Chapter X

Back to School

The lounge was in its usual state of what Sara thought of as professional chaos. The television was on, tuned to the late night news. The night and weekend woman that Sara vaguely recognized as someone who had shoved a microphone in her face on more than one occasion was silently reviewing the events of the hot desert day. Sluggish closed-captioning was tapered across the bottom of the screen, but no one read it. The fluff-filled Saturday edition of the Las Vegas Sun had been cannibalized of its sports page, comics, sales papers, and editorials. The recipe section was holding someone's place in the current issue of the The Scientific Journal of Forensics, and what was left was hanging, half on and half off the catch-all coffee table just waiting to be swept onto the floor.

Nick and Greg were in heated competition, duking it out on the latest NCAA Football game for the not so secret Playstation2 hooked up to the room's second television. Warrick was sitting on the counter reading over a thick file of reports for whatever case he was working. Catherine and Grissom weren't there yet, which Sara accredited to the return of her good fortune. Since the couch was completely taken up by the children and their game, Sara took a seat at the table, her back to the wall so she could see the rest of the room over the top of the folder while she re-read the autopsy and tox reports.

The case was, she mused, going nowhere. There was no perp to catch, no case to prep for eventual trial. It was a grisly open and shut case. She would be able to type up the report tonight and move on to whatever came next. And yet.

Despite it being a slight tangent, the device still had most of her attention. She had never seen anything like it; she had never seen or heard anything that would lead even her darkest thoughts close to the idea of it. She furrowed her brow as she read back over the listed injuries to Finnegan's penis. She still couldn't pan it out in her mind. The woman couldn't have known she was going to be raped, and there was no way that it had been some kind of thrill sex. Something just wasn't sitting right. She ran it through her mind one more time. Young girl: smart, pretty, local, goes walking down the streets and just happens to end up near The Playground? It didn't jive. You had to be living under a pretty dense rock not to know that the area was dangerous. Add it to the fact that gossip around campus had probably put everything from rape gangs to ghosts raised by satanic cults in the Playground at night. Sara couldn't fathom any reason why Erica Green would have been anywhere near the area. She didn't turn tricks and there were far safer places to score drugs. Sara doubted Erica would have even needed to leave the dorm for that. It was a safe assumption that she hadn't planned on being raped, so why had Erica Green had razors in her vaginal cavity?

Sara had no clue. She was missing something. Something that would tie the case up with a neat little bow. The Resident Assistants at Erica Green's dorm had reported that the girl's three roommates would be back from their Basketball tournament that night, maybe they would be able to shed some light on the elusive something.

Her musings were abruptly cut off when a manicured hand jerked the folder down so it lay flat on the table. It was inexcusably rude and highly unprofessional. For those who knew the harsher side of Catherine Willow's temper, it was also a challenge. Sara fought to keep her face passive, even as her temper skyrocketed. In the darker recesses of her mind, Sara saw herself leaping to her feet and punching Catherine in the face. She could all but hear the solid, sickening sound of the hit. Medically speaking it was best to take a punch on the forehead, the bone protecting the frontal lobe was dense, 2.94 millimeters, and when the head snapped back, the neck and shoulders took much of the momentum. In Sara's mind, she always struck the other woman in the jaw, the right side. Her head would fly to the left, causing the other woman's brain to be rattled, and blood would spatter against the nearby window into the hallway. If a single blow was landed just right, it could blacken the eye, swell the nose, and bust the lip.

Those sorts of thoughts frightened Sara more than a hundred days in the desert and a hundred nights under the car. What scared her more was the fact that when she replayed it in her head, it made her smirk. The little smirk turned to a frown and she folded the anger and pushed it down.

When she looked Catherine in the eye, Sara felt confident that her face was blank and she only blinked, "I'm sorry, Catherine, did you say something?"

The question had been genuine; Sara hadn't noticed Catherine's arrival and certainly hadn't heard what, if anything, she'd said.

Catherine's eyebrows winged up, a warning sign, "Would you like to join the rest of us, Sara or have you already gone ahead and solved yours and Greg's case?"

Sara hadn't found time to update Greg on everything yet. He knew about the device, of course, she wouldn't have left him out of the loop on something that important. She had been so busy analyzing what she'd just been given that she hadn't thought to tell him the newest discoveries.

She felt a hot rush of guilt and swallowed to hold the acidic bile down in her gullet. "No, I just got this on my way to the lounge; Doc just sent it to me." That was mostly true and Sara gave Greg a little grin, and gestured for him to reach out and get the file. "It's actually turning into a pretty interesting case."

Despite the fact that Greg was on his feet, only a step away, Catherine intercepted the file. This time Sara did let her face to harden. That had been uncalled for, since last time she'd checked, Greg hadn't done anything to piss Catherine off.

The blonde supervisor skimmed over the reports, "Double, one killed the other, right?"

Greg nodded, "It was a pretty bloody scene."

Catherine closed the folder, "Well it looks pretty open and shut, Sara can wrap it up herself. Greg I need you out at a Suspicious Circs tonight."

Now that was going way too far. She and Catherine fought on a pretty regular basis, but they didn't drag others into it, not directly at least. Sara stood up and braced her hands on the table, palms flat. "What happened to you go under the tape, you go all the way? There are lose ends and the girl's next of kin hasn't even been found yet."

Catherine leaned her palms on the table, mirroring Sara's position from across the table. Had they been any closer, their noses would have come close to touching. "You don't need Greg to type paperwork and tie up loose ends. The case is closed, Sara, I want you free and clear to start a new case tomorrow night if not sooner, do I make myself clear?"

Furtively -- Sara didn't knew if it was out of habit or desperation -- she looked at Grissom. She noticed that Greg, too, was looking at him.

Grissom held up his hands, one empty, one with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in it, "Catherine is supervisor, what she says goes."

Sara wanted to flinch, that had been harsh. What had been harsher? He wouldn't even meet her eyes. Nick coughed and started going over his and Warrick's case and the attention slowly shifted to the Texan.

Greg shrugged his shoulders, which was Greg for "There's nothing I can do that won't get us both in trouble" The twinkle in his eyes told her that he wouldn't mind a little trouble. She answered him, just as silently, with a roll of her eyes and a small smile that said, "Thanks for the offer, but I can handle this case and Catherine."

Greg grin grew a little wider and he sank his hands in his pockets to jingle the loose change in them. He wanted to hear about his new case, when his back was turned, Sara let her smile settle into the much more natural feeling frown. Her good mood left over from the morning was going down the tubes and fast.

Midnight was early for the late shift, for the whole city really. Most people who would classify themselves as normal were calling it a night. A college campus wasn't a normal part of any town. Driven by caffeine, exuberance, and young adult angst, UNLV never slept. Neither, it seemed, did its co-ed inhabitants. UNLV Place Apartments, apartment-style living on campus, reserved exclusively for upperclassmen, athletes and those willing to pay triple rent, was buzzing as Sara Sidle along with Jim Brass and Sofia Curtis, walked down the halls. Sun-streak blonde, shirtless frat boys carried duffels of Mother-washed, dried, and folded laundry made their way through the halls and scantily clad young women were leaning against the walls rating the boys as they went by. Several different songs, in at least four different genres of music, rattled the walls from different directions and somewhere, someone was burning something. If Sara's college experience held true, it was probably Ramen Noodles

Jim Brass looked around. He might have been reflecting back on his own college days, or that his daughter had completely eschewed higher education, his face revealed nothing. "Was this how you girls spent your college days?"

Sara chuckled, "Sometimes, but my scholarship didn't pay for places like this. I had a new roommate every single semester, everything from blue blood law students to foreigners in the exchange program. I shared a bathroom with seven other girls for four years."

Sofia nodded, "Ah yes, four feet of space between you and whatever nutcase they paired you up with. Fun times. When I made Varsity I got my own room, which was the motivation for me working my ass off to keep my spot."

They turned the corner and stared down another hallway full of number marked doors and young people.

Jim looked over at the younger detective, "You run track?"

It was a good guess; everyone knew how religious Sofia was about running. The blonde checked her notes and then looked at the numbers they were passing, "Point Guard and we're here." Apartment 263's door was white with black numbers, just like every other door in the seemingly endless hallways and floors that made up the complex.

The door was already wide open and Campus Police was already inside. Three girls, around the same age that Erica had been, were sitting on the couch. They were dressed in matching warm-up suits in UNLV colors and their names were neatly stitched on the left breast of their jackets. Jessica was on the far left, her pale blonde hair had been pulled into a messy French braid, and there were fresh tear tracks on her face. Next to her sat Sheena, a dark skinned woman who looked like she was all legs and arms. On the end was Linda, a brunette whose stone hard face didn't give away anything. Jim leaned closer to Sofia and, though Sara couldn't hear what the Captain was saying, she had a good idea. The three girls would most likely respond better to two women than a man who was old enough to be their father.

Since Sofia, like most everyone on the planet, was better with people than she was, Sara went to the room that Captain McNeely, the man who kept the campus as safe as he could, had pointed out as Erica's. She looked around, taking in everything quickly. The walls were painted utilitarian white and decorated with only smudges of some sort of yellow substance here and there. There was a bed, a desk, a chest of drawers with a television on top of it and a closet. There was a backpack on the floor and a soccer ball in the corner. The window, hidden by blackout curtains, faced the building's inner courtyard.

"Pretty bare, huh?"

Sara turned around to see Linda at the door. "I'm sorry, but you can't be in here right now."

The brunette, a few inches taller than herself, only shrugged. "It wasn't always like this; see the yellow smudges?"

Sara passed her flashlight over the open expanse of wall between the bed and the desk, "Yes."

The brunette ignored the earlier statement and came in to sit on the bed, she drew her legs up under her and looked around at the walls. "She had this big collage; it practically covered the entire wall. Pictures of her folks back home, her friends, her high school pennant, pictures of the team, a poster for Manchester United and the US Women's Soccer Team and, God, everything. There were posters, behind the door there was a Family Guy poster, over the shelves there was this huge dragon poster, she taped up strategies from her playbook, there was no white." The brunette sighed, "Then it just changed, she changed."

Sara looked around, "She took everything down – what -- to start again?"

Linda shook her head, "No, she ripped it all down. It was the day after they were beaten out of the regional tournament. She blew this huge penalty shot. She's the starting goal keeper… I mean she was at least." Linda didn't sniff, she snorted up her tears. "She came home and everything was just different. At first I thought it was the game, she was really serious about soccer, and I mean when I lose, I feel it. This though, it was something, I don't know, worse. She started to hook class, stopped going home for weekend and holidays, stopped going out period -- hid in her room allot. Then she cut her hair." Linda sighed, "She loved her hair, was a prima-donna about it. I should know; we share a bathroom. She stopped dyeing it, stopped primping it, then one day she just hacked it off short."

Sara nodded, "Do you know what happened to cause this sudden change?"

Linda stood, "No, but I do know she was coming out of it. She was going to these meetings down at the student center, getting out and about again. She was smiling again."

McNeely came into the room, his baldhead reflecting the light, "Linda, the detective has a few questions for you."

The brunette nodded and went to the other room. Sara looked around the room one more time, "Hey Mick?" The Captain turned around. "Did Erica Green ever report a rape?" Hoyt McNeely rusty red eyebrows shot up, "What? No. We keep a close watch on all the athletes. I mean after the Duke fiasco and that incident down in Tennessee rape is one of our top priorities. No, Erica never came to me or any of my people about rape." His tone was finite and Sara believed him. She had met Mick back when she'd first come to Vegas. He wasn't just a campus rent-a-cop. He had made his start with the LVPD and would have risen through the ranks with lightning speed if not for the car-wreck that had left him with a bum back. He tipped his LVPD cap to her, "You need anything, Sara, anything, and I'll get it for you. Mick was nothing if not dedicated to the school and his several thousand "kids"

She flashed him a smile, "I think I got it, Mick."

She went through the drawers methodically. She doubted she'd find a how-to book or a manufacturer's note on the device, but there might be something. The drawers had, predictably, clothes in them. There was no rhyme or reason to the placement -- things were just crammed in. The desk drawers were a trifle better. There she found a few flyers and pamphlets. She riffled through them. Most were from clubs around town that hosted 'College Night', some were from on-campus events, and one caught her eye. It wasn't a finite clue, but the instant Sara saw it she felt incredibly dumb.

"Snow"

Author's Note: Ah dorm life, glad that's over for me.