Chapter 6

The summer sun beat down relentlessly, turning the expanse of blacktop into an open oven. Sara shifted uncomfortably as she took the next set of bracketed photos, trying to ignore the sweat rolling into her face. The bus accident wasn't a major case, luckily with only a few minor injuries, but their crime scene covered nearly a half a mile of desert road with no shade in sight. While the work was more tedious than challenging, the heat was making for a miserable morning.

Standing up, she eyed their SUV in the distance, thinking of the bottled water she kept in a cooler in the back. It made sense to finish with the photos before making the trek back, but the idea of a cold drink was tempting. Before she reached a decision, her supervisor approached with a pair of cups in his hands. Walking towards him, she smiled her thanks as she took the proffered beverage. Grissom gave her a brief nod before continuing away from her.

To her surprise, she realized it wasn't coffee but iced tea. On the advice of her PEAP counselor that cutting her caffeine consumption would improve her sleep, Sara had started drinking tea toward the end of shift. As much as she despised her sessions, and the loss of control that had required them, she had to admit the logic of that suggestion.

What she didn't understand was how Grissom knew of the change.

She tilted her head in thought as she realized this wasn't the first time he had brought her tea since her switch. While it was true that he had also brought her coffee, that was always earlier in the shift. Somehow or another, he had realized she had changed her drinking habits. True, he was observant by nature, but Grissom rarely directed his skills towards his coworkers, and it wasn't like she advertised her change in beverage preferences.

Sara tried not to read too much into the fact that she couldn't recall him ever bringing drinks to anyone else on the team.

"Thanks," she called out to his retreating back before looking around quizzically. "Did you get Greg a drink?"

Grissom turned to face her but continued walking away. "He's still down in the ravine bringing up evidence bags."

She stared at him in disbelief. "So?"

"I'm not going down that slope to give him a drink," he stated, pushing back his straw hat to mop the sweat on his face.

"And it would be too hard to set a drink for him in the shade for when he gets done," she said, nodding in the direction of the ravine. Greg cleared the top, arms laden with evidence bags, but lost his balance and cartwheeled back down the embankment.

"He'd just spill it," Grissom answered cheerfully and obliviously, failing completely to catch her annoyance. Reaching the spot where the skid marks started, he bent over to examine the pavement closely.

"You are something else," she muttered, but he ignored the comment as he studied the road in more detail. Curiosity overcame her annoyance and Sara joined him. "Greg's probably going to be thirsty when he gets done."

"You don't have cooties. Share with him," he said distractedly.

"I finished mine," Sara pointed out. She took his drink when he offered it and downed that as well.

"Where does it begin?" Grissom mused.

Shaking her head, she managed to spot Greg clawing his way back to the top of the ravine. Once again, he tumbled back down the slope, his swearing echoing off the ravine walls.

Before she could scold Grissom, she found him bent over the road, crab-walking to the curb. Without a word, he ran a swab into something on the pavement. Moving closer, she frowned as he started sniffing the substance. After a beat, he let out a curious, "Huh."

"What is it?"

Grissom turned towards her with an odd look. "I think it's peanut butter."

"Why would peanut butter be on the road?" Sara mused, taking a quick set of photographs of the smear.

"It wanted to join the traffic jam?" he quipped, giving her a childlike grin.

Whatever she wanted to say to Grissom – about his behavior or bad pun – died in her throat when he dipped a finger in the mystery substance and tasted it.

"Peanut butter," he confirmed.

"Are you sick?" she asked in disbelief. "You accused me of having a death wish ..."

"I never actually said that," he began, but she just glared at him.

Walking away to collect herself, she saw Greg once again struggle to the top of the ravine only to slip and fall back in again. She let out an irritated sigh as she realized she'd have to eventually bring up the bus chassis herself if she wanted to get it back to the lab in one piece.

"I think it's crunchy," Grissom stated after taking another taste. "Or that was a beetle in it."

"Do you ever consider what your actions do to others?" she demanded as she turned back to Grissom.

"It's just peanut butter," he said, frowning as he stared down the road. Tilting his head, he started moving toward a distant curve. "We need to find the start."

"Grissom!"

"What? We need to go back to the beginning," he said again, only to be interrupted by a blaring sound.


Sara opened her eyes slowly, giving her alarm clock the best glare she could in her still-exhausted state. Despite how tired she'd been, it had taken her some time to eventually fall asleep. Something about the case was bothering her – well, a lot of things were – but it was the something she couldn't pinpoint that kept her up. Rolling over, she let out a huff before forcing herself out of bed.

It didn't take a PEAP counselor to recognize her subconscious' attempt to complain about her caffeine consumption. She'd been drinking far too much coffee lately, and it wasn't helping her sleep. Of course, her counselor would probably have had a lot to say about the rest of the dream.

As she showered, Sara admitted to herself that she'd been obsessing too much over Grissom's departure. Still, even at his worse, he'd never been deliberately uncaring about his team. More importantly, she didn't think she was ignoring Greg's problems. She didn't have any solutions, but she had made her support clear.

The pun had been pure Grissom, though, as was his alarming habit of tasting evidence. And it had been fun to imagine him at a crime scene wearing just his straw hat.

Smiling at that image, she suddenly realized Grissom really had noticed her change in drinking habits. As she dried off, Sara tried to recall when he had started bringing her tea; she wasn't sure, but it seemed like he began right after her switch. How long had he been watching her closely enough to notice a change so insignificant?

As she gathered her things together, she smiled wanly. Whatever his flaws, the man knew how to show he cared, even if he had troubles vocalizing it. As she thought about the rest of the dream, she stopped suddenly, let out a long curse and dashed out the door.

Sara was in the Layout Room well before shift started, moving quickly as bits of information fell into place. The additional clues weren't reassuring, though.

"Making any progress?" Catherine's voice called out.

Looking up, she saw her temporary supervisor entering with Conrad Ecklie. Unconsciously she tensed, wondering what type of trouble she'd managed to get herself into this time.

"I told Ecklie about Doc's suspicions, and then the last two victims," Catherine explained.

"Are you sure this is a serial killer?" he asked without preamble.

"Yeah," Sara began, pausing when Ecklie waved her off.

"Then let's wait until everyone is here," he sighed before adding softly, "Why do they always end up in Las Vegas?"

She continued to work as they waited, organizing what she found to make it easier to explain. Hearing Brass and Greg talking as they approached, she couldn't resist the temptation to tease her friends again.

"Hey, huggy bear," she said, smiling sweetly at Brass as they entered. The others turned to him with shocked expressions.

He grinned happily for their benefit. "Hiya, honey bun."

"What?" Catherine finally exclaimed in a voice bordering on horror.

"Guys, it is possible to take a joke too far," Greg muttered darkly as he took a seat next to Sara.

"A joke? Thank God," the blonde said.

"You know, I think one of us was just insulted," Brass said, giving Sara a serious look.

"Yeah. You, probably," she said with a knowing grin. "I can do better."

"Oh! See if I get you a Valentine's Day gift now."

"Some of us want to get home sometime tonight," Ecklie said wearily. Sara ignored the rebuke, enjoying Greg's hesitant smile at the antics.

It didn't take long for the rest of night shift to arrive, with Doc Robbins joining them as well. Sara quickly brought everyone up to speed on the prior suspicious deaths and two current murders.

"This sucks," Warrick exhaled. "A poison that you can't prove was used?"

"And apparently easy to get," Brass said. "When I tried to ask around, the medical supply places basically laughed at me."

"It's used in a lot of situations, and it's not a controlled substance," Doc added.

Greg gave the others a confused look. "Forget about medical supply companies. You can probably buy potassium chloride is half the stores in the state."

Keppler scoffed slightly. "That's a bit of a stretch. Chemical supply stores, sure."

"Seriously, it's one of the most commonly used chemicals out there. Grocery stores carry it as a salt substitute. Gardening stores carry it as fertilizer. It's used as a water softener and in welding fluxes, so hardware stores sell it. Any store that carries dietary supplements sells potassium chloride. Outdoor stores sell it as an electrolyte replacement," Greg insisted.

"Well, I, for one, am just thrilled to know that an undetectable poison is so readily available," Brass deadpanned.

"The killer isn't going to care about purity, either," Sara added, sensing Greg had taken Keppler's comment personally. There were still some hard feelings about the 'reverse forensics' stunt but she doubted that was the case here.

"The injection is just a concentrated salt water solution. It doesn't take a lot of skill to make it," Warrick said. "It's harder to get the syringe than the potassium."

"And they give syringes away." That voice came from Sofia, who was leaning against the door frame, a battered file folder in her hand. "Do you think the killer has a medical background?"

"It's a possibility," Doc said. "Potassium chloride is popular with 'mercy killers' in hospitals and nursing homes. A medical professional would know about it. The slash wounds on the latest victim are consistent with a scalpel. It looks like the killer deliberately tried to slash an artery, but that could have been luck."

"The attack was pretty frenzied," Catherine agreed.

"Neither option is an easy way to kill someone, though," Doc continued. "You have to get in close proximity to the victim, and any medical professional knows an addict on a bad trip is dangerous."

"Are we thinking a personal motive?" Ecklie asked.

"It doesn't matter," Keppler said calmly, ignoring the looks from the others. "The slash victim is the only one we can prove was murdered. We can't do anything about the other deaths."

"Anything that helps us establish a pattern is important," Ecklie said quickly, sensing the others didn't appreciate the comment.

"Are we sure there's a pattern? What sets one addict apart from another?" Keppler countered calmly. "Someone in the area probably didn't like addicts moving into the neighborhood, and this is his way of trying to get rid of them."

"Except our killer has been active longer than we thought," Sara said, pulling up a map showing dots across the city. "Over the last decade, there's been an average of three hundred and seventy overdoses every year across the city. The deaths are spread out – some die at home, there's an occasional cluster at the university from a party that gets out of hand, but multiple deaths occur in the areas where the addicts hang out."

She paused as she pulled up another image highlighting just part of the city. "Doc first became suspicious when he had multiple apparent overdoses in a short time frame, all within a small area."

"That's the area seeing an influx of addicts?" Warrick clarified.

"Yes," Sara said. "The addicts only started using the old Redman's warehouses after revitalization of the Marwood district started, forcing them to find new haunts. I just finished an analysis of drug overdoses in Marwood, and the numbers there were elevated, too."

"In your free time?" Greg asked, giving her a concerned look. "When was the last time you actually slept? Like more than five minutes at a time."

"It was a simple statistical analysis," she said, trying to steer the conversation back on topic.

"Man, 'simple' and 'statistical' should never be used in the same sentence," Nick said.

"Wimp," chided Warrick with a grin.

"You want to explain the methodology?" he shot back with a bigger grin.

"Hell, no! I'm not second-guessing Sara when it comes to math."

"Guys," Ecklie said tiredly. "Really, I want to get home before it's tomorrow."

Sara quickly pulled up another image. "For years, Marwood had an average of one or two dead addicts per month. Then it increased to two or three a month. Then last month it jumped to four overdoses, then five, then six," she said, putting up a final image. "It picked up again when the addicts moved to Redman's. Every shift covered some of the cases, so it wasn't obvious there was an increase until recently."

"And now we're up to a dead addict every several days," Ecklie said. "This isn't a statistical fluke."

"No. The increased deaths only happened in those two specific regions," Sara stated.

"I'm guessing the increase started about three years ago," Sofia said.

"Around then, yeah," Sara said. "How did you know?"

"Great minds think alike," the detective joked, tossing the folder she held unto the table. "When I heard the potassium chloride angle, it reminded me of the Henry Van Buren murder that Swing covered. I was helping them out when Walkins had her gallbladder surgery. They were still talking about that case."

"Wasn't he the doctor? There was something off about that case," Brass said.

Sofia nodded. "The doc volunteered at a clinic serving addicts. One night he vanished after his shift. His body was found in a warehouse two days later. It's still an open case."

"Let me guess – the clinic was in Marwood," Nick said. "So what's off?"

"To start, it was Det. Gonzalez' last case before he retired," Sofia said.

"Oh, man," Brass sighed.

Catherine leaned close to Keppler and explained softly, "Not to speak ill of the dead, but he wasn't the best detective in the department."

Brass let out an half-amused huff. "Yeah, old Speedy always rushed through his cases. Did he do anything on this one at all?"

"Not a lot. A few days later, the doc's medical bag was found in a drug den, so he assumed an addict killed the doctor for his drug supply."

"I guess I know what I'll be doing," Brass said as he reached for the report. "I suppose revenge is as good a motive as any other for our nut."

"It's the closest thing we have to a lead at this point," Sara said.

"No kidding," he said. "The blood trail from the last scene vanished outside the warehouse, and scent dogs couldn't get a hit. Probably got in a car, and there's no security cameras nearby."

"How about the eyewitness?" Sara asked.

"Stinky Stan? He's still sedated. Hope to talk to him this morning."

"Do you want me to pull up the evidence from the Van Buren case?" Keppler volunteered.

Catherine shook her head. "Thanks, but it's not like we're swimming in evidence with the current deaths. What are the chances of finding anything useful from those other bodies?"

Doc just shook his head. "We can't exhume them willy-nilly, and we have no way of knowing which ones died of natural causes or who were murdered."

Ecklie stood up and faced Sara. "How many deaths are we talking about?"

"It's impossible to say," she admitted sadly, knowing they'd never be able to show who had been murdered or to get justice for them.

TBC