Chapter One
"Donny." Will DeShawn knocked on his little brother's door.
"Yeah?" Donovan DeShawn had it better than most. After his father had run off and his mother had died of an overdose, Donny's older brother had taken him into his home and given him a good life. There was always food in the kitchen, nice clothes and shoes for Donny, and Donny and Will even had a decent-sized two-bedroom condo in a fairly nice part of town. Will didn't get after Donny about staying out late or what TV he watched. Will only had two rules.
Rule Number One: Do as Will says.
Rule Number Two: Don't ask questions.
"Take this to Ally for me." Will handed him a ring box.
"Okay." Donny tucked the box in his jacket and tugged on his shoes.
"Is this Homicide or Narcotics?" Gil Grissom asked, setting down his kit.
"Homicide." Brass said. "Kid died, that's Homicide."
"He was part of a drug ring that we were investigating." Vega glared at Brass.
"Kid died. That's homicide." Brass repeated.
Grissom rolled his eyes and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. "Excuse me, boys. The Sheriff calls."
Neither Brass nor Vega acknowledged him.
"Grissom," he answered.
"Grissom, just giving you some heads up, a TV crew is meeting you at the scene. Play nice."
"Didn't we go through this last week?"
"It's good publicity, Gil. Just do your job."
"Yeah. Thanks." Grissom snapped his phone shut. "Hey, Brass. Vega. Decide quick because there's a TV crew coming."
"Homicide." Vega backed down.
"Okay. Do we know the victim's identity?"
"Waiting for the coroner." Brass answered.
"Have you cleared the scene?" asked Grissom unnecessarily.
The storefront of a hardware shop just off the main strip had been closed for the night – it wasn't dirty or run down or abandoned. The door didn't look picked or forced or broken. If it weren't for the muted red and blue lights bouncing off of the white-painted façade, or the almost over-abundant amount of law enforcement present, you wouldn't instinctually know anything was wrong.
Or just the average person. A few decades on this job, and Gil could smell death – not decomp, not rotting flesh, but that sense of it that hung around.
"She's all yours," said Brass, lifting the yellow tape for the other two and then ducking under himself.
They crossed the threshold and instinctively, all three looked down.
A fourteen-year-old boy lay supine in a pool of his own freshly seeping blood.
"I want all of my guys on this."