Chapter 13: Choices

Sara let her eyes open. The numbers of the clock glowed 2:32 a.m. She was tired, but hadn't been able to fall asleep. She couldn't stop thinking about Horatio, the kiss, the case, everything.

Horatio was so perfect. It was true that she didn't know him well yet, but she wanted to get to know him better. Much better. And what did she expect to find when she left Las Vegas? She felt like her life had begun again. New place, new people. She could stay here, see if anything developed between her and Horatio, maybe even get a job at the lab.

But that would mean never going back to Vegas, back to Grissom, to her friends and coworkers.

It wouldn't be the first time. She'd left her lab and her coworkers in San Francisco to go to work for Grissom. She did it to be close to him, and he'd rejected her and ignored her for years. She was getting along better with the Miami CSIs than she had with her Vegas coworkers at first.

A hint of a smile quivered on her lips as she recalled the first time she met Catherine. "I know who I am. I think you're a little confused." She'd been brought in to investigate Warrick, so they didn't exactly start out on the right foot. She and Nick typically got along, but there was that bitterness when they were competing for a promotion. She'd been the outsider in Vegas, never really fitting in with the team.

No. That wasn't entirely true. She'd been an outsider at first, but she'd grown close to them over the years. Even though her coworkers in San Francisco had accepted and respected her, they never felt like family. Vegas had.

But Miami could, too.

Or she could keep going. She could go anywhere in the world she wanted. Maybe apply for a job at Quantico, or New York. She could be a CSI again. Or she could move back to Vegas, and do something else.

It also wasn't entirely true that she didn't know what she wanted. She wanted a lot of things, they were just mutually exclusive.

She wanted to go back. She wanted to stay. She wanted to move on. She wanted to be wrapped in Gil's arms again. She wanted to kiss Horatio again. She wanted to work, to do what she was good at, and feel useful. To heal.

There was no way she could ever be completely happy. If she didn't stay in Miami, she would always wonder what might have been. If she did stay, she would never stop missing her Vegas colleagues, each one with unique talents and quirks. Especially Grissom.

But then, things change. People come and go; and she was gone. How could she go back?

Happy memories of her time at the Vegas crime lab played through her head. She imagined herself relating them to Horatio, explaining why she wanted to go back.

Exhaustion finally overtook her racing mind, and she slept.

She walked into the crime lab the next morning and paused to admire the architecture. The high windows let in the morning sunlight, which, combined with the clean, modern lines of the hallway to make it look like any professional workplace, not a building devoted to unraveling the mysteries of death. She could easily imagine herself working here.

"Hey Sara." Ryan came up behind her. "Alexx told me to tell you that Jozebeth is awake. She thought you might want to interview her."

She smiled as she turned toward him. "She's right; I do. Is H around, do you know?"

As soon as she asked it, she wondered if Ryan would mind her using his nickname for his boss. But he smiled in amusement. "No. He tracked down Kenneth Frizzell's ex-girlfriend; he went to question her."

"Okay. If he asks, tell him I'm at the hospital."

"Sara, wait." His voice dropped in volume. "There's...something else I wanted to talk to you about."

"What?"

"Horatio told me that you had some problems in the Las Vegas lab, and you're thinking about a career change."

"He told you that?" she inquired, guarded.

"That's all he told me. He didn't say what the problems were, and it's none of my business. He told me because I went through something similar. I lost my job here, for some good reasons, and I ended up working as a crime correspondent on the local news. After a while, it started eating away at me, because I'm a CSI, and when I stopped doing that, I couldn't stand it. I don't know if you'll get to that point, but my advice is don't burn any bridges."

She nodded, accepting the advice to mull over later. "Thanks."

"I'll see you later."

Sara paused outside Jozebeth's room.

She entered hesitantly. Elizabeth was sitting by her daughter's bed reading a book. The girl was watching TV. "Hi. Is this a bad time?"

Elizabeth closed her book and stood up. "Not at all. Miss...Sidle, right?"

"Yeah. Sara."

"Jo, Miss Sidle is a CSI on your case."

Jozebeth sat up and smiled. "Hi."

"Hello Jozebeth. Mind if I ask you some questions?"

"Go ahead. It's a rerun anyway." She turned off the TV. "The doctor told me I was drugged. There was this guy at the coffee shop. He was bald with really, really bushy black eyebrows. He ordered the same coffee as me, and I think he switched our cups. I can describe him to a sketch artist."

Sara couldn't help but smile at her almost cheerful eagerness. "Do you often answer questions before they're asked?"

"Well, I have been here before," the girl pointed out.

"I see. The man who drugged you at the coffee shop is already in custody. He was hired by one of the bank robbers who kidnapped you seven years ago. We think he was trying to kill you because he was planning another crime and didn't want anyone to be able to identify him."

"Well that's good."

Sara blinked in confusion. "Why is that good?"

"I was targeted because of the last time I was kidnapped. If it was someone completely new out to get me, I'd start to feel paranoid." Her lip started bleeding from the force of her smile straining against her stitches, so she set her lips into a straight line, but there was still a gleam of amusement in her large brown eyes. Sara could see why so many people, possibly including one of her kidnappers, were so fond of Jozebeth.

"That's a good way to look at it. So, have you noticed anyone following you, or watching you lately?"

"Believe me, if I had I would have called the police. No."

"Has anyone tried to contact you, like along the lines of a secret admirer?"

"Not that I can think of."

"I'm sorry to ask you this, Jozebeth, but do you remember the attack at all?"

"No, thank god. The last thing I remember is walking out of the coffee shop, and then I woke up here. Anything else I can do to help?"

"Not right now. Thank you."

"No problem. If you need anything else, I'll be here."

The girl's smile was infectious, and Sara grinned back. "It's unusual for someone I interview to act so cheerful, especially in a hospital," she said.

"I can imagine. I kind of like hospitals," Jozebeth explained. "There's nothing to do but watch tv or read or talk to people, no pressure to work or accomplish something. It's relaxing. And I feel safe. Maybe because the hospital was the first place I went after my kidnapping, so I associate it with safety. And anyway, I'm sure the doctors and nurses don't need yet another grumpy patient."

Sara glanced up at Elizabeth, who shrugged. "Don't look at me. She was born that way. Smiling." Her own smile saddened. "I never could understand why anyone would want to hurt my Jozebeth."

"She's lucky to have family and friends to take care of her."

"We're the lucky ones."

Sara didn't say aloud her next thought: Jozebeth's winning smile might have been exactly what kept her alive.

Back at the crime lab, Sara wrote her report of the interview with the victim. She was heading toward Horatio's office when she spotted him in the hall. "Hey, H."

"Sara. I hear you spoke with Jozebeth."

"Yes. Didn't learn anything new. I have the interview notes; I was just on my way to give them to you." She handed him the folder.

"That's some fast work."

"Like I said, there wasn't much to go on. Did you have any luck tracking down Kenneth Frizzell?"

"Not yet," he replied.

"I...have an idea. It probably won't work, but it's worth a shot."

He looked up at her curiously.

"Remember Catherine Willows?"

"She is hard to forget," he said with a half smile.

Sara raised her eyebrow at that, but continued. "The first case I worked with her, we found the suspect's pager at a crime scene. He paged it, so Cath called his number back, and managed to talk him into a meeting. We got him."

"Clever move. How does it relate to our case?"

"Well, we have an unknown number from William Sommer's cellphone, don't we?"

Horatio smiled slowly. "Yes we do."

"If that's Kenneth Frizzell's number..."

"We might not be able to trace it, but we can still use it to get him."

Sara dialed the number from a payphone outside the crime lab. They'd decided she should do it, since their target might recognize Horatio's voice from his news appearances.

A mechanized voice asked her to leave a message at the tone.

"Hi," she said uncertainly. "A mutual friend gave me this number. I have a package I need delivered discretely, and I heard your the man to call. Meet me at 1754 North Jackson Road at five p.m. today." She hung up.

"Now we wait," Horatio said.

Sara stood outside the abandoned building at the address she'd given the mystery number. She pulled her hood tighter against the heavy rain, and checked her watch. It was nearly 5:20. There was no guarantee he was going to show, and she didn't know how long Horatio wanted her to wait.

A hooded figure approached her. He leaned up against the building next to her. "Got a light?" he asked.

"No."

Ken recognized the voice from the phone message. "So what's this delivery you wanted to make, and how much are you willing to pay for it?"

Sara glanced around. "Let's go somewhere we can talk."

"We can talk here."

"You really want to risk someone seeing you stuffing a wad of cash in your pocket?" she asked.

He glanced around. "Okay. Where do you have in mind?"

She opened the door behind her and entered a seemingly empty room. As she walked in, she pushed back her hood. "In here," she said.

Ken followed her. As soon as he was clear of the door, it slammed shut and Horatio stepped out from behind it, gun aimed at his head. "Kenneth Frizzell?" he said.

Two uniformed officers entered from another room. One of them had a gun trained on the suspect, the other was carrying handcuffs.

The man turned as the officers restrained him. "You set me up!" he shouted at Sara.

"Yes she did, and you killed William Sommer," Horatio stated.

Ken Frizzell sat stiffly in the interrogation room. He had declined a lawyer. Horatio and Sara sat across the table from him.

"Mr. Frizzell," Horatio began, "We found a gun in your backpack that, as we speak, is being compared to the bullet that killed William Sommer. We found a notepad with the same kind of paper that the death threat was written on. One of your partners has implicated you in a bank robbery and kidnapping. I strongly suggest that you get a lawyer."

He laughed humorlessly. "Mr. Caine, I don't think you understand how little I have to lose."

"Prison is not a nice place, Mr. Frizzell."

"I understand that." Ken looked at the reflections on the table top. "The gun will be a match. My prints will be on it. I don't think there's a lawyer in Miami who can keep me out of prison."

"But there may be mitigating circumstances that will factor in your sentence."

With that Ken looked up. "Horatio Caine...you're like the bogyman to the people I've been dealing with the past few years. There are mothers in Miami who tell their disobedient children scary stories about you. You'll catch them and put them in jail. You always know. I'm sorry if I sound a little self-centered, but I'd like to know exactly how much you know about me already."

"I know, Mr. Frizzell, that you had a bright future ahead of you once. I suspect that started slipping away the day you agreed to rob a bank. Your former girlfriend told me she met you in Atlanta, where you were living the playboy lifestyle. She moved to Miami with you,and you got an apartment together. She said suddenly it seemed like you had no money. She paid the rent, while you got a job riding a bike for a messenger service. She kicked you out of the apartment after she left you for a richer man. It sounds to me like your money ran out faster than you expected it to."

He nodded with a half smile. "They say crime doesn't pay. But the day I saw the money we got from the bank job, I thought they were lying. I convinced the others to let the girl go. I thought we were Robbin Hood, noble thieves who would never get caught, because we were better than the others. I had all of these ideas for what I would do with my cut of the money. We all did."

"But it wasn't that easy, was it."

"I couldn't put the money in a bank. That much would have raised some eyebrows. I thought about it for a while, put most of the money in a box and buried it in my grandfather's backyard. The rest I took to Atlanta, bought myself some great clothes, a suite at a hotel, nightclubs, parties. I ran out before I knew it. Then I came back to Miami with my girlfriend. But when I went to where my grandfather's house used to be, I found out he'd moved to a retirement community in Tampa, his old house had been torn town and replaced with a gas station, and the money was long gone. After Britney kicked me out, I crashed with some guys I met in my work, started doing runs for drug dealers and pimps, eventually stopped showing my face in law-abiding society. I haven't had a place to call home in years, so don't tell me prison will be worse than what I have now."

"How did William Sommer contact you?" Sara inquired.

"His situation was a lot like mine. He burned through his money early and started finding other illegal ways to get more. He did some drug dealing, some scamming. He heard I was working the same beat, and he started hiring me to do odd jobs for him. But what he really wanted was to do another bank heist. He asked me to track down Jozebeth and make sure she wouldn't be able to identify him if he got caught. He figured better to go down for one job than two. She wasn't that hard to find. Everyone's got a website these days, even the car shop she works at. I started following her, reporting back to Will, making sure she didn't see me. But then..." he trailed off.

"Then what?" Sara encouraged.

"I remembered a pretty young girl, but the Jozebeth I saw was a beautiful young woman. A beautiful woman who, in spite of everything, all the shit we put her through...she smiled all the time, was nice to people, wasn't even afraid to walk down an alley by herself." He shook his head and sighed. "I couldn't go through with it. I told Will he should leave the girl out of it. He said he would, but I kept my ears open and found out he had started following her himself. That's when I sent him the note. I figured he wouldn't try to kill her at the motel, and he'd told me Arsenio gave him a key to his house, so the next day I went to Arsenio's place to see if he would show up. I was too late. He was beating her, kicking her, and she wasn't even moving. I couldn't believe he would do that. I couldn't believe he could do something like that. I shot him. He killed Jozebeth, and I just...couldn't let him live after doing that."

"Mr. Frizzell," Horatio leaned forward, hands folded on the table. "Do you know the legal definition of justifiable homicide?"

The suspect blinked. "No."

"That is why you should talk to a lawyer. Jozebeth De La Garza isn't dead. She survived the attack. You saved her life."

"Jozebeth is alive?" he asked, tempering his hope with skepticism.

"Yes she is. I'd like to remind you that you can ask for an attorney at any time."

"Okay," he said uncertainly. "Can I have an attorney?"

"I'll make a call."

He and Sara stood up and exited the interrogation room. Natalia was standing outside the door. "Hey. I thought you might want to see this." She handed Horatio the notepad, open to the last page inside a large plastic evidence bag.

"Dear Jozebeth," the letter, written in tiny, neat handwriting began, "You don't know me, but I know you. You are an amazing human being, and you deserve nothing but happiness out of life. I know you've known a lot more than that. I wish I could take away the terrible things that have happened to you. I can't say everything I want to expess to you, but I want you to know that" The letter ended abruptly.

"He was in love with her," Sara stated.

Horatio agreed. "It appears that way."

Sara hesitantly knocked at Horatio's office door. There was no answer. She waited for a minute, then sadly turned away, and jumped slightly as she came face to face with the red-haired lieutenant. "H, I was just looking for you."

"I rarely make it to my office," he said, smiling with amusement. The smile disappeared in a moment. "I understand that you're leaving?"

"I'm planning on heading out this afternoon. But I didn't want to leave without saying goodbye, and telling you why."

He nodded and opened his office door. "Come in."

Once in the privacy of the impersonal office, Sara had trouble finding words.

Horatio spoke first. "You may be interested to know the DA is not going to charge Frizzell with murder. He's pleading guilty to armed robbery for a reduced sentence. He and Merlo will both be testifying against Arsenio Petersen."

"Good," she said. "It's weird, cases like this where the victim is also a bad guy."

"Not everything is black and white, not even in our business." He paused for a long moment. "Sara, you know, the lab can always use a criminalist of your caliber. If you're interested, you could stay."

She blinked and focused her eyes on the bare desk. "I'm tempted...but if I go back to work as a CSI, it will be in Vegas."

He nodded. He'd expected that. "Okay, but if you ever change your mind...if you ever need anything, I'll be here. You have my number and my e-mail. Promise me, promise me, Miss Sidle, that you'll keep in touch."

She smiled. It was hard to say no to someone so sincere."I promise." She meant it. Somehow she was sure she would someday return to Miami and see Horatio again. But she was also sure that, for now, it was time to move on. "I also wanted to thank you. You've helped me sort some things out. You've actually helped me more than you will ever know."

"I could say the same to you."

She smiled sadly. "Goodbye."

"For now."

Minutes later, Sara walked out into the sunny Miami afternoon. "Now that," she said to herself with a smile as she put on dark sunglasses, "was something."

The End.