Author's Notes: To follow.
Courtney Wallace
by Kristen Elizabeth
If we don't stand up for children, we don't stand for much. - Marian Wright Edelman
I think I made Gil go away.
He already had so much going on with some crazy guy who kept leaving him tiny little crime scenes. Okay, I know they were really creepy to everyone else, but to me they were a lot of fun to look at. I never had a dollhouse, but I always wanted one. I liked going to craft stores and looking at the tiny little books and chairs and dishes they sold. So I spent a lot of time looking at the models in Gil's office.
When he wasn't looking at them with me, he was reading lots of case files from Idaho. I don't think he found what he was looking for though. Every time he finished with one, he'd throw it aside and curse.
Maybe my killer wasn't lying. Maybe I was his first girl.
Gil never read any of the files from Idaho in front of Sara. I don't think he wanted her to know what he was doing. But maybe if he had let her help him, it wouldn't have gotten to him so much. It wouldn't have made him so tired that he had to get away from everything.
He left in a cab, not too long after the guy he thought made the little crime scenes killed himself. I was with my mom when it all happened, trying to get her to wake up after she passed out from too much vodka. But I knew it really upset him because he never talked about it. Not even with Sara.
He said goodbye to her at the lab before he left, but he could have done it better. He should have kissed her or something. Sara went back to Gil's place, and didn't get out of bed for a whole day. She even called in sick to work. I sat with her on the pretty sheets in case she needed me, but she never cried. She just kind of lay there, like she didn't have any reason to get up.
I felt awful. If only there was some way I could tell her about my killer. Then she could arrest him and Gil could come home and they'd be happy again.
She went back to work the next day, and every day after that. But she wasn't the Sara she was before. She only smiled when she had to, and even then it didn't make her whole face light up like it used to. I was kind of ticked that no one else, not even Greg, noticed. Or if they did, that they didn't do anything about it.
Actually, I kind of missed Gil, too. I probably could have gone to him if I wanted to, but I was afraid to see him. Maybe he wasn't missing her as much as she was missing him.
They found Marissa's body in the mountains three weeks after Gil left. There wasn't a lot left of her. The bugs had really gotten to her. Still so gross. But kind of better when it wasn't my body they were crawling all over.
The guy who'd come in to take Gil's place got put on the case with Sara. I was hopping all around them at the crime scene. My mom used to say I was all wound up when I was like that. I just liked watching Sara work. She was so neat, and nothing ever grossed her out. I knew that if my killer had left something behind, she could figure out that Marissa's killer was my killer, too.
But my killer was even more careful with Marissa than he had been with me. He took everything with him, even her purse. He'd left mine behind. It took Sara awhile to figure out who she was for sure, and even longer time to find out that the DNA inside of her matched the DNA left inside of me.
By that time, my killer had packed all his stuff into his car and moved to Los Angeles.
If Sara was still mad at Gil when he came back, she hid it really well. He looked really happy to be home. I decided to be mad at him for her, since all she seemed to want to do was kiss him when they were alone.
I didn't stay mad for long. After the guy who'd taken over for him died, Gil got all of his cases. And that included Marissa's.
"Two victims," he told Sara. They were on the floor in her living room, eating pizza. I was sitting between them. Food had stopped making me hungry. I didn't know if that meant anything, but when I first died, every time I saw something that I liked to eat when I was alive, it smelled good to me. Not anymore.
"He knew both of them," Gil went on. It was a good thing Sara had shaved his beard off, or he might have gotten sauce all over it. He wasn't really paying attention to his food. He was concentrating too hard. "I want to get into his house, Sara."
She smiled at the sauce on his lower lip. Even though they had plenty of napkins, she kissed it off and licked her lips. "We need more for a warrant."
"His car, Judy's physical description, the fact that he taught both victims…we've gotten warrants with a lot less."
"I just hope we land the right judge," Sara said, sighing. "One who doesn't hand out warrants based solely on DNA evidence."
Gil looked like he was about to start an argument with her, but his cell phone rang and he couldn't. He got up off the floor and answered it. "Grissom." He listened for a second, then looked at Sara. His face got really pale.
"What is it?" she asked very quietly.
"Yeah, Jim. I understand. We'll bring our kits." Gil closed his phone and stared at it for a second. "Jim went back to Lapinski's for a follow-up interview." He paused. "Apparently…he's disappeared."
Sara set down her half-eaten slice. "He skipped town."
I already knew that, but it still made me feel awful to hear it, and to hear how upset Sara sounded about it.
They went to my killer's empty house, but there wasn't much for them to do. My killer had taken all of our clothes, mine and Marissa's. Our pictures, too.
But my killer hadn't taken everything. In the garage, Sara found the ropes that had been tied around my wrists. She took them back to the lab. Greg processed them, which he normally didn't do anymore. I knew he used to though, so it made me feel really special that he'd do that for me. He found skin cells on them. My skin cells.
That's when they really started looking for my killer. But he was gone. And it seemed like he'd gotten away with it all.
Life…if I get to call it that…kind of settled into a routine for a few months. Gil and Sara worked a lot of cases, mostly together. He got another little crime scene; I still loved to look at them, all lined up in locked plastic boxes in his office. So did the guy in the lab that they all called Hodges. He was always in there, poking around.
Greg got a lot better, but I don't think he ever just forgets what happened to him, even for a few minutes. You can see it when he looks at you. Or looks through you.
Sara never forgot me. Every week or so, she would take out my file and look over it. But then she started to get busier and busier with more and more cases, and it started being every other week. I don't think Gil wanted to think about me. And I was kind of glad. I didn't want to be the reason he had to go away again.
Things changed for me, too. I didn't just stop being hungry; I stopped smelling. And then I couldn't feel the ground underneath me. It was like I was floating sometimes. It started to get harder to move from place to place. I really had to work to make myself appear in my mother's house or Sara's apartment. Mostly I just stayed in the lab. It was too hard to watch my mother drunk, and know that I was the reason for it. And Sara didn't stay in her apartment anymore, anyway. I couldn't understand why she just didn't move into Gil's place. Or marry him.
I really wanted to see their wedding.
I didn't think about my killer all that much, but whenever I did, things seemed to go back to normal for a little while. Like I could smell Greg's buffalo wings warming in the microwave. Or it felt like I was actually standing on the ground for a minute. Sometimes, like if I really thought about how much it had hurt to have my killer push inside of me, it almost seemed like I could reach out and touch Sara or Gil, and that they might feel it.
When I stopped thinking about my killer, I went back to feeling like I wasn't really all there anymore. Time went by really fast, and I missed days or sometimes weeks. It's weird, but it's like I was more real, more alive when I remembered.
And then one day, nine months after I first met her and Gil at Lake Mead, Sara got a phone call from an officer in Los Angeles.
"They've got him," she told Gil when she finally hung up. He didn't know what she was talking about, so she had to explain. "William Lapinski."
Gil took off his glasses, like he always does when he's really interested in something.
"They caught him trying to abduct an eleven year old girl from a shopping mall in Anaheim." Her voice kind of broke down right then.
"Is the girl all right?" Gil asked.
Sara nodded and wiped her cheeks with her hand. That's when I noticed she was crying. "She's fine. She's…lucky." He took her hand away from her face and held it. "He's being sent back here." She stopped, like she needed a big breath to go on. "We've got him."
I tried to reach for her hand, but instead of being able to hold it like I used to, my fingers went right through her.
I was standing with Gil and Sara, watching through the little window, as my killer sat across from Captain Brass. His hands were cuffed behind his back. Captain Brass was talking to him about my DNA on the ropes in his house, but my killer wasn't saying anything back. It wasn't like he could say all that much to defend himself, although I knew from watching Captain Brass in this room before that most people at least tried. But the police in California searched my killer's car, and found my clothes and Marissa's. Our killer didn't even ask for a lawyer.
"I thought he'd look…scarier," Sara said out loud. She shook her head. "I might have gotten into his car, too. Especially if he was my teacher."
I don't know why, but hearing that made me feel so much lighter. But it made Gil clear his throat and slip his hand out of hers.
When Gil and Sara walked into the room a minute later, I followed them. Captain Brass got up and let Sara sit down. Gil sat next to her, and I stood behind them, and we sort of faced off against my killer. It was kind of neat.
None of them said anything for a long time. Finally, Sara opened the file Captain Brass had brought with him and took out a picture. It was of me. My junior high yearbook photo.
She put it in front of my killer. She only had one question. "Why?"
My killer didn't look at her…just at my face. "She was my best student." Gil leaned back a little, like he needed to get far away from my killer. "She was so smart. Always asking questions, looking to me for the answers." Gil's eye twitched. "I wanted to teach her everything. I loved her."
"You didn't love her." Sara spit out her words, like she wished they could hurt my killer. "You destroyed her."
"She was beautiful," my killer whispered, looking up at Sara. "And sexy."
Before Sara could even lunge at my killer, Gil put his arm out to hold her back. "Tell us what happened," he asked. His teeth were clenched. He had his scary face on, but I wasn't scared of him anymore.
My killer smiled. "It was so much better than I'd imagined. She was perfect. So soft. Delicate." My killer's eyes closed. "Tight."
Sara pushed Gil's arm away and jumped out of her chair. She walked all the way to the other end of the room, and stood there, staring at the wall. She balled up her fists so hard that her knuckles were white.
Gil looked at my killer. He made his voice low enough that only my killer and I could hear him. "When they put the needle in your arm, I'm going to be there to watch. And after, when you're dead, I'm going to go home and celebrate."
He stood up, taking my picture away so my killer couldn't look at it anymore. Even though Captain Brass was in the room, Gil went to Sara and put his arm around her shoulders. They left together.
That was the last time I saw my killer. I didn't go to the trial. It wasn't a very long one. Sara and Gil talked about it one night at the lab. It only took the jury an hour to find him guilty of killing me and Marissa. Another jury took two hours to sentence him to death.
I was with my mom the night after that happened. Instead of getting drunk, she poured all the alcohol in the house down the kitchen sink. She went to bed with my picture, and when she woke up, she called the grief support group on the card that Captain Brass had given her back when my body was found.
The last time I saw her, she was in a meeting, smiling as she talked with her new friends.
I was at the lab, in the break room, with Greg and Nick and Warrick when a story came on the news about how my killer had decided not to appeal his death sentence. He was going to be executed in two weeks.
"Good riddance," Nick said.
"Amen," Warrick said.
Greg just nodded. When his break was over, he went back to work. The last time I saw him, he was laughing with Wendy, the DNA girl. And he didn't look like he was thinking about that night in the alley at all.
My killer got a lethal injection and died a year and ten days after I got into his car, thinking I'd be home before my ice cream melted. I wasn't there for it; I stayed with Sara who was glad my killer was being punished, but just couldn't go see it happen. Gil went, just like he had promised. And just like he promised, after it was over, he came home and celebrated by making love with Sara.
It didn't seem wrong to be there with them. It was beautiful, like watching a sunset out in the desert or fireworks on the Fourth of July.
As I watched them love each other, everything started getting brighter. It was like light was closing in around me, wrapping me up in a warm blanket. When they fell asleep, I knew this would be the last time I would get to see them.
"Bye." I kissed Gil's cheek and then Sara's. "Thank you."
I like to think that when their little girl was born nine months later, there was a part of me that lived in her.
But I was far away by then. And there was nothing but peace.
Fin
A/N: This was a long time coming, I know. It would have probably lingered a lot longer without the help of PhDelicious, and everyone who's ever dropped me a line and asked about it. Thank you so much for reading this story, and for all of your wonderful feedback. It was one of the most difficult I've ever attempted, and I hope you enjoyed it.