A/N: Thanks again, everybody. Also, I posted 2 chapters this week, please be sure to read Chapter 4 first.
Chapter 5
San Francisco
She woke in a panic. The same panic that'd gripped her heart tightly for the past seven months. The same screams, the same dreams, and the same denial ripping her apart. The denial had been easier than the truth. The truth cut far deeper than the lies. Her whole childhood had been lies, so it'd come easy, until it no longer felt easy. It felt wrong, shameful, and guilty.
Denial, denial, denial. Gil would've quoted something from the Bible about Peter, who denied Jesus three times until he no longer could. She couldn't deny it any longer either. The truth was staring her in the face as she stood in the bathroom and washed her face of the tears that had stained it.
It'd been a mistake the first time she'd mentioned him to Gil during a case. She hadn't caught herself in time before she said the words. "When I was a kid I was playing hide-and-seek one day and I found this plastic bag under my big brother's bed. I thought it was a bag of dirt so I took it to my mom. Turned out it was his bag of weed. He was grounded for a year."
Maybe it was because it was Gil and she never wanted to lie to him. She hadn't held back as she told him the truth. Well, part of it. She left out the broken arm. That had been the first time she'd mentioned that she'd even had a big brother in almost twenty years. The night her father was killed had been the last time she ever saw him. After that, he was gone. Lost in the system and then to life.
The lies made it easier to forget that he ever existed to begin with. It didn't hurt so much. Then one day, a little girl and her big brother entered into her life that reminded her so much of how she and Nathan had once been. Hannah West was a child prodigy, much like herself, with a troubled big brother, again, much like herself. Hannah had used her intelligence to throw doubt on her brother's guilt and it'd worked. Marlon was declared innocent, while Hannah faced prosecution. In the end, Marlon was guilty. He was a murderer, and his little sister had set him free while taking the blame.
It'd been a case that opened a locked door in her mind that she never wanted to open. The girl in front of her didn't even look upset, or even worried, about anything that'd happened or what she'd done. She committed murder. "Hannah, with your gifts, you could've done anything you wanted, and you picked murder. You can't take that back."
Hannah looked, if anything, like she pitied her for thinking such a thing. "You're worried how I'm going turn out."
Of course she did. "Of course I am." She had empathy, like she always did, but this was different. When she looked at Hannah, she saw herself. And when she looked at Marlon, she saw her brother. "I know it seems like a really long time, but…in five years, the Stacies of the world would've been behind you." She knew that all too well. She'd been bullied in school; heard the whispers. Then, she graduated and it was over.
"Let me guess. You were a smart kid in school. Maybe you feel we're a little bit alike."
"There aren't many people like you." Like us, she thought. She could have used her smarts to save people. Instead, she used it to take a life.
Hannah, again, just didn't seem to get it. "That's what my parents always say, too. The last four months, all they cared about was the effect of the trial on me, not Marlon. It's been that way ever since I was 14 months old and started spelling words with plastic letters. It's so unfair, and nobody ever sees it. He doesn't deserve to go to jail. If I get convicted, what's the worst-case scenario? I mean, I'll be out in five years with an undergraduate degree. There's no "Son of Sam" law in Nevada—that was ruled unconstitutional—so I'm free to write a book about all this."
Write a book, she thought. She let out a breath as she shook her head. All she could think about was book deals and royalties.
"The story'll be worth millions. Freaks are always good box office."
"You're not a freak."
Hannah actually laughed. "When's the last time you had to sit down to be eye-level with a murder suspect who was standing up?"
She didn't know what else to say, or do. All she knew was that this seemed wrong in a way. "Hannah, you are smart."
"So I've been told."
"But you're not smart enough to get away with murder." She was glad for that. No one, she thought, was smart enough to get away with murder. And if they were, she had to be smarter.
"I think I am," Hannah said, causing her to get confused. "A lot of people are smart enough to get away with murder. You probably are, too. But you have to be really smart to make people think things happened that never did."
She'd been right. This was wrong. This was so wrong. "What do you mean, exactly?"
Hannah, with a nearly smug glint in her eyes, said, "Please don't worry about me. I'm going to be fine." Leaning in close, she told her, "I didn't kill Stacy. Marlon did."
Her mother hadn't killed her father. Nathan did. She'd blocked it out. She'd blocked him out of her memories and her life for twenty years. The lies she told became just another way to survive the trauma. It was a way to cope. Maybe Nathan had actually been a dream and not a reality. He could have been a fantasy, an imaginary friend. He could have not existed at all. She could have been crazy, just like her mother.
And the lies had worked. There were times when she didn't think of him at all. When she believed she never had him in her life. It'd been so long that his presence was no longer felt. She only saw him in her dreams. A face in the dark. But, had it even been his face? She couldn't imagine him older and she wasn't even sure if what she'd remembered from her childhood had been real.
Confronting Hannah and Marlon had forced her to confront the truth. How could she ever look her brother in the eye and say that she didn't want to remember him. The memories were far too painful with him there. That her life hurt less if he had never existed. The pain had been more bearable if she'd been the only one inflicted by it. The abuse made her want to save lives while it made her brother want to take them.
The picture in the evidence box had been real. The face of her brother, of Nathan's eyes staring into hers through that picture, was very real. Her silence had made all the difference. She didn't say anything at the trial. Her silence could have doomed her mother, but it could also set Nathan free. All she knew was how to keep family secrets, and that was one more secret to keep.
Gripping the edge of the counter, she stared into the water that'd pooled in the sink, and felt the tears start to well up again. She'd reviewed all the evidence and files concerning her father's death and hadn't been surprised by the amount of evidence left out of the court documents. There had been evidence suppressed due to the fact that there hadn't been a jury trial. Her mother had been found incompetent due to her mental illness. Her confession held up because her prints were on the knife, and she had bruises and all the medical records going back years proving continuous abuse.
But there had been more. The evidence had been circumstantial and her confession had been brought into question given her mental state. Then, there was Nathan. There was blood on him, his shoes, and hands. A written note confession. Then the final kicker: his prints were also on the knife.
He was sixteen years old. Two confessions to the same crime with evidence that could go both ways. One a troubled teenager and the other an unstable, mentally ill parent. With two confessions, it becomes a question of credibility of fact. In the murder of her father, it could have literally gone either way. The prosecution had to decide. What they had done instead was make a deal.
Her mother had been found incompetent but also guilty. She kept insisting that she'd done it. Nathan, troubled teenager who resisted the police and made a false confession, would get juvenile detention until his eighteenth birthday. After he'd turned eighteen, it was like he no longer existed. He was lost to the world and she was never able to find him. She tried once. He had no digital footprint. Most likely, he'd ended up homeless, maybe even on drugs. He could've died an unknown John Doe.
It pained her heart to think her brother was dead.
Checking the time, it was four in the morning. She hadn't slept at all. Picking up her phone, she thought of calling Gil but knew he was working. Sitting down on the bed, she turned her attention back to the casefile that was spread over the other side of it. She'd made copies of everything, even the photographs.
Picking up the black-and-white photocopy of the picture from their childhood, she wondered how it ended up in evidence. The evidence envelope had said it was Nathan's property. Had it had the picture on him when he was arrested? Was it in his pocket? Had he carried around their photo like a keepsake?
Tears welled again, but this time she didn't stop them. She let them fall.
Las Vegas
He was running. Fear gripped his chest as he raced to get away. The trees blurred, sand mixed with grass under his bare feet as he ran. Ignoring the pain, the tightness of his muscles, the cramping in his side, he rushed towards help.
His breaths were labored as he followed the bloody footsteps over the sand and grass. His chest hurt as his heart pounded along with his head. Clambering and climbing the hill, he didn't look back as he focused on putting one step in front of the other.
Pieces of bark were stripped from the trees, blood smeared over the wood. Getting to the top, he didn't have time to let out a breath of relief, he started down it. His legs felt weak, tired, as he took a step forward. He slipped, tripping and falling, he tumbled to the bottom of the hill right into a fence. Blood on the metal links that made up the chain-linked fence that stretched the length of the road, enclosing the park.
He had to climb it, up and over, and drop to the road. Help. He needed help. Lights brightening the dark, a white car appeared out of the void. The car stopped. He hit the window and grabbed the handle. He wanted inside. It jerked away. He hit the back of the trunk; angry it didn't stop.
The panic intensified, his labored breaths were burning his lungs. Desperation raged inside his chest as he hit the window, leaving smears of his bloody hand across the glass, and then the trunk of the car. "Stop!" It stopped. They got out. A man. A woman. The man approached him. The woman was on the phone with the police.
The world was spinning. He was getting dizzy. There was a weight in his pocket, on his waistband. The phone. The police. More car lights heading his way. Pulling the box cutter, he attacked. Fearfully, angrily, he lashed out. Blood sprayed over the car, road, and his body. He felt it hit his face. There was no control; his arm swung wildly, blindly, slicing through skin to get away. He had to run.
A saw the box cutter on the ground, blood on the handle. Dropping the box cutter, he felt the panic once again as the fear shot through his head. He had to run, to get away. Running through the dark void, he disappeared.
Gil saw the figure running, leaving a bloody trail in his wake, as the lights from a car broke through the darkness as the world slowly started to reappear around him. Before there had only been the dark void, the fear and blood, and the running. The street came into focus and he saw Deputy Adams along with the coroner's van. Assistant coroner David "Dave" Phillips waited patiently for him to release the scene so he could take the bodies. He was waiting for Kevin to arrive first before he let Dave take the victims.
The car that stopped behind the SUV. Kevin got out of the driver's seat and headed his way. Once he got close enough, said, "Just left the M.E. 's office, Doctor Williams' was finishing up the hiker autopsy."
"Learn anything new?"
"All the wounds were expertly inflicted. Three cuts to very specific locations, all the same. Clean and with no mistakes." Kevin looked down at the bodies at his feet. The two victims, Ashley Lang and Daniel Vetrini, had been moved from where they'd been lying. They were both on their backs as their dead eyes looked towards the sky. Kneeling down, he observed the wounds, the cuts over their faces, necks, and body, and said, "This is different. Are we sure it's the same guy?"
He knew that was coming. It was the same question he had at first. "There's another body."
As they walked towards the park, he spotted Warrick placing evidence markers down on the sidewalk. He was taking pictures of the blood trail. Catherine was in the opposite direction, following the bloody trail towards the gas station when Samantha Ivers' body had been found two weeks ago. They entered the park and he saw the lights setup around the field. On the ground in the middle of the lights was the body of the newest victim of their serial killer, along with Detective Nowlins.
Walking under the lights, he watched as Kevin took in the scene. Before getting close to the body, he noticed the markers leading away, towards the hill. Then he walked around the perimeter, searching the area with his eyes, before finally entering the circular area that was illuminated by the lights. He pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket as he approached the female body.
She was dressed provocatively. Her black leather skirt was high above her knees, high heels were twisted in the ground, one of the laces unlatch and a heel broken. The tank-top was soaked in blood and the short red leather jacket hung open as her right arm was trapped under her body; her left on top of her chest. Blood was on her left hand, like she'd tried to use it to try to stop the bleeding. It hadn't worked.
Stalking around the outside of the perimeter, was the dog. It circled around and around as it felt trapped in the dark. His eyes lifted from the dead body and saw it circling. The shadows beyond the lights started to creep his way as a dark figure appeared over the woman's body. It stood beside Detective Nowlins. It stood straight, sure of itself, and in its hand a knife. Its face was smooth as a white mask appeared covering only half the face. It reminded him of the Phantom of the Opera. One side masked, the other uncovered. Man's duplicity.
Kevin appeared next to him, his voice was low as he asked, "What is it?"
He blinked and said, "Nothing."
Kevin didn't look convinced. He glanced towards Nowlins and said, "Could you give us a minute, Detective?"
Nowlins held up his hands and stepped away, in the shadows. "Take all the time you need."
Once the detective was far enough away, Kevin said, "You can't fool me. What'd you see?"
He knew he couldn't hide from Kevin; he'd seen him at his worst. His son knew when he was so far into his mind that he was projecting it outwards into the real world. "A dog."
"A dog?" Kevin asked in surprise. "Hank? Jack?"
Hank was his and Sara's dog. They'd gotten him after he'd learned that Lecter had been in his old townhouse. Nick's friend, Marcus, who trained police dogs, had introduced them to the boxer a few weeks before he and Sara moved into their new house. Over the course of four weeks, they trained with the dog to their own specifications of what kind-of guard dog they were wanting. Hank was more than a guard dog, though, but a service dog. It was the only logical thing to do seeing how his dog sitter was blind.
He took his eyes off the stalking dog to glance at his son as he told him, "Kind-of looks like Winston."
"Winston? Okay." Kevin nodded. There was worry in his voice. Who could blame him? His dad was hallucinating their old, deceased, dog. "Anything else?"
"The beginnings of our killer. It's just a faceless figure. That's how it always starts."
The dark figure with the knife turned away from him to face the body on the ground. The dead woman moved. Her broken heel repaired itself as her ankle untwisted as her body rose up from the ground. The blood creeped up her body and into the wound that healed. The red leather jacket stopped above her waist, over the white printed blouse, and she smiled at the figure. Her brown eyes were bright, made brighter by the gap toothed smile, and at seeing her beauty, he felt enraged. Inside, he was so angry at her. He wanted her dead.
"Feel anything?"
He felt the victim first. "She didn't put up a fight. She stood there. She wasn't afraid." How does he lure them? Better question, how does he find them?
Kevin thought about that as he said, "And the report was of a homeless man with no shoes…How could she not be scared of him? Some strange man approaches you in the middle of the night, looking like that, you're not going to be disarmed. If anything, you're going to get defensive. He had no car…Yet, he got her out here? Alone?" He was asking the same questions. Looking at him, he asked, "Feeling anything else?"
He was feeling a lot of things as he looked over the scene, at the killer, but mainly, he felt, "Cold." Angry yet so cold on the inside. Without hesitation, the dark figure slit the spot between the shoulder and neck, then the throat, and then a quick downward cut to the body. As her body twisted and fell, he watched her die.
Another figure appeared out of the shadows, startled, confused, and afraid. He had to get away. He had to run. "Panicked. Afraid."
"Our killer isn't afraid, though," Kevin said. As his son's voice filled the air around him, he watched the second figure run away. "He's an expert. The way he kills them is precise. He wasn't in a frenzy like the car victims. There was no fear. Whoever killed Ashley Lang and Daniel Vetrini was terrified. Whoever killed her, wasn't."
He almost smiled as he heard his exact thoughts coming from Kevin's mouth. He was really good at profiling. Granted, he didn't get into the killer's heads the way he could, but he understood them because he understood people's minds, human nature, and the evidence. Put that all together, and you get the sinking feeling that hadn't left him since he arrived on scene. There were inconsistencies.
"He was cold. The coldness on the outside hides the rage underneath. He has two sides. One side a mask for the world to see. What's underneath, the part of him that's hidden, is a monster." The dark figure turned to him and he saw the side of the face opposite the smooth white mask grow a twisted looped horn out the side of the head. Duplicity. "A man with two-faces."
Kevin knew the answer the same as he did. He said it first, "Either this guy is suffering some sort of psychosis, or personality changes, going from organized killer one moment to a disorganized one the next, or—"
"We're looking at two different suspects. One disorganized, frenzied, and the other a cold-blooded killer."
Kevin eyed him as he asked the only other question one could with that information. "Partners?"
He shook his head. He had no idea.
San Francisco
Parking in front of a grey building on Oak Street, across from the panhandle, Sara got out of the rental car and pulled off her sunglasses. She took a moment to look over the street, all the multi-colored houses, before walking up the steps and of the two storied building. She'd tried calling ahead but only received a tape recorded message, on an old-style answering machine. The number listed for the former ADA was a landline.
Knocking on the door, she waited as she glanced around the street at all the greenery and smelt the salt from the ocean. She'd really missed that more than anything. The smell of the ocean. A few seconds later, she heard the locked turn before the door opened to reveal an old man with a cane, curiously sitting behind him on a small table was a cat. She smiled as she said, "Mr. Jenkins?"
"That's me, who're you, young lady?"
"I'm…" she hesitated, not knowing if he'd remember her name or not. Clearing her throat, she said, "Sara Sidle. My mother's Laura—" The way his eyes rose and frown deepened told her everything. He remembered her.
Without a word, he backed up and allowed her into his home. It was pretty old school with no a single new electronic in the place and most likely the same furniture he had in the eighties. Plaid upholstered couch, a lazy-boy, and a bulky television set sitting on top of an old dresser. A VCR on top of it. The old man was old school. There wasn't a single piece of modern technology in the house.
"Have a seat. Would you like something to drink?"
"I'm good, but thank you." She'd interviewed many suspects, witnesses, and victims over the years but the moment she sat on the couch, she had no questions. What she had was feelings of guilt. Why hadn't she done this sooner?
Before she could say anything, Mr. Jenkins sat in the Lazy-boy and said, "Of all the cases I've prosecuted over the years, there are ones that stick with me. Your mother's was one that stuck."
"Why?"
"Why wouldn't it? I was always so certain when I knew who was guilty and who was innocent. Doubt is the worst place for anyone to be in when it comes to life or death. My biggest fear was being wrong. I never wanted to put an innocent person in prison, or on death row."
"And, with my mother's case, you didn't know the truth," she said as she remembered the plea deal made. "The only thing you knew was that she was mentally ill and needed help. Instead of imprisoning her, you saw to it she was put in a mental institution. As for my brother…" she trailed off as she felt once again the shame and guilt in her chest."
"A few years put away, mental evaluations, medication, it was the best we could do given the circumstances. Your brother never verbally confessed. He gave us no details."
"All he gave you was a handwritten note. He didn't say anything?" she asked even though she remembered how quiet Nathan had always been. Just because he was quiet that didn't mean he didn't understand. He'd been incredibly smart. Again, Nathan reminded her so much of Marlon West. No one expected Marlon to be as intelligent as he was given how he presented himself to the outside world.
Mr. Jenkins shook his head. "Never said anything. He kept journals."
Journals? "They weren't in the evidence boxes."
He stood as he said, "They wouldn't be. There's a storage unit. Your mothers. She wanted to keep everything. Her lawyer arranged it all. We were friends, despite being on the opposite sides of the courtroom. Allen was a good man, great attorney, and always did his best for his clients. Your mother had no one else to trust with it, and she wanted you to have it."
She grew confused as she stood and watched as Mr. Jenkins opened a drawer in the desk by the window. He searched through it until he found a small box and pulled it out. "Have what?"
"The key," he said as he opened the box and removed a key, "to the storage unit." Mr. Jenkins held it out for her. "I had wanted to give it to you sooner, but you left the state for college. Before I could remember to look for you, so much time had passed."
She took the key and held it in her hand like a foreign object. It was just a key, but she knew that what it opened was more memories of a past she tried to forget. Mr. Jenkins went through his address book and ripped a page out and handed it to her. It was the address to the storage unit. She put both the key and piece of paper into her pocket as she said, "I should get going."
"Have you talked to her yet? Your mother?" Mr. Jenkins asked as he walked her to the door.
"I have an appointment scheduled for tomorrow."
He smiled and it surprised her how soft and genuine it was. "Tell her 'hi' for me."
"I will," she said in near numbness. She really didn't know how to feel about any of this. Mr. Jenkins kindness. The key. And unearthing her past in order to confront the ghosts that plagued her mind, numbed her heart, and invaded her dreams.
She knew she had to do this. It was the only way to move forward and have a future with the man she wanted in her life. She didn't want to self-destruct and bring him down with her. He would've taken it, and let her do it. He would have understood and tried to help. All it would have done to her was make her feel so guilty. What if by bringing him down with her, she caused him to go insane? Gil's gift and curse, what made him the profiler he had been and the CSI he was now, was his empathy.
He would have felt all her crazy, and it would have driven him right back there to that dark place that had trapped him once before. This was for her alone. These were her dark secrets. She never wanted them to reach out and touch Gil's heart the way they touched hers. It would darken him, numb him, and turn his heart off to her.
She just knew it. It happened before to a different heart that had tried to love hers. In the end, it tore them apart. As she left the house, heading to the car that was parked across the street, her mind drifted back to the last time she saw Doug before leaving for Las Vegas.
"Sara, you don't have to leave."
She shut her locker and grabbed her shoulder bag off the bench as she told him, "It's an IA investigation at the most prestigious crime lab in the country, aside from the FBI. How can I not go? And it's Grissom. He's been—"
Doug put his arm out to stop her as he leaned on the locker next to hers. "We have plans."
"A rain-checked dinner is not 'plans'. I said maybe. This will only take a few weeks tops. We'll talk when I get back."
Doug glanced over his shoulder, towards the hallway, before telling her, "If you leave, you'll regret it."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that…Sara, someone might get hurt—"
"Don't," she said, cutting him off. "Don't do that with me. Don't say things like that to try to get me to stay."
"You're always fucking exaggerating every thing I say—"
"I'm not exaggerating—-"
"You're being ridiculous!" he nearly snapped, causing her to take a step back. "Running off to Las Vegas because a man you had a fling with calls you—"
A fling? She never had a fling with Grissom. She could not believe him. "Are you jealous? Is that what this is?"
"What else are you going to make me do, Sara? I mean, who do you think you are—"
"Doug—"
"I quit my job with the NTSB to be a CSI here, for you—"
"I never asked you to—"
"What more do you want? You've never appreciated a damn thing I ever did for you. Not a single thing—"
She held up her hands as she went to step around him, saying, "I can't do this right now. You need to calm down. We'll talk when I get back."
Doug let her walk by him as he turned to her and said, "You got lucky with me."
"Lucky?"
"Yeah, lucky." Doug stepped up to her as he reached out to touch her face. She felt the tremor in his hand as he said, "You know how much I love you."
She knew, and that was one of the reasons she had to leave. He couldn't let her go when she had already left. She no longer loved him, but he still had hope. He was right. Someone would get hurt. She was hurting him right now.
"Vegas already has enough whores, Sara. Don't become one," Doug whispered as he brushed by her and headed down the hallway.
She felt a chill go down her spine at the anger that had settled into his eyes before it was gone. It reminded her of her father's eyes, right before he beat her mother. She'd changed him. He was never like that before. His eyes never held so much anger in them before they'd gotten together. She made him that way. She'd turned his love for her, his heart, into something dark and angry.
She turned him into the one man she hated more than anyone: her father.
Sitting in the car, key in her pocket, windows rolled down so she could feel the ocean breeze on her numb face, she drove away from Mr. Jenkins house towards the storage unit facility.
TBC…