9. Strip Maul

"How did you survive the time as an officer? It's crazy out there at night." Sara said when Sofia sat next to her.

"Oh, you were out with the crime unit, right. People there are alive instead of dead. Quite a change, isn't it?"

"I think dead people are much easier to handle. What makes people wear a horse head on the Strip? With a bag of grass in his pocket?"

"Horses eat grass." Pretty easy to figure out. What else than grass should a horse have in its pockets? Okay, a horse didn't have pockets…

"Not this kind of grass. And we had a mule too. A drug mule."

"The man, who pretended to be a woman? He killed himself in the department, it was a messy crime scene. And another thing the Sheriff isn't happy about." Another thing, that would give Sofia a headache and a lot of work, to smoothen things out.

"I heard rumors that…is it true? She wants to resign?" Usually Sara wasn't interested in gossip, in this case, it was about work, she had Sofia, as a good source, next to her, why not test the waters? See, how much truth was in this rumor.

"I can't talk for her."

"No, but you can tell me if you heard the same rumor. If you know more."

"Are you interested in the job?"

"No, I'm not and I'm in no position to become the Sheriff. You, on the other hand, you could become the Sheriff of Vegas one day. You're climbing the ladder pretty good and fast."

"We can talk about that in ten years or so. For now, I think Ecklie would be a good choice. He has changed."

"He did. Morgan is pretty good for him. How is Brass doing? I heard the prostitute had a ring, he bought for his ex wife. It must have been a shock to realize, something, that meant a lot to you, was sold to a stranger." By your own daughter, who seemed to hate your guts.

"Yeah, he wanted Ellie to have to ring as a sign of how much her parents were in love. She sold it, worse, she must be or must have been in Las Vegas and never tried to reach out for him. She's his weakness, whatever she does, it goes straight to him, affects him. He'll try to find her, find out if she's still here or moved on."

"I hope he tells us when he needs help. Dealing with family issues is hard and they're even harder when you deal with them on your own."

Sofia raised her eyebrows. She knew somebody else, who had family issues and didn't ask for help. This person was sitting right in front of her, but she would not say a single word about Sara and Grissom's relationship, it was up to the brunette to bring this topic in.

"This kid, Bobby Reed, he didn't care about anything. We told him, his room mate was dead because of him and he acted like we told him, it rained in Seattle. He was cold. I'm not sure if he reacted this way to hurt his father or because he actually doesn't feel anything for other people."

"Maybe it was his kind of payback for his father. His parents are divorced, often there's bad blood."

"He did mention something about, he has his weekend visits again and if he would comes to see him more often this time, he might have a clue what was going in the life of his son."

"Words like these make me happy to have no child."

"You don't like children?"

"I love them, but…there are so many things you can make wrong. It's so easy to screw up and say things, you can't take back. It's a huge responsibility and with our jobs…I saw it with Catherine, you worry all the time about your child, because you know how evil the world is. And then you're away so often, to fight evil, that you don't have enough time to be with your child."

"That's true."

Sofia wondered if Sara and Grissom had talked about having children and if these were the words, they ended this discussion with. But it was something, she better not asked the brunette.