Leon Tacker sat nervously in the police department interview room. He was a bit worried they had checked on him and found his previous charges of drinking and driving and substance abuse, but since then, he had cleaned up his life. Despite the repetitive beer, he was keeping up with his studies and living the straight and narrow to hold on to his football scholarship. Except for a few skirmishes, he knew he had nothing to worry about, or at least hoped he had nothing to worry about. His left leg hopping nervously in his seat, his fingers tapping at the table, he heard the door crack and open wide and looked from the officer watching him over to Captain Jim Brass entering the room.

"How you doing, Leon?" Jim pulled out the opposing chair to sit down.

"Fine."

"Hey, you can calm down here." Jim noticed his nervous quirks. "I'll let you know when you're in trouble." He parted a file and spread it out before him on the table in front of Leon. "Now let's see, your buddy, Ben Connors, headed upstairs with a young girl, and vanished with her into his bedroom. A minute later, you heard screams from the room, and you and several of your alcoholic buddies broke into the room and found… nothing."

"Pretty much."

"How'd your buddy get out of the room with the girl?" Jim asked the question. "Does he have like a secret passage or something? Did he go out the window?"

"I don't know."

"Come on…." Jim grinned and tilted his head like a dad grilling his kid. "Are you covering for your buddy? You don't want to go down with him. At least tell me the girl's name."

Leon started drawing a blank. What was her name? What did Ben say it was?

"Her name?" Jim started wondering if the boy was actually legit. He could read it when someone was lying, but this college kid was seriously drawing a blank. "You know, it's the second question after what's your sign?"

"Lisa…" Leon suddenly remembered. "Lisa Bobbitt. I hadn't heard it before tonight, but I think she's an assistant or something from the history department."

"Okay, now we're getting somewhere." Jim started writing notes. "What do you know about her? Where can we get a picture of her?"

"She won't be hard to find." Leon's leg continued twitching. "She looks exactly like Kelly Clarkson, well, old Kelly… with the dark hair… and bigger boobs…" He placed his hands before his chest to demonstrate his point.

"Kelly Clarkson?" Jim looked up. "Like from American Idol?"

"Yeah…"

Sara Sidle departed from watching from the other side of the two-way mirror in the room. Turning on her heel, she stepped from the room and headed toward Trace where Connors' white bed sheet had been draped and hanging from the wall. A large orange stain on it had the shape of a human body without arms, legs or a head. Intrigued and curious, David Hodges was stifled by what he was perusing under the microscope. Sara placed her hand to his shoulder to get his attention.

"Hey…" She got him to look up. "Well, any similarities?" She wanted to know if Connors vanishing act could be linked to the disappearance of young William Danvers some weeks before.

"Plenty…." Hodges mused a bit in his intellect. "Both traces from both scenes are a residue mixture of sweat, plasma, skin cells, enzymes and damaged red blood cells, but the cells are in lyses. I couldn't get DNA."

"No idea if they're from the male or the female." Sara spoke the obvious.

"You know," Hodges rose from his seat and approached the sheet deep in thought. "You know what I'm thinking. I'm thinking this is residue from a degenerative disease, something that causes the victim to expel or vomit excess tissue."

"Then it would have to come from the girl instead of Connors." Sara used her deductive reasoning. "Anything like that would have been detected by the college physician for the football team." She made an unspoken thought and turned round to read the trace examination report. "I'll get Brass to run her priors."

"Way ahead of you…" Jim appeared in the room. "Her name is Lisa Bobbitt. I'm getting her history now."

Another CSI named Catherine Willows was off to another crime scene with Nick Stokes by her side. The drive to the Winchester Rest Stop was a two-hour drive, but then, their gasoline expenses in the course of work was covered by the city. There was no way the city could cover the annoyance of the long drive in a Denali truck with a busted AC Unit. By time they reached the rest stop, it was after dusk and light was fading fast. Catherine had a wonderful windswept look from driving with her car window open, while Nick had uncovered down to his CSI-issued dark blue t-shirt with the gold-stenciled badge over his heart. Local police as well as the state patrol were at the rest stop amidst campers and RVs. Stadium level lights atop large metal poles lighted the gravel area. Upon arrival, Nick took a quick swig from his water bottle for a while and commenced with his forensic kit ready to proceed with business.

"Catherine…" Local sheriff Max Walters recognized the lovely red-haired CSI from previous cases in the area. "I was worried you might get lost."

"Not quite…" She looked over to Nick for the moment. "You have a missing girl?"

"Maddie Franklin, four-years-old..." Walters continued. "She's the daughter of Matt and Tricia Franklin from Hendersonville, Tennessee. He's a Nashville police officer; she's a medical doctor, both out here for a vacation. Maddie was playing with three other kids over in the children's area, but when she didn't return for dinner, the mother panicked. Dad called the police."

"Did they see anyone suspicious?" Nick was checking his kit.

"No…" Walters briefly removed his hat from his snowy white hair, wiped away a covering of sweat and replaced his hat. "I've been treating it under the belief the girl wandered off instead of a kidnapping until I hear otherwise."

Catherine looked over with her own maternal feelings to the grieving mother sitting in a lawn chair under the tarp of their RV. The dad was using his experience to try and take charge of the local police investigation, but he was not being allowed to go too far. Nick began by surveying the area from the camping area toward the children's area. It was a roped off area filled with sand with swings, an elaborate climbing set with assorted children's playsets. Snapping pictures along the way, he stepped onto the deck of the vending machine hut, snapped one photo and gazed briefly to the tree line some twenty feet from him. He wasn't sure why he looked at it, but he was reminded of his youth and wanting to follow fishing trails. There were dozens of them near the woods near his childhood home, and they often twisted and turned around and through gullies and groves to several different fishing holes.

"Sheriff…" Nick called for Walters. "Have you had anyone check the fishing and game trails."

"I've got three officers and volunteers out there right now linked by radio." Walters tilted his head up with concern as a father himself. "But with the darkness, they'll be coming back soon."

"What are you thinking, Nicky?" Catherine shifted her weight to her other leg.

"Well, she could have gone exploring…." He panned around once more. "Or she could have…. Hello, what's this?" His eyes noticed something that didn't belong to the ash tree a few feet down the path. He reached for tweezers and a sample container, plucking the swatch of strange hairs off an errant twig and collecting it. It was possibly something; it was possibly nothing.

"Look like hairs…" Walters stated.

"It means something could have come this way." Catherine took her light as the sky started growing even darker. She panned the path for a clue of the child's footprints over matted leaves, crushed brush and foliage growing every which way. The trail itself was bare; it was a dirt trail weaving around large hundred-year-old trees and thick brush, subsequently splitting some thirty yards ahead. She paned her floating beam of light to and fro then chanced to go off the path and noticed a pattern of disturbed leaves amongst the other woodland floor coverings.

"Hold it there…" Nick grabbed her hand with the light and showed her where to aim it. With her beam showing the way, he dodged his way around a large oak and hit the spot he had designated. Leaning to the forest floor, he started snapping pictures than started framing the trace he found by clearing the leaves from it.

"You got any plaster?" He asked.

"Yeah, what is it?" Catherine leaned in with her light at the step Nick had found. He measured it at fourteen inches with his light aimed from his teeth, but the odd thing was the lack of a tread pattern. It looked like a large human foot, but much too large to be human. He sprayed it to preserve it for a cast then started mixing the plaster with water from his water bottle.

"Tuft of long hairs… large footprint…" He began talking.

"Don't say it." Catherine chided him.

It was completely dark when Greg Sanders headed for his disappearance case. The case was at the end of Puckett Street on Harmon, the site of a previous case. An accountant heading home, maybe a bit tired and sleepy, he didn't have alcohol in his system, had stopped short to avoid a pedestrian dashing in front of him. His sudden stopping resulted in another car stopping short to avoid hitting him, but knocking him into a nearby tree. The area was blocked off with one wrecked car pushed into the wall of the cemetery adjacent and a second car with a caved in front end. Rotating orange, red and blue lights lit up the area as police guided through cars and paramedics tended to two injured drivers. Greg could see one officer coming up to him from around the fire department rescue truck. Lieutenant Ralph Everett had crossed paths with him on a few cases.

"You're it?"

"Everyone's on cases…" Greg responded nervously on his solo case. Everett sighed taking what he could get and turned back to the accident scene.

"The first driver's name is Matt Felts, a CPA…" He began calling the scene. "He stopped short to avoid hitting a pedestrian but got rear-ended for the attempt and then slammed into the cemetery wall. The pedestrian, however, was knocked over his car and hit the asphalt behind him, just barely getting missed by the car in back. We're still looking for her…"

"Her?" Greg looked around re-examining the scene. "She's not here?"

"The other driver, Chloe Harridge, said she saw the girl vanish over the wall of the cemetery and run off." Everett pointed to the other driver tended by another paramedic. "She's not as banged up as Felts, but she's a little shaken up. Where do you want to start?"

"With Felts…" Greg carried his kit and placed it on the ground near the ambulance. The injured driver was in traction; his head in a brace and his body held immobile. He looked up with two brown eyes from a bruised and tired face.

"How are you doing, Mr. Felts?" Greg reached to acknowledge him by touching his hand without a handshake. "I'm Greg Sanders from the crime lab. I'm here to find out what happened. Did you see the girl you hit?"

"Yeah…" The tired and distraught CPA looked up worn from his experience. "I don't know where she came from. One second I'm listening to the news on the radio, and then she was appearing in my headlights." He paused for a breath. "I braked as fast as I could, but I still somehow managed to hit her. Oh, god… I hope she's okay."

"Well," Greg scribbled the notes he thought he needed. "You'll be happy to know she somehow made it away from the scene. My job is to find her and get her to the hospital. Did you get a good look at her?"

"Yeah, but you're not going to believe me."

"Why not?"

"She looked exactly like Kelly Clarkson."