Catherine was hurting, the way she used to hurt when she went through cocaine withdrawal; the way she hurt the night that Eddie died. She felt a painful absence in her bones. She felt a total aloneness she hadn't felt in years. With the radio now silenced and Grissom's bug collection and piles of books and papers strewn around her, she felt as if she were standing alone in a mausoleum late at night, with no one to commune with but the ghosts of ages past. She was reminded of Hamlet, wandering the turrets of his dead father's castle and looking for answers. When she closed her eyes, she could here Gil quoting Shakespeare, as he would often do. But the line that reminded her most of him was one she had never heard him say: "Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither...."(3) He preferred spiders. Or at least she thought he had. But then came Carol....

"Where are your ghosts?" Catherine asked herself, gazing around the room. "And what will they tell me?"

Catherine set aside her uneasiness about invading Gil's privacy, and began a thorough search of his apartment, knowing, as she did so, that anything incriminating would have already been seized. But what she was looking for was something that wasn't incriminating, something that would tell the world that Gil Grissom was a normal man with normal interests, not just someone who lived alone with spiders and studied death. Still, even as she searched for the normal, she didn't expect to find it.

Gil's furniture was largely leather, heavy and manly. For art, he hung bug collections on his wall. His music tended towards classical, jazz and hard rock. Stacks of National Geographic, Scientific American and The Journal of Forensic Sciences were piled on the floor.

His other reading material was equally bizarre. On dust-laden shelves, Catherine found copies of "Maggots, Murder, and Men: Memories and Reflections of a Forensic Entomologist," by Azkaria Erzinclioglu; "Entomology and the Law: Flies as Forensic Indicators," by Bernard Greenberg and John Charles Kunich; "The Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection," by David Lehman; "Studies in the Psychology of Sex," volumes 1 through 5; and a copy each of "The Sexual Man" and "Unmasking Male Depression," both by Archibald Hart. They stood side by side with Marcel Proust, William Shakespeare, Bernard Shaw, and copies of Nancy Friday's two books, "Secret Garden" and "Forbidden Flowers." They all looked well read. Catherine realized that the dayshift didn't understand the implication of the last two books.

"They probably think they're about gardening," she said to herself, picking them up and setting them aside, to take with her, later.

She explored his kitchen, finding things she knew she would never have found there five years ago: a six pack of beer, left over pizza, a box of stale donuts, and other assorted items that told her he hadn't been eating well. In his bathroom she found all his personal items, strewn about with the abandon of someone with no time for or interest in cleaning house.

His bedroom, with its heavy black shades drawn to simulate night in the middle of the day, had been ransacked. Drawers were left hanging open, clothes tossed about as if from a windstorm, sheets and blankets torn off the bed and the mattress tipped on the floor.

Everything in his closet had been dumped into the middle of the room, leaving nowhere to walk except over it all, and footprints attested to the fact that the police had done just that, crushing his reading glasses in the process. In the middle of it all, a photo of Gil and his mother lie on the floor, the glass broken.

Such an ache rose up in Catherine that she clutched her gut and sunk to her knees on the mountain of clothes, fighting back tears. They had violated him, she thought. They had violated him. It was payback for what they thought he'd done to Carol. They weren't looking for evidence. They were looking for revenge.

For the first time since she'd learned of Gil's arrest, Catherine wept. Jim Brass found her there twenty minutes later.

"Hey, are you alright?" he said, bending down to check on her.

She nodded and quickly brushed the tears from her cheeks.

"We need to clean up this mess," she said. "I don't want him to see it like this. He's been through enough."

Brass helped her to her feet.

"Did you ever tell him?" he asked.

"What?"

"How you feel about him?"

"Oh, Jimmy, I'm too old to play that game." She laughed softly. "Besides, he's got his hands full with Sara. He doesn't need anyone else swooning over him."

"Gil's not in love with Sara," Brass told her.

She looked up, a bit surprised.

"I suspected as much, but how do you know?"

He shrugged.

"Guys know these things," he said.

"That's not very scientific of you, you know," she teased, trying to pull the mattress back onto the bed.

Brass gave her a hand.

"Have you ever seen the way he looks at a beautiful woman?" he asked, gesturing. "His eyes follow her around the room, and he gets this smirk on his face. It's really kinda disgusting."

Catherine thought a minute.

"He used to do that. Before he got your job. Maybe even a little after that. But I haven't seen that face on him in years," she replied.

"Well, I've seen it."

"Do tell."

"It's the way he looks at you, every time you walk away from him."

"Jimmy," Catherine said, turning to stare him down. "Shut up."

*****

Gil Grissom laid in his infirmary bed at the Clark County Detention Center and thought about black flies. Whenever his mind drifted to the horrors of the night, he thought about black flies. Whenever the touch and smell and taste of Carol surfaced to his consciousness, he thought about black flies. Whenever pain stabbed at his chest and back, he thought about black flies. He thought about flies because he didn't dare think about anything else. He built a mental wall of flies between him and his terror, his humiliation, and his pain.

Simulium venustum, the black fly, common in Canada, lands on its prey many times during the day, but tends to bite just before night.

(The fly bent over, and someone was shoving his fist up its ass.)

No! Focus on the fly! It's just a fly!

Black fly larvae is found in every type of flowing water.

(Black flies crawl on the skin, attack at whim, places on him that he didn't want touched.)

No! They're just flies. Just flies.

Black fly larvae stay in one place, using saliva to stick to objects in the roiling river water.

(The flies were leering at him, jeering at him, calling the Bug Man pervert and murderer.)

No! No! No! They are just flies! Oh, god, I miss my spiders.

If he focused his mind and energy hard enough, he could wake up in the morning and be a fly. Kafka. Metamorphosis. Bug Man. Hermetically sealed. Under a microscope. Exposed. Violated.

The wall of flies was disintegrating. The wall of flies couldn't protect him from the nightmare that had become his life. The pain welled up inside and overtook him, and he shuddered. He clamped his jaw, trapping the sobs in his throat. He had to find something else to hang onto: an idea, a memory, a face....

Catherine. Her face. Her eyes. Her smile. The way she looked at him. The way she would never look at him, again. Not after this. He had lost so much that day -- his freedom, his home, his privacy, his career. But until that second, he never thought he could have lost her, too. A single gasp escaped his lips, and he sunk deeper and deeper into a very dark place.