A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviewed my last chapter! And for people who are asking me suspiciously: yes, the cliffhangers do start soon. Not quite yet, though... I have to drop clues first ;)

As always, any reviews and suggestions are very much appreciated, as I'm still experimenting writing certain characters and situations. I'd love to hear what you think!

Lindsay had heard of Chinese Water Torture, but she had never realised quite how much it could live up to its name.

Splish.

The bullet hole went right through the ceiling of the room she was processing, and had broken the skylight in the roof on the next level. So rain was beating into the loft, eager to have found an entry point, a weakness in the structure, and every now and then a droplet from the growing puddle up there found its way down the small hole, to splash into the diluting blood pool on the laminated wood flooring.

Splish.

Then a varying pause, while her ears strained to catch the next drop, in a state of constant expectation of it.

Splish.

It was driving her crazy. She wished protocol, and the need to preserve evidence, didn't forbid her from mopping up the blood and putting something soft there instead to absorb the dripping silently.

Splish.

The door opened, and Mac entered. "You've found it?" she asked hopefully.

Splish.

"Yes." He held up a small evidence envelope. "The bullet ricocheted after breaking the window; it didn't have enough momentum to get outside. Thankfully for us, because we'd never find it if it had. It's deformed, but it's a .38 calibre round."

"That's all the bullets recovered, then. One in her shoulder, a through-and-through from his leg I pulled from the wall, and that one."

Mac looked again round the sparsely but expensively furnished living room. The woman lying on the floor was wearing a dressing gown, fabric which had quickly soaked up blood, turning the blue to purple. A knife handle stuck from her chest.

"Why shoot someone and then stab them?" Lindsay asked. "I mean, why not just shoot her and be done with it?"

"Perhaps the shots were never intended to be fatal," Mac suggested. "It seems personal to me. The killer could have wanted her to know exactly what was happening."

Lindsay shuddered. Another pearl of water dropped ripples into the redness beside her, and she made a small involuntary noise of irritation. Mac heard her, and guessed its cause.

"How are you doing with evidence collection?"

"I'm done, I think. There's no obvious evidence of an intruder, but hopefully we'll be able to find something at the lab. There certainly doesn't seem to be anything here, unless the fingerprints match to anyone in the system. Even the door doesn't make sense." The frustration showed in her voice.

Splish.

The furnishings in the room were perfectly undisturbed. The only indication of a violent murder was Rosie Saunders's body, the bullet holes in the wall and ceiling, and the door, the lock of which had been smashed down by the police officers who'd responded to the report of shots fired.

Mac considered. "Chances are, our killer has a key. It isn't a self locking door, "

"But didn't the building supervisor say that Miss Saunders here lived alone?"

Mac smiled slightly. "He did." He stood with the air of waiting for her to continue.

Lindsay considered. "She might have given a spare key to one of his neighbours, in case of an emergency."

Mac nodded. "I've already had a couple of the unis do a canvass. No one on this floor or the ones directly above or below have admitted to holding a spare key, or even knowing Miss Saunders personally. Apparently she kept to herself."

"Is this a test?" Lindsay asked suspiciously. "Because you keep leading me to say things, but you've already thought of them."

Mac laughed. "Just seeing if you're coming to the same conclusions as me."

"Well, I haven't exactly been able to get to a conclusion yet, unless someone's discovered the principle of walking through walls. Have you?"

"I don't draw conclusions this early in the investigation."

"Yes, I know," she sighed. "Follow the evidence, right?"

He nodded. "I think we're done here for now. Let's get back to the lab and run trace from her clothes, and the fingerprints we've pulled from the door."

Lindsay stood up, only too pleased to be away from the irregular dripping. She gestured towards the window. "Is it me, or is the rain getting worse?"

Mac studied the falling water. "Hard to say. Either way, it'll take us a while to get back."

Splish.

- - - - -

Flack groaned at the sight greeting him as he stopped his car. He got out reluctantly, opening his umbrella to shield him as he did so.

He glanced around for a second until his attention was caught by a shout, and splashed through the rising streams and lakes to where Angell was waving him over. She was wearing a yellow hi-vis jacket over her dark waterproof coat. Water slicked her hair to her scalp, and he held the umbrella over both of them, raindrops drumming onto the fabric.

"You kiddin' me?" he asked grumpily. "I'm a highly trained homicide detective and I get called to a car pile-up in this weather?"

"Stop whining," she told him. Strands of dark hair were stuck to her cheek-bones. "Everyone's busy today. The highly trained homicide detectives get the privilege of being called to the fatality wrecks instead of the rest of the pile-ups that are going on."

"The crime scene I just left was indoors," he pointed out. There was nowhere to stand that wasn't partly submerged. Water seeped in through the eyelets on his shoes, soaked possessively into the hems of his pants.

She raised an eyebrow. "Keep on whinging like that and you can have a case of attempted murder to investigate too. Or rather, you won't, because I'm good enough not to leave any evidence. I don't want to be here either, particularly, so shut up and be thankful."

"Thankful? What the hell for?"

She shrugged, grinning. "Thankful that there's no wind, so you can use your umbrella? Thankful that Messer's not here to wind you up? Thankful that, despite your blatant eyeing me up, I'm not filing a harassment suit? Whatever warms the cockles of your heart, detective."

He glared at her cheerfulness, but knew implied blackmail when he heard it. "Ok, ok. Let's get to it."

"That's the spirit." She winked at him.

- - - - -

Sid watched the raindrops hurl themselves at the glass of the window, mesmerised by the patterns they formed as they slid down the pane, defeated in their attempt to smash through. Today would soon become a busy one for him, judging by the spate of telephone calls the morgue had received so far, notifying him of the imminent arrival of more of the dead.

For now, though, he had time to stare out at the pouring rain. Plenty of time, amongst the stainless steel coffins holding bodies, which lay silent as the graves they would enter soon. The dead didn't complain, or speak, or pass judgement, and in many ways he felt that they were easier to deal with than the living. He thought of Sheldon, who had moved from here out to talk to and examine the living again, and was glad that it wasn't his job. Especially on a day like this one.

The rain-threads wove themselves into tapestries as he watched, patterns, ghosts, forming and dissolving, reforming and dissolving. Maybe the future was drawn in the grey sheets of flowing cloth, for those who could read it. But the half-formed shapes and faces blurred into each other too fast for him to catch.

Quick footsteps announced Danny's arrival, snapping him out of the half-thoughts falling through his mind, and back into the imitation sunlight of the room. "Hey Sid," Danny greeted him. "I'm here for autopsy results, Claire Martell."

Sid's face creased in confusion. "I've been trying to contact Sheldon. I thought he was coming to pick them up."

"Nah," Danny said. "The doc's gone out to a scene with Stell and Adam. I'm all alone here."

"Not nice weather to be out in," commented Sid as he slid open one of the metal drawers. "How did you manage to avoid being called out yourself?"

Danny grinned. "Dunno, but I'm not complaining."

"Well, I hope your luck holds," Sid told him. "Now, your victim. COD is exsanguination. Her throat was cut, as you can see."

"Yeah, guessed that much."

Sid nodded his head sadly. "She was attacked from behind. Probably didn't even see her attacker."

"Yeah." Danny glanced at Claire Martell's cold face once more. "Please say you have something useful?"

Sid unclipped his glasses from his face. "Actually, I do. I already know who killed her."

"Really?" asked Danny, slightly incredulously.

"Oh yes. I don't joke." He strolled across the room and slid open another drawer. "Here you are. Iain Abbots, 28 years old. He ran out into the street next to the alleyway where your victim was attacked, and was hit by a car."

Danny still looked sceptical. "And…"

Sid smiled triumphantly. "He had her wallet in his pocket, as well as a knife with her blood on. Kendall ran it."

"How come you didn't tell me?" There was an injured tone to Danny's voice.

"I didn't know that you were on the case, or I would have. As I said, I thought it was Sheldon's, so Kendall brought the results to me when she couldn't find him, but if he's out in the rain that isn't very surprising. I called his cell phone only a few minutes ago to tell him, but it went to voicemail so I left a message."

"Huh." Danny clearly wasn't going to give up his chance to sulk this easily, despite Sid's calm tone. "Well, case closed, I guess."

"I hope everyone's alright, out there," Sid said.

"Course they are. Anyway, I'd better get on with verifying and doing the paperwork from this one. Thanks for solvin' it, Sid."

"You're welcome," Sid said as Danny disappeared, doors to the morgue swinging closed behind him.

He turned again to the window, a worried frown creasing his forehead slightly. The raindrops continued their slow assault on the glass, wiping away the world outside in their merging patterns. He wished that his friends weren't outside today.

Ghosts formed and dissolved as he watched, formed and dissolved.