"Catherine? Are you sure?" Gil asked, cautious of the drawing of conclusions.
"Positive." Catherine said, nodding her head.
"Who? Do I know this person?" He asked, curious despite himself.
"Oh, you know who he is, alright. He almost cost me my house."
"Eddie has her?"
Catherine nodded glumly. "He's her father, Gil. We're going to have tread carefully in terms of legality issues." She said, dropping her head into her hands for what felt like the thousandth time that night.
"Are we giving up Catherine?" Gil asked expecting the same reaction he'd gotten before. What shocked and worried him was the calm, almost reluctant way Catherine said
"No."
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"Maybe…"Catherine murmured an hour later as she was examining the broken window that clearly was the point of entry.
"Maybe what Catherine?" Grissom said, once again sneaking up on her.
"Just trying to figure out Eddie's motive," she snapped
"And what would that be?" God only knows Catherine thought.
"It's just a theory, but Eddie has a sister. What if she recently told Eddie she was pregnant? He gets to thinking 'maybe I shouldn't have left my kid in such a hurry'. Decides he'll try and find her. Starts at our old house- boom. He found her in a heartbeat. I should have moved." Catherine muttered, angry with herself.
"Catherine look at me- this is NOT your fault. Besides, your theory doesn't explain how Eddie knew who your babysitter was."
"He met Laura a few times and you can find just about anything about almost whoever you want on the Internet these days Gris, it was too easy," Catherine said, her voice rising. With a sigh, she went back to swabbing blood off of the window. Grissom watched in shook as angrily she threw the swab across the room. "This is pointless!" she screamed, "We know who did this! We just don't know where he is. Why aren't we trying to find him, instead of going through the motions of finding out who he is, which we can do after she's home? He gagged her Gil, he gagged her!"
"Catherine. You just threw evidence across the room, it's useless now, get a hold of yourself. We can't prove that he was here and we need that to keep him," Grissom said forcefully. Catherine sighed as she collapsed onto the couch, her eyes filling up with tears.
"I know," she murmured. Grissom sat down next to her, his arm around her shoulder. When she'd collected herself, she smiled her thanks to Grissom.
"I'm sorry Gil, I just want her home. I don't think I collected all of the blood, there's more. Plus we have the hair she ripped out and I found some fibers on the glass," She said with a small, hopeful grin.
"Sorry doesn't cut it. I'm getting Sara on this one."
"Gil come on, I'll be worse if I'm not on it, finding her myself, you must realize that," she begged.
"You know I can't Cath, you can't work this case. You're going home and taking a nap. I'll call Sara so there's still two of us on the case and I'll see you tonight at which time you will take over Sara's case."
"Alright." Catherine consented with a nod, proving, at least to Grissom, how tired she was. "Bring her home for me Gil." She added as she opened the door. To her extreme dismay a surprisingly large flock of reporters made their way over to her. It was the middle of the night for crying out loud.
"Ms. Willows, do you know who has your daughter?"
"Are you worried for your daughter's safety?" As tired, worried and annoyed as she was Catherine had to snicker at that one. Not a mother, obviously. Before she could make out any of the other questions, if you could call them that, Grissom, who had noticed what was going on, took a deep breath and whistled, wincing as he turned into the sacrificial lamb. And once again, Thank god for Gris she thought as she unlocked her car door and slid, safely into the driver's seat, leaving Grissom to pest control.
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"Hey you. Did you get any sleep?" asked Warrick when he heard Catherine walk into the locker room. Catherine raised an eyebrow, clearly saying What do you think?, but the corners of her mouth turned up in an amused smirk.
"Never mind, I'll take a wild guess," added Warrick jokingly.
"That bad, huh?" Catherine said wryly in response to Warrick's joke.
"Hey. We're gonna find her, Cat. There's not way she's not doing everything in her power to help us. You know that. She is your daughter after all," he pointed out, pulling her into a reassuring hug.
"Thanks 'rick," she said with a sigh. He just shock his head.
Walking in to the break room a few minutes later, she found Sara "What have you two uncovered for me?" She demanded, her mind never far from the fact that her crazed ex- husband had her daughter and she had to get her back.
"Nothing much. Greg's running the hair Lindsey grabbed with the blood you pulled from the window." Sara rattled. "I ran fingerprints I pulled from the doorknob in Lindsey's room, I got one that wasn't Lindsey's or the Vic's. It matched one Grissom got off a knife that he found with trace amounts of blood on it. The blood's with Greg. It'll probably match the Vic's."
"Laura." Catherine muttered flatly
"Huh?"
"The victim's name is…was Laura." Catherine winced at her slip.
"Okay." Sara answered.
"Anything else?"
"Not really."
"Okay, just a hunch, but Eddie was working as an electrician last I checked, so if you run his name through the union database, you should be able to find him. That is, assuming he's with the union," Catherine suggested.
"Thanks, and don't let Grissom catch you at that." Sara muttered.
"At what?" Catherine frowned.
"Making an ass of you and me," Sara smiled at her.
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About fifteen minutes later, Grissom found Catherine with Sara, sitting at one of the database computers.
"…and she clamed up- in front of the entire auditorium. She was so embarrassed. She hasn't touched a key since." Catherine said, telling Sara about Lindsey's brush with a piano recital a year and a half ago. Sara had successfully gotten Catherine calm by having her tell happy Lindsey stories.
"There you two are." He said, walking into the room, giving Catherine a pointed look.
"I'm just keeping Sara company, we're not even talking about the case." Directly. Catherine explained to Grissom, who she was sure was worried she was 'contaminating evidence'.
"Good, Sara you can go back to your case now." Grissom said bracing himself for the argument he knew was inevitable.
"What?" said Sara, hoping she hadn't heard him right.
"You can get back to your case." He said in his I'm-the-boss-so-listen-to-me tone of voice.
"Why? Cath can work it solo. I'll be more useful finding Lindsey." Sara said in her I-don't-have-to-listen-to-anyone tone of voice, not really shocking Grissom or Catherine. The former sighed.
"Sara, can I talk to you outside for a minute?" he stated rather than asked, signaling her out of the room and Catherine's earshot. "Look inside that room. She clearly got no more than an hour of sleep. You were able to calm her down. I need you to keep her that way. Understand?"
Sara nodded, Grissom had clearly sensed her questions, and answered them.
"Good. Get 'rick with me, Nick can work the rape case solo, and get back to keeping Catherine sane."
She snapped, making a gun with her thumb and index finger over her shoulder as she strode off down the hall to find Warrick.
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A half hour and a trip to the locker room to grab her book later, Catherine sat reading, well really just staring at the pages of said book, with her feet underneath her and her hair tied up so it wouldn't interfere with her "reading". As she was once again kicking herself for throwing the swab across Laura's kitchen, and not anticipating Eddie's "change of heart", and the half a million other stupid things she'd done in her life, the computer beeped at her.
"Finally!" she muttered with an exasperated sigh, as she looked up at the computer screen.
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