A/N: Man, this website picks the worst times to go down! But I am very grateful that things are back up and seem to be running smoothly. crosses fingers that it will stay that way! As much as I love reviews, you can imagine my disappointment when I only got a few with the last chapter. Come on, make my day! Just go down to the bottom of the page, and hit that little button that says, "Submit Review." You can do it! :-)
Thanks also to those who corrected me about the Komodo dragon. Fascinating animals, but a little dangerous for domestication. And, to think I actually did some research on them before I wrote the chapter - obviously, not enough! :-( Oh, well, chalk it up to artistic license! :-)
Spoilers: "The Strip Strangler," "Burden of Proof," "Pledging Mr. Johnson"
Disclaimer: Boy, if I owned CSI:, I'd really have something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. But, since I don't, I guess I'll just have to be content with being thankful for that whole roof-over-my-head, clothes-on-my-back, food-on-my-table thing. You know, the little stuff. :-)
Chapter 16: IntuitionNick and Greg trudged the half-mile distance back to the Denali at a snail's pace. The scene had been extensive, and exhaustion had long since set in. They each carried multiple evidence bags in addition to their field kits. Who knew one measly body could be so much work?
Greg swiped the back of his arm across his sweaty forehead as he followed his friend. I thought the desert was supposed to be cold at night. It must be over 100 degrees out here. Or maybe it's just that I had to line up evidence markers on footprints that led me half a mile back into the desert, he thought ruefully.
Reaching the passenger side of the SUV, the young scientist dropped his field kit and removed a latex glove with a resounding snap. He'd always had a love-hate relationship with the rubber coverings. Loved the cleanliness, hated the confinement; loved the protection, hated the restraint. Kinda the way I feel about the DNA lab. Except that's more of a hate-hate relationship. Huh.
That thought irked him, and the other glove came off with more force, the sound echoing off the truck and bouncing back at him from a nearby sand dune. Annoyed, Nick looked up from his Maglite-illuminated search through a mass of keys. "Dude, what's your problem?"
"Sorry," the younger man mumbled, reddening when the CSI eyed him curiously. He glared at the gloves, angry with them for getting him into trouble and exacting his revenge by crushing them tightly into a ball between his hands. Deep down, he knew it was irrational to have such deep-seated emotions towards a pair of inanimate objects, but that did little to ameliorate his feelings at the moment.
As he stared down at the gloves, he suddenly remembered the advice Sara had given him a few weeks ago to always hang onto his used gloves as they were also considered evidence. He could remember it all with perfect clarity, and he placed the wadded latex into a pocket of his vest absently, mentally kicking himself for handling them so roughly but mostly thinking about Sara.
When he heard the door latch click open, he pulled open the back door and dropped the kit onto the backseat before climbing into the front. His counterpart waved goodbye to Vartan and a uniformed officer and pulled out onto the isolated two-lane highway that would take them back toward the garish lights of Vegas.
"Hey, Nick?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you really think the serial killer's a woman?"
"Huh?" The CSI's mind was still on their half-nude DB found behind a boulder out in the desert. In the midst of trying to make sense of two sets of footprints walking to the spot and one set running out, it wasn't that easy to switch gears.
"The case Sara and Grissom are working on. Aren't female serial killers really rare?"
"Well, yeah, Greg, but you're the one who brought it up. Remember?"
"I know," the young man replied absently. "But what if there's another explanation for the DNA on that plate? And why would the killer have stopped to eat something?"
"Well…" Nick paused a moment, considering. "Maybe he – or she…" he added as an afterthought, "…knows them. Comes in, eats with them, then kills them. There wasn't any sign of forced entry at the Ellis residence and, as I recall, none at the Shea residence, either." He squinted as he tried to recall details of the two-year-old case.
Greg shook his head. "There was only one plate. And only one DNA sample."
Nick shrugged. "Maybe Mrs. Ellis wasn't hungry but wanted to feed her guest." He sighed. The whole thing didn't make a lot of sense. "Regardless, though, maybe she had a guest who wasn't her killer." He thought for a moment, then wondered aloud, "Who would come over to visit? A neighbor, maybe? Or an old friend?"
The trainee nodded eagerly, and his partner smiled. "Why don't you call Brass and ask him to talk to Mr. Ellis about female visitors his wife might have had?"
The surprise evident on his face, Greg smiled and fished out his cell phone, thumbing through the phone book quickly in his search for the detective's number. Nick could hardly suppress his smile at the young man's reaction. He was like a kid in a candy store.
After he hung up, the two rode in a comfortable silence for a few minutes, each lost in their own thoughts. But, as the lights of the city came into view below them, Greg suddenly broke the stillness with a question. "Do you think Sara's OK staying with Grissom?"
Greg's voice was tentative, but there was an undertone to the question that made Nick uncomfortable. He loved Sara, would do anything for her, even if it meant taking up her cause with their boss. But he was fiercely loyal to the older man – heck, he loved him, too – and this felt a little bit like discussing family business with an outsider. The Texan stiffened, unsure how to answer.
The younger man must have noticed because he quickly clarified. "I just mean, I don't know, there's been these kind of bad vibes between them lately. She acts tough, but I think, deep down, he kind of hurts her sometimes. I just hope he's treating her OK, you know?"
He did know. The dark-haired CSI blew out a breath as he debated how to reply, but Greg spoke again before he had the opportunity.
"And I think she can really get to Grissom. He cares about her a whole lot more than he lets on. But I guess he's afraid of that or something, so he keeps her at a distance. And that just hurts her more. So I just hope she's OK staying with him."
The Texan kept his eyes on the road, unwilling to show how taken aback he was with Greg's insight. When he was sure he had schooled his features into neutrality, he turned to look at the young trainee, raising one eyebrow in silent question. The young man shrugged in response and bashfully replied, "I just care about Sara, OK? I know I haven't worked out in the field with her for as long as you have, but she's my friend, too. I don't want her to get hurt. Or Grissom, either, for that matter."
The last part came out almost as an afterthought, but Nick heard the sincerity behind it. He nodded as he trained his eyes on the road, trying to decide what to say. He felt bad for thinking of the young man as an outsider. Sure, he wasn't a CSI – yet. But he was getting there, and Greg obviously cared about each team member just as much as any of them did. His question hadn't been asked out of any sort of gossipy motivation but out of a genuine concern for his friends. And Nick realized in that moment that he should answer honestly.
His decision made, he turned his head to face the lab-tech-turned-investigator and responded as truthfully as he knew how. "I talked to her about it tonight. She said Grissom's been real nice."
The younger man looked skeptical. "Do you think she was telling the truth?"
His answer was emphatic. "Yes." He could still remember the expression on Sara's face just before she kissed him on the cheek. Her answer was definitely an honest one.
Greg's face relaxed, and Nick couldn't resist ribbing him a little. "So, Greggo, admit it. You just wanted Sara to come stay at your place, didn't ya?" He grinned at the blush that crept up the young scientist's face. "That's what I thought. You've got it bad, man."
"Yeah, well, she's only got eyes for somebody else," he replied, and there was no bitterness in his tone.
Nick was struck once again by the younger man's perception, and the smile faded from his face as he said sincerely, "You're gonna be a really great CSI, Greg."
XXXXXXXXX
Sara catalogued the last of the evidence from the two cases onto a comparative list on the dry-erase board as Warrick dropped the bag onto the one remaining clear spot on the layout room table. "OK, that's the last of it," she said, as she stepped back to survey the organized mess they had created.
Raising an eyebrow at her, her colleague asked, "Now what?"
Arms crossed against her chest, she pursed her lips as she shook her head. She studied the contents of the table for a moment before releasing a heavy sigh. "Do you think this really is a female killer?"
He stared at her, surprised that she seemed to be questioning Grissom's edict to rule nothing out. "You don't think so?"
She blew out a breath, turning her palms up as she admitted, "I don't know." She picked up the matching sets of crime scene photos from the table. "It's just…" After studying the photos for a moment longer, she met his eyes. "I know I don't have any evidence to prove it, but this still seems like a male killer to me."
"Is this some kind of really weird male bashing?" he questioned, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.
She grinned. "Well, guys are jerks…"
He brought his hand over his heart in an exaggerated gesture. "Oh, you hurt me. That's harsh."
Her smile slowly faded as she looked back at the photos. "It's just that about 90 of all serial killers are males, most of those white males, and they usually kill white females. They rarely know their victims or have any real hatred for them, per se. And they're typically of above average intelligence, which makes them really difficult to catch."
Warrick cocked his head as he looked at her through narrowed eyes. "You sound like Grissom. When did you become a serial killer expert?"
One corner of her mouth inched upwards as she responded. "Do you remember the Syd Goggle case?"
He nodded. "The Strip Strangler? Yeah, of course I do. Weren't you a decoy for the FBI in that case?"
She gave him a humorless smile as she met his eyes. "Yeah, Grissom was so ticked off at me for that, but I had to do something. Those women were getting killed, and we weren't moving fast enough." She shook her head as the memories brought back the frustration. "I checked out every book I could find on serial killers after that."
He grinned. "Picture that. You learning all you can about criminals? No way," he teased. Nudging her arm, he said, "'Fess up, Sar. You were trying to impress the FBI, weren't you? Gonna leave us and go capture the next 'Hannibal the Cannibal'?"
She glanced up at him sharply, wondering momentarily if he knew of her leave of absence request from two years earlier, but his widely naïve smile bore testimony to the innocence of his comment. She smiled softly, and her admission was spoken so quietly as to be nearly inaudible. "Maybe once upon a time."
She paused as a mental image of her supervisor intercalated itself into her thoughts – lips curved ever so slightly upward to form a bashful smile after she'd told him he was an "unusual" child, cheeks tinged pink across the upper edges of his beard, eyes clear and blue as a mountain lake and billowing with more emotion than she'd ever seen in their depths. Drawing a deep breath, she looked up to meet Warrick's curious gaze and smiled as she shook her head. "But not anymore." And it didn't even surprise her to realize it was the truth.
A slow smile spread across his handsome face, and he replied with a nod. "Good."
She heard the sincerity in his voice and had to swallow past the lump that suddenly appeared in her throat before she could speak again. Looking back at the table, she dropped the crime scene photos and said, "Why don't we start with what they don't have in common?"
"Suits me," her partner shrugged with a quick glance at the dry-erase board. Something caught his eye, and he studied the contents of the table until he found what he was looking for – a trace report from the Shea murder. "What about this? Nick and I agonized over this for hours when we first had this case. There was a tiny smudge of this stuff just outside the door of the vic's apartment. He swabbed it and, come to find out, it's a mixture of motor oil and gasoline."
He handed the report to Sara, who perused it as he continued. "The only thing we could come up with is that a lot of lawn care equipment requires you to mix oil and gas in the engines. Weedeaters, edgers. Stuff like that." He shrugged when Sara smirked curiously at him. "What? Like I can't know something about lawns?"
She laughed. "Warrick, you live in a high-rise."
"Who do you think takes care of my grandmother's yard? I know my way around lawn equipment."
She laughed at his indignant tone, shaking her head as she looked back down at the report. "Well, Ally Shea lived in a third-floor apartment. She didn't exactly have a great need for lawn equipment."
"I know," her colleague replied. "That was the part we couldn't figure out. It was a 50:1 fuel-to-oil ratio. A lot of small engines use a mix like that. Chainsaws, some lawnmowers, even some outboard motors for boats. But there was no equipment in that apartment that would have used a fuel-and-oil mixture."
"A motorcycle?" she questioned. "A lighter one could get up on the third floor."
"Not easily," he retorted. "And, anyway, bigger engines like motorcycles and cars have the fuel and the oil housed separately."
Sara nodded. "What about the groundskeepers at the apartment complex? Maybe they were involved?"
"Thought about that, too," he nodded. "Questioned all four of them. They all had alibis."
"So the killer brings some sort of small-engine equipment with him and then takes it out with him after he kills her? I could see that if it was the murder weapon. But Shea was injected with salt water, not hacked up with a chainsaw." She shook her head in frustration. "Ugh…" she growled, handing him the report and freeing her hands to punctuate her words when she spoke again. "This is so aggravating! We have all of this evidence and not the first clue how to interpret it. And, in the meantime, this guy is out there somewhere looking for his next vic. It's Syd Goggle all over again." She sank heavily onto the stool next to the layout table and dropped her face into her hands, breathing deeply in an effort to calm down.
Warrick squeezed her shoulder soothingly. "Come on, Sar, this is getting us nowhere fast. Let's look at something else."
She nodded with her head still buried in her hands and looked up to see him holding the bagged restraints and autopsy reports on each victim. "How about we check out what's similar between our vics. Your choice," he said, gesturing toward his hands.
She reached for the autopsy reports and carefully cleared a space on the table, while Warrick dragged his chair around to sit next to her. He reached for a pair of gloves from the box on the table, and the two worked in companionable silence for a while. And, though, the only sounds in the room were those of an occasional page turning or of latex meeting nylon, Sara found his mere presence oddly comforting.
Not surprisingly, there was no further evidence to be gathered from the restraints, and Warrick finally held up the fishing net that had once bound Allison Shea's wrists, peering at it as though it would tell him all of its secrets if he stared at it long enough. Sara glanced up at his movement, her lips curving upward slightly when she noticed his absent stare. Her eyes followed his gaze, and the sight of the fishing net sparked a memory from earlier in the evening. "…saving dolphins from tuna fishermen… loved dolphins… her passion in life…"
"Hey, War…" she said, her eyes never leaving the net.
Something in her tone caught his attention, and he turned to look at her. "Yeah?"
Slowly, she brought her gaze from the fishing net to Warrick's face. "Did you know Ally Shea was a marine biologist?"
His eyes narrowed as he tried to piece together what she was trying to tell him. "I thought she was an environmental engineer."
She shook her head. "She was, but her master's was in marine biology, and she was planning to go to work for Greenpeace after she finished her Ph.D." Refocusing her attention on the bindings in his gloved hand, she asked, "Don't you think it's coincidental that a woman who wanted to save dolphins from tuna fishermen was bound with a fishing net?"
A gleam of understanding sparked in his green eyes, and he snapped his focus quickly to the table full of evidence. "Yeah, I do." He rebagged the net carefully before reaching for the nylons that had been used to bind their second victim. "Restraints for Marilyn Ellis." He met his partner's intense gaze as he said, "A housewife's worst nightmare?"
Sara shook her head as she arched an eyebrow at the stockings. "A necessary evil for a society wife." When she glanced back at her colleague, her smile matched his own. Things were definitely looking up.
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Catherine's philosophy of life had been forged in the fires of an absent father, an adulterous husband, and an agonizing divorce. She could still remember with absolute clarity the exact moment when she had decided to stop selling her body for those who weren't worth the sacrifice and had chosen instead to market her brain for those who were. It was the day she had walked into her home one person and, carrying her infant daughter, strolled out a different one – after finding her husband in bed with yet another floozy, the third one that she knew of. She had known when she married Eddie that he was a philanderer but had naïvely thought she could change him. By the time she arrived at her mother's house that morning, she at long last understood that that would never happen, and she had ultimately refused to talk to her husband when he called to apologize yet again. And, when her mother had asked her what she planned to do, she had simply said, "Never doubt and never look back." Words to live by. And live by them, she had.
She had always been proud of her efficiency and had long considered the ability to multitask to be a highly desirable trait in any mother – and an utter necessity in single ones. The effort she had spent cramming work, school, time with Lindsey, meals, and sleep into a 24-hour day had been the best way to put her new mindset into practice. Time was precious and not to be wasted, least of all on things as unproductive as doubt and regret.
Her newfound efficiency quickly became as much a part of her as breathing, and the no-doubt philosophy had been honed over the years to include a corollary: economy of activity. Every energy expenditure she made – whether in thought or in deed – would serve some purpose. If it were an exercise in futility, she would have no part of it.
Now, as she pored over the thirteenth page of phone records from the Ellis household, she was beginning to question whether she had correctly applied that corollary in this situation. The entire quest through a seemingly never-ending pile of documentation seemed to be completely useless and, yet, here she sat, either unwilling or unable to give up the search for a clue.
Raising her eyes, she peered across the desk at the man who had, almost singlehandedly, helped her to formulate a new life, a better one for both her and her daughter, far away from the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas that she had always known. She couldn't claim that Gil was perfect. On the contrary, he had done a number of things that made her flat-out furious, starting with keeping Eddie's indiscretions to himself rather than telling her about them. Even thinking about that now still made her blood boil. As a matter of fact, she and Gil had clashed more often than she'd like to admit, and it still amazed her that anyone could be as utterly clueless about people as he appeared to be. But he was a trustworthy friend, loyal as an old sheepdog; he had always been there for her, had never seen her as a second-class citizen because of her past, and she loved him for reasons that were too numerous to list.
He was unaware of her gaze upon him, and she took advantage of the moment to study his features. He looked less tired than usual, and the lines around his eyes were less pronounced. And something else was different. She narrowed her eyes in concentration. What is it about him?
"Catherine, do I have something on my face?" he asked irritably, shifting slightly in his seat to peer over his glasses at her.
Anyone else would have been intimidated by that look; the blonde merely smiled. Obviously more aware than I gave him credit for. "No. I was just noticing that you shaved."
"Yes," he agreed, running his right hand over his face. "Now that we've established that I do, in fact, own a razor and know how to use it, did you find anything?" He gestured with his head toward the stack of phone records in front of her.
Heaving a drawn-out sigh, she dropped the pages onto his desk and held up a slender finger. "One call, Gil. In thirteen pages of phone records – most of which seem to be to or from the Ellis teenagers and their Playmates of the Month – there is only one lousy phone call that's even remotely out of the ordinary, and it's probably just a wrong number!"
Her voice rose with each syllable until, by the end of her sentence, she was speaking in a higher octave. And, for whatever reason, it struck him as hilarious. Grissom pressed his lips together tightly, but the uplifted corner of his mouth gave away that he was trying to suppress his mirth. "Are you laughing at me?" she asked, her expression an odd mixture of annoyed and surprise.
"Noo…" He shook his head, but she could see the smile in his eyes.
"Yes, you are," she said, trying to remain serious but failing miserably when she saw his expression.
"OK, yes, I am," he conceded, finally allowing his smirk to manifest itself. "But you've got to admit, you can get a little, um… dramatic at times. And it's humorous."
She cocked her head to the side as she looked at him, her surprise turning to full-on shock. "Well, sure, I know that, Gil. Even Lindsey tells me that. Hell, half the time I act that way just to see if I can get a rise out of you. But I never do. So why now? Why the sudden funny bone?"
He shrugged, not really knowing himself why he had been so amused. Usually, he found Catherine's melodramatics to be tolerable at best and annoying at worst. Maybe he'd finally lost his mind. Maybe she'd just hit a nerve. Or maybe… He met her gaze with a grin as he decided to voice the thought aloud. "Maybe I'm just happy."
The blonde arched an eyebrow, but he held up his own stack of phone records from the Shea household, deftly returning them to the matter at hand. "I haven't found anything probative, either. Most of their calls were to Rankin's law office and a few to other attorneys." He looked up at her. "What about your one 'out-of-the-ordinary' call?"
She looked down and flipped through a few pages to find the one that interested her. "From a pay phone at Desert Palm to the Ellis residence. 8:36 pm on the night she was murdered. It's just a one-minute call, though, so it's probably a wrong number."
Grissom nodded, but his gaze was fixed somewhere in the air over her left shoulder. After a few moments, he spoke. "Maybe." His eyes focused on hers as he added, "But Desert Palm owns printers like the one that printed that note."
Her own eyes widened as they stared into his, and she nodded as she reached for her cell phone. "I'll call."
A hesitant voice answered after six rings, and Catherine suddenly realized she had no idea what to say. Thinking quickly, she asked for Dr. Francis Crick, waving her hand at Grissom to quiet his snort of laughter at her irreverent reference to one of the discoverers of DNA. The disembodied voice informed her that there was no one there by that name.
"Well, this is Desert Palm, isn't it?" she snapped, trying to sound as brusque as possible.
"Yes, ma'am," came the polite reply, "but this is the OR waiting room, and there aren't any doctors here at the moment."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, I must have the wrong number," she said perkily, before depressing a button to end the call. At Grissom's inquisitive look, she told him, "It's the OR waiting room."
His brow furrowed as he absorbed the information, and she tapped the pages in front of him with her highlighter to get his attention. "Hey, big guy, wanna see if you can find that same number in your pile of phone records?"
TBC…