Disclaimer/Author's Note – See Chapter One.

Chapter Five – Leads

'What do you mean you don't have any suspects!' a very angry father, Scott Michaels grilled Brass and Catherine. 'How can you not have a suspect!'

Brass held up his hands, attempting to placate the man. 'Mr Michaels, we don't have a suspect right now. Believe me, that all could change. You just need to let us do our jobs.'

All of the man's anger was suddenly replaced with terrible grief, and he sunk down onto a chair and began to weep. 'Haley… Haley,' he sobbed.

Catherine sat down near him. 'Mr Michaels, I'm so sorry for your loss. Can you think of anyone who would have wanted to harm Haley?'

For a moment, the grieving father was unable to speak. Finally, his eyes met Catherine's. 'She shouldn't have even been out of the house. I told her to stop seeing Jason. Didn't want her around him, after his psycho ex-girlfriend threatened her.'

Catherine and Brass shared a look. Finally, a lead. 'Do you know this ex-girlfriend's name?' Brass asked him.

'Stacey… something,' Mr Michaels thought for a moment. 'Stacey… Marks, maybe?'

'When did she threaten Haley?' Catherine asked him. 'Can you tell us what exactly happened?'

Michaels was beginning to get himself back under control. Looking almost embarrassed to have been crying, he impatiently wiped the tears from his face.

'Haley came home about a week ago… last Wednesday, I think. I could tell she'd been crying, was really upset. I asked her what was wrong and she said that she'd been on a date with Jason and they'd run into Stacey. The little bitch had really tore into Haley, hit her, pulled at her hair. Said that Jason was hers and she'd put Haley in hospital before she'd let her date him.'

'Did you report this to the police?' Brass wanted to know.

Michaels shook his head. 'I didn't… I didn't think it was that big a deal. Girls fight over guys all the time.' Catherine could see he was getting upset again. 'I didn't think… I didn't like Jason anyway, so I told Haley to stop seeing him. I thought that would be the end of it.' Tears began to roll down his face once more. 'This is my fault, isn't it? If I had called the police last week…'

Catherine shook her head. 'There was no way you could have know this would happen, Mr Michaels,' she told him gently. 'And we don't know that this girl Stacey had anything to do with your daughter's death.'

'But we will check her out,' Brass assured him. 'Just in case.'

'What have we got?' Grissom asked as he strode into the break room, cutting the chatter and bringing the briefing to order.

'Possible suspect,' Catherine told him. 'Brass and I interviewed Haley Michaels' father a few hours ago. Apparently, boyfriend Jason's ex threatened Haley last week. Brass is running down the name, but no luck as yet.'

'How's the evidence coming?' Grissom asked.

'DNA's back on the condom,' Nick informed the group. 'Clive's DNA on the inside, Mary's on the outside.'

'The victims. No surprise there,' Catherine remarked. 'What about the fingerprint you got off the car door?' she asked Warrick.

'Spoke to Jackie at the end of last shift,' Warrick replied. 'No match to the vics. So far, it's an unknown. Maybe our perp.'

'So we've got nothing?' Sara summed up, frustrated.

'We've got evidence to tie to a suspect, when we develop one,' Grissom corrected her. 'And we've got a distinctive M.O.'

'So, what are we thinking? Are the hearts part of some weird ritual, or is he cutting them out as a Valentine's gift to his honey?' Warrick pondered.

'Man! Whatever happened to flowers and candy?' Nick said with disgust.

'Diamonds, Nicky,' Catherine admonished the young CSI. 'A woman likes diamonds for Valentine's.'

Sara made a noise of disgust.

'What? You don't like diamonds or you're not a fan of the holiday?' Catherine asked with a smirk.

'It's not a holiday. It's an excuse for card manufactures to make money in the slow season between Christmas and Easter,' Sara announced. 'It's a meaningless, capitalist farce.'

'Cynic,' Nick said under his breath.

'Hey, I like romance as much as the next woman,' Sara told him. 'But Valentine's is a crock.'

She suddenly became very aware of Grissom's gaze on her. Trying not to look up and meet his eyes, she felt her face flush. Inwardly she winced. She always did that – make a big deal out of something stupid – say something, simply for the sake of saying it, and ending up with it sounding like a major belief system.

Warrick had been watching this exchange with amusement, and saw Sara start to blush. He let her suffer for a moment before helping her out.

'Okay, so… what else we got? Because DNA and fingerprints are coming up empty. Do we know who was last with the second couple?'

Catherine answered him. 'Scott Michaels didn't even know his daughter had left the house. He banned her from dating Jason last week, after the incident with the ex-girlfriend. And her friends say they hadn't seen her since school let out at 3.30.'

'What about the boyfriend?' Grissom asked. 'No one missed him?'

'He lives alone,' Catherine told him. 'No one to miss him, from what we can tell. Brass is looking into it.'

'What about their car?' Nick asked. 'It hasn't turned up yet?'

'Not yet,' Catherine answered. 'Brass has an APB out on it. Hopefully it's only a matter of time…' She was interrupted by her pager. 'Speak of the devil,' she remarked as she plucked the device off her belt and looked at it. 'Brass has located the ex-girlfriend. I'm going to go talk to her. Catch you guys later,' she said as she left the room.

'Okay, in case Catherine's lead doesn't pan out, Sara, I'd like you to follow the M.O,' Grissom said, looking at the brunette. 'A person just doesn't wake up one morning and start cutting out hearts. They develop a taste for it. Go on the FBI database, look for anything similar. Don't limit yourself to just the hearts. Any murders where the victims were mutilated. Couples killings. Any murders where two killers were thought to have been involved. Let's try and work out the pattern.'

'On it,' she told him, uncurling herself from the chair and heading out of the room.

'According to the two friends, Clive and Mary drove off in their car at around 11.30pm, from a fast food place just off the strip.' Grissom glanced at his notes. 'Denny's. Warrick, take Greg and get your hands on the surveillance footage for the restaurant's parking lot and see if anyone might have followed our first couple.'

'That part of the strip has a bunch of cameras on the street too,' Warrick told him. 'I'll see if I can lay my hands on that footage too.'

With that, he and Greg left the room.

'Nicky, until the second couple's car turns up, I want you sifting through missing persons,' Grissom told the remaining CSI. 'We didn't find the first couple for four days. I hate to think it, but there may be more out there, waiting to be found.'

The sullen girl sitting opposite Catherine couldn't have been more than 17. She sat with her arms and legs crossed, completely defensive, and refusing to look either Brass or Catherine in the eye. After twenty minutes of interviewing the uncooperative teenager, Catherine had just about enough.

'Two people, that you know, were found murdered last night,' she said bluntly. 'You don't seem very broken up about it.'

'I loved Jason,' Stacey told her. 'Everyone deals with grief in their own way.'

'Right,' Brass replied, with a tone that made it crystal clear he didn't believe the girl for a moment. 'And yours is to sit there and chew gum without so much as a tear. Yeah, you really seem broken up about it.'

'I am broken up,' Stacey said, looking angrily at him. 'You don't know how I feel.'

'What about Haley?' he asked her. 'You broken up about her death, too?'

'I don't give a shit about her,' Stacey replied. 'That rich bitch stole my boyfriend.'

'Really? From what I hear, he broke up with you,' Brass told her. 'What's the matter, Stacey? Not used to getting dumped? Maybe wanted a little revenge on the new girlfriend?'

Stacey didn't reply.

'So you decide, hey, he dumped me. Why not kill them both?' Brass continued. 'Was it a 'if I can't have him, no one will' kind of deal?'

Stacey suddenly looked scared. 'You're not pinning this on me! I didn't kill them!'

'You threatened Haley last week,' Catherine said. 'You attacked her.'

'Yeah. So? Doesn't mean I killed her,' Stacey replied. 'I'd never hurt Jason. I love him.'

'Where were you last night?' Brass asked.

'In my room.'

'Can your mom or anyone else verify that?'

'She works nights.'

Catherine opened up her field kit and took out a sterile swab. 'Stacey, I'd like you to give us a DNA sample and your fingerprints.'

The girl looked fearfully at Catherine. 'Don't you guys' need, like, a warrant or something.'

'We can get one, if you'd prefer,' Catherine replied. 'But if you're telling the truth and you really had nothing to do with Haley and Jason's murders, then giving us this sample will rule you out as a suspect.'

Stacey thought about that for a moment. Finally, she nodded. 'Okay. Whatever.'

'Smart choice,' Catherine told her.

Nick had only begun checking missing person's records when he found something. Limiting his search to the past week, he had already found one couple who had gone missing. Jessica Reynolds and Mark Lewis had disappeared two days after Clive and Mary, the first couple. Nick silently prayed that they had simply run off together, and were not lying dead, somewhere in the desert, waiting to be found. Printing off the record, he continued combing the database.

On a hunch, he widened the search to state-wide, to couples who had gone missing in the past five years. There were surprisingly few cases that were still active. Three in total, which he printed off. One case caught his eye. A 16 year old girl and her 17 year old boyfriend, who had disappeared together a year and a half ago. The guy had turned up, after almost 6 months, saying that he had broken up with the girl after she started acting 'weird' and 'violent'. She had run off when he tried to get her to go home. Her whereabouts were still unknown.

Definitely worth checking out, Nick thought to himself.

Warrick almost missed the car. He and Greg had been going through footage for a few hours at that point. The amount of footage was simply huge. Even with an approximate time, there were so many cameras recording that particular part of the strip, it was still a big job. In the end, it was Greg who spotted the victims car.

'Whoa, Warrick man,' the new CSI said. 'Wasn't that it?'

Warrick ran the tape back and paused it at the moment Greg indicated. 'Good call, Greg,' he told him.

The two victims, Clive and Mary, were in their car, apparently saying goodbye to their friends. A moment later, the car drove off.

'Wait a minute…' Warrick muttered, running the tape back again. A moment after the car pulled away from the curb, another car drove through the frame. 'I recognise that car…'

He dug through the other tapes, putting one on after another, looking for the right moment in the tapes. Ten minutes later, he found it.

Thirty seconds before Clive and Mary drove away from their friends, another car, the one that had followed them, was parked around the side of the restaurant. A figure, probably male, was sitting in it. Another figure, female this time, ran towards the car and jumped in. A few seconds later, they had driven out of frame.

'She was coming from the direction of the restaurant,' Greg observed. 'Keeping lookout?'

'Then she sees our victims leaving, runs to her car, and they start tailing them,' Warrick continued. He was jiggling the digital enhancement controls. 'Damn it. I can only get a partial plate number.' He jotted it down and handed the paper to Greg. 'Run this and see what we get. I'm going to see if I can get a better image of our two suspects.'

If never ceased to amaze Sara the level of violence one human being was prepared to inflict on another. Even with everything she had already seen in her career, there were constantly new mutations of evil springing up, each more ugly and disturbing than the last.

Such horrors she was discovering as she went through FBI records, looking for anything that might match this particular M.O. Always professional, nothing she read in the case files upset her physically. She read them with the cool detachment that her job required. But in the private enclosures of her mind, which she seldom shared with anyone, she despaired for the human race once more.

Printing off anything that sent up a red flag, she already had a few interesting leads to follow when she spotted something that got her attention. Six months ago, a teenage couple were kidnapped by two people 'a man and a young woman' who may have been 'in her late teens'. They were held, at knife and gun-point, for around 6 hours, while the couple terrorised them, describing how they planned to kill them. The victims were asked repeatedly if they were 'truly in love'. Eventually they were dumped out in the middle of the desert after the female kidnapper became 'bored'.

As the report printed, Sara stretched, and found her mind wandering towards more pleasant thoughts. As many times as she thought about her blossoming relationship with Grissom, she still didn't quite believe that it was happening. Unconsciously, she touched her fingers to her lips, thinking of how his lips had felt when he kissed her that morning. She wondered where he had learned to kiss like that. His kisses were passionate yet gentle, sensuous and so full of promise. She felt a tingle up her spine at the prospect, wondering when he would decide to take the next step. After being the one doing all the chasing for four years, Sara was now more than content to sit back and let Grissom do the work. For now…

Focus, Sara. She gave herself a mental shake. She had work to do. Just as she was settling down to continue searching, another tingle up her spine alerted her to the fact that the object of her distraction had entered the lab behind her. Without turning round, she continued to type, but a smile had crept onto her face. When he walked up and stood close beside her, so close she could smell his clean, unperfumed scent, her grin widened.

'Hey,' she greeted him.

'Hey,' he replied, a gentle smile in his voice. 'Found anything?'

'Yeah. A few cases caught my eye. This one in particular.' She handed him her most recent printout.

Grissom spent a moment reading the report. He was as intrigued as Sara. 'The boyfriend's still local,' Grissom remarked. Sara looked at him and knew what he was thinking. Stepping back and gesturing to the door, he smiled at her. 'Shall we…?'

TBC.