"Jenne, get your ass in here!" The lab rat could hear her boss's angry cry down the hall, through a closed door, and over the music blasting through the headphones tightly clamped over her ears. Maddy scurried down the hall, lab coat flapping, and skidded to a halt standing in the doorway of Ecklie's office.
"Well, my ass is here, what did you want with it, Conrad?" She smiled and curtsied clumsily, two dainty fingers holding the edge of her coat like a skirt.
Ecklie cleared his throat, beady eyes running up and down her curves. Maddy quickly pulled the lab coat shut, blocking his view down her red sequined tube top.
"You're in the field today, Pam called in sick. You got eight DBs in an abandoned house; Natasha will tell you more on the scene. Everyone's already there."
Maddy's blue-and-green eyes went wide with delight and she held up one hand for a high five. Ecklie just stared at her raised hand, so she turned on her heel and left the office, mentally congratulating herself on both the field work soon to come, and flustering Ecklie so thoroughly. In moments, she had packed and her dusty, old, sky blue Volkswagen beetle was speeding down the road, away from the lab and towards a promising adventure.
XoXoXoXoX
The light from Catherine's flashlight bounced off David's glasses as he looked up from the final corpse. "Just like the others. Lividity is fixed; she died where she is now, no blood around, though we won't know until we've flipped her if she's got any wounds that could've killed her. No ligature marks, and no sign of a struggle. She must have been sedated somehow…"
Sara and Catherine sighed at his words. All eight victims had been in the same situation. They were exactly where they'd died, nothing to suggest an unnatural death, the only distinguishing feature being the ordinariness of their demise.
After a few more photos, the women examined the rest of the body, then packed it away in the van with seven companions, all with a one-way ticket to the coroner's office.
The two women joined the rest of the graveyard shift inside, standing to one side of Grissom, who was lecturing his CSIs.
Sara noticed that Maddy had joined them, her now platinum-blonde hair radiating light in the dim room. The lab-tech was standing in between Nick and Greg, Warrick was standing right behind her. The youngest CSI was holding a whispered side-talk with the boys surrounding her, completely ignoring Grissom. Natasha and Brass were in one corner, fingers entwined, eyes shining as they gazed at each other. When Catherine saw this, she fought the urge gag. "How cutesy," she thought at the star-crossed lovers, wondering how they always seemed to get away with their public displays of affection while in Grissom's presence.
XoXoXoXoX
"Oh, classy," Nick said, holding up a pair of black lace panties in one gloved hand. He stuck them into an evidence bag, labeling it and moving on to another section of the room he was clearing with Maddy.
She rolled her eyes, collecting a mint tin full of pot. "This may not have killed them, but if they had enough in their systems, it could've made it easier for them to be attacked." Maddy bagged the pot and looked over at Nick.
"State your source," Nick said, smiling mischievously.
"Uh, I went to high school, Mr. Stokes," Maddy replied, her voice oozing sarcasm. "Don't tell me you've never been high?"
Nick laughed; deliberately leaving her question unanswered, and bagged the last piece of evidence. "Looks like we're done here."
Maddy marred her porcelain face with a scowl, narrowing her eyes and trying to look as menacing as a five-foot-four lab rat with fluorescent hair can look. "Aren't you going to answer me?"
XoXoXoXoX
"Sara, take a look at this…" Warrick was holding up a wineglass with lipstick smudges around the rim. "Do you remember if anyone was wearing lipstick?"
"I don't think so," Sara said, taking the glass from him and placing it carefully in an evidence bag, making a mental note to run a DNA test on it.
At that moment, Natasha stumbled into the room, the heel of one of her boots catching underneath a rug. She knelt down, pulling on a pair of latex gloves as she did so, and lifted it up. She shined her flashlight down and noticed an auburn hair. Taking out her tweezers, she picked up the hair and put it in a small manila envelope, labeling where she'd found it.
"Anything I can help with?" she asked, noticing the large pile of evidence bags the two CSIs had collected in the center of the room, a wine glass balancing precariously on top of the mound.
"I think we've cleared this room, but you can help us carry some stuff," Sara said, motioning towards the heap of odds and ends.
Rolling her eyes, Tasha held a few of the more durable items in one hand, the wineglass in the other, and started to carry them out to the mass of squad cars parked outside, wondering if she would have to use her master Tetris skills to fit everything in, or whether they'd have to make a second trip.
XoXoXoXoX
Nick and Greg looked at David expectantly. "Why are we here?" Greg asked in an impatient tone.
"I found something I thought might be of interest. You see this bruise around her wrist?" He gestured at one of the victim's arms, where, sure enough, a purplish discoloration had wound around. "It looks like a hand. There are the fingers and the palm," he said, tracing the outline of a hand with one latex-covered finger.
"So…what's that mean?" Nick asked. "I don't think we can lift a fingerprint off a dead body."
"You can try, can't you?" David said. He seemed very determined that his find wouldn't go unnoticed.
"Sure, whatever you say," Greg replied, taking out a brush and some print powder. He thought better of his decision, though, and looked at Nick. "You want to superglue it?"
Nick grinned and left to get fuming supplies.
A while later, the three men were standing around a small tent made out of plastic sheets, watching fumes from the acrylic resin settle on the dead woman.
Once they were sure any prints would have shown up, the tent was dismantled and Nick inspected her wrist. "Hey, get me a picture and a tape lift of this, then we'll run it through AFIS and see if we can get a hit. You should get prints off the other victims, too, for comparison.
XoXoXoXoX
"What have you got for us, Doc?" Catherine asked as she walked briskly into the morgue, Grissom at her heels.
"Not much," Doctor Robbins sighed dejectedly. "No signs of struggle on any of them, no ligature marks, defensive wounds…" He trailed off. "I sent some samples out with David, but nothing on them suggests poison."
"There are such things as untraceable poisons, you know," Grissom said knowingly. "We might be dealing with a botanist. Something killed these people; we just have to follow the evidence to find out what."
Catherine rolled her eyes at Doctor Robbins, both of them feeling somewhat skeptical about Grissom's motivational speaking skills. They'd heard them a million times.
Grissom caught the look that passed between his colleagues, but dismissed it and left the morgue, deciding to return to his office, maybe reread his copy of A Fly for the Prosecution, one of his favorite forensic entomology studies.
XoXoXoXoX
A/N: That's it for the first chapter, the second will be written by Silver Hair Fox, who's character (Natasha Haan) joins mine (Maddy) in a bunch of these fictions, and she likes to get in on the action of writing. Maybe she'll know what killed these people, because I sure as hell don't! Reviews are appreciated!
Maddy