Grissom's index finger skimming the exposed skin at the small of her back made her jump and hit the knob, sending it careening out of focus and the stool she had been sitting on crashing to the floor.
"Dammit, Grissom, you scared me half to death!" she accused him, but at his half-smile and shrug, she couldn't keep the glare going for long. The thought that Grissom couldn't stand not to touch made her giddy.
"I can make up for it," he said, holding up a folder.
Sara narrowed her eyes at him and pursed her lips. "What've you got?"
"Grab Warrick on your way and I'll let you know," he promised, and breezed back out of the lab. She was left staring at his retreating back with frustration.
Warrick was in the drying room right next to the lab she'd been working in, and for a moment she wondered by Grissom hadn't just sought out the other CSI himself. In the end she shrugged, righted the stool, and put the fiber evidence she'd been working with back in the collection envelope, planning on dropping it off after she alerted Warrick to the meeting.
He was examining a bloody towel under an ALS when she entered, and motioned her over, handing her a pair of red goggles. "What do you think that is?"
"Um." She leaned over the towel to get a closer look at the stain. "Not blood. It almost looks like...wine?"
"Yeah, that's what I thought, too," Warrick said, nodding and flicking the ALS off. "Missed it on the first pass-through. To the naked eye it's mixed in with the blood." He sampled the section of towel and tucked the swab back into a box. "Suspect says he came home and found his wife in the bathtub, slit wrists. He grabbed the towel and tried to stop the blood flow."
"Then how did the wine get there," Sara finished his thought for him, nodding. "Not something you usually find in a bathroom."
"It's not much, but Robbins already reported that the cuts on the wrists were not consistent with suicide." Warrick shrugged. "It's a new direction."
"Speaking of new," Sara said as he folded up the towel and replaced it on the hangar, "Grissom wants us down in the break room. I'm thinking hot case."
"Cool. Be there in five."
"You'll be there before me," Sara said, holding up the collection envelope. "I've got to go drop this off. Don't start without me, okay?"
"Sure."
Catherine popped open the can of Diet Coke and swirled it around in her mouth for a moment before swallowing. It was her first caffeine of the night, and an incredibly welcome jolt of energy. Lindsey had been home sick from school with a stomach bug, and Catherine had barely slept in between shepherding her daughter back and forth to the bathroom and refilling the juice in her "sick cup," a baby's tippy cup that Lindsey insisted on using whenever she felt even slightly ill.
"Oh, come on," Nick howled in disgust, and reached across to hit the power button on the television in disgust. She raised an eyebrow at him, and he crossed his arms petulantly. "Third error of the game," he explained, shaking his head in frustration.
"O-kay," Catherine said, shrugging.
"So, hot case?" Warrick asked, entering the room and flipping a chair around to straddle.
Catherine raised her eyebrow. "Not that I know of...Nick?"
"Nah, I haven't heard anything either," Nick said, tossing and catching an apple.
"Sara told me Grissom wanted us in the break room," Warrick clarified, arcing an eyebrow.
"You think she..." Nick began, but cut his sentence in the middle when Sara entered the room.
"Do we have a new case?" she asked eagerly, immediately nixing the tentative theory, as she took a seat next to Warrick.
"We were hoping you could tell us," Catherine put forward, and watched with keen interest as Sara's eyes narrowed and immediately went into suspicion overdrive.
"I don't know anything more than you do," the other CSI answered, and leaned forward to snatch Nick's apple from mid-air.
"Hey!" he protested, mock-glaring at her. She just shrugged impishly and bit in.
They were all a bit on edge, Catherine reflected. There hadn't been anything more complicated than a breaking and entering for the past two weeks, and while the last thing any of them would wish for was murder, the monotony was beginning to wear on a group of high-functioning individuals like the night shift CSIs.
"Grissom, please tell us you have something," Nick begged the instant their supervisor set foot in the room, and the entomologist looked up from his open binder to see a room full of anxious forensic scientists.
"I do," he said non-comitally, and seated himself at the table.
Catherine had always known that Grissom had a streak of perversity, but this was really pushing it. "And?"
"Suspicious circs, Las Vegas Reperetory Theater," he said, sliding the assignment sheet out to the center of the table, and across from Catherine, Sara started and stared at Grissom. Catherine catalogued the rather uncharacteristic reaction to keep in mind for later.
None of them were quite so far gone as to stand up and cheer, but there was a definite lightening in mood.
"All hands on deck?" Warrick asked, passing the slip to Sara to read.
"Until something else comes up," Grissom clarified. "Bianca Tolmen, twenty-seven years old. Fainted onstage and later went into convulsions backstage. She was taken to Desert Palms and is now listed as death imminent. No pre-existing medical condition, so doctors put her through a battery of blood tests."
"Poison," Sara said, straightening in her chair and completing Grissom's thought.
"Strychnine," Grissom supplied, favoring Sara with a slight smile.
"We have a case," Warrick said with satisfaction.
"I'll drive," Sara volunteered, jumping out of her chair and heading to the door.