Sara was in the lab, looking over the small amount of evidence for what felt like the millionth time. Grissom had gone back to the scene to see if he could find anything else that they had missed. The supposed open and shut case of the double murder suicide had turned out to be anything but. All three victims were shot with one bullet, and each of the three bullets was shot from a different gun. There was only one gun at the scene, so where were the other two guns, and who killed these people? Sara's phone vibrated, distracting her from her thoughts.
"Sidle."
"Its Grissom. I want you to come to the scene, and bring three body dummies with you."
"Time to reenact the crime?"
"Time to figure out who killed these people."
Sara hung up her phone and packed up the evidence before heading out to meet Grissom. Working with him on this case tonight had gone amazingly well. Most of the awkwardness seemed to be gone. They were working together at their old rhythm, totally in sync. It was wonderful. It almost made hunting for killers fun.
*****
When Sara pulled up to the house, Grissom was waiting outside.
"Hey Grissom, ready to play dolls?" Sara asked as she pulled the first of three dummies out of the back of her truck. Grissom raised one eyebrow and looked at Sara. "What?" She asked.
"You just don't strike me as a 'play with dolls' kind of person."
"Sure I am. I used to play with Barbie all the time when I was a kid. Did you know that Barbie doll hair melts at about half the temperature of the Barbie doll itself?"
Grissom smiled and shook his head. "Well, how about these dolls we shoot instead of melt?"
Sara grinned back. "Sounds like a plan."
Once inside the house, Sara and Grissom both silently examined the crime scene before them again, trying to see the crime in their heads. For the next three hours Grissom and Sara moved the dummies around and set out different scenarios as to who was shot in which order, and where the killer or killers would have been standing. Both were so absorbed in the work of investigating that neither noticed the time passing, or the sun rising on the eastern horizon.
"The two women must have shot each other. The way the bodies were facing, the distance that they were standing from each other, it all matches the evidence," said Sara.
"The man was standing off to the side, watching. Then someone else must have walked into the room, saw what was going on, and shot him in the back, then cleaned up the guns and wrote the phony suicide note to make it look like a murder suicide."
Grissom and Sara both turned to look at each other. "But why?" she asked.
"That, my dear, will be answered when we find the answer to another question. Who?" Grissom turned and walked out of the room and into the back yard, leaving Sara standing in the middle of the room with her mouth wide open.
'Did he just call me 'my dear'?' Sara thought. Her mind was going a million miles a minute, and her pulse was going even faster. Just as her lightheadedness was taking over and making her feel like she was going to pass out, Grissom stuck his head back in the door.
"Sara, are you coming?"
She shook her head and turned to Grissom. "What?"
"To the lab. So far we only have a 'how.' We need to look for my 'whom' so that we can find your 'why.'" He grabbed one of the dummies and walked back out to the vehicles. He couldn't remember the last time that he had felt so happy. Just working in the same room as Sara was such a relief. He just hoped that she felt the same way.