To Die in Las Vegas

The first thing I noticed about the Las Vegas Crime Lab was that everyone seemed to drive a Chevy Tahoe.

The second thing was the people. There were hundreds of them, thousands even. Buzzing zealously as they flew through the corridors, in and out of rooms like bees in their little honeycomb chambers. The place was a hive of activity.

I was somewhat lost in all the action as soon as I stepped inside the air-conditioned building. People in lab coats breezed by me, knowing exactly what they were doing, something I obviously did not. I staggered, I stumbled; I eventually found my way to the receptionist's desk by pure accident and the forces of gravity and crowd jostling. Everyone seemed to gravitate to this desk. I had to line up.

I had an opportunity, while I was waiting, to wonder if this was a really good idea. I was twenty-six, fresh out of college with a BS in Chemistry and an MS in Molecular Biology, and here I was already signed up to be part of one of the biggest forensics labs in the United States.

Oh, hell yeah.

It hadn't entirely been my choice. I'd received a phone call from the Crime Lab some weeks back, stating that they had a free position for a lab tech and I had been personally selected by the supervisor of the Criminalistics Bureau's Night Shift, Gil Grissom himself.

I'd be a fool if I didn't know who Gil Grissom was. I'm no fool, so of course I knew who he was – a man who had probably solved more cases than Sherlock Holmes, who, let's face it, didn't exactly have modern science on his side; but the point was, Gil Grissom is brilliance personified. And I, me, Sadie Turner, had a chance to work with him!

No way was I going to pass this up.

It was 9 o'clock at night, what I later learned to be a Vegas peak hour for crime. I'd actually arrived an hour early, since officially I didn't start 'til 10, but I'd figured I'd want to be early so I could get 'inaugurated' into the Lab's way of life. I just hoped the ceremony didn't involve wet trout or ox liver of any kind, unless I was going to analyze it.

Eventually I got up to the receptionist who looked at me as if she thought I'd taken a wrong turn on the way to the mental hospital. Maybe I had. "Hi," I said to the rather plump woman, trying to be as amiable as I possibly could in the face of such overworked agitation. I held up the laminated ID I'd been mailed days earlier. "I'm Sadie Turner, the new lab technician. I—"

No further words were necessary. The woman pointed off down the corridor. "Grissom's office!" she snapped, and turned her attention to the next person who demanded her notice. Shrugging, I advanced down the corridor.

The Las Vegas Crime Lab wasn't a laboratory, it was a labyrinth. It wasn't that hard to navigate, really, I suppose I just got lost half-a-dozen times because I'd never been there before. The layout was fairly simple, with the all-important DNA lab in the centre, and the outlying departments (Trace, Fingerprints, Ballistics, Drying Room, etcetera) around it in a sort of wonky circle. Down a corridor, I learned, was the morgue, and down another the holding rooms and the office of Detective Jim Brass, a man I would meet later in my adventures.

Grissom's office was sort of hard to miss. It was a dark room, with many accoutrements that spoke fondly – and maybe a little oddly – of the occupant. There were things in jars, things I didn't even want to identify, lining shelves on the walls; cut-outs of magazines, posters, newspapers, a Big Mouth Billy Bass above the door (the batteries were dead, I assume, since it didn't start singing as soon as I walked underneath it) and in the midst of all the chaos, Grissom's desk and the man himself at it, hunched over a pile of paperwork that did not seem to be getting any smaller.

He did not look up as I entered. I stood and studied him for a moment before making my presence known.

I couldn't tell how tall Grissom was, but he seemed intimidating enough – he emanated this aura of quiet calm and control that was rare and, whenever you saw it in a person, just a little bit scary. He was one of those types who, I thought, probably always knew where he was and what he was doing.

He was older, maybe even old enough to be my father, with sandy brown hair peppered with grey. He had a little beard, too, which didn't really hide the perpetual youthfulness in his face. He wore spectacles over eyes that I suspected saw every little detail even without them.

I reached up and knocked on the doorframe. Gil Grissom looked up and fixed me with an inquiring stare. "Yes?" he said in a quiet voice.

"Er," I said. Way to go! Already stuttering, Di! "Er," I repeated, suddenly feeling very young and stupid and not suited to this job at all despite the fact I hadn't even started yet. "I'm Sadie Turner," I said pathetically, holding up my ID as if it would start talking and do all the explaining for me. To my dismay, it didn't, so I was stuck with speaking to Mr. Grissom. "The new lab technician. The receptionist told me to come here."

"Sit," he said, pointing with his pen to a chair opposite him. I did so, vaguely noticing Grissom was right-handed. I myself am ambidextrous; it always amazed me how a person could only manage by using one hand to write.

"You graduated from the University of Western Nevada six months ago, yes?" he asked after grasping a manila folder on the mountain of paperwork and flipping it open, scanning the contents. I gulped, nodding as he looked back up at me.

"Bachelor of Science in Chemistry," Grissom continued thoughtfully. "Merits in Physiology and Human Anatomy. Impressive."

I smiled. I felt somewhat like a schoolgirl called to the principal's office, fearing I'd done something wrong, but finding out that instead I'd won an award.

"I was surprised you accepted so readily the position here," Grissom continued in his calm voice. His expression barely changed as he spoke, I noticed. "Not many people have the constitution to deal with what we do, every day."

"I've seen a few pretty nasty things in my time, Mr. Grissom," I said. "I think I can handle whatever's thrown at me, be it bodily fluids or bloody bullets."

Grissom smiled. The expression seemed incredibly boyish on his handsome face. He was handsome, too, despite the crow's feet sneaking in on the edges of his eyes and the frown lines on his forehead. "Good, because you'll be dealing with both on a regular basis here." He closed the folder. "One question, though – what made you want to become a scientist?"

"A scientist?" I shrugged. "I wouldn't call myself that. I guess I'm just...an observer of science. It interests me. The way things work. The way people work. The way chemicals work...It all intertwines and I'm somewhere in the middle of all that. I don't see how people can go through life not knowing why the sky is blue, or why it rains, or why we sweat when it gets hot. I know I can't." Grissom was watching my face carefully through all this, and I sensed I was rambling on, so I shut up feeling rather sheepish about it. To my surprise, though, Grissom smiled.

"'The great thing in life is to be simple and the perfectly simple thing is to look through keyholes'," he quoted softly.

"George Bernard Shaw?" I hazarded. Grissom's smile widened.

"I can tell I'm going to like you. Come on, I'll give you the grand tour." He stood up, seeming rather relieved to be abandoning the conundrum of paperwork on his desk, and led me out of the office.

The next ten minutes I spent almost sprinting to keep up with Grissom, who moved surprisingly fast. He showed me the DNA lab, where I would work some of the time, the Trace lab, the Ballistics lab, Questioned Documents, the Drying Room, the Evidence Rooms, the Morgue (where I met Dr. Al Robbins, the Night Shift Coroner), and too many other places to count. At the end, he stopped by a door labeled Break Room – as if I couldn't tell by the various personnel lounging around inside on couches or drinking coffee.

"I'll introduce you to the people you'll spend most of your time with while here," Grissom said, pushing open the door. I followed him inside.

There were three people currently occupying the Break Room. Two were on couches, one was standing up and leaning against the kitchen counter that ran the length of the wall. The two people seated were women – one of them blonde, with a commanding matronly air around her; the other brown-haired, a no-nonsense look in her brown eyes. If there was one thing I was good at besides science, it was reading people, though sometimes I did get people drastically wrong and the third person in the room was going to be a testament to that.

He was...well, a guy. He was tall, taller than Grissom at least, but not too tall. He was built like a linebacker and had a jaw you could use as a can opener. He had dark hair and darker eyes, and he seemed entirely absorbed with the TV going over in the corner.

"Catherine, Sara, Nick," said Grissom, "Meet our newest lab technician. Sadie Turner, this is Catherine Willows –" the blonde woman smiled and nodded at me, "Sara Sidle," the brunette gave me a gap-toothed grin that was, in her own way, actually quite cute, "and Nick Stokes." The man glanced up upon hearing his name, apparently seeing us for the first time. "Hey," he mumbled, sipping his coffee.

"I hope you'll all get a chance to work together. Where's Warrick?" Grissom inquired, raising his eyebrows and looking over his spectacles at the group.

"Right here, Gris," said a tall man with a sizeable afro, walking in the door. He had a goatee and big green eyes that went immediately to me, the only out-of-place person in the room. "Just went to check on those prints from the Garvey case, no match in AFIS," he said, still looking at me.

"Warrick, meet Sadie Turner. She's our new lab rat." Grissom said, without any preamble.

"New blood, huh?" Warrick said, stepping forward to shake my hand. His hand was warm, and he smiled at me. "Welcome to the Crime Lab. We sure do need more pairs of hands around here."

"Warrick's been feeling a little overworked lately," said Sara Sidle from the couch, diverting her attention from the TV. Warrick frowned at her.

"I have not," he griped. "We just need more good techs, you know. Can't do the analysing ourselves all the time, can we?"

"Sure," Sara said, grinning again. Grissom shook his head.

"Warrick, let me know how the Garvey case goes, I want to hear the second you've got anything," he said. Warrick nodded. "Nick, Catherine, Sara – don't get too comfortable, I'm sure something will pop up for you guys soon. Sadie, come with me – we'll get you a lab coat and set up with Sanders. I hear he's backlogged." And with that, Grissom left the room.

I caught Nick Stokes staring curiously at me as I left, but my mind was on other things. Mainly, how the hell was I going to survive here?