Quiet Desperation
Summary: When a girl goes missing, the case threatens to complicate matters between Grissom and Sara.
A/N: Thanks to Ann for the beta.
Rating: PG-13.
Disclaimer: Yes, I really do own CSI. To maintain my evil reputation, I will not allow the characters to get involved. Bwhahahaha!

Chapter 6

Walking into the break room, Sara headed straight for the coffee machine. The aroma gave her hope, and a quick taste verified her suspicions. This wasn’t the lab’s typical sludge, but a high-quality brew. The timing was perfect. She hadn’t been kidding when she told Grissom that she needed caffeine; she was nearing the limits of even her prodigious ability to go without sleep.

After taking a second, longer drink, she headed to the table, cradling the cup in her hands. Earlier in the locker room she was even half-convinced Grissom was ready to touch her, a clear sign that she needed rest. If that wasn’t enough, her own hope that he would reach out showed how tired she was. Hadn’t he already made it clear that he wasn’t going to take the risk? So why couldn’t she get over him?

Sipping the coffee slowly, Sara’s eyes rolled as she pondered that. It was becoming the defining question of her life. She’d survived a terrible childhood, made the most of her life with the limited resources and support offered, and now as an adult, one man totally threw her off-balance. She wanted to dismiss it as a sign of weakness, but he was the only man she’d ever loved. And if life had taught her one lesson, it was that love was something too special to throw away.

Pushing the hair from her face, she sat back slowly. Unrequited love was a dead end, though; she had to move on. In the past, every time she thought she was making progress in that regard, Grissom would say or do something that pulled her back. But that was it. He never offered anything else. Sara sighed softly. It wasn’t enough, and she wanted more out of life. This non-relationship wasn’t beneficial to either of them. All she needed was a way to convince him of that.

That actually brought a sad smile to her lips. How did you talk to a guy who seemed to live his whole life in a state of emotional denial? She’d love to have a clue about any aspect of him. After her angry outburst, she’d expected him to retreat, but he’d been concerned. Grissom probably even thought exhaustion caused her eruption. He was right, in a sense, but it had nothing to do with lack of sleep. Her fatigue was emotional, and it had been building for too many years.

Hearing quick steps behind her, Sara looked over her shoulder to see Greg entering the room. He carried a thermos and had an uncharacteristic upset expression. She watched as he hurriedly emptied the coffee pot, casting suspicious looks over his shoulder while he worked.

“I could kiss you,” she told him, ignoring the cheek he proffered on the way to take a seat opposite of her.

“You always say that, but you never do,” he grumbled good-naturedly, winking at her as he topped off her cup. After comically scanning the area, he hid the thermos under the table.

“I never actually said I would kiss you, just that I could. And thanks. I needed this.”

“Well, in that case, I won’t get upset with Grissom. Can you believe he ordered me to break out the good stuff? I tried to tell him Hodges was a coffee-guzzling thief, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“What did you say?” Sara asked slowly, her cup paused in front of her lips.

“That Hodges is a coffee-guzzling thief. If he finds this thermos, he’ll drink the entire thing, the leech. No, that’s an insult to leeches. They can’t help that they’re bloodsuckers. Does he ever offer to pay for it?”

As he continued to gripe about ungrateful lab techs, she stared into her mug in confusion. Grissom appreciated good coffee, but it was odd for him to demand that Greg supply it. A small voice in the back of her mind suggested that he’d done it for her benefit. She couldn’t quite believe that; it carried implications she didn’t want to think about.

She was still trying to downplay the gesture when Grissom came in, carrying a pizza box. Even Greg stopped his harangue to watch as he headed to the cabinets to grab a stack of paper plates and napkins. “Coffee, Greg?”

“Here,” he answered, pulling out the thermos.

Grissom came over, setting the pizza in the middle of the table before retrieving a coffee mug. When he came back, he nodded at them expectantly and opened the box to show a large mushroom pizza inside it. “There’s enough for all of us.”

Greg shrugged and grabbed a slice immediately, but Sara hesitated uncertainly. This really was some sort of overture on his part, but the she wasn’t sure how to react, especially when he took the seat directly next to her. He’d even remembered that she was a vegetarian.

It had been over a day since she’d eaten a proper meal, and her stomach began to grumble. Her colleagues both looked at her questioningly, and she took one of the plates. Sara made eye contact with Grissom as she finally reached for a slice, and what she saw hurt. He had enough compassion and consideration to make her heart skip a beat, and enough sadness to verify that no matter what he felt, he wasn’t going to act on it.

“What do we have?” he asked softly.

“Not a lot,” Greg volunteered first. “The car was a wreck. They’d already started stripping the interior.”

“Be glad it wasn’t pancaked,” Sara muttered between bites. “It’s bad enough the parts were sitting on that dirty floor. We sent a bunch of samples to Trace, but contamination is a possibility.”

“Yeah. We took blood samples from the car, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to get anything from it. You know how hot cars get sitting in the sun. The blood’s not fresh, and it may have degraded too much to get DNA.”

“I know,” Grissom said softly. Rachel Mathers had been missing for six days now; the odds of finding any intact physical evidence had dropped. He also knew the odds of finding the young woman decreased every day, a fact the news reports continued to state in each broadcast. That bothered him, not because of his reputation, but because he knew what the case meant to Sara.

“Well, Mia has the samples now, along with Rachel’s toothbrush and hairbrush. She’s looking to see if she can get any DNA from them. Someone wiped the inside of the car down. We found a lot of swirls, but no fingerprints.”

“There were prints on the outside of the car, but those all match Dvorak or his employees. No surprise there. They weren’t thinking about prints when they were tearing the car apart,” Sara said.

“What else? You stayed late working on something.”

She grinned wryly. “Rachel is on the short side, so if someone else drove that car, it’s possible they had to adjust the seat. I checked the seat position lever; whoever wiped the rest of the car didn’t think about that. There were several partials. I also found some on the inside of the trunk, and on the doorframe. Jacqui’s working on them.”

“Good,” Grissom said, handing her a second slice of pizza. “The police don’t have much in the way of leads so far. Dvorak says someone left the car on his lot with the junkers, and he thought they were going to report it as stolen, so he decided to strip it for parts.”

“You believe him?” Greg asked.

“It’s not an unheard of situation. And he has a spotless record – not your typical chop shop operator. Dvorak’s cooperating, telling us we can search his home without a warrant. He’s taken full responsibility for what happened, saying his employees didn’t know anything about the car. Right now, there’s nothing to tie him directly either to our missing person case or Malco’s murder.”

“Dumb luck?”

“Possibly. But serendipity is seldom so serendipitous. That’s why I’m taking over the Malco murder,” Grissom said, pausing to take a bite of pizza. He gave Sara a quick look before continuing. “I’ve asked Catherine for help; swing shift will be checking out the leads from the hotline.”

Sara did a subtle double take, hiding her surprise behind her piece of pizza. He’d actually asked for help – on an active case. True, it was only from Catherine, but the magnitude wasn’t lost on her. It was an unexpected move on his part. Combined with the makeshift lunch, she was left confused. Unable to comprehend his motivations, she focused on their case.

“I went over the time frames again,” she said, leaning forward and resting her arms on the table. “Rachel had breakfast at home around seven that morning. She went to her classes at UNLV. Her professors verified she was there.”

“Did anyone notice anything wrong, or was she acting differently?”

Sara shrugged in response to Grissom’s question. “No one really paid much attention to her. They all said she’s basically a quiet person. She doesn’t volunteer information, but when called on, she knows the answers. After classes, she had lunch with her boyfriend, Ben Johnson. She then went to the Kenyon Construction’s office; both parents work there. Rachel helps with the ordering and paperwork. She was there until four. Plenty of people saw her. According to the Elisa Kenyon, she left to deliver some papers to one of their remote sites. She never showed up.”

“Did anyone notice her leave?” Grissom asked, his eyes crinkling uneasily.

“No. Some of the workers noticed her car was gone later that day, but no one saw when she drove off.”

“If she did,” he answered cryptically, moving a third slice of pizza towards her.

Sara caught the implied comment, and her head bobbed in reluctant agreement. The parents were the last ones to see her; that made them potential suspects in the case.

“And Mr. Kenyon left around the same time as they said Rachel did. No one can verify their story,” she replied, dropping her head briefly at the proud look he gave her. “The remote site, outside of Henderson, wasn’t expecting the new plans until the next day, so no one called to let the main office know she didn’t show up.”

“And they thought Rachel was going to the library to study that night for finals, so they weren’t surprised when she wasn’t home before they went to bed,” Greg added. “It wasn’t until the next morning that they noticed she was missing. They tried to call her friends, but no one had seen her.”

“Did Rachel make it to the library? If she had finals and the site wasn’t expecting her until the next day, she may have decided to put it off,” Grissom noted.

Sara grabbed her mug, looking away briefly. “I thought the same thing, but never got around to checking. The case was closed before I could get there.”

“Try in the morning,” he answered, avoiding her pained look. “Right now, I want you to head to the office, see what you can find there. Greg, help Mia with those samples. If you get done that, help Hodges with the trace from this case. I’ll be working the murder.”

“Oh, man, I never get to go out,” Greg half-whined, refilling everyone’s mugs before leaving the room with the thermos hidden under his lab coat.

Sara grinned at his antics, lifting her cup up in thanks before he disappeared. Taking a long drink, she was distinctly aware of Grissom’s presence beside her. It was inconspicuously reassuring and vaguely unsettling, leaving her in an emotion labyrinth. Considering the number of times he’d left her there, she felt that she should have memorized the route by now, but she was as lost as ever. After setting her mug down, she looked in his direction, giving him a quick grin.

“Thanks. For sharing the pizza.”

“Go ahead and finish it.”

“I’m not going to eat your dinner, Grissom,” she replied, before noting that the single piece he’d taken sat barely touched on his plate.

Catching her confused look, he stood and dumped his trash. It was a delaying tactic, but he could see that she was uncomfortable. That hadn’t been his intention; he knew she was exhausted, and suspected she wasn’t eating properly.

“I ate before I came in,” he said, handing the box to her. “Go ahead and finish your dinner before you go out. And I want you to go straight home when you get done at the library in the morning.”

“Uh. Yeah. Thanks, again.”

Grissom smiled at her, his eyes holding a touch of mischief. “Well, someone has take care of you if you won’t do it yourself.”

He left the break room before she could react, heading to the sanctuary of his office. His comments had been meant as a joke, but immediately after he spoke he recognized they could be taken as patronizing. That was the last thing he felt. Sara’s strength was something he admired, especially considering she didn’t sacrifice her empathy in the process.

Once behind his desk, he buried himself in work. He’d already read the preliminary reports on the Malco murder; there hadn’t been much to go over. The cement truck driver had moved to Vegas recently, and no one at the company knew much about him. He lived in a rundown rental unit, and a deputy found his truck parked on a side street with Malco behind the wheel with a gunshot wound to the head and his hands missing.

Grissom set down the files and turned to his laptop, where he loaded records gathered by the police. A series of cross-references revealed that John Malco had never worked for either Kenyon Construction or Dvorak’s Body Shop. There was no record of the Kenyons doing any work for either Malco or Dvorak, nor had Dvorak done any repairs for either of them.

Looking at the records more closely, he frowned. Malco listed nothing on his job application about prior experience, but driving a cement truck wasn’t a learn-as-you-go job. He pulled up the DMV database and checked Malco’s license number. It was a legitimate license – but issued to a Fred Becque. Further research showed Becque died two months before Malco started work at Ronnie’s Cement.

Tossing his glasses to his desk, Grissom stretched muscles that had tightened in the hours he’d spent at the computer. So far, there was nothing to suggest that anything other than coincidence connected the two cases. But Malco was a mystery; there was no record of him anywhere before he started work in Vegas, and his killer wanted to make sure no one learned more. They’d taken DNA samples, but CODIS only carried information on a limited number of criminals nationwide. And without fingers to print, their odds of identifying him were slim.

Grissom reached for his mug, but one sip of the cold liquid made him wrinkle his face in disgust. Standing up, he went in search of Greg and the hidden thermos of good coffee as he considered his next step. The file didn’t have the autopsy photos yet, so in the morning, he’d go talk to the day shift coroner.

Passing a lab, he paused, studying Sara’s profile as she examined something underneath a microscope. Concentrating on her work, she didn’t notice his presence. Or she’s choosing to ignore me, he thought. Thoughts of apologizing for his earlier quip danced in his mind, but in the end he continued down the hallway.

As he walked away, a scowl settled on his face. There was no hard evidence to suggest that the Malco murder was connected to the girl’s disappearance, but he didn’t want to take any chances. And that irked him. It was an emotional response, not a logical one. And he knew the source of it was his concern for Sara. He wanted to help, and the only way he knew how was through work.

It was just this sort of personal involvement that Grissom feared; even without admitting or acting on his feelings for her, he was letting his emotions intrude into work. That was something he worked hard for years to avoid, and his current weakness annoyed him.

And a nagging thought plagued him: maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t have been so bad if he had let Sara in. His feelings were sneaking out now, and it wasn’t affecting their ability to work together. If he had acted on his feelings, a lot of pain could have been avoided, and they could have had shared a lot of joy.

Finding Greg, he gruffly asked for more coffee before returning to his office. They could have had – past tense. There was no way to recapture the lost opportunities or take back the injuries. The damage had been done, and even if he could repair it, Grissom doubted Sara would ever let him in.

As he rounded a corner, he resisted the urge to turn back. Ecklie was coming from the other direction, and from his expression, Grissom doubted it would be good news. Entering his office, he waved Ecklie in with a flourish.

“Whatever it is, Conrad, I don’t have the time for it.”

“You better make time, Gil. We have a meeting with the sheriff at eight this morning.”

“Maybe we can discuss how shorthanded we are thanks to your playing musical chairs with the shifts? I’m swamped with work, including the missing girl that is now our priority.”

“Look, I’m not here to fight with you. I don’t know what this meeting is about, but Burdick was livid. Whoever is putting the pressure on the department is angry at the lack of progress.”

“What? We just started the case,” Grissom said. “We’re good, but we can’t work miracles. We need time to work.”

“I just hope you have time left,” Ecklie responded with surprising sympathy. “If we don’t find this girl, the sheriff is going to want heads to roll. We’re both on the chopping block.”

Grissom stared incredulously as his supervisor left, unable to believe that things were so bad.

Chapter 7