DISCLAIMER: Yeah. Not mine.

Greg's toast was cold, but he ate it anyway. He was strangely lacking in energy, which was why he was eating toast instead of a proper meal, and why he'd stared at it so long that it was cold before it occurred to him that he was hungry.

It didn't take a genius to know that this case was getting to him, and it was less than twenty four hours old. It was that girl, that girl's body, lying in that nasty, sordid, dirty alleyway. Even after three years in the field there were images Greg couldn't erase from his mind - couldn't block out with Marilyn Manson music or DVDs or a beer or two. At times it got so bad he began to long for the sterility of the DNA lab, but Greg Sanders had never been a quitter, and never would be. He'd stuck it out this long, and the bad times always got better. There was always something - though it may only have turned up after long days - which made him realise again why he'd wanted to do this, which shot him through with an excitement that kept him riding high for a while.

Apparently the kid had a name. Brenda Collins. Sara had told him the girl's story that morning, when they'd been clocking out after their overtime. He couldn't stop himself being glad he hadn't been in the field for the Collins case - he'd felt the impact in the lab and it had been bad enough. And that girl, Brenda, Blondie, had deserved a fairytale life after what had happened to her. And instead she'd had a death that was as terrible as her life had been.

For a few moments, Greg watched the setting sun out the windows.

He left home in time to be at the lab exactly in time for the start of his shift. He wasn't surprised to note, as he clocked in, that Sara was already there - she'd clocked in about the same time as the guys from swing - after all, this was Sara, and she knew the kid. Probably shouldn't have been working the case, actually, but it wasn't like there wasn't precedent for that in the department. If Catherine was allowed to work a case in which her ex was accused of rape, no one was going to stop Sara investigating the death of a little girl she'd known for a day.

What Greg was surprised about was that Sara had actually gone home when he had. He'd been expecting her to come up with some excuse for staying, one last thing to do, but she'd left meekly after an hour's overtime. And maybe Greg had been watching her, and had noticed that she hadn't driven off in the direction he'd been expecting - but she'd still left without even contemplating a protest.

He'd long since given up the idea of ever actually understanding Sara.

He found her in the garage, crouched on the concrete floor in overalls, her hair clipped up on top of her head and a determined expression on her face. She had all the trash from the Dumpster behind which they'd found Blondie (she'd commandeered the whole thing at the scene, much to the irritation of one of the cops) spread out on sterile sheets on the floor, and Greg didn't need telling that she was processing every last bit of it. What she was hoping to find he wasn't sure, but as they'd gone over Blondie's clothes and body and there was no other evidence, Sara was probably looking for the magic make-or-break clue. "Hey, Sara."

"Hi," she replied, not taking her eyes from the Dumpster. She sounded a little vague.

"How's it going?"

"It's not. I've processed half of this stuff - nothing probative yet."

"Damn."

"Yeah. Get some overalls on and come help me with this."

The next two hours were mind-numbingly boring. Greg wanted to suggest they put on some music, but the look on Sara's face stopped him from even opening his mouth. They worked in silence, with only the odd comment or request for a particular item. Long before they'd finished Greg felt he'd be seeing close-ups of trash in his sleep, or that he'd just go mad.

But if Sara could do this, so could he.

When every single piece of trash had been processed so well that not even Sara had a case for continuing, Greg had a raging headache and major case of frustration. This case was coming up dead end after dead end; a little girl was lying in the morgue and they were no closer to finding out who'd raped and killed her.

"Now what?" Greg asked, sitting back and beginning to repack his kit.

Sara pulled off her gloves and flung them into the bin. "What's the time?"

Surprised, Greg pushed up the sleeve of the overalls and checked his watch. "Just after ten p.m."

"Good. We're going back to the scene, see who we can find to talk to who might have been around last night."

"Does Brass know about this?" Greg asked. If he was a little anxious, no one could blame him. Sara had that air of determination which meant that little things like regulations and personal safety were going to be inconsequential.

"He's meeting us there with a couple of cops. We're supposed to be there at eleven. You've got time for a coffee."

Greg had an apple and paracetamol instead, and wondered where Sara had disappeared to.

Before Greg came to Vegas, his impressions of the city had involved the Strip, girls, the Strip, girls, and - yeah. It had almost been a rude awakening to discover that Vegas was just like any other city when you got away from the Strip: either boring but nice, or the sort of edgy areas the people from the boring parts liked to think didn't exist.

This was one of those areas.

It was relatively quiet and empty when they arrived, but it wasn't long before the presence of cops and CSIs attracted people, drawn like moths to a flame. What was it with people?

It turned out that a lot of people had things to say, it was just that most of them weren't at all relevant. Some woman wanted to tell him all about how the street kids couldn't be allowed, and it took all Greg's patience to stop himself from asking if she'd be willing to take some of them in. Someone talked on and on about the rape and murder of a girl in New York City. Greg nodded and promised to keep in mind, all the while knowing that, from the man's description, the two crimes were so far apart (and not just geographically) that they almost definitely had nothing to do with each other.

Sara and the cops seemed to be having the same problem. When they reconvened in a cop car after a few hours, Sara looked close to exhaustion. "Nothing. Nothing. Just time wasters, attention seekers - nothing genuine in that lot."

Brass grinned, and caught Greg's eye in the rear view mirror. "No luck, Sara?"

"You know what we need? We need to find that kid who dialled 911. I'll bet you anything they know something about what happened to Brenda. Has to have been one of the kids from that group that lives round here."

"The kids have gone to ground, Sara," Brass said. "We tried to track them down last night. Brenda probably was part of that group - and if she wasn't they would've known her - but we can't find them. They're not in the old factory we had pegged as their base. But if they pop up anywhere round the city, PD will let us know."

Greg could share in her frustration, and he hadn't even known the girl. He didn't even get as emotionally involved as Sara did (then again, nobody got as emotionally involved as Sara did), preferring to view the cases as far as possible in terms of science - but this case was bugging him too. It was Blondie and her story that was at the root of it. Her father had died for what he had done to Brenda - but he hadn't died in that knowledge. Sitting back in the cop car, clutching a styrofoam cup of bad coffee, Greg found himself wondering if James Collins had really been punished for what he'd done to his daughters. He'd had a death sentence all right, but if he'd had time to think he must have thought it was a random attack.

It occurred to Greg that if he was going to kill someone for a crime, he'd make sure they knew why they were dying.

Startled, he shook his head. Where had that come from? Hell, this job was messing with his mind. All their minds.

He tried to refocus on a determination to get the guy who had done this latest, and final, thing to Blondie. If Blondie's father hadn't paid adequately, this man would.

TBC...