The Unburdening
Author: subobscura
See first chapter for full headers
I'm starting to fashion an idea- Part 2 (Convergence)
A/N: I bought myself season 3 today as an I-got-in-to-grad-school present, so I was inspired!
Inspirational music for this chapter courtesy of Phish. P.S. If you people don't start reviewing, a MAJOR character is going to bite the dust in the next chapter. P
Greg found Sara in the locker room shrugging on a jacket to ward off the early morning chill. He called softly to her and she turned and smiled at him.
"Hey yourself. You 'bout ready to head out?"
"Yeah," he replied. "Just let me change my shoes and jacket and we're outta here. For once, we're leaving on time. Man, I'm beat. My eyes feel like they're ready to fall out of my head." He turned to his open locker and threw in his blazer followed by anonymous brown shoes number 1 and 2. Then he put on his black and white Pumas and a zip-up hoodie. He looked exactly like an undergrad on his way to an 8 AM. Sara found she was becoming less and less disturbed by this youthful transformation. Standards were relative when you were dating someone this hot.
"Were you on those ID's all day," she asked.
"Nah, just the last three hours really." He rolled his eyes. "A trick roll came in right after you left, so that took up the first half of shift. Processed the evidence, pretty open and shut. Then I was on those ID's. Pretty unglamorous day in the life of a CSI."
"Yeah, I totally had you beat. Nick, Cath, Warrick, and I had that chimney case today. Cath is tying up loose ends with Sidley and Martin right now."
"I heard about that. Not one, but two bodies down a chimney."
"It was right up your alley. Very Edgar Allen Poe."
"I'm jealous. Mine was very J. Edgar Hoover. Men in ladies underwear and endless file-keeping. Why don't you tell me about it while I drive you to my place?"
"You still won't let me drive the T-Bird?"
"Hey, you may be the boss of me while we're working, but that T-Bird is all mine, baby. Mr. Liu's?"
"Of course. Lead the way."
Greg wrapped an arm around her waist as they walked out to the car.
CRIMESCENEDONOTCROSSCRIMESCENEDONOTCROSSCRIMESCENEDONOTCROSS
He fiddled with the radio while Sara watched a young honeymooning couple dash into a bar across the street. The girl was wearing a pink veil headband and the guy was wearing a tuxedo jacket with tails over his t-shirt and shorts. They were on the "Just-got-hitched Vegas Pub Crawl" then. She sighed. She'd seen it all before. Greg noticed her stare, but made no comment. They were stopped at an especially long light just outside of the shopping center where Mr. Liu's was located.
"Hey, did you notice anything off with Nick today?" His voice interrupted her thoughts.
"I don't know. How so?"
"He just seemed, I dunno, out of it. He was doing Video Spectral Analysis to pull up the Sidley kid's identity on that gym card, and he was screwing it up. I had to help him out with the wavelengths. It was weird. I mean, I'm a CSI 1, he's supposed to be teaching me that stuff."
"Huh, well, you've done a lot of that over the years. Maybe he's just not as experienced with that particular technique as you are."
"Maybe," was his non-committal reply. He reached over to the dash and picked up his sunglasses, slid them on his nose to shade his eyes from the morning glare. Then he popped a piece of nicorette into his mouth.
Surprised, she asked, "You trying to quit?"
"Not really, although I'm not that strongly addicted. I need the nicotine. I want to stay up and work on the John Doe case a little more. I can't help but feel we're missing something excruciatingly obvious. Grissom thinks it's a serial."
"I hear you there. Clearly it is." He turned into the parking lot and drove smoothly into a space. He turned the engine off and listened to the tick of the engine.
He sighed. "I don't know, Sara. I have a bad feeling about this case. Really bad."
She turned to look at him, but she couldn't see his eyes that well behind his purple shades.
"I know Greg. Me too. But we'll get to the bottom of it." She slid a hand around his neck and into his hair.
He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss on the temple. "Let's go get some food. Oh, do you think we can talk to Nick tomorrow, maybe find out what's bothering him?"
She nodded, although she wasn't convinced that anything in particular was bothering him, that is, nothing more than normal.
"Coolies." He got out of the car and slammed the driver's side door. It was then that she realized he hadn't agreed with her about getting to the bottom of things.
CRIMESCENEDONOTCROSSCRIMESCENEDONOTCROSSCRIMESCENEDONOTCROSS
They were sitting on the bed in his room looking at the photos from the first two scenes. If they didn't find something on their killer soon, there would probably be another soon to follow. Sara was sitting cross legged wearing a "Vote for Pedro!" t-shirt (Greg's of course) and a black thong. Greg was bare chested wearing his Stanford sweats. Sara was looking at pictures of the scenes themselves and Greg was looking at close-ups of the bodies. So far, nothing was jumping out at them.
"Here," Greg said, feeding her a piece of broccoli over her shoulder with a pair of chopsticks. He was soft, white, ethereal in the golden glow of their false and intimate night. The file was spread out all over the bed while they looked for elusive connections. She loved moments like this, the soft domesticity of their burgeoning relationship clashing with the hard edges of their job. These odd emotional intersections were beginning to grow on her.
As he turned away, Greg glanced at the photos spread before her, one of Roxie's back wall and one of the wall of the tenement behind which the first boy had been found. The picture slid a little more into focus.
"Sara, look at this."
"Huh?" She was startled out of the torpor that had begun to overtake her.
"The graffiti here," he pointed, "and here. They match." On the first wall scrawled in tight purple spray were the words Love is Patient. On the second, in red, Love is Kind. Both messages were almost lost in the tangle of gang symbols and cryptic sayings left behind by the residents of the run-down neighborhoods.
"Oh my God, Greg. We're so dumb. How did we miss this? Good catch by the way. He's sending us messages. But what do they mean?"
Greg looked away for a moment. "Paul's letter to the Corinthians. It's from the Bible. What it means, I'm not sure." He shrugged.
"How do you know about the Bible," she asked with a curious tilt to her eyebrow.
He looked embarrassed for a moment. "I was raised Methodist. Now I'm a Unitarian. I try to go to a service at least once every few weeks."
"You're a believer?"
"In the Christian God? No. I guess you could call me a faithful agnostic. I'll take you to a service sometime if you want. It's more like a discussion on issues of faith from open-minded people of all faiths. I think even an atheist could get something out of it."
"I've never really thought about it before. I'll go because it's important to you." He smiled. "You keep on surprising me every day Greggo." Her tone was soft, gently admiring. He blushed and looked away.
Sara turned back to the pictures. "We're going to have to go back to the scenes. Look for more messages. See if any trace was caught in the paint, or even if we can trace the paint itself." She looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was already 11 in the morning. "Let's sleep until 5, and try to get there while we have good light. The scene's sat this long, it can wait a few more hours." Greg nodded. He was really exhausted. As Sara crawled around on the bed gathering papers and photos, he looked speculatively at her black thong. As it turned out, they didn't get to sleep until noon. What they missed, underneath the second message hidden in shadows, was a third message. SOON.
CRIMESCENEDONOTCROSSCRIMESCENEDONOTCROSSCRIMESCENEDONOTCROSS
Greg gasped and shot straight up, throwing Sara off him, who'd been sleeping on his shoulder. His heart was pounding, and he immediately realized that he was going to be revisiting his shrimp lo mein. He staggered out of bed, startling Sara's cat Sadie who gave a loud yowl of protest and gave a swipe at her unexpected attacker.
He ran into the bathroom throwing on the light and fan, before retching with huge gasps and groans into the toilet bowl. Cold sweat poured off his brow, and the spasms seemed to go on for five minutes or longer. When his stomach unclenched, he sat back against the tub, feeling the cold white bathroom tiles digging into his ass. As he calmed, he realized Sara's hand was on his shoulder. Next to him was a bottle of Evian. He reached over and choked down the first quarter of the bottle, feeling its cool slide into his stomach. He felt vulnerable, sitting sick and helpless and nude on his bathroom floor.
"Thanks," he said, in a sandpaper-rough voice.
"Are you sick? Do you need me to take you to the doctor?" Sara stood in a red silk knee-length robe. She handed him his sweats, which he quickly stepped into.
He ran a hand through his sweaty waves.
"No, no. Just give a minute." He leaned over and put his hands on his knees. Sucking in a breath, he said, "bad dream."
"Must have been some dream. Do you want to talk about it?"
"Yeah, yeah, I think I do."
CRIMESCENEDONOTCROSSCRIMESCENEDONOTCROSSCRIMESCENEDONOTCROSS
They sat sipping coffee on Greg's red leather couch in the living room. Sadie, Sara's Siamese that she had gotten from Doc last year sat sunning herself in a pool of molten sun, which warmed the room and provided safe natural lighting. It was 4:15, which they had called close enough.
"So," Greg said.
"So," Sara echoed.
He gave a shuddering breath. "That was the worst dream I've ever had." He looked over at her with a slight sly grin. "I much prefer the ones starring you, my lady love." He turned serious again. "I'm not sure where to start." He took a sip of Blue Hawaiian.
"The beginning usually works pretty well."
"Well, I don't remember all of it. I was me, but, also," he paused. "Not me. I was younger, I think. A kid. I was walking home from school, back in New York. There were these guys, they were older, cooler. I wanted to hang out with them, and today, they finally decided they would let me. They bought me a drink, a soda, and I was so proud, because I was hanging out with the cool high school guys and my mom never let me drink soda. Then, I felt woozy, like I couldn't think straight. And they did...something to me. It hurt a lot, but I don't remember what it was. And then there was so much blood and I'd never felt so much revulsion in my entire life." He shrugged one shoulder like a kid. He put his feet on the glass coffee table next to his book of Andy Warhol prints. "That's it. I mean, it was a dream, but parts of it felt so real. Nothing like that's ever happened to me though"
"Kids, terror, abuse. Sounds like you might be empathizing too much with our victims. Are you sure you don't need to step back from the case?" He looked at her like she had just shot his dog.
"No," he said vehemently. "I don't think it's that, but I don't know what else it could be." He growled, frustrated, then took a breath to calm himself. "Look, I promise to come to you if I have any more problems."
"Okay," she said evenly. She took his hand. "I know I don't say the words a lot, but I do love you. I just want you to be safe and healthy." He relaxed his shoulders.
"I know, I love you too."
Just then, Sara's cell phone vibrated on the end table. She reached over Greg to answer it. The screen read GRISSOM.
"Hey, Gris, what's up?"
"Sara, I need you to get over to the lab. We have important evidence coming in on a 419 that needs to be processed."
"Sure, did you ID the vic?"
"You remember our guy that got off on a technicality a few weeks ago?"
"Mark Engels, sure, how could I forget? Wait. You're lying. He's our vic?"
"Yep. See you soon. Hey, is Greg there? Can you bring him too please?"
"Yeah, fine," she answered distractedly looking over at Greg who was now also on his cell phone. She winced when she realized her mistake. There was silence on the other end of the phone before Grissom said, "Thanks." The line went dead. Well, shit.
Meanwhile, Greg answered his phone which had rung right after Sara's. He frowned at the New York area code.
"Sanders here."
"Is this Mr. Greg Sanders, formerly of 1515 West 66th, Jackson, New York?"
"The one and only." Greg was suspicious now.
"This is Detective Buzzano of the NYPD. I wanted to inform you that we're reopening your case after analyzing DNA evidence that positively identifies two of your four assailants."
"You're going to have to be more specific than that." Greg said. "I have 16 active investigations in various stages of analysis and hundreds more that have since been closed."
"What are you talking about?" The Detective sounded genuinely confused.
"Well, I'm a CSI, and before that I was a DNA technician for 8 years. I assumed you were referring to one of my cases. Though I'm confused about what that has to do with me living in New York."
"No, Mr. Sanders. I'm sorry for the confusion." Buzzano's voice was less gruff now, gentle even, his Bronx accent making him sound like everybody's favorite uncle. "I was referring to your case. You know, from when you were attacked. You were 8 years old, the file says."
"I, I'm sorry. Can I call you back? I was just called out on assignment." Greg reached for his notebook, to take down the Buzzano's number.
Greg's heart was pounding in his chest again. Case? What Case? What was Buzzano talking about?
A/N: Wow, now that was an intense chapter. I hope you liked it. I'm on the edge of my own seat, and I'm the author. Seriously people. Review. )