"Urrm... Earth to David," Sara snapped her fingers awaking David from his vacant expression.

"Oh, hello Sara," David said, blinking as he realised Sara was standing there awaiting autopsy results, "you're here for Miss Blanchard I believe."

"I certainly am," she replied as David led them over to the slab furthest from the door to where Claudia Blanchard lay.

"Miss Blanchard was a particularly tough case to crack, pun not intended." David giggled a little and Sara tried her best not to look too annoyed or impatient, "anyway I noted a small wound to the back of the skull, which led to an acute subdural haematoma."

"So you're saying COD was blunt force trauma?"

"Not exactly," David murmured, "the wound was not immediately fatal and it's likely the victim would have gone into unconsciousness shortly afterwards.

"So what exactly was cause of death?" Sara inquired.

"COD was asphyxiation due to massive crushing injuries; most of her ribs were crushed as well as the radius and the ulna in her left arm. I'd say it was likely she was still alive when that fridge fell due to the burst blood vessels in her eyes. Well, I presume your culprit is the fridge which prevented her lungs from expanding meaning she couldn't breathe properly..."

"Yes, I know the mechanisms of crush asphyxia," Sara intervened, "what else can you tell me about the body."

"Take a look at her liver," David pointed to a bowl to which Sara saw lay Claudia Blanchard's liver.

"There's lots of little... what look to be tumours on it," Sara observed. "Looks like she'd developed liver cancer."

"Well this is liver cancer in its early form, as far as I know it hasn't spread to other parts of the body. I also found tar in her lungs which suggests she was a frequent smoker."

"Well that's one way to beat cancer, die before it kills you."

"I extracted some skin from under her fingernails and sent them to DNA. I couldn't find any trace in the head wound or in her hair so I can't tell you what hit her or what she hit."

"Okay then," Sara grimaced, knowing that they were going to have to rely on the fridge in order to determine who killed Claudia Blanchard, "thanks for the information, I've got to go process a fridge..."

"Hold on a minute Sara," David called to her as she began walking out of the room, "I've got one more thing to show you." Sara turned back and David lifted the cloth to reveal the victim's left hand. Sara noticed that one of her fingers was missing.

"Where's her index finger?"

"Where, I cannot tell you that but the hand came to me bandaged, she must have lost it in a recent accident but it definitely occurred long before death."

"Did you determine how long before?"

"I could, but it's probably easier to probe through any recent ambulance call-outs or if she made any trips to the ER, not that it'll help you find her killer."

"Well maybe she was attacked? Then the killer came to finish her off."

"Possibly but I don't remember an attack where the perp only cuts the victim's finger off."

Sara pondered for a moment, what David had said was true but she had a gut feeling that there were plenty of tell-tale signs that Claudia Blanchard's death was imminent and they could trace those back to a killer. "That's true," she responded eventually, "I'll go and see if Selma's got a hit in DNA, I'm hoping it might prove my theory correct."

Over the past two and a half years that Catherine had been supervisor, Brass had been in her office many times before, whether it be for a meeting relating to a case, or an employee or even just for a casual chat during their breaks. Despite this, he had never really taken her office in, when Grissom had been supervisor, he'd always been secretly fascinated by the butterflies, or the aphids or the pickled salamander which Grissom would put on display.

Here, he began noticing aspects of Catherine which came out in the various ways she'd decorated the room, mainly consisting of photos and memories as well as several awards she'd earned through her career, the latest award, a small plate of gold designated to her for her leadership skills in the previous week's bomb attacks. Brass took a closer look at the photos which lined the office and found that it represented a timeline of key events in her life. She had one taken when she was younger with her mother and next to that was a high school photo followed by a photo with a number of her friends, presumably when she was a dancer.

He glanced over a few years, consisting of photos of her marriage to Eddie, Lindsey's birth, becoming assistant supervisor and one of the team taken a few years back. He moved on to another picture of Lindsey, now a lot older and then next to that was one of her and Warrick.

Warrick. He felt his stomach flip uncomfortably. Although he tended to keep his feelings to himself, there was no denying that he still felt guilt and remorse for the death of one of his good friends. He often had nightmares, some of just Warrick begging for protection, others of McKeen taking out the whole team. Don't ever forget how lucky you are. Those were the words which haunted him every night, the words he heard in his head most times he entered a crime scene, the words that he would regret for the rest of his life...

"Jim," Brass heard a voice speak from behind him, he looked up and saw it was Catherine, carrying a stash of paperwork and portraying a sense of calmness.

"Oh hey Catherine," Brass replied, "I'm not intruding am I?"

"No, it's fine, that's why I always leave my office unlocked. Although I probably should, seeing as I'm sure I caught Hodges snooping around my bonus recommendations not too long ago."

Brass let out a small laugh. Catherine dumped the paperwork on her desk and gestured for Brass to take a seat in front of her. She began the conversation, "so how are you doing today?"

"Bit better actually. Headache's gone and only my left ear appears to be ringing still at the moment." Truth be told he was still a bit shaken up by last week's events. It was bad enough being caught up in the second explosion but it hurt just as more seeing Larry Durman lying in the hospital bed, completely immobile, covered in burns and practically knocking on Death's front door. He had it on his mind that it could have been him, it could have been him on that hospital bed.

"Your doctor advised you not to come in today didn't he," Catherine remarked.

Brass grimaced a little as he didn't really want to admit to going against his doctor and the department's advice but he knew he would be sent home anyway, "Mmm, yes, but I figured that Stokes has been back at work for a few days now and he's holding up alright."

"Yes but don't forget you got more of the brunt of the explosion, and without meaning to sound rude, he's younger and more... fitter than you are."

Brass laughed to himself as she said this, it was true. He was sixty years old now and had put on a bit of a gut recently which he often joked about with his colleagues, "I guess but... I... I've sorta got a bit of a hunger to go back into the field again. I mean it's the first time in a while, about three months, I've gotten to chase a suspect down, I'm still not happy you beat me to that loan shark guy a couple of weeks ago..."

"Okay I was desperate to catch that guy and I saw him and you guys hadn't yet..."

"There's no need to make excuses Catherine," he chuckled, "just don't do it again. But anyway, when I was driving round Vegas, sirens blaring, lights flashing, I felt young again. I guess that's partly down to me being stuck in an interrogation room most of the year but I felt like I wanted to get back out there as soon as possible, get a few scumbags off the street and I wasn't getting that vibe being stuck at home on paid leave."

"I get you, I do, it seems whenever I'm on the job I wanna be at home and whenever I'm at home I wanna be out bustin' crack dealers and all of that crowd."

"Yeah," that was all he could reply with for now. There was a momentary awkward silence before Brass decided to change the conversation, "so what you working on there?" he asked, indicating to the paperwork she had in front of her.

"Evaluations, and I don't mean the little quips I put at the end of every report, I'm talking the big chunky annual ones," Catherine said putting her pen in her mouth to think, "Grissom always hated this part of the job," she lowered her voice to a whisper, "but secretly I love writing up about my co-workers."

"And you get a nice trip down memory lane too."

"Certainly. I've done Ray and Greg's so far and I'm half way through Sara's now, I got to get hers and Nick's done by the end of shift, I want to hand them out tonight."

"Do they know about them?"

"Nope, if you know you're being watching you know you're not working in a familiar environment, a bit of a nice surprise for the end of shift." She paused for a moment and looked back up and faced Brass, "you know, you should probably go home, get some rest."

"Come on Cath, I've had plenty of rest."

"No as I'm not your boss, I can't physically send you home, but as your friend, if your ear's still ringing, I don't think you're ready to be back yet."

"Yeah," Brass nodded acceptingly, "yeah you're probably right. I've booked in to see my doctor anyway, about the ear."

Catherine reached out and rubbed his arm comfortingly, "you go and have some rest now." She smirked to herself, confessing, "you know I've lost count how many times I've said that in the past month."

Brass said nothing but smiled back before getting up and making his way back to PD to collect his stuff and head home. He was just leaving the crime lab when suddenly his phone began ringing, perplexed at who could be calling now he'd clocked out, he answered it.

"Brass."

"Hey it's me," he heard a female voice, relatively high pitched with a strong Irish accent on the other end.

"Hello, me," Brass replied sarcastically.

"It's Monaghan," the voice replied distressed, "can you tell your CSIs working the Blanchard Case that I'm gonna be a bit late. My car won't start."

Brass smirked a little at Monaghan's misfortune; he'd met her a few times and could probably best describe her as irritating, "okay I'll let them know. Drive safely."

"Eurgh! Yuk! This isn't work, this is punishment," Hodges moaned as he sifted through piles of trash in a dumpster behind the Emerald Eyes casino.

"Quit your whinging Hodges," Ray said to him as he searched around in an adjacent dumpster, "just be thankful this isn't your everyday job."

Hodges replied with no more but another moan as he searched through cans, clothes, bottles, used condoms and leftover food. Whilst the top layers were mostly fresh, the trash was only picked up once a week meaning that the older leftovers had decomposed quickly into 'trash soup.' Hodges lifted up an old paper takeout bag and grimaced, "oh great," Hodges gagged, quickly tossing the half decomposed bird to one side and digging deeper in to the pile, "can you get me one of those Hazmat showers? I think I need a full body decontamination."

"Hey Hodges, I think I got something!" Ray called out and Hodges quickly seized the opportunity to leap out of dumpster and go and stand away from the trash in a relative proximity to Ray, who held up a clear plastic bag containing an assortment of items, "whoever cleaned up was stupid enough to leave it all contained in the plastic liner."

"You reckon that came from the same room that the vic died in?"

Ray took out an empty bottle of pills and read the label, "well these diazepam pills are prescribed to Mr Lomar Valdez. This looks like it's our missing trash."

With surprising athletic ability, Ray jumped out of the dumpster and bagged the plastic lining containing the contents of room seventeen-thirty-five. "Is that all we need from here, because I'm not sifting through any more trash."

"I think we're done here," Ray responded, "but because I'm nice, I'll let you use the showers first."

"Good, because I think I'd rather take a bath in Lake Mead than wait any longer for one."

Ray's phone began chiming and he answered it promptly, "Langston."

"Hey Ray, it's Nick," he heard his colleague's voice on the receiver end of the phone, "Vega managed to get an ID on the vic's girlfriend, Lorena Melua, we tracked her credit cards and she's currently at the Tangiers hotel. Vega and I are on the way to bring her in."

"Okay then," Ray responded, "I found the contents of the empty trash can we believe is from the crime scene, I'll take it back to the lab and start processing it now."

"Okay good, but if it's got trash from every day of this week with it, that could have been dumped at any time."

Well, it was pretty near the top of the pile, suggesting it was quite new but I'll have a look into it anyway."

"Cool, I'll speak with ya later."

Nick and Vega casually walked into the foyer of the Tangiers and up to one of the members of security. Having spoken to the casino before venturing in, they knew who they were after and the security member pointed them over to a Blackjack table where a game was mid-session. They were led over to the table and the dealer pointed at a young, Hispanic woman who was piling up numerous chips for her roster.

Vega tapped her on the shoulder and said, "excuse me Miss, you're gonna have to come with us."

The woman, Lorena Melua rolled her eyes at the detective, complaining, "well this better be important, I'm on a winning streak! Three twenty-ones in a row!"

"Miss Melua," Nick spoke up, "we need to talk to you regarding your boyfriend, Lomar Valdez."

"Oh, what kind of trouble has he gotten himself into this time," Lorena whined.

"The kind where he stops breathing."

"Alright Miss Melua, we need to ask you about your whereabouts for this evening," Vega spoke to Lorena Melua from across the table in the interrogation room.

"I was on a girl's night out," she answered bluntly, blinking with astonishment. Nick looked at her suspiciously, she'd taken the news of her boyfriend's death surprisingly well, there had been a few tears but other than that, she had remained stubborn about admitting any involvement with the incident. She continued, "we came to Vegas for a fun week out, us and two other couples. First night we had a girly night out and they had a mens' evening and last night it was couples. Tonight we went back to girls and guys evening."

"So where were your gals Miss Melua?" Nick inquired. She gave him a cold stare which he returned.

"Urm... had a minor disagreement earlier on, they wanted to go clubbing and I wanted to hit the Strip, try out my luck."

"So they can't confirm your alibi then," Vega pointed out. "Particularly between the hours of nine and midnight."

"No I was out with them at ten, we just then parted ways and I've been at the Tangiers all night, go and ask the guys there."

"Oh don't worry," Nick spoke up, "we will, in fact we have one of our lab techs analysing video surveillance of the Emerald Eyes Hotel right now, so we'll know whether you're lying or not."

"Hold on? You think I killed my husband?" She asked them bewildered, the two of them nodded.

"Well, you're case isn't looking very good. I mean we got some data of when your room was activated by the cards. It says that it was opened twice within ten minutes shortly before he died around nine-thirty, ten pm. Once around half eleven and it was also used at around midnight, shortly before your boyfriend's body went through the window."

"Also we have evidence that someone tidied up the crime," Vega spoke up, Nick noticed Lorena's eyes begin to widen with fear and dread, "we found the trash from your room in a dumpster, it contained your boyfriend's diazepam pills and seeing as you're the on..."

"I'm not the only one who has access to the room," she hastily interrupted, "urrm... the hotel gave us two cards and we urrm... let each other use our cards."

"And why would you do that?" Vega asked curiously.

Lorena looked around to see if anyone was watching and slowly began explaining, "because on couples night we like to urrm... swap... partners."

Nick and Vega looked at each other with an awkward look on their face, her alibi was flimsy at the best but then again they didn't have anything to hold her on.

"Okay Miss Melua, you're free to go, for now but don't go far, we're only just beginning our investigation."

"Hey Greg!" Sara called out to her colleague who was stood outside DNA, "I'm gonna be gone for a short while, our new Detective is having trouble getting off the driveway."

The two of them smirked at each other having heard negative comments about the majority of dayshift staff, "Okay then I'll go and get a head start at processing the fridge then."

The two of them parted ways but before Greg could get to the garage he was stopped by Selma.

"Sanders!" She barked causing him to jump, "I got a hit in the skin found under fridge-girl's fingernails."

"Okay, but she's not a girl, she's a fifty-eight year old woman," Greg reminded her.

"Fifty-eight, eighteen, not much different to me," Selma shrugged and showed Greg the hit which CODIS had come up with, "Amy Griffin, thirty years old, no record but she's a paramedic at Desert Palms."

"Okay, I'll have her brought in but I can't see someone trained to save lives willingly place someone under a fridge."

"True, but take a look at her past work evaluations." Greg looked down the list and found something which maybe a paramedic could kill for.

"So, she has a motive, maybe we could get her after all."

"Look Mr Sanders, you're wasting your time here." Amy Griffin stared at Greg from across the table in the interrogation room. Her posture and tone of voice suggested she was confident, but at the same time, she didn't appear to be cocky, like many suspects they had brought in.

Ignoring the fact that she somehow knew his name, Greg told her firmly, "just explain to me what your skin's doing under the fingernails of Claudia Blanchard."

She swept aside part of her jet black hair, revealing what looked like to be a severe scratch on her right cheek, "I got called out Thursday evening, some woman cut her finger off chopping up onions. Who the hell chops up onions at one in the morning?" She began raising her voice, "I arrive at the scene, and clear her up and then suddenly she starts swiping at me screaming "you killed my husband, you broke apart my family." She put on a mock elderly voice and began swiping away at the air. Greg couldn't help but start laughing at her impersonation. Pull yourself together, Greg, she's a suspect in a muder inquiry, his thoughts told him.

"Well it says here, she filed a complaint against you two years ago," Greg composed himself sombrely, "and apparently you were disciplined because of it."

"If by disciplined you mean, moved to working nights, then yes. Though I'm partly thankful for it," she smiled at Greg and put on a sweet tone, "because all the cute guys work nights."

Greg felt himself starting to feel a bit uncomfortable and tried to bring it back to the case, "the complaint was for failing to save her husband from his car crash back in o-nine."

"It was a four-car pile up! As a paramedic, part of the job is prioritising lives at risk, and I'm sorry I had to choose saving the two children over her sixty year old husband, I really am but it's part of the job. You know, people like us, you, me, we put ourselves in harm's way everyday single day, and sometimes we often have to pay the price for doing what we feel is the right thing. Other people will never understand that."

Greg simply found himself nodding along to what the paramedic said, yet at the same time feeling an eerie sense of déjà vu from hearing those words. He sighed and blinked realising that he'd been staring into her emerald eyes the entire time she had been talking. Snap out of it, he told himself mentally.

"You're free to go," was all that he could say. Amy smiled at him sweetly again and lifted herself graciously from her chair and began heading for the door.

As she got to the door, she turned back to face him and said, "it was nice to meet you again, Mr Sanders. I'm glad you are well." Then she was escorted out the building by the overseeing officer at the door.

Greg sighed and buried his head in his hands, praying that someone from Internal Affairs hadn't been overseeing the interrogation. Nice to meet me again? How does she know me?

A/N: The events which Catherine and Brass are referring to are from the previous story, Rush Hour.

Hope you enjoyed Part 2 of the story, Part 3 should be up sometime tomorrow. Please feel free to review and give me your feedback! Thanks for reading! :)