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Cold
Vengeance
Chapter
Six – Assigning Blame
Grissom strode
into the lab earlier than normal the next day. He had caught a few hours sleep
on Sara’s couch, before heading home for a shower and change of clothes. Sara
assured him that she’d be fine when he left, and that she’d be at work in a few
hours. He had protested at first, telling her to take some time off, but she’d
refused. She needed to see how this played out.
‘I won’t touch
any evidence, if that will make you more comfortable,’ she told him. ‘Strictly
research.’
Turning into the
break-room to get some much needed coffee, he saw Nick and Catherine with their
heads together.
‘Have you two
been here all night?’ he asked them.
‘No,’ Catherine
replied, ‘Just got here.’
‘I got a couple
hours sleep and then came back to process the car,’ Nick told him. ‘Got a sweet
little partial on the rear view mirror. Matches the ones we found on the
bullets.’
‘Still no ID?’
Grissom asked him.
‘Not yet. And
the hairs you found in the hat didn’t have skin tags, so no DNA. But I checked
out their morphology. Dark hair, maybe shoulder length.’
‘Sara’s friend Jill
has shoulder length dark hair,’ Catherine confirmed. ‘And there’s something
about her…’
‘She lied when
you interviewed her. About Sara buying the drinks,’ Grissom told her. ‘Sara
says Jill put the drinks on her room tab, and it was Jill who went to the bar,
not Sara. Maybe its time for another little chat?’
‘No can do,’
Catherine replied. ‘Brass just called me. He went back over to the Tangiers,
and Jill’s checked out.’
‘Damn it,’
Grissom replied. ‘Any lead on where she might have gone?’
‘Not yet, but
Brass is getting a warrant for her phone records. I’ll have him check out her
bill while he’s at it. Confirm Sara’s story in case any official channels start
taking an interest.’ Catherine paused, and took a deep breath. ‘Which reminds
me. Ecklie’s looking for you.’
‘He can wait,’
Grissom replied, not in the mood. ‘I’ve been thinking about the warehouse.
Maybe the killer knew it was going to be used a few days after the murder.
Maybe that was the point. I think the killer wanted the body found soon, but
not too soon.’
‘But she wasn’t
banking on two teenagers finding the body only hours after the murder,’ Nick
followed his train of thought.
‘After a day or
two the rohypnol would have been gone from Sara’s blood,’ Grissom went on.
‘And Sara would
have been in the frame for murder with no alibi and a ton of evidence against
her,’ Catherine concluded.
‘Hey guys,’ Sara
greeted them as she walked into the room, apparently not having overheard their
conversation. ‘Any new leads?’
‘Your friend
Jill might have skipped town,’ Catherine told her. ‘Any idea where she might
have gone?’
‘We got another
problem,’ Warrick interrupted, walking fast into the room. ‘Got the ID on the
victim.’
‘Why is that a
problem?’ Grissom wanted to know.
Warrick shot
Sara a look full of regret. ‘It’s Hank Peddigrew.’
---
‘Damn it,’ Sara
said, walking into the locker room and slamming her fist into a locker. Grissom
was close behind her.
‘I’m sorry,’
Grissom told her in a soft voice. He remained at the door, giving her space as
she roamed the room like a caged animal.
‘I don’t care
about your theory that it was about both of us, Grissom. This is my fault,’
Sara told him. ‘The killer used my
identity to kill Hank. My gun. It was
probably even my friend.’
‘Sara…’ Grissom
began, but she cut him off.
‘Hank arrived at
that warehouse after his killer did. He saw my car. He must have thought he was
meeting me. It’s my fault, Griss…’ Tears threatened in her eyes again, her
voice breaking.
‘You can’t blame
yourself,’ Grissom told her.
‘The hell I
can’t,’ she replied angrily. ‘Damn it. I hate this. I hate how out of control
my life has become.’
‘She only has
control on your life if you let her,’ Grissom reasoned. ‘And you won’t. We’ll
get her, I promise.’
‘False promises,
Grissom. You don’t know that,’ Sara shot back. ‘And my life was out of control
long before any of this happened. Has been for a couple of years now. Ever
since…’
She broke off,
unsure if she should go on. She looked at him, her vulnerability never more
apparent. Grissom watched her, real fear welling up in his heart. He wanted
nothing more than to spare her further pain, whatever the cost. Emotions he had
long suppressed and shielded himself from were surfacing, and it terrified him.
‘I have always
been in control of my life, Grissom,’ she began slowly. ‘Always kept work and
personal separate. It was easy. I mean, if you don’t have a private life, how
can it affect your work, right?’ she laughed ironically. ‘Then I moved here and
everything changed. I started losing my control. My personal feeling started
slipping into my working life and I didn’t know how to deal with it. Every
since my feelings started to deepen for…’ she broke off, unable to continue.
‘Hank,’ Grissom
concluded quietly.
‘You, Grissom,’ Sara corrected him. ‘It
was just a crush, initially. Hero worship. Ever since I met you at that seminar
in
‘Sara…’ he
interrupted, intensely uncomfortable. ‘We shouldn’t be talking about this. Not
here. Not now.’
‘Damn it,
Grissom, if not here and now, then when and where?’ Sara’s voice was tight with
frustration. ‘We’ve danced around this subject for 4 years. Ignoring it isn’t changing anything. Maybe we need to
confront it, head on. Maybe then I can start getting some control back.’
She sat down on
a bench, arms wrapped tightly around her in a defensive pose.
‘I’ve never let
anyone get close to me. Didn’t need to. Until I met you,’ she said quietly.
‘And it scares the hell out of me. Every mistake I’ve made; the drinking, Hank,
has been born out of that fear. Everything has spiralled out of control since I
allowed myself to have feelings for you. And I don’t know how to regain the
control I used to have.’
Grissom sighed
deeply. ‘You’ll get the control back. It just takes time.’
‘Maybe I should
just quit. Maybe this is what all this, the set up, has been about. Maybe I’m
done here.’
‘You’re not
done,’ anger tinged Grissom’s voice now. ‘Damn it, Sara, you’re one of the best
CSIs we’ve got. You’re good at what you do. And you’re stronger than this.’
‘I’m not,
Grissom,’ she said, defeated. ‘I’m not like you. I can’t just choose to ignore
this.’
‘What does that mean?’ he demanded.
‘I heard you,
Grissom,’ she told him, looking into his eyes with such sadness he thought his
heart would break. ‘That case several months ago, Debbie Marlin. The girl who
looked like me…’
‘How did you…?’
‘..Know she looked
like me? After you so obviously kept me away from the crime scene? You should
know me by now Grissom. I needed to see what you felt you had to protect me
from, so I went to the morgue. Saw her face.’ She paused, and then slowly
turned her face to Grissom, locking her eyes with his. ‘And then I went to the
interview room when you and Brass interviewed Lurie. I heard what you said to
him.’
She rose from
the bench and moved away from him. She continued to hug herself as if freezing.
‘You described yourself
as a sad middle-aged man who had allowed your work to consume your life. Then
you talked about being given a second chance with someone you could care
about.’
Grissom was
unable to speak. He gave a small nod, while watching the beautiful, hurting
woman in front of him. Sara still didn’t look around, but continued in the same
quiet tone.
‘You said you
had to make a decision. To risk everything you’d worked for, for the chance of
a new life. And you couldn’t do it.’
‘Sara,’ Grissom
began quietly. ‘How did you know? That
it was you?’
‘You just told
me.’
Grissom let out
a breath. He didn’t know where to go from here, but he knew that now was not
the right time for this. Sara had been through enough in the last 48 hours, and
dealing with whatever it was between them was not going to help matters.
‘Sara, this
isn’t… you’ve been through enough. We can deal with… with our problems when all
of this is over. It’s not the reason any of this is happening.’
Sara turned to look
at him, tears gleaming in her dark eyes.
‘Isn’t it?’ She
leaned against the wall as though suddenly exhausted. ‘I’ve screwed up big
time, Grissom.’
‘Stop blaming
yourself, Sara.’
‘I told her. All
of it.’ Seeing the confusion that registered on his face, she went on, ‘Jill.
We’ve been in regular contact via email for years. Ever since college. I told
her everything. About you. About Hank. I completely spilled my guts. I didn’t
have anyone here I could talk to. So I talked to her.’
‘So the notes?
She got the information from you?’ Grissom needed her to spell it out.
‘Yeah,’ she sunk
back down onto the bench, her head in her hands. ‘I’m so sorry, Grissom.’
‘Hey,’ he said
gently, moving towards her. He crouched down in front of her and softly placed
a hand under her chin, making her look at him. ‘This is not your fault, Sara.
You trusted her.’
‘Yeah,’ she
replied, not truly believing his words.
Grissom stood
back up and offered Sara his hand, helping her to her feet.
‘Now go home,’ he
insisted. ‘Get some rest. I’ll drop by your apartment in a little while and
check on you.’
For a moment, he
thought she would argue, but then she gave him a small nod. ‘Thanks, Grissom.’
Moving past him,
she picked up her jacket. His voice stopped her at the door.
‘You’re wrong
about one thing, Sara,’ he told her in a soft voice. ‘I’m the weak one. Not
you.’
Not trusting
herself to turn around, Sara gave a half shrug and left.
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