Chapter XVIII

This Is How Rumors Get Started

Sara put her Prius in park, taking one of the last available spots in the lot, and let the hybrid engine idle for a moment. Her stereo, professionally tweaked to her specifications, pumped out a steady stream of head-punching heavy metal, the sort that Greggo loved so dearly. The thrashing of guitars and crashing of drums and cymbals were simply too overwhelming and chaotic to ignore. She didn't particularly relish the sound that could loosely be classified as music, but it kept the nasty thoughts in her head drowned out. The sound also threatened to buckle the metal of nearby cars, but sacrifices had to be made. What was Wendy's Mustang compared to her mental health? Of course, Bobby's truck was on the other side and he would take it personally if his baby had even a scratch on it. It was probably not good for her mental or physical health to upset the lab's resident Gun Guy. She turned the key to 'Off' and pulled it out. The music abruptly stopped and she opened the door to the desert's oppressive heat. She planned to head straight to the lounge for coffee, water, soda, anything to put on her empty stomach and occupy her hands. These were the sort of times she missed smoking.

The lobby was busy when she walked in. That wasn't completely out of the ordinary, it was shift change after all. There was, however, an unusually large group around the reception desk. Eager for the distraction, she paused to see what had captured all the lab-rats' attention.

"That," Wendy narrowed her eyes, "is imported silk. We're talking mega-bucks for a pretty little bow."

Beside her, Archie scoffed, "Bow's nothing - look at the vase, that's not just any lead crystal. We're talking Waterford. I looked into buying something like this for my Mom last Mother's Day. They are insanely high."

Mandi, on Wendy's other side, pushed her glasses up to the bridge of her nose, and leaned forward, "And can we say Vera Wang? Someone is a very lucky lady."

At the back of the group, David Hodges cleared his throat. The balding trace expert couldn't stand to be quiet when everyone else was talking. He put his hand up, "And the piece-de-resistance, ladies and gentleman, two dozen Orchis Kneabenkaut."

Mandi, Archie, Wendy and Judy stared at him and the somewhat neurotic tech ran a finger along the bloom of one of the flowers. "The very rare, very expensive, out of season Anatolian Orchid, imported from the Greece Isles to only three dealers on the West Coast."

The four techs turned to Judy, the Crime Lab's night receptionist and gate keeper. "C'mon," Mandi near whined "just tell us who they're for."

Judy, probably weighing her loyalty for the CSIs against her well-known love for gossip only shrugged, "None of you."

Wendy let out a snort of laughter, "Yeah, none of us are that lucky." She slid her eyes to the right and then the left, "I'm betting they're for Catherine."

Archie hummed, "I don't know, isn't Sara's birthday coming up?" He cut his eyes, in a none too discreet way, to Grissom's office. For her own part, Sara looked at the flowers through the gap in the group of gabbing rat pack.

Twenty four perfect pale pink and pure white blooms on delicate vivid green stems. They were expertly arranged in an outrageously expensive and undeniably lovely crystal vase and topped off with a creamy white silk bow wrapped around the foot of the vase. She didn't have to see the card; she had no doubt in her mind from whom the flowers had come and who they were for.

Alex could work incredibly fast when she was properly motivated.

Sara composed herself as much as she could manage and cleared her throat. "So nice of you to remember, Archie."

All of the techs and Judy instantly adopted innocent looks and tried to appear casual. Sara brushed past them, and looked directly at the flowers sitting on the high counter. "These are for me, Judy?" Though her voice went up at the end of the phrase, it was hardly a question.

Judy mutely nodded and handed her the card. It was heavy and her name was penned on the front in intricate calligraphy. She slipped the single piece of crème paper out of the envelope and read over it quickly. Without saying a word, or even changing her expression, Sara put the note back into the card, folded both of them in half and unceremoniously shoved them into the hip pocket of her dark-washed jeans.

The group silently salivated, waiting for some kind of signal from Sara. She knew they were watching her, waiting like gossip vultures for a juicy piece of information. Since office gossip ranked very, very low on her current list of things to worry about, she decided to give them the show they all so desperately wanted. She put her hands around the vase, above the bow, cupping where it flared out to hold the flowers. The crystal was cool against her fingers and the flowers smelled sweet and exotic. For a moment she closed her eyes, which was a mistake because memories flared in the dark behind her lids. She opened her eyes and set her mouth in a hard line. She turned and dropped the vase, flowers and all, into the trashcan with a heavy thunk. She walked away, pushing past a shocked Mandi, without looking back. "Leave them in the trash."

That was how the rumor that Sara Sidle had dumped Gil Grissom started at the Las Vegas Crime Lab.

Sara went straight to her locker, coffee long forgotten. She put in her combination, 3-15-61, with shaking fingers and jerked the lock off the latch to get into her things. She grabbed the jumbo sized bottle of chalky antacid tables and chewed up four at one time. She winced at the awful taste and tried to will them to work faster. Sara banged her head against the metal door beside her own locker and the sound of flesh on metal echoed dully through the small space. As if her life wasn't complicated enough, she now had Alex working damn hard to catch her attention. The grinding, scalding pain in her throat told Sara that the other woman was succeeding.

This had been how it had all started in the first place. Sweet, silly little gestures that had made it impossible for Sara to ignore her. Of course, back then, things hadn't been quite so complicated and Alex hadn't had so much money to throw around. She had always, Sara grudgingly had to admit, had style though.

May 1995

San Fransisco, California

Sara pushed a strand of hair, that refused to conform to gel or mousse, out of her face and carefully stowed her department issue Glock in her locker. She had already signed off on her case evidence and was done for the day. Of course, her case was only an aggravated robbery. It was the usual CSI I bottom rung casework that she caught day in and day out. It was, however, more satisfying then morgue work. Keeping that and the fact that she had a date over the impending weekend in mind, she signed out for the day. She was halfway down the main brick and tile corridor of the Forensics Wing of the San Francisco Hall of Justice, more widely and pejoratively called Geek Central, when a booming baritone voice yelled out her name. She rolled her eyes and backpack slung over one shoulder, she leaned into the nearest office.

It didn't particularly look like a Forensic Scientist's Office, and it certainly didn't look like it belonged to the Head CSI and number two man on the wing. The office was a chaotic train-wreck of colors and odd-ends that didn't seem to fit into any one slot. It was a good environment for her boss.

Her direct supervisor switched his attention from the cartoon on the television and frowned, "Don't you ever answer you pages, Sara?"

Dressed way down in old tattered blue jeans and an even older black tee shirt, Riley Bates did not look like he belonged on the right side of the law. His blonde hair was shot through with silver, but it was still long enough to pull back into a pony tail that tickled his shoulder blades and his big brown eyes had laughter in them. Whether the laughter was spawned from yelling at her or whatever Saturday Morning Rerun he was watching, Sara didn't know. What she did know was behind his Woodstock Reject appearance was one of the keenest scientific minds she'd ever known and that was saying a lot.

"You've got a package up front, Kid. Did you order another crash dummy without my okay?"

Sara leaned against the doorway, "No, not this week at least."

Bates picked back up whatever file he'd been glancing over before he'd called her into his office. "Well go and get whatever it is before the desk Sergeant pees his pants, huh."

Sara chuckled, nodded and readjusted her bag full of clothes that desperately needed laundering before setting back out for the lobby.

Her mouth dropped open and she felt her eyes widened when she hit the highly polished floor of the Hall's lobby. The only thing sitting on the Sergeant's desk was a bouquet of flowers. No, scratch that, it wasn't just any bouquet of flowers. The lilies were a gorgeous new hybrid that had been bred upstate and the vase was, if she wasn't mistaken, hand-blown artisan glass. The Desk Sergeant grinned at her and handed her the card with a smile. "Somebody's got a hot date tonight, huh."

She tugged the obviously read and replaced card out of the crumpled envelope and couldn't help but smile at the looped handwriting-

Let me buy you dinner to show you how grateful I am for all you've done for me. No Arguments, Miss Super CSI.

That first time she'd forgotten about her calm evening full of laundry and had gone to dinner with a somewhat dopey grin on her face. She had also, Sara scowled at the memory, woke up in Alex's bed that next morning. The woman certainly had her ways. She was clever and mysterious. That card, like the one currently in her back pocket, had been unsigned. Alex's style had always been the only signature she'd needed, and for some reason, Sara had found that attractive at one time.

At one time, in the past tense. Sara closed her locker door with a resounding bang. This time she was older, wiser and was not going to play Alex's games. She wasn't going to go gooey over some stupid flowers, or a cocoon on a twig for that matter. She was Sara Sidle, CSI and adult, damn it! Sara walked out of the locker room with a set face, a purpose to her stride and her cell phone out and in her hand. She had work to do and a case to help solve.

Catherine stood in the doorway of the aquarium like layout room, and when Sara turned she immediately took in the hard as stone expression on the other woman's face. That look wasn't one she liked to see this early in the night.

"There you are, great, you can catch me up on the Marsh case." She had, and Sara congratulated herself on the accomplishment, left Catherine's system and layout alone. The seemingly random stacks of papers and photos didn't make much sense to Sara, but they would to Catherine. Sara knew from experience that their two arrangement systems worked very differently and, had she touched anything, she would have put it back in the wrong place out of simple habit. She knew better.

Catherine, voice frigid, handed her a sheaf of papers. "The blood work from Green and Finnigan came back, Wendy flagged it for you."

Sara's brow shot up without her conscious command to do so and it lowered in relief when she read over the papers. It was all negative. Though she would go through the standard battery and schedule of tests just to be safe, it was relief to know that she was in the clear. It was one less very deadly thing to worry about.

Her relief and the momentary calm resulting from it was shattered by Catherine. "You didn't tell me you had an accident down in the morgue."

Sara recognized the other woman's tone. Her problems were just piling up today. On top of everything else, Catherine was gearing up for a fight. Sara did some quick mental calculation. It was time for one of their blow-the-roof-off blowouts, give or take a phase of the moon. Now she wished she had gone through and rearranged the photos and evidence reports herself instead of respecting Catherine's system. If they were going to fight and hiss at eachother, she might as well start sooner then later. Then again, that would have been waving the scarlet red flag in front of the raging bull and Sara had gone and forgotten her matador's hat and sword at home.

She sighed and prepared for whatever was about to fly her way. "Doc Robbins said he'd take care of it. We hadn't identified the device yet and my finger slipped. I didn't need stitches, but we were worried about contamination so we had all the blood tested along with mine. Wendy rushed it for me." It wasn't the first time someone had used the lab facilities under the table, off the books and for their own personal reasons. Sara wisley kept that particular thought to herself.

Catherine nodded stiffly and Sara knew that while the other woman was somewhat satisfied with her explanation, she still had something to say. In essence Sara had won the battle but was probably about to lose the war. "Would you like to explain what the hell happened this afternoon?"

She'd known that this was coming and Sara had spent all day thinking about her answer. "Not particularly."

She watched Catherine's scowl deepen and felt a sharp pain claw up her throat. She ignored both phenomenon. "I am you supervisor, Sara. You owe me an explanation."

Sara's head snapped up out of pure defiance, "It was personal, Catherine, drop it. You owe me that."

It might have degraded into a brawl, all they needed was a vat of Jello, but as fate would have it, Greg poked his head into the room. For a moment Sara and Catherine didn't respond to the younger CSI. They didn't even acknowledge his presence. They were caught in each other's glare. After a very awkward moment, Greg caught their attention by clearing his throat. "Hey, we have another scene, Sofia and Brass are calling us in specifically and you know what that means." Catherine hissed a curse through her teeth and Sara dragged her hand down her face.

There had been another murder.