

"What's that smell?" she asked the Doc as she entered the morgue.

He was at his desk, eating, of all things, and reached over to grab the file folder, saying, "Shepherd's Pie. My wife's mother's recipe."

"Smells delicious but I don't know how you can eat it here."

"You get used to it," he said as he handed her the folder. "She died of asphyxiation. Someone strangled the life out of her."

"I could have told you that," she said as she flipped the file open and started reading.

"She'd also been raped and beaten. No semen, he wore a condom. Abrasions on her wrists indicated that she'd been bound. There was a sticky substance on her wrists. My guess is tape residue." He handed the evidence scraping that was in a vial to her. "No stomach contents because she had no stomach left. All her internal organs had already decomposed. I sent hair and blood to tox. From my calculations, she died four days ago."

She lowered the folder as she asked him, "Are you sure?"

"There was no evidence that she'd been frozen and then thawed," he said as he stared up at her. "You assumed that she'd been killed the night she disappeared. The reason she was found in the state she was in was due to the fact that she'd been alive this whole time. Killed four days ago by strangulation. Her body was in the beginning part of the second stage of decomposition, bloating, when she was found."

"Then that means there's a second location. Somewhere she'd been kept alive this whole time. Thanks, Doc."

"Don't mention it," he said as he went back to eating as she left the morgue.

Once she got back to the lab, she tracked down Greg. He was in the break room, warming up some leftovers Chinese. "Greg."

He nearly jumped as he went to grab his food carton out of the microwave. Spinning around, he glared at her, saying, "Don't sneak up on a guy like that. I could've had chopsticks in my hand and thrown them at you like daggers."

"Sure you could've, Bruce Lee. Where're the results?"

Picking up a folder off the top of the microwave, he handed it to her, saying, "I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that there were still remnants of Grissom's prescription medication in his blood sixteen hours after consumption. I think it's his slowed metabolism. You know, once you get older, it slows down and—"

"What's the bad news, other than Grissom's expanding waistline?"

He sat down at the table as he picked up the chopsticks and started stabbing at his food. "Nick found epithelial skin cells on the tie. I got two matches. One matched Julia Holden, the other…to her husband." She saw the report in the file, the 99.9 percent match to Grissom's DNA, and shook her head. "I wish I had better news."

"Greg," she said as she closed the folder in her hand, "this is the only case where the abundance of forensic evidence proves reasonable doubt. Grissom is an expert. If he did it, he wouldn't have been this sloppy. No gloves were worn on his hands to prevent DNA transfer, but a condom was used in the rape to prevent semen in the body. The tie was found, left at the scene, but the tape used to bound her wrists wasn't. Why?"

Greg gave it some thought before saying, "The tie was planted to incriminate Grissom while the tape and semen could have linked the killer to the victim."

"Exactly. Ambien in Grissom's blood proves one thing: he was unconscious throughout the entire ordeal. They used him, and his car, to set him up for the murder of his wife. Now we have to find out the who and why."

She left Greg in the break room as she headed to where Warrick was with Mandy who was running the prints found on the beer bottles collected at the scene. "Have you gotten any matches yet?"

Warrick's face was grim as he shook his head. Mandy glanced between them as she told her, "All the prints found on the bottles belong to one person: Grissom."

She gaped at her. "You're kidding."

"Wish I was, Catherine."

She could understand the tie, but the beer bottles? "I thought you said they weren't recent."

"They weren't," Warrick said as he leaned on the counter. "Those bottles had to have been at the site for at least a few weeks or more. I sent DNA to Greg and it's running now, but…we already know who it's going to match."

"I know none of us want to admit it, but maybe Hodges is right," Mandy was saying. "Could he actually be guilty?"

The printer beeped to life as the results were printed out. She grabbed it up as she shot a glare at Mandy before leaving the fingerprint lab. Going to her office, she shut the door and put the fingerprint results with all the other evidence in the case. Sitting behind her desk, staring at all the evidence, she felt a sinking knot in her gut. There was too much evidence. Enough to revoke his freedom.

Once this went to the D.A.'s office, Jefferson would ask the Judge to have Grissom remanded into the custody of Clark County until his trial date. He wouldn't have any other choice. The Judge might grant bail, but it'd be a long shot.

It didn't matter if he was innocent, unless they found out who was really doing this, who had actually killed Juila Holden, Grissom was going to be convicted of her murder. Unless he got himself a damn good attorney who knew how to work miracles.

It'd been nearly a day since he'd gotten the phone call that Julia's body had been found. Twenty-two hours spent with his mother and daughter, as they all grieved for her loss. He'd gotten to his mother's house and she was the first person he'd told. Through her grief she kept blaming him. Never directly accusing him but blaming him none-the-less. What good was he if he couldn't even protect his own wife? That it'd been his fault that Julia had been having an affair with some other man. His fault for making her leave him. They should have been living together, he should have been there. And worse, an adulterer himself for being with another woman.

He tried not to let her words slice up his heart, but they always did. Despite trying to keep a distance, putting up a barrier between them, she was still his mother. He still loved her. And because of that he was vulnerable to her inflictions of pain. It used to make him angry, but now all he felt was sad. He'd never make her love him; to her, he would always be a disappointment. He'd never make her proud of him, so he stopped trying. All he could be was who he was. All he could do was love who he loved. And he loved Sara, and he loved his daughter, and he had loved Julia. He was really going to miss her.

Telling his daughter had been the hardest thing he'd ever had to do in his entire life. His hands felt cold, frozen, as they didn't want to move. It took everything he had to sign the words and he couldn't even remember what in hell he'd signed. What he did remember was the look on Charlotte's face. The absolute devastation and then the tears. He held her for a very long time until she fell asleep and then he laid in her bed with her, just watching her sleep.

Sara had called him and he listened to her talking to him for awhile but he honestly couldn't recall what she'd told him other than that she loved him. She missed him, and she was thinking about him and Charlotte.

Then it was just quiet. Quiet for hours. Julia's friends had come over during the day, all bringing food and talking to his mother, and crying. A lot of crying, hugging, and coffee being made. He'd been mostly ignored and he was okay with that. The only reason anyone approached him was because Charlotte was in his arms. She hadn't left them since last night.

He honestly didn't remember much of anything, it'd been like he'd been moving around in a fog, until he saw Brass walking into the house with a folded piece of paper in his hand. His eyes met his and he knew why he was there. He had an arrest warrant. Glancing out the window next to him, he saw the police cars and the media. He was going to be arrested again.

Charlotte's arms tightened around his neck as he went to stand. He couldn't whisper into her ear, couldn't speak to her the words he wanted to say. All he could do was hug her back, give her a kiss on the cheek and then hand her off to her grandmother. Signing to the both of them, he told them, "I love you. It'll be okay," even though he had no idea if it would be or not.

Walking by everyone that had gathered in his mother's house, he left with Brass and once outside he asked "Can you wait to cuff me in the car?"

"I can wait to arrest you when you're actually guilty of something," Brass said as they walked to the detective's car where Brass opened the back door for him to get in.

Smirking at Brass, he told him, "Thanks, for believing I'm still innocent."

"That's what friends are for. You might want to duck your head," he told him as he pushed him down into the backseat then shut the door.

He looked towards the front door to his mother's house and didn't see her standing there. He saw no one.

Brass drove them to the police department and as he walked through the halls towards the interrogation room, everyone was watching him. The cops and the civilians. He saw a deputy who he'd rubbed the wrong way during a case a few months ago, Fromansky, watching and saw his eyes narrowing at him as he approached the door. No less assuming his guilt.

Catherine was already in the interrogation room, waiting for them. The door was shut and he sat down at the table as he waited to be questioned. All he had were the same answers he had before. He didn't do it. He didn't kill Julia.

She took a glance at the two-way mirror before addressing him, no doubt this was being recorded. "I'm just going to lay it out here for you, Gil. We got you." He frowned at her words as he saw Brass lean against the wall behind her. She opened the file folder in front of her and then started to lay out the case they had against him. "Julia's body was found off I-95, between Indian Springs and the state prison, off a dirt road." He saw the photos she'd placed on the table and felt his mouth go dry at the location. "She'd been strangled after being beaten and raped." Upon seeing the pictures of Julia's dead body, the abrasions around her neck and the bruising on her wrists, he fought down the urge to get sick. He'd seen dead bodies before, but never someone he cared about. "She had been buried in a shallow grave. Near the gravesite, Warrick found beer bottles with your prints all over them. Recovered in the grave along with her body, a tie with your epithelials all over it along with Julia's DNA. WE didn't find the tape used to bound her wrists. Scrapings under her nails were of her own skin, she'd dug her fingernails into her palms. What we need to know is where she was kept alive all this time? Time of death was four days ago."

Four days ago? He felt everything go numb as he heard those words. She had been out there alive somewhere. He rubbed at his head as he felt it pounding as he felt the guilty fill up his chest. "She needed me, and I wasn't there."

"Gil?"

He shook his head as he felt the tears on his face. He hadn't even realized that he started crying. Wiping his face, he studied the pictures, committing everything to memory. Then he saw the picture of the tie. It was the tie he always wore to court. There was a tag on the underside of it. Orange with four numbers 1-523. It was the tag that the dry cleaners used to identify it as his. Reaching for his wallet, he pulled it out and went through the contents in the section where he kept his money. He also kept the ticket for the dry cleaners folded up inside it as well.

Taking the ticket out, he opened it and looked at the date: 02/23/2004. He'd dropped off his dry cleaning after he'd testified against Stuart Gardner, the County Court clerk who'd killed two people suspected of a string of serial murders. He hadn't been back to pick it up yet. Usually forgot about it for a few months until he had another court date. In fact, he had it on his mind to pick it up once he found out when his trial started.

He handed it over to Catherine who looked at it before she passed it behind her to Brass. "I didn't pick up my suit. I had that tie and my suit at the cleaners."

"The employee who conducted the transaction couldn't remember who picked up the dry cleaning," Brass told him. "We lucked out that everything was on the computer. Your clothes were picked up on March 23rd, exactly a month later and the Tuesday after Julia's disappearance. Paid in cash. They have no cameras so we don't know who it was, only that they didn't have the ticket, it wasn't with the receipt."

"Gil," Catherine said, drawing his attention back to her. "How can you explain the beer bottles found at the scene?"

"Because I was drinking out there that Saturday night before Julia's disappearance." On seeing their shared look, he explained, "I like to drive out to the desert when I—When things get too much, and I have to get away. It's a ten mile stretch between the state prison and Indian Springs. All public land, so if I want, I can pitch a tent and camp overnight. It's also really fun to watch the night flights, when the Air Force conducts night drills and training. The mountains are close, so I can do some hiking. Sometimes I just need the quiet. I must have drank too much that night to have left beer bottles behind. I normally don't litter."

Leaning on the table, Catherine told him, "We don't have any other choice—"

"I know," he told her as he knew what was about to happen next. "It's the evidence. Thank you for letting me see it."

"Do you have anything we can use or anything to go on to try to find out who's really behind this?"

He'd been thinking about that as he told her, "I wasn't driving my car. Most likely, I was asleep in the back. Manager places me at the car wash at 5:10 in the morning. It took them thirty minutes to clean my car. That's 5:40. And it took me about twenty minutes to drive home. So from 2:30 until 5:10, is unaccounted for. What I do know is that I didn't drive myself to the car wash but I did drive myself home from the car wash. That means that's where the driver, who could also be the killer, got out. Maybe an ATM camera caught something or a street camera? There was either another car waiting, or they caught a bus or hailed a cab. They left somehow. That's where I'll start. Everything else…I'm going to have to try to explain in court."

"You're still going to represent yourself? Grissom, now is not the time for your ego, call your lawyer—"

"With this evidence, it's not going to matter if I have Johnnie Cochrane as my defense attorney, public opinion has already decided my guilt and this evidence solidifies it. What we need to do is find out who's behind this to prove that I'm being set up."

He really didn't have anything else to say, and neither did they. Brass had to take him into custody and he knew that no matter how much Judge Harris liked him, he was going to jail until his trial date.

It was a day later, Monday afternoon, when he was once again standing before Judge Harris and was told that his trial would be moved to Mulberry, Nevada where Judge Douglas Mason would preside over the proceedings. He felt his breath leave his body at those words because he knew that Judge Mason was actually a serial killer named Paul Millander.

Judge Harris looked at him as he said, "Dr. Grissom, your trial date will start one month from now, on Monday, May 24th. In light of the new charges being brought against you for the abduction, rape and murder of your wife, you're now considered a flight risk and you will be remanded into the custody of Clark County as bail is denied. Do you understand?"

He gave a nod as he told him, "I understand, Judge. I request that I'm kept out of the general population."

"Of course. You'll be in solitary confinement given your status." Even Judge Harris sounded disappointed.

Once again his mother and daughter were not present in the court and he felt his heart sink as he wasn't able to give his daughter a hug before he went to jail for a month. Sara gave him a nod, signed to him that she loved him, as he was handcuffed and then escorted away, out of the courtroom, and then into an awaiting van that would take him to the county jail.

TBC…