CSI Redux:

Riptide

February 20, 1996

            The air was cool and damp and held a hint of the silver-gray fog that danced and swirled along the watery surface of the bay, causing edges to be fuzzy and nebulous. The ships working their way in and out of the bay appeared ghostly in the mist, their forms only partially visible at any given time. The bay seemed to be washing away, turning gray with each gentle wave as the tide slowly came in.

            Sara glanced at the watch on her wrist as she reached into the backseat of her white Volkswagen hatchback, the silver case blending easily with gray checked seats. Gil had hinted at looking for something newer for her to drive but Sara found the idea of parting with her GTI hard. The back bumper had a crease in the center where an elderly man had hit her while parallel parking his own car near the courthouse and the front wheel wells were starting to show more rust and less paint but it had been the first real thing she had purchased and owned since leaving the ever uncertain Foster Care System and the car and all its flaws held a special place in her heart.

            “Sidle!”

            Sara’s eyes scanned the dock for the familiar voice calling her name. Well, it was sort of her name. Her driver’s license read Sara Grissom and she would be getting new cards from the Social Security Department with her new name on them very soon but the human resources papers still sat on her desk half filled out and not everyone had learned of Sara’s hasty marriage to Gil Grissom. Of course some did and just chose to ignore it.

            “Mike,” Sara greeted, giving the detective a warm smile that she did not feel.

            I’ll be damned if I let him get to me, Sara thought, her smile growing in proportion to Mike Olson’s frown.

            The police detective did little to hide his bitterness at Sara’s refusal of him. Dishing out barb’s when ever he could Olson had earned himself a few scathing looks and a number of new enemies. Sara was well liked within their work community and Olson’s digs and surly behavior reeked of sour grapes.

            “Your crime scene is over here,” he nearly growled, leading Sara towards the end of the dockyard where a large red metal building stood.

            Sara followed Mike along the tar covered, uneven surface that separated the waterfront from the harbor. The slight breeze coming off the bay was moist, like walking through damp sheets hanging on a clothes line, causing Sara’s hair to curl outrageously.

            “Hi, Sara,” greeted a woman in her mid thirties, her sleek black hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. “Ike let you out of the shop?”

            Becca Hsu was the Crime Lab’s version of a walking, talking reference set. Sara joked that Becca was the female, Chinese-American Gil Grissom to Ike Munro once and had the man shooting Coke foam out his nose. The mental image wasn’t helped any by Becca wearing a spaghetti strapped shirt and tight fitting khakis at the time.

            “Not exactly,” Sara said kneeling down on one of the many large, wooden jetties that speared out into the bay.  “Leonard pulled me in to help out.”

            Becca huffed at the mention of Gary Leonard, one of two Assistant Lab Directors for the San Francisco Crime Science Division, the one no one liked. The man had a condescending air about him that just naturally put people off. He would smile blandly as he walked the halls, nodding superiorly, like a noble to his vassals. The worst part about the man was that he couldn’t be bothered to listen to anybody unless he felt they could increase his chances at upward mobility.

            When Sara had tried to explain to the man that she was off for the day and was on limited field service, Leonard had waved his hand in front of his face as if shooing a fly before hinting that her field certification could be somehow in jeopardy by refusing him. Sara doubted the man had the pull and really doubted Ike would let a toad like Leonard stand her way of becoming an investigator but Sara really didn’t want Ike to fight her battles and the scene sounded tame enough.

            Their victim was floating face down in a cavern created between a small Handysize and the heavy beam and concrete pier that the two women knelt upon. The body bounced imperceptibly in the frothy water, occasionally getting a limb caught up on a rubber covered metal beam that lie just beneath the bulk vessel’s water line.

            “Initial observation?” Becca asked, looking over her shoulder at Sara.

            “First blush says drowning but…” Sara peered down the length of the small tanker before observing the heavy metal beams of the Shiplift that hung above the partially drydocked vessel. “Did he die here or get washed in from the tide?”

            Becca pursed her lips and nodded her head. They would need the body and a cause of death to truly know what happened to the man but Sara was right, was this their primary crime scene or a body dump courtesy of the semidiurnal tides that came and went in San Francisco Bay?

            “Is there a safe way to get down to the bottom of the lift?” Sara asked, her eyes running the length of the massive contraption encircling the tanker.

            The ships would be sailed in at high tide and anchored within the Shiplift. As the tide rolled out the massive hydraulics would slowly raise the ship from the water allowing work to be done. It looked as if the ship docked before them was having repairs done along the waterline, thus part of the hull was still in the water.

            Becca stood from her kneeling position, slapping unseen dust from her khaki colored slacks. “Oh, no,” she said, eyeing Sara sternly. “You’re not going anywhere near that lift.”

            Sara’s gaze rose from the body, turning startled and confused as they landed on Becca. “No, not me…I meant…in general,” Sara explained. She wouldn’t dare risk the possible dangers of descending beneath the wharf’s surface, not in her condition.

            Becca gave her a knowing nod that said damn straight!

            Most of the people Sara worked with knew she was pregnant, four and a half months pregnant to be exact, and knew that she was trying to finish out her field proficiency before the baby was due in the hopes of landing a job in the Las Vegas lab where her husband worked. Ike Munro and their boss, Supervisor John Gables, had made it a point to allow Sara the opportunity to finish her field tests with the least amount of liability.

            “We’ll get Water and Rescue to retrieve the body and see if we can’t get the lift up higher and get a better look at the area.

            Sara gave the CSI a nod but doubted the lift would yield much. Any evidence that was down there had most likely been washed away by the sloshing gray waters and that was assuming the dock was their initial crime scene.

            “Hey, Bec, Sara,”

            Approaching the two women was Mike Olson’s temporary new partner, his regular partner on administrative leave after hitting a suspect. Shaun Anton was the polar opposite of Olson, personality wise. He was level headed, open minded and didn’t give two shits what the “boys” thought of him. The bright smile that normally adorned his handsome face was missing which told both women something was up.

            “Hey, Shaun,” Sara greeted.

            Detective Anton graced Sara with a quick smile. “Hey, Sara, how are you doing?” He asked, looking briefly at Sara’s rounding stomach.

            Sara’s hand instinctively went to her belly, her smile broadening at the feel of her baby’s movements. “Good, really good.”

            Shaun grinned at Sara, nodding his dark head. He liked to tease her that if he had had a womb he might have been able to snare Gil Grissom. Sara laughed at the mental picture of Grissom going gay on her. “Well, first come, fist served,” Sara had teased back making Shaun laugh with her.

            The smile on the detective’s face slowly faltered. Throwing his chin over one shoulder, Shaun indicated the massive building directly behind them. “Got another body,” he told the two women.

            Their second body was more accessible. Lying on the dusty cement floor of the building, partially hidden from view by a set of silver metal drums and a forty foot sloop was a man in his early fifties, his thinning salt and pepper hair caked in dry blood that obscured a lethal gash in the man’s skull. The coveralls suggested that he had been working at the time of his death.

            “What do you think?” Becca asked Sara as she stood up after examining the body more closely.

            Sara pulled her flashlight from her coat pocket, shining the light underneath the raised sailboat. “I think our perpetrator may have left something behind,” Sara said in an almost absentminded tone, her focus set on an overturned gallon bucket of lacquer, the bottom rim stained red.

            The decision was made to divide and conquer their expanding crime scene. Becca Hsu would take the floater stuck in the wharf and Sara would get the victim on dry land, both felt it was safer for Sara. Although Sara was healthy it was far too risky to have her climbing wet wrung ladders and metal rigging.

            With a focus that belied her rookie status, Sara went about documenting the scene before getting down to the business of collecting evidence. Photographing the body, the bucket, a number of disturbed tools scattered about the floor and what appeared to be a partial boot print on one of the four heavy beams angling up towards the boats hull, holding it above and in place.

            Sara pulled the silver case closer to her as she squatted down on her heels. Fingering through the various lift kits her attention was immediately drawn to a pile of dust at the base of the thick wooden beam supporting the sailboat.

            “Sawdust,” she said out loud, her eyes following the beam upward past the boot print.

            The moment Sara’s gaze spotted the neatly sawn line cutting halfway through the support a theory erupted within her mind, her eyes quickly seeking out the other supports as she rose to her feet. Following the supports from stern to bow along the portside of the boat Sara found that each beam had been carefully cut through.

            “Did you disturb someone sawing through these beams?” Sara asked the dead man on the floor.

            “I guarantee he’s not going to talk to you.”

            Sara turned and smiled at the young man approaching her, pushing a stretcher in front of him.

            “They all say something, Bodi,” Sara said with a raised brow. “You just have to know the language.”

            Bodi Young was a blond, lanky thirty year old surfing nut that also happened to be the Assistant Medical Examiner for the city. “I hear you and Becca are finding bodies like there going out of date. Trying to get that proficiency thing done all in one day?”

            Sara chuckled at the assistant coroner, watching as he went about examining the body.

            “Well, can’t blame a girl for wanting to get on with her life and hopefully live in the same city as her husband.”

            Sara’s tone and words were light but her eyes were steely as they narrowed on the dead man and the preliminary evidence he was revealing to them.

            “You could always get Ike or John to make up a position for your man here,” Bodi said, signaling for Sara to help him turn the dead man over.

            Gil had offered to move to San Francisco and Bodi was on to something even if he didn’t fully realize it. Both Ike and John had said they would be glad to find a place for Gil in the San Francisco lab, make one if need be but Sara didn’t want Gil to have to give up his job and life in Las Vegas. He had changed so much for her already that Sara felt it was her turn, besides there was a CSI position opening up on both the swing shift and the graveyard shift in the next couple of months in Las Vegas and that seemed far easier than going through all the rigmarole that would surely be involved in attempting to create a brand new position in her lab.

            Besides, she wanted to do this for him. Before Gil, Sara had been happy with her life. She had put her past in a box and labeled it with a big DO NOT DISTURB sign on it and it worked reasonable well for her. Sara believed in love but felt it was something other people were blessed with. She wasn’t resentful or jealous about it. It was like the lottery, only a few lucky ones ever got the big prize.

            With Gil, Sara had won the biggest prize of them all, a man that loved her so thoroughly that even when they were separated by hundreds of miles she could still feel the warmth of that love coursing through her veins. Sara felt cherished for the first time in her life and it was because of the amazing man she had married.

            “And have to deal with all of you guys,” Sara teased.

            Bodi was about to give as good as Sara was giving out when both of them heard the distinct and sickening sound of wood snapping and giving way. Sara’s eyes registered the support at the stern crumpling inward towards the boat’s hull, the wooden beam sending splinters exploding outward as the weight of the ship stressed the compromised support.

            Sara heard Bodi scream but did not make out his words as she turned away from the boat and began to run, the loud pop and grind of the other supports coming in quick succession before they were drowned out by the deafening boom of the boat hitting the ground and careening in her and Bodi’s direction.

            Something heavy and hard smacked into Sara’s upper back and shoulder launching her forward, her feet working desperately, trying to keep their footing. With a loud harumph that was drowned out by the noise of the boat coming to settle on its side, Sara hit the ground, the palms of her hands taking the brunt of it, sliding painfully along the dusty, hard floor.

            Time seemed to slow as Sara’s startled mind tried to make sense of the situation. The heavy whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of her heartbeat raged in her ears as her confused brown eyes finally settled on Bodi Young crawling quickly and anxiously to her side.

            “SARA? SARA!” Bodi hollered, his concern readily apparent as his dark eyes took in Sara, his hands roaming her body trying to assess any injuries.

            The sound of the large sailboat crashing on to its side had echoed loudly out the mammoth bay doors, sounding like a bomb had gone of from within. When Becca, Shaun Anton and Mike Olson came running through the doors their vision was obscured by a wall of white and gray dust that rose up and rolled out towards them. When it slowly began to settle they could see Bodi kneeling over a disoriented Sara lying on the ground, one hand holding her head while the other lay protectively over her stomach.