1

Now in his 30th year, Greg Sanders had seen much pain, suffering and most of all death in his life. There was a time when being a child prodigy was exciting and processing DNA samples completed him, but he had wanted more. The comical relief he once supplied to the lab diminished and he had turned stone cold from the emptiness of three hours of sleep each night. He sacrificed himself to answer the unsolved questions, using his knowledge of the sciences to prove his theories. The only thing that he kept with him from his growth from boyhood to manhood was his love for heavy metal. And it was on an early morning such as this one with the sun already scorching down onto the desert of Vegas, that he could really drown himself in a Marilyn Manson cd. Pondering this idea while he proceeded to leave the lab that was partially his residence, Greg realized a good album would calm his nerves.

In haste he bumped into a day-shift worker just coming on, and although he knew he had seen the woman around the lab, he couldn't put a face to a name. The two of them apologized and the woman quickly dashed off to her lab. He knew she was very attractive and it intrigued him how her neck-length black hair was cut so that it got short it the back. Too tired to think, Greg went on his way to sort out his own issues. Starting his car, he sighed at the starting up of the latest Manson album, this one held so much somber emotions, similar to what he currently held inside. Greg needed something to forget his work; more or less he needed a woman. He rolled down the window of his car, driving off into the direction of his apartment and forgetting the mysterious woman.

The strange woman stood looking into the mirror attached to her locker door. She pulled the long lengths of her hair away form her face into a small ponytail that was held together by multiple bobby pins. Her hair once had been chin-length, but letting it grow helped so that she could get it out of the way when she worked. Due to the changing of her looks and her odd way of doing her job, Ecklie referred to her as the Greg Sanders of day shift. Now that he was moved to fieldwork, she knew that she was the only eccentric lab technician left. She slammed her locker shut and walked to the DNA lab that she virtually lived in. The pile of files let her know that it was going to be a long day.

In her own 30 years, she had watched her parents' marriage fall to pieces, due to her mother's overbearing personality. Greek woman should never be in union with Italian men, she had learned this very early on in life. No, it wasn't a frequent occurrence in the whole nationality; she knew it to be only her mother. Frankie Bentivegna moved herself into the forensics field, after much confusion on her decisions. In her freshman year of college, she went from one extreme to the next, English to chem. then Philosophy and then back to Chem. It had taken her too long to figure out and when she was months away from getting her undergraduate degree, she was hit with a life-changing surprise. She had only moved to the desert of Nevada to be as far away from her mother and two older brothers Johnny and Anthony as possible. Her Eldest brother Vinny and her father Mario had opened a hotel-Casino, which meant that Frankie and her other brother Alexander had to keep the two in line.

Frankie pressed play on the CD player that she had put a misfits cd into and got down to work. DNA never ceased to amaze her, and the on-going joke between analyzers was that investigators checked under the stove for semen. The day shift workers were repulsed by her music and often spoke down to her, a trait she observed that was taught by Ecklie. She was trying to transfer to swing so that she could be in the middle of things, rather than have day shift always ragging on her. It would be nice to see Hodges every once in awhile. Not many workers requested swing, so she assumed she was in the clear.

Footsteps echoed across her lab as her shift was nearing its end. Without looking up from her microscope she spoke, "Why are you here so early?"

"Stokes has been hounding me for results of his last case, so I decided to come in." the man answered.

Frankie noted the results she was finding from the skin cells that had been found at one scene. Technically this was trace but since it was of biological material it fell under her jurisdiction. Her only dilemma was that looking through a comparison microscope she found no matches. This was bound to be just one of those cases.

"You know Hodges, maybe you should lighten up a bit more and they'll start to like you." Frankie told the man that rarely anyone could stand for too long.

"Frances—"

She corrected him. "Frankie."

He sighed; she was never going to get over the fact that her first name was beautiful. The scientist before him having grown up with four older brothers had been a project of her environment. Yet even despite the boyish characteristics she possessed he had seen the internal feminine instincts buried deep below, that Hodges was certain only came from being a mother. He was never going to understand her.

Hodges leaned against the doorway to the DNA lab, watching Frankie finish up her work and put her results into the out bin. He wondered if she'd ever switch to nightshift, she had the capabilities to get much done and they needed more help. "You know, they'd like you, you're just like Sanders when he worked DNA."

"Yeah, what happened to him again?"

"Oh he got a taste for fieldwork. Have you ever considered that?"

Frankie opened the next case file with the sealed DNA sample taken from a suspect. She logged in her signature and began to process it to compare to the samples she had processed weeks prior. "My life's too hectic to be on call, Hodges."

"Do you still live on the strip?"

She shook her head, but her full focus remained on her task at hand. Frankie was a person who had the ability to focus on a tedious task while holding a straightforward conversation with someone. "'Left the strip two years ago, it became too hectic living in my father's hotel and casino."

Hodges knew he had to begin his work and bid Frankie goodbye. She in turn shook her head at him, Hodges didn't have much people skills and she had always blamed that on the lab. Having grown up in a large family, Frankie had learned the differences in all personality types and how to deal with each. Even so, there were some things in life that completely baffled her and one of them being why it was a privilege to pay more to go to a school where scholastics were of the utmost importance. Or why young boys of single mother parents constantly questioned the idea of their birth fathers. It was something she was forcing herself to learn on her own.

Frankie wrote out her notes for the case, waiting for results that she knew might not be done by the time her shift was over. That was the price of being a scientist. Another set of footsteps entered the DNA lab, and she looked up to see a familiar blonde woman standing there. Out of all of Ecklie's lackeys, Sofia Curtis was one of the only ones she could stand, and now that she worked with the night shift none of the day investigators gave Frankie respect. Another acceptable reason why she should switch to swing shift.

Sofia cleared her throat, "I hear you're asking to be put on swing, nobody asks for that."

"Well you know how day shift treats their analyzers, and it will be easier to raise my son if I can see him off to school and pick him up from practice before I have to go in." I explained.

"Ecklie's going to want to talk to you, you might be better off just switching to night shift."

Frankie nodded, checking on the machine running the test for her DNA sample. It gave her the sample back, processed and ready to be compared to the other. Sofia became forgotten as Frankie began to make her comparison analysis on the two samples. It was a match. She filled out the rest of the file, putting it in the out bin for whoever was on the case to take. Frankie cleaned up her station, unplugging all machines so not to waste the lab's electricity. She took her lab coat off and folded it in her arms. Sofia was gone already, but Frankie paid it no mind, she shoved her coat in her locker and pulled the pins out of her short hair. She liked the eccentric edge she gave off. She walked outside to the afternoon sun, got in her car and sped away with Danzig blasting out of her stereo.