A/N: Well, looks like I got stuck writing this chapter anyway…As soon as I'm done I'm going to go grumble at Nikki to write the next one. I've done all the hard stuff, she needs to shoulder some of the burden…
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"I just got the results back from your blood samples," David said as he burst through the doors of the morgue, a few papers clutched in one hand.
Doctor Robbins looked up from the cadaver he was putting into one of the drawers.
"They're wasted as hell and stoned out of their minds. All eight of them. It kind of looks like a frat party."
"Well, they had to be sedated somehow…" Doctor Robbins looked at David. "Do you want to get Grissom in here? He hasn't had a chance to thoroughly inspect anyone, he may have missed something."
"Alright." David was off and searching for the nightshift supervisor before the words had fully left his mouth. The door to the morgue banged shut behind him, and Doctor Robbins laughed a little at his enthusiasm.
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Maddy jumped as her printer whirred to life. The results from the hair Natasha had found were slowly making their way onto the printer's tray. She snatched them up, some not-yet-dry ink smudging her fingers as she did so. Pulling out her cell phone and admiring the Hello Kitty stickers all over the bubblegum pink case, she dialed Grissom, then Natasha.
Moments later, there was a knock on her door and both people walked in. "We got a hit off CODIS. What you wouldn't do for the paper in my hands, eh, Grissom?" She nudged his arm jokingly and winked.
"Yes, Maddy, I'd do anything," Grissom said, an uncharacteristic smile playing across his usually expressionless face.
Maddy blanched at the smile he was wearing, shoving the paper at him. "There, take it, just don't smile like that!"
Grissom laughed, taking the paper and smoothing out the creases. "Victoria Anderson, last known residence out in West End. I'll phone Brass. The four of us should be enough for one investigation, right girls?"
Both girls nodded, heading to the locker room to grab coats and kits.
As Grissom was leaving the office, David caught up to him. "Robbins wants you to examine the bodies, thinks he may have missed something."
Grissom sighed and called down the hall to Maddy and Natasha. "Looks like I'll have to miss our little outing, take Greg with you! The field work will be good for him."
Maddy grinned and gave him a thumbs-up before hurrying off to get her coat and find Greg, currently residing in the break room with his third cup of coffee.
"C'mon, Greggo, we're out in the field! Investigating a suspect who is quite possibly dangerous!"
Greg put his coffee cup down on the counter. Only Maddy could pull him away from a quiet break with the TV and a warm mug of Blue Hawaiian. He followed her out the door, watching her brilliantly white pigtails bob in front of him as she skipped down the hall.
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Pam sat at Nick's house, looking over the crime scene photos. The circumstances of the eight victims were more or less the same, all of them in their early twenties, none with any identification.
"What about that hair? Did it turn up any DNA matches?"
"Yeah, aVictoria Anderson. Maddy, Greg, and Tasha are on their way with Brass to go check her out," Nick said, wrapping his arm tighter around her waist.
"Alright," Pam replied, snuggling up in the blanket she was wrapped in and slurping some chicken soup from the bowl on her lap. "I'll finish this and then I want to go to bed. I'm beat."
Nick smiled and stood up, gathering the photos and sticking them back into their manila folder. About ten minutes later, both of them had drifted off into a pleasant sleep right there on the couch, the empty bowl sitting on the coffee table, forgotten.
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Brass and Natasha led the way up a flight of steps to a dingy, off-white house in suburban Vegas. Greg trailed behind, waiting for Maddy, who was pushing a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses up her nose. "They're cute," he thought. "They make her look sort of studious, though."
Brass rapped smartly on the door. No sound came from inside. After a few more attempts, he called out. "Las Vegas PD, I'm coming in!"
He tried the knob and found it unlocked, and then entered the deserted house. On the mantle there was a framed photograph depicting all eight victims, accompanied by a black-haired woman. "We still don't have a warrant, let's come back to it later," he said.
Maddy looked wistfully at the photograph before returning to the cool comfort of the car, crammed in the backseat with three field kits and Greg. "The woman in the picture had black hair, but the hair Tasha found was red…What's going on here?" she thought, staring out the window as the dismal neighborhood flashed by.
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The doors to the morgue clattered open as Grissom walked in. "Well, Al, what is it you wanted me to have a look at?"
"I'm not really sure. I thought you might want to scrape their fingernails or something, I'm not a CSI."
"Alright then." Grissom walked over to a table on which the first of the victims was, a dark-haired man with a sharp nose.
Snapping on a pair of gloves, Grissom lifted one of the man's hands, carefully scraping underneath his fingernails onto a piece of paper, which in turn he tipped into a small envelope. Doing the same with the other hand, he sealed up the envelope and looked up.
"Get me another body; I'm done with this one."
The next body was a woman with red hair and full lips. Her eyes were green beneath closed lids.
"Did you send everyone's DNA to Maddy for comparison?" he asked.
"Yes, but she's out in the field right now, she won't have gotten anything done on it yet."
Grissom swore under his breath, pulling out his cell phone and calling Maddy.
"Jenne," she answered brightly.
"Maddy, it's Grissom. I need you to get back here and process all the DNA evidence. I can send Warrick to pick you up if it's a problem."
"Actually, Grissom, send Warrick to pick all of us up. Brass's car just broke down and we've got no way to get back to the lab."
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Catherine and Sara were reconstructing a window they'd found broken at the crime scene. The frame was laid out on a table, along with all the shards of glass they could find. Both women were bored of the puzzle, trying to fit pieces to the pieces of glass jutting out from the edge of the frame, but neither had any choice.
"This is important," Sara told herself. "The Haeckel marks indicate that the window was broken from the outside, meaning the killer probably wasn't in the house with the group before he or she committed the murders. We have to find the original point of where they glass was struck. We can figure out roughly how tall they were by where the point of origin is."
Catherine took one of the larger pieces of glass and fit it evenly into a space between two others, smiling a little.
Sara picked up a smaller bit and fit it in beside Catherine's large piece. "I guess this isn't so bad," she said out loud.
Catherine smiled. "Yeah, it really is," she replied. Both women burst out laughing at the crap job Grissom had assigned them, cursing him through their giggles. Once they'd regained their composure, it was back to the jigsaw puzzle.
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Maddy settled down in her swivel chair, then began the tedious process of running all the DNA samples through CODIS, also comparing them to the hair. She wilted when she found out that the hair belonged to one of the victims. "At least that's one with a name," she thought dejectedly.
After an hour or so she'd managed to identify all eight victims. She paged Greg, asking him sweetly to take the results to Grissom while she worked on the wine glass.
He glowered for a moment but took the papers, dashing off to find Grissom and leaving Maddy to smile and gloat over her victory to herself.
After a few moments, she turned her attention to the wineglass. She was delighted to find that the DNA matched none of the victims, and set about running a sample through CODIS, though it was devoid of any matches.
"Our killer doesn't have a rap sheet. Interesting."
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Grissom thumbed through a large, leather-bound volume. The DNA results had been discarded on his desk; he had turned his mind to greater things.
His finger traced a list of untraceable poisons. It stopped its journey about halfway down. "Well, this seems interesting. Almost like the Adventure of the Sussex Vampire."
He smiled inwardly, trying to decide the best way to go about the investigation. "I'll start by rereading that story," he said out loud, taking down another book from the shelf and discarding the one about botany.
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