"What bugs you most?"
A CSI fan-fic story, started May 2003; WIP (and somewhat AU).
The usual disclaimers: none of the CBS or CSI characters belong to me, and I make no money doing this kind of thing. I am not affiliated with CBS or CSI in any way.
Spoilers: this is set sometime between Seasons 4 and 5 (so lots of water under the bridge since I started this fic). Greg Sanders is still in the lab.
Rating: T for adult themes and language in later chapters.
Pairings: Jim/Catherine; Bobby/OFC.
Chapter 15/??
"Progress?"
Later that shift, Detective Sergeant Ray O'Riley sat in Interview room 2 with their suspect, who had been identified as Francis Anthony Scalisi, Staff Sergeant, USAF. Thus far, he had refused to speak beyond name-rank-and-serial-number but O'Riley could be as patient as death when he wanted to; he'd had plenty of practice. Ray read from a file folder on the table in front of him; two uniformed officers stood grimly behind the bandaged Scalisi. Their disdainful looks plainly told him what they thought of his kind.
"This isn't a good night for you, Francis. Killed a cop; killed a civilian; and, got your ass completely whipped by an unarmed woman 'cause you put her boss in the ER," O'Riley began, speaking softly and hoping to provoke any kind of reaction from the young man. "I wouldn't let that get around the barracks if I was you, and there was a boat-load of eyewitnesses. Know what I'm sayin', Francis?"
"It's Frank, Buzz. I go by Frank," he said sarcastically, finally speaking. He had rolled up the sleeves of his orange LVMPD jail jumpsuit to show tattooed biceps.
"Whatever you say, Francis," O'Riley replied, shrugging and making a note in the folder. "I can't say I'm real impressed with what the Air Force has been teaching you. So what were you doing out at Painted Desert? House-hunting?"
"Yeah, house-hunting is exactly right." He was working hard to keep up his tough-guy façade.
"At ten o'clock at night and the house is dripping red-bug shit down the walls? What you think, I'm stupid or something?"
Scalisi smirked. "You said it, not me."
"Make it easy on yourself, Francis. We've already got you for two homicides, one assault and a whole bunch of other charges I ain't even thought about yet. Cough it up and maybe Nevada will only execute your sorry ass once. There's no way a moron like you could be workin' alone."
"I've got nothin' to say, Sergeant O'Riley," Scalisi told him, making a show of clamping his lips tightly shut.
"What is it, your balls starting to feel better? Maybe I'll get the Doc down here to kick 'em clear out of your busted up nose," O'Riley said, sneering a little. "I know some guys in the PD who'd pay to see that, Francis. We could charge admission to cover the free beer."
"You and her have a thing going back in the Army or something?"
O'Riley laughed, genuinely amused at this idiot. "Nah. I was in the Marines, and the Doc was in the Girl Scouts. Amazing what merit badges they work on these days, huh? Besides, no way a woman like that would give a dog-face like me the time of day." The big sergeant Detective chuckled sardonically, shaking his head when he noticed that "Francis" was starting to look nervous for some reason.
"I want a JAG lawyer," Scalisi finally demanded; his resolve was beginning to show cracks around the edges. O'Riley figured it was a good time to let the guy marinate for a while anyway.
"No problem, shit-bird. One from Nellis will be here at 1300. Maybe you'll live that long." O'Riley stood and nodded at the two officers to escort Scalisi back to his cell. They had placed him in a single "room" with an officer on suicide watch, taking no chances.
After the suspect had gone, the burly former-Marine stepped into the adjacent observation room where Brass, Willows and Brown had been watching through the one-way mirror.
"Laying it on kinda thick, Ray," Brass told him blandly. "Did you get tape?"
O'Riley took a mini-recorder from his coat pocket and clicked it on. Nothing happened. "Oh, damn. Look at that; dead batteries again. Sorry, Captain."
Brass gave him a significant look while Willows and Brown stifled chuckles. "We'll interview Mr. Scalisi in the presence of his JAG lawyer," Jim said, clearing his throat but satisfied with their progress at the moment. "For now, he's just been processed, fingerprinted and identified, capisce?"
Ray nodded and handed over the file to Jim. Catherine already had Dawson's ballistics report on the rounds Doc Robbins had removed from both Officer Shepherd and Matthew Merrifield. They were perfect matches of course, corroborating what all of the eyewitnesses had reported.
Warrick, who had processed Mickey's bloodstained clothes and crime scene gloves, added his photographs to the evidence jacket as the four continued their impromptu conference on the case. "Did Dr. Mickey really put a hurtin' on this guy? That nose is all out of whack."
Brass cleared his throat again, but it was O'Riley who answered: "Yep, big time; you shoulda seen it, 'Rick…bam, bam, whack! I really thought she was gonna put a cap in him too, with his own nine-mil." He did nothing to conceal his admiration of her quick actions in the field. "The stupid fu…. Sorry, Catherine."
"Ray, I couldn't have said it better myself." Willows patted his arm fondly and smiled away his slip of the tongue; she'd always suspected he was retired something military. The U.S. Marine Corps just made sense from what she knew about Detective Sergeant Ray O'Riley: he was faster and smarter than he looked, and underestimated by a good many suspects, much to their regret.
"Let's take it easy, people, and be glad it was a fast collar. It's a good thing she didn't shoot him, for Christ's sake," said Jim mildly, not saying out loud what all four of them were thinking. "I haven't reported the incident to Sheriff Mobley yet, and I'm not exactly looking forward to that conversation. Anybody hear from Nick and Sara about Grissom?"
Catherine sighed and nodded, smiling. "They ought to be back any minute now. Gil's going to be fine; the doctor wants to keep him twenty-four hours for observation, probably under restraint."
They all laughed softly at the thought, knowing that Grissom would be chomping at the bit to get back into his lab and back to his experiments; a certain gallows humor seemed to help them with the deeper and more painful emotions they often experienced…one of their own had been killed in the line of duty, and another pair injured.
Warrick stood and stretched, his lanky form well over six feet. "Where is Mickey, anyway?"
"Bug lab. She said something about processing the samples from Painted Desert, ASAP," Catherine replied in her role as acting CSI-supervisor until Gil returned. "I'll speak to her about the one-day administrative leave later. I have a feeling I already know how she's going to react to that news."
Jim took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. He gave Catherine a nod that spoke volumes. "Then I guess I'll be down in the bug lab," said Brass. "Page me if you get anything new." The two detectives and the pair of CSIs parted, each heading off to work on his or her segment of the investigation.
It was a short walk down the hall and through the maze of labs, but Jim soon was making his way into the recently named "bug lab". He saw Mickey and her assistant, Janet, concentrating on their samples, each at their own workbench. Neither had heard him come in, or so he thought.
"Hey, Mickey. How you doin', kid?" he called out quietly, not wanting to startle her as she worked inoculating Petri plates full of a light beige solid (general purpose agar). She had changed into light gray autopsy scrubs since her bloodstained clothing had been taken into evidence; a lab notebook lay propped open to her right.
"Hey, Uncle Jim," she replied, not looking up, but paying attention to the burner flame on her workstation. "Gimme a second to finish these." Mickey's glasses had eased down the bridge of her nose, but she ignored that at the moment.
"No rush. I've never seen a bug doctor at work like this before," joked Brass. He noted her intense concentration with a sense of pride, knowing full well that she was even more motivated to dig into this particular case.
Mickey snickered quietly at him, and he was glad to hear it. The death of her friend, Officer Lloyd Shepherd, had hit her harder than he thought. As Jim stood quietly by and out of the way, he observed her inoculating agar plates with the bacterial samples that had been collected earlier that evening. To his eyes, she moved almost instinctively, and he guessed that this was from years of experience in microbiology lab techniques. When the stack of plates in the plastic rack reached the top, she turned off the burner and sprayed disinfectant solution on the work surface.
"I just came down to see if you wanted to get coffee and bring me up to speed on your Serratia samples," he said, carefully pronouncing the genus name he'd learned, watching as she left the stack of plates in the incubator (and Brass only knew what it was because of the printed label on it), then headed to the sink to wash her hands.
"Yeah, decaf tea for me please…that sounds like a good idea," she replied at once, checking her watch. It was just after four in the morning. "I'll leave these swabs with Greg on the way."
TBC