Disclaimer: I obviously do not own CSI: NY. I just own my car, my laptop and my crazy muse who seems to want to write 4 different stories at a time. I also do own any characters that you do not recognize. You can borrow them if you ask permission first!

A/N: Okay. I am so sorry for the wait, but here we go! Thanks to everyone that read and reviewed! Here's the next chapter!!! Many thanks to Aphina and Axellia for the beta. I don't own the chapter title either. That belongs to Bowling for Soup (Lord, I love them!).

Chapter 27.

Sad, Sad Situation

Back at the lab, Stella and Kendall were working on the scant trace that hadn't been destroyed by the fire. Stella was studying the clothes that Mac found in the upstairs bedroom and so far was having little success.

Kendall was inspecting the shock collars that they had retrieved off of the bodies in the dining room. She took one of them apart, to study the mechanism that delivered the shock. "This is interesting," she mused, causing Stella's head to come up.

"What is?"

Kendall looked up. "The collar. This is a model that is commonly sold on the market for large dogs, but modifications have been made to it."

Stella looked intrigued. "What kind of modifications?"

Kendall smirked. "Well, the amount of joules that this baby produces would kill a dog. It's been modified to produce a higher voltage that would be more effective in humans."

Stella shuddered. "That is just…" she trailed off, not sure what the correct word for what she was feeling was.

"Insane, maniacal, evil?" Kendall suggested.

"All of that and more," Stella agreed. She bent back over the clothes and flipped up the collar of the shirt that she was studying. "Bingo. I found a hair," Stella said as she picked the hair up with tweezers. "I'm going to get this to the DNA lab. See if we can put a name to this."

Kendall nodded as she bent back over the collars, hoping to find anything out about how the modifications were made.

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When Marty walked into the morgue, the number of black body bags in the room surprised him. "Wow, this is…." he trailed off as he looked around the filled room.

Sid and Hawkes looked up. "Marty, I'm glad to see you," the chief medical examiner said. "We've got thirty eight bodies here. Both male and female, all ethnicities."

Hawkes looked up from his autopsy table, which housed one of the burned bodies from the dining room. "We are starting with the victims from the downstairs of the house. There are twenty-one people from there. We need to determine the actual cause of death."

Marty shook his head as he donned his scrubs and apron. He pulled one of the bodies over to an autopsy area. As he unzipped the bag, the only thought going through his head was that he wanted to solve this case as quickly as possible, since he didn't know if Taylor could handle seeing the ghosts for very long.

With that in mind, he began the external exam of the body, which he came to realize was going to be fairly useless. The body itself was burned beyond recognition, even the hair had been burned away. Dutifully he still studied it, to see if he could find any wounds. After ten minutes, he hadn't found anything, so he moved to make the Y-incision.

As he carefully peeled back the burned skin, he noticed some damage to the internal organs. The liver showed signs of bruising, as if the woman on the table had been beaten repeatedly. He continued to study the organs; the signs of repeated abuse stunned him. What two things that struck him most of all, was that none of the trauma that the woman has sustained were life threatening and there was no evidence of smoke inhalation, which meant that she was dead before the fire started.

Puzzled, both by the signs of trauma and the fact that the ghost was not visiting him to tell him how she had died, he continued the autopsy, readying the cranial saw to study the brain. He had weighed the organ, noting that it was average size. As he studied the brain, he noticed that there was nothing wrong with it.

Perplexed he walked over to where Hawkes and Sid were discussing their findings. "Hey," he said as he walked up.

Sid looked at him. "What did you find?"

Marty shook his head. "Signs of long time physical abuse, none of it life threatening, though. I'm guessing that we are going to have to wait for the tox screens to find out the C.O.D."

Hawkes nodded his agreement. "The only other thing that could be the C.O.D. is possibly heart failure, but that seems unlikely with this many people." Hawkes sighed, the long two days catching up with him.

Both Sid and Marty looked at him, before Sid began to steer him towards the exit. "Sheldon, you need to rest. Go, there are plenty of bodies here. Marty and I can work on it for however long it takes for you to recharge."

Hawkes nodded his acceptance as he began to remove the blood stained scrubs. He chucked them into bin. He got into the elevator and made his way up to the trace labs, to see how much progress Stella, Kendall and Adam had made.

He stopped in with Stella first. "Hey, Stella."

Stella looked up at him and smiled. "You looked exhausted," she observed.

Hawkes nodded, knowing that his exhaustion was not only from the rough couple of days, but also from the sleepless nights he'd had since Lydia had broken up with him. "It's been rough."

"What'd you find on the bodies?" she queried.

"A puzzle," he answered dryly. "There was no obvious cause of death. All of the bodies looked to have been abused, but none of those injuries was life threatening." He was about to continue when he saw Danny and Mac walking towards them. "Hey, Mac," he greeted them as they walked into the room. "Were you able to get a statement?"

Mac nodded. "Mrs. Pasternak said that she discovered her husband conducting experiments on the people that she had brought to live with them. He then assaulted her and when she woke up, he was dead and the house was on fire."

He looked at Hawkes, who responded. "Nothing conclusive from the autopsies so far. We've only gotten through the bodies from the dining room. I can tell you this much. All of them were dead before the fire started. None of them suffered from smoke inhalation."

"Interesting," Mac mused. "Anything else?"

Kendall's head lifted. "All of the shock collars that they were wearing were modified from existing collars for large dogs. Whoever did the modifications, knew what they were doing. They upped the voltage to something that started off as uncomfortable for humans and if I'm not mistaken, unlike most dog collars, this doesn't provide an intermittent shock, it's continuous."

"Has Adam made any progress with the computers?" Danny asked as he looked down at his vibrating phone. It was Cory again and for the third time that day, he hit the reject button. He just wasn't ready to talk to her yet.

Mac's phone rang. "Taylor?"

"Hey, Mac. It's Cory. Listen, I've got some information for you on those fingerprints and since Danny isn't answering his phone, I wanted to see if y'all were at the lab, so we can do a video conference."

Mac glanced at Danny before answering her. "Sure, Cory. I'll get everyone in the AV lab, so we can do the conference. Give me ten minutes." When he hung up, he glanced at Danny, wondering exactly what was going on with the engaged couple. "Cory found some information on the Pasternak's fingerprints. She wants to do a video conference with us. So we can see what Adam has and maybe a clear picture of what exactly happened in that house."

The team nodded, Danny a little sheepishly, as they turned to make their way into the lab. They found Adam working feverously, trying to extract information off of the computers.

"Hey boss, I don't have much yet. On the first computer, I think that the water damage is too great to get any information off of it, but I have hopes for the second one."

Mac smiled at him. "Any luck on with ICE?"

"Program is still running. I've expanded the search from people who not only arrived from Europe to those arriving from across the globe. However, that is a lot more pictures, so it's going to take time."

"Okay. Cory wants to do a video conference from London; can you set that up for us?"

"Done and done. She just called me to let me know," Adam responded with a grin as he tapped a couple of keys on the keyboard. In seconds Cory's picture popped up on the large video screen in the back of the lab.

Danny stepped into the background as he looked at her, noticing the dark smudges under her eyes. His heart constricted since he knew by looking at her, she hadn't been sleeping, but he refused to let that sway him. He was going to stand by what he had told her, because he knew that he was right.

Cory looked at the group gathered, her face carefully blank as she saw Danny staying in the background. Determined to put their fight out of her mind since she didn't want it affecting either of their jobs, she focused on Mac. "Hey, Mac," she said as she tapped some keys on her keyboard. "I'm sending you a hard copy of what Alistair and I discovered, but I can give you the Cliff's Notes version if you want."

Mac nodded, his astute eyes not missing the fact that she was looking everywhere but Danny, and he made a mental note to see if he could get Danny to talk about whatever was bothering him. "Yeah, go ahead."

Cory nodded her head. "The fingerprints belong to a Dr. Ludwig Esser and Polina Zolnerowich. Esser's father was a Nazi war criminal. He was a master torturer who escaped to the USSR right before the war ended. From what Alistair and I have uncovered, in a marathon all night session, is that Heinrich Esser, Ludwig's father, stole millions of dollars from the Nazi's. He opened numerous accounts in Switzerland and over the years, by living frugally and investing correctly he amassed a fortune of close to a billion U.S. dollars."

Stella gasped. "Wow, so our guy inherited the money from his father?" she ventured.

Cory shook her head. "Well, in a way, yes. Heinrich Esser was brutally murdered in the winter of 1988. He looked to have been tortured extensively before his death. From the KGB reports that we gathered, I would not disagree with that."

Mac tapped his mouth carefully, going over the case in his head. "So, Mikhail Pasternak, a.k.a. Ludwig Esser, tortured and killed his father and then escaped to the United States?"

"Actually, no," Alistair piped up from the background. "All of the background that I gathered on Ludwig Esser indicated that he did not follow in his father's footsteps. He opened up a state of the art clinic in one of the poorer districts of Moscow and traveled to remote areas of the country to offer free healthcare."

Cory cocked her head as she looked at their confused faced. "Okay, what are y'all thinking?" she drawled.

Mac cleared his throat. "Danny and I just got back from taking Mrs. Pasternak's statement. She claimed that her husband had been torturing people in that house, doing medical experiments."

Cory shook her head. "Not possible. If anything, it was her that was doing the experimenting. Polina was Heinrich's assistant, really his protégé. She was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder at a young age, and the wonderfulness of the KGB was that they searched for people like that. She went to medical school,"

"And let me guess, her degree was in torture," Danny finally interjected, moving forward.

Cory glanced at him and nodded her head. "Yes. From the few documents that survived the fall of the Iron Curtain contain, the KGB believed that she was the one that murdered Heinrich."

Stella bit her lip. "So, why would Mikhail, I mean Ludwig move in with someone who killed his father?"

"That, Detective Bonasera, is the mystery. We can only surmise that she told him that he was in danger. Chances are he never knew what actually transpired. We were able to track them to Switzerland, where they withdrew all of the money from Esser's accounts. Until Mr. Ross emailed us the driver's license photos of them, we weren't able to pick the trail back up," Alistair told them.

Cory smiled. "And that's where it pays to have a forensic accountant as a friend. It's just like riding a bike," she laughed. "I'd forgotten how much fun it was to trace funds around. But, working backwards from the account numbers that I found, I discovered that the money made one heck of a journey before it ended up in the States."

"How so, Cory?" Mac inquired.

"Well, basically when I broke it down, the money made about three trips around the globe before it landed in the accounts of the Pasternak's. I think I was able to determine their port of origin when coming into the country," she revealed as she transferred her gaze to Adam. "Adam, if you will, narrow your search results for matching ICE photos coming from New Zealand in 1988. I believe that you will find the Pasternak's there."

Adam nodded as he narrowed the search result and within moments, they had a match. "Here we go," he said excitedly as the computer beeped. "The names attached to the photos are Penelope and Joseph Opperheim, from New Zealand. It is also from December of 1988, instead of October of 1989, when the records of the Pasternak's begin."

Cory shot a triumphant smile over her shoulder to Alistair. "See Alistair, I told you they were the best."

"Corinne, you did a lot of work on this as well. It was a joint effort," Alistair conceded.

Cory laughed. "Anyway, Adam we need to find out who checked them in to immigration. Even at that point, Polina's fingerprints were flagged in InterPol's system and their system did not register any hits. We need to make sure that there aren't other wanted people in this country that we don't know about."

Mac's eyebrow lifted. "Cory, you know there are."

Cory sighed. "I know. But, but it still pisses me off that there are compromised agents in immigration." She yawned. "Anyway, that is all that I have. I'll be in London a few more days, but you can always get me on my cell. Now, if Alistair will be so kind to arrange me some transportation back to my hotel, it's five a.m. here and I've been up for twenty-four hours. I'm going to crash. Night, y'all."

As the lab said their good-bye's to Cory as the conference was disconnected, Danny was abnormally silent. Mac turned to the group. "We need to take Cory's lead. Everyone, log in and secure your evidence and then go home. I don't want to see anyone back here until eight a.m. tomorrow."

Stella, Hawkes and Adam readily agreed, but Mac put his hand on Danny's arm to prevent him. "You want to talk about it now?" he asked the younger man quietly.

Danny nodded and followed Mac into his office. As Mac settled behind his desk, Danny slumped in a chair, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "I didn't know Cory was in London until she'd been there half a day. She just flew there after Alistair hung up on her. When I found out, we fought and I've been ignoring her calls since then."

"I see," Mac said calmly. "Why did you fight?"

"She's being selfish. I don't mind that she went to London, but she should have told me she was leaving. I feel like I'm losing her, Mac. She's been withdrawn and distant for months. It'll be okay for a few weeks, but then bang, it's like she is so focused on her job that everything falls by the wayside."

"Have you tried talking to her about it?" Mac asked him.

Danny sighed. "I didn't realize how much of a problem it was until I woke up and she was in London."

"And you both snapped at each other," Mac reasoned. Danny nodded. "Look, both of you are strong willed people and I think that when she gets back, you both need to talk it out. Communication is the foundation of a successful relationship," he advised.

Danny nodded as he rose to his feet as he thought about what Mac had said. "Thanks, Mac."

Mac smiled. "Now, go home. Get some sleep and let's see if we can figure out this mystery tomorrow."

AN: Okay. So, my muse seems to have disappeared, so if anyone sees a green and purple dragon hanging around anywhere, can you send her home? Please?? :D Anywho, I don't have anything written after this, but I'm hoping that the influx of new CSI: NY episodes that my muse may come back. As always, please read and review!!!!

passionate csi - It kinda is, but kinda isn't. It's set in the same world as A Time to Heal, but my major focus is on the drama, plus Danny/OC. I do throw in Flack/Lindsay (actually, note to self, must include that into the next chapter), but mostly the relationships aren't the focus, they are just there. :p Thanks for the review!!!

Nienna - Thanks! I'm glad that Cory has finally gotten through to Alistair, too. Because he is going to be mega important with trying to catch Etienne. I totally can't wait to see the rest of the lab hold the baby (especially Danny....I'm thinking something like, "I broke him!" when Ryan won't stop crying when he's in Danny's arms. lol). I'm glad that I keep your interest. That makes me feel like I'm doing my job right!!!

Maddy - Thanks! She's just really messed up. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with her yet, so Polina's fate is in the claws of my missing muse. :p Hope the end of the school term is going okay for you!!!

Soccer - No worries! I know you read it (even if it takes you a little longer to review. RL sucks.)

fLaCkFaN - Thanks! She is actually in a couple of other stories (I'm assuming that you're talking about stories that I haven't written). Simply Devine and Devine Intervention by Aphina, What the Eye's Can't See by Axellia and then Gotham's Heroes by Spaxaph (that's a side project with Aphina, Axellia and myself). I thinks that's all of them. They will definitely get Etienne, but it's probably going to be an interesting ride to get there. :p

Axellia - Send Lexi home (I honestly think she may be hanging out with D right now) and I'll get right on that! Lol. Nope, for once, you are only a chapter behind! I completely agree about the OCD and making the unpleasantness better to read. It makes sense to me! I really expect CM to come in soon, but Lexi has changed the storyline so much that I'm not making guarantees and you know that the school shooter case won't be wrapped up until Cory knocks the hell...oops, I mean slaps the handcuffs on Etienne, since he orchastrated it. :p

Shout out to Brown-Eyed Girl - Hope things are going well for you!!!!