Through the Blinds

chapter two

By Cappuccino Girl

Pairing: Grissom / Sara

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Most definitely not my intellectual property.

Notes: This story takes place right after Felonius Monk.

I've whined, moaned, wanted to press delete a thousand times, and ocasionally I've let out a satisfied sigh. Indescribable thanks to Devanie for listening to it all. Also, thank you to the many others who sent words of encouragement.

Summary: Put your shovel away. You're too young to be digging your own grave.

What to wear to work today? It's a serious problem, as a quick glance onto your bed will show. Five suits and about a dozen shirts are strewn out on the freshly ironed bedspread. Once you've chosen a combination and decided it just might be practical for lab work, fieldwork, and approaching your colleague about the mildly interesting revelations of this morning, you'll no doubt change your mind about it as soon as you spot your reflection in your car window. By then it will inevitably be too late to go back inside and fix the fashion disaster. Mix and match never was your strong point.

"What do you think?" you ask your daughter, spinning around.

"It's fine, mommy."

"Is it? You really think so, or are you just saying that?" You lean forward to kiss her forehead before she jumps off the bed.

"You look pretty," she says, grabbing her glass of juice from your bedside table. "But your hair's a little funny."

Black slacks. Sky blue shirt. Leather jacket cool. Your hair lets you down every time. You smile, recalling the time you almost had to shave your hair into a Mohawk when you lost a bet in college. Mark let it get so close that you honestly thought that bastard was going to make you do it. At last minute, he agreed to a round of drinks with friends as a settlement.

Your toss the brush you are holding into the basket on the dresser and reach for the hairspray which sits beside it. Habitually shaking the can until your wrist feels tired, you hold your breath, then push the aerosol. You cough anyway.

'Six weeks.' You can't get those words out of your head. Ever since Sara showed up at the lab a year and a half ago, you've always known there was something behind that innocent facade. You've speculated, but then who hasn't. Through the blinds, you watched your boss kiss your colleague, your friend. Damn them both. You haven't been laid in far too long. Casting a critical eye on your reflection in the mirror, you unbutton another hole of your blouse before sauntering out of the bedroom.

~* *~

The break room is thick with the smell of coffee and cheap disinfectant when you fall into work ten minutes early. Nick has his feet up on the table. Sara's stabbing a fork into a piece of cake, moving it around on the plate without eating. Warrick is going through some memos. Glancing around, you notice that Grissom is curiously absent.

You grab your chipped white mug from the draining board and shove it under the coffee maker.

"Nick brought cake," Sara eventually says, pointing gleefully to the food in front of her.

You look first at Sara, then Nick. "You brought cake?"

He nods. "Yeah."

"Can I marry you?" You pull the now full cup out from under the coffee maker, and take a seat at the table. There's no sweetener around anywhere.

"That kind of messes everything up," he says innocently.

"Why? Have you finally gotten past a second date with someone?" you remark, dropping half a spoon of sugar into your mug.

Sara giggles from her seat opposite you.

Nick just gazes back at you over last week's copy of Time Magazine. "I always thought that if I ever got married, you'd be the stripper at my bachelor party."

You lean back a little, regard him skeptically. "Did you really?"

"Yeah."

"Keep on dreaming baby," you say, flicking your hair out of your face.

"You want cake?" Sara asks, trying hard to change the subject.

"At your bachelor party," you mumble, more to yourself than anyone else. "No, I don't want cake."

"Evening," Grissom says, strolling through the open door.

Sara keeps poking her cake with her fork. If she doesn't stop that within the next thirty seconds you may be forced to stab her with it. She doesn't look up at Grissom.

"I've got the pathologist's report here, as well as some other lab results," he explains, taking his seat at the head of the table. "Nicky. Warrick. Everything okay?"

"Yeah," Warrick says from his seat on the couch. "We're off to the Monaco to print."

Nick gathers his things together and stands up, causing Warrick to follow suit.

"See you later," Nick says when he's almost out the door.

"Bye. Keep dreaming, cowboy," you call after him in your most seductive voice.

Grissom gives you an appraising stare. "Am I missing something here?"

"Nick thought Catherine would be the stripper at his bachelor party," Sara says, taking a mouthful of cake.

"We have an overly healthy working environment here," you add.

Grissom still looks blankly back at you. "Nick's engaged?"

"No." Sara smiles. "You keep staring at my cake."

She's right. You snatch the fork from her and take a bite. "This is good."

"There's more on the counter," she tells you, pointing.

"No thanks. So, where are these reports?" you ask Grissom, who seems rather interested in the crumb on the corner of Sara's mouth.

He hands you the folders, and you flick through them, pausing every now and then to drink some more coffee. The two of them just study one another's movements in silence.

"She showed signs of struggle," you read from the sheet. "Sounds like that confirms the forced entrance through the window theory."

"Let me see." Sara pushes herself and her chair around the table without standing up. You hold the document out so the two of you can read it simultaneously. "What about Foster?"

"Nothing," Grissom says, still reading lab results while he talks. "We're still waiting for more details on him."

"I've got a window to collect today," Sara chirps.

"Background checks?" Grissom half asks, half tells you.

You sigh. "Yes, the joys of reading through mountains and mountains of crap in order to find one piece of information that might explain something."

"The police delivered all the paperwork from the house this afternoon," he states.

"I saw it in my office. Picked my spirits right up."

Sara raises her left eyebrow. "How many sacks?"

"Eight, I think."

"Well, I'm off to remove windows," Sara says, tossing her slightly worn bag over her shoulder.

"Enjoy."

"Catherine and I are off to the coroners," Grissom announces.

You look up at him. "We are?"

"Yes," he remarks. "Page me if you find anything, and bring the bathtub too."

"Sure will," Sara calls from down the hall.

"Coroner, huh?"

Grissom tosses the remainder of his coffee down the drain and rinses out his mug. "Yes."

"I can tell this is going to be an enlightening day."

~* *~

"Park over there."

Grissom rests his elbow on the wheel and studies you for a moment, his brow furrowing. "But we always park here."

"The space on the right is never free."

"I've always managed just fine from here," he says almost indignantly.

"That one's in the shade," you whine. "It's hot out, just incase you haven't noticed."

"We have air conditioning and it'll be dark in a few hours."

"Oh just park on the right would you?" Men.

Reluctantly, he maneuvers the car into the narrow space nearest to the entrance, and the two of you pile out. You cast a glance at him when he opens his door. The heat does hit him, and you can't prevent the tiny smirk from creeping onto your face.

"Got the folders?" you ask, swinging your bag over your shoulder.

"All here."

You shove the heavy door open and step inside. "I always hate this part."

"Hope you brought your extra strength menthol Vaseline."

And with that, you're making your way through the pristine hallways. The floor is horribly slick, and you're grateful that you picked the grippy-soled shoes when you got dressed this afternoon.

"Can you throw me one?" You wave your finger towards the pile of blue scrubs in the shelf. He hands you one which you pull over your head before entering the room.

It smells like operating tables. That revolting stench which you can never get out of your nose. You put on the bravest face you can muster and stand beside Grissom. He catches Sara, so he might have the courtesy to steady you if you became faint.

Two bodies are laid out on the shiny steel gurneys, stiff white sheets covering even stiffer corpses. This is what it all adds up to: two past lives in an eerie tiled room where your every move echoes off the walls for a minute.

Grissom watches the young coroner uncover the first victim with an almost morbid fascination. This part of the job is always like watching a train wreck.

"Cause of death is easily visible. Laceration of the throat and wrists."

"She would have died relatively quickly," Grissom clarifies.

"A matter of minutes."

Holding the white mask to your face, you lean a little closer. "No one commits suicide by slashing their neck open."

"She exhibits classic signs of struggle," David tells you, holding up the victim's hand. "See these marks here."

"This wasn't suicide," Grissom states, moving around the gurney, looking for signs of violence.

"Her right shoulder is severely dislocated, and there's further bruising on her lower legs and back." In that disrespectful style that pathologists must spend years in medical school perfecting, David shoves the body onto its front. "This one looks like something was hit against her."

You glance up for a moment, take a deep breath. "Could it have been what caused her to fall in the first place?"

"Sara's gone to fetch the bathtub," Grissom says. "It wouldn't surprise me if the killer flung her down on that, and then killed her."

You share a moment of contemplative silence before the coroner tugs the sheet from the second victim.

"Cause of death is, surprisingly enough, exactly as it seemed at first glance. Hanging."

~* *~

You hook the heels of your shoes on the foot rest of the stool. Sara is up to her neck in papers which form a landscape of hills and valleys on the tables. Half a dozen burlap sacks adorn the floor.

"Why are we doing this again?" she wonders aloud.

"Because Grissom's having fun with the bathtub and too many cooks spoil the experiment or something."

"Why do I care about year old credit card receipts anyway?" Sara demonstratively waves the paper around.

You snatch it from her. "Robinson Travel. $2268.00. I want this man as a boyfriend."

Sara arches her left eyebrow in disagreement. "You can't. He's dead."

"Great. Just go wreck all my hopes, would you. Crescent Jewelers. Isn't that the jewelers on Maryland Parkway?"

"You're asking the wrong girl."

"One thousand and twenty dollars."

"Fancy." Sara tosses aside another pile of paper. "What else?"

"I don't know. You tell me."

"We have credit card receipts for just about every expensive restaurant in the city, and elsewhere. Manhattan mostly."

"This guy had a high paying job, right?"

She nods, hands you another wedge of receipts.

"It looks like he was staying there for one to two weeks at a time, but he never seems to charged them back to his company."

"Which is what you would do if your dinner was business related." She pauses, flipping through the papers once more. "So how does a guy with a job like this manage to go away on holiday that much?"

Trips away. Jewelry. Eddie. "That asshole. It was business, but this? These dinners. This was more than business."

Sara's eyes narrow. 'What do you mean?"

"We have to follow up on those holiday bookings and then check his wife's receipts. "

"All this paper," she groans, dropping her head onto the table in despair.

"See, this is why you shouldn't care about whether Grissom took six weeks or not."

Sara's head snaps up, eyes glistening. "Excuse me?"

"Nothing. It was just a misunderstanding."

"I don't think..." she trails off.

"Do you even begin to realize what you're getting yourself into?" you find yourself saying.

Sara stares blankly back at you.

"I saw you. Yesterday morning," you tell her, attempting to keep your voice as calm as possible.

"Saw what?"

"Six weeks."

"Oh my God," she exclaims, covering her face with her hands

"I guess that's one way of putting it," you remark. "Have you got any idea what you're doing?"

"That's none of your business," she spits.

"We're both working on this case."

Sara inches away from you, pushing her hands against the table so that her stool slides back. "This has nothing to do with the case."

She's not getting away. "Identifying with the victim as much as you are has everything to do with the case."

"I don't think this is the right place to be having this conversation," Sara tells you.

"Maybe not, but I'm having it anyway," you say firmly, smacking the papers you are holding onto the table for emphasis. "You're going to get found out, and Grissom will be packing his bags and your reputation as a first rate CSI will be down the toilet."

"You're being melodramatic."

"You're fucking your boss, Sara. You're kissing him at work. You're bringing your relationship into this case.

She jumps off her stool and begins violently rummaging through a sack of papers. "Don't you lecture me. Don't you dare," she scowls, tugging at the fabric of the sack. "You should have seen your face before when you saw these receipts. You've got plenty of personal baggage of your own. I'd think about keeping that under control before you come in here and tell me what I should or shouldn't be doing."

"You can't do this Sara," you say, your voice gentle once more. "Put your shovel away. You're too young to be digging your own grave."

"We need to focus on the research." And with that she shoves another heap of papers into your hand.

~* *~

You rub your eyes, squinting. Grissom's studying photographs, and occasionally you lean far enough across the table to point something out with haphazard gestures.

"How's the bathtub?" Sara asks, strutting in to the room with an air of false casualness.

Grissom turns his head a fraction, glances up and down her body. "Fascinating. Nothing seems to match up. It's like doing a connect the dots, without the dots."

"Coffee." She hands you a mug, a small peace offering, and eases her way behind Grissom's chair, slipping him another cup also.

"Thank you." He takes a sip. "So, what have you got?"

"He was cheating on his girlfriend," you tell him confidently.

"How so?" he asks you, still examining the pictures.

You dip your finger into your coffee to find it scalding hot. "Well, I don't know for sure yet."

"It's just gone past the women's intuition stage," Sara clarifies. "We have receipts."

Grissom's eyes have moved back to Sara again, mentally undressing her. "Show me."

Sara doesn't respond. She seems colder, restrained, as though her movements were controlled by puppeteer threads.

You attempt a smile. "This guy's been doing all this fancy stuff in New York without his girlfriend, and never charged it back to his company."

"Maybe he was just courting a future client," Grissom responds, taking notes in a dog-eared folder.

You lean back in your chair, put your feet up on the empty stool beside you. "But that's business. You'd still want your money back for that."

"What about an old friend?" he asks.

You sigh heavily. Another headache's looming around the corner. "He's going on vacations to the Bahamas, and while he's on these vacations for two, his other half's making charges to her card here in Las Vegas." You really need a cigarette. Fumbling around in your pocket, you pull out a snotty Kleenex, one of you daughter's broken friendship bracelets, and two pieces of Nicorette. You unwrap one and pop it in your mouth. Life is one giant compromise. Even the cigarette breaks have to give.

Sara fidgets, brushes her hair behind her ear. "I think Catherine's right. It does appear that way."

He closes his eyes for a moment, gathering his thoughts before asking, "If he has another woman, where is she?"

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say she's probably not in San Francisco," you say, punctuating the sentence by chewing.

Sara warningly raises her eyebrows.

"We're getting distracted by all this background information," Grissom says, his voice calm and articulate. "We need to know why both of the victims were killed in different ways. Mann was killed by a laceration to the throat which occurred after a significant struggle. Foster showed almost no signs of struggle and was hung, after which, we are presuming, the killer snuck back out of the bathroom window, through which he originally entered."

Sara nods in agreement. "I'm going to look at the window later today or tomorrow. See what I can find." She chews the top of her pen, eventually asking, "Foster showed no signs of struggle?"

"None aside from slight bruising to his wrist," Grissom confirms.

She drops the now deformed pen back onto the paper, leaving print of spit on the page. A hint of sparkle returns to her expression. "Then who's to say that Foster didn't kill his partner, and then hang himself?"

"It would explain the suicide note."

"But not the forced entrance into the bathroom window," you tell them, stirring your coffee a little too violently, causing it to spill out over the rim.

"I think we have to consider the possibility. What if it was Foster?" Sara proposes. "He kills the woman he loves, then he panics and kills himself."

You roll your eyes at their illogic. "Before which he writes a suicide note for his girlfriend. Please."

"This guy would have been a mental wreck when he killed himself," Sara says, her confidence waning.

"We can't let this go," Grissom states. "Call the pathology lab and have them check for blood under Foster's fingernails."

Sara keeps drumming her fingers onto the table, her eyes making hesitant contact. "Where do we go from here?"

~* *~

You turn the volume up two extra notches on your stereo, the bass almost vibrating the doors. The sun has risen a few hours ago, its rays casting golden hues onto the roofs of the buildings you pass. If the stoplights co-operate, you'll be able to have breakfast with Lindsey before she needs to go to school. You push the accelerator down a little harder.

The case needs direction, needs clarification and, most of all, closure. People uprooting their lives in order to move back to the one they love. People lying, cheating, hurting, eventually killing. You could have reached for a gun. You didn't but it wouldn't have felt wrong at the time. Bang. Quick and simple. Little mess. Wash it all away with vodka if the thought would have haunted you.

You're all finding painful parallels and sooner or later one coincidence will cause everything to collapse like dominos. The time one spends setting up these rows upon rows of black dotted tiles. Move a finger and they all fall down.

~ to be continued ~

all feedback to: cappuccinogirlie@hotmail.com

visit the author's website at www.cappuccinogirl.com