A Few Days with Laura Sidle Chapter 6

The community worked before breakfast. They ate toast and drank coffee before they milked cows, gathered eggs, fed animals, and opened the barn. By the time they met for breakfast, they were hungry for a real meal and their guest was awake to join them as they ate a breakfast fixed for those who do physical labor.

Sara left after breakfast. She needed to return the car. She was scheduled to work that night. She wanted to call Grissom. Every woman in the house shook her hand or said a few words; all were kind and gracious, smiling and quietly returning to whatever work needed to be done. Before leaving her room, she heard laughter outside the window and watched as several of the women cut flowers and shared an experience—she was certain it was about a bug as one woman twirled and waved arms over her head. It was the loudest noise she had heard in twenty-four hours.

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Grissom listened to Sara's message twice. He heard a change in her voice, a slight uplift of excitement, conveying nothing but saying she would call him later. He checked time on the machine; she should be home. He called her number and left a message. Five hours later, he woke and had to find his phone in the bed. No call. He tried her number again only to get the answering machine a second time.

He got up and poured cereal into a bowl, put a cup of water in the microwave, and checked the time. Sara should have called by now. He dialed her work number.

She was not working. He dialed work again, asking for her boss. As soon as he answered, Grissom remembered this was Sara's day off, but that did not mean she was not working. Tom Henry affirmed his thought—Sara was off until the next night.

It puzzled Grissom. Thinking back over the past months, he realized that they had talked almost daily. More than nine hours had passed since her call. He called her home number again and left a third message—saying he missed her. He went to work, early, because there was always something to do with the rising crime in Las Vegas.

Twice during work, he dialed her number and got her answering machine—it was the middle of the night and, the second time, it was three in the morning. She should be home, sleeping or reading. His mind went into over-drive trying not to think about what can happen to people, especially young women who lived in quiet, lonely apartments.

He cursed. The same quiet, lonely apartment where a week ago, he sat on the step with Sara thinking how nice it was, a faint fragrance of flowers in the air, was causing alarm tonight. Inside that apartment, he had realized he loved the young woman in bed with him; she asked for nothing, she had accepted him without question, she made him laugh, and he was six hundred miles away.

He dropped the evidence bag in his hand. The woman working across the table looked up. "Anything wrong?" She asked.

"Catherine, can you take care of things tonight?"

"Sure." The two had worked together long enough to be familiar with each other. She told him everything; he rarely said anything, which, she thought, made them perfect for each other. "It's quiet." She gave him a perplexed smile. "What's going on?"

Grissom stood at the table several seconds before he spoke. "I need to do something. Tell Jim I'm officially off the clock." He turned and left the room, heading to the locker room before a quick stop in the break room where he dialed a number in San Francisco. There was no answer.

He had a change of clothes in a small duffle bag and carried it on the airplane with him. He had not even looked at the price of the ticket when the agent ran his credit card. This was probably the stupidest thing he had done in thirty years, but he had to know why she was not answering her phone.

The flight took no longer than usual but seemed to take an eternity as his mind played the same scene over and over. Perhaps she was staying with friends or lying in a pool of blood or left the phone off its hook or—his mind would not stop returning to the night that ended in the emergency room. Why could he not think a rational thought and instead had taken the first available plane to San Francisco?