Chapter 5, for ya'lls enjoyment.
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I couldn't sleep, no matter how hard I tried to. No matter how tired I was. Sleep wasn't coming. With a groan I got up, and left my room, and headed for the kitchen.
"Mom?" I heard a voice ask, "What's up?"
"Nothing Lindsay," I replied, turning to my teenage daughter, who sat at the kitchen table, "Just couldn't sleep is all."
"Because of your friend?"
She was a perceptive girl, I had to give her that. But Sara wasn't the reason I couldn't sleep. She was out of the worst danger now, according to Grissom, and someone had been sent up there to keep an eye on her, in case the attacker came back. "No, she's not the reason... " The real reason was something I'd realized a few days before, but hadn't thought anything of until that day. Nick. The way he'd looked at me when I gave him a smile... That was what was keeping me from sleeping. I knew from the way he'd looked he was starting to develop an interest in me. Worse, I was beginning to think I was developing an interest in him...
"Is it someone else at work then?" she asked. She was determined to get an aswer, "One of the guys?" she added slyly.
I sighed, "Maybe..." I said slowly, "and maybe not."
The "Maybe not," didn't convince her, "Who?"
"Nobody..." I said, going to the fridge to get a drink. She waited until I was done with a glass of orange juice to pester me again. Finally I gave in, "Nick Stokes." She'd know who he was. She'd met all of my coworkers at one point or another.
"The Texan guy?"
I nodded, then said, "So how was school today?"
"Boring," she told me, "didn't have much work to do, since it's so close to summer break." We sat and talked for a while, about normal, every day things, until finally, my sleepyness caught up with me, and I had to go to bed again.
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My cell phone woke me up, just after the sun went down. I tried to ignore it, at first, even went so far as to shove my head under a pillow. But no matter what, that damned ringing couldn't be blocked out. Finally, I gave up, and answered it.
"Brown," I grumbled, letting my displeasure of being awakened be known.
"Warrick," It was Grissom. He sounded odd... Like he was holding something back, "Get in to work... We've got a 419 at the hospital..."
Now I knew why he sounded the way he did... and I had to ask, "Any news on who it was?" Not Sara, please not Sara...
"None yet... One of the nurses called it in a few minutes ago. She didn't say who the DB was..."
It took me all of five minutes to get dressed and get out the door. Frankly, I was surprised I didn't get stopped on the way to the hospital... I certainly wasn't doing the speed limit. By the time I got to the crime scene, I was out of breath, from running. To my horror, the room that the woman at the front desk had directed me to was Sara's... Everyone was there, crowded outside. The door was shut tight.
"Well?"
I imagined they knew what I was asking. Catherine, at least did, "We don't know... we've been waiting for you to get here..."
Grissom opened the door, and all of us hesitantly looked inside. In the middle of the floor was the police officer that had been sent to keep an eye on Sara... But, Sara's bed was empty. The sheets were tangled, and pulled off the bed in some areas, the dull hospital blanket was on the floor in a tangled heap. The vase of flowers that had been sitting on the bedside table was now across the room, shattered, and various other items were knocked over, or broken. There had been a fight here.
I saw Grissom walk over to Sara's bed. He stared down at it, digging his fingernails in the the palm of one of his hands. He stayed like that for a long while, until, I saw, blood began to drip from his fingers, onto his shoe. Catherine brought him a rag to clean it off with, and the rest of us got to work on working the scene. The officer's throat had been slit, probably with the scalpal that lay a few feet away from him. He was lying on his stomach, and his nose appeared to be broken, judging from it's squashed appearence, and the ample amount of blood surrounding it. He'd been slammed into something before he died.
Nick pointed out blood on the wall, that wasn't random spatter. Possibly where the victim's face had hit. There was blood in the edges of what remained of the vase, as well, it had hit someone. I excused my self from the somber group, and went back down to the front desk.
"Excuse me, Miss," I said, "But do you know who the last visitor to room 211 was?"
"Ummmm, you and Mr. Grissom, Sir... No one else has visited that room. No one else has even come in today."
"You wouldn't know who the last doctor in there was, would you?"
"That would have to be Dr. Grimwell, Mr. Brown. He was in charge of Miss Sidle's care, by his own request, I believe. But his shift ended an hour ago..."
I didn't stay behind to hear the reast of what she had to say, and got back to the scene. I told Grissom what the woman had told me, and he looked for a moment as if he had just realized something... For some reason I felt as if I had missed something importan, before I could say as much though, Grissom was calling Greg, at the lab.
"Greg? I need you to check something for me... See what you can find out about a Doctor Jonathan Grimwell. It's important."
"Why the Doc?" I asked as he snapped his cell phone shut.
"You'll see," was all he said about the matter, "I want you and Sofia to go and bring Adam Hopewell down to the PD... I want to find out a bit more about his missing brother..."
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I checked up on the doctor, like Grissom had asked me too. What I was finding wasn't comforting. I was getting impatient, waiting for him to get done asking Mr. Hopewell questions, so I could tell him my news. Finally, I gave up on waiting, and interupted.
"Grissom? I, uh, need to talk to you... now."
He sighed, and got up from his seat, leaving a rather frightened looking Mr. Hopewell behind him, and came out into the hallway. "What, Greg?"
"Well, that blood from the vase was a match to the skin we got from Sara," I said, "and I did what you asked."
"And?"
"And it's not good news... You know Jonathan Hopewell disappeared a few years back, right? Well, Nick found a record of him in Los Angeles... With Archie's help I managed to, erm, 'accidently' find out what that was for... Turns out, it was a name change..."
"To Jonathan Grimwell," Grissom stated. Then he added, "Should have known... name's so similiar... Went to medical school... Had that surgical mask pulled down over his neck..." I got the feeling that he was talking more to himself than to me, "I knew I recognized his voice..."
"Thank you, Greg. Did you get his adress?" I nodded, "Good... Go tell Catherine to see if she can get a search warrant for it, and then get everyone else together..." Without saying another word, he went back into the interogation room.
Moving as quickly as I could, I went about my tasks, The longer we took, the less chance we had of finding Sara... Alive anyway.
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"What?" I asked, sure that this scientist or whatever he was, was pulling my leg, "That's not possible... My brother's gone."
"Which is what he wanted people to think," said the rather attractive blonde woman, who had accopanied one of the CSIs on both their visits to my home.
"Mr. Hopewell," said the scientist, Grissom I think he'd said his name was, "Your brother nearly killed someone close to me, and now he has her somewhere, either dead or alive. Any information would be helpful, believe me."
"Well," I said, feeling rather confused. "Before he went off to New York, he said he would find a way to get back at the ones responsible for putting Emily behind bars.,. Even if he had to disappear from the face of the earth to do it... I guess he did...Something else he said was that he wasn't going to kill anyone in the process either. He said he'd find a way yo make that person kill the one thing they loved most on their own. If you ask me, my brother was a sick son of a bitch. My sister wasn't much better... And there were times I wondered about those two... if you get my meaning."
The man nodded, "I think I do. But I don't know what he's thinking..." he was talking to himself now, "No one could get me to hurt Sara..."
"My brother has a talent for making people do the things he wants you to," I said. "Believe me."
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"Got our warrant," I said, to the gathering in the break room, "Granted, I had to lie about the fact that we had a confirmed identity, but..."
"Oh well, Cath," said Nick, "it got us the warrant...Shall we go?"
Everyone
else nodded. It was time to go get Sara.
The home of Jonathan
Grimwell was not a great one. Rather small, and not in the greatest
neighbor hood. Though we didn't really expect an answer, Grissom and
I pounded on the front door. No answer. So, plan b. Open the door on
our own.
Surprisingly, it was unlocked. The inside was worse than the outside. The walls of the living room were covered in photos, post-it notes, and various other forms of paper. All of them were written on, though the writing was so messy it was hard to determine what they said. The photos were of various locations in Vegas, and Henderson, as well as some of Grissom, on the streets, or at a crime scene, The man had been obsessed. How he'd found time to keep up his job...
All of us split up into pairs, Nick with me. Warrick with Sophia, and Greg with Grissom.
In the end, the only thing we found, was a tape recorder. No sign of Sara anywhere. It was Sophia that played the tape.
"Hello, all," said the voice of the doctor, "No doubt you know who I am by now. But concealing my identity for long was not my intention. I don't want your question to be who, or why... I want it to be where. Where am I, and where is Sara? And when you figure it out, Grissom only comes to get her... Grissom only. That way, he can be the one to kill her..."
Another voice piped up in the background, Sara, "You're an idiot if you think that they'll actually-"
"Shut the fuck up, you bitch!" the doctor shouted, "You'll get your chance to talk in a god damn minute." There was a brief pause, before he continued. "If you haven't found where we are by midnight, I'll leave Sara here. Without the medical attention she needs, you can be sure she won't last long. Especially with all the desert critters out here that would love a good meal." There was a clattering sound, and then the doctor muttered something, and Sara spoke again.
"Don't listen to him, Grissom. You come alone and he'll kill you. I'd tell you where I am, but you probably know how bad of an idea that would be, so I'll just say this: I love you. And to everyone else, goodbye."
With that, the tape came to an end, leaving all of us in silence.
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okay, I know it may seem a bit early to reveal who it was, but like he said, the question is meant to be "where" not "who and why"