Part 2- Where'd She Go?
As Warrick, Sara and Grissom worked their way through the crime scene, Brass and Catherine kept Greg at bay, trying their best to keep him calm, so that he wouldn't freak out. There was no way he could process that room, not when it was something so close to home. Trying to stay as calm as possible, Brass and Catherine had led Greg over to near the elevator lobby, speaking in low moderate tones to keep the nerves they both knew were shot to hell from fraying any further.
"When was the last time you spoke with Renee?"
Greg bit his fingernail, thought back to two hours before. "She, uh…she stopped by the lab around ten tonight, asking if I wanted to grab some dinner."
"Does she have any enemies on the team?"
"No way, everyone loves Gizmo, she's…she's a good girl. She never had any problems on the team, other then the typical girl stuff."
Catherine, being a female, asked the question she knew Brass would be too hesitant to ask. "Would it be possible that she met someone in the hotel bar, decided to have an out-of-town quickie?"
Greg's weariness turned to fury on a dime. The hands he was dragging through his hair stopped at the back of his head. "I don't appreciate your insinuation about my sister, Catherine."
Obviously having touched on a sensitive subject, Brass held up a hand to try and keep the peace. "We're just trying to eliminate possibilities. Is it feasible she went to a different bar or casino on the strip?"
"The Orpheus, maybe, I told her I'd take her there tomorrow night, maybe she went there to check it out herself first." Greg's hand flopped to his sides, the anger bubbling in his veins at full throttle now. "Or maybe whatever psychopath killed her friend took a trip down the strip and went after her."
Recognizing the signs, Catherine stepped in to cut him off. "Greg why don't you take a walk, let us talk to some people." At his protest, Catherine merely shook her head. "You're no good to us trying to process a scene like this if you're acting this way. Why don't you head back to the lab, I'll meet you there with surveillance footage."
Fuming silently, Greg stalked off, his field kit in hand, his footsteps silent on the plush carpet of the hallway. Shaking her head after him, Catherine went to the opposite corner of the elevator lobby where the two other young women who'd come back from their night out were being held with an officer.
Back in room 814, Warrick and Sara continued to process the scene. Warrick snapped various photographs of the room as Grissom bagged a bloody knife and Sara the vic's toothbrush and hair brush from the bathroom counter, then began dusting for prints. Warrick, who had switched to using the ALS on the sheets, tried to keep his thoughts from turning too dark by making light case-talk with Grissom.
"Do we have anything yet on Greg's sister?"
"Only that she is the coach of the team, she lives in Miami, and she she's doing her doctoral thesis in psychology with a focus on criminal profiling."
"You know all of that from the scene?"
Grissom gave Warrick a withering glance. "No, we had a conversation at the when she came looking for Greg earlier. You'd do well, my wedded colleague, to listen to a female when she's giving you details. Could save your butt one day."
Warrick could only roll his eyes. "Greg's sister is a smoking Nordic hottie, Gilbert Grissom is giving me marriage advice. Today is just full of surprises."
"The point is that if she's gone missing, chances are a masters psych student is not going to be a naïve little girl in a new city, she's going to be a critical thinker. She'd probably be very sarcastic and abrasive to whoever tried to approach her, using it as a defensive mechanism."
Sara caught the tail end of Grissom's speech as she came out of the bathroom. "Yeah, but what if that's our guy's thing? You know, maybe he likes a challenge?"
"This is all assuming that wherever she is, it's against her will. Could be something as simple as she met a guy and hasn't left his bed yet."
Sara slid her eyes over to Gil for a microsecond, murmuring, "Sex isn't always so simple to a woman," then let it go as she continued to process the scene.
Oblivious to Sara's sotto voce comment, he now focused his attention on the night stand, more specifically to an oily substance on its surface. Taking a swab, he sniffed it. It smelled slightly of sugar, like flat soda. Photographing it, he then noticed the deep gouges on the bedside table. In his head, he could see the fingernails of Miranda Simpson digging into the wood as she fought for her life. Behind him, Warrick snapped pictures of the room service tray and its half eaten contents.
"So person or persons unknown shared a meal with Miranda pre- or post-coital then Miranda's throat is slashed. Maybe our killer found out about the date and didn't like it."
Grissom shrugged as he stood up. "As George Eliot once said, 'Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.'"
Outside in the elevator lobby, Catherine and Brass continued to interrogate April and Claudia who were wiping off the print ink Catherine had smeared them with on wet-naps.
"It's just a standard procedure to eliminate you from the list of suspects," Catherine explained, packing up the ten-cards. "What time did you knock on Miranda and Renee's door?"
April shifted, shook her head to try and clear the last drags of rum out of her brain. "I don't know, around ten or so?"
"We were late meeting our girlfriends in the lobby to start the post-competition celebration. We'd just won our fourth straight title and hell, it's Vegas, and we wanted to live a little." Claudia rolled her eyes, as though annoyed by this turn of events rather then saddened. Catherine made a mental note of it. "Probably thought her true colours would come through if she got into the sauce."
"And what true colours might those be?" Brass asked sternly.
"The fact that she's a big fat dyke. Everyone on the team knows it."
April looked appalled by her friend. "Claude that's a horrible thing to say! She just died!"
Brass uttered a silently oath that this interrogation wouldn't be put on hold for a cat fight. "Miss Winchester, can you confirm that the deceased was a lesbian?"
April fidgeted, unsure of what course to take. "heard rumours she'd come out over the summer. It's a small school and things like that get out, but then at homecoming, I saw her making out with a bunch of different guys so I thought it was just people trying to freak the team out."
"Oh come on, April," Claudia whined, obviously at her wit's end. "Joining the cheerleading team, video taping at sorority and team sleepovers, always offering advice on lingerie to other women? That says rug-munch to me."
"Any idea who'd want to hurt her? Was she being threatened at all?"
April screwed up her face in concentration. "No. No clue. If she was gay, though, I think the only person on the team she'd trust enough to keep it a secret or to not make a big deal about it is Renee. Renee is cool about that kind of stuff."
As they made their way to Brass' car in the parking lot, having finished with the two ladies half inside the bottle, Catherine couldn't seem to let something go.
"Do you buy it?"
"Girls experiment a lot in college." Brass shrugged, trying not to show how uncomfortable he was with the subject.
"I mean Claudia's story." Catherine wrenched the passenger door open, got in. "They often say that vehement outward hostility to a personality characteristic is indicative of latent sexual attraction to said characteristic."
Brass turned the engine on. "You think Claudia's got some homosexuality issues?"
"Couldn't hurt to do a little investigating with the other girls on the team about her history." There was a long pause. "How do you think Greg is doing?"
Brass put the car in reverse. "Hard to say. Kid's never really been rattled on the job before, not like Sara or Nicky."
Catherine gave a half-laugh. "Yeah, there's a magnet for trouble. Some guys are just unlucky that way. We should head to the Orpheus, see if Greg's hunch was right."