Disclaimer: All rights reserved for CBS.
A/n:Well, it's winding down folks. Only a couple of chapters to go. I hope you have enjoyed this story and that you aren't disappointed with the ending.
Chapter 18
Sara pulled up at a red light and took the time to check the address on the card. Her first priority was getting settled and then she planned on going straight to her mother. She was tired of inaction, and she wanted to get this done. She was fed up with this fear ruling her life. For years she'd put it behind her, thinking she'd moved on, but all it had taken to bring it to the fore was an eye opening encounter with a mentally unstable woman.
The light turned green and she accelerated, only a few minutes from her destination. The sun over head beat down, heating the car, but there was a cool breeze that kept the temperature down, making it a pleasant day.
Sara turned onto Courtland Avenue and, after going a couple of blocks, turned right and headed up the hill. The neighborhood that Michele lived in was one Sara had only been to once; she'd worked a case there many years ago, and she remembered the long trek up the hill to reach it. After fifteen minutes of searching, she finally found the right house.
The house was something to behold. The two story structure was painted in a variety of colors that you wouldn't think would work together, but actually came together quite nicely, giving the famous Victorian painted ladies of the town a run for their money.
Sara took a deep breath and released it. Thoughts of Natalie swirled around in her mind. She remembered her inability to get through to the unstable woman, and she couldn't help but wonder if maybe she hadn't been able to get through to her because, somewhere in the back of her mind, she felt that she had deserved it. That she could have become someone exactly like Natalie. Someone like her mother, who used pain and humiliation to get her way, and who allowed her baser instincts to take over.
Sara relaxed as the elevator climbed upwards. Her phone rang and she smiled on seeing who it was. . "Hello Gilbert," she answered, and leaned back against the railing.
He filled her in on what they'd found out about the miniature killer and Sara felt a small pang when she found out the reasons that Natalie had ended up in foster care. She knew from personal experience that nothing good led you there.
The wind whipped through her hair as she headed towards her car. "All right, I'll be right there, I'll meet you at the lab." As she opened her trunk to stow her kit away, she thought of her own time in foster care. Luckily she hadn't been there long, but it was long enough that it gave her a greater understanding of how it was to be truly alone.
Her thoughts were interrupted as she heard her name. She turned, surprised to find a stranger there. She saw the tazer a second before the barb shot out, and then her world was filled with pain.
The next time she opened her eyes she was in a small dark place. Her hands were tied together with a plastic tie and from the sounds around and the bumping of her prison; she determined that she was in the trunk of a car. She forced her mind to clear, determined to find a way out of this. She knew if she didn't get away soon she'd be just one more murder for a CSI to investigate, and the thought of that spurred her on. She gripped the barb in her vest with her teeth and pulled, ignoring the way it cut into her lips. She spit it out behind her and grappled with her fingers to find it. It took concentration, which was hard because of the pain that still racked her body, but she finally managed to grip it and pry off the tie. Once she was free of that she was faced with another problem. She needed a way out of the trunk. She used the inside latch to open it but knew the car was going to fast to go out that way. She looked around the interior of the trunk, looking for a possible escape route. She closed the trunk and looked around. Her mind raced. She made herself focus on the task at hand. Getting an idea, she began to unscrew one of the speakers. She thought it was ironic that she was the CSI most often given the responsibility of dismantling cars, and that knowledge would be what might get her out of this. Hopefully there would be a hole behind the speaker by which she could get to the latch for the back seat. It seemed to take years to unscrew the speaker, but finally she had it loose. She reached her hand through the jagged plastic and grasped the latch, lowering the back seat. Knowing she only had one chance to take her captor by surprise, she tried to silently ease up behind her.
Acting quickly, she leaped forward and grabbed her from behind. The next few minutes went by in a blur, and she managed to smash the woman's head through the window before shoving the back door open, hoping that the car had slowed down enough for her to jump. She hit the ground hard, landing on her arm and rolled to a stop. She saw the car stop, but couldn't get herself to move and her eyes closed as a wave of blackness overcame her.
Once again she opened her eyes and found herself in the car. She was in the backseat this time, and her hands were retied. Before she could formulate a plan, she felt water hit her face and swallowed the water that cascaded into her mouth reflectively.
The roar of the car helped clear some of the cobwebs in her brain, and she focused on the woman in the front seat. She could only think of one way to make her rethink what she was doing. If she could just talk to her, make her see her as more than a victim, but as a woman, just like her, who's had a hard life, maybe she could stop her from continuing on this path. She had an idea of who this was, and it didn't make her feel more comfortable.
"Natalie?" she whispered, her voice raspy.
The woman looked back, startled and Sara knew she was on the right track.
"Natalie Davis." Sara swallowed. " I know who you are. I know a lot about you."
Sara could see that Natalie was listening, and she hastened on, hoping to get to her. "You make miniatures. I've seen you before right?" Sara realized that was true, she'd seen her around the lab. "You work in the lab, on the cleaning crew."
Natalie remained silent, but Sara was sure she was onto something, and she knew what she had to do.
"So sorry about hitting you back there. I guess… uh, I have a fear of trunks. In my business you only find one thing in them."
Still Natalie didn't say anything, and Sara worried about getting through to her, so she switched tacks.
"We actually have a lot in common, you know? I'm a foster kid, too. Happy happy joy joy," Sara said sarcastically. "I do know what it's like to be alone, afraid that no one's every going to be there for you." She remembered those times too well.
"Ernie was," Natalie whispered.
Sara blinked. "Yes he was." She decided that might be the best way to talk Natalie out of this. Convince her that Ernie wouldn't have wanted this, though she was having trouble concentrating. "That's true, Natalie." Sara ventured into a painful part of her past, hoping that would get through to Natalie. "I lost my father, too." Her mind went back to those lonely days when the man who'd loved her more than anything had been taken from her. She roused herself, she felt so sleepy. "I know that Ernie loved you, he would not have wanted you to do this."
This caused Natalie to respond. "Ernie loved me more than Grissom could ever love you," she whispered.
"Grissom?" Sara was confused, her brain fuzzy. What did Grissom have to do with this? Then it hit her; Natalie knew. She knew that she and Grissom were together. "Oh, I know what this is about," she slurred. Something was really wrong. She couldn't focus, but she did remember… "Natalie, what did you put in the water?" Sara eyes were so heavy. "Natalie? Huh?" Unable to keep her eyes open any longer, she closed them and drifted into sleep.
She opened her eyes, once again confused about where she was. She heard creaking and turned her head, feeling the dirt under her cheek, realizing that something was being lowered on top of her. "Natalie?" She called. "Natalie, what are you doing?" Her grogginess clearing, she called again, "Natalie? What are you doing?"
Realizing too late that her arm was stretched out and that the thing being lowered over her was a car, she groaned. "No, no, no!" she found herself screaming as the car pined down her arm, causing pain to shoot to her shoulder. "Don't do this," she grunted.
"Natalie!" Sara called over and over until she heard a car start up and take off. Despite the wind and the crackling of thunder in the air, the silence was loud and she knew that she was alone. She knew she was going to die, knew it as deeply as she'd known that her father was dead before seeing his body. The rain started to fall and Sara lifted her head. She would not die like this! Not at the hands of some psycho! She would not roll over like her father had done, time and time again, until finally he'd given his life so that she wouldn't have to feel her mother's wrath.
'Bang, bang!'
Sara jerked, her eyes opening. It took a moment to gather her bearings, and she felt truly lost when she turned and found a tall blond woman staring down at her.
The woman mimicked the action of rolling down the window, and Sara automatically complied.
"Yes?" Sara asked.
A pair of big blue eyes blinked. "Sorry, doll, didn't mean to startle you, but I have to get going soon, and I thought you'd like to get settled before I do. I'm Michele." She purred in a deeper voice than Sara would have expected.
Sara shook her head. "Sorry, I guess I drifted off." She opened the door and stood up. Looking up, she realized how tall Michele was. "Hi, I'm Sara; I guess Rona called and told you I was on my way." She held out her hand. "Though, if it's too much trouble, I can always find a hotel."
Michele shook her head. "No, it's fine. There's plenty of room, and I work so much that I'm barely here anyway."
Shaking her hand, Sara realized that Michele had extremely long red nails. "So, I'll grab my bags and head on in."
They walked up the front walk together and Michele told her about her job. "I perform three times a night. Singing is my life, I don't know what I'd do without it, but it doesn't pay the bills. So during the day I work at a little store called Good Vibrations, that's how I know Rona, she orders stuff from us for her little Inn."
Sara choked back a laugh. "Does that leave you time to sleep?"
"Sure it does, my last performance is at three in the morning, I get out of the club around six, then I go open the store and work until noon. I hurry back here to sleep until six and then I'm up and at it again." She smiled as they walked through the door. "Luckily this place is paid for, an inheritance from a favorite uncle; otherwise I'd be working three jobs trying to keep myself in home, food and gasoline." Her laugh echoed in the entry hall. "Your room is this way."
She led the way up the stairs and stopped in front of a door to the right. "You have your own bathroom and there's a big screen TV as well." She handed Sara a key. "Here's the key to the house, make sure you lock up when you leave."
Sara shook her head. "Are you sure? You don't even know me."
Michele laughed. "Rona told me you were good people, that's all I need to know. Plus she said you were a cop, which can't be a bad thing to have around."
"Well, not exactly a cop, I'm a crime scene investigator."
"Same thing in my book," Michele said, glancing at her watch. "Oh my, time for me to go. There's food in the fridge, help yourself. I'll see you later." She gave a little wave and hurried down the stairs.
Sara turned to look around the room. No time like the present to get down to business. Picking up her purse she also hurried down the hall and out the door.
Sara sat in her car gazing out the window at the townhouse on the corner. It was the kind of place her mother had always wanted to have. Sara had gotten Archie to do her a favor and find out the address. In return she'd promised to buy him the new Grand Theft Auto game when it came out. An expensive payoff indeed, but looking up addresses for the general public wasn't exactly risk free, and as her mother's address wasn't listed on any database she had access too, she'd had to pull out the big guns.
Her heart pounded as she contemplated getting out of her car and knocking on the door. She hadn't been this scared when she was pinned under that car.
And then it became a moot point.
Laura Joiner walked out of the house and started down the sidewalk, holding the leash of a well groomed standard poodle, its pink nails clicking on the sidewalk bricks, and it's pink bow ruffling in the breeze.
Sara's heart tripled in speed as she got out of the car without taking her eyes from the woman walking down the street. Her feet carried her to stand directly in front of her.
Laura stopped and stared at the woman who was now blocking her path. "Can I help you?"
TBC…