Disclaimer: CSI belongs to CSI-people.

Warrick watched the small screen. The view shook and bounced as Valerie crawled through the space under the house. He picked up the two-way radio.

"Can you hear me?" He asked.

"Loud and clear," Val answered back. "How's the view from up there?"

Warrick grinned. "Well, I see a lot of dirt. Not a lot else."

"Yeah?" Val grunted, "Well, that's about all there is in here." She hauled herself through the tunnel, inch by inch. "Whoever was in here had to skinnier than I am. I fit, but it's a tight squeeze."

Warrick paused a moment before speaking again. "Are you okay?"

"Like I said, I'm fine."

"What about what that supermodel said to you?"

There was a significant pause. The view on the small screen was still. Finally, Val answered. "Yeah. I'm fine. I guess."

"Are you sure?" Warrick asked, "You stomped out of there pretty mad."

"I'm a delicate person, okay? But I'm fine now." She cleared her throat, and the camera view started moving again. "Let's just focus on the case, alright?"

Warrick watched the screen as Val manoeuvred through the tight dirt tunnel under the house, pulling herself forward with her arms. Something came into view in the darkness. Valerie focused the beam from her helmet in its direction.

Warrick squinted at the screen. "What the hell is that?"

"Big Mac?" Val crawled closer, and coughed. "Half-eaten… and it reeks. Could be weeks old." She paused, coughed again, then asked, "You haven't seen Super Size Me, have you? Coz this looks like the 'after' shot of the…"

"I don't wanna know." Warrick interrupted. "But bag it. There might be some DNA or something on it."

"Gross," Val snorted, picking up the burger from a distance, "I pity the one who has to analyse this."

"That would be Greg."

Val snorted, laughing, then started crawling forward again. The torchlight hit bare dirt walls and illuminated the thin curving tunnel. The walls were smoothed, as though whoever had used this tunnel had gone back and forth inside it often.

After some time, Val stopped crawling. "What kind of foundations are these?" She asked, incredulous, "Is this even legal?"

"Why? What's wrong?"

"Well, I don't know much about buildings," Val said, casting her eyes - and the camera around, "But when the foundations are laid down, shouldn't they be flat on the concrete? This house's been set up so there's concrete, then about three feet of dirt, then the house."

"How does that work?"

"I dunno… wait, here's a pillar." She crawled towards the dirt wall and brushed away some of the dirt with her hands. Red bricks and white mortar patterns showed through. "Wow. This house was just begging to be dug under!"

"What do you mean?"

Val tapped the brick supports with a knuckle. "The foundations are solid, the pillars keep the house up… but if you dig around them, in all the dirt, the house will stay upright, and no-one will ever notice."

Warrick frowned, taking in that information for a moment. "How would someone find out something like that?"

"I have no idea." Suddenly, the camera went black, and Valerie yelped.

"Val!" Warrick gripped the radio hard, and leaned towards the screen, trying to make out an image. "What? Valerie, what happened?"

She gave a whimper. The image on the screen remained blank.

"Valerie? Valerie!"

Her voice sounded like Miss Piggy's would if the Muppet had decided to take up crack. "It's looking at me…!"

Warrick frowned, confused. "What is?"

She whimpered again, and her answer was barely audible. "A cockroach."

Warrick blinked, then sighed. A cockroach? "… It's probably just after the burger."

"Make it go away…"

"You told me you had no fear."

"Of enclosed spaces, yes! Cockroaches freak me out, OKAY?!"

Warrick winced at the pitch of Val's panicked squeal. He tried to calm her down. "Ok, ok. Just take a deep breath…"

"It's moving!" The camera screen shook - a flash of dirt wall. The helmet had fallen off her head, and the camera was resting against the floor. "It's moving towards me!"

"Val…" Warrick sighed.

"He's stopping…" She gave the Muppet-whimper again. The view on the screen wobbled.

"Val!" If calm wasn't working… "If you're so freaked out by a roach, just bag it and I'll release it later."

Suddenly, she gave a big sigh of relief. "No, it's okay. He just crawled into a hole. It's ok… I'm okay…" She sighed, then laughed nervously as she picked up the helmet and put it back on her head.

Warrick shook his head, trying to bite back a smile. "Are you sure?" he asked gently.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Gone were all traces of Muppet-ism from her voice - she was back to normal and twice as businesslike. "Let's just get back to the case." She started scrabbling through the tunnels again. "Hello…" There was something in the dirt in front of Val. She picked it up and examined it. Darkly, she said "Someone's careless."

Warrick peered at the screen, trying to make out what Val had in her hands. "What you find?"

"Bloody guitar strings." Val said coolly. "The garrotte." She peered upward. In the roof of the tunnel was the trapdoor. With a grunt, Valerie pulled herself into a ball, then pushed up at the trapdoor.

Warrick got out of the van and headed back into Julia Westwood's home just in time to see Val emerging from under the rug. She pushed it open, as far back as she could get it. It doubled back the rug, opening on the rug's underside, preventing any dirt from getting on the snow-white carpet… hiding the murderer's entrance and exit.

Warrick knelt down in front of Valerie. She passed him the bag with the rotten burger… and the bag with the guitar strings. She brushed back a strand of her flame-red hair and looked up at him.

"So now what?"

Warrick hefted both bags up. "Process, process, process." He put the evidence bags down and offered her a hand-up.

"One thing I don't like about this," Val said, looking back down at the tunnel she had just crawled though, "That tunnel could have taken weeks, maybe months to dig. Julia didn't live in here for that long. Whoever came in here to murder Julia maybe wasn't looking to murder her."

"Or maybe he was," Warrick said darkly. Val turned, frowning. Warrick picked up the evidence again, then added, "Maybe whoever was doing the digging didn't care who was in here - maybe he just wanted to kill someone."

Valerie's frown deepened. "That makes no sense at all."

"Yeah," Warrick agreed, "Maybe it'll make more sense when we've analysed the evidence."

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Grissom looked up at the knock on his door.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

Grissom nodded. "Take a seat, Valerie." She did so. Grissom folded his hands and watched her silently for a moment. Valerie smiled nervously back.

"How do you find Vegas so far?"

Val smiled, put a little at ease. "Oh, it's great. I love it. It's a great work environment, and the people here are terrific."

"I had a talk with your supervisor an hour ago."

Val continued to smile, but her eyes suddenly didn't seem to want to join in the activity. They seemed a little wary. "Really?"

Grissom pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose - they'd been slipping. "Valerie, I really appreciate you coming down here on such short notice, but if at any time you need to go back to Seattle…"

"No." Val interrupted, "Dr Grissom, there's no need for me to go back to Seattle in a hurry. None at all. I mean," she shrugged, trying to keep a pleasant face, "I came for a week, and I'll stay for a week. I hate leaving anything half-done. Just ask Cameron."

"Your supervisor did tell me of your stubborn persistence pertaining to any and all cases." Grissom nodded, "But he also told me other things."

Val went quiet.

Grissom looked at Valerie, analysing her like an insect specimen. But her blank face revealed nothing. Grissom sighed, then ploughed ahead. "Valerie, I am not going to judge you on your previous choices."

"I have no criminal record," Valerie said stiffly. "I have never been arrested, suspected, never been…" She trailed off at the expression on Grissom's face.

"But you have been victimised. Correct?"

Val paused, then hesitantly nodded. "Yes, sir."

Grissom sighed. "Why are you a CSI, Valerie? And why Seattle? Cameron filled me in on your current situation."

Valerie looked down at her hands, like a child forced to answer to a teacher for something she'd done wrong. "Seattle's my home, sir."

"But in all your years of travelling, you've never wanted to stay somewhere else?"

Valerie met his steely gaze. "Once or twice. But I always come back to Seattle." She looked down again. "Some ghosts won't die."

Grissom took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. "But you're content to continue being a CSI."

"Of course." Valerie's posture straightened. "No other job I'd rather have." She paused a beat, then added, "Could we change the subject, please?"

Grissom sighed, then managed a smile. "Of course. How are you doing on your case right now?"

Val nodded, "pretty good, actually. Warrick is with Greg now, collecting the DNA samples we collected from the crime scene. We found out how the killer got in and out of the house undetected."

"How?" Grissom was intrigued, despite himself.

Valerie hesitated. "Am I allowed to discuss ongoing cases with you, or is that against some protocol?"

Grissom smiled at that. "Valerie, for this week, I'm your supervisor. I'm monitoring your progress."

Val smiled back. "In that case… the killer dug a tunnel under the house, and came up inside through a trapdoor."

"Dug a tunnel?"

Val nodded. "Something which took planning, patience, and a knowledge of the building's funky foundations."

Grissom raised an eyebrow. "And you found this out, how?"

"I crawled through the tunnel myself."

Grissom's eyes flickered above Valerie's head for a second, then back to her face. "Really?"

Val nodded, warming to her topic. "I figure our next step would be to find out if there are any hits for the killer's DNA in CODIS. Also, finding out the building's blueprints - and who might have access to them."

Grissom's eyes flickered above Valerie's head again. "Good."

Valerie frowned. "What? Is there someone behind me more interesting than what I'm telling you?"

Grissom looked back at Val. "When you crawled through the tunnel, what did you find?"

Valerie blinked, unused to the supervisor's eccentricity just yet. "A handful of guitar strings, which had been twisted into a garrotte."

"And…?"

"And a really festy burger."

Grissom smiled, as though he'd just come to the heart of the problem. Valerie's eyes became wary again. "What?"

Grissom motioned for Valerie to stand, which she did. Grissom also stood, and crossed around his desk. Valerie watched as he went over to a collection of random items in a box on one of the shelves and rummaged around.

"When you were crawling around under the house, did you notice if the soil was damp, moist?"

Valerie frowned, wondering where this was going. "Yeah, it was. And it was a little muddy near the entrance. I figured it was because it had rained the night before Julia Westwood's murder…"

"And how old was the burger?" He turned, holding in his hands an oversized pair of tweezers and a glass jar. The wariness in Val's eyes was replaced with something bordering on alarm.

"I don't know," She watched him as he advanced towards her, "But the meat wasn't green, so it couldn't have been very old. It just stank, is all."

"But still prime food for the Periplaneta americana."

Valerie froze. "The American cockroach."

Grissom paused, looking impressed. "You know bugs?"

"I know the scientific name of the thing because I have to know my enemy."

"Bugs are our friends."

Val looked at him. Her neck was tensing up. "You're an entomologist. That's your catchphrase. But please, I have a phobia of roaches, so if you could never EVER mention that name in my prescence…" She frowned, and looked at Grissom again. "Why did you mention it?"

"You have a friend." Grissom pointed at Val's head.

It was at that point where Val's heart-rate trebled and her entire body froze up. Her voice rose to Miss Piggy pitch again. "Its. In. My. Hair?!"

"Don't worry," Grissom said, poking the tweezers into Valerie's hair, "It's not going to hurt you. P. americana is an omnivorous and opportunistic scavenger. He was probably just after the burger when you startled him. While you were in the tunnel, he probably crawled onto you, looking for its food source."

If it was possible for hackles to rise on a human, then Valerie's hackles rose. "Its. In. My. Hair?!"

Grissom continued to give Valerie the life story of the cockroach. "Usually they're found in moist shady areas in yards, hollow trees, wood piles, and the like; or in the commercial area, sewers, drainage systems, steam tunnels, or anywhere where there's abundant food, moisture, and lots of dark places to hide. This one probably came indoors because of the rain… and because of the food."

"Analyse it later." The red-head hissed. "Just get it OUT of my HAIR!"

Grissom grabbed hold of the brown bug and pulled it slowly out of Val's hair. The cockroach's legs caught on strands of hair, and refused to let go. Val closed her eyes and whimpered and Grissom tried to pull the roach out of her hair without taking her hair with it. Eventually, the cockroach came free, and Grissom dropped it into the jar. He examined it, fascinated.

Valerie, her eyes still squeezed tight, was so tense she was shaking. "Is it gone?" She whimpered.

Grissom held the jar up to her face. "You want to see it?"

The first thing Valerie saw when she opened her eyes was the roach. She screamed, turned, and belted down the corridors.

"YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK-YUCK!!!" She vanished down the far corridor, still screaming. The entire lab stopped its activity to turn, watch, turn to each other, raise eyebrows… then get back to work.

Grissom stared, somehow mystified by Valerie's reaction. The cockroach waved its antenna gratefully at him.

A/N: Miss Piggy on crack is actually what I sound like when I see a spider. I'm an arachnophobe. Someone suggested it would be a good idea to make Val sound like that. Try it sometime. Again, apologies to the people who like their CSI raw. I'm throwing in an OC. Please bear with.