Chapter 2

Finn glanced over at Sara, one eyebrow raised by Sara only had eyes for the other woman who had unwittingly strayed into their midst.

"Heather..." she said in a strained voice, asking again when her first question was met with a shocked silence, "What are you doing here?"

"The same thing as you I would imagine." She replied quietly, studying Sara intently as they spoke. In response to the other woman's unimpressed raised eyebrow, she crossed her arms defensively over her chest and said, "I heard about Adam's death. I came to find out what happened."

"My question was more directed at a general thing. Why are you here at all?" Sara pressed firmly,

"I work here at the hospital." She replied evenly, when Sara gaped at her she added, "On a part-time basis."

"What?" Sara asked with a small smirk, "The idea of rekindling failing marriages by playing dress-up lost its appeal?"

"No." Heather replied curtly, a slight edge tinging her voice now in response to the other woman's questioning, "That's why this is only 'part-time'.

Sara nodded, still not entirely convinced about this. There had to be a bigger reason as to why Heather had decided to travel all the way out to the hospital in the dead of night.

She and Finn both looked into the room, studying it and their victim carefully. They both glanced at each other simultaneously, sharing the same thoughts,

"Something is off about this." Sara murmured quietly,

"Yeah..." Finn said, turning back "I mean, no matter how suicidal I was, if I had just sliced my wrists open on a piece of sharp metal, body's natural instinct is to fight back, to struggle..."

Sara nodded, "Which would have meant struggling against those restraints and, padded or not, that's going to leave a mark."

At this point, Finn turned back round to Maggie and asked, "Was Adam sedated before he was left in here?"

"I would assume so, yes." She replied, "If you like, there should be records somewhere..."

"Yeah, could you dig those out for us?" Finn broke in, smiling,

"Yes, I think that would be OK..." Maggie said, a little thrown by how forward the other woman was, "Come on, I'll take you back to the nurse's station. They should really be in here but it's been a crazy night."

"Isn't every night?" Finn asked as she turned to look back at Sara before following Maggie, "That OK with you?

"Sure." She said, adding with a small smile, "I'll just do a little preliminary, take some basic shots until you can get back to your blood."

"Thank you." Finn said, smiling and winking at the other woman's understanding before heading off after Maggie.

As Sara began to quietly walk around the edges of the room, deciding to photograph blood and anything else on the outside of the room and then work in to Adam's body, she became increasingly aware that she was being watched.

She was about to turn around and comment on this when Heather told her quietly,

"You're not wearing your wedding ring anymore Sara."

"No, I'm also not wearing the same perfume anymore either, would you like to comment on that as well?" she bit back angrily without looking up,

She was in no mood to start playing Sherlock with the ex-dominatrix. Her nerves were shaken-up enough as they were and Heather standing causally in the door-way casting aspersions over her personal life was doing nothing for her blood-pressure.

"Look, Sara-"Heather said, with the air of someone dropping the pretence,

"No, no I don't want you to 'look' into anything to do with me." She told her flatly, noting several blood drops on the floor beneath the victim's right arm, potentially indicating that he had attempted with that wrist first and been successful with the second owing to the much larger pool on the other side.

"Not even Grissom?" Heather asked softly and pointedly, studying the other woman with her unsettling intensity as she spoke,

"Especially not Grissom." Sara retorted coldly,

"Sara, I am a sex therapist, I could help-"

"No, no I don't think you could." Sara snapped derisively,

"Why?" Heather pressed gently,

"It's a little late for that now don't you think?" Sara muttered, turning on her, eyes blazing, telling her in no uncertain terms to drop it.

"No, no I don't..." Heather continued, Sara turned away from her again, continuing to move around the room, noting the faint trace of blood on the catch of the window that had been nailed shut as Heather continued, "I can help you Sara."

"And why would you want to do that?" she spat, whipping back round to face her, studying the other woman in turn,

"It's not what you think Sara." She told her quietly, "Grissom and me...It would never have worked."

"Why? Because you're more of a cat person?" Sara shot back sardonically, continuing to move around the room,

"No. Because his attentions were always held by someone else." She answered quietly, "Even from our first meeting I could see that. It was always just a pity it took him as long as it did..." Sara did not answer, being distracted by the drawers of medical equipment, drugs, needles and syringes. "I understand him Sara." She pressed urgently,

"Maybe. But you don't understand me." She answered quietly,

"Maybe not, but I do understand the way you feel about him and the way he feels about you."

"I don't understand how he feels about me right now." She snapped defensively showing more of her cards than she had intended in her anger, "How can you?"

"He called me Sara." She said quietly, sending a lead weight into the other woman's stomach as she continued, "He told me what happened-"

"Congratulations." Sara hissed icily, turning to look back at the other woman with cold eyes as she said, "Now what do you want from me?"

"I want to help you Sara." She said softly,

"If you really want to 'help' me, then you can just answer my questions and then go."

"Alright..." she said slowly, crossing her arms over her chest once more as she watched the slim brunette, "What do you want to know?"

"Why are you here?" Sara asked, repeating her question from earlier, "Why the special interest in this particular inmate? Things like this happen on a weekly basis here, you know that."

"I had a personal interest in Adam." Heather replied smoothly, "I was his therapist."

"You were counselling Adam Trent?" Sara asked, genuinely thrown by this little twist, "Why?"

"The hospital almost became partially private." She began to explain evenly, "Families of the patients could make...Contributions towards them receiving individual treatment in an effort to make a more dramatic change in their mental health."

"And they contacted you?" Sara asked disbelievingly.

"It was a mutual connection." Heather replied, "For anyone interested in any field of science, individuals that buck the trend; that exist outside that monotonous bell-curve of normality are always interesting, exciting. They are discrepancies; naturally I was drawn to a place like this."

"Naturally." Sara repeated, a faint edge of sarcasm in her voice, "How many of the inmates here were you 'drawn' to exactly?"

"Just one. Adam was my only case here."

"So why Adam?" Sara asked softly, "Why him in particular?"

"He intrigued me." She purred softly, the hint of the dominatrix shining through the composed, professional mask of the psychologist, "He was something new, something exciting and complicated. I love complex challenging men."

"And why are you here now?" Sara asked smoothly, fighting to keep her composure, "It's a little late for your challenges isn't it?"

"I had a session with Adam tonight." Heather replied lightly,

"Was it normal for you to meet at this time?" Sara asked pointedly,

"It wasn't abnormal." Heather replied infuriatingly,

"Did anything happen in tonight's session that you think may be relevant to this case?" Sara asked quietly,

"What are you attributing this to?" Heather asked, glancing around the room and taking in its features as opposed to Sara's, "Suicide?"

"You know I can't tell you that Heather." Sara replied, who, at that moment in time, had no idea what she was attributing this to.

Sighing, she said, "If you're thinking suicide, I would say so...Adam was making improvements but..." She hesitated a moment before continuing, "He was schizoaffective, meaning that he frequently suffered from violent mood swings, either up or down, at the moment, he was down. That tended to intensify the suicidal thoughts. If you had asked me last week it would have been a different story, but now..."

"Do you know what happened with Adam to have him sent to seclusion?"

Heather hesitated a moment before answering, "No. We had finished our session; I was on my way back to Vegas."

Sara could not pinpoint why that statement felt off to her and so she decided to leave it alone for the moment.

"Alright..." she said quietly, "I think I have everything I need. Thank you."

Heather paused a moment before turning and making to leave.

Unable to stop herself, Sara murmured,

"Heather?" Just as she was leaving,

She turned back to look at the brunette and said, "Yes?"

Sara hesitated, fumbling over her words as she asked quietly, her pride and her need to know resulting in a silent, internal conflict, "You said you had spoken to him?"

"Yes..." Heather replied quietly, seeming to sense that this was a delicate area, "He called me shortly after your break-up...He needed someone to talk to."

"How..." she began, faltering before forcing herself to ask the question she needed to know, "How did he sound?"

"...Hurt." Heather replied sadly before turning and leaving the broken brunette crouched on the floor beside an empty syringe staring after her, the same emotion stirring in her deep eyes.

"Heather? Right?" Finn said, accosting the other woman at the nurse's station on her way out,

"Kessler. Doctor." She said by which of introduction smiling and dancing around Finn's gloved hand,

"Julie Finlay. Finn." She replied with a small grin, "I hate to have to do this but, did you have access to the room the victim was found in?"

"In theory yes. If you have access to this hospital you have access to just about anywhere. It's a locked unit so they saw no reason to have cages within the cages. The inmates are generally free to roam, as are the staff."

"Alright then, could I ask you to provide me some exemplars of your prints and DNA so I can rule them out?" Heather hesitated, not looking thrilled by this prospect, "I can get a warrant." Finn pointed out evenly, "But that will mean me leaving and coming back and having to track you down, all of which takes time and this is a time sensitive business. If you really want to help find Adam's killer, you'll just give them to me now."

"Alright. Take whatever you need." Heather told her,

"Thank you Doctor." Finn said, setting her kit down and removing a swab, "So, you and Sara know each other?" she asked lightly,

"Our paths crossed on a previous case." Heather replied smoothly,

"Are you sure that's all it is?" Finn asked quietly,

"What are you implying?" Heather asked coolly,

"Look, I'm no expert, but there seemed to be more than just 'path-crossing' between you and Sara earlier." Finn said who for one had not missed the sparks that had flown between both women outside the victim's room.

"Perhaps." Heather said, affording her a small laugh, "But if you want to know details you'll have to ask Sara."

Finn chortled at that, "Yeah, you have a lion's mouth I can stick my head into first?"

Heather laughed more genuinely at that, "You have a point there...She's..."

"Yeah..." Finn said, smiling warmly, "She's great though." She worked for another few moments before saying, "Well thank you, I'm done, you can get on your way now."

"Thanks." Heather said, bending to collect the bag she had set on the table next to them and turning to leave, Finn's eyes following her off the premises.

"What did you get?" Sara asked as Finn re-entered the room, "Many things." Finn replied winking, "Firstly, Adam Trent's records of his time in seclusion, nothing as to why but it did tell me with what. He was injected with lorazepam following a psychotic episode."

"Enough to prevent suicide?"

"He would have been groggy and disoriented but he was in here alone for about three hours, he had time."

"Where there's a will there's a way..." Sara murmured darkly, "What else did you get?"

"Exemplars of fingerprints and DNA to use for elimination, including your friend Dr. Kessler." She paused a moment, glancing around the room, "What about you? Any joy?"

"Yes and no." She replied with a sigh, "I found a bloody fingerprint on the bed beside Adam. I've emailed it to Mandy, see if she can get a hit...That's about the only clear-cut thing I've found...We're going to be here for a while."

"OK...So let's take it one step at a time. What's the blood telling you?"

"You want me to lay it out?" she asked raising an eyebrow, "I thought you were a little possessive over your blood."

"Usually." She said, smiling, "I trust you. Go for it, what do you see?"

Smiling, Sara began, "Dead people...And the things that made them so..." Finn smirked at this as she took a deep breath and moved around to stand by the bed Adam's body was tied to, "Blood drops under the right wrist indicate that he was equal opportunities when it came to this, he broke the skin on that wrist but hit a goldmine on the left, success, as indicated by that helpful blood pool."

"Yes..." Finn murmured, studying the blood as she listened to Sara's theory, "Succeeded in catching an artery, I'll give you. Succeeding in killing himself? I don't think so. That blood pool's not nearly big enough to indicate a fatal wound."

"My thoughts exactly, which is when I stumbled across this." She said, crossing the room and indicating the blood spatter in the corner, "High velocity, less than a millimetre in diameter."

"Indicative of a gunshot wound." Finn said, eyes flashing, intrigued now.

Sara moved back towards Adam Trent, allowing Finn to have a closer look at the blood spatter that adorned the walls, something on his body distracted her as Finn began to absently theorise,

"So...Clearly a separate event from the slashed wrists but the question now becomes is it Adam's blood or are we looking at another victim?"

"My money's on Adam's." Sara said quietly from beside his body,

"Really?" Finn asked, turning to look at her, "Cite your source."

"The hole in his chest." Sara answered, grinning,

"What?" Finn asked, moving over to join her,

Sara pulled a torch from her kit and shone the sharp beam under one of the chest restraints showing the blood and the rent in the skin from whence it came, raising her eye brows.

Finn gently slid two fingers under the restraint in an attempt to get a better look at the wound, only to find that the strap lifted cleanly and easily away from her victim,

"What the Hell?" she murmured, staring first at the loose strap and then up at Sara who noticed that the strap had not been fastened down properly to the other side of the bed, "This wouldn't even restrain a sumo wrestler, never mind a twig like Adam..."

"What is going on here?" Sara asked wonderingly.

"OK, so, we have a patient with a gunshot wound and slashed wrists and loose restraints...I would say that someone is trying to make this look like something it's not." Finn said, taking a deep breath and beginning to lay things out, "So, either Adam killed himself and had help..."

"Or he was murdered and we're looking at a homicide." Sara said softly,

"OK...So, let's go on the theory he was shot first, and, for the point of keeping things simple, let's say that he shot himself..."

"But then why didn't he die on the floor? Why in bed with the restraints on?" Sara continued, picking up the thread where Finn left off. She paused a moment, pacing around the room before answering her own question, "Because he was moved...Someone hears the shot, comes running, finds Adam bleeding out on the floor."

"Right, and after the complaints this hospital has under its belt, that would not look good for them. Whoever it is, gets Adam up, maybe tries to clean him up a little, leads him over to the bed and tries to make it look like he killed himself using the restraints."

"OK..." Sara said slowly, "If that was the case, why wouldn't they clean up after themselves?"

"Maybe they were interrupted." Finn suggested, "The marks on the floor indicate that this blood pool was much bigger. But if I am whoever is covering this up, my own safety takes precedence over the hospital."

"So if I heard someone coming I wouldn't stick around and make myself into suspect number one, I would the Hell out of here." Sara said, nodding,

"Turning the lights off to try and dissuade anyone from checking in the near future."Finn added, explaining Maggie's earlier discrepancy.

"Interruption would explain the hasty clean-up and the loose restraints..."

"But not the lorazepam...A dose that high, he should not have been standing when he was shot..."

"OK...Let's go with something we do know..." Sara suggested, "If there was a gunshot, there was a gun."

"And going with our theory of interruption, it's probably still here..." Finn said quietly. She walked back over the corner of the room where Adam shot himself and turned back to Sara, purring, her voice mockingly flirtatious, "Would you like to play victim?"

Smiling at the irony of this, on several counts, one of them rather unsettling, Sara consented, lying carefully on the floor and allowing Finn to use blood pools to match the positions.

"Alright..." Sara said from her position on the floor, "If I was Adam and I had just shot myself...If the gun was in my left hand, it would be under there..." she said, gesturing to a little cupboard that was sitting flat on the floor, making that impossible, "If I shot myself with my right hand..." she continued, flipping over, "It would be under there..."

Finn fished a torch from her own kit and looked under the tray Sara indicated. She shook her head slowly, "Nothing..."

"Well guns don't just get up off the floor and fly away by themselves..." Sara murmured,

"No they do not..." Finn said, crouching down beside Sara and pressing her knuckles to her lips as she pondered this. Tilting her head, she squinted uncertainly at something,

"What's up?" Sara asked, noting the expression that was instantly familiar to every criminalist.

"One of the trays in that holder doesn't fit properly, it's not sitting right..." she said slowly, getting up to examine it. Sara sat up on the floor as Finn slid it open and let out a small, triumphant laugh. She took several, hasty shots of the contents and then held them up to show Sara,

"One murder weapon."

Sara shook her head and massaged her eyes saying, "Right, forget for a minute whether he killed himself or was killed or how he ended up back on the bed. How the Hell did he manage to shoot himself? Guns are not just left lying around here. How did it end up with him?"

Before Finn could answer she checked her phone and looked up at Sara saying, "I don't think you should be asking how but potentially who..."

"What have you got?" Sara asked,

"Mandy matched the bloody print you found on Adam's bed to one of the exemplars that I sent her."

"Really?" Sara asked, curiously, "Who?"

"Heather." Finn replied grimly.