Chapter 19

"Where's Catherine?" Grissom asked Nick as he glanced up from the field they were unearthing.

"Jeez Louise!" Nick exclaimed as he looked at the series of grave-sized hole scattered about that were now being lit by multiple flood lights. "Oh, Catherine's on her way but she needed to pick Lindsey up from a school trip. She said she'd be up as soon as she got her home with her mother. Warrick offered to drive her up, so he stayed with her. I'm afraid you're stuck with me for now. How many graves have you found?"

"Eleven in this field, alone. There were five in the basement of the house over there."

"Whose house is it? Are they being investigated?"

"They just moved there last month. The bodies were there longer than that. And before this couple got the house, it was vacant for a year."

"So it could be anyone."

"Afraid so," Grissom said as he glanced over to where Sara was snapping pictures of the latest body that was dug up. "You can help Sophia with the remains of the graves, maybe you two can come up with something useful. Sara and I will go back to the sheriff's office with Greg. They're expanding their morgue with the leftovers staying in the sheriff's basement."

"Ah, Gris," Nick moaned with a pitiful tilt of his head. "Do I have to work with her?"

"You've got something against Sophia, Nick?"

"Yeah, she's a bitch," he explained. "Everyone's got something against working with her."

"Are we talking about Sophia?" Ecklie asked as he approached the men, taking off a pair of gloves and wiping the sweat from his forehead. "Is there "anyone" who will work with her?" Grissom and Nick just stared back at their superior, knowing he was waiting for either one of them to speak up, but neither willing to do so. "What about Greg?"

"Oh, yeah, mm-hmm," Nick agreed quickly.

"Greg—yeah, Greg can work with her," Grissom joined in.

"Well, he can't," Ecklie told them. "He's needed down at the morgue to work on getting DNA samples of all of these."

"Sara and I can do that," Grissom told him.

"No," Ecklie said tiredly. "I know you don't particularly get along well with Sara, I'm not going to force you to work with her when you don't have to."

"No, really, it's no bother. We'll just go in and get the job done. I think we can control ourselves long enough to finish."

"You and Sara?" Nick asked with disbelieve. "That's like throwing two pissed off cats into a shoe box with one another. Neither one's going to come out unscathed!"

"That's what I figure too," Ecklie said, then glanced back to the blonde CSI who was struggling to pull a tarp out of the grave Sara was taking snapshots of while Greg grabbed the other end. "Okay, I'll stay here and work with Sophia. I don't know that they're going to be doing any more digging tonight. Nick, you can go down to the sheriff's office with the other three. I'm sure there's more than enough work to be taken care of down there. We've sure as hell sent enough bodies down to them."

"You little shit! You did that on purpose!" Sophia yelled and Greg yelped as he took a quick jump backwards and stared at the woman who was now half sitting, half lying on the ground with a corpse lying across her lap and black slime oozing out of a decomposing hole in its abdomen.

"Oh, Sophia," Greg said as he stood there staring at her. "That's gonna smell horrible."

"I told you to get a better hold on that tarp," Sara told her as she started taking photos of Sophia on the ground. "Didn't I say, don't drop that, Soph!"

"Shut up! And stop taking pictures!"

Sara quickly snapped one more then lowered the camera as she continued to watch the woman. "Why are you just sitting there? If I were you, I know "I" wouldn't want to be sitting on the ground with a decomposing body on top of me."

Ecklie sighed deeply as he looked over at the commotion then called in a tired voice, "Get off the ground, Sophia. We've got too much work to be doing to be playing games."

"Get the damned thing off of me!" Sophia hissed.

"Oh!" Greg said as if the idea hadn't occurred to him and he quickly reached down and grabbed his end of the tarp again, pulling it around to get it off of her, but not before spilling more of the putrid semi-liquid onto her. "Sorry."

Nick looked over at Grissom. "She's gonna stink to high heaven."

"Lemons," Grissom said absently. "She should use lemons."

"I don't think she's going to find lemons out here at this time of night," Ecklie said as he started walking with Grissom and Nick toward the trucks parked several yards away. "Good thing no one's sharing a room with her."

"Conrad!" Sophia's raging voice rang out after the bald supervisor, making him pause a millisecond before speeding up his step and getting inside one of the trucks.

"I—uh—have to go to the bathroom."

Grissom and Nick watched as he drove away and they both stepped back when Sophia hurried to them and stared after the truck.

"Man! Sophia!" Nick said with his hand covering his nose. "Use a little common courtesy. Step back about twenty or thirty yards until you get a shower."

"Won't work," Sara said as she approached them and walked directly to the truck she was sharing with Grissom. "She needs . . ."

"Lemons," Grissom finished for her as he went to the driver's side of the truck.

"Yeah—lemons," Nick told her then hurried to the truck he had arrived in.

"Well where am I supposed to get lemons at this time of night?" She called after them.

"I got some back in my motel room," Greg said as he caught up with her. "I figured we might run into something like this so I brought a bunch up for the crew. Want to buy some?"

"I'm not paying for them. Were you going to charge everyone else on the crew?"

"Mmm—no."

"Then why. . ."

"Do you want to wash that stink off or not?" Greg asked again.

"How much?"

"How much do you want them?" He looked at her with a raised brow. "Right now I'm charging a buck a lemon."

"I can get them three for a dollar at the store!"

"Good luck trying! But, if you'd rather wait until morning and let Grissom smell you like this all night. . ."

"I'm not paying a buck a lemon!"

"Okay, but now they're a buck and a quarter."

"I'm not. . ."

"Buck and a half."

"Fine! Get me the damned lemons!"

Within the next half hour, Greg, Sara, Grissom and Nick were all down at the temporary morgue collecting DNA samples, photographing injuries to the bodies, and generally investigating them for more evidence. Since Sara had the camera, she roamed from body to body, pausing to speak to each CSI as she approached him. But for Grissom she always had a tendency to pass behind him, where her hand would find the perfect roundness of his backside. After nearly an hour and a half of this, he swore to himself that if she did it one more time he was going to order her out of the room and he wasn't quite sure if he could keep himself from going with her.

"What's going on over there?" Greg asked in a sing-songy voice, wearing a smile as childish as a four-year-old's. "Grissom having more trouble with chalk?"

"What are you talking about?" Sara immediately pulled her hand away from squeezing a firm globe and Grissom looked over the tops of his glasses from the teenage boy he was examining.

"Grissom's butt—he back into a wall of chalk, or what? That must be the tenth time I saw you grabbing it."

"Sara's grabbing butts?" Nick looked up from the woman he was working on and made a semi-disgusted face. "Grissom's butt?"

"He's got a lose thread—and I'm trying to get it off—it's driving me nuts!" Sara spoke up quickly, sending Greg a look that could maim.

"I bet it's driving you nuts," Greg chuckled.

"See, Griss," Nick said as he went back to searching for foreign objects on his body. "That's why you should just go buy yourself a pair of jeans. You never have that kind of problem with jeans. They never have threads hanging off of them like that."

"I'll keep that in mind," Grissom said dully. "Sara, have you finished with these? I think you've gotten enough shots in here."

Sara looked at him. "Are you saying I'm finished? That I can go back to the motel?"

"Not at all. I wanted to go over one of the bodies with you in the other room."

He removed his glasses in a very professor-like manner and turned, walking ahead of Sara toward the room with the other bodies. Greg watched them leave, then moved to the door and watched them go down the hallway, not at all surprised when Grissom moved into the bathroom with Sara instead of going on to the room he had mentioned.

"So what body did you want to discuss with me?" Sara asked with half a smile as she looked at the double stalls and sink that occupied the room.

He silently walked toward her and she backed up until she was pressed back against the sink. He put his hands on her waist and guided her back farther until she was sitting on its edge, then he nudged her legs apart and moved to stand between them.

"You're playing with fire, little girl." He held her hips as he pressed against her and allowed her to stimulate him as he started grinding against her slightly.

"So I'm an arsonist," she said quietly as his hands moved up until he was holding onto her face and he lowered his head to cover her mouth with his own. His tongue slid between her lips, sliding along hers with slow persuasion.

The sound of the door opening didn't register immediately but by the time it was completely open Grissom's lips lifted off of Sara's. Nick rushed inside then stopped abruptly upon sight of them as Grissom and Sara in their position.

"Uh, what are ya doing, boss?" Nick asked slowly.

"She had something in her eye," Grissom told him as Sara quickly blinked and Grissom pried it open with his fingers. "I think I got it out. Did I get it out?"

"Yeah, all better. It must've been some dirt from out at the graves."

"Well, uh," Nick watched as Grissom wet a paper towel and placed it on Sara's eye then stepped back from her. "I—you know. . ."

Grissom and Sara looked at him a moment before they realized they "were" in the bathroom and he had come rushing inside.

"Oh!" Sara jumped down from the sink and started for the door. "Sorry, Nick. I'll leave you to your privacy—or at least partial privacy."

Nick gave her an appreciative smile as he watched her leave, then turned and started for the stall where he immediately unzipped his pants and started to relieve himself.

"Ya better keep an eye on that, Gris. The dirt out there can have awful sharp particles in it. Ya don't want her to get a cut cornea or anything like that."

"Thanks, Nick." Grissom turned and started out the door as well. "I'll do that."