A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed, meant a lot. Chapters a tad long for me anyways, but had to be stopped here if not it would keep going on and on. Thanks again.
The ride over was silent; Sara figured he was sulking because he was close to getting laid. And their boss had interrupted that, just like he had been doing indirectly for the last week and a half.
"It's not my fault" she told him, the radio wasn't on and that was a first.
He watched out the window as the buildings became fewer and farther between, they were almost of Vegas, when in the middle of the desert a hotel sat, the neon sign flickering.
The crime scene tape flittered through the wind, that came out of nowhere, the sirens flashing emitting nothing but red, white and blue, even the officers who usually cracked jokes to keep themselves from remembering there was a body a few feet away remained silent.
This case was going to be different.
You could feel it in your bones
"You two are going to have to cover this case, I got another 419 back near the Sands" Grissom handed Sara the brief notes he had started, and briefed her on what little information he knew about the situation.
Something drew Greg towards the room, the coroners van parked as close as protocol would allow, without tampering with evidence. Tire treads, he searched the ground, there were none. This doesn't however rule out that someone could have parked a little ways down, and walked, too many shoeprints to rule anything out.
He rounded the corner to room three, paying close attention to ground, hoping that the killer left some sort of evidence. No such luck, the door hadn't been pried open either, the killer had knocked, or the victim left the door unlocked, the question he didn't know was how do you get into the room if the occupant knew that he and the person in the next room were the only ones there?
"David did you use gloves to open the door?" Greg saw the coroner's assistant out of the corner of his eye.
"The manager opened it for me" he just nodded, so much for getting prints, they'd been over lapped and who knew if the killer had worn gloves like he was doing so now. But he had to at least try, if not the manager would get tried for murder, might be a better place for him then here. Any place would be better than here.
Nothing was out of the ordinary, everything was in it's right place, a little eerie considering unless you were OCD, the place was spotless, a little too spotless. And he had a hunch that he would find nothing.
The position of the body was a little odd, almost like when a vampire slept, arms crossed, feet pointed towards the ceiling, the clothes not wrinkled. His hair had even been combed straight back.
"The vic is Art Ringwood, 45, an Associate in Stevenson and Associates. Checked in about three hours ago, with a female, two rooms side by side, queen beds in both, the vic in the other room is Vanessa, no last name" Greg looked up from his position of kneeling beside the vic, snapping pictures at the unusualness of the cleanliness of the body, a weird thing considering his throat had been slashed. No blood on the pillows and comforters below. That just didn't happen.
"Got a question for you how does one get their throat slit and have no blood anywhere?" Greg asked as Sara started on the other side of the room.
"You weren't killed on the bed"
"Bathroom?" Greg asked and could feel that Sara was following him with Luminol in hand, spraying the sink, and the bath tub both positive for blood.
"So if he was killed in the bathtub, how do you get a man of his nature in here? You have to be at least two hundred pounds to carry that guy and more if he was kicking and screaming"
"He may have been drugged" Sara offered, she walked out of the room as Greg dusted for prints on the taps. Nothing. Not surprising.
"He'd be dead weight if he was drugged" Greg offered
"So that rules out female" Sara voicing the obvious
"If you want, I can help you in here, then move onto the other room"
"I think I can handle it if you wanna go search the grounds" Greg told her, and for a second he saw disappointment but it was only there for a second and he didnt dwell on it.
"You sure?"
"Yep" he now bagged the suitcase and contents.
"Okay" Sara stood there for a few seconds and turned and left leaving him alone with the dead guy.
With the body being removed, he found their leading piece of evidence, a wooden bead, a dark blue in colour. Was this a clue? It could mean everything it could mean nothing.
Dusting for prints on the two glasses, which still held liquor the two glasses identical only the one closet to the bed had lipstick on it. A pale pink. No biggie it only proved that the girl in the next room was in here.
Making his way to the next room, he once again searched the grounds, still finding nothing, he walked in, this room smelled stronger of death than the last, the woman positioned the same way, only she had a rosary in her hands he tried pulling the rosary out of her hands but to no avail, so it was true, the death grip really did avail, her luggage torn through and laid on the floor in a half hazard way. No drinks, glasses or even evidence of food were to been seen. He snapped a few pictures of the body, and noticed something. The vic was wearing red lipstick, not a pale pink. Who the hell was the other person? And he got his questioned answered why this room smelled more like death than the last, Whore had been written across the back of the bed wall in blood. Can you say hate crime?
The bathroom and sink were positive for blood and he swabbed them, just to be sure that it was infact victim number two's blood, because well stranger things had happened.
"I'm all finished outside, what do you want me to do?"
"You can start taking the evidence out to the car, almost finished in here" he called from the bathroom.
"Okay do you have any-"what ever she going to finish saying was ending in a shriek
"Sara you okay?" he quickly stepped out of bathroom to find, Sara picking up a cockroach, a huge cockroach.
"This little guy scared me" she held the little creature firmly as the little bug's arms and antennae moved frantically, looking closer she saw something that shouldn't be there.
"Greg hand me a swab" he thrusted one in her face, a little too quickly for him to be in the bathroom.
"The probably of that being one of the victims blood is very narrow, theirs hundreds, possibly thousands of these guys in these walls"
"What over evidence do we have?" Sara questioned
"Good point" he now handed her a little container to place the filthy cockroach inside.
On the autopsy room, or so he hoped that this visit wouldn't be a waste of time hoping that they would get something they could use.
"Hey Super Dave" Greg casually said as he walked closer to the examining table, and noticed the blush on David's face, could it be that after all this time Dave still had just a small admiration for a one Miss Sara Sidle? That's not why he was here.
"Just finished your bodies"
"That was quick" Greg replied with a new found appreciation for the man
"Just because it's the crime lab's busiest night doesn't mean it's ours, you two were the first of the night" he said with a sense of pride
"Okay" Sara answered with a just a hint that she really understood, the situation could be in reverse, people could die of natural causes no need for it to be investigated, back to case. David moved to the woman and took out the case notes.
"Nothing too unusual, since she had been dead so little I took fingerprinted the areas where it takes the longest to dissolve, came up nothing, also did a rape kit, the hymen was ruptured but that's common for the first time, no tearing at the five, six or seven o'clock positions to suggest rape, it looks like the sex was consensual" David flicked a few pages before continuing on
"Took her prints and anything else useful, tox reports for both are still pending"
"The guy same thing, cleaned with my guess is would be antibacterial soap"
"Oh found this clutched in victim number two's hands"
David held up the rosary beads, the cross at the bottom twirling back and forth.
Greg donned a pair of gloves and took the beads from him
"How the hell did you get this out of her hands?"
"A magician never reveals his magic tricks" David joked
"These beads look like the one I found on the guy vic"
"There any beads missing on this rosary?"
"No" Greg declared after a brief examination of the set "Doesn't even look like theirs blood on it, but there is a marking, I need a microscope to be sure" Greg walked out staring at the tiny marking on the rosary, they may have a lead.
"You walked out of there pretty suddenly" Sara told him half an hour later as she came in, putting on a fresh pair of gloves.
"The rosary beads are from a church"
"I would suspect they would be" stated matter of factly.
"This church stamped it, see that little RCC in the corner of the cross?" Sara had to peer way down low to see it, so much so that if he looked to his left, he could see two things, her breasts, and her mouth was really close to his but he remained focused on his task, it was him after all who had put limitations on the PDA at work.
"Ya"
"If we do a search on all the RCC churches, which I doubt they are many we can find out who's this is"
"Or we search her stuff"
"I've already been through it, there's nothing there"
"Are you sure? We haven't been back that long"
"First thing I did when I came up here, searched every pocket, there's nothing"
"Suit case too?"
"I may be new, but I didn't miss anything. Of course I checked the suitcase" that however didn't stop Sara from searching the contents again.
"Did you just not hear what I said?" Greg snapped
"I had a similar case back in foster care, I always hid stuff in this one special zipper part, whenever my stuff got searched they never found the compartment aha" she opened the zipper and pulled out a small piece of paper and a card
"Looks like a birth certificate and social insurance number"
"Let's run it see what we got"
"Are you sure you checked everything?"
"Sara the woman had one pair of pants, and two skirts, and no sweaters that had pockets, yes it may seem like I didn't but I did, I checked them"
"Okay"