"Greg, I need this to be a priority," Catherine Willows urged, holding out the evidence bag. Her blue-eyed gaze was sombre.
Greg turned from the wash station, where he was putting on a new pair of latex gloves. "I'm swamped," he advised her reluctantly. "We're backlogged. I've got four other 'priority' cases at the moment, and others that aren't as urgent, but that have been waiting and have to get done at some point." His shrugged his shoulders, shooting a glance at the workboard.
Cecilia watched as Catherine pressed her lips together. The CSI had been reticent on their return from interrogating Michael Strickland. She had not said a word about what had transpired in the room, and had cradled her kit, with the evidence bag containing the sample of Strickland's DNA, close to her chest. Catherine had seemed drained and preoccupied, intent on getting back to the lab.
"I'll buy you a pound of Blue Hawaiian, handsome" Catherine coaxed, smiling at the young man, "if my case moves to the top of the list." She leaned in towards him, jutting one hip provocatively, and lightly touching his sleeve. "Well, make that a half pound," she amended with a wink. "I still want to be able to make my mortgage payment."
Greg grinned widely, enjoying the banter and the flattery, even though he knew what precipitated it. Then he sobered. "Really, Catherine, I can't. Everyone feels that their case is the most important." His dark eyes communicated their understanding and regret.
Catherine sighed, straightening her back. "It's the Palmateer case," she explained quietly. "That little girl that was raped by her mom's boyfriend." Catherine's sapphire eyes shone with emotion.
The muscle in Greg's left jaw twitched. He tried to stay impersonal and uninvolved and to do his job as a scientist, without dwelling too much on the circumstances that brought the evidence to his lab. In the beginning, when he'd first started working for the LVPD's forensics unit, he had wanted to know the details of all of the cases. Had found himself investing too much emotionally in the work. Had driven himself harder than he should, on behalf of victims who he came to feel were depending on him for justice.
He'd allowed himself to be cajoled, and intimidated and had had a hard time standing up to CSIs who, understandably, all felt that what was a priority for them, should also be a priority for him. He had been affected by graphic retellings of crime scenes, and had been imbued with sympathy and compassion for those whose lives had been touched by tragedy. Greg had found himself putting in more and more overtime, and losing his sense of self to his work.
When he got off shift, and went home to his apartment, he would lay in his bed and stare at the ceiling, wondering if he could worked a bit faster. Or if there had been some mistake he had made, something he had mishandled, or something he had overlooked. He'd agonize over court cases, wondering if the judge would disallow some crucial piece of DNA evidence, and a guilty perp would go free.
When he'd gone back home to visit his parents that first Christmas after being hired at the Vegas lab, and just five months into his career, he had been mentally and physically exhausted. His mother had come downstairs one night, to find him sitting alone in the darkened family room, in front of the remnants of a fire, staring into the dying embers.
She had laid a slim hand on his shoulder. "Talk to me, Sweetheart," she had urged gently, settling onto the sofa next to him. She had taken his arm, and laid her head on his shoulder. "I'm glad that you could get back for Christmas. Except...you're not really even here." Greg had tensed, and she had squeezed his arm reassuringly. "You're like a different person, Greg. Your laughter used to resound through these rooms whenever you were in this house. You've always been our light, shining brightly, showing us how much joy there was in the world, because you saw wonder everywhere."
She had paused, letting him consider her words. "I don't think you've smiled once in the last two days. Not a real smile. Not one that lights up those beautiful dark eyes of yours. Not even when you opened that swami hat that Meghan gave you."
Meghan was his younger sister, seventeen and still at home. The swami reference had been an inside joke between the two of them. Though several years had separated them, Greg and his only sibling had been close. When she was little, and Greg would catch her misbehaving, he would tease her by threatening to tell their parents. Even though she knew he would never tattle on her, Meghan would squeal with mock fear and beg him not to.
Greg would close his eyes and put a hand to his forehead in mystic fashion, and pretend that he was predicting the future, and that he could see what Meghan's punishment for her infraction might be. He would come up with all sorts of wild and impossible disciplines, that might range from their parents boxing Meghan up and shipping her to a desert island, to their building a turreted addition on their backsplit, and banishing Meghan there til such a time as a brave knight on his noble steed, should ride in and rescue her. Eventually, they would both be laughing, and Greg would be tickling her, and admonishing her to be a good girl in the future if he kept her secret.
Their parents hadn't known the details of this private joke. But Greg's mother had seen how excited Meghan had been when she'd come home from the mall with the ridiculous purple and gold hat. The teen had hardly been able to wait for her older brother to come home, so that she could give him his gift. Her daughter's disappointment in the lacklustre reaction her brother had shown to the gift, had been palpable. She continued quietly, "We can all see that something is wrong, Greg. You aren't yourself. You've always been so happy and full of life..."
Those words 'full of life' had caused Greg's chest to constrict. He thought about the last case that he had worked on before leaving Vegas. The decomposing body of a child whose description hadn't even seemed to match any of the national missing persons cases. An abused child whose lifeless form had been dumped, and whom noboby, it had seemed, either missed or mourned. "I'm not a kid anymore!" he had snapped. "Life isn't all fun and games, you know!" He had been horrified that he had raised his voice to his mother, but he had been unable to stop himelf. "If you saw some of things I've seen! If you knew some of the things I know! If you had to live with that every single day..."
His voice had trailed off then, his throat too tight to get out any more of the words to express what churned inside of him. "I know that I'll never understand, not fully," his mother had said softly, at length, and Greg thought he had detected a slight tremor in her voice. "But I can listen."
And so it had all come pouring out of him then, in cathartic waves. And when Greg was done, he knew even before his mother said it, that he couldn't lose himself in the importance and seriousness of his work. He had to retain his identity, or he would burn out before another year had even passed, and the Greg Sanders that he had always been, and enjoyed being, would cease to exist.
And so the next day, he'd taken his little sister out to the movies, to see a comedy that was so ridiculously bad that they were both rolling their eyes in derision, even as the laughter had bubbled from their lips. And the next day, before he'd left, Greg had put the swami hat on, and predicted that Meghan was going to graduate high school with honours the following June. And then he'd hugged her and told her to be good or their parents would lock her in the turret and she'd miss her graduation party. "And remember," he'd cautioned, wagging his finger at her, "you might be able to fool Mom and Dad. But Swami always knows!"
And then Greg had packed up his bags, and taking the elaborate, purple headpiece he had gone back to Las Vegas, where he had slowly but steadily made the effort not to succuumb to the pressures of the job anymore. Every now and then, when he felt himself slipping into that stressed and overwhelmed state again, he would dig out the swami hat, and remember that life was not all darkness and despair and ugliness, and that it didn't mean that he didn't care, if he still found opportunity to laugh.
"Greg?" Catherine's hesitant voice broke his reverie.
Greg knew that he did have a great deal of work to do. And he knew that all of it was important. But the cases with the children...those were the ones that still affected him. He had seen a picture of Carly Palmateer, in the case file that Catherine had been going over in the break room last night. He'd heard her telling Nick about what the mother's boyfriend had done to the girl.
Every now and then something would get past his defensive shield. The difference was that now Greg could acknowledge his emotional involvement, and deal with it without letting it eat him up inside. "Yeah, okay Catherine," he relented. "I have one sample for Warrick's floater from last week that I have to do first. Then I'll do yours."
Catherine relaxed visibly, the tension that had been knotting her lovely features easing away. "Thank you, Greg, so much!" she said sincerely. "I'll bring the coffee tomorrow."
"Oh no, no, no..." Greg told her with a sly grin. "If you want to jump to the front of the line, you're going to have to sweeten the deal. I'm thinking dinner, drinks and dancing."
Catherine laughed. "Sorry, Greg, I'm not going out with you. Nothing personal, I just don't mix business with pleasure."
Greg made a show of looking taken aback. "Who said I was talking about you?" he asked. He winked at Cecilia. "I was talking about your friend."
Cecilia coloured slightly, but chuckled. It had been a while since a good-looking young man had flirted with her, and even though she knew Greg Sanders was just joking around, she enjoyed being included in the camaraderie. "I don't dance," she said, with mock sorrow, shaking her head.
Greg threw up his hands. "Fine then! I guess I'll just do this out of the goodness of my heart." He was still smiling, though his dark eyes were intent on the writer. For a moment, he wondered what she might think of his seeming irreverence under the circumstances. He wondered if Cecilia would think him callous and uncaring, untouched by the sad reality that had brought Catherine to his lab tonight. He wondered if she could possibly understand.
Leaving Greg to his work, the two women proceeded to the office where Janey had been trying to match prints from the liquor store robbery. The computer was continuing to run it's search, but still there had been no match. Catherine had sent Janey on a break, to rest her tired eyes, while she continued to monitor the screen. Eventually they had a hit, on the prints of a retired Air Force Captain, living in Las Vegas.
Catherine ran a check on Lawrence Reingold, and found nothing in his military records to indicate that he would be involved in either the robbery or the subsequent battery. It was a lead to run down though, and Reingold would have to be eliminated as a suspect, but Catherine was sure that he had probably only been a customer in the store recently, and was not responsible for the criminal activity.
Finally, after having no further success, Catherine suggested to Cecilia that they take a break themselves. The dark-haired woman had followed the blonde to the empty break room, where Cecilia had poured herself a cup of coffee, while Catherine removed a bottle of water from the fridge. Despite how interesting the night had been so far, Cecilia was fighting her body's natural inclination to follow it's internal clock, and she needed a boost of caffeine.
Catherine sat with one slender leg drawn up to the knee, her shoe resting on the edge of the chair. She tilted her head and downed a long swig of the water. She set the bottle on the table, and began to turn it in circles, staring at it reflectively. Cecilia took a chair at the other end of the table, to Catherine's left, grimacing at the bitterness of the dark brew, and wondering how long it had been sitting on the burner.
"Brass is a good cop," Catherine spoke suddenly, still concentrating on the bottle of water. "We're lucky to have him on the LVPD. He came here years ago from New Jersey. Almost single-handedly he worked to rid the force there of deep corruption. He..."
"Catherine," Cecilia interrupted calmly. Catherine looked up, her blue eyes uncertain. "I understand what you're trying to do. And I admire your loyalty." Catherine didn't insult her by denying the claim. "It's not necessary though. Really," Cecilia spoke with quiet assurance.
Catherine gave a wan smile. "I just didn't want you to think...to get the wrong impression..." Catherine looked at her levelly. "Jim Brass is a good cop. And he's a good man."
Cecilia thought about their meeting in the hall after the detective had left the room. Of the words that she had wanted to say, but hadn't. She envisioned the intensity and the attention to detail with which he had overseen the hit and run crime scene her first morning with CSI.
She recalled his offer to give her a ride home from Coopers the day of Denny Martens funeral, even though he was suspicious of her motives for being in Vegas. She saw in her mind's eye the gentlemanly way he had held open the car door for her. She remembered how Jim Brass had redirected Sheriff Brian Mobley's unwanted attention the night of the Kellerman's party.
"I don't doubt that at all," Cecilila said simply.
A relieved grin lit Catherine's face. "It's a good story though," she informed the writer.
"One day I'd like to hear it," Cecilia replied sincerely, over the rim of her cup.
"Well, if you can't get Brass to tell it sometime," Catherine continued, "let me know and I'll finish it."