The Mason Jar Restraunt was located on Canyon Road off Interstate 15 into California south of Las Vegas. Truck drivers often stopped here and so did tourists looking for one last meal after losing fortunes in Las Vegas or going there in hopes of striking it rich. The small restraunt was about the size of a former railroad passenger car with counter seats and tables overlooking windows pointed on the Las Vegas skyline. It was almost the view one might have expected in Ancient Greece as long gone paganists looked up to Olympus or Chinese philosophers looked upon Mount Kun-Lun for advice from their own immortals. Las Vegas beckoned with promises of fortune to many patrons at the Mason Jar.
It wasn't just the view of the neon-lighted sky or the bright Las Vegas landmarks that made many a driver stop here. It was the home-style meals, the celebrity photos autographed by actors and singers and the hope for a really good dessert. Ruby Hollander who owned and ran the place was very proud of her cakes and pastries. The local Canyon Community newspaper had applauded her often for the meals and dinners out of the Mason Jar and the community awards on her kitchen wall were proof that she was very much liked by her patrons and raged upon by her new customers. When she heard that actress Susan Sarandon raged on her diner to her actress friends on Late Night with David Letterman, she knew she was an overnight success. She was running out of space for all the autographed photos on her walls. Several regulars wished she opened another place closer to Los Angeles, but she knew that was impossible; she couldn't control her quality of service from two places at once.
At lunchtime, the line at the door often reached down the street, but an hour to closing, business dropped off and Ruby's daughter, Charity, started washing dishes. A few truck diners crowded at a table in raucous laughter before realizing they'd be hitting the road again. Ruby freely refilled their cups with decaffeinated coffee knowing how to treat her patrons. She laughed out loud to their bawdy jokes and squeezed past her eighteen-year-old niece, Patience, bussing tables.
Another table away, William Pryde and his wife, Prue, sat with their two girls. The younger one fidgeted and the eight-year-old went under the table pursued by her mother. William just studied the map for Anaheim and hoped he didn't get lost along the way again. He had promised his daughters a trip to Disneyland and he was going to get them there. Another restraunt patron salted his fried eggs and sliced them up with his steak. At another table, a gambler named Jerome Howard played with a calculator to perfect his system and paused to mix his peas and asparagus with his mashed potatoes. It was into this family setting that a strange figure invaded looking for solace away from the dust and loneliness of the road. He had arrived by Harley Davidson, a sectioned out chopper with thinning black paint and patched leather seats and entered in faded blue jeans, black t-shirt and dirty leather jacket. Dropping the jacket over his seat at the counter, he stroked his dark goatee and peered over the menu in his fingers with moderate interest. His presence was distant and surly, but Ruby thought she could break that dark exterior and get him to open up like a son.
"Hi." She laid out a napkin with a fork and spoon. "What'll you have to drink?"
"Let's see…" The motorcyclist knew what he wanted. "Steak and eggs, hash browns, side of ham, two pork chops, white rice, stuffing, mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole, squash casserole and a beer."
"We don't have beer here." Ruby answered. The stranger looked back at her as if it was just another disappointment in a long line of disappointments.
"I'll just take some of that coca-cola stuff." He answered. Ruby just beamed friendlily at his massive appetite and didn't worry if he'd eat all of it just so long as he paid for it. Her daughter Charity had emerged from the back kitchen with a glass mug of soda for the figure in black. The dark haired figure took the drink with restrained interest and sipped it as if he wasn't used to it. Faint words mumbled from his lips and he sighed pretending to be interested in the artwork on the menu.
As one patron paid his bill as the register and departed, an open convertible Mustang painted in different shades of blue pulled up outside and its young passengers jumped and scrambled from it lacking in human value or moral ethics. One of his passengers cursed at the motorcycle outside the front entrance while his cronies stormed the restraunt angry at the world for refusing to bow to them. Their undisputed leader pushed ahead as William Pryde looked up and pulled his daughter close to him, but the young punk instead headed straight to the motorcyclist and invaded the tall figure's personal space looking to create an incident.
"Hey, is that your hog out there?" Joey Vasquez sneered with disrespect to the cyclist. "You cut me off at the crossroads."
"You should have stopped at the sign." The motorcyclist answered.
"You telling me how to drive?" Vasquez was backed by Kenny Groth and Frank Wright, two other high school dropouts under the deluded notion that a high school education was a waste of time and fear and intimidation was all they needed.
"Hey," Ruby's husband, Jack Hollander, called through the order window at the pieces of human trash. "I don't want you punks harassing my customers."
"Shut up old man or else I ventilate your stupid trailer!" Vasquez shot a look of human disrespect and turned back to his new source of hated. "How bout it, biker-man? You got what it takes?"
"I'm giving you one chance to walk way." The biker sipped his soda as Ruby waited fearfully to give the man his sizable dinner. "You don't want to go there. How about you do something smart for a change because if you mess with me, you won't see another day."
That was the wrong thing to say in a volatile situation with a teenage youth wanting to die in a blaze of glory. Striking the glass of soda from the man's hand, Vasquez reached to his back as Groth pulled out his choice of a problem-solver in the form of an automatic .38 revolver. Prue Pryde hit the floor under her table as her husband shielded her and her kids. Howard tried to bolt for the door and one of the truckers backed by his peers rushed for the teenage gangster wanna-be. The world was showing another part of its ugly side and as usual it came from one of the inhabitants of it trying to live far beyond it. This was the side that Gil Grissom saw all the time. He served as the janitor who had to clean it up and as the translator who had to decipher it for a society who had not yet understood why it still happened. In this world, there were cast off pieces of former human individuals who forgot they were people and had shed all aspects that had once made them human. Instead of trying to regain the aspects that once made them normal, these former members of the human race instead strove to destroy anyone normal and to eliminate all who got into their path. The once loved site of the Mason Jar was now surrounded by police cars both local and state, five ambulances and three cars from the Criminal Science Lab. Backed by his entire night shift, Grissom and his staff stood as a wall to separate humanity from the underworld that would destroy human society. Catherine Willows looked toward two crying young girls and Sara Sidle started snapping pictures. Nick Stokes struggled to pull on his CSI jacket as Warrick Brown still wondered if things were getting worse. After both Columbine and the destruction of the World Trade Center, he still wondered why there were people who considered human life as disposable objects. Their guide to the scene of human sorrow and degenerated rage was Captain James Brass, a seasoned police officer and former head of the CSI team.
"Eleven bodies…" He tried to stay professional in the face of human sorrow. "Multiple gun shots… it doesn't look any better inside."
"Did Ruby make it?" Grissom asked. Jim choked back on his sorrow; he loved her German Chocolate cake.
"Looks gang-style…" Warrick shone his light on the once exquisite restraunt. The bullet hole riddled interior was dark but barely lit by night filling in through shattered windows and holes in the structure. Solitary hanging lights hung with fragments of shattered neon tubes dangling dangerously. Blinds hung through the open windows thrust out by the volume of gunfire. Broken shards from windows, drinking glasses and overhead lights covered the floor, plates of food and obscured bodies in the presence of sprayed human blood. One human body lay on the floor trapped behind rows of stools and the counter. The figure of a larger trucker laid sprawled out in the walkway near the bodies of the Prydes under a table in silenced repose. The body of Jerome Howard blocked the door from opening another foot.
"Nick, Sara, exterior," Grissom slipped into analytic mode. "Warrick, Catherine, outside in…" He paused and sniffed the air blowing through the opened diner and detected something. There was something else to the crimson scent of blood, aroma of fine dinners, heavy odor of gunpowder and gasoline by the entrance. "Does anyone else smell ozone?"