PART EIGHT

Dr. Robbins was scrutinizing the remains of a female jogger who had been missing for three and a half-months. Suspecting rape, he began checking for tell-tale vaginal tears. As he looked, he received an interested glance from his company. Still dissecting the remains of James Kendall, she stood up straight, cracking her back and lifted her metal clipboard to write another note. Her white lab coat looked as if it belonged in a butcher shop, and her once perfect coif of red hair was a bit askew even for a person too dedicated to her job. There was a creak, a groan and a cursory bit of light entering the dim room as she and Robbins looked up together. Standing dear the entrance, Fox Mulder looked distantly over to her with a look of complacency, over to Robbins peering back to him over his eyeglasses and back to Scully with an aura of distant interest.

"Well," He started. "What about it?"

"Neither Sadler nor Kendall were killed by anything human." Her plastic gloves snapped as she pulled them off. "Topsoil in their bodies matches the topsoil of the cemetery, there are no epithelials on their upper bodies to explain the marks on their shoulders and underarms and there are no such things as ghosts." She looked at him daringly to contest her report.

"The only reason people say that is that parapsychology is not a recognized science." Mulder was quick to point out. "We knows cows and dogs exist because we all took basic school biology, but the only reason everyone says ghosts don't exist is because they never take the time to do the research, yet, ghostly phenomenon occurs practically once every thirty seconds somewhere on the planet with more frequency ahead of one person being mugged every one minute. What does that tell you? Sadler and Kendall were pulled underground by the spirits of once living people because Jason Scott Troy somehow knew how to call upon them."

"Mulder…" Scully briefly mumbled instructions to Robbins' assistant to reclaim Kendall's body then turned back to her partner. "Every bizarre death is not proof of ghosts. Sadler and Kendall likely died because of a string of unlikely and unconnected circumstances. One, they were extremely under the influence and likely hallucinating, two, they were driving extremely fast prior to their deaths, three, most of Las Vegas is built on desert with a high chance of sinkholes, and four, did I mention there are no such things as ghosts?"

"If you turn out a light, does the electricity disappear?" Mulder expressed a belief. "When a person dies, what happens to their memories and personality? Doesn't science say that everything goes somewhere? What about this human spirit that is the basic tenet of every known religion on earth? Science doesn't know everything that happens at death; there's no evidence that ghosts do not exist."

"I'm on his side." Robbins looked up.

"Thank you!" Mulder looked at him.

"What?"

"If you weigh a person just before they die and compare their exact weight after they die, there is always a .000053 variant difference. I've often wondered where the missing weight goes and then it dawned on me." Robbins paused for affect and looked at the remains of his female jogger. "The weight of the human soul having departed the living body." He gestured over the cadaver before him as proof of what he was saying.

"But that doesn't mean that it stays here on the planet to make noises from attics and appear in photographs for the TV series Unsolved Mysteries." Grissom slipped into pathology behind Mulder. "Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that the best way to come to a solution is to eliminate all likely possibilities until you find the last however even unlikely solution."

"Mr. Grissom," Mulder folder him arms while Scully took the time to shorn herself of her white coat and discard it. "How do explain a whole family with names, relationships and personalities identical to the figures in Greek Mythology?"

"My father's name was Charles," Grissom started. "His sister's name is Lucy and I have a cousin Linus married to a girl named Sally and they a son named Schroeder. Some families adopt very cult-like characteristics, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are thousands of years old and were once worshipped by our ancestors as gods."

"Mr. Grissom," Dana liked anyone with a gifted intelligence and highly rational personality. "Have you ever considered working as a Federal agent?"

"I couldn't pass the mandatory I.Q. test." Grissom eyed her over with intrigue. "They said I rated too high for their standards." He turned to Robbins about the jogger then realized just how busy the forensics lab could get. Captain Brass opened the pathology door open with a new unexpected incident to challenge their collective intelligence.

"Shooting at a diner, eleven people dead, everyone heads out…" He announced. Grissom briefly eyed Robbins as the FBI Agents in his company and hoped the dead lady jogger wasn't getting up anytime soon. After a brisk pace to his office, he grabbed and pulled on his jacket, lifted up his forensic kit sitting at a ready location and headed out with Warrick Brown on his heels with the manner of military agents rushing to war.

"Great…" Warrick didn't react with much interest. "Gangland slaying?"

"I don't know." Grissom looked back at him as if he wanted him to tell him. "Maybe… but we won't know till we get the evidence collected and read."

"I'm putting on my boots." Sara sat down and removed her pumps. "Something tells me this is going to get messy."

"I just called Nick in." Catherine stood pulling on her police jacket, checking her badge and pulling her long blonde hair out from under it.

"He's not here?" Warrick realized that they were one short. "Where is he?"

"Day off, he's off playing trains with William Braddock, his new best friend…" Catherine shined as if she had another son. "You know, Braddock and Short are talking about getting married. Nick has even offered to house sit for them during their honeymoon."

"I bet…" Warrick kept pace with her. "That loser's playing with trains and didn't invite me along. I want to see these trains."

"A new toy and men become boys." Sara tilted her head up grinning as she boarded the CSI vehicle filled with its complement of gear and accessories. Warrick slid into another vehicle with Grissom at the wheel and felt the SUV jerk forward while he still struggled with his seat belt. Catherine gingerly allowed a police car to cut before her and behind Grissom and watched traffic as she herself carried on to the crime scene.

"How's your progress in the Harmon Cemetery case?" Catherine started with chitchat.

"Cold…" Sara confessed. "It's on the back burner until we get more info or get more data off the car." She paused and felt her thoughts drifting over the facts in the case. "I still don't understand how we misplaced Jason Troy's body."

"There's Nick." Catherine pointed out Nick turning off ahead of them in his SUV heading for their crime scene. Lifting her head up, her eyes caught something else. Blending in with the crowd of pedestrians fascinated by the flurry of police lights was a figure she knew. Standing by a figure in black, Jason Scott Troy locked eyes on her and recognized her too as Sara's jaw dropped. A shudder danced up her spine as if someone had walked over her own grave and a groaning gasp came out of the world around her as she tried denying what she was seeing. He couldn't be alive; he just couldn't.

"Sara?" Catherine called her again.

"Nothing…" Sara continued looking back as the individual people in the crowd obscured her view of Troy, but not the coldly aloof figure in black by him in the black sunglasses. With the baldhead and covered eyes, the dark figure accompanying Troy had a very reaper like appearance.

"How'd you like being dead for the first time?" His cold sepulcher voice spoke to his young ward.

"I can live without it, Uncle Hades…" Jason answered.

END