Chapter LIV

Film Noir Goodbye

The case was being handed over to the Federal Authorities. For Jim and Sofia that meant paperwork and lots of it. A transfer at the crimelab, however, was much more work. There was a physical transfer of notes, sketches, photos, video, personel logs, test readouts and results, autopsy video, notes and reports and of course there was the physical evidence. Four dead men, one dead woman, one mutilated survivor, that's all the FBI wanted from Las Vegas. Grissom knew what the FBI wanted because he had already been in contact with one of the Supervisory Special Agents in the Behavioral Analysis Unit. The Justice Department felt that the profilers had the best chance of understanding, tracking and arresting Victoria Blake.

There was more to the case then just simply a handful of people. Families had been torn apart, people's lives changed so radically that only their DNA would be recognizable. This case has dragged on and on, each twist and revelation had been more disturbing then the last. He had been an investigator for more years then he'd like to count and every single year there were more rapes, more murders. Every year the criminals got more devious, more bloodthirsty and more, just more. Then as if wading through death and sorting through the debris of despair wasn't bad enough, the press had to give it their own spin. The macbre truth didn't require spin. It didn't need any extra drama added to it. Blood, sex and scandal sold papers, and all of that was cheap and plentiful in Vegas. So plentiful that it had spilled into his life.

He checked the contents of each of the evidence cartons against the list. He signed off on each item and prepared the master list for transfer to the federal labs. His hands moved with the ease of habit and practice, but his thoughts were far from the blood-soaked motel bed sheets that had been bagged and tagged days before.

He'd been on a rollercoaster, one made of events, emotions and stress instead of steel or wood. Had he known that the pretty girl with the ponytail at his lecture so long ago would become such an important part of his life, he might have never spoke to her. No, he sighed and took off his glasses, that was going a bit far. Sara had been apart of his life, in various roles and degrees of importance for years and he didn't regret that. It was just, he searched for an appropriate word, hard. It was hard to stand by and watch her pull away from him. It was even harder to acknowledge that the things she had said, yelled, at him were true. He had treated her diffrintly. It was impossible to remember exactly when he had started. Maybe he had done so from the day she had arrived in Vegas. She had come to Vegas at his request and had stayed, also at his request. He had wanted her to stay. He had put his request in the form of a job offer, and she had happily accepted it.

It was funny, he mused as he taped up the evidence carton, he had never wondered what had motivated her to jump up and leave her hometown for Las Vegas. He had, at first, believed that the job had been too good for her to pass up. The lab was number two in the country, afterall. Then again, San Fransisco's facilities were nothing to sneeze at. Later on, he'd decided that she'd come for him. She had made statements to that effect several times and he'd never had a reason to doubt it. He'd never doubted it until now. It was hard to ignore evidence, especially when it was in your face and all around. Sara hadn't come to Vegas for him. She had left Frisco to get away from her.

He signed his initials, two plain and precise Gs, on the box's seal and started on the second box. There were so many pieces of the case to sort through and consider. Nothing was simple anymore.

He looked at the evidence bag that was next. It was the chain that Kera Heine had kept her trophies on. The rings looked dull and lifeless under the fluorescent lighting.

He couldn't point to a day on the calendar and say that was where things had started to destabilize and disentigrate. He'd been on a gradual slide towards exhaustion for a long time. If he had to pick a time where things really started to get out of hand, it would have to be the morning he had walked into Izzy Delancy's kitchen.

He put the bagged and tagged jewelry into the box and checked it off the list. He didn't need to dwell on it. He had, to use the vernacular, dumped Sara. He had spent months telling himself that it was for her their own good. Kera Hiene had spent months convincing herself that the answer to rape was mutilating and killing men. They had both deluded themselves.

The diffrince between them was obvious, though. Heine had been driven by hate and had mixed lust and blood into a concoction that was both bitter and heinous. She had run wild through the city, leaving death in her wake.

He had been playing with feelings, emotions, and souls, not lives. He'd been toying around with romance and love like he had his first chemistry set. In the end they would both have to face down their just deserts. Heine would have her day in court and serve her time in jail. He would-

David Hodges came around the corner of the table and into his line of vision from seemingly nowhere. Startled, Grissom fumbled the pen in his hand and dropped the sheaf of photographs he'd been arranging. Both hit the back-lit layout table with a whispy clatter. The ball point pen bounced and rolled off the table and into the floor, the photos spread across the table helter skelter. Dead bodies, blood, human beings turned to grusome puzzle pieces. They had pieced together the entire puzzle this time, but it didn't make sense, he didn't know why he had thought it would.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you-"

He did it without thinking, he read the other man's lips and relied on what that told him just as much, if not more, then what he heard him saying. The immediate message was more visual then auditory, par for the course when one battled reoccurring hearing loss.

"What do you want, Dave?"

His voice was calm and even, but that too was unremarkable, expected and normal even. He started collecting and reorganizing the crime scene photos without missing a beat.

The trace-annalysis expert fiddled with his collar, "I-" He held out his hand to indicate the rest of the lab, "We just wanted to see if you are okay."

On the one hand it was kind of him to ask. On the other, Grissom doubted that the various lab techs had made a committee and voted Hodges their spokesman.

"I-"

Grissom put the newly-organized pictures in a plain brown accordion file folder. How was he doing?

"I'll be okay, Dave, thank you for asking."

He would be okay, eventually. He would talk to Sara in a week or so, after Alexandra Dupree had left. They would be able to fix things. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but someday they would be okay again. There was a certain comfort in that idea.

"Help me finish boxing this up." He motioned the other man over, "And you can tell me about those thought excercises you've been talking about."

"This is nothing like Casa Blanca."

Alex Dupree squinted and looked around the remote tarmac in dismay, then back at her companion. Sahara was dressed in a black tee-shirt and had sunglasses on. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking. Alex, on the other hand, couldn't find her Dolce & Gabanna shades, not that it mattered now. In a few minutes she had to get on the waiting Lear Jet. She was getting out of Vegas and going to only God and the Feds knew.

Sara gave her a sidelong glance, "Well, we're no Rick and Ilsa."

Alex smirked, "Oh, I don't know, we'll always have Paris."

That brought a small smile to Sara's far too serious face.

The two women were at a way-out-of-the-way airstrip somewhere around the vicinity of the middle of nowhere. The press was all over McCarran and after Blake's escape, everyone wanted to avoid more exposure. Sara and Alex were standing together in a slim shadow beside the cavernous steel and aluminum hanger, half-heartedly talking. The sun was setting in the west and if either of the women had bothered to pay attention to it, they would have said it was beautiful. The fading golds, glowing oranges, dreamy pinks and the burning red painted over the sky's thousand shades of blue until it blurred and blended to indigo and black at the edge of the eastern skyline. The desert around them was slowing coming out of its daytime slumber; it was revealing its wonders of the night. The women couldn't care less. It had been a long and trying day and they were ending the same way they had began it, together. It was an awkward sort of together, one that didn't sit quite comfortably anymore.

"For what it's worth, Sahara, I am sorry." She paused and looked off at the desert in the distance, and added, "For everything."

There was plenty of everything that lay between them.

Sara sighed and pushed her glasses tighter to the bridge of her nose, "Everything wasn't your fault. I know I'm not the easiest person to live with."

"That's for damn sure."

Both women started to laugh and Alex leaned against the metal skin of the hanger.

"I heard from a little bird that you've been suspended."

Sara propped her boot-covered foot against the hanger and crossed her arms over her chest, "Yeah."

Alex matched her pose, "I'm betting that was probably at least a little bit my part."

Sara's mouth twisted as if she was swallowing words. After a moment she pushed one hand through her hair and adjusted her sunglasses with the other. "It would have probably happened eventually with or without your help. It's been a rough couple of years."

Alex let out a sigh, "Have you thought about going home? I never changed the locks, and I don't think I'll be barging in anytime soon. Just a mini-vacation. You could go see the old crowd."

Sara only got a few syllables out before Alex continued.

"Or you could take a trip out to the farm. Get some of that fresh air you love so much and spend some time spoiling my brothers's children. They've grown so much since you saw them last."

She turned ninety degrees to face Sara and for extra emphasis, took the other woman's sunglasses off her face. "Don't say no just yet. Go to my place, go to see the family. Go somewhere, anywhere but here. This place isn't good for you."

They were less then a foot apart, staring each other down. It was just like old times.

"Alex." Sara closed her eyes for a moment, as though she wasn't exactly sure she wanted to be there, "For better or worse, Las Vegas is home now."

The blonde model reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind Sara's ear. Her hand lingered on Sara's cheek. "I'm just worried that's all, Sahara. I know you can take care of yourself just fine, but I want you to know that no matter where I am, I can be back here anytime you need me.

Sara reached up and covered Alex's hand with her own and for a moment they were quiet.

Sara took the other woman's hand off of her cheek, but didn't quite let it go. "I'm really going to miss you."

Alex pulled her into a hug, "It's been great seeing you again."

"Ahem."

Sara looked over Alex's shoulder to see a somewhat uncomfortable, impatiently waiting Marshall Shannon.

"We have to go."

Alex let out a loud, melodramatic sigh, "Okay, okay, fine." She didn't move an inch.

"You take care of yourself, Sahara Sun. No heroics, obsessions or brooding, you hear me. Leave that stuff to people who have capes and powers, okay?"

Sara leaned closer, "Only if you behave, Lexa. Listen to the Marshalls and the attorneys and don't cause problems."

Alex closed the gap and leaned her forehead against Sara's. "I guess this is it."

Sara smiled a little, "I guess."

"One more for the road, then."

Before Sara could fully process what the other woman said, Alex kissed her.

No matter how long or far apart they were, Alex's kisses would still floor her. This one was different though, it was a bittersweet goodbye kiss. It was the kiss they hadn't shared the first time Sara had left. It was sweet and almost chaste, like a first kiss but more finite and just a little bit sad. Sara broke the kiss and felt something akin to reluctance. Groping for something close to normal, she slid her sunglasses back onto her face, "Goodbye Lexa."

Alex smiled at her and pushed a stubborn curl behind her ear, "Goodbye, Sahara. Take care of yourself and give the Detective a chance, she's a keeper."

She stood, slightly slack jawed Alex sauntered along side the scandalized Federal Marshall who was supposed to be protecting her. Sara stood and watched all the Feds board the plane, like ants running into a hill. No one said anything to her and when the stairs were folded up and the door closed, Sara knew it was over, but stayed to watch anyway. She covered her ears and watched the plane take off from the safety of the hanger. She stood there watching the sky until the plane, and Alex, disappear into the wild blue yonder.

"Now what?"

Sara pushed off of the wall and walked towards the parking lot. She was talking to herself, again, and didn't expect an answer.

She went around the fence and into the parking lot, still questioning herself: What she had been thinking, where were they taking Alex, what the hell was she going to do with herself for the next two months.

"Well," The voice, while expected, still startled her. "We can start by getting a beer, Skippy."

She opened the glowing orange car door and slid into the muscle car. She relished the feeling of cool leather against her skin. Her companion followed suit and opened the door he had been just been leaning against. The driver grinned at her and tucked his shaggy hair under his backwards baseball cap. "It's not like you have to go to work tonight or anything."

Sara closed, slammed, the car door and leaned back against the custom upholstery. She would lay her seat back the safety-seat in back wouldn't let her. "Rain check, man, I think I just want to go home today, okay."

The driver chuckled, "She always does that to you."

Sara glared at him, "Just drive, Mr. Observation."

He started the car with a roar of six cylinders, "You sure about that beer? I mean you just said goodbye to the hottest woman either of us could ever hope to sleep with."

Sara watched him smoothly shift into first, "Is that your twisted and perverted way of asking me if I'm okay?"

He smiled, "Is now a good time to mention that you're the best and I love you to death, Skittles?"

Sara smiled and closed her eyes behind her sunglasses, "Yeah, I know, but it's nice to be reminded every once and a while."

Author's Note: No that is not Greg. That is all.