Disclaimer: I don't own.
A/N: :) Thanks, as always, for the reviews. Those of you who don't review, I hope that you're enjoying this as well. Every once and a while, tell me what you like or dislike. I stress over chapters in this particular story like nobody's business, so the feedback is nice.
Rage--I found the last chapter funny too. :)
Chapter 23: The Mile High Club
…Okay, maybe I'd been just a little out of line.
But I drag myself out of the crime lab and over to the diner because Sara had pulled a card I could hardly refuse… to see some drunk ass who calls himself her and Michael's friend, bending her over and kissing her like he owns her—and I know my Sara. …Sara. Just Sara.
Regardless, I know her and I knew from the wide-eyed look of surprise and the way she looked at him afterward that the advances had been unwelcome. If he hadn't been her friend, she probably would have punched him. …As it was, she made it a joke, and laughed it off, while her hero Michael did nothing to defend her honor or reprimand his friend.
I felt guilty after I left, and though I couldn't bring myself to apologize—Sara and I couldn't talk like we used to, whether we were on better terms or not—I tried to make it up to her. I gave her the most interesting case, and gave her Nick to work it with her. Other than Greg, Sara seemed closest to him, and I thought that would help.
That left a trick roll. I gave it to Warrick because Catherine had a court date coming up, and spent the entire shift holed up in my office, working on paperwork. …It seemed like I had never appreciated the demands on Brass when he'd run the shift. True, I'd taken on some of the load and helped him out, but the sheer volume of paperwork and signatures involved was overwhelming. I felt like, more often than not, I was busier signing my name than solving crimes.
On days when finishing the paperwork could not be put off any longer and I ended up pulling a double just to get it in on time, I found find myself daydreaming while I caught an hour on my couch before the next shift, about giving the shift up. …Catherine would be the most logical choice, because she was the senior CSI. Truth be told though, good as she was at her job, I didn't really think she was cut out to lead a shift yet.
For the good of the lab, I couldn't. …But if I could… I would find myself a man who had previously believed himself strapped with responsibilities, now set free. And the minor issue of dating a coworker seemed minimal compared to a supervisor dating a subordinate. …Not that I could necessarily bring myself to be with Sara, again. I… I wanted it. God, I wanted it. But anytime I let myself consider it as more than a passing fantasy, I saw her wrapped in some strange San Franciscan's embrace, hiding her vulnerability in his bed while I sat at home, hoping I could just spend Christmas with her.
And then I would feel so nauseous that I was certain I'd be sick if I didn't get my mind on someone else.
Still—giving her the case seemed to help. I jumped in when I could, talking them through evidence. Despite both being level three's, they were newer to this. I had told Sara, the first day we met, that experience was the one thing you couldn't learn in a textbook—and the real force behind 'intuition.' They still needed guidance, here and there, and I was happy to provide it.
Especially when Sara smiled brightly at me instead of avoiding my gaze, and when Nick strove so hard to gain my approval. I reveled in gently guiding them in the right direction and watching them excel.
Their case took up most of a week, and by the time we were wrapping it and finishing up work on other open cases in our backlog, we were getting a call that required my whole team. The Sheriff Mobley requested our presence specifically. A DB on a plane, suspicious circumstances, and the sheriff breathing down my neck, talking about our window to be 'heroes' by solving the case before the FAA arrived in the morning.
…I really hated the Sheriffs, because they were worse than people like Ecklie, who thought of our roles as a career—they viewed everything through the lens of politics. I had no interest in playing politics, nor making any decisions based on a politician's desire to use our success to back his campaign efforts. I was here for the victims. I contented myself with making a snide comment asking if he was running for mayor when he said that an arrest would be good for me and him and Vegas. He might as well be giving a Miss America speak. 'This arrest will give us world peace…'
I needed to go start with my team before I said something job-threatening. They were all waiting on the plane already, which was good. Despite disagreeing with the Sheriff, I was aware of the time crunch—if we were taking the case, I wanted to solve it. I stepped up inside, glancing around. They all looked well-rested… we'd had an easy few days. They'd be ready to work fast, and that was going to be necessary.
"…from Atlanta, married, no record." Catherine finished speaking as I came fully inside, my eyes rescanning the first class section of the plane in case I'd missed anything obvious the first time around.
"So," I said, glancing around, "what do you think?" I wanted to get their first impressions.
"I don't know, but this sure must have looked scary at 30,000 feet." Catherine responded.
"All this damage by one guy—had to be on drugs." Warrick said, shaking his head.
"Too much damage for one guy." Sara said softly, and I felt myself beaming with pride. She was seeing the scene as it presented itself, not the story we'd been told.
"So… more than one guy." Nick concluded. He and Sara thought a lot alike. "What do you think, Griss?"
"I think we've got ten witnesses all signing the same song: Deceased went berserk. Unless we find something else in the evidence, that's what happened." I said, not because I didn't believe anything had happened, but because I was stressing the vital need to find something to prove the eye witnesses wrong. Juries put far too much stock in eye witness testimony. "Catherine?"
She nodded, knowing what I wanted without asking. "I'll start the interviews."
"Thank you. Warrick, go with."
"Yeah." Warrick responded, nodding.
"Brass has them all assembled in the lounge—assume there's evidence on everyone. Nick, go with the coroner. Sara and I will work the plane. …This is a mobile crime scene—it might not be here tomorrow."I said, stressing without needing to say so that we needed to work this as fast as possible. Everyone headed out, and I glanced at Sara, offering her a smile.
She returned it, and launched into an assessment of the scene. "This much damage speaks to come kind of encounter. …If there was a fight on the plane, why would every witness be defending the killer?"
I felt my lips quirk in a smile. I loved watching Sara's mind running through the motions, making the connections. And I knew, instinctually, that she felt more strongly than she was willing to say in front of me that this was foul play. She didn't want to be adamant and then be proven wrong, because she was still eager for my professional approval.
"Once David arrives, take the area around the body so they get it back to Nick and Jenna as soon as possible. I'm going to go talk to the pilot."
She nodded, camera in hand, already crouching down beside the body. I gave her form a quick once over, feeling almost sad in the observance of the sleek line of her neck and the subtle curves of her form. I had made mistake after mistake since Sara had come to work with me…I was just lucky that she forgave me so easily, offering again and again an unassuming camaraderie. We had fought last week, and yet the entire interaction was absent any awkwardness. She was the consummate professional.
The pilot gave us very little—except that he didn't believe our victim to have been drunk or on drugs. He mentioned that people acted strangely when flying, and I filed the information away, thinking that maybe that could explain his behavior. Sara's question had been extremely pertinent—certainly there had been some type of scuffle on the plane, but why would ten strangers all decide to tell the same story? The only explanations were that either one—they were all responsible, or two—it was partially true, and his behavior had been erratic.
By the time I returned, Sara had processed the body as much as she could in-place, and David and the coroners had removed it. She was holding a stack of orange cones with tape wrapped around them. "Hey—anything from the pilots?"
"Very little." I said, looking at the cones. She offered me another open smile, and for a brief moment I felt like we were back on the level of being friends, not coworkers, not boss and subordinate, and certainly not mere acquaintances. Friends.
"I thought we'd put the names of the passengers here," she pointed to the tape, "and place them around the cabin. You always say we go fast by going slow—it'll save time to not be constantly checking who was seated where."
I gave her a bemused smile, wondering not for the first time how she remembered the things I said so clearly. "Great idea." Her flushed, beaming response made me realize how rarely I complimented her. …Maybe I ought to do so more often. We got to work.
We found a broken seat in front of Tony Candlewell's—our dead guy's—seat, and blood drops beside Lou Everett's seat… and very little else. Sara stood to stretch, as she'd been crouching beside seats for the last half hour. "So I've been thinking… You know I asked why they'd all tell the same story when it clearly isn't the truth? Why defend a stranger? What if they were all involved? I mean, do these people know each other outside of this plane? …Maybe there's a connection we don't know about."
I stood too, cringing at the creak in my knees. "I'll go see how Catherine's doing—someone has to be talking. …You can do the last few rows on your own?"
"Of course."
I nodded, and moved out, heading to the first class lounge, asking the question that had been on my mind all night, building in intensity with each new piece of information. If nothing criminal had taken place, why wasn't anyone talking? Because something had happened beyond what they were telling us. Her thoughts were the same as mine, and as Sara's. They were hiding something. …I just couldn't figure out why.
I headed back to the plane, thinking I could help Sara finish—there was no way I'd been gone long enough for her to have finished—when my phone rang. Nick and the coroner had found intracranial bleeding, thoracic hemorrhaging, a ruptured spleen, a fever, and a bruise which Nick thought looked like the heel of a boot. I would leave that detail out when I reported to Sara, I thought, climbing back into the plane, at least for now. I didn't want it swaying her assessment of the scene.
She informed me that the passenger in 4B had been drinking fairly heavily, and I moved over to find the evidence of this—several small liquor bottles tucked in the pouch in front of him—and when I glanced up, she was holding a broken wine bottle, with what looked like blood on the edges. Tony Candlewell had had defensive wounds on his hands…
Sara glanced back at the cone. "Marlene Valdez was sitting in 2E."
I opened my phone, calling Brass and Catherine to let them know, while Sara moved into the aisle. I hung up and moved with her, stepping ahead when she stopped to look closer at something, and I spotted the other half of the wine bottle on a smashed cart on the floor. That was probably how the bottle had broken. …A weapon of opportunity?
"Sara…?" I moved to the side while she looked up at me and picked up the piece. "The other half of the wine bottle, from 2E… So, Marlene in 2E slashes the victim… he's bleeding. …Where does he go?"
"The lavatory." She says, and then we're up and moving. A glance inside tells us very little, and she points this out quickly with a sigh. "No evidence."
My own experience, years prior, in an airplane bathroom makes me think we ought to take a closer look. I smirk, mostly to ward off the blush I'm feeling. That is not a story I'm willing to share with anyone, least of all Sara Sidle. "Well, no patent evidence, but if there's blood present, there might be latent evidence." There. That sounded plausible. And there could be blood present. A second after I spoke she'd moved, and a glance behind showed me the UV light.
"One step ahead of you, every so often." She said, the subtlest tease in her voice. If she knew what I was really looking for, she wouldn't say so.
"Thank you." I said, taking it and moving over to the sink… because that was where my experience had taken place. It felt… most plausible. "Ah," I said, a moment after turning it on. "Would you hand me the Christopher Columbus from my field kit?" I asked, when I'd found exactly what I expected.
She watched me for a moment as I looked through the mini microscope and found semen, exactly as I'd expected. "…I take it that's not blood?"
"No," I smiled, looking at her in disbelief that she hadn't figured it out. "But there's protein in it." I teased, watching as realization dawned on her face.
"Ohh. The mile high club." And I felt myself getting a nervous, excited feeling. Talking about sex on a plane with Sara, even in the context of a case, was more personal than we'd been in a long time. I wanted it to last. "…That means the two passengers might have had no idea what was going on inside that cabin." She concluded, and I went out on a limb, quoting the article I'd read on the plane.
"You know, high altitude enhances the entire…sexual experience. It increases the euphoria." I expected her response to be surprise… I expected her to tease me about how I would know such a thing, and I could fall back on the article. Hell, I probably still had the issue, so there was no risk of revealing anything… and in the meantime, she could playfully interrogate me on a very personal subject. …I did not expect to receive her opinion on airplane sex.
"Well…" she started, drawing out the word in thought. "It's good. …I don't know if it's that good."
I looked back at her in shock, realizing with a jolt that she had joined the mile high club as well. …When? With whom? …Michael? Tyler? The third man who I knew nothing about? I knew for a fact that it couldn't be from the man she'd been with after I'd asked her to spend the holidays with me—she'd told me that it had happened after a night of drinking… no planes involved. Had she been with someone else, since then?
It seemed like she realized the implications of what she'd said as soon as I did—and made the leap to my statement, a moment later. "…Cite your source." she demanded.
I made an impatient noise, mostly because I felt somewhat nauseous at the idea of not-knowing. "Hand me a swab, please."
The grin on her face, however, was infectious. "You're avoiding the question. …'Enhances sexual experience, increases the euphoria…' Cite your source." She demanded again, and I sighed.
"A magazine."
Her eyes narrowed. "What magazine?" Her tone was entirely skeptical, and still light and teasing. Was she flirting with me? I gave another impatient sigh, though this one was less than genuine. If she could ask me, I could ask her....
"Applied Psychodynamics in Forensic Science." I said, with emphasis. She smirked.
"Never heard of it."
"I'll get you a subscription." I teased, reminding myself to do so… or at least find the old magazine. "Now… Cite your source." It took everything I had not to beam with pride. If we were talking about past experiences, and in the process of doing so, she was still flirting… it meant that talking to me meant more than remembering him. Whoever he was.
"Oh. Now you wanna go down that route?" She challenged, and I felt elated. The slightest of blushes had risen to her cheeks, but everything about her body language was leaning towards me, and the smile she was fighting told me she was enjoying the interaction as much as I was—and for the same reasons.
"Yeah…"
The blush increased, still subtle, but there. "…Nah. Nevermind."
"You started it." I sat, looking at her more fully, imagining drawing her into this bathroom and contaminating the crime scene and making her entirely mine all over again. I felt my hands trembling, just slightly, with the temptation that was washing over me.
She paused a moment, as if bracing herself, and I briefly saw the flash of something hidden and hurtful in her eyes, but it was gone in a moment, and her flirting was back, her voice more confident than it had been a second ago… maybe a touch of her bravado had been slipped in, to give her strength. "…Delta Airlines, Flight1109, Boston-Miami, March '93, Ken Fuller…hazel eyes." She took a breath, her eyes flickering up to the ceiling repeatedly, as though she couldn't look at me while detailing this. I felt surprise slipping over my face at the details. I had heard that name before, and never so… flippantly. She was hiding, again. "…Organic Chem. Lab… T.A., BMoC… Overrated. In… every aspect. …Can… we get back to work, please?"
"…Yeah." I said, realizing that once again, idle flirting could not ever be just that, with Sara. No longer imagining destroying our crime scene, I was remembering in detail the violent nightmare she'd had before giving me the name 'Ken' as her only explanation. I was remembering the butterflies when we'd been wrapped up in bed, in the very beginning of our relationship, the night of our first kiss. Ken had been her only one-night stand… and her tone had told me that I would get no more information. …Had she been raped in the airplane bathroom? Certainly someone would have heard… certainly she wouldn't be talking about the event so flippantly?
I stood, no longer feeling elated, but struggling to keep the tease in my voice, because I knew she didn't want to talk about it. "I think, because of your first-hand knowledge and experience in airplane bathrooms… You can do the swab."
Her smile and blush returned, a little disbelieving and very playful, and I smiled and moved away. It was just too much, to see her pretending that this wasn't a problem… pretending or maybe even honestly believing that I didn't know any better. …Had we really gone so far, in covering our past, that she would think I didn't remember?
