Best of Intentions

Ecklie reached out and took her arm as she stood. “I don’t know Sara. But we’ll find him. Let’s get you out of here and let the team work, ok?” Greg and Catherine went to work dusting and swabbing every inch of Grissom’s office, while Brass and some uniforms took statements from people in the building. Sophia and Danny were over at Desert Palm collecting evidence from Grissom’s secretary and Brian who were attacked in the outer office.

Brass answered his cell phone and swore. “Damn! Ecklie we need manpower. Highway patrol just found a 419.”

Sara froze. “Is it..?” Brass shook his head. “We don’t know anything yet. But if this is the same guy, I’d say no. That’s not his style.”

Ecklie walked Sara down to the lounge and sat her down and Catherine came with some coffee for her. “Cat I can’t just sit here and do nothing. I have to do something.”

“You know we can’t do that Sara. You’re too close to this for anything to hold up in court, and you’re too emotional to think clearly right now.”

It was a long day for the CSI’s collecting what they could from Grissom’s office, but like the three disappearances before there wasn’t much to go on. Ecklie was with Dr. Robbins for the autopsy on the 419 found earlier. As they expected, it was not Gil Grissom. However the body was identified as Dr. Robert Winslow, the first victim to disappear.

“This man has been dead approximately three weeks, which puts time of death one week after he disappeared. The bruising and multiple bone fractures tell me he was beaten over a period of several days, then killed with a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. Looks to be a .22 but I’ll know for sure once I open him up.”

“So our guy is snatching them, beating them, keeping them around for a week, and then killing them. He holds onto the body and then dumps it later.”

Robbins nodded. “Sounds like a theory. If the second victim turns up soon it will confirm it though.”

Ecklie sighed. “So we’ve got a week to find our fourth victim before he dies.”

Robbins looked puzzled. “Fourth victim?”

“Yeah. It’s Grissom.”

Grissom groaned as pain split through his head and a wave of dizziness washed over him when he moved. His right eye wouldn’t open and Grissom assumed it was either swollen shut or was caked with dried blood. He remembered sitting in his office talking to one of his students and turning around to get a file. He remembered seeing something out of the corner of his eye and a sharp pain as he was hit in the head. He fought against his attacker as blood flowed into his eye, then a cloth was put over his face and his vision darkened. He could see he was lying on the floor of a basement and his hands were bound above his head. Looking around for any clues he noticed he was actually handcuffed to a pipe, so he was able to shift a bit and sit up with some difficulty.

“Oh good you’re awake.” A voice called to him. He looked but all he could see was a bright light and a figure silhouetted against it. But the voice was familiar to him.

“What do you want with me? Why are you doing this?”

The figure rushed at him and he recognized his captor immediately. “Because you’re the best! Nothing I ever do is good enough because people like you set the bar so damn high. You think you’re so smart and you’re so much better than everyone else. Everyone looks at you like you hung the damn moon. They’ve all been like that, but in the end they weren’t smart enough to get away. I’m smarter.”

Grissom listened to his captor’s ranting and started to reason with him. “Of course you are. I’m the first to admit I’m nothing special. I can’t help how people look at me, but I don’t judge people.”

“Oh give it a rest Dr. Grissom. I saw you at that banquet. Everyone crowded around you, hanging on your every word waiting for God knows what. All those educated people showing off trying to impress each other and you with what they know. Even your wife got in on the act and shocked the hell out of everyone that she has a brain. People like you get off on making everyone else look stupid, and you’re not going to get away with it anymore.”

His captor walked across the room and picked something up. He turned and Grissom saw a ball bat in his hands. “Now let’s see how smart you are with your brains smashed on the wall.” Grissom tried to shield his head as he saw the first blow coming, his chained arms taking the brunt of it. Not getting the result he wanted, his captor became angry and started kicking him in the stomach and ribs. Grissom began to slip into unconsciousness thinking about Sara.

Sara splashed water on her face and rinsed out her mouth in the ladies room. Grissom had been missing for 24 hours and they still had no clues as to who had him or where he was. The lab results from Grissom’s office and it gave her little comfort. Some of the blood was in fact Grissom’s but the majority of it was unknown. The only prints found in the office were Grissom’s, his secretary’s, two sets belonging to his TA’s, and two sets belonging to students who had appointments with him the day he disappeared. Ecklie had pooled resources from both shifts to handle the case, and the day shift crew had brought in a second body. It was identified as the second victim who had disappeared and the timeline matched the first. The kidnapper was keeping his victims for a week, beating them over a period of several days and then killing them with a single shot to the head. After holding the body for two more weeks, the killer dumps it in the desert. Grissom had been missing for a day. If the killer stuck to his timeline, they had six more in order to find him.

They spent agonizing hours combing over files and reports trying to find anything that linked the four men. Mia from DNA got a match to the unknown blood in Grissom’s office. They still didn’t have an identity, but the blood matched the skin found under the fingernails of both DB’s. It wasn’t much; but for now it was all they had.

Brass brought Brian and Chris in for questioning, which turned out to be a dead end. The other two students whose prints were in the office were also wanted in for questioning, but no one had seen them since their appointments with Grissom. Catherine was hopeful as Brass put out APB’s on both of them, now she needed to tell Sara.

Sara rested her head on the stall wall while she waited for her treacherous stomach to calm. Catherine found her and gave her the news. “Sara why don’t you get some sleep. You need to decompress or your stomach will never settle down.”

“I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes I see Gil in a pool of blood or lying in the morgue. Every time I eat, I wind up in here.”

Catherine helped her clean up and wrapped her into a hug. “Honey you have to calm down and take care of yourself. When we find Gil he’ll never forgive us if we didn’t take care of you.”

Catherine took Sara to her office and got her to lie down on the couch for a while. She was exhausted herself, so she sat with her and rubbed her back until she felt Sara fall asleep. It had always worked with Lindsay too. “We’ll find him Sara. Don’t worry about that. Gil you better be all right when we get there. I don’t know what she’ll do if you aren’t.”

He woke up as a bucket of water was thrown in his face. His captor laughed as he coughed water from his lungs, causing his ribs and stomach to protest loudly. “Oh poor baby. Does that hurt? That’s not even close to the pain you’ve caused me. I’m going out. You can’t get away and there isn’t anyone around to hear you. But just in case someone happens by.” He forced a wad of cloth into Grissom’s mouth and tied a strip around his head.

As soon as he heard the door close, Grissom began searching for any way he could escape or to let anyone know where he was. He knew Catherine and her team wouldn’t stop until they found him, but they needed evidence to work with. There had to be a way for him to get back to Sara, before it was too late.

Catherine heard a sound that was becoming all too familiar from the ladies room while on her way to meet Brass. They were well into day three of Grissom’s disappearance and Catherine had lost count as to how many times Sara had thrown up. “Hey. I just thought you’d like to know, Brass found the two students and they’re coming in for interviews.”
Sara nodded as she wiped her face at the sink. “That’s great. Greg is getting both of their records from the university and Grissom’s class lists.”

“Is there anything I can get you?” Sara looked up to see concern written all over Catherine’s face. Sara gave her a weak smile and shook her head. “Just find Gil for me. God Cat I haven’t felt this helpless since Nicky was kidnapped. And even that was better because we knew he was alive. We could see him. This not knowing anything is killing me.”

Brass sat across the table from Michael Thomas going over events the day Grissom disappeared. Michael insisted that after their meeting he left and then went to his parent’s home in Pahrump. He had receipts from his trip and Brass had people checking on his story, but it looked legit. Detective Vega was putting Gary Mitchell through the same paces, and getting the same results. Catherine sighed and rubbed her head as she felt a headache brewing. Warrick sat a bottle of Aleve on the table in front of her. “You look like you need it.”

“Now I know why Grissom gets migraines. Three days and we’ve got nothing. There has to be something we’re missing Rick. I can feel it.”

Sara woke up throwing the blankets off and dashing for the bathroom. Catherine was right. She had to calm down and take care of herself for Gil. It wouldn’t do him any good to find her a complete wreck when he came home. She climbed into the shower and tried to relax as the water poured over her. She had a couple of hours before her appointment and then she would go back to the lab. “There has to be something we’re missing. I can feel it.” It was day four and she needed to do something. She’d see her doctor and get her stomach under control, and then find the monster that had her husband.

Grissom relaxed and opened his eyes when he heard the door close once again. His captor had a pattern of taunting and beating him, then leaving for a while, and returning to begin again. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out that being unconscious stopped the beatings, so he had started faking it. Once he was certain his captor was gone he went to work. The pipes he was chained to were old and he had been experimenting as to how far he could turn his body without hurting himself to try and get a good hold on them. He was able to stand and brace his weight against the wall for leverage. He never heard his captor’s return until the ball bat connected with his knee sending him crashing to the floor and igniting a blinding pain through his left arm.

“Did you think I wouldn’t know you’d try that? They all have, and they all failed. Just like you. How does it feel to fail Dr. Grissom?”

The bat rained blows down on Grissom and he felt himself slipping away once more.