1.
"Hi, this is Grissom. Please leave a message." Not again. Sara closed her cell phone annoyed. The third time in a row she went straight to voice mail. Where the hell was her husband? Why he not answer his phone? Or called her back. What was wrong with him? Within the last months her calls went more and more often to voicemail and his calls weren't as frequent as they used to be. And when he called, he had barely any time to talk.
Another try and again she reached voicemail. "It's me, your wife, Sara, if you remember…I wonder where you are…why you don't answer your phone. Call me…soon. Please." She put her cell phone away. This wasn't the marriage she expected to have. Yes, they agreed on a long distance relationship, they were aware it was no bed of roses, but it worked. At least the first year or two. What changed that it didn't work anymore? Somehow she had the feeling, he was hiding something from her and most times, when your partner hid something from you, it wasn't good, was it?
Pushing away her thoughts about her relationship - if you could call it this - she went into the break room to join her team and wait for the assignments for the night. Work was the best way to get her mind off Grissom and their relationship. Nick and Greg talked about college football, Finn and Morgan read a magazine and DB wasn't around. An ordinary evening in the CSI lab.
"Hi guys." She sat down and looked at the newspaper on the table. She read them all, why did nobody get new ones? A doctors office offered better magazines than the CSI lab. Grabbing the TV remote, she switched on the news channel.
"…a plane just crashed down a mile off the Las Vegas Strip. So far there are no reports about survivor and fatalities, as there are no information about the plane. From where I stand it looks like a Cessna crashed into two houses. Firefighters, EMS and police are around, we keep you informed as soon as we get any information…" By now everybody looked at the TV screen and followed the news.
"Shit, that doesn't look good." Nick said.
"Looks like an ugly scene. How many people fit into a Cessna?" Morgan asked.
"Depends on which kind of Cessna it is. From the pictures we saw, I can't guess." Greg answered.
"We'll have plenty of time to have a closer look at it, we go over there." DB said. Nobody noticed him coming into the room. "LVPD requested us, it's our case of the night. Grab your kits and prepare yourself for the scene."
A scene a mile off The Strip. To Sara, it didn't look good at all for the people in the aircraft and also not for whoever was at home. Tuesday night, when accident happened it had to be around nine to nine thirty pm., most people should be at home, watching TV, in bed, preparing for school, talking to the spouse - if the spouse was available. Some seemed to be out of touch. Hopefully the people, who lived in these houses, were lucky people and worked the late shift in some casinos or somewhere else. Probably their only chance to survive.
When they arrived at the scene they had to wait a while for the firefighters to finish their work and EMS to get all injured people away. A dozen casualties in hospital or dead, impossible to tell who was in the plane and who was in the house most times. The fire made it difficult and EMS had other priorities than checking out, who was where when the accident happened.
"Two houses burnt down, two dozen others are damaged more or less, we have three cars burnt, fortunately it looks like nobody was in there, various eye witnesses, who told me, the plane came down and crashed into the houses. It was supposed to touch down on LAS, came from San Francisco. At the moment we've no idea about who was in there, it was a private plane. The pilot didn't call for help, didn't call the tower and honestly I doubt, he mistook The Strip for LAS." Brass said.
"If he mistook The Strip for LAS, he came from another direction, had crashed down north or south of it, not west." Sara answered, her eyes on the scene.
"Exactly. Well, it's your job to get answers from what is left of the plane and the buildings, I talk to more witnesses and victims. So far four are dead, two of them were kids. If they belong to the plane or house, I don't know."
"We work on that." DB looked around. "We start here, the firefighter are done, as soon as they leave the field for us, I want you to work on the plane. The answers should be there. The plane crashed into the houses, not the other way around, so it's likely, whoever or whatever was on the plane, caused this."
Unless somebody made the plane crash down, Sara thought. Somebody with a weapon big enough to get the Cessna into trouble, make the pilot lose control and crash down. A laser pointer? A riffle? Did the plane ran out of kerosene? Or the pilot lose conscious? A lot of questions and the after the firefighter extinguished the fire, a lot of evidence was gone or contained. Not an easy case to work.