So, thank you for continuing to read - I'm assuming you're liking it! I do believe it's time for some other characters now!

Nick and Catherine arrived at their own crime scene. A body just off the strip, near McDonalds.

'Hi guys,' Said Detective Brass, as he walked over to the two criminalists who were ducking under the crime tape.

'Hi Jim,' Said Catherine, as she flicked her hair over her shoulder. 'What do you have for us?'

'Vic was found by a couple of hookers, just getting off a job a couple of hours ago. David's on his way over from another body. Called to say he'd be about ten minutes.'

'Any witnesses?' Asked Nick.

'Body was already there when the ladies found him, no cameras anywhere on this part of the strip.'

'Nothing from McDonalds?'

'Just the Big Mac wrappers in the gutter over there.' Brass told him, pointing to the many papers and boxes thatwere littering the grass and sand that was the crime scene.

Catherine looked over at Nick.

'Oh, come on, you can't be serious!'

'They're evidence on the crime scene, Nicky. They have to be collected.'

'I know that, but isn't it your turn to collect the trash.'

Catherine merely pulled a face before she headed over to the body and started taking photographs. Nick turned to Jim, who shrugged at him and wandered back over to the two hookers who were still being questioned by some uniformed police. Nick sighed and started taking photos of the incriminating pieces of trash, before bagging them.

After a while, he finally turned his attention to the last piece of trash. A white Styrofoam cup. Nick froze. The hairs on the back of his neck stood upright, as he broke out into a cold sweat. He quickly glanced over his shoulder. Catherine was busy taking pictures of some form of print or tread in the sandy ground next to her.

He dropped the camera and let the strap catch around his neck. 'Get it together, Nick,' he told himself. 'We're past this.' Grabbing one hand with the other he took a deep breath, waiting for his shakes to disappear.

'You finished over there, Nick?' Catherine called over to him.

'Huh?' He shouted back, 'yeah, last piece over here.'

'Good. David's here.' She told him, pointing to the coroner's van that had just pulled over.

He took a picture of the cup and picked it up for a closer examination. It had blood splatter across the outside, and, the bottom was missing. He shone his torch over it and picked up on the small black particles on the inside. To confirm his findings, he pulled two q-tips from his kit and rubbed one across the outside, and one across the outside, before testing for GSR and blood. Both tests were positive.

'What've you got?' Catherine asked him as he wandered over to her and David, who had just started processing the body.

'Hi, David,' said Nick, before holding up the evidence bag with the Styrofoam cup. 'Poor man's silencer.'

'Ugh, they're getting cheaper and cheaper.' Muttered Catherine. 'What can you tell us, David?'

David looked up at them. 'One bullet wound entered the heart; through-and-through. Liver temp puts TOD at about four hours ago, and lavidity has set in,' he told them, as he pulled the body off the floor to show the lavidity in the back.

'The amount of blood indicates he was shot here.' Said Nick, more to himself than to the others, 'which means it wasn't a body dump.'

'Well someone had to see something.' Said Catherine.

'I got the drive-thru tapes from the McDonalds manager,' Jim told them, as he joined them, a couple of tapes in his hand.

Catherine nodded, 'I think we're done here.'

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'So how long did you know we were getting a new CSI, Gris?' Warrick asked his superior as the both alighted from their vehicle.

'Just over a week.'

'And you didn't tell us? Man!' Exclaimed Warrick. 'I can't believe Ecklie managed to get her here on the department's budget. I thought he was going to have to make some job cuts?'

'Ecklie would have sold his child's soul to have the person who was the brains behind the last forensic procedural breakthrough. Anything to make the department look good.'

'Do you think she's that good?'

'I don't know,' Grissom said simply.

'Hey, Grissom, Warrick.'

'Detective Vartann! Long time, no see.'

'Yeah, just got back from paternity leave.' The detective told him as they walked into the house.

'How's fatherhood working out for you?' Warrick asked him.

'It's great. No sleep, but, oh, just you wait, Warrick, you'll be there soon.'

Warrick chuckled, 'I'mjust out ofthe honeymoon period. There'll be no babies coming my way for a while.' He wrinkled up his nose, 'you didn't say anything about a decomp,' he complained, turning to Grissom.

'I wasn't told there was a decomp.' He replied, whilst looking over at Vartann.

'That's because there isn't one,' he told them, leading them into what could have been the bedroom – the house was empty of all furniture. 'But I think there is one somewhere,' he pointed to a large blood stain on the floor, with several lumps of decaying grey matter amongst it: the source of the smell.

'There is no way we can age that, is there?' Warrick asked.

'No,' confirmed Grissom. He bent down and picked something off the ground. 'But this little fellow can,' he held up a small bug with a pair of tweezers.

'Who is the owner of the house?'

Vartann opened up his notebook and glanced down at his black, scrawling handwriting. 'Owner is a Joe Sailes. The house has been on the market for the past three months. He's currently retiring in Europe. Got off the phone with him a few minutes ago. Wasn't too happy at being called up in the middle of the night.'

'So who reported the break-in?'

'Neighbours reported a strange smell, called it in. The officer who came around noticed the smell, called in homicide. I came out, found the back door ajar. Looks like someone came at it with a foot.' He told them as he led them to the incriminating door.

Warrick pulled out a measure from his kit and held it up to the footprint on the door. 'Look's like a size 11.' He looked over at Grissom, who was shining his light on something. 'What you got there?'

Grissom bent over and picked up something with his tweezers and turned to show it to Warrick. It was a small sliver of something blue. 'I'm not sure,' Grissom told him, 'looks like either plastic or rubber.'

'There doesn't appear to be anything which matches that in here.' He shone his torch around, the beam of light highlighting the particles of dust which had been disturbed and were floating in the air. 'I don't think there's anything here: no fingerprints or footprints in the dust, just a few bugs, some blood, a bit of blue, and one footprint.'

'Warrick, you know as well as I do that sometimes all it takes is one piece of evidence to break a case.'

'I know, Gris. I was just pointing out that we weren't going to be here long.'

-----------------------

Cheryl let out a sigh. They had finally disposed of the decomp in the ME's office, and all the evidence had been secured, which meant one thing – they would all be able to finally have a shower. She went outside to her Hummer and grabbed a bag from the back seat. The bag contained a towel, her wash things, and several items of clothing. If there was one thing she always managed to do, it was destroy at least one item of clothing on a weekly basis. Destroying her house was another thing altogether.

She returned to the building, aware of the wrinkled up noses, and the strange looks she was getting (Eddie was following her around, practically attached to her heals) and headed back to the break room, where Sara said she would be. Thus far, the only rooms she knew for definite, were the break room, reception and the room with the temporary evidence locker. Sara was there, pulling out some lemons from the fridge. 'Hey, I have this wash care line with me, which removes the smell of anything, if you want to use that, instead,' Cheryl offered her.

Sara smirked, 'nothing removes the smell of decomp.'

Thinking of her house, Cheryl wanted to punch her. Instead she tried again. 'No, really, I-'

'No, thank you. I'll stick with what works. The shower and locker room is back that way,' she told her, before returning her attention to the lemons.

Cheryl shrugged. Her loss. 'Does it matter what locker I take?'

'There's one with an unlocked lock on it. Default combination is 12345. You might want to change that.'

Biting her tongue from saying anything sarcastic to that comment, Cheryl turned and left, following Sara's directions to the locker room. Sure enough, there was an empty one right at the end of the room, near the doorway to the showers.

She opened the door and began unpacking her things, before finally stripping off. She flung her clothes into a pile, (which Eddie promptly jumped in, curled up into a ball, and went back to sleep, ignoring the stench which was radiating from them), with the exception of her underwear. Even though she knew the stench of death would never come out of them, she was reluctant to take them off. They were one of her favourite sets, albeit, they were inappropriate for work, being as they were the fancy kind from Victoria's Secrets, and even though she knew wearing them was tempting fate, there was something about sexy underwear that gives you confidence, even if no-one else could see them.

She was about to slip out of the French knickers when the door behind her opened. When it didn't close, she turned around and screamed. Her face, and Greg's face was now a very similar colour to her scarlet underwear. She grabbed her towel and wrapped it around her, as Greg looked down at the floor.

'Sorry,' he told her.

'What are you doing in here?' She screeched.

'I need a shower.'

'Shouldn't you be in the men's locker room?'

'This is the men's locker room,' he told her as he practically ran over to his locker, 'and it's the ladies locker room too. It's unisex.'

Cheryl shut her eyes and let her head slam against the next locker. 'Figures,' she muttered, into the locker door. 'When you said Sara was funner, I didn't think you meant the practical joker type. I would have put that one more on you.'

'You know, there are changing cubicles attached to the showers.' He told her as began pulling his wash thing out of the locker, including a handful of lemons. 'You need to borrow a lemon?'

'No, I got a shower gel, thanks.' She told him, still talking into her locker. 'You're more than welcome to use it.'

'Cheryl, the best thing to get arid of the smell of decomposing bodies is lemons.'

Cheryl reached into the back of her locker and pulled out an unused bottle of gel, 'try this,' she said, flinging it at him. As he caught it, the door to the room opened and Sara walked in.

'I see you found it alright.'

'Yeah.'

'You know, it's a unisex locker room? There are changing cubicles with the showers.'

Cheryl looked at her, trying to decide whether or not she had genuinely forgotten to mention that fact earlier. And then she caught the smirk. It was entirely plausible that the smirk was because she had just figured it out, but then again, it could have been because her plan had worked. Choosing the latter, she smiled at Sara, picked up her wash bag, before flinging her towel over her shoulder and walked to the showers in her underwear, 'I know there are,' she called over her shoulder, 'but I'm an exhibitionist.'

She walked straight into the shower, barely stopping to dump her things and remove her underwear, turning on the water as hot as she could take it. She leant forward until her head was resting against the tiles which were icy cold in contrast.

Why, oh why did she just do that? Normally she was quite reserved, especially when it came to walking around with little underwear on. Even with clothes on, she didn't like 'acting' in front of people. It was why she took a job behind the scenes. And Greg? She was never going to be able to look at the poor guy again. As for Sara, if the woman didn't like her to start off with, she probably wouldn't do now. As she had no intention of leaving her job, she would have to apologise, because, otherwise, working here could get uncomfortable.

When her skin had turned a bright pink, she got out of the shower, dressed and headed back into the locker room. Thankfully, Greg was the one still in the shower, because when she dumped her old clothes in the trash can, Sara was the only other person in the room. Temporarily ignoring her, Cheryl turned her attention to her reflection. As Sara was making impatient noises behind her, she decided that messing with her hair was probably not a good idea and allowed the wet ringlets to hang down her back. She turned back to Sara and waited patiently.

Sara frowned at her. 'You don't smell of lemons.'

'That's because I didn't use any.'

'But you smell… clean.'

Well, I did offer to let you use the shower gel too, but you're just too stubborn to admit you may be wrong, she thought. 'What would you like me to do now?' She asked her instead.

'We're going to the ME's office to see if they've managed to establish a cause of death, or time of death. I'll meet you down there. There's something I have to do first.'

'Alright,' said Cheryl, as she moved to the door, 'um,' she stopped, 'where is the ME's office?'

Sara rolled her eyes and reeled of the directions quickly. 'And it's the last door on the,' she paused, 'the last door on the left.'

'You sound sure.' Cheryl muttered as she left, wondering where it was Sara was sending her, a bar of her soap still in her hand, and Eddie close at her heels.