Sara chewed on her fingernail impatiently, her eyes transfixed on the screen as it scrolled, her finger clicking the mouse softly. She errantly scribbled notes onto a legal pad, printing out significant information. Grissom had passed the door on several occasions, back and forth, sometimes with a folder, sometimes with a coffee cup.

He was pacing.

It was distracting her.

He finally stopped. "You're not going to have any fingernails left."

She snapped a nail off in her teeth at the quick, her eyes still on the screen.

"What are you working on?" he sat down with a newly filled coffee cup.

"I have no idea," she picked up a red stirrer from the desk and started to chew on it, twisting it around her finger.

"Perhaps I can help," he started.

"Nick wanted me to run a background check on every person we questioned at the DeMonte house. Everyone checks out, nothing funny. There were no immediate financial moves going down like we thought, no problems with any of the attendees. By all accounts, the senator shouldn't be dead. Then, I ran the wife. I'm finding some really weird stuff here."

"Weird as in…?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? Nothing weird or are you brushing me off?" Grissom sipped his cup.

"I'm finding nothing at all," she looked up at him, her hand again on the mouse and twirling the stirrer in the other. "No credit cards, no loans, no debt, no nothing. She either has the most pristine credit in the world, or has never had any financial transactions in her life. That's weird, impossible even…"

"Perhaps her husband controls more than just her statements to the police."

"Yah… but they've only been married six months," she pursed her lips and leaned back in the chair. "Doesn't that seem weird to you? Where's everything before she became Mrs. DeMonte?"

"Green cards, passports, another country before her marriage?" he asked. "Perhaps she doesn't have a record because she hasn't been here long enough to make one."

"What are you thinking? Mail order bride?"

"Perhaps. That's one theory."

"I dunno, I'm thinking a criminal record and the Mr. paid someone to cover it," she started chewing on the stirrer again, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. "I need to check deeper into the husband's personal financial records, somewhere I can't get from here."

"I'll get you the okay," Grissom said. "I'm waiting on the warrant for the house, then I'm going back to find what we're looking for."

"And that would be?"

"I have no idea either," he said as he left the room, sipping from his cup.

"Got it," Brass held up a folded piece of paper.

Grissom smiled and detoured to pick up his equipment case.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

His lips pursed as he twirled the brush on surface after surface in the master bedroom. Visual match, one after another was only of Mr. DeMonte's fingerprints and the head housekeeper. It was as if Mrs. DeMonte didn't exist.

He pulled drawers, lifted mattresses, knocked on walls, checked lawns, gardens, garages and cars.

Nothing, and they were back to the bedroom.

"Warrick, what are you getting?" he asked.

Warrick stood in the doorway of the bathroom, closing his equipment case.

"Nothing. There's nothing in the house that raises a flag, no residue, no nothing other than the dead senator in the foyer and what we already know."

"Nothing. I keep hearing that word, I keep thinking that word and it's making me angry," Grissom's face was intensely dark. "There has to be something."

"DeMonte has a really old record, but there's nothing here. No drugs, no weapons, no nothing. Him and his wife are clean as a whistle, other than the fact that he beats her, which can't be held against him until someone sees the abuse or she files charges."

"We're looking at this wrong…" Grissom said, turning in a circle in the room with his flashlight. "We thrive on evidence, but there is no other evidence. The answer here has to lie in the absence of evidence so…. why isn't there any evidence?"

"Look, I don't see where you're going here," Warrick said, rubbing his forehead. "The absence of evidence is innocence, we've got nothing here. We have to let DeMonte go."

"Not necessarily. When it doesn't make sense, it's usually not true. It doesn't make sense that there's no evidence," he stopped himself, raising a quirky eyebrow. "Which means there is a mountain of non-evidence that we are missing that will bridge the gap between the squeaky clean DeMonte's and the mysterious death of a senator. It's too perfect, too clean, too squeaky and that doesn't make sense... and Mrs. DeMonte seems to have no fingerprints." He looked across his collection.

Warrick look at him oddly. "Nick mentioned that too."

Grissom moved into the bathroom and looked around for a moment, a grin slowly sliding across his features.

"Mrs. DeMonte is obsessive compulsive…" he said, satisfied with himself.

Warrick blinked at him.

"Every item of Mrs. DeMonte's is in perfect order, down to the exact spaces between her toiletries." He thought back to when they first met. "When we first entered, she was alone and her lips were moving. I think she may have been counting, probably experiencing some strong visual mental images. She probably has no knowledge of it. It didn't seem important until now."

"Could her housekeeper have done the cleaning and arranging?" Warrick asked.

"Look at her husband's sink," he shined the light on it. It was clean, but nowhere near the precision of his wife's.

Grissom grinned, pulling her drawers again one by one. The same precision was abundant; make-up lined up perfectly in distinct spacing.

"So she's a nut," Warrick said. "She also patches severe wounds with band-aids. What does that prove?"

"Think about what you just said… If it doesn't make sense, it's usually not true."

A light twinkled in Warrick's eyes, "Why would someone unconsciously obsessed with precision and neatness be so sloppy with cleaning up her own blood and injuries?"

Grissom smiled. "Either she killed the senator with immaculate precision, leaving no evidence behind, including fingerprints; or she didn't kill the senator, faking the mess and playing a battered wife to hide something else."

"That's dirty," Warrick said. "Are you thinking the senator may not have been the target?"

Grissom nodded.

"We have a perfect wife trying to be imperfect, or an imperfect wife trying to be perfect," he sucked quietly on a tooth, looking at Warrick. "Then the question remains, which one is the real Mrs. DeMonte…? Dr. Jeckle… or Mrs. Hyde?"