Chapter Three
Crying. Sobbing. Red, the worst color—the color of death, of hate, of anger, of pain and anguish… all over the room. The traitor was on the floor, shaking with uncontrollable wails. Traitor…that traitor, the one who ruined everything…who deserved everything to come…
Sara gasped and frantically opened her eyes to look around her quiet room, noting angrily that her hair, clothes, and sheets were dampened with her cold sweat. Sitting up, she placed her fingers at her temples and closed her eyes. Deep breath in, slow breath out…Her heart was racing and her breath was far too quick. Damned nightmares—it was the worry, the worry she felt over what Max had told her. She had been calm at the restaurant, miffed, but calm.
But she was far from calm now.
The plane ride back home had served as nothing but a quiet place for the circumstances to truly set in. She was being investigated for murder, and her father's at that. These court processes took time—she would struggle through days, possibly weeks, of mental torment, constantly forced to recall painful memories. The visions of the dream she'd just had were flashing through her mind, and she knew she would be having many more of them as her worry increased. What if she was arrested? What would she do then? She didn't have anything valuable enough to put up for collateral, and she certainly didn't have the money to pay bail.
She slid out of bed, glancing at the clock with a soft sigh. Two o' clock in the afternoon. Usually she would consider seven hours a decent sleep, but then why did she feel so exhausted? Perhaps a hot shower would do some good. She traipsed out of the bedroom, through the main room and over to the bathroom door on the far end of her apartment.
Flipping the water on, she turned to look at herself in the mirror. She grimaced at what she saw. Not only did she feel exhausted, she looked it too. Her eyes were puffed up and red, her complexion pasty, her hair bushy in back and plastered with sweat in front. The effect was an aura of unpleasantness and misery…pathetic may even have been an accurate description. Hopefully the shower would settle everything back into place.
She stripped and stepped into the scalding water, wincing as it splashed against her. But she was soon used to it. The visions were still lingering in the back of her mind. She pressed her forehead against the cold tile wall as the water continued to wash over her, relaxing her tense body. Trying to make the images go away only made it worse. They became clearer and clearer the more she thought about them, to the point she doubted they were just from a nightmare. Painful memories from the subconscious.
After another deep breath, she grabbed the shampoo bottle from the small shelf implanted in the wall of her shower. Instead of putting it in her hair, she turned the bottle over and began to read the ingredients on the back panel. When she was done, she squirted the soap into her hair and lathered. She rinsed out the suds while reading the ingredients to her conditioner, and then her body wash, shaving cream, face scrub, and bubble bath. It was a method she had used since she was a teen—to cope and to forget—because nobody could concentrate on a nightmare when they're trying to remember what triethanolamine was.
When she was finished, her mind was clear enough to give attention to other things. She turned the water off and grabbed a towel from the hook outside her shower. She wrapped the sage-colored material around herself and stepped out to the steamy room. Wiping the condensation off the mirror, she looked herself in the eye, slightly more pleased with what she saw. The bags under her eyes didn't seem to have changed much, but she was now a pleasant pink. As she dried off, she made a mental checklist of what needed to be done.
There were errands to run today—her fridge was frighteningly bare and she desperately needed to do laundry. Bills still needed to be made by the end of the month. She hadn't vacuumed or dusted in awhile. How long would all this take her? Long enough to keep her mind off of things? Hopefully.
Striding briskly out of the bathroom, she entered her room where she grabbed one of the last clean shirts from her closet. She dressed while mentally forming a grocery list, her mind firmly set on grocery shopping and laundry. No stupid nightmare was going to stop her.
xXx
If she had thought all the errands she needed to run were going to keep her mind occupied, she had been very wrong. She had failed to accommodate the mindless time spent in the checkout line, waiting for her load to finish, filling in the blanks on a check. The loud drone of a vacuum had been deafened by thoughts she found herself unable to control.
She sat on the locker-room bench, staring blankly at the metallic door to her locker, trying to find the motivation when she felt too dragged down to even stand. With a sigh, she reached out to the door and opened it, tapping the door further open with her foot. She stared into it when a sudden voice broke her out of the stupor.
"Hey, Sara!"
She looked to her left to see Greg leaning against the doorway, hands in his pockets.
"Hey Greg," she began slowly. "What are you doing in so early?" She turned back to her locker and removed the bag from her shoulder, placing it inside.
"Wanted to catch you before you got into a case or something." He stood up straight and continued, "I was wondering if you had a good day off."
Sara shrugged as she slowly stood up. "It was okay." In the same unhurried way, she removed her jacket and placed it by the bag.
"Is everything alright?" he inquired, raising his shoulders, and leaning against the doorframe again.
"Yeah, Greg, everything's fine." She threw him a forced smile. "Why can't I take a day off without somebody thinking something is wrong?" She shut her locker a little harder than she had meant to as she stormed towards the doorway with her arms folded.
As she swept past, Greg replied under his breath while following after her. "Because you never take days off unless something is wrong…"
When he stepped into place next to her, she turned to glare at him, halting in her tracks. "Look, Greg, I just…decided I needed a break for once. I worked for three weeks straight and needed to catch up on some things." Her voice wasn't entirely angry—there was a hint of tiredness mixed in.
"I've seen you work for five weeks without a break," Greg pointed out.
Sara bit her tongue to keep her frustrations in line, and replied as calmly as possible with, "You know what, just drop it. It's unimportant. Just…fill me in on what I missed."
"A triple," Greg muttered, shrugging his shoulders as if it were an everyday occurrence.
"What?"
"Don't you watch the news on your days off?" He could tell she was at a loss for words, and he motioned for her to follow him. As they proceeded down hallways, he continued. "Warrick is here too. You're with us—Griss, Cath, and Nick are on some other thing in the middle of the desert. Anyway, the case—that's the other reason I came in early—had to work on the case. In here…"
They turned into an evidence room where Warrick was slowly making his way through a box of evidence. He looked up briefly, acknowledging them with a nod and a quick wave before turning back to the task at hand.
"So…what do you have?" Sara wondered aloud, making her way to the table and the small number of bags scattered across it.
"Shooting," Warrick muttered, marking down information from the bag of evidence he held in his hand onto a clipboard beside the large box. "Two men in their late thirties shot, and a six year old girl. She was walking home with her mother. They were all on a sidewalk, east side of Vegas in front of a bunch of apartments."
"Who called it in?"
"Mother," Greg interjected. "Her face is all over the media."
"It was raining yesterday—they were shot outside on the sidewalk…there's not going to be any GSR, is there?" Sara said.
Warrick and Greg both shook their heads.
"No GSR. We can't find the third bullet. Any footprints and trace were washed away by the storm. No guns or casings recovered either," Warrick said.
Sara sighed. "And let me guess—the press is expecting an explanation as to whether or not it's safe for people to leave their homes."
"Pretty much," Warrick replied through a smirk. "What I don't understand, is that it seems the little girl had no relation whatsoever to the two men."
"Maybe she wasn't supposed to be hit?" Sara wondered aloud.
"Well she was hit in the back," Greg replied. He looked into the evidence box and pulled out a handful of photographs, which he handed to Sara. "It would make sense if she was simply hit by a stray bullet."
Sara was looking through the photos when Warrick's pager suddenly went off.
"Robbins—he's about to start the autopsies. Anybody else want to volunteer?"
Sara and Greg remained silent, causing Warrick to sigh. "Alright then…Somebody's gotta finish logging this evidence."
"I'll handle that," Greg mumbled, taking the clipboard from Warrick.
"I'll stay here," Sara followed him with her gaze as he moved towards the door. "To try and familiarize myself with the case a little more."
"Okay. I'll fill you two in when I get back." And he left.
She looked back at the pictures, grateful for finally receiving a solid distraction. The young girl was dressed in a bright yellow raincoat, a matching hat on the ground beside her body. Her wet hair was dark and stringy from the rain, her face pressed into the hard cement sidewalk. The girl's name was written in the bottom margin of the photograph, "Samantha Potter." Other photos showed the two men, Tony Hammond and Archie Murray.
Twenty minutes later, Sara came across the drawn representation of the crime scene and finally spoke. "Greg, you only found two bullets, correct?"
"Yeah, one is still in the girl's body and the other we found in a tree behind that Archie guy."
"So you're missing the one from Tony, the second man?"
Greg nodded, scribbling down a note on the clipboard and setting another baggy aside.
"Well, what if the girl was hit by Tony's through and through?"
He looked up at her, and she moved the drawing over so he could see.
"See how they're pretty much in line? I bet the bullet in Samantha also killed Tony."
"So…what does that mean?" Greg raised an eyebrow slightly.
"Well, if the DNA on the bullet matches both the girl and Tony, it would mean her death was probablyan accident. I'll go down to the morgue, meet Warrick and send the bullet off to DNA."
xXx
Sara returned home at 5:00 a.m. that morning. Setting her purse on the kitchen counter, she opened her newly stocked fridge and pulled out a cup of strawberry yogurt. Work had been rewarding—she had been right about the DNA, and who couldn't feel satisfied when they were right? There hadn't been much but lab work to do, and she hadn't been entirely happy with that, but she kept telling herself the case wasn't over yet.
Remembering what Greg had said about the media, she brought her yogurt over to the living room where she turned the television on, flipping channels until she landed on a news broadcast. He had been right—Samantha's mother was the first thing to pop up on the screen. Her face matched her daughter's almost perfectly—the tears on her face as she spoke almost like the rain on Samantha's.
Sara continued to watch stoically until her yogurt was gone and the station moved on to something else. Sighing, she turned off the television and strode into her kitchen. She tossed her spoon in the sink, and just as she bent down to throw out the yogurt carton, her telephone rang. Her breath caught as she stared at it. With a soft sigh, she reprimanded herself for being so paranoid. It could be a telemarketer—there was nothing to indicate it was Max.
She made her way over and glanced at the caller ID. Her stomach fluttered. It was Max again. Something must have happened.