Disclaimer/Author's Note – See Chapter One

Chapter Three – Worrying Developments

The woman sitting opposite Catherine in the Tangiers suite could have been Sara. Jill Davenport was young and fresh-faced – in her early 30s but easily passing for a woman in her 20s. Dark hair fell loose about her shoulders.

'Is Sara okay?' she wanted to know, a look of deep concern in her eyes. 'I thought she was really street-smart. Otherwise I would have made sure she got to her car okay.'

'There's some concern that she might have been drugged last night. Can you remember everything about your evening with her? What you both drank? Who might have had access to your glasses?' Catherine asked her.

Jill thought for a moment. 'Sara only had one drink. Played with it for a while, if I remember correctly. I don't know what she was drinking. She was the one who went to the bar.'

'What was your impression? Beer, wine, spirit of some kind?' Brass pushed her.

'Orange juice,' Jill replied. 'It looked like orange juice. Of course, she might have had something else in it, but I don't know.'

'And what did you have?' Catherine asked.

'Campari and soda.'

'And what time did Sara leave?' Catherine went on.

'Um, around 11, I guess. Maybe a little before,' answered Jill. She paused, apparently thinking about it. 'Yeah, I think it was maybe ten to 11.'

'You guys hadn't seen each other in a while, right?' Brass took over. 'Why would she meet up with you at 10pm, only to leave maybe 50 minutes later? Didn't you two have a lot to catch up on?'

'Well, you know Sara…' Jill answered cryptically. 'Come to think of it, she didn't really seem to be in the mood. Kept looking around her. Uneasy. Checking her watch. Like there was somewhere she had to be. I asked her if she had to work, but she said it was her night off.'

'Back to the drink,' Catherine interrupted, not liking the implication of what she was hearing. 'Did anyone come near it? Was it brought to the table by a waiter, maybe? Did Sara leave the table at any point? Maybe to go to the ladies room?'

'Nope,' Jill answered. 'Like I said, Sara went to the bar, brought the drinks to the table herself. And she didn't leave the table until she said she was going home.'

The whole team was assembled round the table in the break-room. Sara sat facing Grissom, hugging a large sweater around her as though freezing. She had never felt so exposed.

He had insisted on processing her himself. After he had drawn her blood, Grissom had proceeded to collect evidence from her. Fibres from her clothing. Skin from under her finger nails. Now she sat at the table with them in silence, as the team attempted to figure out their latest bizarre case.

'Planted finger print. Planted hair. Planted bugs. Is there anything about this crime scene that wasn't staged?' Nick wanted to know. 'And why Sara? Why is our prep trying to point the finger at her?' He was taking this personally, remembering all too well when he was falsely suspected of murder.

'Well, the finger print was planted on the outside of the bottle, but our guy didn't bother with the inside,' Catherine added. 'No saliva, just beer. When anyone drinks from a beer bottle, you can always expect to find some of their saliva mixed with the contents. Backwash. But, in this case, zip. Means the perp probably emptied the beer out of the bottle before placing the print. Maybe to make it look like Sa… someone had been drinking from it.'

Catherine cast a nervous glance at Sara, who had yet to react to anything being said.

'No other prints anywhere else around the body, though. Including the note. Perp was clean.'

'Not that clean. Your perp may have left a print on the shell casing y'all recovered,' interjected Bobby Dawson as he strode into the break-room. 'Finger print came back as unknown. Jacqui asked me to run the results over to you, since I was coming this way myself.'

Warrick shook his head, confused. 'That's kind of sloppy for someone who took such care to leave nothing but planted evidence. Prints on bullet casings are an amateur mistake.'

'What about the bullet?' Grissom wanted to know.

'Matched the one I test fired from the, uh…' he paused, glancing at Sara. 'From the gun, y'all brought in.'

'So, it was my gun,' Sara stated in a dead voice. 'This keeps getting better and better. Brass will be in here to arrest me any minute.'

'No one's going to arrest you,' Grissom told her. 'My gut's telling me you were drugged. Wouldn't have been hard for our killer to take your gun, use it and return it before you came to.'

'You finger print wasn't on the casing Sara,' Catherine went on. 'And I think it's a safe assumption that you don't use the type of ammo we found at the scene. You use Hydra-Shok, like the rest of us, right?'

Sara nodded.

Catherine went on, 'Well, the bullet we recovered looked to me like a Black Talon. Am I right, Bobby?'

'Close,' the ballistics expert replied. 'Winchester took the Black Talon off the market a while back. Brought out the Ranger STX, known as the Ranger Talon. Potato, potah-to though. Does exactly the same job. Very destructive.'

'You can say that again,' Grissom replied. 'Cut like a buzz-saw through the victim. Would have kept going too, if it hadn't hit that concrete wall. You have a chance to look at it yet, Bobby?'

'Yeah. Not much to see though,' Bobby answered. 'Got ripped up pretty good with the impact. We're not going to get much from it.'

'Thanks Bobby,' Catherine said when Grissom didn't reply. Bobby nodded before leaving the room.

'So someone took my gun, reloaded with Talons, getting their fingerprints on the bullet casing, and then loaded it again with my own ammo?' Sara reasoned. 'Why change ammo if the gun was already loaded?'

'The talon is high performance,' Grissom told her. 'Incredibly destructive, like Catherine said. It was over-kill. Someone wanted to make sure they'd kill our victim with one shot.'

'So, if they weren't wearing gloves, and their print is on the bullet they fired, doesn't it stand to reason their print might be on my ammo?' Sara reasoned.

'Your bullets are with fingerprints now. They're the next run,' Nick told her.

'Okay, so the perp is trying to throw us a curve by planting Sara's print and hair. But why the bugs? To throw off time of death?' Warrick wanted to know.

'Well, that he didn't accomplish,' Grissom answered. 'The Doc places time of death around 1am this morning. That warehouse was empty, but it was used on a semi-regular basis, so there was no real guarantee that the bugs would have time to do their thing before the body was found. Which makes me think there's more to the bugs than just trying to screw up our crime scene.'

Grissom was doing a good impression of being all business, but Catherine could tell that every word was causing him effort. She had never seen him this worried, or this lost.

'And what was with the note?' Nick wanted to know. 'It almost sounds as if the killer's quoting you, Grissom.'

Before he could answer, Judy rapped on the door, carrying a package.

'Sorry, Dr Grissom. A courier just dropped this off. It's marked Urgent, so I thought I'd better bring it straight to you.'

Taking it from her, Grissom mumbled a vague 'Thanks'. He began to brief his troops.

'So, we got time of death, but identification's being held up 'til we can get hold of dental records. Nicky, start looking into missing persons. Males, who've gone missing in the last 48 hours, for starters. Warrick, check out the warehouse. It's part of an industrial complex, so they should have some kind of CCTV. Try and talk to the owner. Find out who might have had access.'

Nick and Warrick rose to their feet, glancing at Sara with concern on their way to the door. She looked up as they moved passed and gave them a brave smile. Grissom tore open the envelope and began to reach inside.

'See you later Sara,' said Nick, supportively.

'Take it easy,' Warrick added.

'Catherine…' before Grissom could continue, Greg arrived at the door.

'Uh, Grissom…' he began hesitantly. 'Can I have a word outside?'

Sara looked at Greg, but he couldn't meet her eyes.

'Greg?' she asked, fear starting to prickle at her. 'Did you get the results of my blood test?'

'Uh, well, yeah… Um, Grissom.' Greg shifted uncomfortably, still not looking directly at Sara.

'Greg,' Catherine began evenly. 'Sara has a right to know…'

Greg hesitated again. Finally he raised his eyes to look at Sara. He looked at her with such sorrow, like a man who had finally been faced with the reality of what he did.

'Sara, you were drugged,' he finally said.

'What was it?' her voice small now.

'Rohypnol.'

Grissom's hand had stilled inside the envelope. Catherine looked from him to Sara, unable to determine who was more devastated by the news. The look on Grissom's face turned from horror to confusion. Slowly his withdrew his hand from the envelope, bringing with it a pale green thong and a note.

'What the…?' he started, picking up the note without thinking. Unfolding the paper, he read the single line and dropped it to the table.

Concentrate on what cannot lie…

Sara looked from Grissom's face to the satiny green material in front of him. A sudden realisation struck her.

'Those are mine.'

To Be Continued...