Concatenation

by Burked

Sara's mentoring Greg on an unusual case.

Disclaimer: Insert random legal mumbo-jumbo here.

A/N: Thanks to Mossley for betaing, but more importantly, for pushing, pulling, teasing, cajoling, and any other verb you care to use that means she enticed me to finish it.

Chapter 1

"So, am I your punishment?" Greg didn't turn his head towards Sara when he asked, fearful of the withering look he half-expected. Instead, he trained his eyes intently on the road ahead of them as it appeared in the headlights.

"Punishment for what ... exactly?" Sara asked, without moving her eyes, her face unnaturally devoid of expression. The windows of the Denali were open to let in the cool air of the desert night, and her hair was Medusan strands cavorting in the breeze.

"You know what I mean," he said gingerly, shrugging as he turned his face towards the side window. He wasn't really turning away from Sara so much as he wanted to watch her reflection in the glass. An almost eerie glow emanated from the dashboard lights, turning her pale skin a morbid blue.

"I'd freak if Grissom picked me up at the police station," Greg mumbled.

"It wasn't exactly a lifetime fantasy of mine," Sara replied. She had tried to keep her voice steady, but the tenseness that had settled in her jaw and throat made the words sound harsher than she intended.

"So, anyhow," Greg started, taking a deep, calming breath, "that's what I mean. Having the new guy stuck with you, slowing you down. Your punishment."

"Greg, it's not a punishment to have a rookie assigned to you. It's a compliment. Why would Grissom want you to work with me if he didn't have confidence in my abilities?"

"So you don't mind?" he asked eagerly.

"I didn't say that," she said, instantly drawing a hurt puppy look from Greg. But she smiled, drawing an identical reaction from Greg.

"Just a few ground rules. First, I drive. I always drive. That means you don't drive. Clear so far?"

Greg nodded uncertainly, leaning over slightly to look at the speedometer, drawing a sideways glare that snapped him immediately back into place.

"Second, you observe, unless I tell you to do something. You don't do anything, and I mean anything, unless I tell you to. When I tell you to do something, do it."

"That's cool. I'd rather do that than have to tell Grissom I screwed up something."

"Good attitude," she said, nodding.

"Did you hear about what happened in my first proficiency test?"

"I won't even lie to you. Hodges told everybody," Sara admitted.

"No one told me you couldn't even take a leak at a crime scene. Grissom just left me there by myself, so there wasn't anyone to ask."

"He left you alone at a crime scene?" Sara asked incredulously. Not only was it unusual to leave a rookie alone at an active scene because of their lack of experience, but also she thought that what had happened to Holly would have still haunted Grissom. She knew it affected her, and she never even met the rookie CSI who was killed at a crime scene.

"Yeah. That suck-up Hodges acted like it was common knowledge. Like I was some sort of idiot. The bathrooms were a long way from the place we found the body. There had to be hundreds of people who used it that night. It just didn't seem like one more was going to hurt anything."

"Well, Greg, all you really have to remember is that you can't help but change a scene when you go into it, especially once you start processing it. You do everything you can to minimize that. Next time, if you are in that position, and there's nowhere else to go, just process the bathroom before you use it."

"Yeah, I got that from Grissom ... after I failed the test. He didn't even acknowledge that my screw-up actually helped us identify physical evidence."

"I think you're going to find that Grissom is the same to us as he was to you when you were the DNA analyst. You won't hear much about what you did right. At least not often. He assumes that you know that if he doesn't say anything, you're doing a good job."

Sara pulled the SUV alongside the curb, parking behind the lone police car. Two uniformed officers were covering the two entrances into the house. The one in the backyard was ambling around the lawn, looking for any telltale signs of an intruder. The officer in front was standing on the porch, making notes.

"You call it in?" Sara asked, leading the way up the walk to the front door.

"Yep," the officer answered, finishing his jottings before looking up. "Neighbors said they heard a loud noise like a gunshot, so we came by the check it out. My partner saw the vic through the bedroom window in the back, lying on the floor. So we busted in to see if we could help him. He was already dead, but not by much, so we called Rescue. They just left. And he's still dead," the cop said, smiling slyly at Sara.

"And so the scene's been trampled on by how many people so far?" Sara asked testily, as she made her way slowly into the house, shining her flashlight in an arc across the room, mapping out the most probable travel routes so she could avoid them. "Walk behind me, Greg."

"I know," he answered, a little embarrassed that she gave away his status to the cop.

"Rookie, huh?" the officer asked. "Let's see, me and my partner went in, and two EMTs."

"Where'd you walk?" she asked.

"I'm not a rookie," he said a little gruffly. "We had to clear the premises, and we traveled along the walls, just like we're supposed to."

"And the paramedics?"

"Walked right in like they owned the place," the cop sighed.

"Some of them just don't get it. It wouldn't take two more seconds to preserve the evidence."

"Superheroes," the cop said, shrugging as he withdrew to his post at the door.

She and Greg made their way slowly back to the bedroom, stopping at the door. Sara moved back, and Greg started to go in, but she put an arm out to stop him.

"No, wait. Just look for a few seconds. Take in the whole scene. When we go in, we can't help but change it, so get a good look now. After you're finished looking, take some pictures before we go in. You want to be able to remember and document exactly how it appeared when we got here."

"But the cops and EMTs already contaminated the scene, didn't they?" Greg asked.

"To some extent. Certainly the body's been repositioned. But they haven't changed everything. Familiarize yourself with the room, and what they changed may become obvious to you."

"How come you guys usually just walk in?"

"Because we get a mental snapshot of the scene immediately. Comes with practice," she answered.

Greg nodded and peered intently into the room, moving his eyes over everything, not really sure what he was looking for, but trying to follow her instructions, hoping it would all become clearer later. After a moment, he lifted the camera and took shots from the doorway, slowly scanning the perimeter of the room. Sara instructed him to also take shots of the ceiling and floor.

When he was finished, Sara again took the lead and led him on a slow, circuitous path towards the body. It seemed that her flashlight played on everything but the corpse. The anticipation grew in Greg, as though she were tempting him by avoiding the object of their visit. The only view of the victim he had was in the pale, flickering light cast by the television.

"Why don't we just turn on the light?" he asked.

"It's easier to focus on a specific area and see what's there when it's spotlighted. If the whole room is lit up, it's surprisingly easy to miss something."

"Oh," Greg said, nodding, hoping it wasn't considered a dumb question.

Finally, Sara began to run the beam up and down the length of the body. "So, what do you think?"

"I think he has a hole in his head," Greg said noncommittally. "A really big hole."

"It's probably going to be even bigger on the other side," Sara instructed, shining the flashlight on the far side of the man's face, illuminating the edge of what proved to be a substantial portion of skull that was blown away.

"Ow!" Greg said, scrunching up his face in disgust. "That's gonna leave a mark."

"The cause of death isn't exactly a mystery. What about manner of death?" Sara asked. Her voice had the mentoring quality that he had hoped for. He knew by the sparkle in her eyes that there could be more to the scene than it first appeared. He was careful to look around slowly, trying to identify anything that related to the shooting.

"Um, suicide?" he asked, uncertainly.

"What evidence supports that?" Sara asked.

"Well, we didn't see any signs of struggle, or any indication that anyone else was in here. And the cop said that they busted in, which means that there hadn't already been a forced entry that they could use."

"Good. You picked up on that," Sara nodded, earning a self-satisfied grin from Greg. "There are a few problems with that theory that you're going to have to work out, though."

Greg's face fell, and he looked around, almost in panic, searching for something obvious that he had missed.

"Look at where the body is. Okay, now where's the gun?"

"By the bedside table," Greg said, a frown of concentration hardening his face. "But the body is between the foot of the bed and the TV. Too far away?"

"Probably," Sara intoned. "And suicides rarely decide to watch TV while they're ending their lives."

"But then some of the stuff on TV is bad enough to drive someone to suicide," Greg cracked. When Sara didn't join in his laughter, he continued, "So it's murder?"

"Maybe. Could it be anything else?" Sara asked socratically.

"Probably not a gun-handling accident. Gun's too far away for that, too," Greg answered, a little more confidently.

"Know anything about guns?"

Sara squatted next to the weapon, spotlighting it in her flashlight's beam. Greg lowered himself behind her, peering over her left shoulder.

"That's a Desert Eagle XIX, fitted with a 10-inch barrel and a laser sight," Greg stated, with more confidence than anything else he'd done all evening.

"Greg, I'm really impressed! I didn't know you knew so much about guns."

"I have a paint ball gun that looks pretty much just like it," he said matter-of-factly.

"You know what they say about guys with big guns," Sara said teasingly. "That they're compensating."

"There's an exception to every rule," Greg shot back.

Chuckling, Sara leaned in to look at the barrel. "It's probably not stolen, since the serial number isn't filed down. So why does a guy that lives in a dump have a $2,000 handgun?"

"I assume you don't think it's for home defense," Greg posited.

"Not unless he expects elephants to be breaking in. That's a .50 caliber barrel. The shells are so big that the magazine only holds seven rounds. But if you can't kill something with seven rounds from this gun, it can't be killed."

"No wonder he had such a big hole in his head," Greg mumbled. "You think the gun belongs to the killer?"

"Who'd leave behind such an expensive weapon? Even if it belonged to the victim, why did the perp leave it here?"

"Is that a rhetorical question, or do you expect me to actually answer it?" Greg asked.

"I expect you to consider the possibilities."

"Let's see. Um. Maybe he panicked, dropped the gun and ran out when the cops pulled up."

"Possibly. How'd he or she get out?"

"Probably not a she," Greg offered, hoping he wasn't making a mistake.

"Why not?" Sara asked, a hint of challenge in her voice.

"Such a big gun would be hard for most women to handle. It's pretty far from the grip to the trigger, for one thing. And if it's a .50 caliber, wouldn't it have an extremely strong kick?"

"If you're only firing one shot, the kick doesn't matter."

"But it still probably wouldn't be a woman's gun."

"Probably not. Unless she's a big girl, or very experienced with firearms. I've used one of these in target practice."

"Yes, but you're hardly typical," Greg said, winking to make sure that she knew it to be a compliment.

A loud thump startled the two, and Sara drew her weapon and spun smoothly towards the sound, glad she was already in a crouch.

She blew out a breath of relief as she holstered her weapon, and huffed a short, nervous laugh.

"Freaking cat scared the shit out of me!" Greg shouted towards the cat, who was draped leisurely across the length of the top of the TV, its tail swishing back and forth as if agitated, but it's eyes were deceptively droopy like it was half-asleep.

"They do have a tendency to sneak up on you. I used to have a cat, but I gave it to my niece. Too much cat hair everywhere. It would be on my clothes, on my skin, in my hair. I was afraid all that cat hair would contaminate a crime scene, so I gave it away."

"I had a cat once," Greg said uncertainly. He wasn't sure that having a cat as a pet added to or detracted from the iconoclastic image he worked so hard to project.

"Yeah?" Sara asked nonchalantly as she took the camera from Greg's still unsteady hands to photograph the gun before placing it in a plastic bag.

"Yeah. It was demon-possessed though. I'd come home from work or school, wondering what it had shredded that day. Furniture, drapes, clothes – nothing escaped the Claws of Wrath. It even scratched up the walls and wood trim. I kept thinking it would grow out of it, but it never did. By the time the cat was a year old, it looked like Edward Scissorhands had lived there."

"Maybe it was mad that you didn't spend more time with it," Sara suggested.

"I was going to school and working. That's why I got a cat. I thought they were more independent and wouldn't need as much attention."

"That's where you made your first mistake. Just because something's independent and doesn't need attention doesn't mean it doesn't want attention ... when it wants it."

"Ooooh, personal revelation, Kitty Cat?" Greg purred at Sara.

"Bite me, Greg," Sara scoffed.

"Ummm, so bestial of you," he teased, punctuating the sentence with a throaty growl.

"Work!" Sara barked, repaying the cat by startling it. The cat bolted from its perch, sending the TV Guide flying. It wildly zigzagged seemingly randomly before jumping up on the bedside table, knocking off the alarm clock before sprawling out again, looking as serene as it had before.

"The first thing you can do is put that cat someplace else before it completely destroys the crime scene!" Sara shouted. "Find a laundry room or bathroom to put it in."

"Why don't I just put it outside?" Greg asked.

Sara reached out and took the cat's forepaw into her hands, squeezing a pad slightly and noticing that no claws appeared. "No, don't do that. It's declawed. No way to protect itself."

"Bonus!"

Sara shot Greg a withering look, and he relented, scooping the feline up from its resting place. He earned a loud, contented purr as he stroked the cat.

"I've always had a way with pu ..."

"If you say the 'p' word, I'll shoot you on the spot," Sara warned.

"... pussy cats, I was going to say. You have a nasty mind," Greg said as he scooted from the room with the tabby.

Chapter 2

"Another one. I'm starting to lose count," Captain Jim Brass growled without preamble.

Gil Grissom walked next to Brass, the pair followed closely by Catherine Willows, who issued silent directions to the two junior CSIs by pointing where she wanted them. Nick Stokes broke off to the right, and Warrick Brown to the left. The younger men immediately began taking photographs of the dumpsite of what was presumed to be the latest victim in a string of prostitute killings.

"She's number seven. At least she's the seventh victim we've found. Shot execution-style with a large-caliber weapon, effectively removing the face," Brass noted.

"If these weren't working girls with an arrest record, we'd probably never be able to identify them," Catherine sighed.

"If they weren't working girls, they'd probably still be alive," Brass amended.

"At this stage, anyway," Catherine added. "He may still be new at this, snatching easy victims until he gets more experience."

"Or he may have a thing against prostitutes," Brass countered. "Like the Green River Killer. He may even think he's doing the city a big favor."

Grissom stood and backed away a bit while the assistant coroner, David Phillips, and a diener began the process of removing the body.

"Same positioning as before," Grissom noted lowly, as though talking to himself. "The victim is nude, with her hands placed on her breasts and her legs propped up suggestively. It's apparent that he used that pipe for object rape, like the others."

"Sick bastard," Catherine muttered, shaking her head derisively.

"He's probably impotent, and prostitutes might represent sexuality to him. So they enrage him to the point of brutalizing and murdering them. He poses them as lewdly as possible to demonstrate that they are 'whores', not women, in his eyes."

"Good thing Sara's not on this case," Catherine said quietly and gratefully. "This would send her into orbit."

"You say that like it's accidental," Grissom replied, equally quietly.

"So you put her with Greg so that she wouldn't be upset by this case? That was so sweet of you," Catherine said, smiling, but with a mischievous lilt in her voice.

"It wouldn't be prudent to put her on a case that might compromise her objectivity, and therefore her effectiveness," Grissom countered, a bit defensively.

"Yeah, I'm sure that was the reason," Catherine said, turning abruptly to go check on Nick's and Warrick's progress.

Chapter 3

"Sorry I took so long to get here," David apologized as he wheeled the gurney into the bedroom. "Rough night. They found another victim of the prostitute murderer. The media is calling him 'The Street Cleaner' now."

"That makes it sound like he's doing a good thing," Sara huffed. "He's a psychopath, not a do-gooder."

"It's awful what he does. It's bad enough to kill those poor women, but the rest is just ... degrading."

Sara smiled wistfully at David. She had never known a man so sensitive and decent in her life. She'd often wondered how different her life would have been if she'd have fallen for a man like that, instead of a man who admitted that he couldn't risk his job for her.

Once the body was removed, there was much more space in the room, and Sara instructed Greg to retrieve the spool of red string from the SUV. When he returned, she was taking close-up photos of the blood spatter on the two walls mottled with red, as well as the ceiling.

He watched intently as she took a ruler and called out measurements to him, instructing him on how to enter them into the special calculator to determine the angles of impact of each blood droplet. He was at first surprised when she took a permanent marker and wrote on the walls.

"I've already taken shots of the original spatter patterns. Now I'm labeling each and determining the angle of impact. When we're done with that, we can use the information to run string from a sample of spots to find the source."

"Isn't the source the dead guy?"

"Yeah, that's the source of the blood, but we need to determine his exact location at the time of the shooting. And we're trying to find the source of the bullet. To do that, we need to know where the guy was when he was shot, then run a string or a laser from the bullet hole in the wall to his calculated position. Then we get to have some fun with guns."

"Oh, now you're talking my language!" Greg beamed, wriggling his eyebrows suggestively.

Sara ignored Greg's flirting. While she didn't see any reason to not have some lighter moments at work despite the morbid nature of their jobs, tonight she wasn't in the mood for Greg's incessant flirting.

"We're going to try to reproduce the amount of damage to the skull, as well as the spatter pattern by shooting from different distances. That, plus the angle of impact, will show us where the gun was, and therefore the shooter. Call Bobby and find out if we have a Mark XIX. If he doesn't, ask him to find one somewhere for ballistics tests. Make sure he knows we need a .50 caliber."

"You got it," Greg said, keeping his eye on what she was doing as he placed the call.

"Did Bobby say we had a Desert Eagle?" she asked as Greg flipped the phone shut.

"He said, 'I wish!' He sounded positively orgasmic about finding one to play with."

"Why am I not surprised?" Sara asked drolly.

Chapter 4

"No, no, listen to this one!" Nick Stoke's voice was booming at what seemed like 120 decibels, still just barely heard over the laughter and gasps for breath. "This dumb bank robber goes into a Bank of America and says to the teller that it's a hold up. She could tell by how he was talking that he was sort of, you know, slow. So she told him that you couldn't rob the bank if you don't have an account there. So he got all bummed and left!"

Gil Grissom had just entered the room, but could immediately tell that he must have already missed several of the tales, because his employees were already red-faced, with some wiping away tears that had been forced out from a long session of storytelling.

"This one guy knew that his clothes would be pretty easy to recognize, so he stripped down to what God gave him," Warrick Brown began.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Catherine mumbled loudly, bringing a new round of chortles.

"Any-way," Warrick sighed, giving Catherine a sidelong glance, "So he goes in and robs a bank, getting 15 grand. Not bad, right? But the cops still didn't have much trouble identifying him. They found him running naked down a street in broad daylight, carrying two grocery bags full of cash."

Greg Sanders waved his hand in the air like an anxious schoolboy with the answer to the teacher's question. Once all eyes were on him, he said, "This dude walked into a liquor store with a shotgun and demanded all the money. After the cashier put the money in a bag, the dude wanted a bottle of expensive Scotch he saw behind the counter. The cashier refused to hand it over, telling the guy that he didn't believe he was 21. The robber swore he was, but the clerk still said 'no'. Finally, the robber handed over his ID to prove that he was really over 21. As soon as he left, the cashier called 911 and gave the cops the name and address of the dude. Now that's one dumb criminal."

"I'm still trying to decide if the clerk was really clever or really stupid," Sara threw in. "Speaking of stupid, back when I was in Boston, there was this guy who stole two live lobsters from a grocery store. He shoved them down the front of his pants," she began to relate, having to stop to get some composure before continuing her tale. "They, uh, well, they sorta latched onto the only things they could find down there."

"Ow!" accompanied by grimaces, was the reaction of all four men in the room, including Grissom.

"The doctors couldn't save his, um, manhood. Do-it-yourself vasectomy."

"When I was still a rookie cop in Dallas," Nick began, "these guys jacked an armored car. They got 160 grand. There were witnesses, but they were just a bunch of Japanese tourists who didn't speak English, so the bad guys ignored them. Turns out that they got about 40 pictures of the robbery, the perps, the getaway car, and their license plate. Duh! Hey, what about you, Gris? You've got to have about a million dumb criminal stories."

"You'd be surprised at how many residence burglars are caught because they decide to take a nap, watch TV or take a bath at the house. Happens all the time."

"Makes our jobs easier that so many of them are so stupid," Catherine rejoined, shaking her head.

"I remember reading that a man in Oklahoma was charged with robbing a convenience store. There wasn't one shred of physical evidence against him – only the clerk's ID. A good lawyer could easily have gotten him off," Grissom began blithely.

Cutting through howls of laughter, Catherine suggested, "You might want to rephrase that last sentence."

Red-faced, Grissom resumed. "A good lawyer could have successfully defended him. There, happy now? You people have a gutter mentality."

"True, but go on with the story," Greg said, wiping tears from his eyes.

"He evidently didn't care for his attorney or his strategy, because he took over his own defense during the trial. He was doing well until the state called the clerk to recount her ID of the man. The defendant angrily accused her of lying and told her, 'I should have blown your fucking head off!'"

"You're kidding!"

"Then the defendant quickly added, 'If I'd been the one who was there, I mean'."

"That guy deserves a life sentence for felonious stupidity," Warrick chuckled.

"It would seem that the jury agreed with you, Warrick. It only took twenty minutes to return a guilty verdict and sentence him to thirty years for a simple convenience store robbery. There are murderers who don't get such long sentences."

"I heard that these two young guys were pulling their first hold-up. They were real nervous, you know? One of the guys yelled out that he'd shoot anyone who so much as twitched. I guess he was serious, because he shot his partner when he moved!" Warrick said.

"Man, that's dumb!" Stokes added.

"If only they were all like that," Grissom replied seriously. "I've come across a few ... very few, thankfully ... that have made me feel like a complete idiot."

"Paul Milander?" Catherine guessed.

"Yes," Grissom nodded. "Not only for not suspecting him right off, but even once I knew he was guilty, I had hell proving it. When he killed himself, I felt sorry for him, but I also felt robbed, because he still beat me. Like he took away my chance to catch him and prove his guilt."

The idea of someone – anyone – making Gil Grissom feel like an idiot made Greg very uncomfortable. If it could happen to Grissom, how could any of the rest of them make it in this job without feeling as dumb as a box of rocks?

"The Strip Strangler was a tough one," Sara said, hoping that it didn't dredge up any residual anger in Grissom. They never really saw eye-to-eye on that case. He had been angry with her for volunteering to be a decoy. She had been angry with him when she found out that he'd gone to the suspect's apartment alone. If Catherine hadn't shown up when she did, killing the suspect, Grissom would most likely be dead now. Just the thought sent an unconscious shiver down her spine.

"At least you finally got them," Warrick said, smiling warmly at Grissom. "Given time, there aren't many perps in Vegas that can outsmart you for long."

"There's at least one who's trying like hell to pull it off," Grissom said lowly, staring blankly into space, obviously lost in his own thoughts.

Sounding maybe a bit too much like the brown-nosing new guy, Greg broke the silence with a too-perky, "You'll get him, Grissom." In his mind, he added, "You have to."

Catherine was right long ago when she explained to Grissom that they were forming a family around him. Greg was the baby of the family, and his security depended on seeing his father figure as indomitable.

In his three decades in the field, Grissom had found that dogged determination, helped along by generous doses of good luck, seemed more likely to crack cases than pure intelligence was. He found it discomfiting to believe that a perp could be more clever, more dogged, and luckier than he was.

Chapter 5

"Enough levity. It's time to get to work, people," Grissom said forcefully, snapping the pall of silence that had fallen over the room. The group visibly straightened in their chairs, assuming a more professional demeanor. "How's your case going, Sara?"

Instead of answering, she looked over to Greg and raised her eyebrows, indicating that she was handing off the responsibility of reporting on their progress to him.

Even as a seasoned DNA Analyst, Greg had sometimes felt nervous when reporting to the group as a whole. Normally, it translated into fidgeting that looked more like hyperactivity than nerves. And DNA was a field that he felt mastery over. He felt tonight much like he had years ago when he was new to the lab, with butterflies wildly propagating in his stomach.

"We're working on it," was the extent of his report, even after taking a few seconds to attempt to collect his thoughts. It didn't make it any easier that all eyes were on him.

Sara could have jumped in to provide the particulars, but she didn't feel that rescuing Greg from his nerves would be constructive in the long run.

"Have you made any progress whatsoever?" Grissom asked coolly.

"Well, sort of. We found the weapon right off, a Desert Eagle Mark XIX. Fifty caliber. It could be a murder, I guess, but we can't find any evidence that anyone else was ever in the room. Until the cops and the EMTs came, that is."

"Suicide?" Catherine coached, then looked over to Sara for any clues that she could read from her body language, finding her pale face an impenetrable wall.

"Might be, I guess. But there are some ... uh ... inconsistencies, I guess you'd call them."

"Like?" Grissom drawled, attempting to elicit more clarity from the rookie.

"Position of the body relative to the weapon. TV was on. No suicide note. No typical pre-suicide activity, like cleaning, paying bills. Stuff like that."

Inside, Sara grimaced, remembering what it was like to be new and be in the spotlight, forgetting even the most basic professional jargon.

"There are only three conclusive manners of unnatural death. What are they?" Grissom asked.

"Homicide, suicide and accident," Greg answered, feeling like he was being given an oral exam in front of upperclassmen who knew the material much better than he did.

"If it isn't a homicide, and it isn't a suicide, then it must be an accident. Like Sherlock Holmes said, once you eliminate all the possibilities, whatever's left is the answer, regardless of how impossible it may seem," Grissom stated, his eyes fixed on Greg. "So, was it an accident?"

"We considered an accident, like a gun-cleaning accident. But the evidence doesn't fit that theory very well, either. Like there wasn't any gun-cleaning paraphernalia around, and there were no fresh prints on the gun, like it hadn't been handled at all that day. There wasn't any GSR on the body, and guns don't usually just shoot all by themselves."

"Then it was murder," Warrick suggested.

"The angles are kinda weird for that. The killer would have to be lying on the floor on the other side of the bed, shooting upward while the victim sat still at the end of the bed, watching TV."

"That's possible," Nick pitched in. "He might have been hiding over there, just waiting for a chance to shoot the vic."

"Yeah, I guess so. But if that happened, then either the bad guy was wearing a space suit, or Locard's Principle doesn't work, 'cause there wasn't so much as a hair, fiber, or skin cell on the floor that didn't belong to the victim or the cat. Plus there was no forced entry, or any sign that another human being had ever been in that house. Just the DB and his psycho kitty."

Grissom slowly shifted his eyes over to Sara, narrowing them down to a contemplative squint as he absently scratched at his beard. She sat impassively, with little expression other than one raised eyebrow. Without saying a word, he felt that she was clearly issuing a challenge to anyone who might think that she and Greg hadn't already explored all the possibilities.

"Sara, do you have anything to report that Greg has overlooked?" he finally asked.

"No," she stated simply.

"So you're stalled?"

"No. We're working it. Greg has evidence in Trace and in DNA."

Sara still had some ancient primal memory of the first time someone showed confidence in her as a new CSI. It was mere symbolism, of course, but it was very meaningful at the time. In her mind, this was Greg's case, not hers.

"Greg has evidence?" Catherine questioned, tilting her head as if there was some part of her that couldn't compute Sara giving the case over to a newbie.

"Yes, Greg. I'm there as a resource, to monitor and mentor. Greg's doing the actual work. I think that's the best way for him to learn."

"On a murder? You set 'em loose on a bar fight or a stolen car or a burglary. Not on a murder."

"No one's said this is a murder," Sara reiterated.

"Well, it's still a dead guy. I think you might be throwing him into deeper water than he can deal with so soon," Catherine said, her focus on Sara. The two women locked onto each other, and the sensation of others in the room faded for both of them.

"I think you aren't giving either one of us enough credit. Greg's doing a good job working the case, and I think I'm doing a good job with Greg. But if you don't agree, you can certainly take it up with my supervisor."

Catherine held up both hands in surrender, though her face showed that she was nowhere near capitulating. It was obvious that she was storing up an "I told you so" for future use.

"Hey, your name is on the case as primary, no matter who's working it. It's your ass on the line, not mine," Catherine avowed.

"Finally something we can agree on," Sara said acerbically.

After a few moments of prolonged eye contact, they broke off from each other, allowing the others in the room to exist again in their realities.

Sensing that he should gain control over the meeting before another tiff could ensue, Grissom began running through where they were on his serial murderer case. Since Sara was in these meetings, he was careful to review mainly the physical evidence, not sharing the crime scene photos. For the others in the group, they were unnecessary; for Sara and Greg, Grissom felt they would be unnecessarily disturbing, considering that they weren't on the case.

Each of the four CSIs assigned to the serial stated what evidence they had collected, and where it was in the sometimes slow, cumbersome processing in the various labs. Evidence wasn't released to transfer to other departments at the Crime Lab until it had been thoroughly processed in the current department. It was necessary for Chain-of-Custody reasons, but it could be frustratingly slow.

There were times when a crime was considered so time-sensitive that those rules were circumvented, such as in an abduction, but they were rare because while "cheating" on the procedures might help the police locate a missing person faster, it could seriously jeopardize the state's ability to successfully prosecute the perpetrator.

After seven victims, each of the four investigators had a mound of evidence flowing through the various departments. Much of their time was now spent keeping up with where each piece was, and whether there was anything definitive found at each stop.

Until they could find a full-time replacement who was able to stick with Greg's old job in the DNA Lab, he would be one of the hardest working men in America, holding down two jobs that each tended to be well beyond 40 hours a week.

It was now his turn to report on where he was with the seven sets of DNA samples submitted for the serial murders.

"You know, it doesn't make it any easier that he picked call girls. It's not that I'm not getting DNA, it's that I'm getting too much DNA. Usually mixed samples are just two sets of DNA, and it can be hard enough to separate those, unless the two donors are different genders. I can pick out the victim's DNA on all your samples, but there are multiple male donors for each."

"I grasp the complexity of DNA analysis, Greg, but I still need to know if you've found anything we can use," Grissom stated with some frustration, not so much with Greg as it was with the futility he was starting to feel.

"I've put all the samples back through using RFLP, to get more data points. As you well know, that process is much slower than the usual PCR process. It could be weeks until we get definitive results."

"And in two or three weeks, how many more women will die?" Catherine asked no one in particular.

"I'm doing the best I can," Greg said, his exhaustion beginning to show.

"I know that," Catherine said, forcing a smile. "I'm just frustrated. Not at you ... At the psycho behind all this."

"Greg, perhaps you should concentrate on the DNA analysis of the serial murders, and let Sara complete your DB investigation," Grissom stated.

"I can do both. Really, Grissom. It's not like I'm in those test tubes, manually breaking apart chromosomes with my bare hands. I've done my part on the RFLP; the rest just sort of happens by itself, until it's time to analyze the results. That's not for a few weeks. I promise I'll have this other thing done by then."

"You 'promise' to have the other thing done? Don't make promises you might not be able to keep, Greg," Catherine advised.

"I'm pretty sure I already know what happened on my case. I'm waiting on all the evidence to be processed, to see if my hypothesis is right."

"You didn't sound like you had it solved when we were talking about it earlier," Warrick said, his voice low and smooth, taking any challenge out of the tone.

"I want to be sure of my facts before I present a conclusion," Greg replied, shrugging.

"I think that's wise, under the circumstances," Sara added, effectively ending the discussion. She didn't elaborate on what she considered 'the circumstances.' They'd find out soon enough.

Chapter 6

"Greg, tell me we didn't just set ourselves up to be crucified later," Sara said, sliding into his DNA Lab.

"No, I'm all over it. I swear."

"Get any reports back yet?"

"Yeah, I just got one back from Trace." He opened the interoffice envelope, scanned the page, and grinned. With a self-satisfied look, he handed the report over to Sara.

"It's starting to look like your theory could be right," Sara said, smiling her approval with him.

"It helps to have a good teacher," he replied, taking on a look that managed to balance the unlikely combination of innocence and salaciousness.

"Okay, what else do you have out for testing?"

"I've got the firearm with Bobby, and he's setting up the ballistics tests for us later. He so wanted to do them all by himself. I was all 'No, way!'"

"You know, speaking of firearms, you're going to need to get certified at the range."

"I already am," Greg replied.

"Yeah?"

"Wasn't hard, considering that I've been playing war games and urban assault with paint ball guns for years. Once I got used to the kick, it was all gravy."

"You're really getting into this whole CSI thing, aren't you?"

"Yeah, but I feel like Grissom would rather me fail, so that he can keep me in DNA and I wouldn't be able to complain. So I'm trying to make sure that I've got all my ducks in a row. Not to be a drama queen, but sometimes I feel like he's gunning for me, and I've got to try to make myself as small a target as I can. Paranoid much?"

"Hey, I'm not the one to tell you you're paranoid. I came in here on everyone's shit list, if you'll recall."

"It's you and me against the world, baby," Greg said in his best attempt to mimic a film noir private detective.

"Back to what you laughingly call reality ... What about the DNA from the floor swabs?"

"They're in the soup now, cooking up genes as we speak. With any luck at all, I'll have the results tomorrow. PCR is so much faster."

"What about photolab?"

"They said I'd have the infrared pics later today."

"Greg, you're doing a great job, covering all the angles."

"Considering my hypothesis, I better have a ton of evidence or I'll be the laughing stock of the LVPD."

"Just don't commit yourself to a single theory until all the evidence is analyzed. It's great to have a working hypothesis, but you can't let it limit you."

"Not a problem. In this case, I'd love to find out that I'm wrong."

"How we coming on the vic's ID?"

Greg pulled out a small notebook and flipped through the pages.

"Um, let's see. Vartan said that the house was a rental, and that the name on the lease was 'John Smith'."

"Unique."

"Six-month lease, paid in advance in cash."

"Wow, that's not suspicious."

"The wallet didn't have any ID or credit cards, just more cash. Lots of it, by the way."

"Missing persons?"

"Vartan hasn't gotten to that yet. I thought I might browse through them later."

"Fingerprints?"

"Jacqui's been tied up with Grissom's case, but she said she'd stay late today and run our vic's prints. She messes with me, but I think she secretly wants to help."

"Yeah, probably to get you out of the lab and away from her!"

"That's so very hurtful," Greg said, feigning a pout.

"What are we overlooking?" Sara asked, her eyes narrowed in thought, looking out into empty space.

"Let's see, Trace, DNA, ballistics, toolmarks, photolab, fingerprints. That's every lab we've got, other than tox and audio."

"Yeah, and Dr. Robbins will run a tox, just as a matter of course, even though the cause of death isn't exactly the mystery of the ages," Sara said. "Oh, what did they do with the cat?"

"Animal Rescue took it. They told me it was in great shape, like it was really well cared for. But it's an adult, so they aren't sure how adoptable it'll be. Everyone wants kittens."

"Tell them to hold it as long as they can, that it's part of a crime scene. Maybe that'll buy it some time."

"Is that a good thing?" Greg asked uncertainly, earning him a glare.

"Just kidding!" he said, but more to deflate her annoyance than because it was true.

Chapter 7

"Victim number eight. This is getting real old, real fast. The Sheriff has basically told me that I better wrap this up quick, or it's going to the Feds, and I could easily find myself teaching crowd control at the police academy."

Grissom looked over at Brass with a pained look on his face. Neither had really spent much time discussing his demotion four years ago, brought about by the death of Holly Gribbs at a crime scene.

The rookie CSI's death was in no way Brass's fault, but as supervisor of the Crime Lab, he was ultimately held responsible, and demoted. The only saving grace was that he was sent to Homicide, a department he had a lot of experience with, making the transition less painful.

But knowing that his career path towards Sheriff had suddenly taken a sharp U-turn, threw him into a state of resignation. If he failed at this investigation and was demoted again, he knew his days at the department were numbered. He'd have to get out while he was still wearing a suit instead of a uniform.

"Jim, we're working on it. I've got four CSIs, including me, working on it every shift, and we're pulling doubles every few days."

"Yeah, 'cause he's killing some girl every few days," Brass grumbled. "What's with this guy?"

"There's more to this than the control issue that serials typically have. They usually like the hunt, the planning, the careful execution of their plan. The anticipation is part of the build-up to the actual event. If anything, the murder itself isn't always the high point of the crime for them. They don't usually rush things like this," Grissom said, walking around the latest corpse.

"What's that tell you?" Brass asked.

"I think there's a rage motivation here as well. He's not doing this for the usual reasons. He's not taking time to enjoy his conquest. He's pissed and it shows."

"Hmmm. You think some call girl set him off? Maybe a trick roll?"

"It's worth a shot," Grissom said, shrugging helplessly.

"I'll check into the last six months of reports of trick rolls. Maybe he just couldn't let it go, and snapped."

"Let's hope you can find something," Grissom said, trying to be supportive, though it didn't come naturally.

"Yeah. You have any idea how many trick rolls have been reported in the greater Las Vegas area in the last six months?"

"I'm guessing quite a few," Grissom answered drolly.

"It's practically an industry here. The out-of-towners might was well wear a bullseye on their chests."

"Sometimes it seems like there are only two types of people in Vegas: predators and prey," Grissom groused.

"What does that make us?" Brass asked, smiling wanly at Grissom.

"Overworked," Grissom answered, unable to decide whether they were most often the winners or the losers in the Darwinian struggle that waged in the streets of Las Vegas every day.

Chapter 8

"Busy?" Sara asked, standing in Grissom's doorway, but purposefully not leaning against the doorframe. If she wanted to change her life, she had to change old habits, especially the ones that were symbolic.

"Just thinking," Grissom answered, not immediately looking at her. After a moment, he found a mental stopping point and rolled his head and eyes around to meet hers. He didn't say anything aloud, but looked at her expectantly, giving nonverbal permission to speak.

"Got another assignment for me and Greg?" she asked. "We've taken our DB as far as we can until we get results from all the labs."

"Nothing at the moment."

"Need any help on your case?"

"No. There are already four CSIs on the serial murderer. No sense tying everyone up. Besides, to be honest, I wouldn't be comfortable involving Greg at this point."

"You mean it's too important to risk screwing it up?" she asked, clearly miffed. "I know he's green, but I think he's doing pretty well on our case."

Grissom exhaled loudly, frustrated at his gift for finding ways to pique Sara's anger.

"We're seven – no, eight – victims deep into the investigation. He'd have hell catching up on everything. Especially since you two would be out of it the second another case came up. He's too inexperienced to float in and out of a case like that, without getting confused."

"He could learn a lot, even if he just observes. It's not every day that we get serial murderers."

"Well, to be precise, on any given day there are typically between two and 12 serial murderers in most metropolitan areas. Las Vegas isn't an exception."

"I know that, Grissom. But we aren't working their cases every day."

"There's no use in either of you working on my case for just a few hours. Surely you can spend the time doing paperwork, prepping for a trial, organizing your workspace – something to fill your time productively."

"I don't sit on my paperwork, so it's all done. I have already prepared all the materials for all the trials scheduled for the rest of the month. And my workspace is just exactly like I want it."

Grissom sighed and shifted in his chair, unsure how to change the tone of their interaction. He was trying to protect her, and yet she was peeved at him.

"Sara, I would prefer for you not to work this particular case," he finally said, not looking at her, but intently watching the pencil he nervously tapped on his desk.

"Why not?" she asked, leaning forward, putting both hands on his desk.

"It's unusually ... disturbing. I've seen how these things have affected you in the past. I see no reason to subject you to it now. Not when we have plenty of other people on the case."

"That's a little paternalistic, don't you think?" she said, standing upright.

"I like to think that it's supervisory," Grissom said, shrugging.

"I'm not some emotional cripple. Yeah, there are some crimes that affect me worse than others. Same's true for you. And Catherine. And the guys. Why's it different for me? Why am I supposed to never be affected?"

"It's not that ... It's just that ... Oh, hell, I don't know why I'm bothering to try to explain."

"Now, that sounds supervisory," she said coolly.

"Your PEAP counselor suggested that I wait a while before putting you on extremely stressful cases."

"Oh, I get it. I get pulled over, one beer over the limit, and now all of a sudden I'm some fragile porcelain doll. God, you'd think that I was found passed-out drunk at my desk, or that I threw up on the Sheriff. It was just a couple of drinks after work – on my own time – to celebrate Nick's almost-promotion. I didn't have any more to drink than Nick or Warrick did."

"They didn't get pulled over."

"Luck of the draw, I guess. Look, my point is that one isolated incident outside of work isn't any reason to treat me like I can't handle my job – no matter what it throws at me. I may get upset that such bad things happen to people, but I'd be more worried if I didn't care."

"So you're telling me that you don't have a problem, that this is the only time you've been over the legal limit?"

"Well, there was that one frat party in college," she said sardonically.

"Sara, you know what I mean. Are you still drinking?"

"Not at the moment," she quipped.

"Sara, damn it! I'm trying to help you!"

"Grissom, you're not my counselor, my priest or my father. If I want or need your help, I'll ask for it."

Sara stopped for a moment, marshalling her thoughts and emotions. She knew it wouldn't help to lose her temper.

"Okay, Grissom. Want to help me? Let me do my job. It's the only thing I do well."

"Labor omnia vincit," Grissom quoted. Work conquers everything.

"Something like that. Look, I think you can understand how I feel. You put a lot into your job, and you get a lot back from it. Same for me. Maybe I'm a little more emotional about it, but I've never compromised a case. You know that."

The incessant tapping of the pencil was the only sound in the room for several seconds. Grissom didn't break off the eye contact this time, with the two of them locked in a nonverbal struggle of wills.

"You'll keep a tight leash on Greg. And you'll let me know if it gets to be too stressful for either of you."

"Of course," she said, smiling victoriously.

"This is what we're dealing with," he said, sliding the casefile across the desk to her. He finally put down the pencil and leaned back in the chair, turned sideways to the desk. He propped his right elbow on the desk, and leaned his cheek into his hand, trying to look casual though he watched her intently as she flipped through the file.

Her first inclination was to examine the crime scene pictures, but she forced herself to skim through the notes first. She wanted to make sure she had the facts before she took in the scenes visually. She was fairly confident that the pictures would be disturbing, and she didn't want to let them rattle her, especially after she had to talk her way into the case.

She flipped through the photographs, immediately recognizing that they were all almost identical, especially considering that the victims' faces were missing, making them look very much alike.

"Well, it looks like all the physical evidence has been processed, or is being processed. What do you need me to do?"

"Find him for me," Grissom said simply.

"Oh, well, sure, if that's all, I should get that knocked out before shift's over," she said, giving the first sincere laugh all evening.

"There's got to be some way that he's choosing the dump sites. Most serials pick places to keep a number of their victims. They only abandon them when they feel they have to. Others leave the victims where they find and kill them. But not this guy. He's killing them somewhere else and dumping them. But not all in the same place. I need to know if there's any significance to the sites he's chosen. You have a knack for cryptology and finding patterns. Give me some understanding of what he's doing."

"Okay, Grissom. We'll get right on it," Sara said with determination.

"Sara, wait," Grissom bade as she swung from the chair towards the door.

"Yeah?"

"Um, how's everything going?"

"Everything?" she asked.

"How's Greg working out?" he asked, turning the question professional at the last moment.

"Fine," she answered, inwardly sighing at Grissom's reticence.

"And everything else?"

"Everything?" she asked again. "Some things are better than others," she answered cryptically, ending the conversation for Grissom since he seemed to find it so difficult.

Chapter 9

Sara headed directly for her workstation and pulled up the casefile on the LIMS computer system, printing out the exact locations of each body dump. She then called up a street map of Las Vegas and plotted the locations.

As she leaned back to take in the completed mapping, she picked up her desk phone.

"Hey, Greggo. What's more fun than solving a murder?"

"Is this a rhetorical question, or do you want a list? I warn you, it might be explicit."

"How 'bout solving a serial?"

"Sara, I'm crazy about you, but you have a very narrow world view."

"Hey, if you're too busy playing lab rat ..."

"Where are you?" Greg asked, suddenly serious.

"My workstation."

"I'm on my way."

Sara tried first to defocus on the screen, seeing if there was anything visually striking about the pattern. She was in an almost hypnotic state when Greg strutted in.

"Here I come, to save the day," Greg sang, harkening back to an old cartoon.

Sara snapped to full consciousness and rolled her eyes, finally settling them on her partner.

"Grissom wants us to find the serial murderer."

"Two-thirds of our crew, a couple of detectives and about a squad of uniformed cops have been hunting them for almost four weeks," Greg recounted.

"We've got until the next case comes in, then we're off this case."

Greg looked at Sara incredulously, and then his face cleaved with a huge grin. His silent laughter finally burst out.

"Okay, Teach. How are we going to find him?"

"With the map," she said simply, turning back to the computer to tap a few keys that sent the monitor's output to a larger screen, mounted on the wall.

"These are where the bodies were found, and I've put numbers next to them to show the order they were found in."

"Looks pretty random to me."

"Nothing's random, Greg. Even the seemingly most random act is based on something. He's choosing the dumpsites based on something. If we figure out what the key to that is, we might be able to find him."

"Okay, what do we look for?" he asked.

Sara took in a deep breath, and then let it out slowly, contemplatively – not taking her eyes off the large screen.

"Anything. Especially if it's a pattern. It can be the street numbers, street names, latitude and longitude, distance from a central point, common landmarks, anything."

"Wow, that narrows it down," Greg sighed, plopping unceremoniously into a chair next to Sara. They were both turned towards the screen, as though watching a movie.

"Let's just jump in and start with the obvious stuff. Write what we come up with in columns."

Sara rattled off the street addresses and Greg transcribed them. They looked at the numbers and the names of the streets, trying to find any correlation between them or symbolism behind them.

"I don't see anything," Greg moaned.

"It's our first go at this!" Sara almost shouted. "You can't get frustrated so quickly. Think of it as a puzzle, like a cryptogram."

"It's hard to think of it as a game when there are women being killed and mutilated."

"Greg, you've got to distance yourself from that. Take my word for it," Sara cautioned.

"Okay, I'll try," he shrugged, not convinced it was possible. "What about central point?"

Sara put her mouse on each point and drew a line to the points that appeared to be "opposite" from it. Soon a tangled mass appeared in the center, but none of them converged on a single point, and the area covered by the range of intersecting lines was several square miles of inner city.

She stored that version of the map for later reference, then deleted the lines and tried another tactic, drawing concentric circles through the points to see if the perp was radiating outward or inward. Again, there was no obvious pattern, but she stored the page anyway.

"How about the order? Drawing a line between them, following the order?" Greg asked.

"Good idea," Sara nodded, tracing along the screen. The lines would veer off, then return and cross each other, with no discernible path or pattern.

"Not so good, after all," Greg said.

"Hey, we're just eyeballing all these right now. We're not discounting anything yet," Sara said, trying to sound as motivating as she could.

"Now what?" Greg asked.

"Common landmarks," Sara answered.

"Road trip?" Greg asked, beginning to grin again.

"Road trip," Sara nodded, grabbing the keys to the Denali before Greg could make a move, and then fixing him with a glare.

"What's the first rule?" she asked.

"Sara drives," he droned as he followed her out of the crime lab.

Chapter 10

The layout room was silent with Grissom working at one end of the lighted table, and Catherine at the other. Tonight, they were examining the clothing from the latest victim. They examined each article under magnification and full-spectrum light, centimeter by centimeter.

Finishing at almost the same time – not surprising after working together so many years – the lab's fluorescent lights were switched off, and they began bombarding the clothes with various wavelengths of light, looking for any anomaly, any shred of evidence.

Not surprisingly, considering the employment of the women involved, there was no lack of trace evidence. On the contrary, as with the DNA Greg had been analyzing, there was too much trace evidence.

But every bit of it needed to be found, catalogued, and analyzed. Sooner or later they would be able to correlate a hair, a fiber, semen, or some other trace evidence, with trace they had collected from other victims.

It might not seem like much, but it would be a huge step when it happened. They would finally know that they have some physical evidence that could tie a suspect to these brutal crimes.

"It's lucky for us that they had on such skimpy outfits. Not as much to examine," Catherine quipped, trying to relieve the stress and boredom with some gallows humor.

"Hmph," Grissom snorted in reply, not really hearing the statement.

After a few more half-hearted attempts at conversation, Catherine pulled off her latex gloves. She put her hands on the small of her back and leaned backwards, slowly twisting from side to side. A few small pops could be heard as she worked out the stiffness.

"I'm going to grab some coffee. Want to take a break?"

"Mm," was the guttural response, indicating that Grissom was merely acknowledging that she spoke, with no understanding whatsoever of what she'd said.

"Yoo hoo! Yo! Gil! Want to take a break?" Catherine asked, raising her voice and waving her arms to get his attention.

"Break? Now? Oh, sure, I guess so," he mumbled, pulling off the gloves and tossing them absently into the bag that stored the evidence.

Sitting in the break room, each with a mug of freshly brewed coffee, the conversation was about as meaningful as it had been in the layout room. Grissom was obviously completely lost in thought, as though he was following a thread through his mind, trying to find its source.

"Where are the Kiddie Cops?" she asked, earning only a confused, blank stare.

"Greg. Sara. The kids. Where are they?"

"Oh. I don't know," he answered, shrugging. "I guess around here somewhere. But Sara's not a kid. She's somewhere in her mid-thirties."

"It was a joke, Gil. A joke. You know. Ha ha? You need to lighten up. These serial cases are always stressful, and it doesn't help that you never disengage from them."

"We don't have time. We've got to get ahead of him."

"So, what do you think about Sara letting Greg run their case?"

"She knows what she's doing," he said noncommittally. "She's watching everything. If he misses something, she'll steer him in the right direction."

"I know she knows what she's doing. But I also know he doesn't know what he's doing."

"Got to learn sometime," Grissom shrugged, still not fully focusing on her.

"I guess it's not too bad if they only have the one case. Anything else come in?" Cath asked between sips of the steaming brew.

"No."

"So what are they working on? They said all their stuff is in the labs."

"Oh, they're, um, working on part of our case," he said, quickly raising the cup to his lips, as though to stifle himself.

"What? I thought you were going to keep her away from this case!" Catherine almost spewed. "And Greg has no business on it at all. That's all we need is to have him pissing all over some crucial evidence."

"Catherine," Grissom said heavily, his voice clearly showing his displeasure at her tone, "They're just working on the map of the dumpsites, looking for commonalities. It's just something to occupy a few hours of their time, and free us up to examine the physical evidence. It's not like I have them processing a body."

"Yeah, well, it was just a few hours ago that you said you were purposefully keeping them off the case."

"I changed my mind," Grissom shrugged.

"Or had it changed for you," Catherine retorted.

"It's not your concern either way," Grissom answered more acidly than she expected. "Just do your job and let me do mine."

"I've been doing my job. I just don't want all our work to be shot to hell by a rookie and a CSI who might not be able to emotionally handle this case. Maybe in the past she could, but now I'm not so sure."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Grissom asked brusquely. "What's so stressful or emotional about looking at a map? What could Greg possibly do to mess it up? Why are you so intent on keeping them out of this investigation?"

"Because I don't want it fucked up," Catherine reiterated.

"Evidence, Catherine. Give me evidence. Show me one time that either one of them has ever 'fucked up,' as you say, a case. Just one example. Just one." Grissom glared in a manner only appropriate between best friends or bitterest enemies, holding up a single index finger to emphasize his request.

"There's a first time for everything," Catherine muttered as she stood, flinging the coffee towards the sink and dropping the styrofoam cup in the trash on the way out of the door.

"I hate it when they do that," Grissom said to himself, his head shaking back and forth. "They say things, then walk out before I can answer. They get mad or get hurt and then just disappear," he continued, as though explaining the vagaries of women to a neophyte.

Chapter 11

The other four CSIs had already gone home by the time Greg and Sara returned. They had actually made two rounds of all the dumpsites: one while it was dark, and another once the sun had risen. The differences in the appearances and characters of the streets between night and day couldn't be more polar.

Before returning to the lab, they stopped off for some breakfast at the diner. Not only were they hungry, but they were purposefully attempting to avoid the other CSIs on the case by staying out past the end of shift. They had every intention of working several more hours on the case, hoping to get some sort of break before the next shift, and the new assignments it would bring.

They spent the time they were at the diner bantering back and forth about anything they could think of that didn't involve work. They spoke of movies they'd seen recently, new CDs they'd purchased, old friends they'd talked to, and anything else that popped into their thoughts. It felt good to talk to someone about mundane things, unimportant things, but feel like the other is interested in every word.

Once they returned to the lab, they downloaded the digital pictures. There were 16 pictures for each site – eight each for day and night. They stood at the location each body was found, and took pictures of the entire area around them, turning 45 degrees more for each shot until a full circle was completed.

They lined up the eight shots for each of the eight locations, forming a 64-picture grid on the monitor. They went column by column, comparing the landmarks of the locations –a common view, the same type of gas station, a liquor store, a bar, a topless club, a bank, a church, anything that was in common.

They would hit a streak where the first four or five would have some feature in common, but then the last three would not, or some other combination that would raise their hopes, only to dash them in the end.

"I think I'm going blind," Greg finally exhaled.

"Well, they say that can happen when all your girlfriends are imaginary," Sara quipped.

Greg stared for a moment, too tired to fire off a speedy comeback, and surprised that Sara made a joke with an obvious sexual reference.

"What, no witty repartee?" she taunted him. "Oh yeah, I win! Greg's speechless. Alert the media!"

"I am shocked at your obvious and feeble attempts at sexual harassment," Greg said, in a mock-pout.

"You wish," Sara spouted, as she dug out several street maps sold at retail stores and gas stations in the area of the dumpsites.

"Yes, I do," Greg admitted, now looking curiously at Sara as she taped each of the maps to the walls in the room.

"Uh, why do we have all these different maps of the same place?"

"Since he's doesn't seem to be basing his decisions on something in the area, or the names, or anything else like that, he's might be choosing them based on the map itself. These are the different maps available in that general area."

"I'm new. I'm tired. Spell it out for me, okay?" Greg asked, almost whining.

"It's just another possibility. We're going to plot the locations on each of these maps, and see if they tell us anything different from what our map does."

"Why? A street is a street, no matter which map it's on."

"Not necessarily. Some maps have errors. Or they're outdated. They have different color codings. Different landmarks highlighted. Different schemes for the coordinates. Look at them. They're all different."

"If you say so," Greg sighed, picking up the box of pushpins to begin marking the sites.

When he was through with his task, he followed Sara from map to map, alternating between looking at the map and looking at her face, trying to discern whether she saw anything interesting. He wasn't entirely sure she'd tell him right off – perhaps hoping he'd see it, too.

When they reached the third map, after a moment, Greg noticed Sara's eyes narrowing, and a cleft forming between her eyebrows. It was obvious that she was concentrating. He quickly looked back at the map, desperately trying to find what had captured her attention.

"Wait just a minute," she said rhetorically. "Hold on. We might be onto something here," she said, turning quickly to grab a pad and a pen.

"What is it?" Greg asked, almost pleadingly.

"I'm not sure yet. It's just a hunch. Maybe just a coincidence," she mumbled, writing furiously.

Greg looked over at the page and saw that she was writing grid coordinates down on her pad, then he quickly found a few of them on the map, noticing that the pushpins were exactly where the longitudinal and latitudinal lines met.

"Let's see if this means anything," Sara said, leading Greg to the whiteboard to transfer the information to a larger venue.

"Why do you have two sets of coordinates for each one?" he asked.

"Because the map doesn't put a letter or a number for the lines, but for the space between the lines. The dumpsites are right on the lines, so I don't know if he's using the letter to the right of the line or the left, or the number above the line or below. We've got to look at both sets."

They separated the letters from the numbers, forming four pools of data: two sets of letters and two sets of numbers.

Looking at the first row of letters, arranged in the order of the body dumps, it appeared nonsensical. If needed, later they would see if it was scrambled, or encrypted in some manner. But first, they would look at the rest of the data on a more cursory level. Their eyes drifted down to the next line of letters.

"Oh ... my ... God," Greg stammered, turning to look at an equally shocked Sara.

"Call Brass," Sara ordered, as she pulled out her own phone, hitting the speed-dial button for Grissom's cell phone.

Chapter 12

Greg was pacing the room anxiously, his excitement palpable. Sara was occupying herself with examining the numbers that corresponded to the letters in the set of eight coordinates. If the letters had meaning, the numbers might as well. She could see right away that the Street Cleaner was a better murderer than a cryptologist, and she smiled triumphantly.

Brass and Grissom arrived almost simultaneously. Grissom was wearing the same clothes he'd had on, looking as though he'd never left work. Brass was also wearing the same suit he'd been wearing, but it looked disheveled and wrinkled, as though he'd slept in it.

As they passed through the door, Brass rubbed an eye and looked at his watch.

"This better be important. I'm missing my beauty sleep."

"He looks like he's missed a lot of beauty sleep," Greg murmured next to Sara.

Grissom was scanning the walls impatiently.

"It's here," Greg said, pointing at the third map.

Grissom put on his reading glasses as he quickly crossed the room. He leaned into to look closely at the map, then stood erect suddenly.

"They are all at intersections of the map grid lines," he stated.

"Yes," Sara answered simply.

"Is there a pattern?" he asked, wanting to cut through the preamble.

"Yes," Sara answered again.

He turned towards her a bit impatiently.

"Show him what we found, Greg," she instructed, and the newest CSI trainee bounded over to one of the white boards, turning it to face the two men.

"Second line," Greg instructed.

"WHORESDI," Brass spelled out.

"Whores die," Grissom surmised.

"Where's the 'e'?" Brass asked.

"It hasn't happened yet," Sara answered. "That's next."

"So we might be able to stake out the next dump site before he makes his next move," Brass uttered with a calm that belied the excitement that he felt.

"That's our theory," Sara replied.

"Do you know where along the E gridline?"

"Yes. It's obvious," Sara answered, hoping after she'd spoken that she hadn't sounded condescending.

"It is?" Greg asked.

"Stake out E9," Grissom said evenly, his eyes honing in on that intersection on the third map on the wall.

"You did the right thing," Brass nodded. "I can catch up on my beauty sleep later," he said through a lopsided smile. "You kids did good," he added, pulling out his cell phone. He was already barking orders into it as he walked resolutely out of the room.

"He isn't trying very hard to hide it from us," Grissom mused, one eyebrow rising to show the shift between concentration and interest.

"I don't think it was intended to be significant to us. It still looks random on the map, but it was about the easiest cipher he could use," Sara added, moving to stand next to Grissom, her arms folded across her chest.

Greg approached them, hesitating for a moment over the decision of whether to stand next to Grissom or Sara. One seemed more politically correct; the other more natural. While Greg had been more aware lately of the need keep the lab politics in mind, he opted to align himself with Sara and fell into place at her side.

He looked at the map, then over at his mentor, then at the map, then at her.

Seeing his unspoken question in her peripheral vision, she turned and instructed him quietly, "Look at the numeric coordinates below the letters on the board. They're in the same order he killed the victims: W1, H2, O3, etc. So the next letter we're looking for is 'E' and it'll be the ninth victim."

"E9," Greg nodded.

"Right," Sara replied, smiling kindly at him for a moment. "He probably lives in the north part of town, since all of them center there. He probably wouldn't want to be driving too far across town with dead women in his vehicle. He could have adjusted the beginning number to move it south, if he'd needed to."

"I don't know why I didn't see this earlier," Grissom said in muted disbelief. He shook his head in slow disgust, his lips pursed and pouty.

"You didn't have the right map," Sara said kindly. "Things seem random and nonsensical when you don't have the context."

Grissom's head shifted slightly down and to the right as he took his eyes off the map to peer intently at Sara. He wondered if she intended it to be a double entendre, or whether she merely accidentally hit on a universal truth.

"Greg, I'll be your best friend if you'll dig out some of your primo coffee and brew us up a pot. I think we deserve a break," Sara said to him, sensing that Grissom had something to say.

"Leaded or unleaded?" he asked, hoping she didn't chose the decaffeinated version.

"You've got to ask?" she teased back.

"How 'bout some Mocha Sanani Yemeni?" he asked, pausing halfway to the door.

"As long as it has caffeine and sugar in it," Sara answered in short.

"Hmm. Desperation. I like that in a woman," he quipped as he resumed his trek towards his hidden cache of coffee beans.

Sara took in a long, slow breath as she turned back towards Grissom.

"Was there something you wanted to say?" she asked, when she realized that he wasn't going to initiate a conversation.

He met her eyes, his own shifting back and forth between hers, trying to draw the answers from her without having to speak. He could see what she was in her eyes, and to an extent he could see who she was. But he still couldn't make out why she was.

"What you said ... it's true," he began uncomfortably. "When we didn't have the right context, his movements seemed random, and it was frustrating to always be reacting after the fact. Now that we know what map to use, it all seems so obvious."

Grissom huffed a mirthless laugh. "It's interesting how the same facts shift from incomprehensible to obvious in the blink of an eye."

"Once you know where someone's coming from, it's easier to see where they're going and why they're taking that path," Sara agreed.

"How long have we known each other?" Grissom asked, turning his eyes back towards the map to avoid eye contact as he shifted the conversation more towards the personal, rather than the professional.

"Should I be superficial or existential?"

When Grissom shrugged that it was her choice, she continued, "We've never known each other," Sara answered. "Not really."

Grissom nodded very slowly, agreeing with her assessment, knowing that it had been his choice to remain closed to her.

"We don't have context," he offered, his eyes narrowing contemplatively.

"No, we don't."

"Sometimes it's safer to hide the context. Like this guy," Grissom said, jerking his head towards the map.

"He wasn't trying very hard to hide it. He was just waiting for someone to see it."

"Hmm," Grissom intoned, raising both eyebrows as he tipped his head a few times in tacit agreement.

"I've been alive almost half a century. That would be a lot of data to sort through, trying to figure out the context," he challenged, turning back towards her.

"What's most important in following a path is knowing where there are turning points, changing the direction of travel. The rest is filler along the way. Not necessarily uninteresting or unimportant, but, in a sense, inconsequential."

"What's your earliest memory?" Grissom asked suddenly, seemingly out of the blue.

Sara smiled as she realized that he was trying to learn her first turning point. It filled her with a spark of hope to imagine he was interested in building a map of her life. She also knew that he would likely not ask, if he was unwilling to answer the same question.

"It was at the beach. I was riding on my father's shoulders. It was scary at first, but once I realized that he wasn't going to let me fall, I felt so powerful. It was like I could see the whole world from up there."

Grissom smiled at the warmth and empowerment that the memory gave her, wishing they were anywhere else so that he could touch her and connect with those feelings.

When Grissom didn't speak right away, Sara leaned in towards him.

"Quid pro quo, Grissom," she said, challenging him to repay in kind.

"My first memory is of my mother crying," he said, breathing out heavily.

Tossing aside any feelings of impropriety, Sara reached over and put her hand supportively on his arm.

"Why was she crying?" Sara asked gently, almost too quietly to hear. Her hand began to stroke his arm gently, reminding him of her presence and her support.

"My father had just left," he answered summarily, his shoulders barely jerking up in an uncomprehending shrug.

"How old were you?"

"Five."

"So you don't remember anything about him?"

"Not really. Maybe some part of me blocked it out. Maybe I thought that it wasn't important to remember anything, since he wasn't ever part of my life after that. We never heard from him again."

"That's such a traumatic way to begin your life," she agreed soothingly.

Grissom looked over at her, allowing her to be the first person to ever see the pain of that four-decade-old memory in his face.

"Thank you for telling me that. It had to be painful to remember."

"It's been a long time," Grissom said, trying to shake off the oppressive sadness that had settled over him.

"But it was the first turning point, so everything else followed from it. Maybe one day it'll feel more like the first step in creating your life, and it'll lose the negative feelings associated with it. If that hadn't happened to you, you wouldn't be the man you are."

"What kind of man am I?" Grissom asked, more to himself than to Sara.

"A good man," she answered firmly, her stroke turning to a squeeze before she released the contact with his arm.

Chapter 13

"It's been five days. If this guy wasn't Public Enemy Number One, the Sheriff would've made me pull all the guys off the stakeout by now," Brass grumbled as he swirled the last finger of Scotch around the bottom of his coffee cup.

"Well, at least we haven't found a body fitting his signature anywhere else, so it's not like he's onto us," Grissom retorted, upending his own cup. "We'll get him."

Brass lowered his cup behind his desk, pouring more of the smoky, amber liquid into it from a bottle hidden in his desk drawer. He looked up questioningly at Grissom, silently asking if he'd like another shot of Scotch.

Grissom set his cup down in front of Brass, who spirited it away behind the desk, returning it within seconds.

"If one of my employees were drinking in here, they'd catch hell."

"That was a tough break for Sara," Brass said, his head bobbing in agreement.

"Yeah," Grissom said, staring down into his cup.

"The rules aren't any different for us. If Atwater walked in here, we'd catch hell, too."

"Or he'd ask for a drink," Grissom snorted. "But she was off the clock, on public property, not here at work. At that time of night, half the people in Vegas are a lot more inebriated than she was. Sometimes life just isn't fair."

"She was driving," Brass reminded him. "You know Sara. If she'd hurt someone, she'd never be able to forgive herself."

"I know," Grissom said heavily, paradoxically tipping the cup all the way back, emptying it down his throat.

"She all right?" Brass asked, trying to be delicate, but it just wasn't part of his nature.

"I guess so," Grissom said, not bothering to hide his ignorance.

"You guess so?" Brass asked incredulously. "You guess so? Don't you think you better know so?"

"She's a private person."

"She's not gonna wear a sign around her neck, but that doesn't mean she wouldn't talk to you if you asked her."

"If she wanted to talk to me about it, she would."

"If she thought you were interested in her welfare, maybe she would," Brass countered.

"Could I have done something to prevent what happened?" Grissom asked, his narrowed eyes looking off into space.

"Why you asking me? You should ask her that. Not me," Brass said, screwing the cap down tightly over the Scotch before replacing it in the very back of the file drawer of his desk.

"It's a moot point now. What's done is done," Grissom exhaled, rising tiredly from the creaking metal chair.

"She's a good kid. But she hasn't been right ever since the lab blew up in her face. That sort of thing gets you thinking about things, about your life. If you don't like what you see, it can really mess you up. Speaking of that, how's Greg doing? He seems to have handled it okay."

"He had some problems at first, as expected. But he worked through them."

"Is that why you're letting him train as a CSI? You feel sorry for him? Responsible for him?"

"I don't know, Jim. He came close to being my Holly Gribbs, but worse in a way, because we've worked with him so long. Not that her life was any less important. Oh hell, you know what I mean."

"I hope you never have to deal with that feeling. We barely knew her, but still, it tore me up inside. I've worked with cops who died in the line of duty, but you don't expect your CSIs to be in that kind of danger. She was just a kid, fresh out of college," Brass said sadly, shaking his head as he exhaled deeply, willing the sense of sadness and meaninglessness to leave his body and soul.

"I just hope that if I'm ever in that position, that I can be as smart about it and as brave as she was," Grissom added. "She died within seconds of being attacked, but she still managed to leave us enough clues to find her killer. That's gutsy. I wish I could have gotten to know her."

"Yeah, she would have fit in good with Catherine and Sara. They're gutsy broads, too. But then, Sara probably wouldn't have ever come here if Holly hadn't ... well, you know."

"This normally isn't considered a dangerous job, other than the biohazards like bloodborne diseases. But Sara and Greg were in an explosion, Catherine was knocked over and could have just as easily been attacked by a perp, Nick's had a gun shoved in his face twice, once by a stalker. Warrick's been the only one unscathed. He saw more violence growing up than he has in the job."

"That's why I always tell you guys to wear your sidearms," Brass said with a sense of vindication.

"Holly was killed with her own gun. If she hadn't been wearing it, she might still be alive today," Grissom returned.

"Maybe. Or maybe he'd have hit her over the head with a lamp. If someone wants to kill you bad enough, they'll find a way."

"Well, Jim, this has been an uplifting conversation, but I've got to go."

"In a second. I got a point," Brass said, holding up a hand like a cop holding back traffic.

"And that would be?" Grissom asked tiredly.

"About Sara. Look, when you get it shoved in your face that you could die any second, especially when you're still young, it does things to you. Some people decide that they're gonna really grab live by the balls. Others get hard, like they don't care if they die."

"And?"

"It's like she hasn't decided which way she's gonna go. Sometimes I get the feeling that she knows there's more to life, and she's gonna find it. But you know as well as I do that there have been other times when the kid acted like she just didn't care what happened."

"The DWI?"

"Yeah, that. And getting all macho with dangerous suspects. And taking the time to gather evidence when there were pipe bombs not four feet away."

Grissom sighed, knowing that Brass was just recounting episodes that had been bothering him as well.

"I tried to talk to her about that."

"Yeah?" Brass asked, a little surprised and pleased that Grissom had made the effort.

"She said she doesn't have a death wish."

"Sara's honest, and I believe what she says. Or at least I believe that she believes what she says. But I gotta believe even more in what she does. She's starting to worry me, and I don't worry that easy."

"I'm concerned," Grissom agreed.

"What you gonna do about it?" Brass had a smile on his face, but it was not a laughing smile, or even a friendly smile. But it wasn't one of those smirks he reserved for the criminals he faced every day. It was somewhere in-between, challenging Grissom, but as only a good friend could.

"I don't know," Grissom admitted, the side-to-side shaking of his head punctuated by a slight shrug of one shoulder.

"Talk to her more. Keep talking to her. But mostly, listen to her."

"She's got a counselor. It was one of the conditions for keeping everything off the record."

"Yeah, well, there are some things you talk to a counselor about, and there are some things you talk to a friend about. And they ain't the same things."

"I'm not sure she thinks of me as a friend," Grissom said uneasily.

"Maybe not. So you gotta convince her you are. You are, aren't you?" Brass challenged, putting his semi-smirk to work again.

"I don't know," Grissom admitted. "I thought I was once, but everything changed. I don't know anymore."

"Why'd it change?"

"Lots of reasons – none of them good ones, really. We just sort of drifted apart."

"That isn't what it looked like from the outside."

Grissom looked up at Brass, meeting his eyes, confusion and curiosity drawing him closer.

"What do you mean?"

"At first, she was your right-hand man. Your go-to guy. When you needed someone you could trust, it was Sara. Then ..."

"Then?" Grissom prodded.

"Then all of a sudden you were treating her like you didn't know her, didn't really trust her. What the hell did she do?"

"Nothing," Grissom admitted. "Nothing really."

"She had to do something to piss you off."

"I wasn't pissed. I was ..." Grissom paused to attempt to find words appropriate to share with an outsider, even one he'd known as long as Jim Brass.

"Yeah, whatever you were, it started to change again a few months ago. I saw how you looked at her when you came outta Debbie Marlin's house – like you were looking at a ghost. I saw how you didn't rest 'til you solved the case. I think seeing some dead girl that looked like Sara really shook you."

"We've worked together a long time. That's a natural reaction," Grissom shrugged off.

"Yeah, maybe that's natural for the rest of us, but not for you."

"Is there a hidden point here?" Grissom asked impatiently.

"Hell if I know! It's just that it seems to me that you're stuck on some decision, too – some decision about Sara. You can't seem to decide whether you like her or not, whether you trust her or not. At least, that's what it looks like from the outside. Maybe if you two put your heads together, you can both make up your minds. Just a thought."

"I'll take it under advisement," Grissom said, adopting a cool, professional tone to mask his unease. But inside, he was wondering whether his indecision had any impact on her inability to decide.

Chapter 14

The group sat around the table, discussing yet again the evidence – or lack thereof – in the serial murder case known in the press as the Street Cleaner. They found themselves in the morally precarious position of waiting anxiously for his next move, knowing that it could be the one time he made a mistake. And yet, each of them knew that his next move would undoubtedly mean the end to another life.

"Where the hell is he?" Catherine barked impatiently. "He's doing this on purpose. He knows we're on to him now, and he's playing with us, like a cat plays with a mouse."

"Don't they ever just stop?" Greg asked innocently.

"No, Greg. Not killers like this. They have a compulsion to do what they do. He's not doing it for fun, or even for revenge. He's doing it because he thinks he has to," Sara explained.

"Greg, we really need the DNA. How close are you?" Grissom asked, trying to sound more patient than he felt.

"Well, there were eight samples. And each had multiple donors. I can only electrophorese a couple at a time, you know. Unless you want to buy me more equipment."

Grissom raised an eyebrow, not so much in response to the threat to his budget, as in surprise that Greg still seemed to feel ownership over the DNA Lab, despite training as a CSI.

"Greg, I'd buy you the Hubble Telescope, if it would get me the killer's DNA any faster," Grissom said facetiously.

"Fortunately for you, that won't be necessary, though a couple more electrophoresis setups would be handy. But since we don't have time for that, I've gone to Plan B."

"Plan B? I'm almost afraid to ask."

"I went to UNLV and borrowed some equipment. I used your name. Hope you don't mind," Greg said with a sly smile, knowing that Grissom could hardly complain at this point.

"So are we any nearer to getting an answer to my question?"

"Yes. I've just completed the electrophoreses and shot the radiographs. The computer is analyzing them as we speak. Since there are multiple donors, we won't be able to rely on the computer to the same degree as we usually do, so I'll start analyzing them personally as soon as we're done here."

"Good, good," Grissom nodded, hoping that he would at least find some DNA common to all the women. It may or may not get a hit on CODIS, but at least he'd have it to compare to any suspects that the dragnet happened to snare.

"Hey, how's it coming with your DB?" Nick asked.

"I think Greg has a viable theory," Sara offered, knowing Greg felt ready to present the evidence to the group.

Grissom tilted his head towards Greg, his face opening up to form the human equivalent of a question mark.

"Uh, I kinda think, well, it's kinda weird, I know, but I guess it's possible. Not likely, I know, but possible. Anything's possible, right? ..."

"Greg!" Catherine barked, hoping to snap him out of what threatened to be an endless loop of self-questioning.

"I think the cat did it," he blurted out, freezing in horror when he realized how ridiculous he sounded. Not so much as a breath could be heard in the room, when suddenly it erupted in raucous laughter.

"The cat shot his owner with a .50 caliber pistol?" Nick sputtered, looking first at Warrick, then shifting over to Sara, to find that she wasn't laughing. "You're kidding, right?"

"Uh, no, not really," Greg choked out, looking down at his hands, the fingers knotting, freeing themselves, and re-knotting seemingly endlessly.

"Greg, just lay out the evidence like you've heard us do a hundred times. Forget what species the suspect is," Sara whispered to him, leaning over so far that he could feel her breath tickling his ear.

"Well, uh, the – I guess you'd call him a suspect – the suspect was acting very suspicious when we were processing the room."

"Greg, it's against protocol to allow a suspect – or anyone else for that matter – to remain at a crime scene. They might contaminate the evidence," Nick mentored, right before spewing out a belly laugh.

"I know that," he said defensively. "I took the suspect to another room so we could continue to process the scene."

"Did he 'fess up or did he lawyer up?" Warrick asked, eliciting more chuckles around the table.

"Like I was saying, we processed the scene," Greg continued, feeling his face flush, the heat of his own blood making him sweat.

"Lemme guess, tell-tale paw prints on the murder weapon," Nick offered.

"No, but you're close," Greg said, as the chuckles began to die down.

"You aren't seriously suggesting that a cat that's all of – what, 10 pounds? – actually shot his owner dead with that big-assed gun!" Catherine said hopefully.

"Yeah, I guess I am. It was probably an accident, though. I don't think it was premeditated," Greg offered.

At that statement, even the stoic Grissom could no longer contain himself, and he burst out laughing with the remainder of the audience, save Sara. His giggle was surprisingly high-pitched, considering that his normal voice was typically melodiously low.

"Sanders, you are a madman," Nick shouted, shaking his head.

"At least he's willing to be open to all the possibilities, to think outside the box," Sara said a little defensively.

"Greg doesn't even know where the box is yet!" Nick jibed.

"Grissom, just hear him out," Sara asked. Her tone wasn't pleading, like one would expect with those words. Instead, they came across as more like a word to the wise.

"Okay, Greg, walk me through it. What's the physical evidence that implicates the felonious feline?"

"Okay, well I already told you that the cat was acting suspicious. It was really jumpy. So we moved it. Sara showed me how to do the blood spatter analysis, and we ran string on, I guess, about two dozen blood drops," shrugging in a 'give or take a few' manner.

"You guess? ... Or you know?" Grissom challenged.

"I know," Greg said, trying to shore up his battered confidence.

"What did you determine?"

"That the victim was sitting at the edge of the bed when he was assaulted. That the bullet came from six feet away, floor level, with the barrel of the gun tilted up at an angle ..."

"What angle?"

"Uh, um, 37 degrees, wasn't it?" he asked towards Sara, who nodded.

"Go on," Grissom commanded.

"There was a lot of GSR on the floor, with no voids. And there were fresh scratches on the bedside table, leading to the edge. And there was some cat hair stuck to some of the gun oil on the slide."

"And your conclusion?"

"The guy was watching TV, and the cat was fuc ..., uh, messing with the gun, batting at it. You know, like cats do when they're just playing with something."

"And it pulled the trigger?" Warrick asked, incredulously.

"No. Bobby tested the pull on the trigger. It was lighter than you'd expect, but not so light that a cat could pull it, especially without holding it still with the other hand – I mean, paw."

"Go on," Grissom said, less challengingly.

"So I think that the cat knocked the gun off the bedside table, and it hit the floor, discharging."

"Bullet could have gone anywhere, but that poor dude gets it in the head?" Warrick said with an air of resignation to all the vagaries of life.

"Exactly," Greg said, smiling nervously, looking around the room for any sign of acceptance or support.

"Who's the detective on the case?" Catherine asked.

"Vartan," Sara answered.

"And you've shared this theory with him?"

"Not yet."

"Why not?"

Greg shrugged almost shyly. "I wanted to float it by you guys first. I mean, I don't want to look like some crackhead."

At the renewed chuckles, Greg amended his statement, "Okay, maybe 'look' was a bad choice of words. I don't want to sound like a crackhead. I wanted to make sure I had all the bases covered."

"That's what Sara was there for," Grissom said, looking over at her to see if she had any comment.

"I wanted him to get some practice at presenting an unusual theory to a group of seasoned professionals, so that he could learn how to think on his feet, answering challenges as they came up. Under the circumstances, I think he did well enough to have the confidence to present it to Vartan now. It's easier to take the attempts at humiliation from one person you barely know than from four people you've known for years. Vartan should be a breeze compared to this."

As Sara's words soaked in, the mood in the room shifted to one of uncomfortable self-examination for everyone there.

"Hey, we were just messing with you! You know that, right?" Nick offered, slapping Greg on the back good-naturedly.

"Hazing the new kid," Warrick added, holding out his clenched fist to tap his knuckles against Greg's.

"I knew there was some reason I've never liked cats," Catherine mumbled, throwing a wink Greg's direction.

"Greg, organize your thoughts logically to write up your field notes. And leave out all the 'I think's and 'I guess's. Just state the facts and draw your conclusion. Allow the evidence and logic to carry the argument." Grissom was looking at Greg with all his usual seriousness, but he didn't use the same almost-contemptuous tone that his earlier statements carried.

"Just the facts, ma'am," Greg teased, trying to sound as impassive as Sgt. Joe Friday.

Grissom casually looked over at Sara, who bore the aura of a woman vindicated. He had to admit that he felt pride in both of them for not accepting the easy explanation, but instead following the evidence, as ridiculous as the conclusion might have sounded.

Greg felt the heat of embarrassment begin to fade to a still-warm, but comfortable, feeling of acceptance. He'd stumbled onto a case that put him in jeopardy of forever being cast as less-than-scientific.

He knew he was considered a jokester, but he also knew that they respected his work in the DNA Lab. He was hoping that he'd be able to make a fresh start with the switch to criminalist, showing that he could be serious.

He'd adopted a slightly tamer hairstyle, and had begun wearing conservative clothes. But it was becoming harder to pretend that he'd really changed much. Greg was still Greg, whether he was wearing a blue button-down Oxford shirt, or a tee shirt from a Slipknot concert.

"Freakin' cat," he said inside his mind, shaking his head minutely. "Capped his owner and tried to make me look like an idiot. I hope he gets the electric chair," he said, almost chuckling out loud at his own off-kilter humor.

Chapter 15

"He's overdue. Something's up. He's probably gotten the hell outta Dodge," Brass growled into the cellular.

"There was no reason to. We weren't that close, and he probably knew it," Grissom countered.

"Maybe he just kills them when they piss him off. Maybe he's hit a string of well-mannered prostitutes."

"Yeah, like that's a common trait in that particular subculture," Grissom returned sardonically.

"So what do we do now? We can't keep up this stakeout forever. With the murders stopping, the Sheriff won't cut us much more slack."

"Suggest to him that it's the strong police presence preventing the murders. Maybe the political pressure will buy us a little more time."

"For what? I mean, really, when you think about it, what are we accomplishing out here?"

"I don't know. Maybe he's already killed the next one, but can't dump her because you're there. That's assuming he knows you're there."

"We've been out here too long. And the people along this street are the kind to notice strangers in the 'hood."

"I'm expecting DNA today. Maybe we'll get lucky this time."

"Who's working the DNA? Some newbie? Or is Super Sleuth working it?"

"Greg's working the DNA," Grissom acknowledged.

"Okay, well, that's good," Brass said. "I feel better about it now."

"We're going to have to get used to having someone else in DNA, Jim. It's a certainty, sooner or later."

"I know. I just don't want them cutting their teeth on a serial murder case that's got us by the balls."

"There is something very disturbing about that mixed metaphor," Grissom said, smiling slightly to himself. Brass had a way with the English language that often amused Grissom. It might not always have been grammatically correct, nor was he floral in his speech patterns, but he managed to get across both the meaning and his feelings.

"One more body, and the Feds will be living in our back pockets. You know that, right?" Brass asked dejectedly.

"Let 'em."

"Damn, I must have a bad connection," Brass carped, slapping playfully at the cell phone. "I could have sworn I just heard you say ..."

"I did. Let 'em. Let the Feds try to do better. There hasn't been any police procedure overlooked on your watch. There hasn't been one forensic test not run on what little evidence we had. We've done what we can do. If they can do better, let 'em."

"Grissom, are you feeling all right? You hate the Feds taking over your cases."

"I've got other cases that have been stacking up because of this one. And we're not any closer, unless the new DNA tests pan out. If they do, great. If not, let the FBI handle it."

"What's up with you? Are you dying? You get religion? Fall in love? What's changed?"

"Nothing, Jim. I guess I just realized that I can't solve them all. I can't save the world, no matter how hard I try, how hard I work."

"Is this some sort of mid-life crisis? 'Cause if it is ..."

"No, Jim. It's not a mid-life crisis. I'm past that age, or at least I hope so. I'm not giving up on this case, but I'm not going to fight the FBI over it. It's what they're here for. We're on the same side."

"Yeah, Gil, sure. Okay."

Brass was clearly still confused, but none of his questions seemed to result in answers that made things any clearer, so he decided to postpone the conversation until they could talk in person – preferably over a few glasses of Jim Beam.

Chapter 16

"Sara, can you come to my lab?" Greg asked excitedly over the phone.

"Sure," she replied simply, already on her way.

"What's up?" she asked, smiling as she entered the lab.

Greg could hardly contain himself, grabbing Sara's hand, wrapping his other around her waist, spinning her around the lab in a grand waltz.

"Been sniffing the solvents again, Greg? I've already told you it's going to give you 'dain bramage'," she teased.

"Oh, I'm good. Yeah, I'm good," he sang, still dancing around the confines of the laboratory with his partner.

"What is up with you?" she laughed, as she dug in her heels to stop their spinning.

"I just solved the Street Cleaner murders, that's all," he giggled, resuming their dance.

"You did?" Sara practically squealed. "CODIS match?"

"Nope."

"Internal database?"

"Not exactly."

"Damn it, Greg! Tell me!" she said, slapping playfully at his arm.

"Okay, if you're going to beat it out of me ... Not that I like to be beaten by beautiful women. But, then again, I'm not sure I'd really mind either ..."

"Greg!"

"He's dead."

"The killer?"

"Yep."

"You got that from the DNA? That doesn't make sense. You can't tell that from the samples."

"I found one set of DNA that was common to all the victims. That was step one. When I got that isolated, I started running it against all the databases."

"You so need to cut to the chase before I strangle you!"

"While I was sitting at the computer, I happened to look down at the stack of files lying there. They were other samples that I needed to run through CODIS once this one was done. I started flipping through the one on top, and I realized that the DNA values for the 13 loci that CODIS uses were virtually identical to the killer's DNA. So I compared them side-by-side. Bingo. Match-a-mundo. Greg Sanders solves the crime yet again!"

"Who is it?"

"I don't have a clue what his name is, but I know who killed him."

"Greg, you are quite possibly the most exasperating human being alive. You know that?"

"Yes, I do. Confusion and chaos in my wake – my job is done."

Once Sara finally had Greg convinced that his life was in imminent danger of an abrupt end, he finally told her what his results showed.

"No! You're kidding!"

"Would I kid you?" Greg asked.

"Oh, we gotta tell Grissom this right now!"

"I tried to call him, but I couldn't get hold of him. I left a voicemail," Greg reported.

"Forget the phone! Let's go!" Sara pulled him bodily from the office, grasping a wad of his lab coat sleeve. The two practically sprinted down the hallways, looking into each lab as they passed.

"Now I see why all the walls are made out of glass. Just to be able to find the boss," Greg panted out.

"And all this time I thought it was so he could find us," Sara shot back.

"Grissom!" they both called out when they saw him in the layout room that was still adorned with the maps Greg and Sara had hung on the walls.

Having been deep in thought, Grissom jumped at the sudden, stereophonic sound of his name, especially delivered at such a high volume and an equally high pitch.

"Are the DNA results in?" Grissom asked hopefully.

"Better than that," Sara couldn't help but interject before Greg could answer.

"I know who it is," Greg said breathlessly.

"Who is it?"

"Well, I don't know his name yet, but I know who he is. Or at least who he was."

"What the hell is he talking about?" Grissom asked impatiently.

"Greg, we've been through this. Just tell him," Sara advised.

"The serial murderer is the dead guy."

"Which dead guy?"

"The one the cat killed. The Street Cleaner is the dude we found killed by the cat. How freaking funny is that? We put a couple of squads of cops and an entire CSI team on the case, and a freaking cat is the one that finally stops him. It's so perverse!"

Grissom dropped his head, shaking it back and forth in disbelief.

"Are you sure?"

"Matched the DNA myself. I've got it running against every database I can find, trying to get a real name. The prints didn't turn up anything, but I thought I'd still give it a shot. For now, the only name we have is 'John Smith'."

"And we've got the gun," Grissom said, realizing that the evidence may well have fallen into their laps.

"We've got Bobby looking at the gun again, seeing if he can rule it out. But considering that the damage to Smith's head wasn't much different than the damage to the serial's vics, the caliber is probably right. We don't have any bullet fragments or shells to match to it, but considering that the DNA matches, do we really need it?" Greg asked.

"Maybe not. But we need to be sure. It's possible that your DB just so happened to have had sex with those women prior to their deaths. Was there any more DNA common to any of the vics?"

"Not one strand of DNA common to them all, except for Smith's. I'm telling you, he's your guy," Greg said confidently.

"Let me ask you a question," Grissom said, his face turning very serious.

"Okay."

"Would a less experienced DNA analyst have come to the same conclusion?"

"I guess so," Greg answered uneasily. He had certainly not intended to work himself out of a job.

"Really? So it wasn't due to your experience or the skills you've developed the past several years?"

"Grissom, that's not fair," Sara admonished. "What do you want him to say? It's a no-win question."

"I want him to tell me the truth," Grissom said calmly, never breaking eye contact with Greg.

"It was more of a coincidence, really. I just happened to notice that a sample I was getting ready to run through CODIS was the same as the sample from the serial killer that was already running. The same thing could have happened for anyone."

"You think anyone would have instantly recognized that they were the same, despite having seen several different samples during the workday?"

"Maybe not," Greg shrugged. "But they'll learn, just the same as I did. Everyone's got to start at the beginning."

"We're one of the busiest labs in the country. Can we afford to hire someone who's at the beginning?"

"Grissom, I can't believe you're doing this!" Sara exclaimed. "Greg's solved two cases in the past week, despite only being a CSI Level 1. I think he's deserved his shot. We'll just have to live through breaking in a new DNA analyst."

"Sara, I'm talking to Greg," Grissom said evenly, earning an exasperated huff. "Greg?"

"Does that mean I have to stay in the lab?" Greg asked dejectedly.

"Is that the only option you can come up with?" Grissom asked.

Greg looked back up at Grissom, knowing that he'd been given a chance to find another answer.

"So I don't have to stay in the lab?" he asked in a confused voice.

"I need someone with your level of skills and experience in the DNA Lab. Find me one," Grissom said, turning to leave, smiling broadly once his back was turned. Grissom was determined that Greg be sure of what he wanted. The best way to do that would be to make him find his own replacement.

If he found someone as good as he was, Grissom would be pleased. If Greg discovered in his search that no one met his own standards, then perhaps he'd go back to the lab, happier and more secure in his position. Again, Grissom would be pleased.

Chapter 17

"Greg? What are you doing here?"

"Oh, hi, Sara! I was just, uh, checking up on the cat," he said almost guiltily.

"Here's the adoption paperwork, sir," the clerk said, setting a clipboard and a pen down on the counter in front of him.

Sara lifted an eyebrow challengingly.

"Who's going to adopt a murdering cat?" Greg sputtered out.

"Evidently, you are," Sara answered, laughing.

"So, what are you doing here?"

"Well, I can tell you I'm not here to adopt any cat that can shoot better than I can."

"Sara ..." Greg prodded.

"I came to give a donation in the cat's honor."

"You mean you can do that?" Greg asked, suddenly looking a bit panic-stricken.

"Sure. Why not? As long as someone else is supporting it, what do they care?"

"You mean I don't have to adopt it?"

"Who said you did?"

"I thought that was the only way to keep it from being ... you know."

"Greg, this is a no-kill shelter. He won't be put to sleep. But they run on donations, mostly. So if your point was honor the cat in some way, just give a donation. Maybe check on him from time to time until he's adopted. You don't have to be a martyr."

"So my satin sheets are safe from the Claws of Wrath," Greg mumbled thankfully.

"You have satin sheets?" Sara asked, giggling slightly.

"Sure. You wanna see them?"

"No, thanks. You know, I tried to sleep on satin sheets once. I couldn't keep the pillow or the top sheet on the bed. Too slippery."

"I've got one word for you: Velcro," Greg said, nodding sagely.

"It was all I could do to not slide off the bed. I'm not going to Velcro myself to the sheets. It's just not worth it."

"Satin adds to the ambience," Greg retorted, pronouncing the word in the French manner.

"Maybe it's just me, but I'm really not all that interested in props – excuse me – ambience. To me, it's all about the person."

"That's fine when you're in love. But for the rest of the time, props help make up the difference."

"I never really thought of it that way," Sara laughed.

"Excuse me, miss," Greg said, waving down the clerk. "I've been discussing the adoption with my friend here, and I'm not really sure I'd make a very good cat owner. But I'd like to leave a donation to help care for him. I'm sorry."

"It's no problem, sir. As a matter of fact, since they put him on the news, several people have called expressing interest in adopting him," she said, smiling.

"We bust our asses on that case, and it's the freaking cat who gets on the news," Greg bemoaned as he set some money down on the counter.

"Be happy it was the cat. Grissom would finish busting our asses if either one of us had been on the news."

"Just be sure to warn the cat's new owners to lock up all the firearms," Greg warned as Sara pulled him from the shelter.

Chapter 18

Sara was just setting her keys down on the breakfast bar when her cell phone rang. Looking at the number, she automatically answered, "Sidle."

"Hey, Sara."

"Hey, Grissom. What's up?" she asked, quickly grabbing the quart of orange juice, thinking she wasn't going to have time to make herself something to eat.

"Nothing. Just called to talk."

"Talk about what?" Sara asked.

"Nothing. Nothing, really. I was just wondering how you're doing."

"Oh. I see. Okay. Well ... I'm doing fine. I've been going to the PEAP counselor every week, as required."

"That's not what I meant," Grissom sighed, realizing that she must have thought he was checking up on the progress of her "rehabilitation."

"Well, what did you mean?" Sara asked, genuinely confused.

"Just what I asked. How are you? I mean ... really."

"I'm fine ... Really," Sara answered cautiously.

"Did I call at a bad time?" Grissom asked, suddenly realizing that she might have been asleep, or worse, that she might have been entertaining.

"No. I just got home."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. It's kinda funny, really. I went down to the shelter to give a donation. I saw Greg there. He was just about to adopt the cat that popped the serial killer."

"Greg adopted the cat?" Grissom asked, settling back into the pliable leather of the couch, making it groan amiably. His face relaxed as well, with the hint of a smile pulling at his mouth.

"No. I got there just in the nick of time. He was feeling a little guilty about pulling out of the deal, until the lady told him that a bunch of people wanted to adopt the cat."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It's famous now."

"It is?"

"I guess you haven't seen the news. Somebody found out that the cat was the one that killed the serial. So, it's a hero."

"How'd they find out?" Grissom asked.

"Don't ask me. All I know is that it wasn't me or Greg. Scout's honor," Sara answered quickly.

"Do you have any duct tape?" Grissom asked out of the blue.

"Duct tape?" Sara stammered, clearly thrown off by his question.

"Yes."

"Do I even want to know what for?"

"I'd use the first few feet to tape up Nicky's mouth," Grissom cracked.

After her laughter tapered off, Sara took a breath and held it for a moment, until the line was quiet on both sides.

"And what would you do with the rest of it?" she asked, a hint of playfulness in her voice.

"Have any suggestions?"

The silence teetered between uncomfortable and exhilarating, with each remembering the same moment in time, unaware the other was also reliving it.

"Do you remember ...?" Sara began.

"How could I forget?" Grissom interrupted her.

"Grissom, could you come tape me up?" Sara said unaffectedly, just as she had years ago.

"I love my job," Grissom breathed out through a grin.