"So, this all started with a bad smell," Morgan began explaining to Greg. "Some people went to look in a window in this suburb, and saw a dead body lying there. They called it in."
"And it smelled... very bad," Sara interjected.
"It did," confirmed Morgan. "And what we found there was a disgusting mess. Alcohol bottles, puke, sperm, and blood all over the place."
"Nick found most of it," said Sara.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered that she had pointed to him. He nodded, and offered a short grin before tuning them out part of the way again.
"Of course," Greg stated. "Who else...?"
"But, what we did find ourselves was a diamond, which led us via serial check to a small jewelry store owned by a group of real oddballs," continued Sara. "And one of the ladies there – Clara – told us that she didn't know anything about the situation."
"She did tell us that the diamond had sold to an old lady, though," said Morgan.
"Who's in the morgue," added Sara.
"But Clara was lying," Morgan clarified.
Nick couldn't help the slight smile that crept up his face. Greg was looking politely between the two women as he tried to keep up. It was so very like he had done when he'd first become a CSI. And that was a much better memory.
"She did know what was going on, and she did sleep with our victim. Vigorously..." explained Sara. "We found vaginal lubrication that matched right to her."
She pointed at the highlight on the case file, and Greg skimmed over it with his eyes.
"Okay..." he said simply, and formally. "But where does the victim factor in to all this?"
Sara and Morgan looked at each other, and then each at Nick. "That's what we still don't know," Morgan said. "We're not quite sure where he actually fits into this mess. There doesn't seem to be much of a motive for killing him from anyone."
"He was a complete pervert," Sara said. "He had sex with pretty much anything."
"He was an alcoholic from hell," Morgan expounded. "He seems to have spent his whole life that way... But it's not what killed him."
Pushing the thoughts of his family to the back of his mind, Nick spoke up. "He was a bad relative. Didn't treat his mother or nephew very well..." He stepped up to the table, and ran his fingers over the case file's pages. "But his nephew is the liar I told you about when you first came to the hallway." He flicked through the pages, and withdrew the photograph that had been taken of Brandon when he'd first come to the police station. "He came rushing up to the house like he had no idea his uncle was dead. And he may or may not have known his grandmother was, but he at least lied about the boozer on the floor."
"Put on a real good show, too," came a scratchy voice.
They looked over to the doorway. It was Brass, standing dutifully with his hands folded in front of him.
"I thought I'd come over and tell you in person, Nicky: we can't find Brandon."
Nick dropped his gaze. His eyes, it seemed, moved themselves back and forth across the dirty details of the floor. Of course they couldn't...
"We went to the warehouse he left us, and we found out he'd been fired two weeks ago," Brass elaborated. "They gave us his home address on their files, though. It's empty. Not a single sign of life. Looks like nobody's been home in a month or two, at least..."
Nick raised his head, and began to weigh the choices... There was always Sara; pissed or not, he knew she would go if he asked. And Greg was eager, and also familiar. And Morgan had been his favorite of the new additions to their lab since all the changes; she would be no less the merry if he brought her with. But someone would have to go... With the missing evidence still hanging over his head, anything too solo would look irresponsible, at the very least.
But he knew who it would be before he turned and looked at her.
And so did she.
So she didn't wait for him to say it. "Yes."
There was a wave of calmness, then. The distinctly uncomfortable appearance he'd been covered in seemed to melt. Though the tone of his voice crawled down a little bit...
"Thank you," he managed to whisper, through the husky drawl of his home land.
And she couldn't help but smile at it. And stare at the one who made it.
Even if he didn't stare back. "Greg, what I'd like you to do is go over all the evidence, top to bottom. Fresh eyes could really help us. And Morgan, could you and Sara give me the evidence part of that summary, now? We still need at least something on Martin Trem and Madame Challal. So far, we got nothing."
"You mean, we had nothing," Morgan replied. She clapped her hands together, and reached for the box by his hand. "We've actually got something on both of them."
Nick frowned. "We do?"
"Yeah. Check this out. Sara?" She tossed the bag in her hand to the person in question, and pulled two of them out, herself.
Sara smacked two hands around the bag in the air, and spun it around to take a good look at it. Suppressing quite effectively,she hoped, the irritation of an unknown object flying across her vision...
It was the fingerprint analysis read-out from the window in the vault at Woman's Best Friend. "Oh!" she exclaimed, as the memory of the discovery dawned on her. "That's right..."
Nick leaned in close. The heat from his body seemed to bounce on the side of her arm. "Whatcha got?" he asked, a little louder than gently.
She shuddered, and tightened her grip on the bag. And her answer dropped to match his previous tone. But all she said was, "It's Martin Trem."
She looked up when he didn't say anything. Something flicked across his face, but she waited. It felt like it was his turn to talk.
"His fingerprints, then?"
But that was Brass. She redirected her line of vision with a deep breath. "Yes," she answered. "He was up there, in the vault. Doing something to the window."
"And he wasn't the only one," Morgan said, sounding much like the wait to reveal what she had found had been really hard on her. "The blood samples: all three of them..." She slapped each report down on the table. "All Madame Challal's."
"All of them?" asked Nick.
"That's right," Morgan answered. "She had a struggle, at the very least. Who knows who with?"
"Let's find out," Brass said. "There's more than enough here for a warrant to search with."
"Yeah. Even if she persists in being a bitch," said Nick. "But nothing, still, on the old woman?"
"Sorry, captain," Morgan replied, sounding nervous. "Nothing else, so far. And we're still waiting on David for that autopsy..."
"Oh, yeah," said Nick. Confusion crept across his face. "I wonder what's taking so long..."
"Let's go and check it out," offered Sara. "He's probably just having a long day. God knows, we are. We can look on the way out."
Nick nodded, and grinned at her from still quite closely beside her. "Let's do that. And then we can head for Brandon's place."
For what felt like the millionth time, a new wind powered her sails. Sara gave him a thumbs up and clicked her tongue, much to his sudden joy. As they walked towards the elevator to go to the morgue, he reverted to the familiar man she had known for so long. And though it still showed – the back-shelved sadness – his theorizing seemed to make it go away for a little bit. Most of his theories were, in her opinion, a little far fetched, but she played bobble head quite happily all the way down the cold hall to the morgue, just to see that confidence come back to his form.
But then, he said something in his hypothesizing that struck her quite suddenly. "I mean, for all we know... Brandon's not even related to these people. We never did look much at the extra room in the original crime scene."
She stopped. "What?"
So did he. "His room? Or, at least, I think it would be his room. The one at the top of the stairs. We never had any real reason to check, but I hadn't thought until Greg asked the question: 'Where does the vic even go in this screwed up picture,' that we don't even know where Brandon does, either."
A myriad of notions ran through her mind. But she landed on the one that stood out the most, and decided to explain the others to him on their way to the scene. "We don't know where any of them fit," she half-muttered.
"I'm sorry...?" He leaned his ear down a little bit.
"We don't know where any of them fit," she repeated a little louder. "The whole thing is totally scattered."
"That's right," he affirmed. "That's what I was just thinking. I–"
She smiled, and clamped down on his lips with her fingers. His mustache tickled. "Yes, but Nick... What if it was set up that way?"
The way he scrunched his eyebrows, and aimed his eyes to the side in thought was borderline adorable with his lips pinched together.
"I bet if we go and look at that bedroom, we'll find something that someone just hasn't had time to take care of," she said.
"You sound like Morgan," he mumbled through her grip. "But you're probably right."
She nodded, feeling very much like Morgan in the way she was suddenly overcome by enthusiasm. "Let's go and take a look!"
"Hey, when was the last time you had a nice dinner?"
She looked up. He wasn't looking at her, but his question hung a little in the air, which seemed as multi-colored as the flashing lights from the top of the squad car Officer Mitchel had accompanied them in. She was at a loss for words, for just a moment or two.
"Uh...me...?" she tried.
Great. That sounded stupid... And he caught it, too. But instead of looking at her like she'd grown a second head – the way she suddenly remembered Hank had done a couple of times – he smiled, and lifted his eyes to hers.
"Yeah, Sara, you."
She bit down on her bottom lip with her upper teeth. "Well, there was last night... At the cafe, you remember..."
"I do. But I mean, like, a nice dinner. Like, a place you went to with somebody, and didn't have to worry about the tab."
"Oh. I suppose the last time I went with Grissom. So, a while ago. Greg took me once, too, but that was before the divorce."
She didn't think she sounded too sad. And for the moment, she didn't feel sad. But he still responded with a single, sympathetic nod, and looked away at the house. It was enough to sink her formal-feeling expression. But not enough to make her angry with him again.
Which, she figured, as they ascended the front steps, would not have made sense, anyway. Had any of the recent times made sense...?
She shook her head, and leaned against the side of the door frame, while Mitchell made the obligatory pass through the premises. It was a large house, so it took a few minutes. She admired the fearlessness with which he strode in, and the way it persisted in the sound of his quick and unabashed footsteps was amazing to her.
"How soon after meeting Officer Mitchell did you wish you had always known him?" she asked Nick.
He smiled, and let his head drop a little. "Immediately," he answered without a beat. "I doubt I would have suffered the Gordons if good ol' Mitch had been around."
A swirling sickness ran through her. "Oh... Oh, yeah..."
He looked up again. "Surely, you must have thought the same thing, once or twice. 'If only someone else had been there...'"
She nodded... more as a gesture to him than an honesty with herself. Although she had thought about it a couple of times from her own kidnapping experience, it had not necessarily been Mitchell who'd come to mind.
It was Mitchell who came through the front door rather suddenly in an unbroken stride, though. "All clear," he announced.
"Thanks," Nick said.
And he strode, himself right through the front. Sara followed, feeling rather uneven as she watched him whip out a flashlight to guide them through the dark.
"It doesn't smell quite as bad in here," he remarked. "Still a little decomp..."
She sniffed at the air, and frowned as the still-offensive odor penetrated her sense of smell. "Yeah," she still said. "I guess it's better than it was."
The upstairs room, which they went for immediately, was fairly empty. She pulled her own flashlight out of her pocket, and clicked it on. But when she realized what it had landed on, she jumped, and screamed like a girl right out of a horror movie.
"God...!"
Strong hands closed around her arms and shoulders, and she landed squarely on both feet. Nick's chest anchored the back of her neck, and the rest of him supported the rest of her.
"What?!" he exclaimed. "What is it?"
She steadied herself, and returned her beam of light to where it had been. On the head of a deer, lying face up on the hard, wooden floor.