With every new chapter I seem to keep saying this, 'I'm sorry it took so long' .In this instance my heartfelt sympathy to 'tasha, my beta, who listened to my whining…lots.

As always, she's done a wonderful job, although I must admit to taking some small pleasure in the fact that, for a change, she missed an incorrect possessive in my final draft and thus confirmed that she is indeed nominally human :)

This chapter is dedicated to two fanfic readers whose positive feedback for this and other fics have made getting out of the deep hole of writer's block and apathy that much easier; so BlueRosesAtMidnight and Vesica, this one's for you.

Note: I'd like to acknowledge the assistance of David Berkowitz, without whom I never would have figured out how I was going to catch the bad guy in the following chapters.

Finally, in the highly probably event that I don't update for Christmas, everyone have a happy one and here's hoping you don't get a lump of coal.

I'm running out of time

I'm out of step and closing down

and never sleep for wanting hours the empty hours of greed

And uselessly always the need to feel again the real belief

Of something more than mockery

if only I could fill my heart with love

Closedown: The Cure

A stranger passing by the music room of the university would have been somewhat perplexed as the sounds emerging were more akin to a bunch of English soccer hooligans than that of the gentle art of music. Actually, it wasn't that bad; no foreign supporters had been stabbed, the piano wasn't on fire and bottles weren't being thrown at the police, nevertheless, the language coming from the room was blue enough to make a legion of her majesty's finest naval recruits blush in the manner of a young girl whose puritan maiden aunts had sequestered her in a convent in order to protect her innocence from the inevitable burgeoning of her sexual awakening.

The source of the inflamed language was one Greg Sanders, student by day, frustrated lab tech by night; or was that frustrated lab tech by night and even more frustrated music student by day – it was getting to the point where he couldn't remember. Fortunately, due to the good offices of his girlfriend, the inimitable Rilie Andrews, he wasn't completely frustrated; battered and bruised, albeit in what could be considered a good way, but not frustrated.

It should also be pointed out that the bruises on his forehead came from a combination of banging his head against the wall at the lab and his head on the keys of the piano at college and not from the banging against the headboard of the bed, when Rilie got particularly enthusiastic.

That being said, and all mention of banging, walls and pianos aside, things had momentarily looked brighter at the lab last night as he and Grissom had managed, amongst multiple cups of coffee, to find a DNA match between a blood sample found at the house where the latest multiple murders had taken place and the strand of hair recovered from outside Agatha Babylon's apartment complex. Greg smiled indulgently as he remembered Grissom's near palpable excitement, or a close as the older man got to excitement outside of pupating bugs, at Greg's announcement. Greg's smile immediately faded as he remembered that this was the music room and not the lab and that his creation, his lauded composition, was assuming a status more in sync with its title than perhaps one could wish; for unless thing moved along somewhat more rapidly than they were at present then his work would indeed be presented DOA, and when Mueller got her hands on him he would be able to join in the funeral procession as a fully paid-up, participating member.

The truth was, that of late, he had been distracted from his studies.

Some distractions had been, well…distracting; again, he thought of Rilie at her most… err… distracting.

Other distractions had been; he struggled with his search for a description or even a bad metaphor, as he'd never metaphor he didn't like, before eventually giving up and deciding that they too had been distracting. In particular his thoughts turned to the lab and the demands it had made on his time of late. It wasn't as pleasant a distraction as Rilie, especially when she did that thing with her…he rapidly censored the thought, relegating it to the part of his mind that was used for lying on the sofa drinking whiskey.

He sighed. The truth of the matter was simple; the driving force behind DOA had become, to his mind, somewhat superseded by events. When he'd started writing the piece it had been the focus of his feelings of loss, of not only his sense of self, but his connection with the world at large; in essence it was about hope still-born and now, in light of past events - like a madman running around massacring innocents - such feelings appeared to Greg as little better than petty and selfish; and to concern himself with writing an epic piece of music as a paean to those feelings seemed in retrospect the height of arrogance and self indulgence.

It was a particularly bitter irony, considering that he had left the lab in order to re-connect with the creative part of his psyche and indeed, those feelings he had considered lost; now he was at the precipice of a decision that would see him deliberately abandoning those feelings.

Of course, he was missing the point; that the creative process was never a waste of time, but as was his wont, Greg often overlooked the obvious when trying to undertake multiple assignments. Rilie, if she had been around, would have simply attributed his lack of perception to the existence of a Y chromosome, which by her definition (or at least until the point at which she had had at least two cups of coffee) immediately rendered the owner incapable of anything except the most menial of tasks. In turn, Greg would have contended that he was able to more cold-bloodedly prioritise, but using such a tactic against Rilie was futility in itself as she tended to go all reptilian at the slightest suggestion, again, usually before the addition of coffee, that a mere male was her superior.

Sometimes she was even serious.

After restraining himself from hurling his glass of water across the room, although it would have suited the stereotypical image of the musical enfant terrible, he again took his seat at the piano and dolefully plunked out a few chords in the hope that inspiration would settle on his shoulder much in the manner of a giant stork blocking a chimney.

Of course fate decided that Greg didn't need a stork, what he needed was…a composition professor.

As Greg stared despairingly at the keyboard the door to the music room had quietly opened and Professor Mueller had entered and taken a seat out of his line of sight. Into the echoing silence that was music not being created, her harsh voice cut through the silence. "You know, Mr Sanders, composition is a lot easier if you actually pay attention to what you're doing." She continued in a quieter, almost sympathetic, vein. "That being said, sometimes, composition is not about trying to create something, it's about letting the music describe what you're feeling. It doesn't have to be coherent or logical or even pretty it just has to be."

"Why are you telling me this professor?" Greg remained facing the keyboard.

"Because Sanders, sometimes I cannot leave well enough alone."

He turned to the sound of the door closing quietly behind her. Greg paused, before turning back to the keyboard, his hands idly sketching out the theme to the Twilight Zone as he considered reassessing his belief in the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

After a moment of consideration he decided to give Mueller's advice a go. Consciously, he tried to let go of what had become the almost instinctive intellectualism of the composition process, putting aside notions of logical progression and such he tried, once again, to feel the music. Inwardly, he winced and wondered if should be actively looking around for a short green guy telling him to reach out with is emotions.

The only word for what he experienced over the next hour was frustration as each time he followed what he thought to be a promising progression ended up as a musical train wreck. Greg smiled sardonically to himself, thinking that if things continued to progress the way they were then he had the potential to be writing cornflake jingles for the rest of his life. Of course, it was possible that jingles might prove to be profitable and lead him towards a life of wealth and happiness, however, if such was the case, then he would have to buy himself a house without mirrors, insofar as he'd never be able to look himself in the face.

Time crawled. Maliciously. At points throughout that tortuous day, Greg would have testified to its almost feral mien as it slunk through the corner of his mind making seconds feel like hours and hours an interminable punishment. Finally, he had had enough, and it was, of course, at that point that his fingers struck a minor chord, one that had had been tried numerous times throughout that day without success, but now, seemed to make sense. Maybe it was the tiredness and frustration talking through him, but the music flowed, welling from deep inside as he expressed his inner Shelley.

Maybe, he thought, as the experiences of the past few days merged into a seamless whole, Mueller was actually a composition teacher for a reason – well reasons stemming from something other that her apparent psychopathic need to terrify students – and that maybe, just maybe, Rilie, and Prof Doppler, had had a point when she had expressed some small measure of confidence in the professor's methods.

Some would call it coincidence; others would make reference to speaking of the devil and thus initiating an appearance, although Rilie would have been somewhat upset at being compared to the evil gentleman with the kitchen utensil, nevertheless, as Greg was succumbing to the frenzy of inspired composition, the door to the music room quietly opened.

"Back again, professor?"

Rilie, who hadn't thought that she'd made any sound, was momentarily taken aback, Greg didn't, as far as she was aware, have ESP. The instant of indecision was soon replaced with an impish smile as she gave in to temptation.

"Well, I'm not a professor yet Mr Sanders, but if you're telling me you want to play dress-up later this evening, then I'll go away and prepare a lesson plan for you."

Recognising the voice of his girlfriend, Greg turned from the piano and smiled, 'Sorry Rilie, I thought you were Professor Mueller, she checked in on me earlier."

Rilie made show of checking Greg over for injuries, "Are you sure she was here? You appear to be breathing and you're not covered with scratches, maybe you imagined it?"

Greg shrugged. "It's possible I guess, I mean; she was helpful and all, most un-Mueller-like, maybe I was dreaming?"

"I'd be fairly concerned if you were dreaming about Mueller."

"Not as concerned as I would be."

"True." Rilie then smiled maliciously, in a polite well-mannered sort of way, "just for my own edification Greg, if you did happen to be dreaming about Mueller, how would I know?"

"I imagine the screaming would probably give it away."

"I bet your cat would just love that."

"She's used to me screaming."

"Why?"

"That would be due to her clawing me in the middle of the night."

"A sound tactic."

"Maybe from your perspective."

"Your cat. Your feet."

"Just you wait…"

"What on earth are you implying, Mr Sanders?"

Greg looked bemused, "Scarlett O'Hara you're not, Rilie."

Throwing her head back, hand cast against her forehead, Rilie assumed a forlorn look, "Ah do declare…"

"Very funny."

She grinned. "I thought so."

"You would."

Rilie shrugged, before turning her attention to the piano and the sheet music scattered about, "How's it going?"

Now it was Greg's turn to shrug. "Okay, I guess. Certainly a lot better than it was earlier today; I guess I've just had a lot on my mind."

"Still putting in the late nights at the lab?"

"Yep. Grissom asked me specially. This damn Shakespeare case is really pushing the guys to the brink of exhaustion, not to mention exasperation, so it's a case of all hands on deck."

"Isn't that what you walked away from last time?"

"Similar situation, different conditions; I'm getting a bit of respect this time, mainly from Grissom, but frankly, the opinion of the others is largely irrelevant, at least now, if I have problems, I can go and talk to Grissom and I know he'll listen."

There was no missing the emphasis the young man placed on the verb, and Rilie, having heard how Greg had felt previously, knew that having someone whom Greg could consider a mentor was nothing but positive; however, she couldn't help feeling some small level of disquiet at Greg's seeming neglect of his music; and being Rilie, she didn't hesitate in voicing her concern.

"Don't let your music slip Greg, you've come so far with it now that it would be a criminal waste."

"Priorities, Rilie, priorities."

"Don't you get all pedantic on me Sanders, or didactic, or, for that matter, anything else; your music is too important to get left in the dust of an ongoing criminal investigation."

"Thus speaks the music major," Greg noted wryly. "A little perspective here would be a good thing, catching the lunatic out there murdering people is far more important than my scribbles."

"So the actions of a murderer are far more important than musical scribbles?" Rilie, to her credit, only looked murderous, but the tone of her voice was sweet, beguiling even and Greg, if he'd had the sense God gave an oyster, would have recognised the trap being set and fled to the hills.

"Yes. Of course," he sounded puzzled that Rilie would think otherwise.

"So what if…say…this musical scribble was by someone like Mozart, is the murderer still more important?"

"Ummmm yes?"

"You don't sound convinced."

"I'm not so sure about your comparing my scribbles to Mozart's scribbles. Mozart, big, famous, culturally important composer guy; me not so big, famous and definitely culturally important."

"Who's to say you can't be? Or won't be?"

"Surely it's more important to make sure he doesn't kill someone really important than to worry about a might be, or a may be; far better ensuring the here and now."

The young woman regarded him sadly, "No Greg, that's not the point at all, as soon as we give up our hopes for what might be we may as well be dead."

'That's uncharacteristically sentimental of you Rilie."

"Not really, Greg, most people would call it depth; I'm not just a pretty face and a pair of well rounded breasts, I am actually capable of complex feelings other than lust, cynicism and unadulterated malevolence."

"I know that Rilie," Greg responded quietly, "I guess I'm not used to seeing you care about something so passionately, other than yourself I might add."

"Are you calling me selfish you little…" Greg raised his hand to forestall the inevitable explosion.

"Not at all, but you are exceptionally defensive, not I might add, in a reactive way, but in the sense that you don't let any body in for fear of getting hurt."

"…but that doesn't mean that I don't care Greg, and that doesn't mean that I don't hope; I'm just very careful about what I decide to let in and it kills me to see something, no, someone, I care about, that I've let in, prepared to throw it all away because they think that what they do isn't worth as much as something else."

Greg was literally taken aback. This was a side of Rilie that he had never thought existed. He had never made a connection between the obvious anger she held towards large parts of the world and a defensive passion for the things she obviously held dear. He should have known better for it was like he held a mirror to his face and this time found that it was Rilie staring back at him.

"I'm not planning on throwing it away, I'm not quite that far gone," his heart lightened somewhat at Rilie's slow, but definitively present smirk, "but my beliefs put the safety of others before myself and my needs." He thought back to Violet, his mentor, and his failure to be there for her. His heart, his passion for music had died with her, or more correctly been subsumed by other feelings to the point of denial as he sought solace and penance in a career on the positive side of the legal ledger; but that, he discovered, was an impossible quest when he was little more than a shadow pretending to be something of substance. It is said that a house divided against itself cannot stand and it is, to extend the metaphor, equally true that a man divided by the component parts of his very essence is neither fish nor fowl nor Frankenstein's monster. Greg had found that not only could he not be a scientist without music but also that he couldn't be a composer without science.

"Maybe that's the problem Greg, maybe you need to put yourself first for a change."

"I did that by coming here, to university I mean, and while it's brought me a measure of personal satisfaction I don't feel right."

"Right? As in correct for walking away from the lab?" …And how long did that last, she thought to herself.

"No." Even to his own ears he didn't sound very convincing. "No" this time with more certainty, "I feel like I've left part of me behind somewhere."

"So what your are so ineloquently telling me, is that lying around town somewhere is a crudely sheared piece of psyche with your name on it, and, if it is part of you, it's probably holed up in a lowlife titty bar getting drunk on cheap whiskey."

"Gee, thanks for the wonderful character assessment."

Riley shrugged, it wasn't her fault that Greg's psyche spent its spare time crawling around the less reputable parts of Las Vegas; she motioned for him to continue.

"See, the thing is, Rilie, my music feels hollow without the science, I need the lab. Well, actually, no," he said, correcting himself, "It's not the lab, it's the science, the lab merely gives me the perfect opportunity to practise."

"…and where does the music fit into the science?" Asked Rilie, clearly intrigued.

The young man's eyes went vacant for a second as he sought to come up with an answer that was not only coherent, but also accurate, for sometimes the attempt to quantify the esoteric renders it meaningless.

"How about this. Lady Heather is in the business of sex…. No, let me finish" he added, when Rilie was about to object to his definition of her Godmother's activities. "She's in the business of providing a degree of sensualised pleasure through the pursuit of her profession, okay? Now, if you ask her how she views what she does I'll bet you that she calls it an art because everything she does, despite the importance of mechanism and process, is designed to bring out specific emotion and responses. For me the interaction between music and science is the same thing;" he paused, "you see?"

And Rilie did, albeit from a different perspective, as for Rilie the music was the balance point for the rage in her soul held towards her father, in particular, and her family in general. Her compositions were usually compared to one finding themselves being picked up and dropped into the centre of a maelstrom. Unfortunately, most maelstroms generally have a beginning and an end and some sort of contextual framework from which patterns and meaning could be grasped or inferred, Rilie's work inevitably, and some would say invariably, continually battered itself against the bulwark of the senses with unremitting fury; certainly the listener couldn't help but be moved but, more often than not, came out feeling like a double martini: shaken and stirred. For all that, the intensity of her music at least provided Rilie with the degree of catharsis that allowed her to present, at least, a semblance of normality in public; the emphasis here being on semblance as anyone whom had been on the end of her razor sharp tongue would unhesitatingly tell you.

Then there was Greg and it wasn't as if he had become something so sickening as the wind beneath her wings or even, god forbid, the eye of her storm, but his presence had given her another small child to place on the end of her seesaw and so just as Greg's science balanced his music, Rilie's music, and now Greg, balanced her.

Perhaps somewhat selfishly she was afraid that if Greg turned his back on the music he would turn his back on her; such is the price of learning to trust.

"I guess that makes sense Greg, I guess I just don't want you to walk away from your music, it means so much to you."

The young man smiled, "You're right, where else could I derive so much frustration for so little return?"

"That would be the lab, if I take your assorted complaints to be any indication of things."

"Now you're beginning to understand why I need the two; music and the lab, if I combine them I manage to at least reap some measure of satisfaction and achievement."

"You're obviously easily satisfied to be happy with so little."

"That's not what you said the other day "

"…!!!…"

Greg grinned evilly; it was seldom he managed to render Rilie so completely speechless.

"You'll pay for that Sanders."

"Promise?"

"You are so dead, this was a PG conversation."

"The operative word here being 'was'."

Rilie swallowed manfully, it's my fic and I'll non sequitur if I want to and changed the subject back to things non-naked and recreational. "So what does Grissom think of all this?"

"All what?"

"This metaphysical conundrum of yours."

"I have no idea. Mind you, it's not like I've said anything to him he's a tad preoccupied at the moment."

"Shakespeare?"

"Aye. I think Jim Brass is about to offer to build him a brick wall to bang his head against, although knowing Brass it's just as likely that that is his idea of a joke as much as it is a genuine offer of a therapeutic outlet for Grissom."

"Why are you not sure?"

"Because Brass contends that his form of release is going clay pigeon shooting."

"Sounds normal enough."

"Not so much when Brass tells everyone that he uses City Hall bureaucrats instead of clay targets."

Rilie smirked knowingly "I don't imagine bureaucrats are particularly aerodynamic, however, if your friend Brass wants to perform some more testing then I could recommend some of the staff in the admissions building."

It was Greg's turn to cock an eyebrow in mock horror, "That's a horrible thing to do to a clone, I'm not sure the ethics committee would approve."

Rilie sighed. "You can't have everything. Although, being as how this is academia, getting something past the ethics committee has more to do with how you write your proposal than it does with the actual ethics of the situation; Jack the Ripper would have had a good chance of explaining his actions as studies in advanced anatomy with respect to repeated ongoing trauma and getting away with it."

"I'll suggest it to Grissom, I imagine he'd be in favour of putting of putting his least-favourite fruit loop through an industrial mincer."

"That application would have to be made to the ethics committee of the industrial college across town we don't handle manual labour here."

"Isn't that rather elitist?"

"Really Greg, you have to draw the line somewhere, how could you possibly suggest that such a rarefied learning institution such as the one we attend stoop to such mundane matters as wholesale butchery?"

"Have you read some of the first year's attempts at a coherent argument?"

"You might just have a point there." This final comment proved too much for both young people and they collapsed in a gale of laughter. After a moment the two quieted somewhat and Rilie turned to Greg intending to pick up the threads of the conversation before it had packed up its wagon and headed west on a tangent.

"So why's Grissom so upset? I think I remember you telling me that you'd got a trace match on some blood."

Greg nodded. "That's right, the only problem is that that trace match we have only proves that the same person has been in two separate locations, there's nothing on any of the criminal databases that match?"

"What about medical databases?"

"The don't keep DNA records on patients unless there's a specific reason to. For example, if they're mapping a hereditary disorder, or if it's court ordered, pending a criminal trial, things like that. Now, it's perfectly true that our friend with the knives would qualify for such a court order but it's not possible to go back in time to do it and we also can't test every male in the Las Vegas area."

Rilie grinned, "I imagine that the civil rights attorneys would have an absolute field day with that."

"Oh yes, and even if it did somehow get through the courts we don't have enough police officers to enforce either the order or to stop the mass migration that would surely follow."

"Mass migration?"

"Yup." Greg nodded, "of every criminal in the area as they headed for the hills." He grinned suddenly as a thought crossed his mind. "You know, however, it might just be the first time in recorded history that migration across the border into Mexico exceeded border crossings the other way, or it would if Las Vegas was anywhere near Mexico."

"I don't imagine there's any chance of getting access to the medical databases just on the off chance that said psycho is actually on record?"

"Nah, more of that pesky doctor patient privilege thing; unless of course you know a good hacker?"

"Heaven forefend that you suggest such a thing Greg Sanders, and here I was thinking you were such a fine, upstanding individual."

"Well technically I still would be if I didn't get caught; of course such a thing would be incredibly unethical and worse still I'd have to explain just how I came by the information to Grissom, I can just imagine that conversation."

'Where did you get this information Greg?'

'I found it.'

'Where?'

'Somewhere.'

'Is this somewhere a place that I want to know about?'

'Errrr not really.'

"…and it would just go downhill from there."

Rilie made a small moue of sympathy "Don't worry Greg, it could be worse."

"How?"

She shrugged "I don't know, I was just trying to be supportive."

"Try harder." He paused, before continuing in a lighter vein, "Of course I could always mysteriously leave the information on someone's desk."

"Was there someone in particular you wanted to set up for an IAD investigation or would you let random vindictiveness sort it out on the day?"

"I have only the best interests of justice and the department at heart."

"You keep telling yourself that. Anyway, and just for variation, returning to something remotely approaching the subject…"

"Which one?"

"Which one what?"

"Subject."

"Right." Rilie had to stop and think for a bit as she tracked her train of thought down and wheel-clamped it, "you have a choice, killers with knives or the angst that is the life of Greg Sanders."

"Can I take the fifth?"

"Not if you want to have sex again anytime this century."

"I assume you mean with you?"

Rilie arches an eyebrow speculatively, "If you're even thinking about having sex with someone else then I'm going to make use of the piano lid," Greg visibly winced.

"Presented then, as I am, with such a wide range of felicitous and non-injurious options I think I'll take 'killers with knives' as a starter for ten, Bamber."

"Sanders, you're weird."

"You're only just noticing this?"

"The true extent of it perhaps. Anyway, back to the topic at hand and if you try and change the subject again I'll beat you to death with the piano stool."

"Right. What did you want to know? Remembering, as usual, that I can't actually tell you anything that hasn't been released to the media."

"So, based on the fact that you haven't actually told the media anything, discounting that line of piffle your friend Brass gave to the silicon airhead, you're not going to tell me anything, right?"

"Right."

"Except for the fact that you have matched trace samples from two distinct locations."

"Right. Errrr no. Aw shit, Rilie, I shouldn't have even told you that."

She grinned. "It's alright, I won't tell anyone…" she paused dramatically, "…maybe."

"…Rilie…" this time there was no mistaking the seriousness, or the warning, in the young man's voice.

"Relax Greg, I'm just teasing. I did have one question though."

Greg sighed resignedly, "And what was that?"

"How's this guy getting around?"

"How'd d'you mean?" Like from crime scene to crime scene?"

"Yeah."

"We don't know. No one has ever seen him come or go."

"So it is definitely a he then?"

"Yes…dammit, Rilie!" She grinned unrepentantly. He continued, albeit through clenched teeth. "To answer your initial" he glared and she pretended to cower and fend off his gaze, "question, we're fairly certain he has to use a car or private transportation of some sort. Sure, for the first couple of kills he could have gotten away with carting around his gear on public transport, but once the public awareness and hysteria – and a whole lot of innocent tradesmen cornered by well meaning vigilantes – started there was no way he'd get around in anything other than private transport; either that or he's carrying an interdimensional portal around with him."

"But nobody's seen anything?"

"We're guessing he parks a fair way away from the scene and then walks in."

"And again, no-one has seen anything?"

"Not so as he could be linked to a vehicle. He usually strikes in the evening so that's going to reduce the likelihood of people seeing things too. If I remember He did run into a pedestrian one morning, I think they were walking their dog, but his face was obscured so they couldn't tell us anything other than the fact that the person was big and they carried a bag."

Rilie nodded; there was aught else she could do with Greg not only making sense but trying to be helpful insofar as he was able. "One final question Greg, how far out from a scene do the police usually canvas?"

"Usually just the local neighbourhood; it's both a logistics and a resource issue."

"Oh well." She shrugged and got up from where she was sitting. "I can't solve this without food, let's go back to my place and have some dinner; I'll even cook."

"Is that safe?" He questioned, albeit with a smile.

"That depends on your definition of safe, although my spag bol hasn't killed anyone yet."

Greg pretended to wipe his brow in relief, before gathering the various composition materials he'd brought with him from the various corners of the room. "Let's go then."

Hand in hand the young couple left with only the aether to hear Rilie's parting question: "Greg…who the hell is Bamber?"