Title: Crime Life Series Part 1: Success

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: CSI and all its characters unfortunately belong to CBS and Alliance-Atlantis Productions. These stories are fictional, which is also unfortunate.

A/N: Thanks to all who read and those who reviewed. Here's another chapter for being such good fans lol. If there's any information in here that you know is not correct, feel free to send me the correct facts and I will fix it. Italics are inner thoughts by the way.

CHAPTER 3

"Hey Gris? Could you come over here for a second?"

"Sure." Grissom stood up and inwardly groaned at the stiffness in his knees. How could she ever like an old man like me? First my hearing, now my knees. Pretty soon I'll be retired and giving out butterscotch candy to my nephews. "What did you find?" He focused the beam of his flashlight on the area Sara was circling.

"Actually it's what I didn't find that's so interesting." She made her way to stand next to him. Maybe if I just act like we still work well together eventually it will go back to being unforced. "There's no footprints or tire tracks aside from ours and those of the girl at the hospital. The bodies are too far to have been dumped from the road." She pointed her flashlight towards an area with slight drag marks leading towards the road. "And I can't figure out what these tracks are from."

Grissom had already been forming an idea. "Rape and kidnapping are about control right?" With a nod from Sara he continued. "Maybe he feels that he's a great controller, he needed a 'red carpet' so to speak." He watched Sara out of the corner of his eye as her excitement grew as she figured it out.

"He must have spread out a tarp. Folded once or twice, it's the right length. It would keep footprints from being made, evidence from falling on the ground. Take it home and wash it there's no way to connect him to the crime." She was both joyful and dismayed by this news. "That means he has knowledge about how we work, what we look for."

"Yes," replied Grissom with a nod and a smirk. "But we know what to look for when we find him. We still have to wait for David to check on and under the body." They smiled at each other, falling into the ease they once had, with reluctance, but falling again nonetheless.

Warrick started processing the living room by doing overall pictures. The room was 14 x 16, with three doorways. The first connected to the hallway, the second to the kitchen, and the third to the backyard, but that was locked inside and out because of construction to fix the pool and build a deck. The furnishings included a fireplace, 2 couches with end tables, a minibar, and a rug. On the rug was where the wife was lying in a circle of glass, blood, and wine.

"According to the details Brass left, the maid always leaves after she serves dinner because the Donald's like to wash dishes together. Tradition in both families or something. She said she knew they sometimes liked to also have a drink after dinner, but the wife never drank anything except wine. She came in this morning and went through the living room because of the construction. Found the wife, called the police." Catherine replayed the details to Greg whilst checking the neat and orderly room for signs of struggle. Greg was finger printing the gun.

"So what you're saying is, depending on what Warrick finds downstairs, the murder-suicide theory could work out." Greg got a little bit distracted by talking and accidentally spilled some powder on the paper that the gun had been on. He blew it off, and then realized that it was the only paper on the desk not in a tray or folder. Curiosity got the best of him, and he quickly scanned the paper, eyes getting wider as he registered the words. "Cat, you might want to bag this." He handed her the paper and she read it too, smiling at him.

"Why is it you always seem to find the case-breaking material?"

Nick returned to the lab to drop off the rape kit and head to autopsy. He didn't realize Greg wasn't back at the lab yet, and walked into DNA with his concentration on a file. "Hey Greg, could you run this kit for me? I need it ASAP . . . " As he looked up he realized that Greg wasn't back yet, and the person in Greg's chair was definitely not Greg.

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