His Final Chance

Author's Note: With the new version of CSI coming out in October 2021 and William Petersen is the age of Grissom in this story; I thought I'd post this on this site for fun. Also see note at end of story.

A CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fanfiction:
Grissom-Sara, Alternate Universe, Time-Travel, Set in Future and Post-Grave Danger. One chapter.

And now for something completely different...

HIS FINAL CHANCE

24 July 2025

Gilbert Grissom woke up alone, as he always had, in his hermetically sealed condo several weeks before his 69th birthday.

He looked around his bedroom through blurry eyes, noting his spartan furnishings, almost priest-like, in a strange, monastic sort of way; when his gaze landed on a framed photograph on his bedside table. The picture was of his team from when he had been the supervisor of the night shift of crime scene investigators for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

He rubbed his hands over his eyes for a moment, wiping the crustiness out of his line of vision, before settling again on the old photograph. He studied each member of his team individually and as a whole and smiled as memories from their time together flooded his mind.

Catherine Willows, she looked so young, but then so did all the others in the photograph, but Catherine had always looked good for her age. These days, Catherine would not even return his phone calls. Not that he called her that often, but getting through to her was rather difficult. She headed Braun Casino Empire in which she had invented a new trend in Vegas: smaller more intimate casinos, without hotels, where many of the displaced workers from the latest recession now made higher wages and had increased benefits.

Catherine had married several times; the first to the cocky lawyer, Adam Novak, then to the man who turned out to be the love of her life, Ian Davenport. Grissom was proud of his friend and he often saw her on television being interviewed or honored for one reason or another. Catherine's daughter Lindsey had grown up, gone to college and become a lawyer and was currently the junior Senator from Nevada. Her political aspirations were high and her ambitions were limitless.

Another member of his crew that he saw frequently on television was the former lab rat turned investigator, Greg Sanders. In the picture, Greg's blond locks were unruly and spiky. Now when Grissom saw him on the nightly "View on Vegas," his hair was always perfectly coiffed. Greg had also married, to a woman who had been a former cocktail waitress and the two had four children.

His eyes floated over to Nick Stokes, and felt a bit of shame. He had not talked to his former employee in several years. Nick suffered a stroke on his 4oth birthday that left him in pretty bad shape. Confined to a wheelchair and unable to move his left side, he could only speak short phrases secondary to his severely slurred speech. His family had come to the hospital and made arrangements for the native born Texan to return to his home state to allow them to care for him in his time of need. Grissom hadn't spoke to him since that time.

Grissom took a deep breath because it hurt, even after all the time that had passed to see Warrick Brown's smiling face. Grissom was still consumed with grief over the death of "his favorite CSI" at the hand of the former undersheriff of Clarke County. Grissom closed his eyes in pain as he thought of the blood-soaked Warrick dying in his arms. It was still one of his worst nightmares.

He thought for a moment of his friend Jim Brass who had not in the picture. Jim was not unavailable the day the photo was taken because he had been out at Lake Mead fishing with the man who would become mayor of Las Vegas. Several years passed, when his friend Jim Brass died in the line of duty when a crack addict had held several hostages and the police at bay for several hours for reasons unknown. The crack head fired the fatal head shot at Brass with a stolen .22 linked with seventeen convenience store robberies. Jim was dead on impact. Grissom remembered the crime scene as he and another CSI investigated the shooting. He also recalled another shaky eulogy he had given at Jim's funeral.