Hope you like anyway!
I'm sorry if some of the facts in my case are wrong or inconsistent with each other, I'm not a criminalist. I just watch a lot of CSI, as any one could probably deduce.
By the way, yes, Sara is still working at the lab in my story. Sorry if you disagree with that, but I really wish Sara hadn't left the show in the first place. So, here she is, immortalized in my story.
Note: thanks to LoAnne, for being my Beta and critic.
Disclaimer: My name still isn't Jerry Bruckheimer or Anthony Zuiker. Therefore, I still own nothing.
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Eyes…OPEN…keep…eyes...OPEN…Hodges forced his eyes open, gathering all his inner Herculean strength. He groaned, rubbed at his eyes for what must have been the 600th time that day (he thought idly about how red his eyes must be) and groped for his coffee.
The CSIs weren't the only ones who had been pulling doubles upon doubles, even though sometimes it was clear that they thought they were. You could hear them in the halls, wandering around like lost puppies, groaning and griping about everything from reports yet to be written up to the weather outside that day. Didn't seem to have any sympathy left over for the lab rats like Hodges who had been working just as hard (more often harder) as them, without whom the CSIs would be out of a job. They just collected their results with hardly a word of praise, and went on feeling sorry for their poor, underpaid, overworked selves. Sometimes it was enough to make a person want to…
"Hey. Got anything back from that evidence from the Tropicana stabbing yet?" Catherine, sounding exhausted, even though it was only 8 30 in the AM, and she had been allowed by her supervisor to go home last night.
"No. Nothing. Call you when I find anything." The migraine threatening to rip his head open prevented him from adding any of his usual sarcastic remarks, or even to create sentences that were more than clipped syllables strung together. The light hurt his eyes, a sheet of paper dropping to the ground hurt his ears, and he thought he might puke if he didn't lie down pretty soon. He wanted nothing more than for Catherine to go away and stop talking (yelling) in his ear. But of course, he wasn't that lucky. Damn CSIs were always so observant.
"You okay? You look like you just finished a 38-hour shift. When was the last time Ecklie let you go home?"
Did he really look that bad? If a CSI was commenting on how he needed to take a break, he must really be in bad shape.
" You mean, when was my last full night's sleep? About 2 days ago." Seeing her look of skepticism, he was forced to elaborate, despite the fact that his throat felt like he had just spent the last 2 days rubbing it with sandpaper instead of running evidence. "We were grossly backlogged, so I tried to catch up on some of that, and then Ecklie came with a boxful of trace from some traffic fatality and I ran that, and I had to pick up some of the other tech's load because at least half of them have gone home with a headache or the flu or something, and now there's this Tropicana stabbing and…"
He realized he was babbling and shut his mouth. She would probably just counter with her own workload anyway, and expect him to pity her.
To his surprise, she nodded and said, " I'll see if I can get Grissom to pass that evidence over to swing shift. Not like we haven't been picking up enough of their slack lately…"
He closed his eyes in pure joy. Maybe he had been a bit harsh in his analysis of CSI behavior…
"You need to keep alert, though, Hodges. Don't screw us over because you can't keep your eyes open." Her tone turned sharp, and with a final "call me when you get something. This is top priority", she turned and Hodges heard her shoes playing staccato on the tiles as she exited his lab.
He tried to roll his eyes, but stopped with his eyes halfway to the ceiling and pressed his hands to his eyes to fight the feeling that the pressure in his head might pop them right out of his head, and silently berated himself for allowing himself to think for a moment that a CSI might actually have enough sympathy to forget for one second about their own problems. He looked at the evidence on his table, and closed his eyes again. Another coffee was sounding really good right about now.
He only wondered if he could drag his body out of the chair it had all but molded to during the last 2 days and make it to the coffee machine.
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Catherine walked down the hallway, toward the break room. She was shaking her head, thinking how self-centered Hodges could be. He had been pulling some appalling shifts lately, true, but he wasn't the only one. She had just finished a couple of back-to-back double shifts herself, but could he drag himself out of his own self-pity for two seconds to realize he might not be the only one with problems at the moment? Nope.
She shook her head and sighed inwardly as she walked into the break room and flopped down on the old sofa that looked as if it had seen better days, probably sometime during the Second World War.
The Lab Techs just didn't understand how easy they had it, sitting in a warm, safe lab all day, letting the machines do their work...
She cut this train of thought off abruptly. Being bitter toward every human being on the planet she happened to come across today wouldn't solve this case any faster.
But, it was still fact. None of the techs really, truly understood how it was to be in the field, though sometimes they liked to pretend they did. It could be unimaginably harsh sometimes.
Take this morning consult with the team. This case had coincided with both day and graveyard's shifts, and at least that was something. Catherine couldn't think of a better way to get this thing solved than to unite both shifts. Together, there was a reason they were the 2nd largest crime lab in the country.
Sara and Grissom were sitting at the round table in the conference room, gazing off into space with identical blank looks on their faces. Greg and Nick were perched on the countertop as usual, looking like they were clutching onto their coffee cups for dear life. There was an air of dejection, so thick it was almost smothering, hanging around the group as Catherine and Warrick had walked in, coming from the hospital.
Grissom looked up as they entered and told them to take a seat. Catherine sat beside Sara, Warrick made his way over to the counter and took his spot beside Nick.
They looked at each other for several seconds, waiting for someone else to break the silence. It was Grissom who finally spoke up.
"Did you guys get anything from our vic?"
Warrick looked at Catherine, letting her take the lead on this one. "We got Megan Gilesby's DNA, and a possible familial match. The only thing she said through the whole interview was 'David'. She wanted someone named David. Brass is searching for any Davids that could be possibly connected with Megan." She fell silent, painfully aware that they hadn't come up with any real answers from the victim; their best chance at IDing their perpetrator. She could only hope that the rest of the team had had better luck with the crime scene, but judging from the dejected looks they all wore, she wouldn't have bet money on it.
"So, you got about as much from the victim as we got from the crime scene, then." This was Nick, and he didn't sound too terribly surprised about it.
Greg elaborated. "The most helpful thing we got was a red fiber on the bed that didn't look like it came from any of Megan's clothes. There was also some trace evidence, but we aren't really holding out much hope that any of it will amount to much. It's mostly little stuff, like some dirt on the carpet and some powder on the nightstand that looked like makeup to me. There were some partials on the doorknob and the kitchen counter, we're running them through AFIS now, but it'll be a miracle if it comes up with anything."
"We don't work on miracles, Greg. Purely science," Grissom reminded him.
"Right, sorry. It will take a great scientific improbably for us to come up with anything," Greg corrected himself, the corners of his mouth turning up slightly. They were all too used to Grissom's devotion to the scientific aspects of the case to be annoyed by it.
"So, no DNA to work with, no fingerprints, shoeprints, or signs of forced entry. And no murder weapon. Not looking altogether too promising, guys." Even the unflappable Greg Sanders Optimism was beginning to get slightly dampened by the lack of answers.
"No signs of forced entry? That means…"
Sara finished Catherine's sentence for her. "Megan probably knew her attacker. Catch is, (there's always a catch, Catherine thought) no one that we interviewed from the hotel saw anyone going in or out of Megan's room all night. And if they did, they aren't admitting to it." Sara rubbed her eyes, trying to keep a bright outlook but visibly failing.
Warrick spoke up. "So, to recap, the only useful information we have so far is a couple of mystery fibers and some random guy named David?"
"Exactly." Grissom paused, and taking in the pessimistic looks of his team's faces, added, "We've started with less, guys. It's not the first time we've been stranded up the creek without a paddle." There was a unanimous grin at one of Grissom's rare attempts at humor. The smile faded, however, as the same thought struck everyone at the same time.
This may not be the first time, but it never gets any easier to canoe without a paddle, does it?
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Catherine blinked, a far away ringing startling her out of her reverie. As she returned to the present, however, she realized the ringing wasn't as far away as she had thought. It was, in fact, coming from her pocket. She scrambled for her cell phone, hoping whoever was on the other line hadn't hung up yet. She caught it on the last ring, and listened with growing dismay.
She hung up, and shut her eyes tightly. She reached for her caffeine and downed it in one swig, hardly noticing when it burned her throat. She wouldn't have cared even if she had noticed; she had a feeling she was going to need the extra pick-me-up.
She looked at her phone, sighed, and punched in the morgue's number.
It was time to call Doc Robbins, tell him he had the body of a young woman to pick up from the hospital.
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Hodges stumbled into the break room just as Catherine was stumbling out, muttering to herself. She didn't even seem to notice him. That was fine by him; the last thing he felt like at the moment was human interaction.
He grabbed some coffee (so thick it practically plopped out of the pot, must have been Sara's concoction) and eased himself onto the same couch Catherine had just vacated. He was just going to lie here for a minute and collect his strength.
Grissom had made his way into the Trace lab not long after Catherine had, asking the same questions she had (how long since you've gone home, why, ect.) and then told him he could home and have the day off. Hodges could only stare up at his boos in disbelief for at least a minute. He had never realized it before Grissom said it, but 'go home' were probably the most beautiful words in the English language. He had jumped out of his chair before his boss had enough time to change his mind, and all but ran to the break room.
Now his momentary rush of adrenaline was catching up with him. He was seeing colors beneath the blackness of his eyelids, dancing colors that he could follow with his mind…
He realized he was drifting off and concentrated all his willpower on opening his eyes and sitting up. When sitting upright became a physical task, it occurred to him that he should probably go home and sleep. He finished off his coffee and stood up, steadying himself on the arm of the couch.
48 hours… that's a sick, inhumane amount of time to go without sleep…
He ended up in Grissom's office, and interrupted his boss in the middle of his conversation with Sara, Greg and Nick. They were bending over something on Grissom's desk with their backs to him, but Hodges could have cared less what it was. He just wanted to go home.
'Grissom? I'm leaving. If you need me, you'll have to make due without. I'm turning my phone off." He waited, and then when Grissom made a jerky head movement that might or might not have meant he heard what Hodges had said, took a couple steps toward the desk. "Grissom? Did you…"
"Yes, Hodges. I think we can make due without you for a day. Go home." Grissom, tactful as usual. The others hadn't even looked up from the desk.
He nodded, and turned toward the door. Nick had shifted slightly, giving Hodges a perfect vantage point of Grissom's desk. He wasn't intending to stay and look at whatever it was that was immersing the CSIs, but something seemed to catch his eye and he stopped on his way out of the office.
His brow furrowed and he walked close enough to the desk to see what he recognized as crime scene photos. He could make an educated guess that they were from the Tropicana stabbing he had just spent the morning processing trace from, but that wasn't what puzzled him. What troubled him was the feeling that he recognized the face in the pictures, the face belonging to the body lying limp in the hospital bed.
While Hodges tried to put a name to the face, The CSIs finally tore their eyes from the pictures to look at the Trace tech.
"Uh...Hodges? You okay?" Greg was probably the closest CSI to Hodges, having worked with him in the lab for a while until he got his promotion. And even though Hodges could be an arrogant ass at times, the look on his face was almost enough to scare Greg. It was quite a different look from his usual cocky, I'm-better-than-you smirk. This was something else entirely.
The others saw it too, and looked at each other, puzzled.
Then something seemed to click, and his eyes got wide as dinner plates, mouth agape. He shook his head, disbelieving.
"Hodges! Do you-" Sara began, but Hodges cut her off.
"Do you have an ID on her yet?" Please don't say the name I'm thinking, please God, for once in my life I want to be wrong…
But nothing else had gone right today, why should this be the exception?
Grissom looked at the trace tech, head cocked, and replied, "Her name is Megan Gilesby. She died in the hospital close to half an hour ago. Is that significant?"
Grissom had never seen such an array of colors grace one person's face in such a short time period. Hodges face went pale, then pure white, then red, and then he looked back down at the crime scene photographs and turned green.
His chest was moving up and down rapidly, in an effort not to puke or fall down. Maybe both. If the CSIs had been concerned before, they were downright worried now.
He closed his eyes for a moment, and opened them looking a little more collected. "Does Doc Robbins already have her in autopsy?"
"He should… Hodges. Did you know this woman?" Grissom asked.
But as soon as Grissom had said Doc should have Megan in autopsy, he was out the door, migrane all but forgotten, almost barreling Catherine down on his way out.
For a minute, Catherine was as confused as everyone else, but then she put two and two together, and her stomach plummeted.
David… She had wanted David…