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Retribution
Chapter
Three
They
arrived back at the lab after three hours of processing and interviewing
various members of the Department of Corrections staff. After spending time in
prison, Catherine wanted nothing more than to take a shower, but she dutifully
headed towards the coroner’s office, leaving Warrick and Greg to log the
evidence.
“What’s
up, Doc?”
“That
never gets old, Catherine,” he replied in a tone that made it clear the joke
was long past its use by date.
She
smirked warmly at him, her affection for the Chief Medical Examiner’s gruff
ways as strong as ever.
“What
have you got for me?”
“Nothing
you’ll like. No outward sign of injury. No obvious COD, apart from this –“
With
a gloved finger, he pulled open an eyelid on the corpse. Catherine leaned in
for a closer look.
“Petechial
hemorrhaging?”
“That,
along with the cyanosis around the mouth and congestion in the face and lungs,
all suggest asphyxiation.”
“Suffocation?”
Catherine was incredulous. “Al, Tom Haviland was alive and well at lockdown,
and he has a cell on his own.”
He
picked up one of the victim’s hands and showed it to her.
“No
defensive wounds on the hands or arms. No bruising on the face – not that you
necessarily see that every time. The hyoid’s intact and there’s no bruising
round the neck, so I’ve ruled out strangulation…”
“What
then?”
He
shrugged, non-committal. “I’m not sure yet. There are some poisons which
paralyze the heart and lungs. They leave no post-mortem signs except the
indicators for asphyxia. I’ve sent a panel over to tox.”
She
nodded her thanks and readied herself to go. “Thanks Doc.”
“Oh
Catherine, one more thing. His stomach contents were interesting. Nothing but
several partially digested chocolates. And the faint aroma of alcohol.”
“There
was a box of liqueur chocolates by the bed,” she thought out-loud.
Robbins
nodded, already immersing himself back into his work.
“Thanks,”
she called over her shoulder as she left his domain.
---
The
cold rain of one of Vegas’s infrequent storms stung Grissom’s face as he rushed
up the steps towards Sara’s apartment. Like everything in this city, the
weather did nothing by half measures – the downpour was heavy and brutal.
Sara’s
front door was ajar, but it didn’t feel welcoming. On automatic pilot, Grissom
reached first into his pocket for a pair of gloves, then to his hip for his
firearm, before remembering dimly that he had neither.
He
pushed open the door with the back of his hand and stepped inside.
“Sara?”
The
apartment had been ransacked; the boxes which Sara had neatly packed with her
belongings before she left were now upended and scattered, picture frames
smashed to pieces. Grissom stepped carefully around the glass, moving through
the living room and toward the bedroom.
He
had neatly made the bed two weeks ago, after he and Sara had made love and she
had left. Now the comforter was on the floor, the sheets bunched up and torn.
Drawers lay open. Someone had been looking for something.
He
moved into the bathroom and found it in the same condition as the rest of the
small apartment – turned upside down and empty.
She wasn’t here.
Taking
out his phone, he called her cell again and it went straight to voicemail.
Hitting ‘end’, he then dialed the lab.
“Judy?
It’s Gil Grissom. Is Catherine there? – Okay, can you let her know I need a CSI
at Sara’s apartment straight away? –“
He
closed his eyes as the receptionist asked if Sara was okay.
“Yes,
she’s fine,” he lied. “But there’s been a break-in. Can you also call the PD
and see if a detective is free to come by? – Thanks.”
---
Greg
was logging evidence and Warrick was examining a stack of letters when
Catherine entered the layout room.
“Hey
guys. Got anything yet?”
“The
creeps,” Warrick reported. “There are some seriously disturbed women out there.
And one or two men.”
“What?
Can’t they get dates in the real world? They have to go after a guy in prison?”
Greg asked.
“A
famous guy in prison,” Catherine
corrected. “Happens all the time. Richard Ramirez, Charles Manson – there are
some women who find that whole psycho-killer thing attractive.”
Warrick
looked up from the letter he was currently reading. “So, do we have cause of
death yet?”
“Not
quite. Did you process the chocolates yet?”
Warrick
nodded. “I lifted a couple of prints from the box and sent them to Jacqui.”
“Do
me a favor. Send the chocolates over to tox. There’s a possibility that movie
star guy was poisoned, and the chocolates were the only thing in his stomach.”
Warrick
uncurled himself from his chair. “Where will you be?”
“With
Jacqui, checking out those prints.”
---
“Why
did you stay?”
Sara’s
knees were drawn up to her chin, her arms wrapped around them, hugging tightly.
They were moving deeper into painful territory after their two week dance
around the subject.
Her
mother was silent for a moment, pondering the question as she took a long drag
on her unfiltered
“I
guess you just get to a point where you feel that’s all you’re worth,” Laura
replied slowly, measuring each word carefully. “I mean, if a person is told
that they’re worthless enough times, they start to believe it, right?”
You. A person. They.
Sara
had heard women talking like this before. Abused women who avoided speaking in
the first person because it meant they could distance themselves from the
horrors of their experience.
“What
about us?” Sara asked quietly, unshed tears choking her voice.
“He
never laid a hand on you or your brother until – that day. I’d always told
myself that – if he went near either of you I’d leave, or I’d…”
She
trailed off, a shaking hand lifting the cigarette back to her mouth.
“Or
you’d kill him,” Sara finished the thought.
Laura
Sidle nodded.
Sara
didn’t know where the question came from, but suddenly she couldn’t help but
ask.
“Did
it help? Killing him? Did it –“ She was unsure of how to finish the sentence.
“Did it undo what he did to you?”
Laura
took another thoughtful drag.
“I
had to see a shrink in prison. They put me in the nuthouse for a while…”
“I
know,” Sara interrupted quietly.
“Well,
I pretty much thought he was full of it – what the hell did he know? How could
he empathize with an abused woman?”
She
took another pull before stabbing the butt into the astray. Frowning in
contemplation, she took out another cigarette and lit it, before continuing.
“But
he did tell me one thing that stayed with me. He said, ‘There are two types of
abused women. Victims and Survivors.’ Apparently, it took an act of ‘extreme
aggression’ for me to stop being one and become the other.”
A
heavy silence fell between them as Sara processed that.
Laura
had smoked her way through another cigarette before she spoke again.
“I
know you think I was wrong or stupid, or whatever it is you think of me for
putting you and your brother through all that. But it was all I’d ever known,
Sara. My father beat up on my mother all through my childhood. I just thought –
that was the way it was.”
“What
about me?” Sara challenged. “I grew up in the same environment. But I’d never…”
“That’s
what I’m most grateful for in this world, baby. You have always been smarter than me.”
Sara
glanced at the newspaper that lay folded on the coffee table. “Not always.”
Her
mother followed her gaze and frowned, as though the paper itself had personally
caused the hurt her daughter now felt.
“Well,
I don’t know what that judge was thinking, letting her out. But she’ll get hers
in the end.”
“To
be honest? I don’t know that she will.”
Laura
Sidle got up and put her hands on both her daughter’s shoulders, making Sara
look at her.
“Don’t
you do that, baby,” she insisted. “She has not beaten you. You are a survivor. Not a victim.”
“Sometimes
I wonder...”
---
Warrick
had recovered two separate sets of prints from the chocolate box. One pair,
unsurprisingly, came back to Tom Haviland. Now Catherine sipped coffee, trying
to wait patiently while the second set ran through the database.
“Wouldn’t
a prison check stuff like this coming in?” Jacqui was asking, her eyes still
trained on the screen before her. “I’m surprised they even reached him. Don’t
the staff usually confiscate that sort of thing?”
“Sometimes,”
Catherine agreed. “But our victim’s status ensured a certain level of
favoritism among the guards.”
“He
paid them off?”
“That’d
be my guess. He had a lot of luxury
items in his cell.”
The
computer beeped, and Catherine moved beside Jacqui so she could see the screen.
“The
prints are on the system?”
“Yeah,
lucky break. Oh –“ Jacqui tailed off, recognizing the name. “They come back to
Jill Davenport.”
“What!”
Catherine
immediately flipped open her cell and hit speed dial.
“Brass.”
“Jim,
Catherine. Has Jill Davenport checked in with you guys yet?”
“Not
that I know of,” he replied. “But she’s not due for another hour.”
“You’d
better send a squad car over to wherever she’s supposed to be staying. I think
she murdered Tom Haviland.”
TBC.
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