And then the petals fell
And then the petals fell
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AND THEN THE
PETALS FELL …
Part 1
Catherine was
sitting at her daughter’s bed with her letter to Santa Claus in her hands and
tears in her eyes while she watched her daughter sleep.
Eddie was
dead. She was a single mother now with almost no family, at least no family she
really felt attached to.
The night Eddie died she cried herself
to sleep with her Lindsey curled tightly against her back, trying to calm her
mum down but it wasn’t possible. Later she fell asleep completely exhausted.
And now it
was the beginning of December and her girl was about to celebrate the first
Christmas as a half orphan. The thought made her cry again. Slowly she stood
up, not wanting to wake her little darling, went to the living room, got herself
a double Vodka on the rocks and sat down in the soft sofa.
“Dear Mister
Santa Claus
I don’t wish
for much this year since there isn't a lot I can wish for. I know that you can't
bring my Daddy back or make things undone, I know that. I don’t want to see mum
cry anymore and you know Santa she cries a lot.
A couple of
years ago I’d wished that they’d get back together and get me a little sister or
brother but I know that it is impossible now.
You know
Santa, I really like Uncle Gil even if he is a little … I don’t know … shy?
Maybe you could bring him over to celebrate Christmas with us and mum won’t have
to cry all the time or pretend to smile.
I don’t wish
for anything else.
Yours,
Lindsey Willows”
Catherine’s
tears kept running down her cheeks, the letter drawn tightly to her chest.
~*~
“So here are
the cases.” Gil was standing in the middle of the room with a couple of files in
his hand. “Here this is yours Nick.”
He shoved a
file toward the young man with the dark hair. “You go with Catherine,” he shot
her a demanding look, “to this – it’s a double homicide in the desert.”
“Any special
reason why I have to get dirty?” Catherine asked him harshly.
“Because it
is your job to collect and analyse evidence,” was the only thing he said before
he gave a suicide/ homicide case to Warwick and Sara. He had assigned himself
some paperwork.
When Gil sat
down in the office, Catherine stormed in, furious, and closed the door with a
loud bang.
“How dare you
send me to a double homicide in the desert?”
“Have you
read the file?”
“I don’t need
to read the file to see that you are ditching me.”
“Hell
Catherine what’s up? I am not ditching you. I just handed the cases out, nothing
more and I thought that you’d be better on it than Sara or Warwick. Okay?” She
didn’t dare to look at Gil, still being furious. “It’s a double homicide of two
twelve year old girls, okay? I thought that being a mother would make it hard on
the one hand but you’d be much more open to every possibility on the way to
solve this case.”
Catherine
left Grissom’s office without saying a word.
~*~
“You okay
Cath?” Nick asked her in the car.
a">“Sorry that
you had to wait, everything is fine, yes …fine.”
She was
silent the whole drive to the desert. It felt strange to Nick because he learned
one thing since he was working with Catherine – D pus push her.
Brass was
already waiting when they arrived and showed them the bodies. Nick felt bile
rise in his throat and Catherine had to hold back her tears.
The two girls
were laying there in their neat Sunday dresses, hints that they’d been sexually
assaulted, blood staining their chests, and a knife lying next to them.
The evidence
was little, just tyre prints in the hard sand, no footprints or other items that
could help them.
Nick was
leaning hard against the car, facing the opposite side of the endless desert and
sipping on a water bottle.
“What’s up
with her?” Brass asked Nick.
”I don’t know
but since Eddie is dead she isn't the same anymore. It got her harder than I’d
imagined.”
“Yes but on
the other hand I thought they …”
“Well they
didn’t get along well but he was Lindsey’s dad and whenever she needed a timeout
he was taking care of Linds.”
“Maybe she
needs a timeout now?”
“I’ve
noticed she’s been drinking, I don’t want her to be alone.”
“Talk to Gil,
they’ve known each other for so long.”
“I thought
the same till this morning. But when he handed out the cases she flipped at him,
why she’d go to the desert with me.”
“Its not
about you Nick, she is hurt, seriously hurt and she wants Gil’s attention.”
“You think?”
Nick asked the older police officer.
Catherine and
Nick finished the collecting the evidence and headed back to the office.
Catherine was unnaturally calm in Nick’s eyes. She was never a really chatty
person but she liked to talk and to him especially.
And Nick
wasn’t blind. He had noticed that she had lost a couple of pounds since Eddie’s
death and he hardly ever saw her eating anything, only drinking one cup of
coffee after the other. He knew, from personal experience, that this wasn’t
healthy and not working if you have a kid to look after.
He never
thought that she, this strawberry blond beauty, would hurt herself in any way
but it was too obvious now.
Should he
talk to Grissom? Talk to the boss and blame him for not watching out for his
best friend, good friend, colleague?
“Do you want
to talk Catherine?”
Catherine
looked at Nick, “What about?”
“I feel that
you aren’t fine.”
“I am okay.”
“No you are
not even okay Catherine, you are really … I don’t know how to describe it.”
“So don’t.”
~*~
TWO NIGHTS
LATER
When Grissom
came into his office he found Catherine asleep on the sofa, not even the soft
creaking of the door waking her. It warly rly for her to be in.
He closed the
door behind himself and slowly walked to the break room where he met Nick.
“Oh could you
give me a minute alone,” Gil asked him and shot him a look. <
“Sure,” the
younger man said and left.
Slowly he
dialled the familiar number.
“Willows,” he
heard a soft voice on the other end.
“Lindsey?”
“Uncle Gil.”
“Honey I've
got to ask you someth”
“Okay,” she
replied.
“Can you tell
me why your mum is in so early today?”
“She wasn’t
doing well I guess, she never is lately.”
“What do you
mean?”
“She doesn’t
want me to tell anybody.”
“What about
if I come over, let your mum sleep a little, and bring pizza.”
“And a bug?”
“Okay, I
could bring my spider.”
“That would
be fun!”
It took Gil
about half an hour to get the pizza and drive to Catherine’s home. How much did
he want not to question the little girl about her mother’s lately behaviour!
Nobody had
told him how it was to work with her but he could see it in Catherine’s face and
in Nick’s, with whom she had worked during the last shifts, that something
wasn’t working out and that the case wasn’t making any progress. Catherine was
his best CSI and he couldn’t risk losing her, nor did he want to.
He had the
pizza in one hand, the spider’s box in the other and rang the bell. Little Miss
Willows opened the door clad in thick pink flannel pyjamas with little spiders
on it which he had given her last Christmas.
“Hey Linds,”
Gil said and tried to smile while searching the living room.
“Hello Uncle
Gil, do you have Bubo with you?”
He handed her
the see-through box and he could see her smile, a wide and open smile, a smile
he remembered seeing on Catherine’s lips very often.
“Where do you
want to eat,” Gil asked while he brought the pizza to the kitchen.
“Coffee
table? We could watch this one spider movie.”
“Sure
punch-head go put it into the VCR and start it I will be out in a sec, and don’t
forget to take care of Bubo.”
He asked
himself when his spider had been named and why it was Bubo but for the kid’s joy
he didn’t say a word. Slowly he made his way through the cupboards, normally
filled with lots of groceries, today nearly empty, to find some plates. When he
had the pizza on two plates he started to put the box away and noticed a couple
of half empty alcohol bottles in the cupboard under the sink, two empty ones in
the basket next to it.
Not wanting
to make the girl suspicious he brought the pizza out, took some coke with him
and they ate together and watched the movie in peace and quiet.
The little
girl played with the spider for a while before cuddling against Gil’s chest.
She fell asleep to the sounds of a documentary on whales and dolphins.
~*~
SAME TIME –
OTHER PLACE
“Where is
Gil?” Catherine asked Nick and he just shrugged, knowing full well that he was
with her baby. Without asking or calling she handed out the cases and made
herself work with Warwick this night, answering none of Nick’s questions or
letting herself be pushed around.
It was
simple, a car accident, but nevertheless they would have to go out and collect
evidence.
Catherine
wasn’t into talking, not since she found herself sleeping in Gil’s office, not
sure when or how she fell asleep there or even got there or why the hell he
hadn’t woken her since it was obvious that he had been in to get his jacket.
But those
things were topics she didn’t caring about, not anymore, maybe three or four
months ago she would have but not today, never again, maybe somewhere in the
future but she wasn’t sure. Now she only needed more coffee and maybe a shot of
vodka wouldn’t be bad but she told herself more than once that she won’t drink a
drop of it at work, not here. She would risk everything with it and she
couldn’t, not now, not since Eddie was dead and she had to take care of Lindsey
on her own.
Warwick had
been talking to Nick after he saw him with a worried expression in the break
room a couple of days ago and Nick told him what he saw in Catherine, the big
loss which hadn't been worked on yet.
Both weren’t
sure why it bothered her so much since Eddie had been beating and betraying her,
even in her own bed. But a night ago they were sitting at a club and talking and
after a few beers Warwick told Nick what he thought, that Catherine wasn’t
getting over it because she’d never really gotten away from Eddie. She left him
because he betrayed her and Lindsey. And he hasn't heard that there have been
any men since her divorce except for her best and only friend Gil.
“Has there
really been none?” Nick asked Warwick while putting his beer down on the table.
“Well you can
ask Catherine and she’ll answer but I’ll be embarrassed for the fucking rest of
my life,” he answered with a male chuckle, imagination how Catherine would stare
at him or shoot him “the look”.
“It would
have been fun to ask before he died but it’s not like you are signing your
papers for the death row on your own.”
“Yes you are
right, I will talk to Grissom.”
That’s what
Warwick did the next time he saw Grissom and he noticed the older man taking it
seriously. Gil Grissom was the one who knew every detail of Cath’s fucked up
life, her dancing, her husband, her drugs.
Catherine
collected her evidence, didn’t see the stone on the very end of the sidewalk and
fell. For a long second she just laid there, everything black, with closed eyes.
The next
moment, when she opened her eyes, she saw the handsome black man kneeling next
to her, telling the policemen a couple of feet away that he ld cld call the
ambulance.
She had the
feeling of not being able to move, not her head, lips or eyes. She was just
laying there with her eyes open staring into the night.
Warwick went
with Cath to hospital. In the beginning the doctors didn’t want to tell him what
happened to her since he was not family but then, after some comforting words
from him to her on her bedside, the doctor asked him to leave the room.
“Mr. Brown,
you are working with Mrs. Willows?” the doctor asked him seriously.
“Yes I am,
she is second in charge at the CSI.”
“Well then I
have to tell you, unfortunatelyat iat it seems to me like she has a serious
alcohol problem. I don’t know her background but she isn't doing well.”
“Background …
her ex-husband died a couple of months ago and he nearly killed her daughter
with the accident. I think since then it’s been going downhill with. Sh. She
refuses to talk to any of us, not even Grissom which has never happened before.”
“Could you
ask him to come over?”
“Well to be
honest he was about to spend some time with her daughter, o too told me and I
think that’s very important for Lindsey.”
“Willows …
now I remember it, wasn’t she married to this music producer?”
“Like I said
Eddie was killed a couple of months ago but as far as I know he turned into a
music producer after they got divorced.”
“No he was
before too, I may be old but not stupid, I remember pretty faces like hers.
She’d been here with Lindsey a couple of times and refused to call her husband
or anybody. But it’s been quite some time since I saw her last, maybe four or
five years.”
“Why was she
here?”
“It would be
the best if you ask her yourself. I shouldn’t be talking to you about this at
all.”
“She won’t
tell me, I know her.”
“If she
doesn’t tell you maybe this Grissom can, he knows of it.”
What the hell
was going on with her – was what Warwick asked himself.
finished with the evidence and had a talk with the coroner they went back to
analyse the data and let the coroner autopsy the body. Warwick studied Catherine
or whatever was left of the beautiful CSI he was working under.
“Catherine?”
XxXxXxXxXxX
End Part 1