(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)
"What the heck happened here?" Nick said in awe as he looked over the crime scene in front of him. Catherine sat in the car next to him, totally speechless just like Nick. She just looked from one ambulance to the other, and then to the crushed car a little ways in front of them. She didn't say anything as she got out of the car and went to the trunk to get her kit.
Warrick sat motionless in the car too, as if he was trying to collect some nerve to get out of the car and go process the scene. Jenny looked the same. Nick felt a little bad for her, she had barely been here a month and had already witnessed some hard stuff. All Nick could do was hope that this wasn't getting too much to her head. All everyone needed now was someone else like Sara, in which every case is emotionally attached somehow.
They were on a back road on the outskirts of Vegas. It was a two-way dirt road, and about five hundred yards from where they had parked the car, stood a traffic light. Nick thought this was a little strange, being that this was a back road, and dirt for that matter also.
On the right side of the road was a small sports car, or what would have been one. Now, the car was crusted and banged up pretty bad. It looked as if the car had hit something stationary, but there was nothing parked in front of it, or near it that it could have hit. One ambulance was next to the car, helping someone out of the driver's seat.
On the left side of the road was another car, but this one looked perfectly fine, except for the ambulance taking the body out of the passenger's side.
Police officers were running back and forth frantically along with EMTs and a single fireman. They were now trying to help the person out of the first car, but it didn't seem to be going too well. The driver looked as if she had been molted to the car and would not budge. The fact that she was unconscious didn't help either.
"This is going to take a while." Catherine sighed
Warrick took a step forward and placed an arm around her. "We'll clean this mess up, don't worry." The two of them looked at each other for a moment, until they realized that Nick and Jenny were staring at them, and Warrick removed his hand and shoved it in his pocket, "I've got this car." He said and walked over towards the car that didn't have a scratch. Catherine followed him.
"Don' tell me that they are going to turn into a Grissom and Sara soon." Jenny moaned.
"Don't worry, their little 'thing' started long ago. It's just friendly flirting, you know. They look out for each other, Catherine is like our mom really." Nick said with a little laugh.
"Right." Jenny said glancing at him funny. "Yah, well, I'm going to go get the camera and start taking some pictures." She turned on her heels, and walked off towards the car to retrieve the camera. That had sort of become her signature "job." She didn't really want to interfere with anything else, so she busied herself taking pictures of anything that caught her eye at the crime scene.
Nick watched her go, and then turned and walked towards the crushed car. It was going to be a very long night.
(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)
Catherine peered into the car. The body on the passenger side had already been removed. He had been shot in the head once and had died instantaneously. There goes our first witness, Catherine thought.
The driver of the car was nowhere to be found, and Brass feared that he/she had been kidnapped, and Catherine now knew why. The door on the driver's side had been forced open with what looked like a crowbar that Warrick had found a few yards away. The door had been left open, and then the passenger had been shot. There were no traces of blood on the driver's side, meaning that that person had not been injured in the car, but escaped – somehow – without a scratch. Catherine could only hope that they were ok.
Warrick was busy in the back of the car, looking for anything interesting. The trunk was open, but nothing could be found inside. In the back seat of the car lay a single briefcase, with a piece of tissue paper inside of it. Nothing else was out of the ordinary.
"What do you make of this?" He asked holding the paper up for Catherine to see.
"Bag it." she said shrugging and pulled her self out of the front of the car and walked over to the other side. Warrick followed her and they both looked at the ground next to the car.
"You got to love dirt." Warrick said turning to his kit and retrieving the plaster to make a mold of the impressions there. There were three-foot prints. Two of them were directly next to the car, as if someone had opened the door and swiveled their feet out to talk to someone on the outside. The third print was about two feet away and next to what looked like a thin tire track.
"What do you make of this?" Warrick asked looking up at Catherine who stood over him.
"Motorcycle." Gil Grissom's voice called out from behind them. They both turned to see him standing there with his kit in hand.
"And since when are you an expert on motorcycle tires?" Catherine asked sarcastically.
"I'm not, but there is only one tire mark, meaning that there is only one tire."
"But Motorcycles have two tires." She pointed out.
"But they are directly in line so the vehicle doesn't tip over. It's quite simple and this track here is a motorcycle."
"I think you lost that little argument, Cath." Warrick said pouring the plaster into the mold.
"Do you want to tell us where you have been?" Catherine now demanded placing her hands on her hips.
"I was…out." Grissom replied like he went out all the time and this was a nothing matter.
"Where's Sara?"
"She's not here?" He asked looking around the scene that was still in frenzy.
"No, she's not." Catherine replied coolly and then took a stop towards Grissom so she was looking directly at his face. "You better know what you are doing, Gil." She said softly so she couldn't be overhead by Warrick. "People are going to start to figure out that you two are off together if you keep on showing up late with stupid grins on your faces. If I were you, I'd make sure to keep this within the shift. You don't want anyone else involved in your affairs." She said dragging out the last word, and then turned away from him and went back to Warrick.
Grissom stood there, letting her words sink in. did everyone really think that he was out with Sara? It was the truth, but they had tried to keep it as unobvious as possible. He turned at the sound of a car engine, and saw Sara pulling up to where the other cars were parked. She killed the engine, and then got out of the car. She noticed Grissom staring at her, and she smiled, then turned and got her kit out of the car. He turned away from her before anything else could be exchanged between them.
"So tell me what happened here." Grissom turned back to Catherine and Warrick, as Sara made her way over to Nick and Jenny, who was snapping pictures like crazy.
"I can help you with that." Brass said walking over to where the CSI were standing. "From what I've gathered, I guess this car here, the green one," Brass said jerking his thumb in the direction of the crushed car, "Was driving down this road, when it hit something and stopped. The air bag deployed and the driver was knocked unconscious. The paramedics say that she's going to be OK.
"This car here," Brass looked at the car in front of them, the red one, "was parked here and the door had been pried open. The passenger had been shot and the driver was gone."
Grissom thought this over for a moment, "Anything else?"
"Well, what do you know so far?" Brass asked knowing that nothing else would be known until the CSI had processed the scene.
"Wait, who called it in?" he asked realizing that everyone who had been at the scene was either dead, gone or unconscious.
"A trucker back there." Brass said pointing a ways down the road at a pickup truck down there. No one had noticed that truck before.
"Let's go and see what he has to say." Grissom said motioning for Catherine to follow him, and the two of them walked away to go and question the trucker.
(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)
"Nice of you to show up." Nick said to Sara Sidle as she walked over to him. He was examining the front of the car trying to figure out what it had crashed into. "Where were you?"
"So, what's up with this car?" Sara asked setting her kit down on the ground next to Nick's.
"No Sidle, you're not getting off this easy." Nick said as he bent down to look at a paint chip stuck to the hood of the car.
"If you must know, I was at the exhibit." She replied and bent down to look at the same chip with Nick.
Nick gave her a doubtful look, "What exhibit?"
"The one over at the Luxor; mummies."
"I didn't know you liked mummies."
"You don't know a lot of stuff about me Nick." Sara replied calmly and that ended their conversation about mummies. Nick really wanted to ask whom she was with at the exhibit, but he had a feeling that Sara might punch him right then and there if he did. So he dropped the topic.
Jenny came walking over to the two of them, and leaned down as if to join in on their little discussion. "So, how was your date Sara?" she asked as if it was a topic they all discussed over at the water cooler back at the lab.
"You're as subtle as a Mack truck." Nick said and he couldn't help laughing at her comment. Sara blushed a shade of red that Nick had never seen on her before.
"What? I want to know." Jenny answered after a moment of uneasy silence had passed.
"Get back to your pictures, I'll tell you later." Sara mumbled and tired to shoo Jenny off, but instead she started taking pictures of the car.
"I'll remind you later." Jenny said as the light bulb on the camera flashed, temporally blinding Sara and Nick who were right in its range. It was pitch black in Vegas and at this time of night even the littlest light could cause blinding like that.
Sara turned away from her and looked at Nick, who was scraping the paint chip off the car. Sara took a close look at it. "It looks like metallic paint of some sort." She said as Nick placed it in an envelope for analysis.
"Well, whatever this car crashed into, it's not here anymore." Nick said as he stood up and looked around the scene. The other car was quite a ways away, and it was highly unlikely that the two cars had crashed into each other. Nick looked down at the ground for any sign of impressions that might have been made from whatever was here. Directly in front of the car were two drag marks, thin lines leading away from the car towards the side of the road that led into the woods.
"Do you see this?" Nick said motioning for Sara to take a look. Sara looked down, and then followed where Nick was now pointing, towards the woods.
"What could the car have hit that could have been dragged into the woods?" she looked at the car now, and for the first time noticed that the windshield had been smashed in the middle. "Whatever it is, it fell on the car, and was then moved." Sara walked closer for a better look.
"Hey guys," Jenny's voice ran out from behind them. Nick and Sara spun around to see her crouching down on the ground taking a picture of something there. Jenny stood up and took the paper she was photographing in her hands. Nick noticed that she was standing right underneath the set of lights that was on this road.
"Do you know what this is?" Jenny continued holding the paper up for Nick and Sara to see. They both shook their heads.
"Should we know?" Sara said walking towards here and taking the paper. It was thin, almost like tissue paper.
"It's diamond paper." Jenny said firmly.
"Diamond paper? And how would you know this?" Nick asked as he took the paper from Sara and looked it over.
"I used to work at a jewelry store." She said.
Nick laughed, "Jenny, from what I've collected, you've worked just about everywhere." Nick could remember one ride in the car to a crime scene with her. In lull or conversation, Jenny had listed all of her past jobs to Nick, and described, in detail, every one to him. Now he remembered that she had mentioned that she worked for a while at a jewelry store.
"But what does this have to do with anything?" Sara asked trying to get the two of them back on topic.
"It's diamond paper, sans the diamond." She said waving the thing in front of her face. "It means that right now in the Vegas vicinity, someone at a pawn shop is getting filthy rich."
(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)(-)(*)
Hello… Now, hit that review button, and really make my day! 8-)
(Oh, and yes, I still can't spell…)
*a.l.