heartbreak

It was the sorrowful look in his eyes that had intrigued her. When the parents had left the room, unhappy but resigned to the explanation for their daughter's death, he had looked down at his desk. She had the impression that he was struggling to conceal his own feelings.

She had been drawn into this case because of the interstate nature. The girl had been taken from her home in California and brought to Nevada, where she had been seen several times before being found after her kidnapper had killed her. Christina had worked with the local police as the FBI liaison. She'd stayed on after the body had been found. She'd gotten to know the parents, and from what she had been told he was not good with people. Personally, she didn't believe it. She'd seen him with the parents - he'd been patient and understanding even when their grief had caused them to verbally lash out at him.

Now Christina sat at her desk in her office and scrolled through the information on her computer screen. She was able to find out information on him fairly easily. He was a well-known man in his chosen field, and well respected by most of his colleagues. As an investigator, Christina was used to reading between the lines. There were those who didn't appreciate his dedication to his job to the exclusion of political concerns. Christina admired that. She had to worry about the political concerns in her job if she wanted to stay where she was.

She frowned as she searched deeper. He was apparently a very private and personal man. Both of his parents had passed way several years ago, and he had been their only child. He wasn't married, had no children. His job was probably all he had to keep him from becoming a complete hermit.

A notation at the end of the file on him caught her eye. His name was attached to an interstate kidnapping case from 22 years ago. Christina sat back, astounded. He didn't look like the kind of man who would be involved in a kidnapping. She checked her watch - she was technically on lunch for another half hour. Hopefully enough time to dig deeper into this mystery. She tapped in the keys that would pull up what little of the file was stored in the computers and read.

Twenty-two years ago he'd been just out of college, working at a lab in Los Angeles, and married with a baby. His wife, Marjorie, had been out grocery shopping and had taken eight month old Celia with her. According to the report, Marjorie had left Celia in the cart when she went to grab something off a high shelf. When she turned back, the baby was gone.

The local police hadn't been able to find anything at first. It was six weeks before anything turned up, and that was a confirmed sighting of the child in Arizona. That when the FBI got involved. Unfortunately, the Feds on the case got there too late - the child was gone again.

Christina's heart broke when she realized the strain of the missing child had obviously ended the marriage. It happened all too often, unfortunately. Parents blamed each other for the kidnapping, lashing out at the one person they should be looking to for support. Marjorie's contact information had changed six months after the kidnapping, and her name changed a year after that. The agent in charge had noted the divorce in the records. He had moved to Las Vegas a year after Celia went missing.

Christina sighed. No wonder this case had been important to him. She had noticed he was often in his own little world, not hearing anyone around him. He had claimed he was thinking when she had caught him at it, but now she wondered if he was remembering his own terror during those days when no one could tell him or his wife anything about their missing daughter.

The file ended abruptly with a notation from the agent, five years after the kidnapping, saying that the child had been recovered in Texas, the kidnapper was deceased. Christina frowned - this wasn't standard procedure on closing a file. She looked up the agent in charge's name. He was retired, but still living in the area. Christina made a note to herself to call him. While she really didn't have any business looking into this case, she couldn't get the image of those anguished eyes out of her mind.

Two nights later, she entered her apartment and leaned against the door. She wanted to cry from the information Agent Montgomery had given her. Now she knew why his eyes were so haunted at times.

Celia's abductor had been killed in a car accident in Texas, and his will left Marjorie as Celia's guardian. While the FBI started looking into why a kidnapper would do such an odd thing, Celia's father had returned to Los Angeles to be reunited with his daughter. Marjorie had refused.

Agent Montgomery had been appalled by Marjorie's action, and had gone out of his way to help the young father, appearing as a character witness on his behalf when he went to court to see Celia. It had been an odd hearing, and even the judge remarked on it being unusual - usually the fathers in her courtroom were saying everything they could to get out of paying child support, up to and including declarations that the child wasn't theirs. This time, the father was a man who had his name on the child's birth certificate and was willing to pay child support, but he wanted his visitation rights.

It was the mother who had announced that Celia wasn't his child. The judge, deciding that she couldn't take the mother's word when the putative father's name was on the birth certificate, ordered a blood test to determine the truth of Marjorie's claims. The results had been delivered straight to the judge, and she presented them to the parties in chambers. Agent Montgomery had waited outside. Marjorie and her attorney left the room first, and Agent Montgomery could tell by the look on her face that the results had gone her way. He'd never wanted so much to hit a woman in his life as he did at that moment.

Then the father walked out of the room, and Agent Montgomery said it was the most heart wrenching sight he'd ever seen. The man looked like someone had kidnapped his child all over again, and in a way Marjorie had. Not wanting the man to be alone, worried about his state of mind, Agent Montgomery had taken him to a small bar across the street and persuaded him to talk about it.

The tests had shown that both he and Marjorie had O positive blood types. Celia's blood was A positive. The allele for an O blood type was recessive, meaning that it took two O alleles - one from each parent - to create a child with O blood. An allele for type A blood would always be dominant over an O allele, making the person type A. So neither he nor Marjorie had any alleles other than the ones for type O. So one of Celia's parents had to have a type A allele. It was undisputed that Marjorie was Celia's mother. Therefore, he couldn't be Celia's father. Despite his name on her birth certificate, he had no rights to Celia. Not even emotional ones - Celia has been eight months old when he had been kidnapped, and he hadn't been allowed to see her after she'd been returned.

It took a few beers before the man would talk about Marjorie. They'd married their senior year in college because Marjorie was pregnant. She had told him the baby was his, and he had no reason to doubt her. He felt betrayed, used. The last thing he'd told Agent Montgomery was that he wasn't going to open himself up to that again.

He'd kept tabs on the man for a while after that, worried about that last statement. It wasn't really a suicidal statement, but it could have been. But the man had gone back to his work in Las Vegas and thrown himself into it. He became a top crime scene investigator, but he'd been true to his word - he'd never let anyone get close enough to hurt him again.

Though he had no proof, Agent Montgomery believed that Celia's abductor had been her biological father. It was the only reason he could think of, especially considering that Marjorie had been named as the guardian in the man's will. He had raised Celia as his own child, telling neighbors his wife had been killed in an accident. No one had ever suspected a thing. A few months after the test, Marjorie had Celia's birth certificate changed to list the father as unknown. She'd taken even that small connection to Celia away from him.

Christina sank down onto the hall floor. Now she knew why his eyes were so haunted on this case - it was a reminder of his own past. His own nights spent reviewing every moment, wondering what he could have done differently to prevent this from happening. The days of wandering around the house, praying for the phone call that would bring an end to the relentless whys and ifs. After a while, he hadn't even had Marjorie to turn to. Then he'd gotten that phone call that so few parents got, only to have his daughter taken from him again - by genetics. It was no wonder he'd buried himself in his work, isolated himself from those around him. Christina had told one of the other agents on the case that the head CSI had seemed of but not in the human race - always just a little out of reach, even when standing in the same room.

Christina dropped her head to her knees and let herself cry for the young father who'd had his life shattered twice, and for the adult Gil Grissom who was still tormented by and hiding from emotional scars that never healed.