Hey, guys! Sorry it's been so long. I was in Michigan for Christmas and didn't have easy access to a computer. Here is the second and last installment. I hope you enjoy it!

Lindsay squeezed her way through the crowd invading the emergency room at Mount Sinai Hospital. She flashed her badge to the receptionist and asked about Charlene White's condition.

"Ms. White has been in surgery for the last two hours. Because of the severity of the burns, they have to rebuild her skin. It will be quite some time."

"The crime lab is going to need any trace evidence found on Ms. White's body," Lindsay requested.

"Dr. Salin told me that they would send anything they found right over to the lab. Anything else you need?"

"Yes, I was wondering if her daughter, Caitlyn was still here."

"She should be in the break room. Child's Services hasn't arrived yet." Lindsay smiled at the young woman and headed in the direction that the woman was pointed in. She saw a little girl seated in a chair five sizes too big for her, playing with a cup of water. Lindsay knocked on the door and cautiously approached Caitlyn White.

"Caitlyn?" The little girl's head shot towards the CSI. "Do you remember me? My name's Detective Monroe. I'm the one finding out who hurt your Mommy." Caitlyn nodded slightly and returned her attention to her cup. Lindsay sat down in front of her and smiled.

"Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?" Caitlyn shook her head. "Was your Daddy at your house earlier today?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what he and your Mommy were talking about?"

"Me."

"Did your Daddy hit your Mommy or hurt her in any way?"

"No."

"How soon after your Daddy left did you see your Mommy burning?"

"He left before I woke up."

Lindsay sighed. Caitlyn was not being especially helpful. She tried one last time.

"Caitlyn, is your Daddy taking you on a trip this weekend?" That got the girl's attention. She started beaming and looked Lindsay straight in the eye.

"Yes! He is taking me camping in the mountains. We go every year, it's so much fun!" Lindsay smiled at her and rose from her chair.

"Well, that's all of the questions I have. Someone should be here soon to make sure that you have somewhere to stay tonight."

"I want my Daddy." Lindsay froze in her tracks. How could she tell this little girl that her Daddy was a suspect in her mother's attempted murder?

"We'll see," was all that she could respond with. And with that, she walked out the door and tried to find Charlene White's operating room. She hadn't walked 10 feet when her cell phone started ringing.

"Monroe."

"Montana, it's Danny. Listen, the fingerprints on the candlestick and the kerosene are not a match to Michael White."

"What?! That's impossible. We found no other evidence of anyone in the apartment other than Charlene and Cait…lyn…"

"What's on your mind?"

"I was just thinking. Caitlyn seemed really excited when she was talking about going on a trip with her dad. Maybe she tried to kill her mother so that she could live with her dad."

She could almost see Danny's head shake through the phone. "I don't think so, Montana. The prints are too big to belong to an eight year old. Plus, how could she have poured the kerosene on her mother's head? She's too short."

Lindsay rolled her eyes. Danny always had to outsmart her. "Okay…so that leaves Charlene. Do you think she set herself on fire?"

"It's possible. See if you can get her prints and we'll do a comparison. I'll meet you back at the lab."

"Alright, bye." Lindsay shut her phone. Hopefully the doctor's would let her in the operating room, though she doubted it. She found the room that Charlene White was in and lightly knocked her fingers against the window looking into the room. The man whom she assumed was Dr. Salin looked up at him and she held up her badge. The doctor motioned for Lindsay to come in, and she smiled to herself, relieved at the doctor's courtesy.

"Detective Lindsay Monroe, I'm investigating Ms. White's case. What can you tell me?"

"Well, Detective, not much. There isn't anything on Ms. White's body to suggest foul play. She doesn't have any defensive wounds of any kind, no bruising, stab wounds, or anything. However, there is something that is interesting." He took his tweezers and carefully lifted something off of Charlene White's head. He held a magnifying glass over the tweezers and held it out for Lindsay to look at. Lindsay squinted in order to see the small spec at the tip of the tweezers. When she realized what she was looking at, she stared at Dr. Salin in disbelief.

"An insect egg?"

"Lice, from what I could tell. Ms. White was suffering from a very itchy scalp. There are scratch marks all over the top of her head."

"Her daughter, Caitlyn, was home sick with lice. Maybe she gave them to her mother some point throughout the day."

"It wouldn't be the first time I've seen it."

"Doctor, would it be possible for me to take Ms. White's fingerprints?"

The doctor winced slightly. "I'm afraid we had to amputate Ms. White's fingers. They were too severely burned to let her keep. They would have gotten infected too easily. I can give you what fingers we have, but I can't let you print the ones that were left on. It's a safety precaution."

Lindsay nodded. "That's understandable. It would be much appreciated if I could have them as soon as possible." Inside she was groaning. The last thing that she wanted to be doing was processing someone's dead, burned off fingers.

"Danny!" Lindsay called after her colleague in the hallway of the lab.

He whipped his body around when he heard her voice. "What do you have?" Lindsay held up the container filled with Charlene White's fingers and Danny cringed.

"A lead." She grinned at him.

A half an hour later, the two were sitting in the break room waiting for the results of Charlene White's fingerprints to come back.

"Do you like her for this?" Danny asked.

"There's no other explanation," Lindsay told him. "We found no evidence of anyone else in the apartment, and we know it's not Caitlyn. What else could have happened?"

"I dunno." The two spent the next fifteen minutes discussing old cases and joking about the ties that Flack had been wearing to work recently.

"He has to be getting some, there's absolutely no reason for him to be wearing those hideous pieces of crap unless a girlfriend gave them to him," Danny told Lindsay adamantly. It was then that lab-tech Adam Ross knocked on the door to interrupt their banter.

"Hey guys," Adam said in his usual nervous tone. "Your prints on both the can of kerosene and the candlestick are a match to Charlene White." He handed Lindsay the report and she snatched it out of his hands.

"Thanks, Adam," Danny told him, and walked around the table to read over Lindsay's shoulder.

"No-no problem."

When Adam was gone, Danny and Lindsay shared a look of disbelief. "I mean, I know we don't have any other way to explain it," Lindsay began, "but what actually happened?"

"Well, the victim had lice all over her, right?"

"Right, her head was covered in lice eggs."

Danny tapped his pencil on the table, deep in thought. "I got it."

"You do?" Lindsay asked him skeptically.

"My ma used to tell me about when she had lice as a kid. They didn't have the special kinds of shampoo that you can get now to get rid of the little bastards, so they used to pour kerosene on their heads. Sucked the life right out of the little buggers. Excuse the pun."

Lindsay giggled. "Caitlyn said that her mother doesn't believe in medicine, which apparently includes lice shampoo."

"Right, so she douses her head in kerosene…"

"…And then my hair was all wet. I didn't want to take a shower because I was afraid that the lice weren't all dead yet, so I tried to dry my hair over a candle. I guess I wasn't thinking properly."

Charlene White's surgery had concluded several hours ago, and now she was awake and, incredibly, able to speak. She was telling Lindsay and Danny her very sad, very ridiculous story.

"I guess so," Danny responded. Lindsay just sat there with her mouth hanging open, staring at this adult woman in utter disbelief. When she couldn't bring herself to say anything, Danny said it for her.

"We'd better be leaving you alone now, Ms. White. We hope you have a successful recovery."

"Thank you, Detectives. Sorry for all of the trouble I've caused you. I don't know what could have possibly gone wrong."

"Your mother dropped you on your head when you were a baby?" Lindsay mumbled under her breath.

"Have a nice day, Ms. White," Danny muttered through his teeth.

When they had closed the door behind them, Lindsay finally lashed out.

"It really, REALLY, pisses me off when we spend our entire days chasing after people's ignorance."

"You'd rather have foul play, then?" Danny asked her, amused at her anger.

"At least it has a feeling of satisfaction at the end," Lindsay grumbled. She headed off towards the elevator.

"Whoa, Montana, where are you going?" Danny called after her.

"I'm stopping at CVS, getting the biggest bottle of lice-killing shampoo I can find, and taking an extremely hot, extremely long shower until I know that any trace of those blood suckers is off of me." And with that, she was gone.

Danny chuckled when the elevator door closed, and said to no one in particular, "Jeez, the country girl can stand eating the bugs, but she can't stand having them on her head. Go figure."

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