Thanks for the replies, everyone. Again, I own nothing!
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"DNA matches the other cases," Grissom sighed as he walked into the break room which had become their unofficial meeting area.
Catherine held her head in her hands as she examined one of the folders in front of her. There were at least ten folders, all full of information from the two known Boston cases. She shook her head. "How the hell can this guy be so damned smart?"
Given the DNA profile, the man was between the ages of 30 and 35.
"He was young when this started," Warrick spoke. "No more than 20. Must've been some sort of rush. Raping and killing innocent women." He dropped the file down onto the table and rubbed his eyes. "Freak."
Greg poured himself a cup of his coffee. He'd made a large pot for them, knowing it was going to be a long night. "If it's such a turn on, why wouldn't he just keep doing it? Why lay low for eight years or so before striking again?"
Nick entered the room. "Archie is looking at the tapes from the parks camera in the parking lot. If we're lucky, we might catch a glimpse of him."
"That would be a miracle," Sara muttered, entering the room. "The guy is smart. He's hasn't slipped up. Not once. We don't have anything on this guy. He could be anyone."
"What'dya got?" Warrick asked, pushing aside some of the folders on the table, making room for a large stack that Sara held in her hands.
"Everything from San Fran," she dropped the folders on the table with a resounding thud.
COD on the victims varied. Some had their throats slashed, some had their necks broken . . . some were choked . . . the end result was always the same though. Death.
"Sara?" Greg asked, his mug positioned over his mouth. He peered at her from over the rim of the cup.
"Yeah?" she asked, taking a seat beside him, pulling open one of the discarded Boston files, scanning the information that she knew by heart.
Nick sat down on the other side of her and handed her a mug of coffee with just the right amount of cream and sugar. He took a sip of his own coffee and grabbed one of the files on the table, opening it up.
"How did you know? I mean, that this wasn't the first . . . "
"A gut feeling," she shrugged. Catherine looked at her with one eyebrow raised. She sighed, knowing that everyone knew that wasn't the truth. If it were a hunch, she couldn't have known about it matching two known cases in Boston, nor would she have known about the three cases in San Francisco. "About a year before I came here, I was a level 2 at the lab in San Francisco. I was working the cases. We made the connection to the two women in Boston. There was nothing to go on, so we were forced to close the case because it was inactive."
"It says that this woman had a necklace identical to the one that Vanessa White was wearing, only she was the third victim," Nick said, looking at the Boston file.
"And this woman," Greg said, glancing at the open file in front of him, "had a necklace indicating she was number 2."
"Four, Five and Six are accounted for in California," Sara sighed. "Vanessa White is number 7."
"Where's number one?" Brass asked as he walked into the room. He and Sophia had stayed with the family trying to find out about any enemies that they may have had that wanted to hurt them. But Grissom had called and informed them that they indeed had a serial on the loose and it was unlikely that Vanessa's relationship with the Mayor had anything to do with her attack.
Sara glanced up and found all eyes on her. "Never found."
"It doesn't seem likely that he'd have let her get away," Nick sighed. "And all the attacks happened in safe neighborhoods, in large cities, with at least moderate activity."
"Thrill of getting caught," Grissom pondered out loud. "Maybe he was interrupted and couldn't finish the job."
"Then why wasn't it reported?" Greg asked.
"Maybe she was ashamed," Catherine's voice was quiet, remembering back a few short months when she had feared that she'd been roofied and raped.
'Sloppy police work', Sara thought to herself, as a possibility.
"Maybe he hadn't meant to kill," Sophia interjected. "Perhaps all he wanted to do was rape women. The first one may have been compliant for fear of being hurt further. Didn't report it, for whatever reason. But the second one . . . maybe she fought back harder. And he was scared of getting caught. Perhaps killing her was an accident. But a thrilling one. Maybe he found a new high. One that only raping women couldn't create."
"Rape is the foreplay, murder is the climax," Grissom said. Yeah, he'd said that about a number of rape and murder cases in the past as well.
"So what do we know?" Brass asked.
"The second and third attacks in Boston happened three days apart. He disappeared, then resurfaced in California eight years later. The number Four and Five attacks happened four days apart. The Sixth happened three days after the fifth. We thought that maybe the first victim happened four days prior to the second." Sara sighed, swallowing the emotions that had begun to surface. She cursed herself silently. "If that is the case, and he works on a time line -"
"Then we've only got four days before he strikes again," Grissom normally calm voice sounded rattled. If there was anything that could shake him, it was a criminal who could outsmart even the best of the best. They only had semen, and some skin scrapings from underneath the victims finger nails. It all matched the other cases, but still, there was no way of identifying the male as he wasn't in the system. No new evidence had been found that might help in aiding their search. No blood and no finger prints.
"Anything else?" Sophia asked, picking up one of the unattended files and glancing over the notes. "Similarities between vics?"
"All were between the ages of 18 and 20," Catherine answered.
"All were Science majors. The first two known victims were from Harvard, attending the school in 1991, sixteen years ago. The other three were attending USF in '99," Sara offered. She didn't even have to look at the files. She wouldn't never forget this case. She just . . . couldn't. And it wasn't for a lack of trying.
Nick looked up at Sara. He knew something was bothering her. And even though he didn't know exactly what it was, it was bothering him too. That, and something else. "They also all had long brown hair, brown eyes, and fair skin." When she glanced back at him, he saw the features that the victims all had in common. His heart leapt to his throat.
"Science Majors, huh?" Archie asked from the doorway. He noticed that he had everyones attention. "The perp is in his early to mid thirties, right?" The group nodded their heads. "And he has a thing for young university students studying Science. Did they have anything else in common?"
"No," Sara said. "They didn't know each other or have friends in common. Other than that, they all lived in dorms, but they weren't in buildings near one another. I know what you're thinking, Archie, but we tried that angle in San Francisco. We got the all the tapes from USF for the month leading up to the murders, and no one really looked out of place. No one that shouldn't have been there. No one looked suspicious. And if they were a little older, they only appeared once in the footage. And we couldn't locate them afterwards."
"What about the tapes from Harvard?" he asked.
"Nope," Sara said, pushing the chair back and standing up. "The Boston lab never thought to check the tapes. And by the time we called Harvard, requesting them, they were gone. Took up too much space, so they'd been destroyed."
Grissom looked irritable. "Did the lab in San Francisco ask for the tapes anyway? To try and put them back together?"
Sara rolled her eyes and tried to keep her flaring emotions in check. Gee, why didn't we think of that? she thought bitterly. "The tapes were burned. Nothing but a pile of ashes."
"So, maybe if the perp only went to the Universities once, he found all his victims at that time. Maybe he followed them, watched them for a while, got their patterns and routines down . . . knew when and where to strike," Warrick offered.
Sara rubbed her temples. "Well, that's a comforting thought . . . . but there is a problem with that theory. Vanessa White didn't live in a dorm."
The room went silent.
"If he's straying from what he knows," Brass spoke, "then maybe he's about to slip up."
"It's only a matter of time," Catherine agreed.
"Excuse me," Sara said softly, quickly exitting the room.
Catherine stood up, ready to go after her collegue. They all knew how Sara reacted to rape cases. It was never easy for any of them, but she always took it especially hard.
"I'll go," Nick said softly, standing up from his own chair. He gave Cath a half hearted smile.
"You sure?" Sophia asked. She thought for sure if anyone should go after Sara, it would be her or Catherine.
Nick nodded in response and was out of the room immediately after that.
"Archie," Grissom addressed the A/V tech, "I'm going to have the UNLV security tapes sent to your lab. I want you to go over every single frame with no exceptions. I'm going to have the tapes from USF messengered over. I want to compare the people on both tapes. If there is even a hint that one of the people might be the same, we might have our guy."
Archie nodded his head and quickly left to go back to his lab, intent on going over the parking lot security tapes until the UNLV tapes arrived.
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He walked through the lab halls, looking into all the rooms. But he couldn't find her. He poked his head into the locker room, but she wasn't there. He knocked softly on the door to the shower room, calling out that he was coming in. When he entered, the room was empty. Sighing, he walked back out into the locker room, and then into the hall and straight into David.
"Sorry, Super Dave," Nick apologized.
"No problem," the shy man said, continuing on his way down the hall in the opposite direction of Nick.
"Hey Super Dave?" Nick said, turning around. When David turned around, he continued, "have you seen Sara?"
"Sorry," he frowned a little. "The case getting to her?"
"I think so," he nodded. "If you see her, tell her I'm looking for her?"
"Sure," the man nodded. "Tell her to hang in there for me, will ya?"
Nick smiled. "Will do."
Again, he continued on his search, but was coming up empty. "Where are you?" he muttered.
"If you keep muttering to yourself, it could turn into a real problem," Hodges smirked. Nick looked at him, rather annoyed. David sighed, "if you're looking for Sara, she went up there," he nodded to the stairs that lead to the roof of the Crime Lab. People rarely went up there, but a few people had been known to do it on occasion when they needed quiet and a place where they were unlikely to be found.
"Thanks," he said earnestly.
"Hey Nick," Hodges called him when he was about to start climbing the stairs. "She looked pretty upset."
"Thanks for the heads up," he smiled at Hodges. Yeah, he could be a pretty decent guy at times.
TBC . . .
