Behind The Scenes
By: supercsi4
Chapter 39 – Living Doll
SARA: …
GRISSOM:
My life is truly over. Sara has been kidnapped by a psychotic woman and I feel I am going to lose it. I would trade places with her right now if I could guarantee her survival. I feel that my heart can't take much more of this and if anything were to happen to Sara, I'd blame myself and I'd probably go crazy. As I sit here writing all this out, the tears won't stop falling from my eyes and onto my paper, but I feel if I recall all the events of the day, it might actually help.
We were finally closing in on the Miniature Crime Scene Killer, at Trevor Dell's apartment investigating his death. Trevor was another one of Ernie's Dell's foster kids who we've been tracking down to see if he was the killer we had been looking for. Arriving at his apartment though, we found him already dead in the bathroom. I found a small miniature of a male figure in white clothes, all matching Trevor Dell, so I knew our Miniature Crime Scene Killer had already beat us there.
David showed up to take the body, but first did his preliminary examination. "Two distinct lacerations…one on the forehead, one on the back of the skull. Lividity is fixed. Decomp is pretty well developed."
"Air-conditioning would have slowed that and accelerated mummification. Body's been sealed in the apartment. There's no insect activity. So much for TOD," I said.
"Could be a couple of days to a few weeks."
"Miniature Killer?" Sara asked, arriving at our crime scene. God, I wish she were here next to me right now.
I stood up and sighed, "It's hard to say. Haven't found a miniature of the scene yet. Just this." I showed her an evidence bag with the miniature Trevor Dell doll inside it. "Clothes match. The…uh…vic's a part time nurse, but there's no blood on the doll, and it's not posed like the body.
"Bleach at the scene, just like the others." She pointed out the bottle of bathroom cleaner with bleach on the floor next to the toilet. "Maybe this one wasn't planned. Maybe the killer has to make the miniature after the fact, which is why it's so cold in here, to preserve the body."
I nodded at the possibility, "I don't think we can rule anything out. It's all yours, my dear." She always hated when I called her "dear" at work.
Later, Sara, Warrick, Nick and I met in the break room to share our findings. I was barely listening, too confused and mad about this endless case. I looked up to see Sara talking and silently thanked god that she forgave me for our big fight last week and that we were doing so much better. We had gone away for the weekend, a short vacation to California to clear our heads and reconnect. Little did I know it may have been our last weekend together.
Then I walked out of the break room and walked away from Sara for the last time. It was the last time I've seen Sara since that bitch Natalie took her away from me. I didn't get to say "I love you," or touch her one more time or never mind.
The DNA off the Trevor miniature came back XX and that's when we discovered our killer was actually a woman. And after doing some more digging on the internet and at a local hobby shop, we found out that our killer's name was Natalie Davis, a name that will forever haunt me now.
After Catherine and I got back from questioning Natalie's real father, who threw her into the foster system after she killed her sister by pushing her out of their tree house, I walked into my office and immediately saw a new miniature nightmare on my desk. How was she able to gain access to the lab, let alone my office?
I slowly leaned in to carefully study the miniature crime scene. It was an overturned red Mustang on top of a body, but the victim's hand was outstretched in the sand and still moving.
I took a tissue and lifted the car off the victim and it was Sara. I almost fainted. No, god no. I dropped what I was holding and immediately called Jim who ran down to the garage with several officers and found her car. I was running around frantically with my cell phone in hand and just keep on hitting redial, hoping to get a hold of Sara and this could all be over.
I prayed for her to pick up the phone, that this was all some sick joke and we had figured it out soon enough, but when Jim called me and told me he had Sara's cell and she was missing, I thought I would die. I was trying to hold it together in front of everyone, trying to repeat over and over to myself that no one else knew about our relationship and that if I freaked out too much people would get curious, but I had never been so scared in my life.
We figured out Natalie was on our janitorial staff and that's how she was able to sneak into my office and set up the miniature. Greg, Nick, Warrick, Catherine and were in the layout room examining the miniature. When I walked in they were running the miniature car's VIN number thru the computer. I couldn't think, I was starting to sweat and my hands were beginning to shake uncontrollable. I wasn't sure how much longer I could hold myself together.
Time to inform the others of what I had found, "Her name is Natalie Davis, and she works for our janitorial service…For over a month. She's never been arrested, so there's nothing to flag on a security check. She used Ernie Dell's address on her work form. She has no home phone and no driver's license."
The computer beeped with a result and I held my breath. The monitor read:
2007 RED MUSTANG ACCIDENT
DATE: 04-04-07
TIME: 05:19 AM
LOCATION: ALLEY BEHIND THE TRIP WIRE BAR, FRINE ST. & DORISA AVE.
LEAD CSI: SARA SIDLE
STATUS: CLOSED
VICTIM: WELLER, NOLAND
CRIME SCENE DESCRIPTION: RED MUSTANG 2007 TURNED OVER, DRIVER NOLAND WELLER EJECTED FROM DRIVER'S SEAT, VICTIM TOXICOLOGY FOUND ALCOHOL IN SYSTEM
I told Greg to pull up the case photos because I was having trouble breathing, let alone recalling the details of a case from over a month ago, but I remember I had helped Sara with it. The first photo showed the two of us at the crime scene, with some bystanders behind us, including Natalie and then it hit me. Oh my god, she was at the crime scene.
Sara and I had been having a particularly flirty day. It was just a couple days after Sara's really bad case where the young woman had died in her arms and I was still coddling her a little. I had been taking the camera from Sara and had slowly ran my hand down her bare arm and let my hand linger on her much longer then necessary and only removed it after I noticed the goosebumps run down her arm.
"So, she salvages the car, and somehow gets it out to the desert, and then grabs Sara, and puts her under it?" Nick asked as I'm getting more and more nervous. I'm gonna have to explain our relationship to the team to help them understand this case.
"I don't get it. What does Sara have to do with bleach?" Warrick asked. They were getting closer.
"I don't know. This just feels different," Catherine said.
That's when I decided that if it would save Sara, I would announce our relationship to the world, so here goes…
"It is different…This girl holds me responsible for the death of Ernie Dell. I took away the only person she ever loved, so she's going to do the same thing to me…It's not about a psychotic reaction to bleach, or some dead sister or the doll…NotUrLittleBisqueDoll…"
I had finally put two and two together and rushed out of the room. NotUrLittleBisqueDoll was Natalie's user name online, so we were able to get her address, track her down and bring her in.
Natalie was in interrogation and I wanted to run in and beat her senseless until she told me where Sara was, but she'd never open up to me if I was aggressive. She was the type of psycho that needed me to bond with her first and gain her trust.
"Hi, Natalie. My name's Gil. It's so nice to finally meet you. I…uh…probably shouldn't say this, but…I'm a huge fan." I was trying not to stutter, but I was becoming sick to my stomach facing the woman who abducted my girlfriend, "…I've been a crime scene investigator for 22 years. I've worked over two-thousand homicides, and you are by far…the best I've ever seen. I mean…you're such a great artist. And to be so young and so talented and…so pretty. I've thought about you every night for the last nine months. I even tried to do what you do. I built my own miniature. You saw it?" She nodded. "How'd I do?" She shrugged. "Do you play chess?" She shook her head no. "I play as a hobby. It quiets my mind, you know? Soothes me. At one point, I became so consumed by it that whenever I closed my eyes, I could see the chess pieces moving all around the board. I was obsessed with correcting all my bad moves. I wondered if a game could ever be played without a mistake. I'd love to play you sometime." She finally smiled and I wondered if this whole charade would work. "I'm so impressed by the way you embrace your passion. You'd make a great CSI. This last one was brilliant. You studied our crime scene so well. Tracking the car to the junkyard and then towing it all the way out to the desert where you knew we wouldn't find it. And then…" the words caught in my throat, "…the way you killed Sara."
"I didn't kill her," she said.
"You didn't?" Damn, I knew I had sounded too happy as soon as the words left my mouth, and then she exploded.
"This is about her. Her, her, her! It's always about her!"
"No, it isn't, Natalie. It's about you." Please, I was so sorry, I wanted to take it back.
"It's always about her."
Then she started singing, "Oh, sad was the day for the little bisque doll, for they cut all her stitches away, and found the seat of the terrible ache; T'was a delicate task…"
"Natalie, listen to me…tell me where she is." God, please tell me where Sara is.
But she only continued singing, as I continued pleading, "For none of the doctors had ever before performed on a dolly's inside. They tried to re-stuff her but didn't know how, and this was her wail as she died..."
That's when I lost it and for the first time ever and reached over and placed my hands on a suspect and tried shaking the truth out of them.
"STOP IT! Just stop this! Tell me where Sara is!" I shouted at her, but it was no use. The love of my life was trapped under a car somewhere in the middle of the dessert and I was no closer to finding her.