Chapter 1

September 2nd, 2006
Las Vegas, Nevada
12:03 AM

He slowed to a near stop, observing his team as he entered the break room. Greg was hovering almost possessively over the pot of coffee brewing on the counter, which was so unsurprising, Grissom had to shake his head to stop the laugh from coming out. From Greg, his eyes wandered over to Nick, who was sitting in a reclining chair, eating an apple and ribbing Greg with a giant grin on his face. Grissom's gaze continued to move along, coming to a stop on Catherine and Warrick. The pair was seated at the table, hunched over a file. The stress lines across their faces were noticeable, and Grissom found his eyes fixed on them. He watched as Warrick ran a hand through his unkempt hair and Catherine's hand came up and gave Warrick's shoulder a slight squeeze. Neither of their eyes left the file in front of them. Their case was clearly getting to them and the pressure from the Sheriff and Under Sheriff, as well as the media attention their case was attracting, wasn't making their jobs any easier. Grissom cleared his throat. "Warrick? Catherine?" Both sets of eyes peeked up from behind the file. He could clearly see the anxiety and the fatigue in them. "How's the case coming along?"

"It's not." Warrick sighed in frustration and Grissom commiserated, knowing how hard cases like this could try on people. It was one of the reasons he chose to hand it off to Warrick and Catherine when he wasn't able to pull away from his and Sara's own high profile case, knowing he could trust the pair to handle it and treat it with dignity. He also knew they'd do everything in their power to solve it.

"We haven't been able to find any evidence. I don't get it. How can someone get away with something like this and nobody see anything?"

He smiled in sympathy. "Keep working on it Warrick. Go back to the hospital. You and Catherine will turn something up."

The pair nodded and rose, leaving him in the break room with Greg and Nick, both men looking anxious as they waited for him to continue on. "Nick, you have court tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

"Alright, take the smash and grab. It'll give you a chance to leave earlier and have some time to prepare and rest before court tomorrow."

"Yes, Sir." Nick rose, tossing the remainder of his apple in the garbage as he took the slip from Grissom's hand and exited the room.

"Greg, you and I have a 419. Woman's body found in a motel just off the strip."

12:22 AM

There was a slight wind carrying up bits and pieces of trash, the lights from the motel and police cars illuminating sheets of newspaper and plastic bags as they danced in the air. Grissom and Greg stepped out of the Denali and headed towards the door of the motel room where police officers and EMTs were milling about. Seeing Sofia's ashen face among them, Grissom grabbed his kit and sauntered over to the huddle. While other officers seemed to look pale and sick, it was Sofia's face he concentrated on, not used to seeing her normally collected features look so pallid. "Are you alright?"

Sofia nodded, her lips pursed, as if she were afraid to open her mouth.

"What have we got?"

"Dead woman on the bed. No id yet. Anonymous call in. Clerk in the office didn't even know what happened until we showed up." Sofia paused a moment, looking at him. Her voice was soft. "It's bad, Gil."

"Must be. David here yet?"

"No."

He nodded and looked towards the door before looking back to Sofia. She glanced to the door and quickly looked away. He studied her, unsure of what he should do in this situation. Finally he placed a tentative hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. "You're sure you're alright?"

"Yeah, will be. Look, I'm going to go speak to the clerk and see when the manager is arriving."

"Okay."

She turned and left immediately. He picked up his kit and nodded for Greg to follow. He made it to the doorway before stopping suddenly and wiping his hand over his face. Taking a moment to adjust to the sight in front of him, he took a deep breath, and then entered the room.

"Holy shit."

He turned and washed the color drain from Greg's face. "Greg?"

"I know, sorry. I just need a minute."

"Yeah," he mumbled under his breath as he turned back to stare at the woman on the bed. "Alright?"

"Yep." Greg's voice was strained and entirely unconvincing, but he let it pass.

"Okay, you can, um, check the floor for footprints and compare to the EMTs' and responding officers. Then, you can begin printing. I'll handle the photos for now."

"Thanks, Grissom."

"Yeah."

"Oh my God." David's voice came from behind and Grissom turned just in time to see the coroner bolting from the room. He took a deep breath and followed David out into the cluster of police officers. David stood in the middle, hunched over and taking shallow breaths while one of the officers patted him on the back. "Sorry, this is the kind of scene I can't get used to. I'm okay now. I'm sorry Grissom."

"It's alright."

David stood up, walking through the opening police officers made and back into the room. Grissom followed, passing by a staring Greg in the doorway. He stood beside David and looked down at the naked woman bound, spread-eagle, to the bed at the ankles and wrists. She had fabric sticking out of her mouth from what appeared to be a gag. Blood covered her vagina and pooled between her legs. Streams where the blood broke out of the pool meandered along the shower curtain beneath her body. "David, liver temp?"

"Huh." He'd startled David, awakening the young man from his unconscious state. "Right, one second."

David moved over the body, inserting the thermometer into the corpse and took a reading. "She's only been dead an hour."

"Thanks."

He snapped more photos, carefully documenting the body, the ties that held her in place, the shower curtain she was placed on, and the gag sticking partially out of the mouth. "Okay to move her?"

"Yeah."

Grabbing a pair of tweezers, he carefully removed the gag from the dead woman's mouth and throat. He held it up and studied it, finding the scarf similar to the ones binding the woman to the bed. "Greg, snap a photo."

Flashes from Greg's camera lit the dark room. "Evidence bag?" Greg grabbed a bag and held it open, allowing Grissom to drop the scarf into it. He took the bag from Greg, sealing it and placing it in his kit. "Grab some scissors. We'll cut the ties off. I want to preserve the knots for now."

One by one, they cut the ties, placing each piece in a separate evidence bag and snapping photos as they worked. Grissom turned the woman's wrist, and lifted his camera to document the bruising. His eyes wandered up the arm, taking in the numerous track marks running down from her elbow. "Greg, do you see any needles or drugs around?"

"Grissom?"

"Hmm?"

"There's nothing in here. This room's clean."

"What do you mean?" He lifted his head, quirking an eyebrow at Greg.

"It's clean. Look around. I bet this is the cleanest this room has ever been, maybe since the motel opened."

Grissom frowned but allowed himself to look around the room. The woman's body had grabbed hold of his attention the moment he entered and he hadn't yet been able to shift his attention to take in the rest of the room. When he did, he realized that Greg was right. Apart from a few footprints on the floor, the room was immaculately clean, cleaner than the staff of the cheap motel would ever care to bother with. His finger ran along the edge of the bedside table and picked up barely a speck of dust. Grissom squeezed his eyes shut, pinched the bridge of his nose and opened his lids again. "Grab the manager and ask to look at the vacant rooms, see what the standard for cleanliness is here."

"I'm on it."

He watched Greg leave the room and turned to David, who was leaning on a stretcher and again staring at the body. "We can remove the body now, David."

David nodded and moved to the woman's shoulders. Grissom moved to the ankles and they carefully lifted the woman from off of the shower curtain and onto the body bag lying on the stretcher. David zipped the bag closed and pushed the stretcher from the room. When Greg reentered, Grissom saw the overwhelming relief on the young man's face.

"The manager opened up the room next door. Cleaning job wasn't nearly as thorough, minimal required effort, though the manager did say it would have been done by the same housekeeper."

He nodded and bent down, running a latex hand over the carpet. "I think this carpet's been steam cleaned."

"The door and the walls were wiped down with some sort of cleaning agent. I doubt it was the housekeeper. The killer had to be uber-prepared."

"What do you make of this shower curtain?"

Greg shrugged. Grissom studied it, snapping photos as he did. "Maybe it was cleaner than the blankets on the bed? Easier to remove trace?"

"You think the killer cleaned up after? The woman has only been dead about a couple of hours now."

"And the call came in to the lab not long before assignments, which places the call only about ten to fifteen minutes after TOD. It would have had to have been a quick clean up."

"So the steam job and the wipe down of the walls had to have occurred before."

"Unless our killer was doing it while the woman was lying on the bed, dying. We'll have to wait for COD to see if that's a possibility, though. If she died due to a slow hemorrhage, the killer might have had time. If not, well then he or she had to have cleaned up before."

"Before he committed the crime and had to worry about trace? That doesn't make sense."

"It does if it wasn't trace the killer was worried about. He or she could have been worried about hygiene."

"That's messed up."

Grissom shrugged. "Maybe this was an accident. Maybe all this wasn't supposed to result in death."

Greg shuddered. "What was he doing then? Performing some sort of motel room abortion?"

"There was that case just over a year and a half ago, where a therapist was using a storage facility to perform gender reassignment surgery."

"Right, I remember that. I am so relieved I never walked in on that scene. I don't think I would have made it to the field."

"Yeah." Grissom's voice was soft, thinking back to the graphic pictures he'd seen of the scene Catherine, Nick and Warrick had discovered. The scene he and Greg were processing hadn't been much better when they first walked in. He was relieved and thankful that Nick, Catherine and Warrick were spared from seeing this scene after having to deal with that other one, even if it was some time ago. He was even more thankful Sara had left for a conference the afternoon before, or she'd be the one in the motel room with him now. He sighed. "If he or she was using the motel room to perform an abortion…or some other kind of surgery, I don't think the victim consented. She was gagged and bound to the bed."

"Maybe he didn't have anything to knock her out with, or figured she was high and wouldn't feel it, but she began flailing and screaming and he had to tie her down keep her quiet. It could explain what went wrong."

"Don't get tied up to one theory, Greg, though it would help to explain why the room is so clean. If the killer was planning on performing some sort of medical procedure in a cheap motel, sterilization would be an issue." He paused and pursed his lips, staring down at the bed. "I can't make out the shower curtain, though. If the killer was performing an underground abortion, wouldn't he or she bring in clean sheets, or clean plastic? Greg, check the bathroom and see if it has a shower curtain."

"Yeah, maybe we'll find needles in there. If she was using, she may have shot up in the…" Greg's voice died as he reached the entrance way to the bathroom. "Grissom?"

"Yeah?"

"I think you need to come look at this."

"What is it?" He moved in behind Greg and looked. There was no shower curtain. He looked over at Greg and his eyes wandered down, following Greg's gaze. On the floor, in the middle of the room, as though it was part of a presentation, was a white towel. On the towel were two bloody scalpels. Beneath the scalpels, a carved out wooden bowl sat holding its bloody contents.

"Is that…is that what I think it is?"

He closed his eyes and nodded before taking a deep breath. If the evidence changes, so must the theory. "Once we wash down the victim we'll know for sure, but I don't think this was an abortion gone wrong."