Chapter IV

Only in Vegas

Sara took the mold of the tire, but she figured that it was going to be a long shot. It was, to her naked eye, a generic tire, probably from a pickup truck or small SUV. There were literally tens of thousands of those types of vehicles roaming around Vegas and Clark County. There were also some footprints, eyeballing them, she judged them to be men's size 10, probably a work boot of some kind...the kind of boot that everyone and their brother had in their closet. From construction work to hiking, boots were everywhere.

She looked up at the stars. It could never just be open and shut, no the perps had to make it complicated. When she was in a foul mood, she blamed the growing trend of smart criminals on shows like Hard Crime and Law and Order. Most of the time, though, she just went along with it. She just had to be smarter then the average criminal, and that wasn't much of a challenge. She just had to know, to quote the best fingerprint tech on the West Coast, "What is common place and what is unique." She missed Jacqui, the woman had been a whiz with prints and all the techs since had fallen just short of her skills. Of course, Sara had thought they'd never be able to replace Greg in the DNA lab, but Mia, followed by Wendy had proved her wrong.

Sara blinked, her train of thought had once again jumped it's tracked and frolicked out in a field for no apparent reason whatsoever. She'd been having that problem ever since she'd spent that night with Grissom. Her concentration was shot, she was sleeping poorly and she had ended up avoiding the man like the plague...which was difficult since he was her direct supervisor. Warrick's words repeated in her head...she had to make a decision...confront the problem. God, six years and she was just now having to confront the problem.

She scowled and tried to remember what she had been about to do before she'd gotten off on a tangent named Gilbert Grissom. She sighed and reoriented herself to the crime scene. Everything had been collected, the sketches and photos were done, the body had been taken away. This site was almost finished. She did another walk-around with her flashlight. Her eyes darted around, looking for any slight trace of a clue. She found nothing but starlight, moonbeams, Warrick leaning against the SUV, talking on his phone and Sofia Curtis. Sofia was also leaning against her car, and talking, but her conversation was with herself.

Sara waved at Sofia and headed back to Warrick and their department issued Tahoe. She gave him a nod and moved to the back to stow her kit. The three of them all gave the crime scene one last look before they started back towards the bright lights of the city.


With Doc Robbins still working on the autopsy, Warrick took the evidence to log it in and send it to the various techs it needed to go to and Sara went and pulled up the Missing Persons database. They needed to put a name to the face of Jane Doe # 137.

Neither CSI made much progress. It was annoying to say the least. Sofia was out chasing leads, but with so little to go on...well, all three investigators were hoping Doctor Albert Robbins, ME would have something productive to add from his autopsy.


The man in question, an intelligent, rather witty, jolly fellow...if he didn't say so himself, was finishing up what had been one of his most interesting cases to date. Vegas had, over the years, thrown many things at him. From bear attacks to men in corsets...yeah, Vegas was an interesting place to practice. This case, though, it nearly took the cake. He hummed a tune as he dialed two pager numbers from memory. First, Warrick Brown, the man had caught himself in a marriage snag. He'd said nothing, but Al knew...it was a sixth sense that all married men had...they knew when one of their own was in the dog house. The second call went to Sara Sidle. Now there was a woman who had taken the idea of privacy and made it into a way of life. He had noticed that the two CSIs in question had grown closer since Jim's shooting. He took off his bloody gloves with a snap. He smiled, it had been a relief when he'd found out Brass was going to make it...He'd autopsied far too many friends and colleagues over the years, he didn't want to add Jim Brass to that list.


Warrick's pager went off, he checked it and was happy to see the morgue's number on it. The evidence, while it would be good later, was doing him no good at the minute. Tires that half the state probably owned, boots that could have come from anywhere and the brown coffee residue...this case was light on the evidence, they'd solved with less before, but damn was it hard to prove in court.

Sara was already making her way to the autopsy bay when he ran into her. "Hey, find anything on the database?" She shook her head, "Not yet." The resolute look in the woman's brown eyes promised that she would find their victim in the vast databases that the LVPD kept. Warrick didn't doubt she would, she had done it before and she would do it again.

They arrived in the morgue together and immediately went to the slab where the body was laid out. Doc Robbins looked up at them. "This is quite possibly one of the strangest cases I've ever seen in all my time in Vegas."

Warrick blinked, it was just a body dump, what on earth could be that ground shattering about it? Sara was, apparently with him on the 'So What Train' She crossed her arms over her chest, "Do tell."

The Doc's eyes sparked with something that couldhave beenconsidered macabre enthusiasm. "There was no outward indication of COD. When I autopsied her, it became apparent though. She asphyxiated." Sara frowned, "No patiechial hemoraging, though. She was starved of oxygen?" The ME nodded, "When one gas replaces oxygen on the hemoglobin granules attached to the red blood cells, a person dies." Both Warrick and Sara looked at him, "Okay...so she was suffocated?" The man went around the table and uncovered the girl's lungs in a tray. "That's where it gets interesting, I ran a tox-scan on her blood, but when it came back, I didn't believe it, so I looked at her lungs to double check." Warrick nodded, "And..." He looked at them both. "What makes Vegas such a tourist hot spot?" Both Sara and Warrick blinked, momentarily confused by the change of subject. "Aaah, Doc..." He handed them a report. "She died of neon gas poisoning." Warrick's jaw dropped, "You're kidding!" Robbins shook his head. "No, unfortunately I'm not." Sara scowled, the gravity of the situation hitting home, they were in Las Vegas, the neon capital of the world...This case just kept getting better and better.