"Hey Warrick, how'd you get here so fast?" Greg Sanders asked, walking up to the man standing near the back wall of the Sunken Ship.
The man who had been avoiding the casino worked the swing shift in the Las Vegas Crime Lab. His name was Warrick Brown, whose gorgeous body with light chocolate brown skin and two wonderfully different colored eyes set him apart from just about everyone else in the room.
"I've been here since the last tour started about half an hour ago. Where's Grissom?" Warrick answered.
"He's bringing in the new CSI on nightshift. I haven't heard much about her, except that she's got intuition and luck on her side. I overheard Grissom talking to her supervisor in Colorado over the phone, heard him say that he was impressed with the way that she would just 'stumble across evidence' in hot cases."
Warrick nodded and glanced back to the water behind the glass. It was no longer just tinted red, but dyed red, blood from not only whatever human victim there was, but from other sharks. The curator was scurrying around, in near tears because he did not know the status of the damage of his sharks. His eyes shifted again to the passage leading out of the Sunken Ship and saw Grissom heading through it. Behind Grissom was a blonde haired woman, her already fair skin turning into a lighter shade of pale as she faltered just a step away from the glass tunnel. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and walked straight through, and when she opened her eyes again, she appeared to have relaxed a little. Grissom waited for her to catch up before continuing to push his way through the sea of policemen.
"Warrick, what are you doing here?" Grissom asked, adjusting the shoulder strap on his kit.
"I'm a witness in this one." Warrick replied, motioning to the girl behind Grissom, "Who's that?"
"Warrick, Greg, this is Meagan Shepherds, the new CSI on nightshift."
Meagan stepped out from Grissom's shadow and smiled warmly at both Greg and Warrick. She still looked pale and was avidly averting her eyes from the tank, but she made sure to make eye contact with both Greg and Warrick.
"Greg, you two will be leaning on one another since you're both new to this. If either of you need extra help, come and get me, I'll be talking to the curator. For now, I want you to interview the witnesses. Report back to me when this has been accomplished, clear?" Grissom instructed.
Greg and Meagan nodded and Grissom turned in the opposite direction to talk to the distraught curator.
"I clearly don't remember the tank ever being this color. I've only been here once, but still." She said once Grissom was out of earshot, "What happened?"
"I was down here, trying to clear my head. Funny place, I know, but it's quiet and kind of out of the way," Warrick replied, leaning back against the wall, "there were two families down here, one had already left. The other is over talking to Brass, Greg will introduce you to him, and they were about to leave when the sharks started swimming to the surface area, beyond what we could see. Then there was some blood and a shoe floated down to the bottom, and, well, what you can't see is a result."
"What do you mean?"
"How many animals can you see swimming around in there now?"
"Good point."
"What a crap job Griss gave us. We're already done," Greg said, "but for the sake of getting to know one another better, we'll just pretend that he's telling us a long story. You didn't look too happy coming through that tunnel over there. You ok?"
"I'm fine, thanks."
"You sure?"
"Yeah, I'm just a little—"
"I'm cutting interviews short, we need to go see if we can get all the live animals still in there separated and put into individual tanks for observation." Grissom interrupted.
Meagan waved good-bye to Warrick and followed Grissom, with Greg following behind her, across the wood flooring, through the tunnel once more, and finally through a deep green painted door. They went up a flight of metal stairs, and at last, they reached a locked door. The curator himself unlocked it and opened it to a room made entirely of cement and metal. Grissom stepped down less than three inches onto the cement platform, and moved to the side to make room for Greg and Meagan.
With Grissom's vest out of the way, Meagan could clearly see everything in the room. She could clearly see every black spot on the whitewashed walls. She could clearly see where the cement platform, only five feet wide, ended. And she could clearly see where the blood-red imported ocean water began. Her head began to throb steadily to the pounding in her ears that was growing louder. Her feet refused to move and her breathing was shallow and unstable. A single dorsal fin rose through the red beyond the platform and her feet propelled her backwards, back through the doorway and onto the landing of the stairs. Her back barely touch Greg and she whirled around and buried her face in his shoulder. He set his kit down on the ground and awkwardly comforted her as best as he could.
"Meagan? What's wrong?" Grissom asked as his head bounced into view.
"I'm…" She sniffled before continuing, "I'm selachophobic." She retreated from Greg's body and seemed to shrink as she did so.
"Will you be able to work this case?"
"Yes. I'm fine now, I've just never had to see that before."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. We better begin processing whatever evidence there is."
She pushed by Grissom and onto the platform. Greg and Grissom shrugged to one another and followed after her. Along the wall, there were buckets of fish and crustaceans waiting to be fed to what few sharks still remained. There was a puddle of blood to the right of the door, and Greg attended to that. Meagan continued to stare at the chum buckets while Grissom inspected the corners for cameras.
"You won't find any cameras in here, Mr. Grissom. I have one in the stairway, and throughout the exhibits, but not in here." The curator, Patrick McTaney, said.
"Who has access to this area?" Grissom asked.
"My staff, of course."
"Anyone specifically?"
"Jeffrey Everhart, Jackie Lynn, and Michael Olens. They're the ones that take care of this exhibit the most."
"Who is brave enough to get a sample of this water? We need to get one before we can filter the rest of it."
Finally, when no one answered, Grissom pulled out a container from his kit, unscrewed the lid, and dipped his hand carefully in the water. Meagan watched with wide eyes, but was calmed when he came out with his hand intact. He labeled it carefully and put it to the side of his kit.
"Mr. McTaney?" Meagan said, still looking at the food buckets intently.
"Yes?" He replied, walking to her side.
"Would you give me permission to take a look inside these buckets?"
"Whatever for?"
"I'm not entirely sure just yet."
"Meagan, we don't have time for hunches." Grissom announced.
"We don't have anything else to go on." She replied.
Grissom nodded in McTaney's direction. McTaney, though not thrilled with the thought of his creatures' food being touched, agreed silently. Meagan double checked her gloves and then started pulling fish and crabs slowly out of one bucket. Once she was finished with bucket number one, she replaced the fish and moved on to the next. This time, she did not remove the fish, but slid her hand into the middle of the bucket and closed her eyes.
"Mr. Grissom, I found something." She said, closing her eyes in disgust.
"What is it?" He asked from the landing on the stairs as he dusted the doorknob for fingerprints.
"Oh gross!" She exclaimed, pulling one of her hands out of the bucket.
"Mr. McTaney, why are your fish still bleeding?" Greg questioned, looking at Meagan's bloody glove.
"They shouldn't be, they've been frozen…"
Meagan reached in again and pulled out more than just her own hands. McTaney rushed for the stairs, nearly pushing Grissom down on his way out.
"Whoa. Guess this is a sign telling us to stop dicking around." Greg commented while watching Meagan bag the rather displaced body part.
"At least we didn't have to search the roadside for it," Grissom replied, "Now we just have to find the rest of him."