Note: I'm going to be playing a bit fast and loose with the timelines over the next couple of chapters, but hey, didn't Doctor Who say that time was a bit 'wibbly-wobbly' anyway? Going to be mixing up a few episodes and messing around with birthdates and such, just to make it all fit together so hope you don't mind too much…
"So, there's still some work to do on the 406 at the Monaco, and we've just had Trick Roll over at the Mandalay…" Grissom read out the job slips held loosely in his hands and looked between Warrick and Nick, his forehead furrowing as neither appeared too interested in the jobs at hand. "Okay, what's up?"
"What's up?" Warrick blustered, throwing his hands in the air as he paced the confines of the break room. "Man, we get word that Holly was shot working a case, and that's not at the top of our to-do list?"
"It's handled, Warrick," Grissom confirmed with a nod, "I'm taking care of Holly's case myself."
"Okay," the other CSI nodded, appearing appeased for the moment, "Catherine giving you a hand?" Warrick asked, his hands held lightly against his hips, legs slightly splayed in his usual cocky mode.
"Um, no," Grissom confirmed, his fingers lightly twitching against the job slips. "Catherine's been suspended and won't be on shift for a while."
"WHAT?" both CSI's yelled out in unison, jaws wide open in shock; neither one having seen Catherine when she had returned to the lab on the night of Holly's shooting.
"Catherine messed up, guys," Grissom said quietly, "she was supposed to be job-shadowing with Holly, but she slipped of early to deal with a Lindsay situation…"
"Hold up, hoss," Nick interrupted Grissom's explanation, gesturing with his hand for Warrick to keep his blustering to a minimum for a second, "you're telling me that, hard ass, by the book or else, Catherine Willows, just ups and ignores rule numero uno and left a rookie on the first night on the job?" Nick's hands were now on his hips and his normally cheery expressive face set like stone; Warrick now wearing a similar expression. "That's dereliction of duty, do not collect one hundred dollars, do not pass go."
"And that's why you're heading fast down the track to your level III, Nicky." Nick nodded his head in quiet acknowledgement before settling down a little and letting Warrick take a turn in speaking.
"Somebody die, or her house burn down?" Warrick asked, his pale green eyes holding Grissom's gaze as if hoping for a reasonable explanation. Nick gave a long sigh and let out a muffled curse when he saw the answer in Grissom's eyes long before the man himself spoke aloud.
"Lindsay had a nightmare…Catherine left the scene to sort it out…" Grissom confirmed and the heavy feeling in Nick's gut intensified, as he saw the way the supervisors' fingers were twisted around each other in an agitated movement. The ability to spot small details that made Nick such a good investigator, but right now, at that very moment, it was an ability that he wished hadn't developed.
"That ain't all of it though, is it Grissom?"
"Holly Gribbs passed away around an hour ago, she never made it off the operating table," Grissom confirmed solemnly, "Brass wanted to make the announcement himself, but he's tied up getting Catherine's transfer organised."
"So, let me get this straight," Nick said, "Catherine violates nationwide rules, gets one of our own shot to pieces, and rather than the dismissal that we all got threatened with during training, she gets suspension and then a sideways shift?" Nick's sarcastic tone made it all too clear how he felt about the matter, that it simply wasn't enough of a punishment.
"No, Nicky…that's not all," Grissom replied softly, "the deal was that Catherine gets demoted back down to CSI II and is denied supervisory roles for two years. She knows that she was in the wrong, and this was the only way for her to keep her job."
"Yeah, and the department doesn't want to lose someone that they've invested the time in either," Warrick added, a touch of distain colouring his voice. "We're gonna be hurting for bodies, aren't we?"
"Crap on a cracker, yeah, we're gonna be pullin' doubles until we fill her spot," Nick dolefully confirmed, mentally saying goodbye to the gaming time he'd pencilled in after blowing some of his raise on the lasted video games.
"Not at all, gentlemen, not at all," Grissom smiled, ducking his head back into the corridor and making a quick gesture with his fingers. "Nicky, you've already met; Sara, this is our other CSI Level II, Warrick Brown. Warrick, meet Sara Sidle."
Sara slipped into the break room, the slight gap in her teeth appearing as she flashed a nervous smile at the newly introduced Warrick. "Hey, nice to meet you."
"Yeah, and you," Warrick replied, a slightly sullen tone colouring his voice, feeling a touch of resentment over what he felt was a mere slap on the wrist for Catherine compared to how Brass had come down hard on him for slipping away to place a bet when he'd left a scene early; it had been a simple 411 over by the Bellagio, but Brass had yelled at him for over an hour and sent him home early in disgrace, threatening him with immediate dismissal if he ever did it again. Nick meanwhile, had bounded over to Sara and grasped her hand again in welcome, a huge smile stretched across his face.
"Hi again, Sara, always glad to see a smiling face; we don't usually get a lot of that around here. So, you're filling in for Catherine for a while, huh? You're from San Fran aren't you? What's your area of expertise?" Nick kept hold of Sara's hand as he rattled off his questions, his white teeth shining brightly against his suntanned complexion.
"Boy, Griss, when you said he was like an excited puppy, you weren't wrong," Sara grinned up at Grissom as she gently tried to extract her hand from Nick's excited grip. "Yes, I'm on transfer out of the San Francisco lab; it was originally just as a loan but it's was made permanent a few hours ago, and my area of expertise is Materials and Elements Analysis."
"Aren't you gonna say 'hello', Warrick?" Grissom asked softly, noticing the younger man's sour expression, snapping Warrick out of his memories.
"Huh?" Warrick muttered, dragging a hand over his face and then managed a small smile, "I'm sorry Sara, can we start again maybe?"
"Sure," Sara agreed, holding out her hand, "Sara Sidle, newly transferred CSI II out of San Francisco"
"Warrick Brown, also CSI II." Warrick and Sara grinned at each other as they shook hands, before they turned their attention back to Grissom, who just shook his head ruefully at their antics.
"As I was saying earlier, Sara's working with me on Holly's case so I've got you boys have the choice of taking over as lead on the Monaco from yesterday, or the Trick Roll, what'll it be?"
"I'll save Nick from his third Trick of the month and take that one, that okay with you, Nick?" Warrick plucked the slip out of Grissom's hand and waved it in goodbye as he headed to the lockers to collect his kit.
"Looks like I'm heading out to take another look at the Monaco then, Grissom, catch you guys later!" Nick received his slip with a smile before following Warrick down the corridor.
"Alone at last…" Grissom smirked over at Sara who just snorted in response, as she raised her hand to acknowledge the waves of hello from the group of lab technicians that were just changing shifts.
"Yeah, in full view of ten other people where the rooms have walls of clear, plate, glass," she replied, stifling a yelp of surprise as Grissom's hand that had previously been in the small of her back, sneakily slid down to glide across her rear before quickly resuming its earlier positioning as he began to nudge her out of the breakroom and over to his office.
"Let me just grab Holly's file and then we can head over to Warm Springs to see what clues she left for us to find."
Sara dropped off Holly's gun with Bobby to get set up for ballistics testing and headed along the corridor where Grissom was fiddling with the blue pager that they had found slipped under the couch at the crime scene.
"Where'd you get the pager nest?" Sara asked as she watched Grissom drop the pager into the testing slot. "They're great for tracing, if you can rely on the suspect's honesty."
"Won it off eBay," Grissom replied casually, his forehead creasing into a frown as the results popped up on the screen, "Desmond Tutu?"
"Don't feel too bad, hon," Sara ran her hand briefly against Grissom's shoulder before dropping it back down to her side, giving him a wry grin, "my last four traces came back, 'Eminem,' so…" they were interrupted by the chirping of the pager clipped to Sara's belt. "That was quick, Bobby's got the tank set up already."
"Go see what Holly's gun has to say, I'll be here checking out 'Desmond Tutu'," Grissom said drolly, turning his attention back to the tracer unit with a frown. Sara knew that any farewell wouldn't be heard once his focus was back on his work, so slipped quietly out of the lab and headed over to ballistics.
"Oh good, you're both back from the field," Grissom caught sight of both Nick and Warrick heading back to the labs near the end of their shifts.
"Hey, Grissom, what's up?" Nick called out, hoping that they weren't going to be ordered back out just as they were nearing quitting time. Grissom smiled, having already spotted Warrick's hopeful side shuffle towards the locker rooms.
"Nothing to worry about, Nicky," Grissom assured them both, "Sara was just telling me about something they used to do in San Francisco that I thought might be useful here."
"Oh, yeah?" Nick's curious gaze switched over to Sara, who was heading in their direction, cradling several folders in her arms.
"Hmm, whenever the team was back in from the field in time, they would take a few minutes to go over their cases before the end of the shift, while it's fresh in everyone's mind," Grissom explained, giving a gesture with his head in the direction of the break room, rather than his office, knowing full well that the specimens on display there had a tendency to make people uncomfortable.
"Okay, sounds good…" Nick gave a quick whistle to Warrick and nodded his head over to the break room door, stifling a sigh, Warrick jogged over to join the rest of the team.
Sara had already laid out the live casework folders neatly across the table, and she'd also set down a large, wooden handled rubber stamp and an ink pad laid next to it. Seeing the layout, Nick couldn't help but grin at the sight of Grissom's almost gleeful expression as Sara nudged the rubber stamp over in his direction.
"Oh boy, you're really lovin' this, aren't you, Griss?" Nick asked as he watched his supervisor thunking the stamp onto the ink pad a few times and then tearing off a sheet of clean paper from a notepad that had been left on the table. Grissom frowned when the first stamp was very faint, and Nick leant closer and had to squint to read the impression left behind. "'SOLVED' Where'd you even find somethin' like that in the first place?"
"Sara got it for my birthday, isn't it great?" Grissom muttered in a distracted tone, his frown smoothing out into a wide smile as the second impression was much clearer than the first, a few more presses into the ink pad had him grinning like a giddy schoolboy.
"Your birthday?" Warrick said, sharing a surprised look with Nick, "isn't that a state secret or something?" In all of their years working with Grissom in his role of assistant shift supervisor, neither man had ever heard him refer to his birthday, either in the day of the month or the year of his birth. Grissom was such an institution at the lab, that both CSI's assumed that he was in his early fifties, giving the salt and pepper hair and the fact that he and Jim Brass seemed to be contemporaries.
"I'm not usually here around my birthday, so never really thought it worth mentioning," Grissom replied, not looking up from where he was still intently stamping random patterns over the sheet of paper.
"Oh, okay…sorry we never asked," Nick apologised, feeling a little small in the fact that no one had thought to mention it before. Birthdays in the Stoke's household were always loudly celebrated and for most of the crime lab it meant drinks after work or a cake left in the break room for all to enjoy. Glancing over to the clock, Sara noticed that it was fast approaching clocking off time and didn't want anyone having to stay beyond their allotted time, she gently nudged Grissom with her foot to get his attention, and he set down the stamp and pulled the first folder off the top of the pile.
"Okay, first up…Holly Gribbs," Grissom announced, just the mention of the rookie CSI's name had Nick and Warrick sliding into seats around the table, their gaze focused on the stamp lying next to the ink pad, giving out a cheer when Grissom pressed it into the pad before firmly stamping a bold, red 'SOLVED' across the front of her folder.
"Bobby and I found that the striations on the bullet were a perfect match to her own service weapon. We think that the suspect surprised Holly at the scene, they got into a tussle and he shot her with her own weapon," Sara recounted, giving a nod of approval at the murmured 'bastard' coming from both Warrick and Nick.
"When Sara and I went back to examine the scene, we not only found the gun on the rug, but noticed that the phone had been pulled out of the socket and was laying clear across the floor…indications that Holly may have tried to take the suspect off guard by throwing it at him…"
"Him…?" Nick pounced on the pro-noun, eager for more information, but Grissom simply tapped on the bright red, 'SOLVED' stamped across the folder.
"Patience, young grasshopper," Grissom raised an eyebrow over at Sara who merely waved her hand as if happy for him to continue his earlier narration. "We found a pager stashed under the couch, we think that when they wrestled for the weapon, he shot Holly and she managed to shove the page under the couch before she passed out through blood loss."
"But not before she managed to get a good scraping of his skin under her fingernails," Sara continued, a smile tinged with a hint of pride spreading across her face, "even though she was bleeding out she must have remembered enough of her training to tug off her gloves before raking her nails down his face."
"Good girl," Nick murmured softly, sharing a sorrowful glance with Warrick; the pair had only briefly been introduced to the newest recruit before Grissom had whisked her off to their first stop of the night, an attempted robbery of a liquor store that Catherine had later rescued Holly from being held at gunpoint by the liquor store owner herself.
"That's not even the best part!" Grissom enthused, his smile growing wider as he waggled his fingers in excitement, "Sara and I were taking a break when the pager went off."
"Wait, the pager went off and you were able to track it with your crapped out nester?" Warrick let out a whoop of disbelief. "Guess I owe you that ten bucks after all, Nicky."
"The nester? Nah, that thing kept comin' up with Desmond Tutu, wasn't worth the $200 that I paid out in the first place." Grissom dismissed the nester theory with a flick of his hand, and if even possible, the grin on his face grew wider. "Sara tracked the perp down by calling him back, what was it again, honey, 'somethin' somethin' for the bling-bling'." Sara's eyed widened at Grissom's endearment slip but both Warrick and Nick were too busy howling with laughter at Grissom's attempted falsetto to get Sara's 'Valley Girl' impression to even notice. "She managed to trick him into giving up the hotel address where he was camped out at; Brass called out the troops and we headed straight over, caught the guy lounging on the bed in nothing but his skivvies…long scrape down the side of his face…"
"Which matched perfectly to the skin scraping we found under Holly's fingernails," Sara finished off, tapping her finger against the mug shot taped to the inside of Holly's folder. "Jerrod Cooper – we got him and he's now going away for a very, long time." After a moment of pure relief and satisfaction of a job well done, Grissom then turned to the next folder on the pile.
"Ted Sallenger, how'd you get on over at the Monaco, Nicky?"
"Get this, hoss," Nick drawled casually, "remember that bummed off girlfriend that Ted turned out after striking it lucky?"
"Jamie Smith?" Grissom nodded in recollection, Jamie had attacked Ted with a broken champagne bottle when he broke up with her and they had dismissed her as a suspect when they discovered that Ted had left the room to seek medical attention and a scan of the key card revealed that he didn't return back that evening.
"Well…I went back to the room after autopsy showed that funny marking on the back of Ted's skull, turned that room nearly upside down until I found that the mark on the bottom of a clunky candle holder matched the impression perfectly. A little luminol on the carpet lead me to a great, big blood pool on the balcony. Talked to security again and tested the key card myself…turns out that particular key card doesn't always register when someone uses it to get into the room. Ted did come back that night, Jamie smacked him over the head with the candlestick and then tossed him off the edge of the balcony…she knew she wasn't gonna get any of the money but was pissed off at him giving her the push that she…"
"Gave him the push instead," Grissom filled in with his usual blend of dry humour before thunking another red 'SOLVED' across the front of Sallenger's folder. "And you, Warrick?"
"Ah, yeah, Trick Roll over at the Mandalay," Warrick confirmed with a nod, "don't think I would have been able to piece it together if I hadn't been called out to a simple traffic incident on the way back in." Grissom raised a questioning eyebrow as he flicked through the paperwork trying to follow the case along.
"Ah, Kristy Hopkins, simple auto incident where she passed out at the wheel; minimal damage to the car but you sent her over to the ER to get checked over."
"Yeah, I headed over to the Mandalay to grab the victims statement, the vic stated that he'd met a girl downstairs, took her back to his room and then passed out before he got past second base. I noticed he had some discoloration around his lips and thought maybe it was something the suspect had added to her lipstick. I grabbed a sample and was headed back to the lab when I got pulled in to sorting out the Kristy Hopkins smash. Got her sent off to the ER and then got a series of pages from one of the Docs over at Desert Palms…telling me they'd had a series of Trick Roll cases over the past few days, all where the girls had later passed out with the same discoloration…just not on their lips."
"Ah, yes, I see…." Grissom's cheeks were tinged faintly pink as he quickly passed over the photographs that Warrick had taken at the hospital, the discoloration around the girls nipples a perfect match to the discoloration found on Mr Laferty's mouth.
"Greg found it was a motion sickness drug called Scopolamine and the girls had all absorbed it through their skin, managed to piece it all together and get his stuff back from Kristy before she was able to hock it. Mr Laferty can now go home to Arizona with his wedding ring back on his finger." Warrick finished off his summarisation with a satisfied grin, "guess that makes us nearly even now, doesn't it, Nicky boy?"
"Sure does, Rick, only one more to go, man," both CSIs shared a fist bump across the table, Grissom chuckled as he gave the last folder a final red stamp.
"Well, that's 3-for-3, why don't we get out of here and go and grab some breakfast, sound good?" he offered, stacking the folders together in a neat file. "I'll just go and file these away, say fifteen at the Diner?"
"Sure, sounds great man, see you there," Nick and Warrick nodded in agreement, watching from the breakroom as both Grissom and Sara headed off towards Grissom's office together. "Something going on there, you think?"
"What, between Grissom and Sara?" Warrick squinted a little as he watched Grissom bend his head a little to listen to whatever Sara was telling him as they entered his office, the door remaining open behind them. "Nah, man, Cath always said the man wouldn't know how to even speak to a woman outside of work even if one fell straight into his lap," Warrick dismissed the idea without even having to think about it. "Come on, we're gonna be late if we don't hurry up and change."
"Yeah, yeah, okay…" Nick took one last glance over his shoulder, his eyes widening slightly at the sight of Grissom's hand cupping Sara's elbow as they walked toward the exit, after he'd locked his office for the end of shift. "Okay, perhaps Grissom doesn't even need words…" he murmured to himself before quickly ducking into the locker room before Grissom could see that he was watching them. "Nope, nothing going on at all."