Chapter Text
Fiat Justitia ruat Coelum
Night brings out the inhumanity in man. Darkness provides a convenient cover for the works of darkness, hiding evil from men of good ill. Terrible crimes are committed with greater impunity during the hours of the night; the perpetrators of vile and violent acts seek these times to indulge their depravity.
Some others seek the night to uncover its crimes, some choose a topsy-turvy life to force out of hiding those workers of iniquity, bringing them at last to justice so richly deserved. Using ancient and modern methods, from an understanding of the mind to sophisticated tools of analysis they bring justice to the dead. Quiscunque tactus vestigia legat, whoever touches, leaves a trace.
Another night, another dead body. The criminalists of Las Vegas' crime lab had been called to the scene of a rape/murder shortly after their shift began. Arriving with the tools of their trade, the team met up with Captain Brass, who was already present at the crime scene.
Gesturing at an ordinary suburban home, the detective said, "It's a bad one. Two victims, look like mother and daughter. Reported by the next-door neighbour who heard strange noises coming from the house. It looks like a double rape and murder." Walking with the CSIs towards the house, Brass continued, "the mother was early forties, daughter was a young teenager, no indication anyone else lived with them."
Ducking under the police tape, they entered the building. They found a pleasant house, comfortable with sofas and bright prints on the white walls. Following Brass, they went upstairs into the master bedroom. Lying on the bed was the corpse of a woman. Her hands were clenched in tight fists, and her skirt was rolled above her waist. Snapping on latex gloves, Grissom rolled back her eyelid and noted the broken capillaries, and the blueness of her lips.
"Looks like she was strangled," he said, "we'll know more after the autopsy."
In the adjoining room Brass showed them the body of a young girl. She lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, her clothing torn and her eyes wide and staring. Like her mother, she had been strangled, and her neck was badly bruised.
"She looks all of twelve...how can people do this to children?" Catherine said, doubtless thinking of her own teenage daughter. No one replied, they had all thought the same many times before, viewing the terrible crimes they saw every day. Grissom divided the team up, assigning the mother to Catherine, Nick and Warrick, leaving himself and Sara to collect evidence from the daughter. Brass and several other cops spread out through the house, searching for identification for the dead. With the ease of long practise the CSIs began taking samples from the nails of the victims, scanning every inch of the bed and carpets for hairs or blood, and taking fingerprints from every surface the killer could conceivably have touched.
The Coroner arrived shortly afterwards, and on taking the temperature of the body was able to tell them that the victims had died two to four hours earlier. He then took the bodies back to the lab for a full post-mortem once the crime scene photographs had been taken.
The CSIs worked hard, and quickly, knowing that the crime scene could provide them with all the clues necessary to catch the killer. Brass came back and reported to Grissom that he had found the passports of the victims in a study, revealing them to be Elizabeth Tiernan, aged 41, and her daughter Joanna, aged 12. It seemed that Elizabeth had been a single mother, as there was no indication that anyone else lived in the house. They knew that now the hunt would be on for the father of Joanna, for past or present boyfriends or husbands of Elizabeth, for it is a sad fact that most people are killed by someone that they know, and know well. Grissom went with a police officer to inspect the outside of the property, looking for evidence of a break-in, tire treads or footprints that might help them find the killer.
Left alone in what had been the girl's bedroom Sara looked around her. Posters of pop stars and actors covered the walls, and a row of stuffed animals sat on the windowsill. On the bedside table was a picture of an older, smiling woman - a grandmother, she supposed. On a plain desk lay a collection of school books, homework neatly placed in a pile. It seemed so pointless that such a young girl had been viciously killed, had lost her life in a slow and terrifying way at the hands of someone she knew but who had had no mercy upon her. What sort of monster would sexually assault and kill a mother and daughter? Sara could never forget the faces of the victims, they haunted her dreams, rebuking her for not being able to save them and for the times when their killers could not be brought to justice. Picking up a stuffed bear in her gloved hands Sara wondered what hopes and dreams the young girl had had, destined never to be fulfilled, now.
As she stood, lost in thought, a soft noise behind her brought her out of her introspection. Turning round she saw the sadness of Brass' face, mirroring her own.
"These are always the worst," the stocky detective said, "I can never think of any reason why someone would kill a child. An argument gone too far with an adult, I can understand, but a kid..."
"We'll find out who did this, Jim," Sara said with a confidence she did not feel.
"Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everlasting stream," Brass quoted softly, looking at the bear she still held in her hands. Sara looked surprised at the biblical-sounding quotation, and suddenly embarrassed Brass muttered something about having read it in a detective story. They shared a smile, remembering the many times Grissom had flummoxed them with his quotations, before returning to work.
Back at the lab everyone worked soberly, waiting for the autopsy report. It was not long in coming, and confirmed that both mother and daughter had been raped and then murdered. The killer had used a condom and had strangled them with his gloved hands. The mother had died first, with the killer then targeting her daughter. The young girl had suffered more than her mother, having been repeatedly assaulted, unable to get away from her much stronger attacker, and her body defiled after she finally died. Sitting in conference, the CSIs reviewed what they knew so far.
"We have two victims, both raped and strangled by, most probably, the same man. The younger was more viciously abused than her mother, for what reason we don't know," Grissom began.
"Perhaps he wanted to get the mother out of the way so he could do what he wanted to Joanna?" Sara said.
"But why rape her then?" asked Warrick.
"Foreplay? Maybe he hated them both but the girl more?" Nick said.
"Possible, but let's concentrate on the evidence we have. Sara, what did you discover?" said Grissom.
"Some hairs on the carpet - from the colour I think they belonged to Joanna though Greg is comparing them to her at the moment. Smudges and a few partials on the door handle and surfaces. Some fibres on her clothing and under her nails, but no flesh or blood."
The others told of their evidence. None of it amounted to very much. The killer seemed to have planned his crime carefully, wearing gloves and long sleeves, leaving no semen, blood or hairs in the house. Sara listened with a sinking feeling: they had so little, so very little to catch a killer.
Brass joined them, bringing with him an address book he had found at the scene. From Joanna's birth certificate they had learned that her father was Robert Barron, and Brass had the welcome news that there was a spent restraining order against him, preventing him from contacting Elizabeth or her daughter. He would be their prime suspect. Now came the tedious process of interviewing their friends and colleagues to find out all they could about the family, and who might have wanted to do such a terrible thing to them. Someone had to formally identify the bodies, too, and remembering the photograph at Joanna's bedside Sara suggested the grandmother.
Speaking to the friends of the Tiernan's they heard nothing but good spoken of them. They had been a quiet family, distressed by the possessive behaviour and insane jealousy of Joanna's father, harmed by that but on the road to recovery. They had moved home and Joanna was settling down at her new school, where she was an intelligent and well-liked pupil. She had wanted to join the police when she grew up. Clever at science, they might even have worked with the girl, had her life not been so callously ended.
Elizabeth's mother, Mary Tiernan, had been located. An active 68 year old, she had agreed to identify the bodies. She was a widow, and Elizabeth had been an only child, with one stroke the murderer had removed all she had from her world. She was greeted at the mortuary by Brass, and led in to view the bodies. Covered by white sheets and their faces soothed, they looked almost peaceful as they lay on the slabs. Mrs Tiernan looked at the bodies of her daughter and grand-daughter and confirmed who they were in a voice cracking with suppressed emotion. Brass thanked her and reassured her that they were doing everything they could do to catch the man who had done this. Catching sight of Sara outside, the old woman fiercely grasped her hands and begged her to find the man who had taken all she cared about from her. Then Mrs Tiernan left, seeming older than she had, bowed by the realisation that her only child and grandchild had been violently taken from her before their time.
Sara felt tears springing to her eyes as she saw again the human cost of the crimes they saw in the ones who were left behind. She wondered again how Grissom and the others could be so emotionless when faced with tragedy. She never could. She could put up a façade at work, some of the time, but she paid the price for that in her dreams and in the sleepless nights she suffered. So she worked, and worked, and tried to drown the screams of the dying in alcohol, but it didn't seem to help get rid of what Grissom claimed was just empathy.
As she stood, lost in thought, Sara felt a comforting hand squeeze her shoulder. She turned around and saw Jim. She nearly let go into tears as she saw the compassion in his eyes. He knew and understood in a way that the other scientists did not. He alone knew about the drinking, and tried to help her. He was always there, never loud or pushy, but there for them if any of them needed him. Sara surprised herself by feeling a sudden urge to lean on Jim, to ask him to hold her, to let out the emotions she wasn't supposed to have in his arms. Briefly she wondered what he would do if she gave in and asked him for comfort, but she couldn't let anyone think she couldn't cope with the job, that she was over-emotional and incapable of objective thought. She took a deep breath and managed to smile at Jim, thanking him silently for his concern. Then she returned to her work in the lab, to the struggle to find the evidence to condemn a killer for his actions. There had to be something they could find, something to reveal the man behind the mask of violence, something to set the spirits of the dead at rest.