A/N: This is my first try at a CI fanfic as well as my first attempt at a real casefile (up to now, I've done pretty much just CSI fluff), and I am not sure how well it's working out. I would be really grateful for any comments you guys might have, especially about canon errors I might have made or how good/bad my characterizations are.

Disclaimer: Dick Wolf's, not mine

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"Ugh," muttered Detective Alexandra Eames as she cautiously picked her way around the smears, blobs, and puddles of blood that saturated the room she'd just entered. She'd seen bloody crime scenes before, but never one covered quite so thoroughly.

"Watch where you step, Goren," she said over her shoulder. Her partner, though not really a clumsy person, had large feet, and she could tell that he was going to have a hard time following the path of small bloodless patches that she was using to cross to the body.

Mindful of her warning, Bobby Goren carefully worked his way across the room. As he maneuvered, he thought about how odd it always felt when he was made aware that his partner, who had the presence of someone eight feet tall, was actually quite small. Small enough that he probably could have picked her up with one arm and carried her over the blood, had he not been aware that that would more than likely lead to the loss of some of his important body parts.

By the time Goren reached the body, he was walking mainly on tiptoe and wishing fervently that CSU would finish photographing all this blood soon so they could put a tarp down to walk on.

Eames, who was crouched down over the bloody form that was sprawled on the floor, looked up when she saw one of his well-shined dress shoes come into view and give him a sad smile. "Poor guy," she murmured, looking back down at the mutilated thing that had once been a man.

Goren squatted down beside her, nimbly folding his large frame into the limited floor space between Eames and a large swath of blood a foot away. "Maybe," he said after a second, belatedly realizing that she'd been speaking to him. "But this . . . this is brutal. The person who did this had to have hated the victim, and there's usually a reason for hatred like that."

"Are you saying that maybe he deserved to be killed?" Eames asked, surprised to detect something akin to pleasure in his voice.

"No," he told her as he pushed up the body's left shirt cuff with his pen. "I'm saying that this case is going to turn out to have an interesting motive."

Acknowledging that with a small nod, Eames stood up and turned to the nearest CSU tech, who was photographing a short trail of blood drops a few feet away. "Do we know who this guy is yet?"

"No ID on the body," said the tech without lowering her camera, "but mail on the kitchen table is addressed to a James Li."

"Do you know if -" Eames began.

Goren's voice interrupted her. "Eames."

That was his hey-look-I-found-something pronunciation of her name, and she quickly turned her attention back to the body, waiting for Goren to explain.

"Look," he continued after a second, using his pen to push up one of the victim's pant legs.

"The same marks," Eames mused. The man's leg was covered with small, clean lacerations that looked identical to the ones she'd already seen on his face and arms.

"They're all about an inch long," Goren said, leaning into the body to get a closer look, "but varying depths. Smooth edges . . . no visible debris in the wounds." He sat back on his heels, cocked his head to the side, and fell silent as his eyes roamed over the body.

Eames, noticing that he was mouthing words to himself, was content to wait until the Bobby-processor finished its cycle.

Finally, he looked back to her, shaking his head. "Hundreds. Maybe thousands of them." He pointed to to the leg. "The cuts on the extremities are more inflamed than the ones on the face and torso."

Eames nodded with a sigh. "So they worked from the outside in, taking long enough for the immune system to start working on those cuts."

"It would have taken a long time, with the care they seem to have taken with each cut," Goren agreed. Drawing her attention back to the corpse's calf, he pointed to one of the more visible cuts on it. "Very antemortem." He moved the pen to the upper arm. "Still antemortem, but closer to the time of death."

"Because they're less swollen," Eames said, filling in the chain of logic he was following.

"Right. And these," he said, pointing now to the neck, "are perimortem. The cuts on the face may even be postmortem. It's . . . hard to be sure until the blood's washed off."

Looking around the room, Eames again took in the red-spattered walls and floor. "And unless there's another victim we don't know about . . ."

"It's all from him," Goren finished. "He bled out." With a frown, he added, "That shouldn't have happened. Look, there's almost no clotting in any of the cuts. Hey, Lambert," he called over his shoulder to one of the uniforms on the scene, "was the vic immunosupressed?"

"We didn't see any medical records lying around," replied the younger man, "but there's nothing visible to suggest he was ill at all."

"He's right," Eames said, taking another look at the room. "No prescription meds, no oxygen, no sharps container. Do you think th-" she started, turning to her partner only to find him on the floor almost eye-to-eye with the body. "Goren?"

"Pupils . . . not dilated," he muttered, seeming not to hear her. "No unusual odor on the skin or mouth."

"Goren," she repeated patiently, used to his inadvertent silent treatment.

He looked up at her. "If he wasn't immuno-compromised," he said slowly, "then someone or something made him immuno-compromised. That's the only way we could end up with -" He waved his hand toward the bloody floor. "- this. Does he have an ID yet?"

Holding back a joke about his lack of attention, she shook her head. "Presumptive, but not established."

"Presumptive?" he said, looking back at the body.

"James Li. Hey," she added, catching the attention of the CSU team leader, "anyone been through the apartment?"

The tech shrugged. "My guys checked for secondary scene involvement, but it looked clean. Didn't touch anything."

"How about you guys?" Eames asked, moving her eyes to the cops still on the scene.

Lambert shook his head. "Only to clear it for suspects."

"Good," said Eames. "Ready, Bobby?"

Goren nodded and took her the hand she proffered to help him up off the floor.

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"Nothing looks out of place," Eames said a few minutes later as they stood in the doorway of the victim's bedroom. "You see any ID?"

"There's a, uh . . . wallet over there," Goren said distractedly, pointing Eames toward the nightstand while keeping his own eyes on the large dresser that took up most of one wall.

Heading for where he had been pointing, Eames shook her head with a quiet laugh. "You've really got to teach me how to do that," she told her partner as she slipped on a pair of gloves and plucked the wallet off of the nightstand.

Goren, focused on sorting through a pile of coins and cuff links, mumbled, "Do what?" without moving his eyes from his task.

"Walk into a room and spot the most important thing within three seconds," Eames replied. "Ok, I got an ID." Slipping it out of the wallet compartment, she passed it to Goren. "New York license. James Li, date of birth 8-2-65, eyes brown, hair black."

"Sounds like our guy," Goren said, examining the plastic card. "Looks real."

"The hologram looked right to me," Eames agreed. "So we've got a name. Find anything useful over there?"

"Big collection of . . . pocket change," he said, spreading out the coins with one finger. "Were there cuff links on the body?"

Eames thought about that. "I don't think so . . . Hey, Dan," she called through the doorway. "Does the body have cuff links on?"

A few seconds later, Lambert shouted back, "Nope. No watch either."

"Watch is . . . up here," Goren supplied, holding it out for Eames to examine. "Rolex."

"Nice," she said with a nod. "Which brings us to the question of his occupation. I'll start checking the other rooms," she added, patting his arm as she passed to get his attention.

Pulled out of his thoughts, Goren looked down at her hand and back up at her, and then nodded vaguely.