Wax Museum Murders

Disclaimers: Yeah, yeah, like I own this?

Summary: What-if case file. What if Sara had left and joined the FBI after requesting a leave of absence in Burden of Proof? And what happens when she returns to Vegas to investigate a serial murder case? GSR.

Rating: PG-13 for adult language.

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"So the Sheriff called in the FBI again on our case, and if it's anything like the last time..."

"You'll work with an arrogant jackass who will take all the credit while you do all the heavy lifting."

The voice from the doorway was low, husky, with a slow cadence that wasn't quite a drawl, and hadn't been heard in the hallways of LVPD criminalist labs for over nine months. "But hey, you can't argue with the feds."

All eyes in the break room turned to her; she was propped up against the door jam, like she always did when she wanted to create a dramatic impact. She never failed, thought Grissom, as he took in her tall lanky frame and cocky half-smile. It was like she never left. But then he noticed the dark windbreaker was just a shade darker than the LVPD jackets they wore, and an unfamiliar badge hung from her neck on a chain.

"Hey," she said in the ensuing silence. "I let myself in."

Nick was the first one up, bounding out of his chair like a puppy and embracing her in an exuberant hug. "Sara. What are you doing here? Why didn't you write me and tell me you were coming?" Sara beamed at his enthusiastic greeting. Gil knew that Nick had kept up the most regular email contact with Sara after she had left, a source of pleasure when Nick would share news of her in the break room and a source of jealousy as well, since she hadn't replied to any of his emails since that fateful morning she had stormed out of his life.

He replayed the moment in his mind as Warrick and Catherine joined Nick with hugs and questions. "A plant? Are you fucking kidding me?" He had looked at her, uncomprehending. Maybe he was wrong that she liked vegetation? "I come to you with concerns about my work environment, concerns you refuse to talk about and that you treat as a personality quirk... on MY part, and you send me a plant?" He leaned back in his chair, caught off guard by her vehemence. "Yes," he replied, since she had asked a question. She swung her body around, stalking back to the door, while he breathed a sigh of relief that she was leaving. But instead, she punched the wall beside the doorframe and turned to face him again.

She exhaled audibly in frustration, shaking her head with little controlled movements, as if she couldn't find the words. Unfortunately, this was Sara. She always found the words, especially when she was angry. He still remembered how she had gone after the perp, "It got there when you shot your wife in the head...." At the time, he had just been happy that the anger hadn't been directed at his head, but now he was in for it. Both barrels, which was a fitting metaphor as looking into the darkness in her angry eyes was not unlike staring down the barrel of a shotgun. But she surprised him again; the softness of her voice caressed his ears as her hand had caressed his cheek not so long ago. The softness only made her words that much worse. "I give up. Sign my leave of absence, effective at the end of shift, or I'll quit." His horror at the choices presented to him etched every line of his face, and he couldn't speak; he never knew what to say to her, like she took his ability to frame words and sentences from him except when he was talking about work. Even then, occasionally, he would look up and see her intense expression as she listened, and he would lose the train of thought for a moment. But she was speaking again, and he forced himself to listen. "The only difference is, if you sign the leave of absence, I may come back." He took the slim hope she gave him, signed the form, and handed it to her, feeling a small part of himself wither and die as he watched her walk away.

Now, she was back, but not back in the way he had always imagined. She was explaining how she was assigned to the case. Gil knew he had to do something, so he stood and extended his hand, and said, "Welcome, Special Agent Sidle." It sounded awkward even to himself, but once again, she had him at a loss. Catherine shot him a 'lame, Gil, lame' look that meant he was going to catch hell later, but for once Sara understood his gesture and replied smoothly, "Good to be here, CSI Grissom." He caught her half-grin and smiled in response just as she pulled him into a stiff hug complete with half-hearted back-patting. It was more than he deserved, and her smile when she released him let him know she knew as well.

"So, I can brief you on the preliminaries real quick before my partner arrives, if you want," she said, breaking the awkward silence that had settled as Gil had tried to think of something to say and the rest of the team looked amused and pretended not to be meeting each other's eyes.

"Um, sure." Nick had already poured Sara a cup of coffee as she sat down, and she winked at him as she realized it was from Greg's private stash. "So..." she began carefully, knowing these jurisdiction issues were always tricky, "we would not even been here if it was just your two cases. Your cases appear to be related to a series of deaths from one of our cold cases that stretches across seven different states and twenty-three years." She laid out the scenario briefly; eighteen deaths in twenty years, always in established to have happened in July, the last of which happened three years ago. "The three year gap and two deaths in a single month do signal a change from his previous MO, but the signature is the same, so we're not ruling out a copycat. Although the killer could have been off the streets for the last three years and feel compelled to make up the kill count as well. So that's why Agent Cooper, my partner, and I are here. We've had some success in solving three re-activated cold cases in the last nine months, and this one's been part of our caseload. So here we are. Or I am, anyway."

As if on cue, her phone rang. "Speak of the devil. Excuse me." She stood and took her call in the corner, but her voice carried easily in the small room. "Again? And you don't have a driver why? We have ten field agents with us on this op. Just find a cop and get a police escort, ok? I dunno. Speed. Make an illegal left. Knock over a casino. Yeah, or drive around aimlessly for the next 12 hours until I put an APB out on your ass. Your choice. Yeah, 12. You keep arguing with me, it'll be 24. See you soon, boss." She had an amused smile on her face as she sat back down. "It'll be a few more minutes before my partner arrives."

"Bad sense of direction?" Warrick asked, grinning. "He should get GPS."

"Actually, I think he does," Sara laughed, with a 'welcome-to-my-world' expression on her face and a roll of her eyes. "So can you all lay out the cases for me briefly? I have a full and exhaustive briefing on the earlier cases prepped at our ops center, scheduled to start in a couple of hours, but I would like a quick overview." And so they got down to business, laying out the case and discussing evidence.

"Look who I found wondering the halls," Brass announced from the door, breaking up their powwow. Sara was out of her seat in a second. "Jim!" Her hug almost bowled him over, and his normally sardonic look was replaced by a bright smile. He grasped her arms and looked her over, like a father checking to see how much his child has grown since he last saw her. "I thought you were flying in at midnight. I was going to pick you up at the airport."

"Yeah, at the last minute, we flew in with the evidence instead of commercial."

"Military?" Her rueful expression said it all. "Classy." He gave her another short hug, and said, "I have to get some paperwork done before the briefing. I'll see you later." He extended a hand to the tall, dark-haired man standing beside him. "Agent Cooper, always a pleasure."

As soon as Sara turned to start making introductions, Nick interrupted her. "Brass knew you were coming?" His tone was somewhere between hurt and incredulous. She looked shame-faced. "Yeah, he managed to catch me on the phone yesterday. Really, Nick, I would have emailed and told you if I had had any time between finishing up a case and preparing to come here." Nick, she knew, could not stay mad for any length of time and it only took a couple more seconds for him to smile good-naturedly and point a finger at her. "Ok, but you are buying me dinner, little lady."

As she made introductions, the reactions to her partner were pretty much what she expected: Catherine flirted, Warrick greeted him coolly, reserving judgment, and Grissom took him in as if he were a particularly gruesome body laid out on the autopsy table, reading subtle clues to put together the whole. Mark, on his end, evaluated everyone in his way, and immediately flashed Catherine a wide smile before meeting Sara's patently bland look and raised eyebrows.

He immediately launched into his spiel, showing he was a match for Sara in the 'ignore the pleasantries and get down to business' department. "So I'm assuming Agent Sidle has filled you in on the basics. We're set up just down the road in a warehouse for our ops center, but we will probably ask for access to your lab facilities. We're here to work in cooperation, not competition, since we both want the same thing: to clear these cases. Agent Sidle's briefing will start in an hour. Any questions of me?" His recitation was patently bureaucratic, and didn't seem to warm the CSIs sitting around the table.

"Just one," Gil volunteered. "When's your first press conference?" The smile on his face was familiar to Sara, the one he used to goad the sheriff and other authority figures in his typical, bland, zen-master Grissom way. Cooper looked startled and glanced over at Sara, who shook her head, to his apparent relief. "The media don't know we're here and hopefully they won't. There's absolutely no need for this to become a media circus. Anything else?"

As everyone started to get up from the table, he turned to Sara. "So, Sidle, did you get information to finish up the case overview for the field agents?"

"Yup." Her smile was just the wrong side of cheeky as she stood up and glanced at her watch. "And here I was looking forward to eleven hours of peace and quiet."

"You would have missed me," he replied smugly. She just rolled her eyes and hoisted him out of his seat. Their exchange, however, was not missed by anyone, especially Gil, who watched them curiously, the narrowing of his eyes the only thing to mar his impassive expression.