Hurray! I believe that this is going to be a mostly case centered chapter since there hasn't been much development in it. Well, not really. Anyway…Regular PV, Sai's PV when he shows up…If he shows up.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little to no influence in society. ~Mark Twain ( HA! you thought this quote was going to be serious)

Izzy sat at his desk. Unbeknownst to Sasuke, or anyone else for that matter, he hadn't been doing his job. No, instead he had been playing solitary on his computer for the past few hours. He had lost every game. He blamed Karma. Once he had lost what was probably his hundredth game, he decided it was time to get to work. The audio clip had been marked 'Sample Voice Ventriloquist', a ridiculously long name in Izzy's eyes. He didn't see why Botan didn't just mark it as 'Voice Blah' or 'THIS IS WHAT WE NEED BITCHES!' Those were both fun and exciting. He decided when he was done he would change it.

Izzy ran a hand through his salt white hair, sighing as he finally opened up the stripping program. Once he stripped whatever audio effects were compromising the integrity of the sound, it would be over. It would take five minutes tops. He dragged the clip into the program and played it. His eyes instantly narrowed.

" I assume if you're hearing this that you're trying to strip the audio effects off this clip. Well hate to break this to you but this isn't the original clip. Sorry about that. I have to do what I can to thwart you and this is necessary. But just to keep it fun I'll give you a little hint for all your trouble. Don't believe everything you hear or read."

Izzy folded his hands and rested his chin on them. This was troublesome indeed. He wasn't even sure how this happened. He pulled out his cell phone and punched in Sasuke's number as frantically as he could. The white haired man was moving so fast that he kept punching in wrong numbers. He cursed and was about to throw his phone when he decided to just scroll through his contacts and call Sasuke that way. He rolled his eyes, technology.

Sasuke didn't answer the first time he called and Izzy was about to throw his phone across the room. Now was not the time for Sasuke to be Sasuke and do what he did best, be an asshole and not answer the phone. He redialed, two times and on the second redial Sasuke answered on the fourth ring.

" What do you want Izzy?" Came the Uchiha's voice. He sounded bored but mostly tired. Izzy knew he hadn't been sleeping well recently but new news was going to wake Sasuke right up.

" Sasuke listen to me, we have a serious problem!" He screamed into the phone, he could pictured the Uchiha now, pulling the phone away from his face because of the volume in which he replied. " Someone switched the audio clips!" He played the clip for Sasuke and the Uchiha was speechless as Izzy placed the phone next to his ear. " Hello? Sasuke! Are you there?"

" How could this have happened?"

" I don't know! I mean Botan had a password that I had to reset to even get to her files! Someone had to have known her password but there were only one other person who knew it and that was Rye. So unless the Ventriloquist got her to talk there was no way someone should have been able to crack this."

" Izzy, you do realize they could have just reset it themselves."

" Nope. They couldn't. When I reset it I had click the button and then call the company to give me an automatic override because I wasn't the user. And even then it took me an hour on the phone dealing with them and proving that I was a cop. It was really annoying, we should get like an access code so people will shut up and just let us do our jobs."

" Then they had to have known her password. Did Rye keep it with her or something? In her phone maybe?" Sasuke sounded agitated but Izzy could completely understand that. Their best lead had been flushed away by some random hacker. Now they had no leads, no evidence, no nothing.

" Rye isn't stupid Sasuke." Izzy said as he leaned back in the chair, starting to edit the audio clip. There was distortion on this one too but from the way it seemed, there was only slight distortion, like someone had been talking into a fan. There were still hints of their actual voice and if Izzy wasn't wrong, it was a woman's voice. " You see when it came to stuff like this, Rye wouldn't put labels on it. She would just have something random in a notepad in her phone. If the killer or whoever did this saw it, they'd probably be like…'What?'"

" Well I don't see any other way this could happen. Damn, I should have set up cameras in my house even if Naruto told me 'no'. We would be much farther ahead by now."

Izzy was going to say something about Sasuke being kinky when the computer beeped at him, signaling that it had taken out the distortion and all the background noise. He put Sasuke on speaker phone and set it on the table next to the speaker. He was right, the voice was that of a woman. She sounded older, but not too old. Probably late forties, early fifties. Her voice was slightly strained as if she didn't really want to do whatever she did. It was strange. Izzy stared at the screen as the clip finished.

" Huh. I've never heard that woman's voice before but she seems to have a connection to whoever is doing this."

" What makes you think that? She could be the killer." Sasuke said and Izzy could almost see him rolling his eyes.

" And this is why you guys hired the Americans. Even though it seems like she could be the culprit, a woman doesn't have the physical strength to carry out these murders. You forget that women's bodies don't have nearly as much muscle mass as a man's does, especially at this person's age…Unless this chick is a professional female body builder at fifty or whatever, she couldn't have carried this out. At least not by herself."

" So the Ventriloquist has an accomplice." Sasuke suggested as he sighed a little. " Superb."

" What should we do?" Izzy asked as he picked his phone back up. He held it slightly distanced from his mouth since Sasuke didn't need to hear anything else but his voice.

" For now, I don't know. I'll call Itachi later and tell him the news. I don't want to wake him up, he probably just fell asleep. He doesn't need to pull another all-nighter. Listen if the killer or whoever was in the office, dust Botan's keyboard, dust the desk in my office, the burned remains. Anything really. If we can get one finger print that doesn't belong to one of us, then we'll have our lead. Okay? Call me if you find something."

" Okay. Kiss Botan for me, stud."

" You're annoying." And with that Sasuke hung up. Izzy smirked a little and walked into the autopsy room. That's where all the supplies he was going to need were.-

To Itachi

The older Uchiha was having a hell of a time sleeping. After Sasuke's shift was over, he was supposed to come home and then they would discuss the case, as usual. Kisame was going after Sasuke so he could get a good amount of quality time with his little brother before his partner got home. He sighed and rolled around in his bed. He had nearly pulled the sheets off his bed from all the tossing he had been doing. He was starting to get annoyed. He just wanted to sleep, nothing more. Get a little rest before Sasuke got back.

After a few more minutes of fitful rolling, Itachi kicked off the covers and stormed into his shared bathroom. Since Sasuke had moved in for the time being, he was sharing it with his little brother. He didn't mind too much. Sasuke was clean, never leaving things out of their improper place. It was nice to have someone clean living in the house besides him. Kisame was a pig. A horrible, horrible disaster that walked and talked. Itachi didn't know how he had lived with him for this long. He sighed as he entered the bathroom.

He opened the cabinet above the sink, grabbing a bottle of sleeping pills. If he took one or two, he would be groggy but well enough to work. After enough coffee, he would be lively and ready. He opened the bottle dumping the pills into the palm of his hand. He had an entire handful, one actually falling from his grasp. He stared at it and then back up into his reflection.

The bags under his eyes were dark, looking more like bruises than anything else. His eyes were bloodshot, the veins thick and almost pulsing, even in the dim light of the bathroom. He hadn't turned on the light since it was still bright out, even if it was nine at night. The glory of summer. He sighed, looking down at his hand. Even they had lost their luster. No longer creamy pale, a sickness had taken them over. The pills seemed ever more inviting then, calling with the promises of eternal sleep. If he mixed it with the booze he knew Kisame kept under the sink, he wouldn't have to wake up anymore.

" What are you doing?" Kisame asked as he grabbed Itachi's wrist. The Uchiha gasped a little, not even realizing that he had been lifting the pills up to his mouth. " Are you off your lithium again?"

" I haven't taken it since we got back to Tokyo. I've been too busy to worry about it." Itachi said as he pulled his wrist free and dumped most of the pills back into the bottle. " But I don't see why that concerns you. I was just taking a sleeping aid."

" Oh and the entire bottle will definitely help you sleep." Kisame replied, not hiding the anger and annoyance in his tone. Itachi shrugged and swallowed the two pills before walking back into his room. " Have you told Sasuke yet?"

" That I'm a manic depressive? No. I haven't. He seemed to have a bit on his plate right now and my problems shouldn't concern him."

" He's your brother, he needs to know these things, you're important to him." Kisame said as he followed the Uchiha into his room. Itachi laid back down on his bed with his arms resting behind his head, not really looking at Kisame as he spoke. " Itachi, promise me that after the case you'll tell Sasuke about it."

" How about this," Itachi suggested as he turned to face Kisame full on; the man felt awkward having Itachi's full attention on him. " If Naruto comes back alive, I'll tell him. The last thing Sasuke would need is for Naruto to die and then me dropping that bombshell on him. He'd end up more fucked up emotionally than I ever could be. I'm surprised he isn't taking anything right now."

Kisame rolled his eyes as his pocket started to ring. He answered it and Itachi could tell it was someone at the office calling, either that or it was his little brother. The man stood with his back towards Itachi and he could feel the sleeping pills starting to take hold of him. He shut his eyes, letting the serene darkness take him but was shaken awake by his partner.

" Itachi, I know you just fell asleep but we have a problem." The Uchiha sighed, sitting up in his bed. He made a carry on motion with his hand and Kisame nodded. " Someone deleted the original audio file and replaced it with something else. Izzy edited the new clip and found it to be a woman's voice. The possibility of an accomplice has been added."

" What? How could this have happened?" Itachi asked and Kisame shrugged his shoulders. " What about the original tape? Why hasn't Izzy tried that?"

" Izzy was the one who called. He said the original tape was destroyed in the fire at the office; it was destroyed along with most of the other files. He doesn't have anything and doesn't know what to do. He said he already called Sasuke." Kisame informed as he sat down on the corner of Itachi's bed. " Izzy said he wants me to come back to the office and review the camera footage with him. Listen, I'll call you when I go in for my shift at the hospital then you can go and help Izzy okay?"

Itachi nodded as he laid back down in his bed. It would be a couple hours before Sasuke would contact Kisame and he better make the most of it. Before the door even had time to shut, Itachi was out cold. -

Back to the office

Izzy's eyes were strained as he watched more and more footage. They had managed to save every video camera that had been set up throughout the office, somehow. He had been watching up to the point where Sasuke and his team got the call about his house and he remembered it all so well. The pain, the pressure, the need. All of it. It stung him like when Rye and Dante disappeared. He had watched that tape as well, trying to pick up anything from it. He couldn't watch it all though, it was far too painful.

Kisame walked in then, making Izzy jump from the break in the silence. The black man laughed a little as he walked up to the jumpy man who was sitting behind a desk.

" Have you found anything?" Izzy rubbed his eyes and shook his head.

" Not yet, I've been scanning through the whole day just to see if there was any tampering before we left. There was none. And I've been looking at all of the cameras, if we split them we can probably get more footage watched and catalogued." Kisame nodded and took a seat next to Izzy, starting up to watch his own set of footage.

They spent hours examining it but that's when Izzy noticed something. No matter what cameras' footage he watched something would come up and cover them so they wouldn't record anything. It meant that the person who was trying to sabotage them had to be working on the inside. They had known Botan's password and where all the cameras were. It was too bizarre that a criminal mastermind would know this without setting foot inside the office. Izzy looked over at Kisame's footage and the same thing kept popping up, except for on one camera. The one that sat directly in front of Botan's desk. He pushed Kisame out of the way as he continued to watch the film. That's when his heart started to race, when he saw brief movement around the chair. It twisted slightly and then stilled completely. The audio on the clip revealed small tapping sounds but it was too dark to really making anything out. Izzy almost wanted to scream that there were ghosts but that's when he saw tiny hands on the keyboard.

The hands were far too lithe and small to be that of a child. Unless that child was under the age of two…It seemed like they were doll hands…Izzy's eyes widened instantly and he paused the video, making Kisame raise an eyebrow at him. He made the window smaller as he started to play around on the computer, opening up the list of suspects Rye and Dante had made. He was lucky he remembered the password for their files. It was still all in English, something Sasuke was still not to happy about. But for right now, Sasuke would worship any ground Izzy's foot made contact with!

He scrolled through the entire list and there it was, right in the middle. It was Sai's name, it was bolded and italicized which in Rye language meant, strong suspicion. In front of everyone else's name before Sai's there was a little x, meaning they had interrogated the person and had either cleared them or was going to look a little bit further into them. Since Sai's name was bolded and italicized it meant they had researched him and found something either suspicious in his past or met him once before and got what Dante called 'The Wiggins'. Which he defined as an involuntary movement one did when they got a bad feeling from the person they were talking to.

Izzy remembered when he met Sai face to face for the first time. He wasn't very creepy, well his dolls were creepy but him, not really. He seemed genuinely concerned but every good serial killer could hide their true emotions and mask their true intentions with a well thought out string of lies. And Sai seemed to have a good amount of alibis and excuses, all very well laid out. He narrowed his eyes as he opened up another tab on the computer and typed Sai's name into the database. Izzy's amethyst eyes widen to the point of being dinner plates in his head.

There was absolutely no information pertaining to Sai. Not a shred of it. Even someone on the witness protection program would have at least a little background information but this was completely blank, as if he had never existed before now. There was information about other men but none fit Sai's looks or job description.

Kisame looked confused as Izzy backed away from the computer. Everything he had just done was in English and Kisame didn't know much of it. Something he had been meaning to work on but just really never got around to it.

" Izzy, what is it? What did you find?"

" I need to call Sasuke." Izzy muttered as he grabbed his cell phone. His hand was against his mouth and he looked as if he was going to be sick as he dialed Sasuke's number. Since the urgency had increased over the past few hours, Sasuke answered on the second ring.

" What did you find this time?" Sasuke asked as Izzy put him on speaker. There was an awkward silence as Izzy continued to stare at the computer screen. " Hello? Izzy, are you there?"

" Yes, I'm here Sasuke." Izzy finally replied and he shook his head, grabbing the phone as he continued to scroll through the databank. " Sasuke, you're not going to believe this but I think I just found out who is responsible for all this, or at least, the best lead we have at the moment." Sasuke was completely silent on the other line as if waiting. He could tell all the muscles in the Uchiha's body were completely tense. " Do you remember that Sai guy? The one who took Sakura out? Well Kisame and I were watching the footage from the security tapes and I saw a doll typing in the password on Botan's computer, then I checked Rye and Dante's list of suspects, he was on it. His name was bolded and italicized which means that Rye found something she didn't like about him. And I just checked his file on the databanks, he didn't have a single shred of information about him."

The line went dead then and that's when Izzy knew Sasuke had gone out to look for Sai. He would most likely start with his place of residence. He got up and Kisame followed suit as he pulled out his cell phone and called Itachi to inform him of what was going on; Itachi said he would meet them there in five minutes.

The two of them ran out into a squad car, the sirens blaring loudly in the sleeping city as they drove into the darkness of the night. Both of them were gritting their teeth until they finally arrived at Sai's shop. The lights were out and that's when they spotted Itachi's car pulling up along the side. Sasuke's car quickly followed. The two Uchihas got out, both with guns cocked.

The two of them seemed to be in sync as they walked up to the doors, leaning against the walls before Sasuke shot off the lock. It had been silenced by the silencer he kept on his gun for situations just like this. He kicked the door in; Itachi following in after his little brother. Kisame and Izzy rushed in, both falling behind the Uchiha brothers as they moved smoothly through the rooms.

" Izzy." Sasuke whispered as his new partner lined up with him behind a wall. " The cellar is down those stairs, go down and see what you can find." He nodded his head and broke away from the pack, two pistols in his hands, waiting to be fired. Itachi nodded to his partner and brother as they went up the stairs to the house portion of Sai's store.

They moved silently, making sure to mask their sounds by moving slowly and in concise patterns. When they made it to the top of the stairs they were faced with three rooms, two of which had open doors. Kisame picked the one that was farthest away, Sasuke got the open door in the middle, Itachi picked the closed one. He waited for the other two to enter the rooms before he reared his foot back and kicked the door open with all his might. The wood splintered as it shattered off the hinges and skidded across the floor.

" Police!" He yelled, his gun resting over his other arm as a means to steady it and increase the accuracy of his aim. There was no one inside. He sighed he walked up to the door and kicked it. It smacked into the wall and that's when he heard a shifting sound coming from the other side of the bed that sat in the middle of the room. It was reasonably small, probably used for guests. The sheets looked like they had accumulated an small amount of dust, like no one had been in his room for a while, or if they had, they hadn't bothered to clean anything.

He walked around, making sure to not touch anything else. His eyes glanced down to the floor, where a section of board had pulled back and left a perfect coffin sized hole sat. Itachi got on his knees as he looked into the hole. That's when he noticed a blond hair out of the corner of his eye. He pulled a pair of tweezers from his pocket and bagged it as evidence. He would submit it to a DNA test and if his suspicious were correct, it was Naruto's.

" Itachi, he's not here. From the looks of it, it seemed like he had cleared out a week or so ago." Sasuke's voice trailed off as he saw Itachi kneeling on the floor. The younger Uchiha walked over to the hole in the floor and blinked. You could easily hide someone of Naruto's size in a hole like that, especially if he was drugged.

" Call in more officers, I need to get this hair I found tested against Naruto's DNA." Itachi said as Kisame walked into the room. The black man nodded pulling out his phone but all motion stopped when they heard Izzy's effeminate scream coming from the cellar.

" IZZY!" Sasuke yelled as he rushed out of the room and down the stairs. He made it to the cellar to see the white haired man scooting on his ass to the back, dark corner of the cellar. He rushed to Izzy's side but he started to point as soon as Itachi came down the stairs. There was a bucket in the corner of the room and Itachi made a motion towards it, expecting the worse. He pulled the lid off to open it, gagging instantly when the smell engulfed him. Sasuke smelt it from where he was standing and used his sleeve to cover his nose and mouth. Izzy looked dizzy as he sat there in the corner, his hands covering his face. Kisame had stayed in the door way but when he finally got a good whiff of whatever was down there, he puked in his mouth.

The bucket sat open with organs, blood, hair, nails, every detail of the human body mixed together in a rotting pile of debris. There were hints of preserving fluids such as formaldehyde but it wasn't enough to mask the smell of rotting flesh. Flaps of skin had turned a blackish gray color as they molded and decayed into something almost unrecognizable. Organs had been punctured, their contents spilling out into the bucket, mixing with the blood and turning it a darker color, almost black.

" Kisame!" Itachi called to the top of the stairs. " Make sure the entire team gets here! And tell them to bring their biohazard suits. They're going to need them."-

Hurray there was lots of case development here and Izzy found out Sai's dirty little secret. Which means next chapter is going to be filled with Drama! Which is my life so it makes it all worth while!

Sasuke: Why do I have a feeling something big is going to come up soon?
Me: Like what?
Sasuke: Oh I dunno, maybe something dealing with Tsunade.
Me: Oh you'll see Sasuke. You'll see...And so will you my fans. I have many plans for this still.
Naruto: I hope none of them involve me and Sai doing the horizontal monster mash.
Me: You'll see Naruto, you'll see.
Sasuke: Will you stop saying that?
Me: No. This was Hitoko-sama