"Here's to hoping that my father doesn't get arrested this time." I say as
Grissom checks the kits thoroughly.
"What?" He says, looking up from the jars of dusting powders he was counting.
"When I started working at the L.A. C.S.U. my father called in a prank call, which was responded to, on my first day."
"Is he supposed to be in Las Vegas now?"
"No, but he would have a really good excuse if he was. He's in Cascade, Montana right now, as far as I know."
"Well, that can't really be important right now."
"Right. We've got a vic. So let's get in there." I say, as he closes the kits and we get out of the car. "Huh, I think my sister lives near here."
"Is she going to be a distraction?"
"Heather? Not unless she's involved." I say, and Grissom turns to look back at me suspiciously. "Hey, there's more chance that my older sister left something out and accidentally scared someone into calling the cops."
"If your family's involved at all." Grissom says, as a guy with brown hair and a bad tie starts over towards us.
"Precisely."
"What do you have?" Grissom asks the guy.
"We aren't really sure. Housekeeper found a dead body in a tub full of ice"
"And let me guess; blood everywhere, a surgical tray, and a pair of kidneys in a cooler."
"You've seen this before?" The guy with the tie asks, apparently suspicious.
"Sort of." I say, as a cop brings out the cooler. "Hey, hold up a second." I call to him gesturing for him to bring it here.
"What is it?" Grissom asks, as I put on a latex glove.
"Playing a hunch." I say, as the cop approaches. "Hey, how ya' doin'?"
"Pretty eager to put this down, actually." He says, as I check the tags and start to grin.
"What?" Grissom asks, frowning deeply.
"`Two kidneys, AB +, Human`" I read aloud from one side. "`On loan from Las Vegas Yale division of Harvard Medical. Don't squish the pea. Prop. FX, New York City, New York."
"What's all that supposed to mean?" The cop asks.
"It means you've been wasting time." I tell him. "I'm going to make sure nothing's really - "
"What in the nine bloody hells do you think you're doing with that!?" A very familiar male voice thunders from across the other side of the yard.
"Wrong." I finish, as he storms over to us, I realize Grissom is quite effectively hiding me, probably subconsciously.
"I agreed to transport those from one end of town to another, and if they are no longer viable because of any of you, your asses are mine." He booms at the three men, slight spittle spraying the guy in the bad tie - which's name I still haven't caught. "Hi, Kira."
"Hi, dad." I say, stepping out from behind Grissom.
"Did anyone do anything to them?" He asks, more calmly this time.
"Don't think so." I say, looking the kidneys over in the cooler. "Grissom, this is Rollie Tyler, and I'll see you guys later." I hand the re-sealed cooler to Grissom, step over the cop who had done fell out when my father had started yelling, and head into the house.
"What was all the commotion?" Catherine asks, as she dusts a shelf for fingerprints.
"My dad had been using this place as a set."
"What!?" Catherine cries, nearly dropping her dusting powder.
"I'm checking if this was a complete waste of - oh, damn it."
"What's wrong?" Grissom asks, coming in behind me.
"Nothing. My mom's just going to pitch a fit like never before." I say, carefully examining apiece of what used to be a large coffee mug. "An you thought my dad was bad."
"Why's your mom going to pitch a fit?" Grissom asks.
"This used to be a mug my eldest brother made when he was little."
"Anything else broken?" Catherine asks.
"There's some splatter over here." Grissom calls from another room.
"We're on location of a horror movie. Blood's probably fake."
"Probably?" Catherine asks, just a bit stunned.
"Once there were these two little sixteen year old, future residents of Riker's who snuck on set after hours and killed a dog."
"Ewhh." Catherine says.
"Yeah."
"What's the tell?" Grissom asks.
"The easy cleanup." I say, peeling off a speck. "It doesn't have a scent to it, and the color doesn't change as it dries, actually." I tell them in response to their glares.
"Does your father usually shoot holes in the walls?" Grissom asks admiring one that looks like it was made by something traveling the same trajectory it would've taken to annihilate that mug.
"My dad doesn't own a gun. Doesn't like 'em." I say, looking around the rest of the room as I go over to Grissom. "Whoa."
"Anyone on the crew like flash?" Catherine asks, referring to the Desert Eagle - one of not-many guns that would leave a hole of that size.
"All of 'em, but when it comes to firepower, it depends on the director." I tell her.
"How, exactly, is it up to the director?" Grissom asks, as I head back towards the door.
"Hey, Rol'!" I yell from the front door to my father, who is checking out the contents of a blue sports car parked across the street. "Come 'ere!"
"What's up?" Rollie asks, jogging onto the porch.
"The movie, the producers gun friendly?" I ask.
"Not even close. Why?"
"Kira," Grissom calls from inside, "we have a body."
"A real one this time?" Rollie calls in return, as I go in to find Grissom.
"You tell us." Catherine says to him, as he passes her while following me.
"Rollie Tyler, Catherine Willows, and oh, look, my theory flies."
"What?" Catherine asks, overhearing my latest mumblings.
"Never mind her, she's just a bit goofy 'cause she said something like this would happen." Rollie tells her, as we come into the room where Grissom found the corpse.
What we found surprised me only in the fact that it had been overlooked. Blood and bits of flesh are everywhere, thanks to the literally bloody blender, I suppose. The man's head is gone, so that's the first thing I inspect.
"Careful." Catherine warns, as I step over pools of blood.
"You do realize this isn't my daughter's first case, righ'?" Rollie asks her, as Grissom goes to get his camera.
"I'm very good at not disturbing things, Catherine." I say, crouching down near the neck to get a better look. "Surgical decaps are rare even in Las Vegas, right?"
"Well, seein's how I've seen pretty much everything, and still haven't seen one, I'd say yeah." Catherine says.
"You have now. The amputation of the hands and feet look surgical, as well." Rollie tosses in, and Catherine looks at him oddly. "What? I do my research."
"I'll bet." Catherine mumbles under her breath.
"Coroner's right behind me." Grissom informs us, re-entering the room with his camera in hand. "Mr. Tyler, the police would like a word."
"Of course." Rollie says as he turns to go. "Oh, ah. the guy's name is Lewis Troi, I can tell by the tattoo on his collarbone. He was a new stunt man I was training, I don't know much else about him, but I'll give the cops his number and his wife's name. Hope some of that helps."
"Is he going to be a problem, Kira?" Grissom asks, after photos of the body have been taken.
"Rollie, a distraction? No! If anything he could turn out as an asset." I say easily moving around the room, gathering evidence and forming speculation.
"How's that?" Grissom asks quietly, not even looking up.
"He's got a history of working with the N.Y.P.D. as sort of an unofficial extension to their C.S.U." I say smiling a little as I find one of my dad's little inside jokes.
"And we're back to how?" Catherine asks.
"All right, an old buddy of his, Leo, was a detective who used to ask for his help, undercover and surveillance mostly, but when he was murdered during an operation, my dad refused to not work on the case. So now, my dad helps the detective who took Leo's case, Mira, whenever. I guess technically its interference, but he never got in the way enough to really screw over a case."
"Oh." Catherine mutters.
"Hey, it's a good to go, give it a shot." I say easily.
"I don't think that'll be necessary." Catherine says, off handedly.
"Why?" Grissom asks.
"Why what?" Catherine asks in return a short moment later.
"Why should we ask him for help?" Grissom asks.
"Well, it may not be necessary, but it is kind of fun." I say, recalling some of the cases we'd worked on together.
"What's his specialty?" Grissom asks, recalling how I'd asked him earlier.
"I don't know anymore, it used to be disguises, and before that it was general surveillance equipment."
"I meant for forensic investigation." Grissom says, slightly annoyed.
"I know. You should see him pick apart a surveillance tape."
"Oh." Grissom says, switching to ever so slight surprise, as a very familiar blonde woman walks very carefully into the room.
"Hey! Excuse me, this is - " Catherine says, before the woman turns to face her.
"I know this is a crime scene, but someone asks for the security chip, I get the damn chip." She snaps at Catherine. There is no mistaking the resemblance; Catherine had recognized her as quickly as Grissom was, - as he turns to see what the disruption was, - as my sister.
"Catherine Willows, Gil Grissom, Angela Tyler." I say. "Hey, Ang'."
"Hey Kira." Angie says, picking her way around the room.
"You have watch on the van tonight, right?" I ask, tossing the hidden surveillance unit to her.
"Yeah, why?" Angie says, taking the disguise off the unit.
"Wanna show 'em?" I ask.
"Sure, just get a go." Angela says, carefully heading out to the porch, disguise in one hand, recording unit in the other.
"Who wants to see something?" I ask Catherine and Grissom.
"Sure." Grissom says, moving towards me as I move towards the door.
"I'm gonna stay here." Catherine says.
"Later, then." I call to her, just before I reach the door. "Hey, erm. sorry, no one introduced us earlier,"
"Detective Cyrus Lockwood." The guy with the bad tie tells me.
"Ah, Kira Tyler. Now, mind if I show you something quickly?"
"All right." Det. Lockwood says slowly, as I wave Angie back over.
"To the van." I tell her. "This'll be interesting." I mutter to Grissom, as we follow Angie to the big, black van that my dad works out of about 65% of the time.
Angie climbs into the back of the van, sets the surveillance unit on a counter, lets us in through the front doors, and pulls the office chair out of its low cabinet. "All right, Ang', go with it."
"Right, here's what we got: instead of everything being simply taped - "
"By mere mortals, as Rol' says." I interject jokingly.
"It's all stored on memory chips. Now, since Rollie doesn't really believe in waste - time, space, energy, material, - we don't always put in a new chip for every project, choosing instead to just open a new file."
"One chip can hold up to eight months of footage. That's why there's two in every unit." I tell Grissom and Lockwood.
"Not so. Now, since Rol's so good misplacing things, and I'm so good at finding them, we've upped the storage capacity and linked things up. So, now we've got two chips that record thirteen months, one that records for seven, and, all the data, no matter what project, gets sent to a high- security file in our mainframe in New York." Angie says, and I nod. "Questions?"
"How is this better than tape?" Lockwood asks.
"Tape eventually breaks down, by storing things digitally, we can store more and keep it longer. Plus, the image is better." I say, as Angie finishes connecting everything.
"With normal digital footage, you would have to sit through five minutes of irrelevant footage at the least. With this, though, you can simply put in a approximate time, hit enter, and watch what happened."
"Let's try two and a half hours ago." Grissom says, leaning in to watch the screen more closely, as I pull out the spare screens for Detective Lockwood and I.
"We can get more precise." Angie suggests, as the program finishes loading.
"Let's start out at 2.5, Ang'." I say impatiently.
"All right." She says, typing in the time, date, and a code I didn't quite catch.
Immediately, we're watching with great interest - the exact same thing we had been looking at five minutes ago.
"Okay, who wants to snag the coroner before he leaves?" I ask, seeing no change in events forthcoming.
"I'll get him." Lockwood says, swerving around to get to the door, as Grissom looks at me, apparently quite annoyed that that would be my second choice of action.
"Better safe than sorry, but while we're waiting, Kira, pick a number." Angie says, putting in the same date and code - which I figure now as a location code, - and waiting for me to give her a time.
"Let's go three hours before now." I guess.
"Wouldn't be, we had only wrapped at eight fifteen." Angie says, punching in my time anyway.
"Hey, Robbins puts time of death at eight thirty." Lockwood says, climbing back into the van.
"Then watch this." Angie says, as she hits enter.
"What?" He says, looking up from the jars of dusting powders he was counting.
"When I started working at the L.A. C.S.U. my father called in a prank call, which was responded to, on my first day."
"Is he supposed to be in Las Vegas now?"
"No, but he would have a really good excuse if he was. He's in Cascade, Montana right now, as far as I know."
"Well, that can't really be important right now."
"Right. We've got a vic. So let's get in there." I say, as he closes the kits and we get out of the car. "Huh, I think my sister lives near here."
"Is she going to be a distraction?"
"Heather? Not unless she's involved." I say, and Grissom turns to look back at me suspiciously. "Hey, there's more chance that my older sister left something out and accidentally scared someone into calling the cops."
"If your family's involved at all." Grissom says, as a guy with brown hair and a bad tie starts over towards us.
"Precisely."
"What do you have?" Grissom asks the guy.
"We aren't really sure. Housekeeper found a dead body in a tub full of ice"
"And let me guess; blood everywhere, a surgical tray, and a pair of kidneys in a cooler."
"You've seen this before?" The guy with the tie asks, apparently suspicious.
"Sort of." I say, as a cop brings out the cooler. "Hey, hold up a second." I call to him gesturing for him to bring it here.
"What is it?" Grissom asks, as I put on a latex glove.
"Playing a hunch." I say, as the cop approaches. "Hey, how ya' doin'?"
"Pretty eager to put this down, actually." He says, as I check the tags and start to grin.
"What?" Grissom asks, frowning deeply.
"`Two kidneys, AB +, Human`" I read aloud from one side. "`On loan from Las Vegas Yale division of Harvard Medical. Don't squish the pea. Prop. FX, New York City, New York."
"What's all that supposed to mean?" The cop asks.
"It means you've been wasting time." I tell him. "I'm going to make sure nothing's really - "
"What in the nine bloody hells do you think you're doing with that!?" A very familiar male voice thunders from across the other side of the yard.
"Wrong." I finish, as he storms over to us, I realize Grissom is quite effectively hiding me, probably subconsciously.
"I agreed to transport those from one end of town to another, and if they are no longer viable because of any of you, your asses are mine." He booms at the three men, slight spittle spraying the guy in the bad tie - which's name I still haven't caught. "Hi, Kira."
"Hi, dad." I say, stepping out from behind Grissom.
"Did anyone do anything to them?" He asks, more calmly this time.
"Don't think so." I say, looking the kidneys over in the cooler. "Grissom, this is Rollie Tyler, and I'll see you guys later." I hand the re-sealed cooler to Grissom, step over the cop who had done fell out when my father had started yelling, and head into the house.
"What was all the commotion?" Catherine asks, as she dusts a shelf for fingerprints.
"My dad had been using this place as a set."
"What!?" Catherine cries, nearly dropping her dusting powder.
"I'm checking if this was a complete waste of - oh, damn it."
"What's wrong?" Grissom asks, coming in behind me.
"Nothing. My mom's just going to pitch a fit like never before." I say, carefully examining apiece of what used to be a large coffee mug. "An you thought my dad was bad."
"Why's your mom going to pitch a fit?" Grissom asks.
"This used to be a mug my eldest brother made when he was little."
"Anything else broken?" Catherine asks.
"There's some splatter over here." Grissom calls from another room.
"We're on location of a horror movie. Blood's probably fake."
"Probably?" Catherine asks, just a bit stunned.
"Once there were these two little sixteen year old, future residents of Riker's who snuck on set after hours and killed a dog."
"Ewhh." Catherine says.
"Yeah."
"What's the tell?" Grissom asks.
"The easy cleanup." I say, peeling off a speck. "It doesn't have a scent to it, and the color doesn't change as it dries, actually." I tell them in response to their glares.
"Does your father usually shoot holes in the walls?" Grissom asks admiring one that looks like it was made by something traveling the same trajectory it would've taken to annihilate that mug.
"My dad doesn't own a gun. Doesn't like 'em." I say, looking around the rest of the room as I go over to Grissom. "Whoa."
"Anyone on the crew like flash?" Catherine asks, referring to the Desert Eagle - one of not-many guns that would leave a hole of that size.
"All of 'em, but when it comes to firepower, it depends on the director." I tell her.
"How, exactly, is it up to the director?" Grissom asks, as I head back towards the door.
"Hey, Rol'!" I yell from the front door to my father, who is checking out the contents of a blue sports car parked across the street. "Come 'ere!"
"What's up?" Rollie asks, jogging onto the porch.
"The movie, the producers gun friendly?" I ask.
"Not even close. Why?"
"Kira," Grissom calls from inside, "we have a body."
"A real one this time?" Rollie calls in return, as I go in to find Grissom.
"You tell us." Catherine says to him, as he passes her while following me.
"Rollie Tyler, Catherine Willows, and oh, look, my theory flies."
"What?" Catherine asks, overhearing my latest mumblings.
"Never mind her, she's just a bit goofy 'cause she said something like this would happen." Rollie tells her, as we come into the room where Grissom found the corpse.
What we found surprised me only in the fact that it had been overlooked. Blood and bits of flesh are everywhere, thanks to the literally bloody blender, I suppose. The man's head is gone, so that's the first thing I inspect.
"Careful." Catherine warns, as I step over pools of blood.
"You do realize this isn't my daughter's first case, righ'?" Rollie asks her, as Grissom goes to get his camera.
"I'm very good at not disturbing things, Catherine." I say, crouching down near the neck to get a better look. "Surgical decaps are rare even in Las Vegas, right?"
"Well, seein's how I've seen pretty much everything, and still haven't seen one, I'd say yeah." Catherine says.
"You have now. The amputation of the hands and feet look surgical, as well." Rollie tosses in, and Catherine looks at him oddly. "What? I do my research."
"I'll bet." Catherine mumbles under her breath.
"Coroner's right behind me." Grissom informs us, re-entering the room with his camera in hand. "Mr. Tyler, the police would like a word."
"Of course." Rollie says as he turns to go. "Oh, ah. the guy's name is Lewis Troi, I can tell by the tattoo on his collarbone. He was a new stunt man I was training, I don't know much else about him, but I'll give the cops his number and his wife's name. Hope some of that helps."
"Is he going to be a problem, Kira?" Grissom asks, after photos of the body have been taken.
"Rollie, a distraction? No! If anything he could turn out as an asset." I say easily moving around the room, gathering evidence and forming speculation.
"How's that?" Grissom asks quietly, not even looking up.
"He's got a history of working with the N.Y.P.D. as sort of an unofficial extension to their C.S.U." I say smiling a little as I find one of my dad's little inside jokes.
"And we're back to how?" Catherine asks.
"All right, an old buddy of his, Leo, was a detective who used to ask for his help, undercover and surveillance mostly, but when he was murdered during an operation, my dad refused to not work on the case. So now, my dad helps the detective who took Leo's case, Mira, whenever. I guess technically its interference, but he never got in the way enough to really screw over a case."
"Oh." Catherine mutters.
"Hey, it's a good to go, give it a shot." I say easily.
"I don't think that'll be necessary." Catherine says, off handedly.
"Why?" Grissom asks.
"Why what?" Catherine asks in return a short moment later.
"Why should we ask him for help?" Grissom asks.
"Well, it may not be necessary, but it is kind of fun." I say, recalling some of the cases we'd worked on together.
"What's his specialty?" Grissom asks, recalling how I'd asked him earlier.
"I don't know anymore, it used to be disguises, and before that it was general surveillance equipment."
"I meant for forensic investigation." Grissom says, slightly annoyed.
"I know. You should see him pick apart a surveillance tape."
"Oh." Grissom says, switching to ever so slight surprise, as a very familiar blonde woman walks very carefully into the room.
"Hey! Excuse me, this is - " Catherine says, before the woman turns to face her.
"I know this is a crime scene, but someone asks for the security chip, I get the damn chip." She snaps at Catherine. There is no mistaking the resemblance; Catherine had recognized her as quickly as Grissom was, - as he turns to see what the disruption was, - as my sister.
"Catherine Willows, Gil Grissom, Angela Tyler." I say. "Hey, Ang'."
"Hey Kira." Angie says, picking her way around the room.
"You have watch on the van tonight, right?" I ask, tossing the hidden surveillance unit to her.
"Yeah, why?" Angie says, taking the disguise off the unit.
"Wanna show 'em?" I ask.
"Sure, just get a go." Angela says, carefully heading out to the porch, disguise in one hand, recording unit in the other.
"Who wants to see something?" I ask Catherine and Grissom.
"Sure." Grissom says, moving towards me as I move towards the door.
"I'm gonna stay here." Catherine says.
"Later, then." I call to her, just before I reach the door. "Hey, erm. sorry, no one introduced us earlier,"
"Detective Cyrus Lockwood." The guy with the bad tie tells me.
"Ah, Kira Tyler. Now, mind if I show you something quickly?"
"All right." Det. Lockwood says slowly, as I wave Angie back over.
"To the van." I tell her. "This'll be interesting." I mutter to Grissom, as we follow Angie to the big, black van that my dad works out of about 65% of the time.
Angie climbs into the back of the van, sets the surveillance unit on a counter, lets us in through the front doors, and pulls the office chair out of its low cabinet. "All right, Ang', go with it."
"Right, here's what we got: instead of everything being simply taped - "
"By mere mortals, as Rol' says." I interject jokingly.
"It's all stored on memory chips. Now, since Rollie doesn't really believe in waste - time, space, energy, material, - we don't always put in a new chip for every project, choosing instead to just open a new file."
"One chip can hold up to eight months of footage. That's why there's two in every unit." I tell Grissom and Lockwood.
"Not so. Now, since Rol's so good misplacing things, and I'm so good at finding them, we've upped the storage capacity and linked things up. So, now we've got two chips that record thirteen months, one that records for seven, and, all the data, no matter what project, gets sent to a high- security file in our mainframe in New York." Angie says, and I nod. "Questions?"
"How is this better than tape?" Lockwood asks.
"Tape eventually breaks down, by storing things digitally, we can store more and keep it longer. Plus, the image is better." I say, as Angie finishes connecting everything.
"With normal digital footage, you would have to sit through five minutes of irrelevant footage at the least. With this, though, you can simply put in a approximate time, hit enter, and watch what happened."
"Let's try two and a half hours ago." Grissom says, leaning in to watch the screen more closely, as I pull out the spare screens for Detective Lockwood and I.
"We can get more precise." Angie suggests, as the program finishes loading.
"Let's start out at 2.5, Ang'." I say impatiently.
"All right." She says, typing in the time, date, and a code I didn't quite catch.
Immediately, we're watching with great interest - the exact same thing we had been looking at five minutes ago.
"Okay, who wants to snag the coroner before he leaves?" I ask, seeing no change in events forthcoming.
"I'll get him." Lockwood says, swerving around to get to the door, as Grissom looks at me, apparently quite annoyed that that would be my second choice of action.
"Better safe than sorry, but while we're waiting, Kira, pick a number." Angie says, putting in the same date and code - which I figure now as a location code, - and waiting for me to give her a time.
"Let's go three hours before now." I guess.
"Wouldn't be, we had only wrapped at eight fifteen." Angie says, punching in my time anyway.
"Hey, Robbins puts time of death at eight thirty." Lockwood says, climbing back into the van.
"Then watch this." Angie says, as she hits enter.
