Sara got out of the Tahoe, leaving Nick to gather up their kits. A moment later he joined her side, and they looked out into the dessert together. The sun burnt through their thin T-shirts, and they both pulled on their LVPD caps, to protect their scalps from sunburn.

Their eyes struggled to look through the thick hazy air in front of them, so, as a last protective measure from the sun, they completed their outfits with a pair of sunglasses. They were ready to work..

They crouched down over the beaten body, and Sara shuddered inwardly as she took in the blood crusted over what looked as though it could have once been a handsome face.

'Victim is male, approximately mid-twenties. Looks as though the cause of death was a stab wound through the neck.' Nick stated, mainly to himself.

'I've got some fibre around his cuffs, maybe yarn. I'll have to give it to Greg. Looks like he had his hands tied.' Sara carefully picked a fibre from the man's shirt, and bagged it. Nick was extracting a similar fibre from inside the victim's mouth using a pair of tweezers.

'And gagged.' He added.

Sara frowned.

'There's no blood spatter. This can't have been the scene of the crime. He must have been brought here from somewhere else. If he was already dead, why did they untie him?' Sara was perplexed. This just didn't make any sense to her. This certainly wasn't going to be a textbook case.

'We'll have to take him back to the lab, get a time of death, and then.' Nick stopped, noticing something.

'Sara, look, what's all this blue fluff on him? Strange. I'll give this to Greg too. Come on, let's back to the lab. We have a lot of work to do.' With that he heaved himself up, still deep in thought about this strange and gruesome killing.

Catherine wasn't the only one worried about Greg. Grissom was sat in his office, with a mountain of paperwork (which he just couldn't concentrate on), a killer headache (which he hoped wouldn't turn into a migraine) and a distant look on his face. He was afraid that perhaps Greg had come back to work a bit sooner than he should've. It disconcerted him to see such a lively young man reduced to the nervous shaky wreck he'd been seeing recently.

This couldn't be good for Greg, he was sure, and in fact he was just thinking that maybe he should force Greg to go home and get some rest-he'd never go home voluntarily-when he saw Catherine walking down the hallway towards his office. She looked exactly like he felt, and he knew that this was just going to be a friendly chat about nothing in particular. She walked straight into his office, and up to his desk without closing the door behind her. Wearily she flopped into Grissom's comfortable leather armchair and said,

'Grissom, we need to talk. About Greg.'