Chapter Twenty-One – CSI Charles.

Harriet felt an acidic feeling in her throat as she ducked under the yellow police tape surrounding the front door and entered the apartment. After taking a moment to fight back any tears, she went into investigator mode, surprising herself at how easy she found it under the circumstances.

The coffee table by the sofa was overturned, the telephone strewn across the floor in pieces. Signs of a struggle, Emily's injuries were not an accident although she knew that was a practical impossibility anyway. Harriet walked carefully past the back of the sofa towards the end of the living room where her bedroom was. She spotted broken glass and a sticky substance on the floor. She motioned to Nick to take a look. Grissom had allowed her to attend the scene after Greg had explained about her previous job but had forbidden her from taking or processing any evidence herself. Greg had similar instructions and was watching from near the kitchen. Nick ran a swab through the substance and sniffed it.

'Smells like orange juice,' he said.

Harriet nodded, only half hearing him as she spotted the teddy bear lying near to her foot. Nick followed her gaze and then looked up at her, a glazed look in his eyes. She knew he didn't think this was a good sign.

'O.k.,' Harriet said. 'It looks like the attacker came in through the front door and attacked Emily there,' she indicated the broken telephone and overturned table. 'Jake must have been in our room, heard the noise and came to have a look, dropping his drink here,' she pointed to the broken glass on the floor and followed the route with her eyes from that spot to the spot where his teddy bear was lying.

There were some small orange juice footprints, which from the shape of them indicated that Jake had run barefoot away from the intruder, dropping his teddy bear in the process. She relayed this to Nick who nodded and took some photographs.

'Now what?' Greg said, having walked over to where the bear was. 'The trail ends there, I can't see any adult sized footprints around here.'

Harriet was looking at the trail again. Jakes footprints veered at one point close to the sofa. She looked at the last footprint and up to the back of the sofa.

'Nick, could you shine your torch over here please?' she asked.

He clicked it on and shone it over the area of sofa that she was looking at. There, clear as day (well, to an eagle eyed CSI anyway) were some red fibres. Nick took some tweezers and an envelope from his kit and extracted the fibres.

'The intruder must have brushed against the sofa as he grabbed Jake, ' Harriet said, shakily. 'Jake doesn't have any clothes that would shed a fibre that easily,'

'You sure you want to be here Hattie?' Nick asked.

'I'm fine, besides I think we're making progress,' she replied.

Greg never thought he would see police tape outside his own home. Nor had he thought he would find entering it so difficult, when he saw the mess by the sofa and a patch of blood which could only have been Emily's, on the floor, it hit home to him that Jake could be dead. He quickly shook that thought away as he watched how quickly Harriet assessed the scene; it was almost similar to watching Grissom calculate a crime. The way she looked everything over as if she was envisaging it happening right before her in a surreal ghostly kind of way. He knew he still had a lot to learn about investigating scenes but she seemed to think of places to look that he wouldn't have thought of on a first scan of the scene.

He was looking at the end of the footprint trail when he saw what looked like some blood spatter. Wary of panicking Harriet without due cause, he approached it himself to check. It was definitely blood. Looked like it had fallen from a straight height rather than an angle judging by the way there were only a couple of drops and they spiked out at the edges as blood did on impact from a vertical height.

'Nick, can you take a swab of this?' Greg asked, not wanting to draw Harriet's attention just yet.

'What have you got?' Nick asked, moving beside him, swab stick at the ready.

'Blood,' Greg said quietly but Harriet must have had exceptional hearing as she joined them immediately.

'Oh my god,' she said, gently.

'It's o.k, its only a few drops,' Nick said.

'Yeah, Jake probably bit the guy and it could be his blood,' Greg said.

Harriet nodded 'Yeah, great theory Greg, let's get that down to the lab ASAP please.'

'Not a problem but we don't have a DNA tech,' Grissom said, joining them. He had been speaking to Brass and looking over their work.

'Why not?' Harriet asked.

'Because you're here,' Greg pointed out, under other circumstances he might have laughed at her stupidity but he didn't blame her.

'Yeah, of course,' Harriet said, taking the now sealed swab from Nick. 'I'll get right on it.'

Greg was astounded at the resilience she was demonstrating. He knew, although she hadn't told him yet, how much Jake meant to her but she was really holding it together. He offered to drive her back to the lab and help her with the sample which she accepted but seemed distant despite how focussed she had been when examining the crime scene. He just hoped to high heaven, not that he was a believer, that they would be able to solve this one.

'Oh come on you stupid machine,' Harriet snarled, hitting the DNA analysing machine on the top.

She had been waiting for half an hour now for the sample from the apartment to be finished. It felt more like six hours but she knew that was her usual impatience mixed with the dire need to find her son as soon as possible. The machine continued to whirr and click as she paced up and down the front of her lab, nearly knocking Greg over as he came through the door.

'Whoa, careful,' he said, gently.

'Oh Greg, it's taking forever,' Harriet complained.

'Don't worry, it'll be done soon I'm sure. I may have a little good news for you though,' he replied.

Harriet stopped pacing and looked at him, her eyes wide with anticipation. Her heart felt like it had stopped beating in her chest, she was so anxious. Greg smiled unconfidently. Just tell me, she wanted to scream but felt that that would be unproductive in this situation.

'Well?' she said as calmly as she could.

'Yeah, sorry, trace gave the red fibres priority for us and they found that they were made up of polyester.' Greg informed her.

'Great, that rules out practically no one,' Harriet groaned.

'Hey, I thought you were a top CSI back home? What's with the giving up?' he responded, his playful nature returning for a second.

'I wasn't a top one, it's not like I was a supervisor or anything, I was just good at working things out.' She said in her defence.

'O.k., so work this one out, what kind of person would wear red polyester with traces of evaporated vegetable shortening? Not exactly the cologne I would choose.' Greg quipped.

'A fast food restaurant, the bastard works in a fast food restaurant.' Harriet gasped, excitedly.

Her face fell again. 'That still doesn't exactly narrow it down much, how many fast food restaurants must there be around here?'

'I know, a lot, but if we narrow it down to all those with red uniforms we might be able to find something,' Greg said.

She loved the hope in his voice. Even though she was still in the back of her mind preparing herself for the fact that Jake could be dead, Greg's confidence and hopefulness was reassuring and was stopping her from giving up completely. At that moment, Nick came in clutching a sheet of paper, seemingly analysis results.

'Hattie, I've got a small lead; our suspect works in a fast food restaurant. I found some black fragments on the edge of the coffee table after you left. Rubber, like the soles of your shoes with traces of vegetable fat on them. That explains why he left a part of his shoe behind because….' He was blurting out so quickly she could only just understand him.

'Because vegetable fat erodes the bottom of your shoes when you work in that kind of environment everyday?' Harriet finished for him, questioningly.

'Yeah,' Nick said.

'Thanks but we just worked out that the guy must work in a fast food restaurant from the fibres we found.' Harriet couldn't help but smile.

'Oh, o.k,' Nick said, relaxing a little. 'Any hits from your DNA yet?'

Harriet shook her head 'It's taking ages, I think the machine must be broken.'

'It's not broken,' Greg said 'You're just being impatient.'

'What do you expect?' Harriet snapped.

The three stood in an awkward silence for a second or two. Harriet tried to look at Greg apologetically but he looked at the floor. Before she could even consider saying sorry, she was distracted by the beep of the machine and the paper that was coming out of the printer.

Greg avoided her eyes. He hadn't meant to be insensitive, he didn't blame her for being impatient, he just wanted her to stay calm. This situation was taking its toll. He was worried about Jake, dreaded to think what could happen but he was also worried about Harriet if something did happen. His heart skipped a beat as he heard the machine finish its work and print out the result. He watched as Harriet snatched them from the printer and read them.

There was something in the way her face changed that told him this had just got a little bit worse. She looked stunned as if the results had surprised her yet relieved in a way; perhaps this was a major lead. But then her hands started to shake violently. Nick put a hand on her shoulder.

'Hattie, what is it?' he asked.

'This crime isn't random,' she said, shakily.

'How do you know?' Nick asked but Greg had an inkling where this was going.

'Can you pass me the file from that box please, Greg?' Harriet indicated behind where he was standing.

Greg recognised the box as the one Rick had sent along with Jake and his suspicion was confirmed as he removed the lid. He took the case file with her mothers name on out of the box and handed it to her.

He watched as Harriet flicked it open onto the page she wanted. She stared at it for a second and then looked at her own sheet of results. He could see tears were forming in her eyes and she kept looking back and forth between the two pieces of paper as if hoping she had made a mistake.

'Harriet?' Greg prompted her to explain.

'The man who has my son is the man who killed my mother.' She said taking a deep shaky breath.

'What?' Nick asked, obviously having no knowledge of Harriet's past.

'At my mum's murder scene they found a DNA sample from some saliva. We could never identify who it belonged to, there was no comparison to match it to, until now.' She explained.

'The blood matches the saliva?' Nick asked. 'How did you think of that?'

Harriet nodded. 'I worked the case and I memorised the results, it's not something you forget. Someone is deliberately doing this,' she said.

'O.k., Harriet, get on the phone to your lab back home, get them to re analyse the actual sample you found and telephone you back with the results to double check. Nick and I will go and see if we can find this fast food restaurant,' Greg said, surprising himself at the way he suddenly felt spurred into action and his mind was working overtime.

'But it's a match, its right here in black and white,' Harriet protested.

'I know but we need to double check anyway and they might have a new sample to match it to with a name that goes with it,' Greg said. 'Come on Nick, let's go.'

He walked quickly out of Harriet's lab, feeling confident that they could solve this. If the person who had Jake was responsible for Harriet's mom's death then they had to have come over to Las Vegas to find either Harriet or Jake or both. In that case they would need to have been close to the crime lab at some time in order to find out where she lived. Greg's mind was working overtime, analysing every possible scenario in the way that CSI's did. He wasn't as confident in his investigating skills as he would like to be but at the minute he knew he was on to something.

A/N - again, I don't know exactly how forensic things work but I know the bit about your shoes and vegetable fat is true. I worked in a fast food restaurant once (won't say which one because that would be advertising). Also, Grissom probably wouldn't let someone investigate their own home but I tried to get around that a bit. Read on...