"Shouldn't you get home? You finally have some time off. You should be spending it with your daughter."

Catherine shook her head.

"When this thing broke in the press, I had to get her out of here. Everywhere she went, every time she turned on the television, even when she went to school, she saw the pictures and stories about you, and...."

"Catherine," Grissom said, in what seemed like a broken record. "I'm sorry."

She shook her head.

"I sent her to my aunt's, in Montana. She'll be safe there, at least until the worst of this blows over." Catherine smiled weakly. "Besides," she added, "I'd rather be here."

"Then you can stay as long as you want. You can even have the bedroom. I'll sleep out here."

"Hey, I hate to point out the obvious, bud, but the bed is more your size," she teased.

"Actually, it's big enough for both of us." He had intended the comment as a joke, but suddenly it didn't seem very funny. He couldn't believe he'd said that to her.

Catherine patted him gently on the hand.

"Don't look so shocked, Gil," she said, letting him off the hook. "It's not like I haven't thought about it. But the sofa will do, just fine."

Catherine's cell phone rang. It was Nick for Grissom. She left him talking on the phone while she went to the bathroom. A few seconds later, she could hear Gil yelling into the phone.

"That is physically impossible! Paul Millander was a woman, a transsexual. She had the operation, but she couldn't produce sperm!"

"Greg got the DNA results taken from our dead vic, ran it through every database he could find, and got a hit from the sperm bank. They're the ones who said it belonged to Millander."

"His father, maybe. Or someone else using his name. Or even a computer error. But there's no way it could belong to him. Did he check it against the DNA sample of Millander we have on file?"

"I don't know," said Nick. "I didn't ask him."

Grissom rubbed his temple, feeling a headache coming on, as Nick repeated Grissom's question to Greg, who stood in his lab coat, arms crossed, ready for a fight.

"Look," said Nick. "We know this is a red herring. Someone is seriously playing us. They got the sperm from the bank. Maybe it was from Millander's father. Maybe it was from someone else, entirely. All we have to confirm it are the sperm donor bank files."

"Tell Greg that I am ordering him to get off his ass and do his job right! If he can't do that, I'll come down there and tell him personally!"

"Ah," said Nick, scowling and holding the phone about a foot from his ear while Grissom yelled. "I think he heard you."

Greg took the phone.

"I tried to run it through our database," he said defending his honor, "but I couldn't find it. You gotta believe me! It's not there! That's why I went looking somewhere else!"

"He's playing a game with me," Grissom realized, leaning back in his chair, his eyes darting about the room as if someone was hiding behind the walls. "Damn! Why didn't I see it, before? This whole thing has been a set up, right from day one." He was quiet a moment. "I'm sorry Greg. I shouldn't have lost my temper," Grissom said. "Put Nick back on."

"Now, what do we do?" Nick asked.

"You're going about this the wrong way," Grissom said. "Someone has been setting me up, and Carol may even have been in on it."

Catherine came out of the bathroom just in time to hear the end of the conversation.

"You've got to stop thinking of this as trying to clear my name, and start thinking about it as trying to catch a killer. Until you do that, you won't get anywhere."

Catherine could only imagine the other end of the conversation.

"I taught you better than that, Nick," Grissom said. "Stop thinking about me and start thinking about the victim. You'll never figure this out if you don't."

When Grissom hung up, he was clearly upset. Catherine took the phone from his hand and set it down.

"What have they got?" she asked.

"The DNA of Carol's second donor came back to Paul Millander."

Catherine gasped and fell into the nearest chair.

"That's not possible!"

"You're right. It's not," Grissom said. "Millander's DNA isn't in our database for comparison, so Greg went to a sperm donor bank and matched that sample against the one found in Carol. The name came up Millander."

Catherine shook her head.

"Whoever is doing this really knows his stuff," she said. "And has access to our database."

"But he didn't know Millander or the case. If he had, he wouldn't have made such a glaring mistake." Grissom looked over at her, frowning. "This is personal," he said.

"Murder usually is."

"Who would hate me so much, and have such little regard for life, that he would sacrifice Carol just to destroy me and my team?"

"Eckley," she said. "I know you don't want to accept the obvious, but, damn it, Gil, it makes sense! It was his apartment building. He paid her rent and got her in there. He probably arranged for Atwater to hire her, just so she could get next to you. He must have known your history with her. He certainly knew your history with Heather. He had the opportunity to skew the police report so the second semen donor didn't show up in the affidavit, and he must have known we'd check it out. He has access to the crime lab's DNA database. He probably has a contact at the sperm bank. He's the one who's been trying to destroy the team ever since he made supervisor. What more do you want?"

"Proof," Grissom said. "I need proof." He thought a minute about the DNA fiasco. "You know," he added, "if he's made one mistake, he's made two."

Their eyes met.

"We need to go back to the crime scene," she said.

"Care for some company?" he asked.

*******

Nick and Warrick showed up at Sara's apartment around midnight and found her studying.

"What's up, guys?" she asked.

Warrick was relieved to find her looking much better than his last visit.

"We just got off shift and we're looking to do a little extracurricular snooping," Nick said, a big grin on his face. "Want to come?"

"Does Eckley know about this?" she asked.

"No," said Nick.

"Great!" Sara grabbed her jacket and wallet and piled into the SUV with the guys.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Carol's apartment," Warrick said. He was sitting in the front with Nick and had to look over his shoulder to make eye contact with Sara. "Can you handle it?" he asked.

She smiled a little.

"I can if you're there," she said.

He nodded.

When they got to the apartment, they found the door slightly ajar.

Pulling their weapons, the three investigators slipped quietly into the living room and looked around. They heard a muffled noise coming from the bedroom. Nick took the lead, tiptoeing up to the door and gently pushing it open. What Nick saw next would stay in his mind forever. There, laying on the bed with her hands over her head, was Catherine Willows. Straddling her on the bed was Gil Grissom.

"Freeze," Nick yelled, his gun still drawn and trying not to laugh. "Hey, guys, you gotta see this."

Grissom jumped off the bed and Catherine quickly stood up, but not before the others got a gist of what was going on.

"It's not what you think!" Grissom snapped.

"Boy, where have I heard that one, before," Nick said, holstering his weapon and bursting out laughing.

"We were walking through the crime," Grissom tried to explain, clearly flustered.

By now, the three latecomers were laughing so hard they were sitting on the floor and crying.

"They're having a laugh at our expense," Grissom complained to Catherine.

She couldn't help herself. A second later, she joined them. Gil just sat on the edge of the bed and stared at them all until the laughter subsided.

"Are we ready to work, now?" he asked, with a completely straight face.

The four started laughing, again. Grissom, despite himself, had to smile.

"Alright, alright," Nick said at last, standing back up and brushing off his pants. "We're here, let's do this." Then he looked at Grissom. "Man, I should be going blind!"

With that, the team gathered in the living room and ran down the scenario.

"He had to be watching, to know when I left," Grissom said, surveying the room.

"Or maybe she signaled him," Catherine suggested.

Grissom shook his head.

"No. She was still in bed, right where...." He trailed off, not finishing the sentence.

"The closet?" Nick asked.

"I don't think so," Grissom said, "but check it anyway." Nick headed off to do so.

"Parked out in the street, most likely," Warrick said.

"Somebody told the police that I was here that day," Grissom noted. "Someone saw me come in and go out. Who was that person?"

"School bus driver. He was dropping kids off and saw your rig," Warrick said.

"But how did he know it was mine?" Grissom asked.

"Somebody probably held up a picture of your vehicle and said, is this the car you saw? And, of course, he said yes, because your car was here," Sara surmised.

"Which means he wasn't asked about what other cars were here," Nick noted, returning to the living room. "Nothing in the closet," he added.

"It also means that whoever asked him if he'd seen your vehicle, already knew you were here," Catherine said.

"Who was the investigating officer?" Grissom asked.

"Fromansky," said Warrick.

Grissom closed his eyes and processed that information.

"Fromansky is a lot of things," he said, "but I don't see him doing this."

"Which means somebody planted the idea in his head that it was you," Sara said.

"We need to talk to Fromansky," said Warrick.

"Isn't that witness tampering?" Nick asked.

"It is if we do it," said Grissom. "It isn't if my lawyer does it."

"What else do we have," Catherine asked.

"The sperm bank," said Grissom. "Somebody tampered with their materials. We know Millander couldn't have donated to them, so either somebody pretended to be Millander or somebody got into their computers and changed the records."

"I'll check it out in the morning," Sara said, "unless that's witness tampering, too?"

"No," said Gil. "They're not on the witness list because no one else knows about this."

"What else," Catherine asked, again.

"The crime lab database. Warrick, can you get in there and find out who erased the Millander DNA profile?"

"I can try," said Warrick. "I'll have to wait until the place is quiet, but we should be able to narrow it down to one or two computers. After that, we'll see."

"Good," said Grissom, feeling suddenly better than he had all week.

They all stood around and stared at him.

"Am I missing something?" he asked.

The members of the old team glanced back and forth among each other before Sara spoke up.

"It's good to have you back," she said.

Grissom smiled.

"It's good to be back. Now, let's go catch a killer."

-- TBC --