"So, I am still pretty sure he was single," Morgan reaffirmed, "but there was sperm in the corner of the upstairs hall. And stranger things have happened, so who knows...?"

"There was sperm in the upstairs hallway?" asked Sara incredulously.

"Yep."

"Wow..." She set the lid of the evidence box aside, and spread the bags out in front of her. "I couldn't expect a hooker to take this man's money to have sex with me..."

Morgan stopped unloading her own box, and Sara could see her sideways glance in the corner of her eye. "That's what Nick said."

"Really?" answered Sara through a grin. "Imagine that. Nick and hookers..."

It was clear from the look on her face that that didn't sink in with Morgan quite right. "'Nick and hookers'?" she repeated. "What...?"

"He never told you about Kristi Hopkins?"

Morgan bounced her toe audibly on the floor. "I must've missed that one."

Suddenly, Sara realized what she was talking about. She chewed her lip, and shook her head. "You'll have to ask him about that. It's really not my secret to tell."

"Old memories?" mused Morgan, looking away and reaching for the nearby clipboard.

"Yeah," said Sara. "A lot of them coming up lately..."

"Is that what you did last night? Reminisce?"

As impossible as it was, Sara couldn't help feeling like Morgan was talking about the recurrence of her dream. About finding Nick alone... But before answering it in a rational way, she inhaled a stabilizing breath, and nodded.

"That explains it..." Morgan muttered.

"Explains what?"

"Nothing. Nick was just telling me about some old memories, too. Here." She extended Sara the clipboard. "You'd better do this. You're, like, the second in command."

She accepted the clipboard with a suspicious smile in place. "What kind of old memories?"

"I don't know. Previous team dynamics, I guess."

Sara giggled. "If anyone would be able to describe them, it's Nick."

But Morgan didn't seem as amused. "If you say so. What do we have?"

"Alright," Sara sighed wearily. "It looks like you found the most. Um, there's the vomit samples from upstairs, and the sperm for biological specimens. The diamond in the corner, and the shoe prints on the floor in that empty room. Also, the fingerprints off the hallway walls."

"In blood," Morgan interjected.

"Yes, in blood," confirmed Sara. She wrote it onto the evidence log, and kept going. "Then, there's what Nick found. So far..." She rolled her eyes. "DNA swab from the alcohol bottle in the victim's hand... Lifted fingerprint from that same bottle...

"And then, there's the mostly-lack of evidence from around the perimeter. Very shady, and very good work on the criminal's part. Someone obviously knew what they were doing."

"Which suggests familiarity," affirmed Morgan.

"Usually, yes, it suggests familiarity. But nobody's perfect, even when they're meticulously planning a murder. So, what I've found is a little more blood from the slide in the back yard, a Rollex, and some more shoe prints in the dirt by the window."

She looked up at Morgan for a visual cue.

And Morgan provided one by nodding. "Let's get started."

"Yeah."

But the processing was slowed down a bit by some maintenance work taking place in the materials lab.

"Slight delay, ma'am. I'll be out of your way in a moment."

But she didn't mind as much as she might have otherwise. Except for the slight cracks and sputters made by the tools that reminded her slightly of gun shots, she was quite content with the adorable maintenance man's company. He was a pleasant type, and it didn't stop her from getting to her results.

"So, what made you want to do this?" he asked.

She looked up from the blood sample she was running through a tube. "What? CSI...?"

"Yeah." There was a shaky quality to his voice, high-pitched as it partly sounded. Like he was having trouble mustering up enough confidence to talk to someone else...

"Uhm... I don't know, exactly. I was such a science geek in school, and I guess I wanted to find a career in that. And when this came along..." She shrugged. "I jumped at it. I wanted to help people, too..."

"By finding out how they died?"

She was used to this question. But if she hadn't at least been married to Gil Grissom at some point, she probably still wouldn't have known how to answer that. Or, rather, how to answer it so well...

"We're the victim's last voice. It's our job to speak for them, when no one else can or will."

He didn't seem to know how to answer that. He drilled a couple of nails into the table that was attached to the fiber analysis equipment.

"I know," she offered. "It sounds weird, but..."

"No," he said, after another moment or so. "No, it doesn't sound weird at all. I mean... not that weird..."

She laughed. "You'll get used to it. You'll hear a lot of things like that around here if you stay long."

"I think I will," he said thoughtfully. "I can't think of a better way to have conversations like this. Without being looked at like I'm crazy... Or actually having to touch dead people, that is... That part sounds like a real bummer..."

Again, she couldn't help a laugh. "We don't touch dead people," she promised. "We see them a lot, obviously, but there's no touching them. Usually..."

"'Usually'?" he questioned.

"Well, there is always the odd occasion... For everything you can think of..."

"Like what?" he asked, eyes wide, and frozen in the act of putting his tools away.

"Like I said, anything. Just ask our acting supervisor of the morning. He's a CSI, and he's seen more than most of the cops here have. My first year here, he had a gun held to his face. My second, it happened to him again. After the guy with the gun had hidden in his attic, first..."

"What the hell...? Er... heck...?"

"Oh, don't worry about it," she said half-reassuringly, half-dismissively. "I won't tell your boss that you're using bad language."

He smiled, and gestured towards the lab equipment meekly. "There you go. All set..."

"Thanks. Uh..." But when she turned back to read his name tag, he was gone.

When she spotted him in the hall, he almost looked like he was hurrying. She frowned, and went back to her processing. She didn't think she'd been that bad a conversationalist. He hadn't talked to Morgan at all before she'd gone sprinting from the room...

But she didn't worry about it long. The results were in. And a few moments later, she found herself with Morgan, overlooking the spread of printouts from the various lab machines they had just been using.

"Okay..." began Morgan. "I'm... kind of revising my theory on this guy being single. But, it looks like the other party may still not have been female."

She brandished the only sheet of paper left in her hand. The one she had clearly been waiting to show to Sara for dramatic effect. With half a smile in place, Sara accepted it, and read the results along the top.

Then her eyes widened a little, and she looked up without lifting her head. "The semen you found in the hallway corner was mixed with spit? From a man?"

"Yes," said Morgan. "But it gets weirder. Not the same man as the DNA on the bottle. Or the blood from the walls."

Sara blinked in consideration for a moment... and then reached out to take the report from the bottle fingerprint analysis. She compared it to the prints from the blood she had just processed, herself.

"They match..." she said. "The suicide-ee, or victim, left his prints in the blood on the wall."

"That's right," said Morgan. "Which means..."

"He may not have committed suicide. If he's at all involved in things that would cause his fingerprints to be left in blood–"

"–he may have enemies."

"Or an enemy. At least one..." And she stopped and thought, for a moment. Then... "Who threw up?"

"Hmm?" asked Morgan distractedly. "Oh! Same guy with spit in the sperm. Here..."

Sara accepted the next document, and looked it over. "Yeah..." she muttered after a moment. "Yeah, this is who we have to find. Whoever he is, he was probably... intimate with our victim. Or whatever they did... This is the guy we need to find."

"That's great, but we don't have anything to go on for finding him," stated Morgan. "No names came up anywhere during all of this. And some of it's still processing..."

"Well, not all of it. Here's what I've got."

She flopped a folder down in between them. Morgan brushed some of her hair out of the way and opened it.

"Alright, so the blood from the backyard jungle gym..." began Sara. "It's a woman's. And no, there wasn't a name in the system for it."

"Of course not," Morgan droned.

"But, there was some more luck with the diamond," continued Sara. "I ran it through serial check, and found a number etched into it. It's obviously not a real diamond, but it's pretty close... So, I had one of the trainees make a call; it was sold to a store here in Las Vegas, and they aren't far from here. Maybe we–"

"–could find out who!" interrupted Morgan enthusiastically.

"Exactly."

Morgan clapped her hands once, and spun around towards the hall. "I'll get the car!"

Sara squinted after her in a manner of some concern. "How many energy drinks did you have this morning?" she called out.

The jewelry store was a messy-looking place. As they arrived, and Morgan put the car in "Park", a woman behind the large window facing the street was busily brushing dust off of the glass. Sara exchanged a look with her partner, and they exited the vehicle with some very healthy weariness.

"I can't take anymore craziness," Sara said, in a low tone of voice. "This had better go easier than it looks like it will."

"Keep thinking that," Morgan whispered back. "It might actually work for us, somehow..."

And they entered the diamond store, evidence bagged securely in Sara's left hand. The inside was as much of a mess as the outside was. Even though there were a number of people milling around and trying on different kinds of jewelry, the carpets didn't seem to have been vacuumed in weeks. And the lady dusting the window – whom Sara could now see was wearing an actual maid uniform – had a long way to go if she was trying to dust the entire place down. The people behind the sizable counter were smiling at the customers they were talking to in a way that she could only think of as creepy. There were empty spots on the shelves where she guessed that jewelry should have been on display. Nothing was organized or assembled at all. Even some of the jewelry stands by the doors were in pieces...

"Ah!" greeted one of the men behind the counter. "Young ladies...! Marvelous! Marvelous...! Come in, come in."

"Thanks," answered Morgan, with a biting edge in her voice. But part of it was gone after she'd cleared her throat. "We're with the Las Vegas Crime Lab. We'd like to ask a few questions about something you sold here."

The smiles of the employees dimmed a little. But they welcomed the CSIs up to the counter to look at their evidence.

"We found this serial number on it. We traced it to here," explained Sara. "Any idea who it was sold to?"

"No," began the man.

But a woman in a long, purple shawl came around from behind him, and when she spoke, it was with a wispy tone. "Oh, yes..." she half-whispered mysteriously. "I do remember..."

Sara squeezed her fingertips into the palms of her gloves. I said no more crazies... she thought.

"It was a woman," the shawl lady went on. "An older woman, I do believe."

"What kind of an older woman?" pressed Morgan. "One with a lot of money?"

"Oh, no," answered the shawl lady. "No, she said she was spending her life's earnings on it. She wanted to have it for something special."

"Did she say what kind of something special?" questioned Morgan.

"Oh, something to do with a house guest she was very fond of," answered the lady. "Forgive me... but... you said 'the crime lab'? Did something happen to her?"

The more she heard, the sicker Sara felt. It sounded like an old lady's lifetime dream come true may have turned into a nightmare she hadn't survived. She curled up her toes in her shoes, but responded to the store employee's question in as professional a manner as she could.

"We don't know yet. That's part of what we're trying to find out."

"Oh, she was an awfully nice lady," cooed the girl in the shawl. "She certainly made my day."

"How's that?" asked Morgan.

"She asked me if I had anyone special in my life. Said that I was... not to sound immodest, but... 'too pretty' to be alone."

The look on her face told Sara that she was not at all concerned about sounding immodest. And judging by the look on Morgan's, it wasn't fooling her, either.

But it seemed like everything in life was totally lost on the saleswoman. "She wanted to introduce me to her grandson. She said that she thought he would enjoy meeting me."

"Oh, come, now, Clara," spoke up the man who had first greeted them. "We told you that you should have accepted the offer. How often do you get such a chance?"

"She was a stranger, Richard," replied Clara. "I, uhm... I don't like strangers..."

"Well, we don't like criminals," Morgan butted in without another moment's wait. "And we really need to find one before he hurts somebody else. Did the lady ever tell you who she was?"

"Or, maybe, pay for her diamond with a credit card?" tried Sara.

"Oh, no," said Clara. "She used cash. But she did drop something on the way out. I didn't keep it. It was a card with a phone number on it, and a message."

"What kind of message?" wondered Morgan aloud.

"'Help'," Clara stated, simple as if it was the weather.

"And nobody in that crazy place thought they should call the police!?" exclaimed Morgan for the fifth time. "How often does somebody drop such an obvious message for help?! Oh, I'm going to hurt someone..."

"Shh," hissed Sara. "If anyone hears you saying that, you could be in trouble for misrepresenting the department."

Morgan sighed, but conceded, and gave the bag of dumpster-digging material they were getting out of the car a good, hard tug. It came out into her hands, but quickly thudded against the bumper.

"There..."

Sara reached into her pocket and pulled a hair tie out of it. "Here," she offered. "You've got more hair than I do."

"Thanks," said Morgan uncertainly. "How should I take that?"

"Depends on the guy," Sara said back. "Know any of them that like long hair?"

"Sure. Greg does."

"Oh, him, I know. That's why I keep mine short."

"Really? Does it work?"

"Usually," said Sara, beginning to apply the dumpster gear. "He's been off my ass for a while, anyway..."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Morgan's lower lip jutting out a little. It reminded her of one of Nick's favorite "thinking" faces.

And a few moments later, they found themselves knee-deep in a row of conjoined dumpsters in the alley way, by the messiest jewelry store in the city of Las Vegas.

"I always hated this," complained Sara, foot going into a bag and coming out covered with moldy cheese. "I used to make the guys do it back when we had more of them."

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" joked Morgan. "I bet they did almost anything you asked."

"I wish," admitted Sara, absentmindedly kicking a box out of the way while her mind wandered back to years past. "I usually had to go through Catherine to get that kind of response."

"'Through Catherine'?" repeated Morgan. "Why?"

"I don't know." She jerked at a smashed cabinet door. "She was prettier than me, I guess."

Suddenly, she stopped and stood up straight, looking right ahead with semi-widened eyes. Had she really just said that? Out loud...?

She glanced over at Morgan, and was quietly thrilled to see that she'd ducked into the dumpster, and was determinedly pushing a large, black trash bag over into the corner. Whether to avoid looking at Sara, or just lost in her job, Sara was not sure. But as a rush of wind hit her on the face, Sara let out a breath of relief. Half relief of the unpleasantly-private confession she had just all but made... and half of the smell lingering in her nostrils.

"I'll smell like this goop for weeks," she bemoaned. "Reminds me of the time Nick and I brought a heavily-decomposing body out of the desert..."

"Bad as the one we found today?"

"Oh, no," was Sara's automatic answer. "No, that one was the worst. But back then, I couldn't get the smell out of my hair. Nick kept teasing me, this guy I'd just met wouldn't even come around me... Greg was nice, though." She laughed once, eyes focused on the street beyond the alley, mind wandering off again in nostalgia. "He told me a real man wouldn't mind..."

Morgan stopped, then. She glanced up at Sara from her squatted position, and crinkled her eyes against the sunlight.

"Did you ever think about trying him out?" she asked.

Sara frowned. "Huh?"

"That's right, ladies, just... I don't know, just keep looking!" came the sudden call of the store manager from the back door of the building. "And if you need anything else, please just let me know!"

"Yeah!" shouted Sara back at him. "Thanks!"

Her enthusiastic wave, no matter how false, seemed to have done the trick. He turned and went back into the store, and left them alone.

"What were you saying, Morgan–"

"–Ah HA!"

The young blonde stood up, and unwrinkled what appeared to be a medium-sized postcard. And written there, in black letters, was the message they were looking for.

Sara exhaled again in relief. "Good job, Morgan."

She climbed out of the dumpster, and turned to offer a hand to help Morgan.

Who took it tightly just as she banged her knee on the side of the dumpster. "Ouch!" she half-shrieked. And then: "Yeah, whatever. Let's go and get this back to the lab, and take a look at our suspect profiles."

"Suspects?" asked Sara.

"Well, yeah," said Morgan. "Anyone here could have done it."

And as much as she doubted it, years of surprise had taught Sara that she could hardly argue with that one...