A crackling speaker blasted an Aerosmith song to one side of the room and a wash of blue and red light covered the scene. Gil Grissom stood at a cocktail table of the Diamond Club, his back to the lone brunette dancing on the main stage. He pulled a road map out of his jacket pocket and smoothed it over the sticky surface of the table, tracing his finger along I-95 North from Las Vegas towards the small black dot of Gold Center. He pressed his thumbnail next to the scale bar and used it to estimate mileage for the upcoming trip. Easy route. And just over 100 miles from his current location. His scanner buzzed and sputtered at his belt and he turned the volume down, eyeing the practically empty club around him. A few older guys were seated at the bar, more interested in the basketball game on the TV overhead than the in-house entertainment.
The way things usually unfolded around a competitive group of workaholics, Gil had come to owe Detective Tadero a favor. This translated to him meeting a friend of his named Catherine Flynn to help review her senior research thesis whenever his schedule at the crime lab allowed. She was finishing the Medical Technology degree she resumed last fall and the program had some overlap with the rapidly-developing science side of law enforcement. Catherine was confident she'd finish her paper revisions in time, she just needed fresh eyes on it and her department head didn't have much experience outside of the hospital trauma department. She was the one to suggested Gil meet her at the club when she got off work. Her short list of job perks included free burgers and onion rings for both of them, plus it was close to her bus stop home as opposed to the WLVU campus library on the other side of town. He usually showed up fifteen minutes after her shift ended which gave her enough time to change into her normal clothes and shift her brain into school mode.
Usually, but tonight was different.
Thirty minutes earlier, Gil was at a station in the lab finalizing the prep-work for a twelve-hour serology assay. He had filled a series of blood vials to 50 milliliters and checked that they were labeled in proper order, starting with the Control up to the tenth level of the treatment. He taped a handwritten "Do Not Disturb! -Grissom" sign to the table, gathered his jacket and thin leather portfolio from his locker, and headed to the front desk. He was clocking out of his shift when his supervisor Jim Brass approached him.
"Grissom! You got plans tonight?"
Gil removed his punched time-card. "Sort of. Why?"
"Want to turn some stones in the desert?" He was pretty sure Gil would be up for another shift but he supplied more information while the details were still fresh. "Incoming small aircraft lost its cargo on he runway in Gold Center."
"And that pertains to us how…?" He pulled his round plastic frames from a pocket and returned them to his face.
"You're gonna like this. The plane was transporting boxes of weathered human remains found by the Park Service up in Black Rock. It was actually on its way to us before the cargo hatch popped at their refueling stop. Runway is littered with bones and we just got the go-ahead to mobilize our cadets."
Gil slid his time card back in to the machine without much thought. It marked the beginning of a new shift with a crisp efficiency. "My truck's still loaded. I'll drive."
"Good, because I already started your overtime authorization form. You can turn in the expense sheet for the gas receipts, too." Jim had enough paperwork to get off his desk, might as well share some of the suffering with Gil.
They made their way across the parking lot towards Gil's weathered green pick-up truck. Jim moved a pile of junk mail from his seat before getting in the passenger side. "Back up a second. Did you say you actually had plans tonight?"
Gil released the parking break with a thunk and started the truck. "I was going to meet with someone after her shift to look over her research paper. She'll understa-"
"Wait, she?" Jim interrupted in disbelief. He thought he'd gotten to know Grissom pretty well over the last couple of years but had never heard him mention rubbing shoulders with anyone outside of work. And definitely not a She.
Gil shifted the truck from neutral and roughly pushed it into first gear. "She's a friend of Tadero. Interested in becoming a criminalist." The truck jumped a bit as he shifted to second, then third gear.
"Oh yeah, I remember that bet. Good thing you're not a sore loser. What's she writing about?" Jim stayed current on the latest technology by asking these types of questions instead of taking the time to process the latest forensics journals.
"Her paper covers pretty standard blood spatter interpretation methods. She wrote a section at the end proposing a uniform shorthand for reporting the minutiae of spatter conditions. More specifically, to use when coding to that new case organization computer program. It's pretty good stuff."
Jim considered this and, after a beat, said "You can't just leave her hanging. Let's bring her with!"
"You think so, huh?"
"More hands on deck mean less time you and I have to spend freezing our asses off in the desert. If she's okay with you and Tadero, she's okay with me."
Gil nodded his compliance and changed his route so they could pick up Catherine before driving to Gold Center.
Catherine stepped down from the Diamond Club stage earlier than usual. The place was dead tonight and it didn't help that some moron had played "Sweet Emotion" on the jukebox three times in a row. She leaned at the end of the counter and called to the bartender. "Lou? Can I get a cup of Diet? Extra ice, please." Her last request was drowned out by a few cheers over the Lakers game.
"Sure thing, Catherine." The young bartender set her drink in front of her and added a red straw to it. "Fourth quarter can't end soon enough, you know?" The few customers they had tonight ignored the girls all shift and weren't tipping nearly enough to make it okay. If they were Knicks fans he might have been in a better mood.
Catherine gave him a sympathetic look and brought her drink with her to the dressing room down the hall. She sat on an old bar stool to take off her heels and checked the clock over the door. Gil wasn't supposed to arrive for another twenty minutes. She took her time pulling on a pair of skinny black jeans and a Rolling Stones tank top over her shimmering blue stage wear. She crunched the ice from her drink between her teeth until her gums went numb. It had replaced a casual coke habit last year, once she decided to go back to school and finish her degree. Probably not the best for her teeth, but at least this new habit wasn't going to screw up her career goals. Her hair was too short to tie up so she ruffled it a bit and promised herself to wash it when she showered at home. She closed her locker, hung her red backpack over her shoulder, and returned to the main room of the club. Back to the grind.
"You're early!" she greeted, surprised to find Gil already standing at their usual table in the corner. He looked like a lost hiker searching for the trail to Red Rock Canyon with his boots and fleece-lined flannel and a crinkled map on the table.
He straightened and turned to face her. "How would you like to work a case tonight? Road trip."
"You don't have to ask me twice. Are we leaving now?" Tadero's promises were starting to materialize after all.
Gil nodded and folded the map messily. "Supervisor Brass is riding with us. He'll brief you in the truck."
Catherine recognized the name from earlier conversations and would finally be able to assign a face to it. She waved to Lou behind the bar as they left, only a little disappointed that she probably wasn't going to get dinner tonight.
Jim was leaning on the warm hood of the truck as he ended his radio conversation. "Roger that. ETA is oh-230. Over, out." He absentmindedly flicked the antenna a couple times and scanned over the neon lights outside the club. When Gil mentioned they had to pick up this girl at work, this was definitely not what Jim had assumed. The freakshow he encountered working Vice the previous decade desensitized him to most impropriety anymore. And hey, whatever Grissom was getting them into tonight could make things more interesting.
The solid metal door of the club swung open and hit the adjacent brick wall, the busted door spring no longer doing its job. Gil and a shorter woman walked towards the truck and Jim extended a hand to her. "Jim Brass. Thanks for joining us on such short notice." She shook his hand firmly with a wiry but muscular arm extending from a Stones tank. Did anyone appreciate American rock anymore?
"Catherine. Flynn. Happy I can help." She thought he was dressed more like a detective, not someone who supervised a laboratory. Detectives all wore those scratchy department-store sports coats with the outlines of their hidden badges made obvious in the breast panel.
Jim opened the passenger door and courteously waited for her to get in, but Catherine wasn't going anywhere. "Uh, what makes you think I'm riding bitch tonight?" She hadn't meant to rock the boat so quickly into the introductions, but she knew Gil's truck wasn't the most spacious vehicle from when he dropped her off at her place a few weeks ago.
"You smoke?" Jim asked her, evading her protest and retrieving a pack of cigarettes from his suit pocket.
Catherine shook her head. "Quit last month." She could tell Brass was about to deliver a load of bull, care of Catherine Flynn.
Gil looked between them in confusion. The two were getting along okay, weren't they?
"Sorry," Brass continued "but I'm keeping my window seat. Wouldn't want to get ashes all over you. Or the truck." This Catherine chick reminded him of someone back in Jersey. If she was tough enough to immediately object to the middle seat, he figured he didn't need to give her the special treatment tonight.
Still, they both knew the upholstery had seen brighter days.
Catherine rolled her eyes and went to stash her backpack in the back of the truck next to Gil's messy pile of gear, resigned to her current place in this new dynamic. Maybe she'd picked the wrong time to quit smoking. She retrieved her last piece of Nicorette from the front pocket of her bag and fastened the window on the truck cap before joining the guys up front. Jim was still standing with the door open, a slight shake of his head as he waited for her to get in the truck. She reluctantly slid into the bench seat, carefully lifting her feet to avoid knocking the shift stick.
"Hey, weren't you going to buy your mom's old car?" she asked Gil as she struggled to dig her seat belt from the crevice of the seat. Over a recent meeting she'd learned his truck was originally used to haul corpses to the body farm he operated years before his position at the lab.
"What's wrong with my truck?" As far as Gil was concerned, it was a workhorse with a winch mounted on the front bumper and plenty of tow hooks welded to the frame. The Chevy vans at CSI didn't have those luxuries during flash flooding and the resulting mudslides.
She clicked in her belt and shrugged. "I dunno. Smells like formaldehyde and dirt." She pawed at the black fuzzy die hanging from the rearview mirror. "But these are a nice touch."
Brass tried to mask a laugh. Tonight was already loads more entertaining than when it was just him and Grissom.
Gil could feel the clutch slipping on the truck as he started it up and got them back on the road. It would be fine for their immediate trip. "Brass, I didn't have a chance to get her up to speed yet."
Jim listed off the sparse details from the call-out to Catherine and checked his notebook to see if he missed anything. "I hope you're not afraid of scorpions or creepy-crawlies because we're gonna be waking them up tonight."
It would take a lot more than that to rattle her. "They're better than the guys I usually have to deal with. Gil, can we stop by my place? I could use some warmer clothes."
"And I need to find coffee." Brass decided. There wasn't a rush since the group of cadets hadn't yet left the station.
They pulled into her apartment parking lot and Catherine retrieved her bag from the bed of the truck. She scaled the steps to the second floor, heading straight back to her and Eddie Willow's cluttered bedroom. He was sprawled in the middle of the bed like a starfish, a striped sheet bunched around his waist. She stood over him for a moment. Weren't couples supposed to stay on their own side of the bed? She leaned down to tap his shoulder. "Ed. Eddie. I'm going back out. Grissom needs help in the field."
Eddie turned towards her sleepily. He blinked, trying to read the digital clock through a cluster of beer bottles on the night stand. "At this time? Fuckin' really, Cath?"
"I need the job experience!" she countered.
"Yeah, well I need a Catherine experience." He sighed and clumsily pulled her down for a dry kiss. They were both night owls but their schedules at home hadn't been aligning lately.
She smoothed his fluff of brown hair back from his forehead. "Ed, that's actually pretty cute. But it's not gonna work." She got up to open her side of the closet and started digging through a basket of shoes. "Don't forget to set the alarm for your studio time in the morning. Eleven, right?"
He turned towards the wall and growled "Yeah. Enjoy your date. Don't let your pal get eaten by coyotes."
Ignoring his remark, Catherine slid into a pair of cowboy boots and pulled on a Harrah's Casino sweatshirt. She found Eddie's black coat in the hall closet and shrugged it on, searching the pockets for paraphernalia. Nothing but rolling papers. Those would have to stay at the apartment. Once the pockets were emptied, she sniffed the inside collar to make sure no suspicious scents lingered in the fabric. She emptied the texbooks from her bag and packed it with a flashlight and notepad. She found her water bottle next to her jogging shoes and a pack of stale graham crackers in the kitchen and locked the door behind her.
The heels of her boots clicked down the metal stairwell and the blacktop softened their sound as she headed towards the truck. Brass was walking from the Quik Mart next door with a thermos of coffee and a slice of pizza. Grissom was topping off the motor oil, irritated by how low the dipstick level had just indicated. Already a half quart down from five days ago.
Catherine was the first to speak once they were on the highway. "So...do you think I'll actually collect any evidence?"
Gil drummed his thumb on the worn steering wheel. He had already thought about how things would play out tonight but forgot to include her in his planning. "Maybe you could help transcribe my field notes?"
Not the answer she wanted, but she didn't say anything about it this time.
Jim loosened his tie and lit a cigarette. "Gil, no one's gonna give a corn cob if she handles evidence. It's the wild west out there." He took a drag off it and cracked the window another inch. "Let her wear your Forensics jacket once we're on the scene." He turned to Catherine and added "It'll make you seem more official."
Gil glanced at his passengers. "Sure. But you have to put my name on anything you collect, Catherine." He didn't want unnecessary questions when the time came to log evidence back at the lab.
She chewed her gum and nodded ahead. An extra jacket would be nice and she could do whatever was needed if it meant being part of a real project. She had to start somewhere.
Jim leaned against the window. "We're about two hours from Gold Center. If you need shut-eye, now is the time." He learned quickly in boot camp that sleep wasn't a guarantee and you had to get it while it was for the taking.
"Uh, there's a blanket behind the seat." Gil offered. He and Brass weren't accustomed to providing this level of hospitality, however basic.
"Thanks...I'm doing ok." She remembered a story from Tadero involving Grissom and roadkill and imagined the variety of creatures that could have been wrapped in that old blanket. "Brass might make a good pillow if I get desperate." she joked. Jim just kept his eyes shut and grinned, arms crossed in front of him.
Catherine knew she should rest but found the recent turn of events such a rush. And Gil's arm kept jabbing her side as he shifted gears, his focus intent on avoiding the mule deer that often crossed the dark highway. She closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and listened to the block of Pink Floyd albums playing on the radio.
They neared the lights of the runway halfway through Dark Side of the Moon, the transition from highway to gravel road waking up Brass. He leaned forward to adjust his shoulder holster that was jammed uncomfortably at his armpit and announced "The Captain made it clear: local boys are running this show. We're just here for support, so no Us and Them tonight." The makeshift command center at the end of the runway was made up of a few cruisers and the Coroner's van. When they parked alongside the other vehicles and got out they were approached by a man in a wide-brimmed hat.
"I'm Sheriff Douglas." He shook Brass' hand.
"Jim Brass." He motioned to the others in his crew. "Gil Grissom and Catherine Flynn are from the crime lab."
"They told me you had more to spare than three." The Sheriff acknowledged the other two but didn't offer handshakes.
"We have a van of cadets on the way." And they had better hurry up, Brass thought.
"Well we're hoping you can collect your evidence as soon as possible. This airstrip needs to be operational by late morning." His tone turned slightly apologetic. "A hunting charter is coming back from Alaska for the season. Gonna put three on the ground."
He motioned to Jim. "C'mon, I'll catch you up on what I got from the pilot and the maintenance worker."
"Sounds good." Brass followed the man to one of the cruisers.
Gil propped an elbow against the side of the truck cap, visualizing his plan of attack down the runway. He could see the remnants of a black plastic cargo crate under a spotlight on the west side. He decided against parallel transects and determined that a grid would make more passes through the area. Satisfied with that plan, he wrote down a few notes on his clipboard and added "+15 meter buffer zone" to account for anything that might have rolled off the runway and into the desert.
"Oooh, a Piper. Pretty little plane." Catherine said behind him, nodding to the small yellow-and-white striped aircraft. She'd been in a similar plane with an old family friend and his sons when she was on summer break freshman year. Not long after, things got weird with him and Mom so she wasn't sure if she'd get another chance to experience that kind of trip again.
Gil handed her a bucket filled with several spools of thin white cord and grabbed a crate of wooden stakes for himself. "Here, take this. We need to delineate the search grid." He made a last grab for the measuring tape in his field kit and they got to work.
An hour later, the Sheriff made a final announcement before dispersing the mix of local responders and the Las Vegas crew. "Alright everyone, listen up. Grissom and his guys have set up the search area. Keep extra flashlight batteries on your person and watch your footing. If you find anything, even a rabbit skull, collect it using the protocols we established."
Brass hung back at the command center while the others began the search. Site presence went a long way if you wanted to stay in the loop. He ran out of cigarettes less than two hours into the scene, regretting that he didn't pick up another pack with the coffee back in Vegas. Or think to bring a heavier coat. "Gotta love fieldwork." he muttered, blinking into the rickety spotlights that loomed over the small airstrip.
Gil and Catherine worked the grid together and continued meticulously for a few hours. He stopped himself from providing the bone names he knew after she reminded him she had recently taken Human Anatomy. "And I did pretty good on that final." she recalled, collecting a weathered vertebrae and examining it in her gloved hand. She placed it in a manila envelope and jotted down the date and time, substituting Gil's initials for her own in the Collected By field.
He paused his flash of site photos and called over to where she was working. "Remember, it's GG tonight on the labels."
"Yep, I remembered." Catherine was sly about double-checking the stack of envelopes from earlier. She stood and jammed her chilled hands into the pockets of the borrowed jacket, taking in the army of sweeping flashlights around her. Moonlight filled the clear sky and created a purple haze over the mountains. Two years ago, she wouldn't have dreamed of hanging out with cops in the desert at five in the morning. Not sober, anyways.
The pair made their way back to the command center for a break. Gil stowed the spent roll of film in a cooler then joined Jim in the cab of his truck. Catherine put a new pack of evidence envelopes in his field kit. She sat on the tailgate and finished the last of her graham crackers then remembered she had to pee. Too bad the only source of accommodation was the tiny airport at the other end of the runway. She wandered away from the lights of the scene to find some privacy behind a Joshua Tree.
"Have you seen the Coroner around lately? His van was locked and I can't just leave our crate of evidence out there." Gil took a new roll of film from his coat pocket and jammed it into his camera.
Jim ran out of people to talk with and had been in the truck for the last hour. "No. Did you try the airport? The Sheriff humped it over there after he got bored."
"I'm sorry we can't offer him more excitement." Gil faked disappointment.
"Hey, this was just a refueling stop before they were gonna dump the bones at our morgue. Everyone's on autopilot now. How's your new partner doing out there?" Jim asked with a yawn. He reached to turn up the heat.
"Catherine? No issues so far. The cadets have more questions than usual. Most of them for her." He welcomed the break in their questions but it was strange how they recently forgot a few simple evidence collection procedures. What he hadn't noticed was Catherine's recent discovery: if she carried a clipboard and walked with purpose, people assumed she had answers.
"That's too bad. I know how much you love it when they call you Dr. Grissom."
"Yeah, that's exactly it, Jim." Gil stretched his hands over the heater vents and flexed his cold fingers.
Catherine walked back to the truck and stood at Gil's window, waiting for him to roll it down halfway. "Any room in there for me or are we going back out soon?" She was getting a little cold but didn't feel like climbing over anyone.
"Back to it." Gil agreed, turning down the heat on the idling truck. "Don't let this thing run out of gas." he cautioned to Brass before leaving.
By 10:30 that morning, the van was loaded with hundreds of evidence envelopes and was on the road to the Las Vegas morgue for processing. Gil packed up the last bundle of flags and wooden stakes the cadets had collected. He sat on the open truck tailgate to rest his worn out knees and to amend his drawing of the site. His proportions of the runway were a little off but it would work for a rough sketch. If anyone wanted a better picture of the mishap, he'd have Newsome at the County Engineer's office clean it up on the computer in the CAD program.
Catherine said her goodbyes to a few of the cadets and hopped up to sit on the tailgate next to Gil. Her throbbing feet swung in time with the rumbling engine. "Hell of a day. Well, night." She would need to find a better pair of field boots if this was going to happen again.
Gil snapped his metal clipboard shut with a noncommittal hum.
Technically, the sun had risen a while ago but was just now becoming a sharp spike of orange as it breached the saddle of the nearby mountain. Brass put on his dark aviator sunglasses. He recognized the yawns and bleary eyes from Gil and Catherine. "You two look like the Coroner ran you over on his way out. I'll get us back to Vegas in one piece." He didn't let on that he had napped a few times throughout the night.
Gil tossed him the keys and got in the other side, moving over to the center once he remembered they had an extra passenger. Catherine noticed Brass was a little uncomfortable having to operate the gear shift so close to his co-workers' knees. Gil seemed oblivious to this unspoken violation in Guy Code and fell asleep within a few minutes. She also drifted off once she read the sign for "Las Vegas: 45 miles".
Jim cruised for a while but noticed the engine temperature gauge was slowly rising from the normal marker. The check engine light was permanently on in Gil's truck so he wasn't concerned until it started to flash and the needle neared the Hot indicator. Not good. He cursed under his breath and added "Told you to fix that, Grissom." He slowed the truck and parked it on the shoulder of the highway.
Gil woke up and took in their current location. "What...why'd we stop?"
"Because you didn't get the radiator leak plugged. You still have that jug of engine coolant in the back?" Brass was annoyed but kept his voice even. Getting pissy over predictable Grissom behavior wouldn't make his mission to get them home any easier.
Catherine heard the commotion through her nap and stayed in her spot against the door.
"Yeah, let me out. I'll go find it." They both slid out of the drivers side and Jim opened the hood to expose the engine. Gil went to the back of the truck and scrambled over the mound of gear to get to the gallon of bright green coolant. He poured most of it into the steaming reservoir, losing some along the way without the use of a funnel. "It's a slow leak. We'll make it back without overheating again."
Jim slammed the hood closed and got back in the drivers seat after Gil. "Just another ten miles to go. This break-down would be a whole different story if we were in the heat of summer." When they got closer to town he asked "You guys up for breakfast at Frank's?" Everyone agreed it was a good plan so he took a side road to get them to the greasy spoon off the Strip. They were seated at a booth near the dessert display case.
Orders were placed, and Brass excused himself from Catherine's side of the booth to catch up with a beat cop who waved him down across the room. She looked over the mix of cops and locals in the diner. This place would be a goldmine for networking. The guys seated at the counter were talking the ear off of the woman at the cash register. Their bad suits told her they'd spill some case details.
"Catherine, I'm sorry we didn't get to your paper review last night." Gil said, looking up from his mug of decaf.
She couldn't believe him. "Are you kidding me? This was way better! We'll reschedule soon." she assured him.
He pulled a postcard from his jacket pocket and wrote a name and phone number on it in green felt-tipped pen. He slid the card across the table. "The lab is growing and we're always looking for help. Call and ask for our hiring director closer to your graduation, if you want."
Catherine took a sip of her Diet Pepsi and picked up the postcard. "I really appreciate that, Gil." She turned it over. "San Francisco, huh?"
"It's a beautiful city." he quietly replied, watching the construction cranes at work across the street. The Vegas skyline changed a little more every month.
"Pretty soon I'll be picking up a few hours at the French Palace. I need to pay off last semester before the bill collectors get to me." She continued to fill the silence as he looked out the window. "My friend Steph says it's a lot better than the Diamond. Closer to my side of town, too." That, and Eddie's music production wasn't taking care of the bills. High studio fees were his latest excuse. "I will eventually be taking you up on that phone number, though."
Gil smiled at her and looked down at the line of red and black card suite symbols printed along their paper placemats. He knew from his time at the Golden Nugget poker tables that a paycheck could simply be a step to getting other things done. Back then he could exist for hours with bare-bones communication: nods and single words as he rounded up extra cash for his body farm.
Brass walked back to their booth and scanned the dining room to see if he knew anyone else before sitting down. "No surprise I ran into Williams here. They should give that guy a desk behind the pies. It's basically his second office." He laughed at his own joke and reached for two packs of sugar to mix in his coffee.
Catherine's eyes brightened at his jab to whoever Williams was. Working with Brass kind of reminded her of the girls back at the Diamond. Their light pettiness was a pain sometimes but it built camaraderie during the worst shifts. Gil was too tired to supply any acknowledgement and wondered how Brass was still so awake.
The three ate quickly when their plates arrived, each thinking about their next move that morning. Catherine's first priority was the short stack of blueberry pancakes in front of her. Next, she'd need to drop the rent check off to her landlord. And shower. And sleep for the first time in over 24 hours. Anything else could wait until those needs were fulfilled.
Brass dug in to his rib-eye and eggs, too hungry to bother the waitress for steak sauce. He was going to duck in to the lab only long enough to turn in his end-of-shift paperwork. Then he would go home and set up camp on his crumbling backyard patio to finish the last of his Christmas Scotch before sleeping.
Grissom picked up a piece of wheat toast and warily eyed the accompanying cup of diced melon. There was no way the fruit was fresh cut. He had the next day off of work so he planned to empty the gear from his truck and see about a second-hand Mercedes. He was certain his trusty pick-up would make the trip out to his mother's house in Marina Del Rey.