Behind The Scenes

By: supercsi4

Chapter 33 – Empty Eyes

SARA:

I just love it when Grissom and I get a chance to stay at home and he cooks for me and we just relax on the couch with Bruno the entire evening. That didn't get to happen today. Grissom left for our crime scene before me because well, he can get ready a lot quicker then I can and we are still trying not to drive to work together every single day. Anyways, so I finally got to the crime scene and began the hunt to locate my boss and find out where he wanted me.

The crime scene was at a sorority type house and I could smell the blood in the air, so I assumed there were multiple bodies. I made it up to the second floor and into the bedroom where Grissom was. I shined my flashlight in, but Grissom didn't look up, he must have been deep in thought.

"My date got canceled," I said to him.

He looked up, shining his flashlight back onto me and said, "I'm sure he had a good excuse."

I stepped cautiously into the room with Grissom kneeling next to the bed with a dead woman on it.

"Looks like sexual assault. Bound, pants pulled down," I stated the obvious.

"Yeah."

"Where do you want me?"

"Next bedroom. There's another body in there."

"Well, that makes five. The dispatch said there were six."

"According to Brass, the boyfriend of one of the victims found the bodies. Said there were six roommates, all showgirls. Evidently, one didn't come home."

"She picked the right night."

So we were all investigating the deaths of six showgirls who shared this house. Grissom wanted me in the third bedroom, there was a dead girl on the first bed, but I had noticed some blood smeared on the floor next to the second bed in the room. So walked over and kneeled down to look under the bed when suddenly a bloody hand reached and scratched my face. It all happened so fast and really scared the shit out of me. I jumped back, yelled, "Hot scene! Suspect under the bed!" and grabbed for my gun.

My heart was pounding, but in seconds Grissom was in the room and after realizing the person under the bed wasn't going to jump out and attack me, I looked back under the bed to see a woman, later identified as Cammie, huddled in a pool of blood with her hands tied in front of her.

"Please…please help me. Please," she pleaded in gasps.

I put my gun down and reached for the woman begging for me to help her.

"Hold on," I tell her. "Victim down! Call an ambulance!" I screamed for Grissom.

"Dispatch, this is CSI Grissom…" I can't hear the rest of what Grissom is saying on the phone, I'm only focused on Cammie's hand and trying to calm her down.

"You're safe now, okay? You're safe now. It's going to be okay." But I wasn't sure it will be.

Still gasping for breath, Cammie repeated, "Help me. Help me."

"Can you tell me your name?"

"Ca…Cam…Cammie."

"Cammie, I'm Sara. Who did this to you, Cammie?"

"Mm-an…mm-an."

"The man, what did he look like?"

"Poor w…Poor wine…" That made no sense.

"Breast…Breast…knife…"

"He-he stabbed you in the chest?" I stutter as I was trying to hold it together and be strong for the woman possibly dying in my arms.

Cammie grunted and shook her head, "No."

"I need some help here!" I shouted. Why couldn't the ambulance get there any faster?

"Bye…Fin…"

"No, no. No." I pleaded that she wouldn't die right there.

But I couldn't help her and she died right there in front of me, still holding onto my hand. I was emotionally distraught and barely holding it together when Jim came by to question me about what happened.

Jim tore me from my thoughts, "Look, I know this is tough, but did she give you anything?"

"She told me her name. When I went into the room, she thought that I was him."

"Anything else?"

I just shook my head, "It didn't make any sense," I told him as I struggled to flashback to the whole incident on the floor of that bedroom and I told him everything she had said to me.

I had just witnessed for the first time in my career, a person died right in front on me. I was the last thing Cammie saw before she died and I couldn't do anything to save her. Nick said that it was a good thing that I was there with her so she didn't have to die alone. Usually we show up too late to meet the victim, that's how our jobs work, that's how I know how to deal with it, not like this.

I spent most the day avoiding Grissom because I knew he would want to know I was alright and want to talk about it and coddle me and I knew that if he did, then I would break down all together.

Not long after arriving back to the lab from our crime scene, Nick, Brass and I were called to the scene of a bar fight, just a couple blocks from our crime scene, where we found our murder weapon, a knife, when an unknown suspect had stabbed a Marlon Frost in the neck, similar to our showgirls' wounds.

Thinking Marlon was another innocent victim of our brutal killer, I sympathized with him and wanted to ride in the ambulance with him and process his clothes at the hospital. I even held his hand to try and comfort him.

"My name is Sara. Just hold on. You're going to be fine," I told him, as I flashbacked to telling Cammie the exact same thing. "Do you know who did this to you?"

But he just looked at me as I held onto his hand. It was weird how he didn't seem scared or worried or anything, his face was expressionless.

At the hospital, I snapped photos of Marlon's wounds and reassured him that I would be finished soon and it wouldn't hurt, as I also took his DNA and fingerprints. But again, he seemed unfazed by it all. Maybe he was still in shock or maybe he was a crazy serial killer.

Yep, as I took his fingerprints, I noticed the smudges on his fingertips and his callused fingers, similar to the suspect we had been chasing down for the showgirls' murders. I looked up at him and he must have known that at that moment I had just put two and two together and realized he was the killer and he grabbed me hard with both his hands. I screamed and struggled to get him off me and in the struggle, his gown slipped off his shoulders, revealing a large discoloration…a birthmark, just like Cammie had tried to tell me. We had him.

I couldn't avoid it any longer, I had to go report my findings to Grissom. "He has a vascular birthmark, a port wine stain, on his upper chest…that's what Cammie was trying to tell me. We can get DNA off his bloody clothes, but we have no blood or semen at the scene to compare it to. His prints are useless…they're all calluses. They only leave smudges, like the kind we found on the broken knife. I think the bastard tried to kill himself."

"Sara, slow down. Frost isn't going anywhere."

"I am going to nail this son of a bitch, and I don't want him to think for a single second that he is going to get away with this."

"Okay, one step at a time." He was trying to calm me down, but I barely listened.

"Frost smelled like alcohol when they took him into the ER so they ran a tox. His BAC came back .34 -- only a chronic alcoholic can function at those levels. You know what I think? I think he polished off the wine at the scene straight from the bottle."

"So his DNA should be on it."

I can't even recall much else about the case as I sit here now, I just keep seeing Cammie's bloody body laying in front of me begging to be saved. But as Grissom and I were in the break room packing up to leave, a news report flashed up on the tv screen and the reporter said, "Las Vegas PD has confirmed that David Marlon confessed earlier today to the murders of the six Green Valley showgirls…He was found within a block of the crime scene in an apparent suicide attempt. I've just been informed…has confirmed the names of the six victims. They

are Cammie…Libby Cooperson 22, Becca Mayfield, 20…"

"I held his hand," I whispered to Grissom who stood so close behind me I could feel his breath on my neck and the comfort he wanted to give me. I couldn't take it any more and the tears started down my face. I had held the killers hand, "Just like I held hers. I lost perspective."

There in the middle of the break room, Grissom wiped the tears from my cheek and I turned to look at him. I wanted him to wrap his arms around me and let me cry all night, but I knew I had to wait a little longer, wait until we were out of the lab and back at home.

The reporter continued on the screen, "…Lauren Walderson 21 and Emily Wilson, 19. Their

families have organized a candlelight vigil that will begin here tonight."

Grissom must have been reading my mind and knew he had to get me home, so I could really let all my emotions flow out and onto his shoulder in the privacy of our house. He put his arm around me and didn't even remove it as we walked out of the break room and toward the exit. The only person to see us together was a lone janitor mopping the floor, hopefully she'll keep our secret, because at the time, I needed Grissom's arm around me for comfort and I could have really cared less about who saw us.

GRISSOM:

I know I've nagged Sara over and over again about getting too attached to a case or its victims, but today's case was completely excusable. And I worried so much about her throughout the entire case, but she held herself together like the unbelievably strong woman I fell in love with.

Our original plan for the evening was a date, where I cook for Sara and then we relax with Bruno the rest of the evening, but those plans were put on hold. I left for the crime scene quickly while Sara was left at the house to get ready and arrive separately from me. I got all the details from Jim when I got there and sent the team to different areas of the house to begin processing. There were six showgirls killed in their shared house.

Shining her flashlight into the bedroom I was processing, Sara startled me by saying, "My date got canceled."

I'm glad she could find humor at the time because she was about to dive into a bloody mess. I shine my flashlight back at her, yep, just as beautiful as I had left her, and I said, "I'm sure he had a good excuse."

Sara stepped cautiously into the room where I was kneeling next to the bed with a dead woman on it.

"Looks like sexual assault. Bound, pants pulled down."

"Yeah."

"Where do you want me?" Back at our house in bed with me.

"Next bedroom. There's another body in there."

"Well, that makes five. The dispatch said there were six."

"According to Brass, the boyfriend of one of the victims found the bodies. Said there were six roommates, all showgirls. Evidently, one didn't come home."

"She picked the right night."

So I sent Sara into the third bedroom to start processing and the next thing I know, I'm running to her after hearing her scream, "Hot scene! Suspect under the bed!" My heart wasn't even beating as I raced the few steps to the room where she was. All I could imagine was that the disgusting bastard who had done this to these women were still in the house and now attacking Sara. Relief flooded over me though when I saw that it was another bloody body under the bed…I mean relief that Sara was alright, not that there was another body. The woman, later identified as Cammie, was pleading for help and Sara was yelling at me to get an ambulance, but I could tell they would never make it there in time.

With tears in her eyes, Sara tried to keep Cammie calm, while trying to keep her own emotions in check. I wanted to pull her away to avoid the pain she would feel if that woman died in her arms, but I knew Sara would never leave the poor woman. So I stood back and watched in pain as Cammie did indeed die right in Sara's arms. Once Sara knew Cammie was dead, she stood and quickly ran past me and out of the house. I wanted to go console her, but Jim beat me to it and I had a job I needed to do, there was an asshole I needed to get behind bars for what he had done to these women and now Sara.

Sara avoided me the rest of the day and I suppose I was kinda also doing the same. I knew she would break down if I went to her and you know how well I do under those types of situations.

Next, Nick and Sara were sent out to a bar fight that had occurred only a few blocks from our crime scene and the victim of the stabbing was a Marlon Frost. Even though Nick warned her against it, Sara decided to ride with Marlon to the hospital to collect his clothes and other evidence. At the hospital, while fingerprinting Marlon, Sara realized from his uncharacteristic demeanor, emotionless actions, and calloused hands, that he was actually our showgirls' murderer we had been looking for. He must have seen the light bulb come on in Sara's head when she realized who was actually lying there in front of her in that hospital bed, because he tried to attack her. Thankfully, he was weak against her and she quickly got away with her anger boiling over even more then before.

Finally she made her way back to me and had a lot to say, "He has a vascular birthmark, a port wine stain, on his upper chest…that's what Cammie was trying to tell me. We can get DNA off his bloody clothes, but we have no blood or semen at the scene to compare it to. His prints are useless…they're all calluses. They only leave smudges, like the kind we found on the broken knife. I think the bastard tried to kill himself."

"Sara, slow down. Frost isn't going anywhere." She was way too into this case, way too involved.

"I am going to nail this son of a bitch, and I don't want him to think for a single second that he is going to get away with this."

"Okay, one step at a time."

"Frost smelled like alcohol when they took him into the ER so they ran a tox. His BAC came back .34…only a chronic alcoholic can function at those levels. You know what I think? I think he polished off the wine at the scene straight from the bottle."

"So his DNA should be on it." I think Sara would have done just about anything to catch this guy and her determination was inspiring and a little scary at the same time.

So we had finally caught the sicko and Sara and I were in the break room packing up to head home when the news reporter came on the screen and had to discuss this case that we had just closed. I knew Sara didn't need to hear more about it and we both needed to get home.

"Las Vegas PD has confirmed that David Marlon confessed earlier today to the murders of the six Green Valley showgirls," the reporter said as we both turned to watch the tv even though we shouldn't, "He was found within a block of the crime scene in an apparent suicide attempt. I've just been informed…has confirmed the names of the six victims. They are Cammie…Libby Cooperson 22, Becca Mayfield, 20…"

"I held his hand…" Sara said. And next came the tears, but I was standing so close behind her that I hoped she knew I would wrap her up in my arms in a heartbeat if we we're standing there in the middle of the break room. "…Just like I held hers," she continued, "I lost perspective."

I reached up to wipe the tears cascading down her cheek now and I knew I had to get her out of there, so she could cry more freely in my arms alone at home.

"…Lauren Walderson 21 and Emily Wilson, 19. Their families have organized a candlelight vigil that will begin here tonight," the reporter finished.

I looked at her and with my eyes I told her it was time to go. She just nodded and we walked out into the hallway with my arm around her, it was late and I knew that no one was around to see us leave together, no one but a janitor we passed on our way out.

At home, I ran a bath for her and I let her relax as I walked Bruno and made something quick to eat even though I knew she wouldn't want to eat anything. Then we curled up on the couch, I wrapped a blanket and my arms around her and she sobbed into my chest until we both fell asleep.