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Sara and Grissom sat once again in the confession room across the table from a tearful Jake.
Sara leaned forward and spoke to Jake warmly.
"Jake, can you tell me who hurt your mom?"
Jake looked at his knees, his brow furrowed, apparently thinking.
Grissom leaned forward and folded his hands in front of him, speaking to Jake in a reassuring tone that only Gil Grissom can convey.
"Jake… we need to catch this man or he might hurt someone else like he hurt your mommy; I know you're sad because you're not going to be able to see your mommy anymore, and that's not fair, I know, but we can make sure that the man who did this cannot do it again and will be sorry he did it to you."
Under the table Sara grabbed his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
Jake sniffed and wiped away his tears with the back of his hand.
"Now, can you please tell us who it was that did this to your mom?"
"A shark."
Grissom and Sara's brains processed these two words slowly and then turned to look at each other even slower and wide eyed.
Grissom, Sara and Doc. Robbins stood around the body of Carrie Whiting, lying on a metal slab in the middle of the morgue.
"So, cause of death?" Grissom asked Doc. Robbins, impatiently.
"Well, obviously not the work of a shark, but what it appears to be is a swift cut by a sharp blade, probably a machete of some sort. There isn't much I can tell you without the head but I took nail scrapings and sent them to the lab."
"Why would the kid say a shark did it?"
Doc. Robbins shrugged. "Because he's four? You know what imaginations kids have, and you never know what kind of affect his grief is having on him. Any word on custody arrangements?"
Grissom shook his head. "No. Vic's parents are deceased, she had no siblings; Brass hasn't managed to contact the father's parents yet."
Doc. Robbins sighed "I hope he doesn't end up in foster care – we've seen it happen to too many kids and have it ruin them for the rest of their lives."
Grissom glanced at Sara. "I've known of some odd occasions where the outcome of fostering has been pretty spectacular as well."