It was three hours longer than they had expected her to live after disconnecting the tubes and wires, but her body had seemed to rally one last time against its own decimation. She had never regained consciousness.
Warrick was left to imagine her final hours; he had taken refuge in a glass-walled waiting room a down the hall, leaving Sam alone with his sister and his grief. Ten minutes into the death watch - it would be avoidance to call it anything else - he had called Grissom to relay the news about Carter James. The call had rung straight through to voicemail, a sure sign that wherever he was, Grissom had turned his cell phone off. He called Sara instead.
"Yeah, I don't really know where he is," she told him when he asked. "He was at the theater doing interviews with Brass, but he should be on his way back to the lab by now."
"I don't really need to talk to him. Just letting someone know that Carter James should be considered a suspect and that I've got a witness who would be able to provide a tentative ID on the voice on the answering machine tape."
"Got it. Hey, listen, Greg got back to me on that residue - sawdust."
"Huh."
"Yeah, I know, random. It's looking like that kind of case. Anyway, I'll let Grissom know about James." She paused and there was a moment's awkward silence. "How long do you think you'll be?"
He coughed and shuffled his feet against the tiled floor. "No idea. I'll give David a call when...I hear anything."
"Yeah." He could picture her shivering, gathering herself in in much the same way he wanted to do and would have done had he been alone in the labs. "Okay, catch you later, then."
Half an hour into the watch, he found himself thinking he should have brought a book. An hour and a half into the watch, he'd read all the neutral magazines in the room and was eyeing an issue of Cosmo and wondering what exactly nine tips to achieve better orgasm consisted of. An hour and forty-five minutes in, and a mother and two small children joined him in the room. He excused silently and went to the bathroom, wandering the halls for a half an hour, and when he returned, the family was gone. Whether they had received good or bad news would remain a mystery.
Two and a half hours in, he broke down and not only learned tips to a better orgasm but also took a quiz that identified him as an aggressive lover. After that, it was all downhill, and three hours in found him reading about Janet and Fred's failing marriage and how they could repair the damage while trying to keep the cover of Good Housekeeping as discreet as possible.
It would have been laughable if not for the circumstances.
Sam came in to tell him the news in person, strangely tranquil as he entered the room and sat in the ratty chair across from where Warrick was sitting with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.
"It's over," Sam said quietly, mirroring Warrick's posture. "She's not suffering anymore."
The CSI nodded. "I need to make a call." The other man paid no attention and Warrick stepped outside the waiting room as subtely as possible and called the coroner's office to alert them that they would need to come pick up a body. He then caught an orderly and explained to her that no one was to enter Bianca Tolmen's room until the coroner arrived.
Procedural details taken care of, he returned to the waiting room to find Sam Tolmen exactly as he'd left him.
"Have you eaten anything?" he asked, and the young man looked up in surprise.
"Uh...no. They served us something on the plane, but I couldn't eat it." Sam ran a hand across his face.
Warrick checked his watch. Almost nine p.m. "Okay. We need to wait for just a little while longer, and then what do you think about grabbing some food?"
Sam shrugged, docile. "Yeah." They were quiet for a few minutes, and then he leaned back in his chair in an almost violent motion, bringing a hand up to rub at his jaw. "He didn't come. Bastard."
Warrick decided to press gently for background. "You went to college together?"
"UNLV, class of '01."
"Class of '95, myself."
"Nice."
They shared mutual small smiles steeped in memories of their alma mater, and then Warrick picked up the conversation again. "Did you know him well?"
"Oh, God, yeah. We were pretty tight. He was in the same year as Bianca and I." Sam paused. "We are - were - twins. Fraternal. Didn't know if you knew that. They say some twins have this...connection, but Bianca and I never did, not really. I didn't feel anything when...when she first..." He broke off. "We were close, though. We had to be. It was just us."
"Just you?" Warrick prompted.
"Our parents died when we were fourteen. Car accident. We got bounced around foster families for a little while, until we were eighteen. Then we took the insurance money and went to UNLV. It was just enough." He paused and looked into the distance. "Bianca and Carter met freshman year, at some party. It was pretty much instant. By sophomore year it was a question of when he would propose rather than whether he would propose."
"But he changed."
"Senior year, his mother died. Cancer - it was fast. And then...I don't really know what happened. He didn't deal with it well. He started getting fanatically religious. By that time, I was deep into my thesis work and...I didn't notice. I should have. But I just didn't. And this is all in hindsight. At the time, it was just like he was getting quieter, more private. It wasn't until Bianca called me last week that I knew there as a real problem. But going back through the memories of it all...I can see it. It was there." Swiftly, he pounded a fist into an end table, and Warrick jumped at the sudden movement. "And now he killed her. Oh, God, she's dead."
The news seemed to be hitting him in waves. While in a calm period he was detached, able to talk freely, and then it crested again, as now, and the sadness overtook him again. It was a pattern Warrick had seen countless times; one of the mind's coping mechanisms for intense grief. Eventually, the peaks and valleys would even out, and it would no longer be an active effort to remain composed.
For now, the best thing would be to keep him distracted. As if on cue, a man Warrick recognized as part of the day shift coroner crew poked his head into the waiting room. "Warrick, we've got it from here."
"Thanks," he replied, nodding. "Let's get that food," he suggested to Sam, holding out a hand. The young man looked at it in confusion for a moment, and then pulled himself out of the chair and followed the CSI from the waiting room.
Catherine entered the break room to find Nick leaning over in front of the microwave. She stopped for a second to enjoy the view, and then moved over to stand next to him. "Grissom has his cell phone turned off."
Nick jumped, nearly catching her chin with his elbow as he straightened, and glared at her. "Don't sneak up on me like that." She smiled in apology, and he relented. "He was still doing interviews when I left. He probably turned it off so he wouldn't be distracted."
She felt someting like fury rumble in her stomach. "I got here as soon as possible, and he's not even back yet?"
"Nope. Sorry." Nick turned back to the microwave and squinted inside.
"Whatever that is, it smells like it died," she told him. "And you're not supposed to stare right into the microwave."
He flicked his eyes sideways at her and then, defiantly, returned them to the microwave. "It's leftover chicken casserole. And I didn't think it was that old."
"You made chicken casserole?" she asked in surprise.
He didn't even bother to look affronted. "No. My sister was here two weeks ago. Business trip. She decided to stock up my fridge with wholesome food after she saw all the frozen dinners in my freezer."
"Two weeks ago," Catherine said flatly.
"Yeah." He frowned at the rotating tupperware. "It didn't smell that bad before I put it in." The microwave dinged to a finish and he opened the door with a pop. The wafting smell could have rivaled one of Grissom's experiments for nauseating factor. He sighed and dumped the congealed mass into the trash.
"You want to go grab something?" Catherine offered in consolement. "I haven't had anything but a chocolate chip cookie and some bug juice."
"Bug juice?" he asked. "You've been hanging around Grissom too long."
"Ha ha." She rolled her eyes at him. "Girl Scout meeting. Indeterminate Kool-Aid of the week."
"Lindsey?" At her nod, he smiled. "All my sisters were into that. Camp was the best two weeks of my summer."
She snorted. "This is the first summer she'll go to overnight camp."
"You'll miss her."
Catherine confirmed that with a wistful smile. "She's looking forward to it so much."
He returned her smile with a confident one. "She'll miss you too. C'mon, let's get something to eat."
Sara hummed softly under her breath and took another bite of her sandwich, setting it down to flip another page.
"You're going through that pretty fast."
She looked up to see Grissom looking down and upside down at where her finger currently was on the page. Swallowing peanut butter, she cleared out her mouth to talk. "It's a good play. How did the interviews go?"
"Every time we broaden the interview pool, we get more suspects. It seems like almost everyone in that theater had a reason to kill Bianca Tolmen."
"But only one person actually did," she stated unnecessarily. "There's another sandwich on your desk, if you want. Wheat bread, even."
He looked at her in surprise. "When did you make sandwiches?"
"While you were in the shower." She took another bite and swallowed, setting the book down to lick grape jelly off her finger and smirking inwardly at the slight narrowing of his eyes. "When you think about it, it actually takes even less energy than ordering out."
"Really?" he asked, his eyes still fixed on her finger. She'd missed a bit of jelly around the second knuckle. Permitting herself the indulgence, she sucked it off and then wiped her finger on a napkin.
"Mhm. With ordering out, you have to get up to go to the door, pay the delivery guy, bring the food back to the table, get utensils, all that stuff. PB&J, all you have to do is move maybe two feet around the kitchen and spread the stuff on bread."
"How very scientific of you," he murmured, finally tearing his eyes away from her finger and turning to set his binder on his desk, exchanging it for the sandwich. "Brown paper bag?"
"I felt like going all out," she replied, suddenly self-conscious. "There's milk in the fridge. Next to the jar of...green stuff. What is that, anyway?"
"Algae," he offered, his voice slightly muffled as his back was turned to her while he opened the fridge. "For testing linear regression on bodies found in swamps."
"Grissom," she said, trying to keep the amusement out of her voice, "I can pretty much guarantee you that we are never going to have a body left in a swamp in Las Vegas."
He shrugged, and turned around, milk in hand, to sit at his desk. The paper bag crackled as he reached in to pull out the sandwich. "I was curious."
She grinned at him, understanding completely.
They finished their dinner in comfortable silence.