Title: "Confession"

Author: ReverendKilljoy

Rating: PG13

Summary: Brass and Grissom discuss a grisly slaying. The story, like life, is brutish and short.

Disclaimers: Not my characters, before. Not sure I want to claim them now.

Confession

Jim Brass took a swig of coffee and frowned at the dregs. His twisted leprechaun face was mobile and ruddy, sharply shadowed from the bright overhead light.

"I just don't understand, Grissom." He took another look into the wilted paper cup, and set it down. "I've seen a lot of things on this job that I didn't understand, people being people. But what makes a guy go so far off the tracks to do something like this? Without anyone realizing anything was wrong?"

Gil Grissom pursed his lips and thought for a moment.

"We deal in evidence, in science. We deal in calculation and a world of empirical determinacy. For some individuals, the complexities of human interaction become so opaque that the individual begins to break down. The psyche fragments into functional and dysfunctional aspects."

"In the ages before psychoanalytic theory and modern sciences of the intellect and personality, individuals experiencing a psychotic break were sometimes believed to be possessed by demons. It was as good an explanation as any."

"Is that what you're saying happened here? Blame the demons?" Brass looked at the crime scene photos that were spread out between them. "I've seen my share of scary movies, and I never seen anything like this."

"The precision of the mutilation," Grissom said dispassionately, professionally, "especially of the uterus and the heart, suggest a highly intelligent and disciplined killer. The relatively late exsanguination and spatter tell us that the victim was kept alive through the trauma to the abdomen, but obviously the excision of the heart was fatal, probably faster than the killer expected. The instinct to protect her unborn child may have given her strength earlier, and once she lost that incentive she would naturally struggle less."

"And this doesn't bother you? That she was carefully gutted as opposed to some random slashing?" Brass ran a hand along his jaw, feeling the stubble. It had been a very long, very hard thirty-six hours.

"Of course. Blood at the scene consistent with the victim, and a match for the blood found at the scene of the arrest," Grissom noted. "The scalpel used in the killing was also used by the perpetrator in his suicide, and matched the wounds on the heart found in his possession. Blood extracted from the heart tissue matches the victim."

"Attempted," Brass corrected. "The suicide."

"Attempted, of course," Grissom acknowledged. He looked up, peering with tired resignation through his glasses at Brass. "Victim, murderer, murder weapon. Forensics ties it up tight. I don't know what more you might want."

"Well, a confession would be good. Maybe some kind of explanation."

"I suppose it might help. The Church used confession as a means for relieving guilt and stress in a controlled fashion. One of the underappreciated underpinnings of modern behavioral theory is the shift in responsibility for expiation of guilt from the clergy to the individual. Without confession, can there be true absolution?"

"Okay, we're going over the same ground again." Brass stood up. Grissom watched from behind his glasses, his expression unreadable. Brass nodded to the officer behind Grissom.

The young woman, barrel-chested and vaguely simian in her body-armor vest and uniform jacket, put a hand on Grissom's shoulder. He rose, smoothly and with economy.

The shackles on his feet rattled dully. The orange jumpsuit, sleeves rolled down to cover the bandages running along both wrists, rustled softly in the bright interrogation room. The chains on his handcuffs ran down through a ring to his shackles, and prevented him from standing completely straight without flexing his knees.

"Gilbert Grissom, I am charging you in the murder of Sara Sidle, and repeating for the record that you have declined to have an attorney present at this interrogation. Do you have anything to add?" He held his hand out, finger poised over the recorder controls.

"Don't judge me, Jim," Grissom said softly. "That's all I ever asked, isn't it?"

After a moment, the recorder clicked off, and the prisoner was returned to his cell, closely monitored on a 24/7 suicide watch. Brass collected the pictures from the crime scene, and put them in their envelope along with the tape from the interrogation. Then he closed the door, he sat down at the featureless metal table, and he wept.

-fin-

Author's Note- I really don't dislike Sara Sidle (or Jorja Fox for that matter). Can it be a coincidence that she has been killed off in 2 of my last 3 stories? "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."