Absent Friends
by
Melissa Rivers
TITLE: Absent Friends
AUTHOR: Melissa Rivers
EMAIL: missy@lexicon.net
WEBSITE: http://www.geocities.com/missyliannem/csi/af.html
CATEGORY: Vignette; Tag to Friends & Lovers (Season 1)
SPOILERS: Major spoilers for Friends & Lovers (Season 1)
RATING: PG13
SUMMARY: Grissom contemplates the merits of the case
STATUS: Complete
ARCHIVING: CSI Fanfic Archive; Otherwise, not without permission.
DISCLAIMER:
CSI:Crime Scene Investigation and its characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Alliance
Atlantis and CBS Broadcasting Company. This story is not intended to infringe upon the copyrights of
Anthony Zuiker, Alliance Atlantis and CBS Broadcasting Company, nor any other copyrighted material.
I have written this story for entertainment purposes only and no money whatsoever has exchanged hands.
No copyright infringement is intended.
Wordlessly Gil Grissom slipped into the familiar black seat, pulling the safety harness securely in place. The
usual, night attendant at the theme park took the money silently; the exchange familiar, yet distant. Sending
the roller coaster on its way, the attendant watched after it and its lone rider. He could never be sure which
night his rider would turn up on, but he could guarantee that he would be there at least once in every week,
if not more often.
Slowly the roller coaster crept its way along the track, each turn of the wheels punctuating a staccato beat
against the metal tracks, picking up speed as it proceeded on its routine journey. Grissom pushed himself
further back into the seat, preparing for the hair raising passage above the lights that were Vegas. He tried
to lose himself in the heady travel from the gruesome and heinous crimes that were part of his and his
team's responsibility to investigate. It was an exercise that reminded him of his youth; the freedom to allow
the world to rush by and not bear the weight of the evil the world spawned.
Tonight was different. In his job, he was expected to collect the evidence, assess it and use it to find the
truth behind the vicious crimes that haunted the city, holding a bleak cloud of danger for the innocent. Yet,
tonight the evidence went in a direction he had been unprepared for. He always told everyone to follow
the evidence trail. What it had turned up had shaken his principles. Rather than remove one of the lowlifes
that was pillaging the teenage community with drugs, it had destroyed a young man's life.
Wind rushed by him as the coaster soared down its initial descent, quickly gaining speed for its climb up
the opposing track, the kinetic energy pushing the small train of carriages forward and over the next hill.
Grissom looked across the lights of Vegas. Their brilliance shone out against the dark cloud-covered sky,
substituting themselves for nature's own natural light.
It was a city that he had worked in for many years, giving himself over to trying to make sense of the asinine
deaths that plagued the Vegas strip. It had not taken him long to dispose of the 'making sense' part of his
quest for the truth and put his energies into following the evidence trail as to the why and how of the deaths.
Something that would convict a killer or vindicate a victim of circumstance.
Bobby was a victim of circumstance. Yet, he was also a killer, having taken the life of his best friend.
There was no doubt about it. The evidence stood true under examination and the law required that he be
charged for such murder. It was a nefarious situation, one that had sent Grissom seeking his mode of
escape from the reality of his discovery.
The death was attributed to the two friends having partaken in J weed, a tea that gave the boys a 'cool high;
mind expanding'. A high that had sent both boys into hallucinations that had panicked them to such an
extreme that had caused Bobby to kill his best friend, to silence the lambs that were screaming for him.
The charges against Bobby would be defended by his diminished capacity under the influence of the drugs.
This wouldn't save the young man from the fact that he had murdered his best friend, a fact that would
continue to haunt him for the rest of his life. Grissom had seen it in the boy's eyes, the guilt of understanding
that he had performed such a heinous act, an act he was unable to remember.
Bobby wouldn't need to remember the details of his attack, the details from the evidence gathered by the
CSI team was a stepping stone to the nightmares that would become his bedtime partner, the gaps filled
in by an active imagination. Life had changed for this young man through a choice; a choice to be part of
the crowd, to celebrate life through alternate sources.
Grissom wondered as the roller coaster sped around another curve the futility of the arrest. A killer had
been caught, a killer who was unaware of his actions. Yet, the real killer was on the loose; the man that
had sold the boys the lethal concoction. However much he wanted to be able to implicate Ethan in the
murder, the evidence had not been sufficient.
The roller coaster usually served to remove the memories of the atrocious and violent acts that his psyche
was subjected to on a daily basis. Today, it was different, today he was trying to remove the guilt of having
solved a crime that had taken away a life; not the life of Eric who had tragically died at the hands of his best
friend in the desert, but that of Bobby who had lost his innocence in one tragic act.