It was another four hours until they finally finished processing the house, and then two more hours to get everything transported back to the lab and checked into the evidence. By that time, Archie had cracked the password on the computer and managed to find a google search and mapquest directions out to the abandoned mine in his browser history.
The sun had risen, and the suspect had been processed and held in a cell for a long sleepless night, while they dug through his room and his browser. When Sara and Brass sat across the table from him in the interrogation room, they didn't say a word, just began lining up the evidence on the table in front of them. Before they had even finished, his quiet sullenness had melted away and he looked like a scared little boy.
Once the evidence was all laid out, they sat back silently and let it do the talking for them. It didn't take long for their suspect to crack, spewing a litany of self-pitying nonsense about what a nice guy he was and how women would never give him the time of day because they were so obsessed with looks and money.
"Yeah, you sound like a really nice guy," Sara said sarcastically. "Nice guys always shoot their dates in the back."
"I didn't want to shoot her!" he snapped back. "I tried to tell her. I tried to explain. She wouldn't listen!"
"Explain what?" Brass asked.
"Why I had to do it!" he says, slamming his hands on the table. Brass tensed, but when Vogel continued, he was calmer, his voice pleading with them to see his side. "Why I had to use those photos. She never would have given me the time of day if she had known. It was really me. It was me she was messaging. Me she was talking to on the phone. If she wasn't a shallow bitch, she would have still wanted to date me. But she wouldn't even listen. She just walked away!"
Sara's stomach churned with disgust. She thought back to the chat logs, full of lies about his education, his hobbies, his career, his family, and wondered how he could be delusional enough to believe that their connection had been anything more than an elaborate lie.
Once Vogel began to talk, it was as if the floodgates had been opened. He went on and on about the terrible plight of being a middle class white guy in America and all the ways he had been discriminated against by girls who refused to have sex with him and employers who fired him for failing to do his job.
Sara had less than zero sympathy for him, and by the time the interview was over, she was nauseated and exhausted.
"Well, he was a real treat," Brass said as they watched him be led away in handcuffs.
Sara thought again about his victim: the sweet, shy girl laying in the morgue, whose only crime had been being lonely enough that she fell for a man who didn't exist. Sara knew about that kind of loneliness. She was lucky her own mistakes had never led to anything more fatal than bruised pride.
By the time they submitted the video of the interview into evidence, it was nearly eleven, and they were closing in on four hours of overtime.
"Raincheck on breakfast?" Brass asked.
Sara nodded, any disappointment she was feeling was overshadowed by the desire to spend some time at home after spending the last three days at Grissom's townhouse.
She finished up the last of her tasks for the day and swung by her favorite vegetarian takeout place on the way, too tired to contemplate a stop at the grocery store.
When she let herself into her apartment, she breathed a sigh of relief. As much as she loved spending time at Grissom's, there was something comforting about returning to her own space.
He tried so hard to make her feel welcome and at home there, and she had come a long way. He had been comfortable in her space for ages, since before they were a couple, and he seemed bemused at first by her reluctance to make herself at home at his place.
For months, he patiently granted her permission every time she asked to get a drink of water or use his shower or borrow a book. Until a week ago, when he had finally seemed to reach a breaking point.
"Sara," he had said quietly, after she had asked yet again if she could have a Diet Coke from his fridge. "I buy those for you. I buy the bananas for you. I…."
He had trailed off for a moment, running a hand over his face, obviously trying to find the words, and she looked around the room, seeing suddenly all the little things he had done to try to make her feel at home: the fridge he had emptied of science experiments, the pantry full of snacks she liked, the candles on the end table that had appeared at the same time the bottles of her shampoo and conditioner had appeared in the shower.
"Honey," he had said gently, his voice strong and clear but without any hint of censure. "I want you here. I love having you here. You can eat anything, drink anything, read anything, touch anything. I'm never going to say no. You don't have to ask. I don't want you to ask."
She had kissed him then, overwhelmed by her love for him and unable to find the words to explain why this was so hard for her. It might be a small thing to most people, but she had spent most of her life living in other people's spaces, never quite understanding the boundaries of where she was welcome, constantly apologizing for overstepping. And he was a man who valued his privacy and solitude above almost all things.
She kept waiting to wake from this dream, and although she hadn't realized it until that moment, she knew she was acting out of fear, scared that if she got too comfortable, pushed too hard, this beautiful life they had begun to build would be snatched from her before she had even had a chance to enjoy it.
That evening, after they had slept, but before it was time to get ready for work, he had ducked out to run an errand and come back with an extra key. He presented it to her without any big ceremony or grand gesture. Just handed it to her when he returned home and said, "I had this made for you."
It meant something to her that he had chosen to have the key made especially for her, rather than giving her one of the spares he kept in the kitchen drawer or his desk at work. It felt intentional, and she heard his unspoken message that he was choosing to invite her to share his home, not just giving her a spare key to let herself in should she arrive a few minutes before him.
The next morning, they had left work at the same time, but he had decided to detour by the grocery store on his way home. She had eyed the key on her keychain warily, and seriously contemplated manufacturing an errand of her own. Instead she found herself sitting in her parking spot in front of his townhouse staring down his front door feeling as if she was stuck in the nightmare where she missed the entire semester of a class and had to show up for the final completely unprepared.
Once she had forced herself to open the door and go inside, her nerves only got worse. She had paced restlessly waiting for him to arrive, then perched awkwardly on the edge of the couch when she heard his key in lock, only to pop up guiltily when he walked in. If he noticed her demeanor, and she had to imagine he did, he didn't say a word. He had just smiled and greeted her warmly and called her dear and told her to come with him to the kitchen and see what he got for dinner.
She had brought him a key to her apartment the next day, though he hadn't had the chance to use it yet.
Sara surveyed her apartment, tidy but looking a little neglected after three days. She adjusted the thermostat to get the air flowing, and then watered her plants and turned on some music before retrieving the pita sandwich she'd purchased on the way home and eating it standing at the kitchen counter.
When she was finished, she tossed the trash and turned to the fridge for a drink, stopping when she spotted a trio of bananas in the otherwise empty fruit bowl. They were way past their prime, skin more brown than yellow, and Sara wrinkled her nose. She reached for them automatically, intending to throw them in the garbage. But before she could toss them, she reconsidered. Breakfast breads and muffins were one of Gil's favorite little indulgences, and he often brought home treats from the bakery at the grocery store or from the coffee shop they frequented. A quick search on the computer yielded a banana bread recipe purporting to be the "world's best" that miraculously required only ingredients Sara had stocked in her meager kitchen.
She followed the recipe to the letter, pouring the batter into a greased loaf pan that had been sitting unused in her cabinet for years.
She tidied up while the bread baked, first washing up the dishes and utensils she had used to make the bread, and then cleaning out the fridge and wiping down the counters. By the time she had finished, the warm, sweet smell was beginning to permeate the room, and Sara couldn't help but smile.
She was just about to move to the living room where she could wait for Grissom to arrive, when she heard a key in the door. Her heart leapt at the sound, and she froze in place waiting for him.
The door swung open and then closed, and she watched him survey the room quickly, his eyes softening when they landed on her.
"Hi," she said with a smile. "How was your meeting?"
"Fine. I talked to Brass. He said-" He broke off abruptly, head cocking to the side in confusion. "Are you…baking?"
His confusion was innocent. She was certain he had never seen her turn on the oven in all the time they had known each other. But something about the question made her instantly defensive. Suddenly she wanted desperately to be the kind of woman whose boyfriend was not surprised to come home and find his favorite treat baking in the oven.
"I can bake," she said testily. "It's just banana bread. It's not rocket science."
Grissom burst out laughing, a response she was wholly unprepared for. Her angry facade slipped for just a second, and she felt tears prick at her eyes. She felt like an idiot, trying to do something sweet for him and instead just drawing attention to her own deficiencies.
"I'm not laughing at you," he said immediately, approaching her quickly, his face contrite. "It's just…I wouldn't be at all surprised if I came home and found you doing actual rocket science."
The corners of his mouth quirked up in a crooked smile, and she couldn't help but huff out a reluctant laugh at the truth in his statement.
"I'm sure you can bake. You just usually don't. I was surprised." He reached for her, rubbing his hands down her arms, and the residual shards of her anger melted away.
"The bananas were too ripe to eat, but perfect for banana bread," she said softly. "I know how much you like banana bread."
He nodded slowly, his eyes gentle and appreciative. "I do. Thank you."
She leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder and inhaling his familiar smell as he rubbed her back. For a moment she felt so utterly content that she thought she would fall asleep right there in his arms.
Finally he stepped back and nodded toward his bag by the front door. "Let me go get settled and then we'll check out this banana bread of yours."
She smiled, and he gave her a little wink that made her heart flutter before turning and retrieving his bag. He disappeared into the bedroom, and she dug through the drawers in search of toothpicks to test whether the bread was cooked through. She came up empty handed, but managed to unearth an unopened package of wooden skewers she must have purchased at some point in a failed bid to do more cooking at home.
By the time Grissom reemerged from the bedroom, the timer had buzzed and she was pulling the bread from the oven. He leaned against the counter and watched as she poked the skewer through the middle and smiled when it came out clean. She set it on the counter to cool and turned off the oven.
Strong hands snaked around her waist, and she grinned as his lips found her neck.
"That looks amazing. You are truly a woman of many talents."
She rolled her eyes, but tilted her head further to the side in invitation.
They stood together quietly for a moment, watching as steam rose from the perfectly browned loaf.
"I think you've been holding out on me," he teased. "This does not look like the banana bread of a woman who never bakes."
She laughed. "Well, I've always been an overachiever."
Eventually, she disentangled herself from his embrace and cut them each a piece of the bread, which they took to the table and ate leisurely.
"It's delicious, darlin'," he said, when she looked to him for his verdict.
"I just found the recipe on the internet," she said. Then she hesitated. She felt so close to him lately, more inclined to share little bits of herself. "But I used to bake a lot. In middle school."
He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, waiting for her to continue.
"I went to live with this family when I was twelve…." She took a steadying breath. "They were my…fifth family? Sixth? After the first family…I was angry. I was acting out a bunch. Defiant. Oppositional, they called it. I went through a bunch of families very quickly."
He reached out and placed his hand over hers, and she flipped her hand over and squeezed his, grateful for his silent support.
"Anyway, Cheryl was different from the other foster moms. She was really experienced. She had a son who was sixteen, and she'd always wanted a big family but she couldn't have any more kids after him. So instead, she fostered. She'd had twenty or so long term placements by the time I came around. She was…not impressed by my antics. She barely reacted other than to tell me it wasn't going to work on her. I was awful to her at first. I fully expected her to give up on me, and I just wanted to get it over with."
"It's hard to imagine you like that," he said softly when she paused.
She barked out a surprised laugh. "Hard to imagine me as a self-destructive, bratty tween with authority issues? Really?"
He chuckled, and shrugged. "I never saw you like that. Even before I knew…I knew you were hurting. I just didn't know why."
Sara nodded. "Cheryl knew too. She knew why, of course. But she saw me acting out as a symptom, not a character flaw. She waited me out. Eventually she won me over. She figured out that part of my problem was that I was bored in school. She fought hard for me. Got me moved up a grade and put in all advanced classes. She took me to the public library and got me my first library card."
That had been such a pivotal point in her young life. Having an adult who saw value in the things that made her special and fought for her.
"She was a real Martha Stewart type," she went on. "She was always in the kitchen. I hated cooking, but she told me baking was a science. Recipes are just formulas. We experimented with cookies and breads, substituting various leavening agents."
"She was speaking your language," Grissom said gently.
She nodded. "Eventually I fell completely in love with her, with that house and that family. Her husband traveled a lot for work, and Josh was a typical teenager, off with his friends or shut up in his room. But there were two little boys too — a sibling set who they had adopted. They were a lot younger than me, and I adored them. And Cheryl kept saying how nice it was to have another girl in the family since she was so outnumbered. We did everything together for a while. Baking. Taking care of the little boys. Doing my homework together at the kitchen table. She made me a special cake for my thirteenth birthday and bought me presents for Christmas. Not just the crappy generic donated stuff we usually got from social services. But good stuff. Thoughtful stuff. I started to think maybe…they might adopt me. I started to hope they might adopt me."
"What happened?" He asked tentatively.
She took a deep breath and shook her head sadly. "I was babysitting the little boys while Cheryl went to pick up Josh from baseball practice. We were playing hide and seek. They were supposed to stay out of Josh's room, but I looked everywhere and realized that was where they must be. They were hiding under the bed. I crawled under there to pull them out, and Benji had this baggie in his hand…."
She saw the moment he understood; the moment he remembered the part of the story she had told him years ago. He tilted his head back and shook his head. "You said he got grounded for a year," he said finally, the question obvious in his voice.
"He did. And he made my life a living hell. He had basically ignored me until then, but after that he made it his mission to make me miserable."
Grissom made a sound of disgust deep in his throat. "It wasn't your fault," he said unnecessarily.
"I know," she said. "And I wasn't a snitch. If it had just been me, I'd have left it. But Benji was just four. He could have put it in his mouth. He could have…. I couldn't just leave it there."
He nodded. "And your foster parents didn't see how he was treating you? They didn't stop it?"
She shrugged. "They saw. They told him to stop. But what were they going to do? Ground him for two years? Eventually they decided the best thing they could do was separate us. And he was their son, so…"
The rest of the sentence hung between them. He was their son, and she was just some kid they fostered for a while.
"After that, I was a lot more realistic about families. I stopped dreaming about being adopted and started focusing on the future. I put all my effort into school. I bounced around a little and…you know the rest."
He nodded slowly, and she could see him digesting this new information.
"I'm sorry, honey," he said finally, and she could see his frustration with himself, at his inability to find more words to say. But really, there was nothing else to be said.
"It was a long time ago," she said with a shrug. "And even though it ended badly, it was a good placement for me. I think…she set me on the right path. I wouldn't have been at that school without her. I wouldn't have had a lot of the academic opportunities I did without her."
She stood and reached for his plate, but he stood and took the dishes from her, setting them back on the table and pulling her in for a hug. "Thank you for telling me about her," he said as he rested his cheek against her hair. "It means a lot to me when you tell me more about the time before I knew you."
She smiled. "I love when you tell me stories about your childhood."
"Do you?" he asked, pulling away to look at her.
She nodded, surprised by his question.
"Sometimes I'm not sure if…" he started, and then stopped awkwardly and tried again. "I didn't know if it would make you sad to hear about my childhood. The good parts, I mean. The stuff you missed out on."
She was already shaking her head before he finished. "No, no, no. I love those stories. I love picturing you as a little boy. I love hearing about happy families. It's good to know it's not all…."
"Ok," he said, smiling sweetly at her and stroking her cheek. "Good to know."
As they tidied up the dishes and agreed to watch the documentary about spelling bees that Sara had recorded on a whim, she found herself drawn to him, resting a hand on his back, brushing the back of her hand against his arm.
From the beginning, years ago, long before they were a couple, they always seemed to inhabit the same space. As they were examining evidence or looking over printouts, she would sense him just over her shoulder, or feel his arm pressed against hers. It had been both exhilarating and maddening then, to have him so close and yet feel so separate from him. Now, she reveled in the freedom to touch him intentionally.
"I want to change before we turn it on," she said, tired of the work clothes she had been wearing for fifteen hours, and ready to slip into something more comfortable so she could curl up on the couch and cuddle with him while they watched the movie.
He nodded and followed her to the bedroom, where she found a small pink gift bag with a silhouette of the Eiffel Tower on it waiting for her beside her pillow. She realized he must have placed it there earlier when he had unpacked and found him smiling bashfully in the doorway. He nodded toward the bed, inviting her to open it, and so she did, withdrawing a bottle of lotion with a French label. It took her only a minute to place it: the fancy lotion their missing woman from a few weeks ago had fallen in love with on her honeymoon.
She turned back to him and smiled.
"He said…it was the best," Grissom said softly, and she heard his message: that she deserved the best; that he wanted her to have the best.
She opened the bottle and squeezed a small amount into her hand, working it into her skin and lifting her hands to her face to smell the delicate clean scent. "It's wonderful," she said, swallowing back the lump in her throat. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," he said, as he closed the gap between them and slid his arms around her waist.
She looked up into his eyes, letting herself revel in the adoration she saw there, and decided the documentary could wait.
