Las Vegas was a city of a million stories and over a billion crimes. The Las Vegas Central Scientific Investigation team often covered anywhere from fifty to a hundred cases a week. They had one of the most advanced labs in the country and possibly the most gifted and genius level specialists in the whole United States Police Force. Nick Stokes loved his job and wished to scream it from the sky. Catherine Willows had a love/hate affair with it. She loved the work, but it took her from her daughter. She had been a single mother for going on eight years now, and she barely knew her daughter. Her extended family at CSI filled her time, but little Lindsay who had her heart often unfortunately had to take second place.
"I got the wrong case." Nick groused half-heartedly as he and Catherine took a separate case. "Grissom gets the best case and I'm poking into the disappearance of…." He checked his pad as the officer on duty allowed them entry into the two-story ranch house fenced off with police tape. "William Nathaniel Braddock."
"Thirty-nine," Katherine had studied the case enroute. "Kennel Director at the Clark County Humane Society, he went on vacation two weeks ago and didn't return to work last Monday. His manager called him three times, came by here looking for him and then reported him missing." Catherine poked through mail on a small table behind the door. The most current letter was dated eight days ago so that meant Braddock vanished while he was still in the middle of his vacation. She flicked on her penlight and perused over seemingly non-disturbed furniture and bric-a-brac. The setting was modest, and the layout was simple. A basic chair and sofa set around a coffee table before a TV, VCR and DVD set with tables a desk and shelf of books to the wall. One door led to the kitchen and another adjoining one to the dining area. Nick peered down the hallway to a few steps heading up to the bedrooms and upstairs bathroom. The stairs at his eye level revealed three four open doorways and shutter doors to a closet.
"A lot of dust." Nick observed. "I get the feeling this guy didn't do a lot of housecleaning."
"Most bachelors don't." Catherine answered scrutinizing for areas where it was disturbed. "It will at least tell us what's been moved or disturbed." She turned to see Nick doing a quick sweep upstairs and turning round to come back to her.
"He's got one bedroom, one room like a study and another with a pool table." He described what he saw. "I don't have a set-up like this. How does a guy who does grunt work afford to live alone like this?"
"I talked to his manager." Catherine scrutinized for signs of an answering machine that didn't exist. She thought it might have been taken, but the undisturbed dust around the phone suggested to her Braddock just didn't own one. "She said that Braddock lived alone with his parents until they retired to Florida. The house was paid off so all he has is the yearly taxes. Braddock even took his father's old job." She panned over book titles in Braddock's collection and slowly started surmising his lonely existence. "Let's see the basement."
"Okay," Nick looked into the kitchen and saw a door against the wall between the living room and kitchen. His rubber-gloved hand turned the knob and opened the door to reveal stairs descending under the house deep into a dark maw of darkness he knew he'd be entering. Catherine checked the light switch with her light for latent prints and flicked the lights on as Nick stopped at the bottom third and looked to the room under him. Along the wall stretching the three quarters the perimeter of the room was a tabletop train that made him a kid once more. It even extended into an island into the room with an operating switch in the middle and a passage into the adjacent laundry room alongside the staircase.
"This guy is my new best friend!" Nick hurried down and marveled at the exquisite detail work. There was a highly exquisite three-quarter inch civilization stretched out before him on thirty square feet with tunnels, roads, houses, people, animals set in a miniature three-dimensional Norman Rockwell world under a wall-painted horizon. A tiny girl's lemonade stand stood near a small general store before a stalled train. Boys ran past a tiny styrene haunted house with boarded windows. A train conductor and rail man waited at switcher. It would take Nick hours to examine every minutiae and creation on this tiny set. Even Katherine was humbled at it.
"Guess we know where he spends his time." She noticed Nick regressing back to childhood and scanned the room from the spackled ceiling over to the roll top desk under the shelves under the only bare wall in the room. Her eyes perused bottles of paint lined up in single file up high while tools for working in miniature set in dusk around disassembled train cars, section of track and old metal tins with millimeter screws and bolts. She panned up looking for prints and then down for signs of recent activity and then noticed speckles of red at her feet. Nick noticed her discovery and loomed by her side.
"Blood?" He wondered out loud.
"Red latex paint." Catherine noticed the trail of the lost and broken glass bottle from its space up above. "Get a sample." She stood up straight once more and trying to avoid getting distracted by the train entered the adjacent laundry room. The downstairs sink, washer, dryer and water heater were along the back of the house. Against the wall to the room of the train set was a tall metal cabinet for hanging clothes. Opening it up, plastic wrap covering clothes resembled the entryway to fabled Narnia. However, as she perused closer, she realized she was not looking at old suits or outdated gym clothes. She was looking at full length, high collar dresses and gowns. It made her want to start speculating.
"Doesn't everything we've seen so far show Braddock lives alone?" She replied.
"Yeah…" Nick had the paint sample.
"Well," Catherine noticed dresses she would have liked to own. "Who do you think these belong to?"
At CSI Headquarters at the Las Vegas Police Station, City Corner Doctor Albert Robbins covered and scrutinized the bodies of desirables known as James Eugene Kendall and his partner Baron Victor Sadler. Having expired and stripped to all they had entered the world with, they looked like the once normal human boys they once were instead of the foul creatures thy lived as. Robbins hobbled by cane on his good leg as Gil Grissom and Sara Sadler analyzed the bodies for the answers to tell them and the circumstances of their deaths.
"How did they die?" Grissom asked the question at the top of the hour.
"Asphyxiation." Robbins answered as he produced his x-rays. "Both boys had topsoil from the graveyard in their mouths, nasal cavities, throats, esophagus, lungs and stomachs. It's almost as if they were drilled into the ground head first."
"Is that possible?" Sara asked.
"No," Robbins answered. "And they were not driven into the ground by the force of the crash, either, otherwise their bones would have shattered on impact and turned them into jelly."
"There is no way they could have flown from the car and landed where they did." Grissom continued working this boggling case in his mind. "According to the tire tread evidence, they were only doing seventy-five miles an hour when the hit the steel fence around the cemetery and that slowed them to fifty-six. At most, they flew through the windshield and landed seven feet from their car."
"But…" Sara added. "The windshield was shattered, but not broken and the doors were open. They were either alive to leave the car or be removed from it because they were still alive when they were drilled into the ground."
"I can tell you something else." Robbins looked to the x-rays. "Kendall has hairline fractures in his ribs in a circular pattern…"
"From the steering wheel…" Grissom remarked.
"And Sadler has glass fragments in a hairline fracture in his skull."
"From the windshield." Sara answered like a young ingénue. "That explains the passenger side shatter."
"I also did blood work." Robbins picked up his findings. "They both were on PCP at the time and their adrenaline levels through the roof. The epinephrine levels in both of them were above normal. I'd say their pulses were racing when they died."
"They were likely hallucinating just before the time of death." Grissom mentioned. "Which explains why they were shooting up the cemetery, but not how or why they were buried in the ground."
"Maybe they weren't hallucinating." Sara looked up. "Maybe someone, not something, was freaking them out."
"Grissom…" Warrick Brown stuck his head into the room with an expression of annoyed disbelief in his face. "There's this guy from the FBI who wants to talk to you."
"The FBI?" Grissom reacted equally annoyed. "About what?"
"About Jason Troy." Warrick answered. Grissom looked to Sara for answers and then to Robbins. Robbins just stood mute witness to the how the events unfolded and watched as Grissom scowled a bit. It was not out of annoyance, but past grievances showed that he did not hold the Bureau with high regard. With Sara and Warrick in his path, he started forward for his office and noticed a figure in his office handling his jar with the preserved pig fetus with curiosity. Idle and professional, the agent looked up to him with expressed interest and subdued restraint.
"Can I help you?" Gil Grissom started.
"Federal Agent Fox Mulder of the FBI, X Files Division…" Their guest showed his identification. "I'd like to know what you learned about the death of Jason Scott Troy."
"What kind of a first name is Fox?" Sara asked first.