We need to talk, a CSI fanfic

Disclaimer – I do not own CSI, any of its characters (that privilege goes to all those companies mentioned before and after every episode), or any of the songs in this chapter (they all belong to Dolly Parton and her people). The victim, place she worked at, and suspects were made up by me…any similarities between people living or dead, or any actual firms are coincidental.

Spoilers – None

Authors Note – So this is a challenge I was set ages ago….and I wrote it ages ago and everything (like before Christmas). But I never got around to typing it up. So it’s our half term holiday today (woohoo) and I’m taking time to myself.

All words in italics are song lyrics.

Femslash – if this offends – turn back now…

Challenge –1) Cath/Sara

2) Mention of a murder

3) Dolly Parton

4) End of a cliff-hanger

Tumble outta bed
And stumble to the kitchen
Pour myself a cup of ambition
Yawnin', stretchin', try to come to life
Jump in the shower
And the blood starts pumpin'

Sara Sidle stretched an arm over in the general direction of her nightstand and silenced her radio alarm clock. Smiling to herself as she recalled the activities she had been engaged in the previous night, she turned over to find…an empty bed?

‘That’s not right,’ Sara thought to herself, ‘Unless…shit, we’ve come so far, and I’ve just gone and fucked it up already. Best night of my life last night…hell best sex of my life, and I’ve gone and fucked something up…’

Hauling herself out of bed, Sara stumbled to the kitchen, turned the coffee machine on and dragged herself into a shower. As she walked past her table in a daze, she missed the note that had been propped up against the burnt out candle from the night before.

Sara arrived at work with 5 minutes to spare before the start of shift. She kept her head down, and made her way directly to the locker-room, stowed her jacket in her locker, and went to the break room to get her case. Keeping her head down the whole way, she avoided looking at anyone, and missed the smiles everyone was giving her. Finding a seat at the table, Sara stared at her hands, playing with her nail, until Grissom walked in a couple minutes later.

“Warrick, Greg. You’re with me on a double homicide in Henderson. Sofia is waiting for us. Nick, Vartaan has brought your suspect from last night in for questioning. If you get the confession out of him quickly, join us. Cath, Sara, you have a 419 in the alley behind the Four Aces Motel. Jim will meet you there”

As everyone stood up and started walking in various directions to get ready to leave, Sara tried to bolt for the locker room to compose herself. As she passed Catherine, she received a smile from the blonde, and the words “We need to talk…”

Sitting in the locker room, Sara held her head in her hands. ‘Shit…we need to talk…ominous words if every there was…probably going to tell me she’s suing for sexual harassment….or that she’s going to push Ecklie to finally hold true on his threat and actually fire me….but she smiled…maybe she’s not going to kill me, and hide the body so it can’t be found….maybe she liked it….but she said we need to talk….when has any conversation that started with those words ever went well….’

Sara’s inner monologue had her head spinning, and she didn’t realize how long she had been sitting on the bench until she heard Catherine’s voice calling her. Quickly checking herself in the mirror, Sara shut her locker over and walked out into the corridor, preparing herself for a silent drive to the crime scene with Catherine.

As their Denali pulled up to the crime scene tape outside the Four Aces, Catherine and Sara were met by Brass, who couldn’t help but notice the tension pouring off Sara, and the confusion from Catherine. Deciding that one or the other had probably done something about their attraction that the rest of the lab had noticed from day one; Jim decided not to comment for now, but to see if anyone had this week in the pool.

“So our victim’s name is Laura Bates. 23 years old. ‘With flaming locks of auburn hair, with ivory skin and eyes of emerald green.’” Sara looked at Brass, then Catherine. Did no one else think it was odd that Brass had just randomly sung a description to them? Catherine didn’t seem to react, so Sara shrugged, and refocused on what Brass was telling them. “She works over at Carron Cars. Coroner has already pronounced. Time of death is 7 hours ago, so just after 5pm. Cause of death is preliminary listed as massive blunt force trauma to the back of the head. We will know more once the autopsy has been performed.”

“Thanks Jim. Sara, why don’t you start with the body? Once you’ve got everything, and David has taken the body away, come help process the rest of the alley.” Catherine smiled once again at Sara, and got to work.

Sara, still confused by Catherine, got to work. Hunching down, Sara tried to ignore her inner monologue which was threatening to start up again, and started searching for evidence. Finding a couple of short blonde hairs on the victim’s jacket, Sara smiled and collected them. Noticing some blue fibers that were out of place on the victims yellow shirt and black trousers, Sara collected them also. Some more evidence was gathered, before Sara called David over to remove the body. Once David had left with the body on a gurney, Sara went over to report her findings so far to Catherine.

“I’ve found some hairs that don’t belong to the victim, some fibers that are inconsistent with what she was wearing and a finger nail that doesn’t belong to the victim, since her nails were perfectly manicured and intact. I’m thinking…that whoever done this….was not a professional.”

Catherine smiled at Sara. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking the same thing. I’ve found a women’s shoe, covered in what looks to be fresh blood. It’s a size 8.” Sara thought about this. “That doesn’t belong to the victim, Laura was a size 6.” “We’ll know more when we get it back to the lab,” Catherine replied, “But I think the blood could be Laura’s which means the shoe could be our killers. I also found this metal pipe, which again is covered in blood.”

Brass returned at that point from canvassing the area. “I’ve spoken to a couple of homeless people in the next alley over, who said that they heard an argument between two women and that was finished with a scream a while ago. No one in the Four Aces heard anything.”

Back at the lab, David and Doc Robbins confirmed that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the back of the head, and that the pipe Catherine found was consistent with the wounds.

Catherine and Sara commandeered one of the evidence labs, and started processing. Swabbing the shoe and pipe for blood, samples were sent to Wendy in DNA, along with the finger nail and hairs found on the body. The fibers were sent to trace, along with a swab from inside the shoe of a cream or lotion. Dusting the pipe for fingerprints, uncovered a handprint. Sending these to Mandy, Catherine couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, definitely not a professional…”

Sara and Catherine made their way to Carron Cars in order to search Laura’s desk for clues as to why she was at the Four Aces, when both her job and her apartment were all the way over town. They were greeted at reception by Chris Lees, Laura’s boss. “Mr. Lees,” Sara started, “We are sorry to have to inform you, but Laura Bates was found dead last night. We are going to need to see her desk.”

As they were shown around, Catherine told Sara to process Laura’s desk to see what she could find out, whilst she spoke to some colleagues.

“Mr. Lees, what can you tell me about Laura?” Catherine decided to speak to the boss first.

“Well, she started here about 5 months ago, and she fitted in well. She got on with everyone, and she was good at her job. She was ‘working 9 to 5’ but she was happy with her job, as far as we all knew. Some of the other sales people moaned that we ‘just use your mind and they never give you credit’, but Laura was happy where she was for now.”

“Do you have any idea why she would have been at the Four Aces?” Catherine asked.

“Well,” Chris started, “Maybe she was meeting someone, and didn’t want to meet at either of their houses.”

“You mean you?” Catherine asked.

“It’s not something I’m proud of, but yes. We have been having an affair for about a month. We can’t meet at my house because of my wife, and we can’t meet at hers because she still lives with her parents. So we meet at motels, never twice in the same one. I told my wife the other day that I was leaving, and have been staying in the Four Aces ever since.”

Catherine took a note of this, and informed Chris that she would be back in touch. Moving on to other colleagues, she discovered that this affair was well known. In fact some of the other sales people were quite bitter about how fast Laura had progressed, and speculation was that she had earned all her promotions on her back.

“Hey Catherine,” Sara called over to her. “There are a lot of emails here back and forward from Laura to Chris.” “Yeah, he admitted they were having an affair.” “Ah,” Sara replied. “There are also a lot of other emails and messages here that she has saved, most of which are threatening in tone, some of which are downright malicious. It sounds like someone was getting ready to spill to Mrs. Lees about her husband’s affair, and was getting ready to blackmail Laura.”

“Interesting…well lets head back to the lab, and see how the evidence is coming along. We can always come back with a warrant for fingerprints if necessary, since we should be able to show motive with these emails.”

Back at the lab, their first port of call was to Wendy in DNA. “Hey guys. The blood on the pipe and the shoes were both a match to Laura. The hairs had been pulled from the scalp, possibly of the attacker, but there is no match in the system.” “Thanks Wendy.”

Moving onto Trace, they discovered that the fibers were pulled from a cashmere sweater, and that the cream in the shoe was used to treat Athlete’s foot. “I wonder if any of the sales people or Chris has Athlete’s Foot.” Sara wondered. “Well it’s something else for us to add to our warrant if needed.” Catherine replied.

Finally, moving into the fingerprint lab, Mandy was able to give good news. “I ran the prints you gave me, got a match. A non-gaming work card, in the name of Ashley Lees.” “Ashley Lees? As in Chris Lees?” Sara and Catherine both wondered the same thing. “Let’s get Brass to bring her in.”

Catherine and Sara found themselves an hour later sitting across from a sobbing Ashley Lees.

“That bitch. Everything was going great until she came along. Then Chris started working longer hours at the office. So one day I showed up to surprise him with dinner. But he wasn’t there. He had left on time as usual. So the next day he phoned to say he was staying late, I waited outside the office. And I saw him leave with HER. So I followed them. I saw them go into the Four Aces. I left, went home and cried. He came home late that night smelling of perfume. When I called him on it, he confessed. ‘Our little boy is four years old, and he’s quite a little man. So we spell out the words we don’t want him to understand. Like t-o-y, or maybe s-u-r-p-r-i-s-e. But the words were hiding from him now tears the heart right out of me.’ When I asked him why, he told me that he didn’t love me anymore, and that he was moving on. ‘Oh, I wish that we could stop this d-i-v-o-r-c-e.’ So I found out he was staying at the Four Aces, and went to try to talk him around. But then I saw HER

“I walked over to her and confronted her about breaking up our family. Begged her ‘And I can easily understand, how you could easily take my man. But you don’t know what he means to me… I’m begging of you please don’t take my man.’ And that bitch just laughed in my face. So I snapped, grabbed a pipe from the ground, and hit her as hard as I could. Twice.”

As Sara and Catherine left the interview room, Catherine turned to Sara. “You free now?” “We should get the paper work done for this shift Catherine.” Sara replied. “Sara, the paper work can wait until tomorrow. And anyway, we really need to talk….”

TBC?

Ok, so there is my response to the challenge. I included a murder, I had Dolly Parton songs throughout (9 to 5, Jolene, and D-I-V-O-R-C-E). And it ended on a cliff-hanger...what does Catherine want to talk to Sara about? I have some ideas to continue this to about 2 more chapters, but only if people think I should...so please leave me a review and tell me what you think...

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