Chapter 02

"Hey," Ryan said in greeting to Natalia.

She was surprised, and the look registered on her face. "Ryan, we were called about an hour ago. Where were you?"

"Nowhere. What do we have here?" His tone was dismissive, and he was quick to change the subject.

"Well, the victim was Sienna Thompson, a shot to the head."

Ryan nodded, crouching down to Natalia's level. "What do you have?"

"Blood droplets, away from the pool," she responded, swabbing the slightly viscous liquid, "I think it might just belong to the girl over there, though. She caused quite a commotion – I think she broke the victim's nose."

Ryan looked up at Natalia's flippant tone, trying to find the girl in question. Not soon after, did his eyes land on a petite brunette standing off to the other side of the pool. A uniformed officer was standing beside her, but she was turned away with a petulant look on her face. "The brunette?"

Natalia was busy taking pictures of the blood droplet trail to notice the girl, or Ryan. "Yeah. She's Zahara Madison, and from what I've heard she's a likely suspect for the shooting."

Ryan nodded, already on his way over to her. "Zahara Madison?" he called when he neared her. The brunette in question turned to look at him, her green eyes smoldering. She was unimpressed with her entire environment - that much was evident. Ryan took a survey of her – her lip had some dried blood on it, and she kept touching her arm where four long scratch marks sat.

"I'm Ryan Wolfe with the Crime Lab. What happened?"

Zahara caught him looking at her arm. "Bitch scratched me when I punched her," she replied defensively, dropping both arms to her sides.

"Why did you punch her?"

"She was pulling my hair out! She was so psychotic."

Ryan remained calm, but he couldn't help one eyebrow from raising. "Was she on medication?"

Zahara shrugged, a sense of apathy washing over her. "Honestly, I have no idea. A couple of days ago I found a bottle of Stelazine with her name on it – I don't know if she actually took them though." She crossed her arms over her chest, looking past Ryan's shoulder to the random police personnel walking about. In a dry tone she added: "although it would explain a lot."

Ryan shifted the weight on his feet, crossing his own arms across his chest. His head was lowered, but only because he was unconsciously trying to copy the height of the woman before him. "Why is that?"

She gingerly touched her lip, and Ryan watched the movement carefully. "She head butted me, Mr. Wolfe. She had issues."

"You punched her – it's kind of a double edged-sword."

Zahara laughed loudly, posing with her hand on her hip. "She had it coming, Mr. Wolfe. Ask anyone: Sienna was an annoyingly spoilt brat who made more enemies than friends."

"Is there anyone in particular you can think of?"

"Besides me?"

When Ryan didn't even so much as bat an eyelash, Zahara sighed melodramatically. "Mr. Wolfe, do I look like I'm capable of killing someone?"

"You don't have to be particularly skilled to pull a trigger."

It was all Zahara could do to stop herself from smirking when Ryan Wolfe left.

***

Snapping a pair of latex gloves on, Natalia met Ryan in the morgue. "Okay Tara, what do we have?"

Tara looked up from her inspection to smile at Natalia. "Well, Sienna was a little worse for wear. Besides the bullet wound in her forehead, she had a broken nose, a large scratch on her neck, and a bruise began to form in her abdomen. "

"Is all this ante mortem?" Natalia asked.

Tara nodded. "I told you; she took quite a beating. Cause of death: the bullet penetrated the skull, struck the brain, and she bled internally."

"That confirms the story about what happened between Sienna and Zahara," Ryan put in, staring at Sienna. Then he looked at Tara. "Do you have a bullet for us?"

Tara looked at him, playfully offended. "Ryan, I'm surprised you even have to ask!"

She then handed them the extracted bullet. Natalia was the one who received it. "It looks like a .22," she mused.

Just then, Ryan's phone rang. "Really?" he said, sending Natalia a look after hearing the information he was being given. "Thanks."

He flipped his phone shut, his eyes still on Natalia. "It seems Sienna had a restraining order against Zahara Madison."

***

Zahara Madison liked taking hot showers. She liked the way all her muscles relaxed, and the way she felt so completely spotless after the water scalded her skin. She was in the middle of towel drying her hair when her doorbell rang. She quickly shed her towel and put a t-shirt and shorts over the undergarments she had been wearing under the towel. The doorbell rang again before she got to the door. Needless to say she was pleasantly surprised when she found CSI Wolfe on the other end.

"Mr. Wolfe," she smiled, trying not to be surprised, "what are you doing here?"

"Were you going to tell anyone that Sienna had a restraining order against you?"

Suddenly Zahara's demeanor shifted, and she was standing defensively between Ryan and her house. "It was all a misunderstanding."

"See," Ryan sighed, almost sarcastically, "what I've found is that it's hardly a misunderstanding."

Zahara eyed him, moving forward to close her door behind her. Her eyes darkened, and she found herself standing on the step above him, as if to make herself seem bigger. "Don't you judge me, Mr. Wolfe. If you've come here to ask me questions, ask. Don't interrogate me with a preconceived notion of who I am or what happened. Yes, I beat the shit out of Sienna, but I didn't shoot her. She bugged the hell out of me, and as much as I'd rather be eaten by a swarm of killer bees than be nice to her, she didn't deserve to die." And as an afterthought, she added softly, "no one deserves to have something so precious taken from them like that."

Neither one of them spoke, but Ryan was far from done. "If she took a restraining order out on you, why were you at the same place as her?"

So she had something to do with her hands, Zahara began to run her fingers through her slowly drying hair. "Hell if I should know. I was there first. You can check, since you need to swipe a key to get into the pool area."

Ryan nodded, making a mental note to get those records. "So why does she have a restraining order on you?"

Zahara frowned. "Am I under arrest?"

Instantly Ryan became suspicious. "No."

"Do you have a signed order from a judge compelling me to tell you?"

"No."

Zahara backed up, opening her door as she went. "Then get the hell off my property or I'm letting my dog out."

And with that, she slammed the door shut, successfully cutting off anything Ryan was going to say.