To say that Madame Challal's place belied her classy act would be a huge understatement. Based on Nick's description, an apartment at the top of a rickety wooden staircase was far from what Sara had pictured. But it was what she was walking up to... Greg trailing her, and fighting with his flashlight. As they came to the door with Officer Mitchell, a horrible smell reached her nose. It wasn't decomp, but it wasn't pleasant. A smile came involuntarily, as she again remembered the unbearable scent of her first seriously decomposing body case in Las Vegas...
"What's so funny?" inquired Greg.
His flashlight finally popped on, and he made the ever-so unappreciated choice to shine it right at her. She squinted against the light.
"I was just thinking about the smell..."
"You mean the smell I'm about to have to kick the door in on?" snarled a rather irritable Mitchell.
Greg shrugged, as if it were just nature of the business, and that it was okay to express such to their very best assisting policeman.
Sara, however, offered to go in, herself. "How about we tag team it?" She gagged a little, but forced a smile out. "I can do it."
Mitchell smiled, and waved a dismissive hand. "Nah, you stay right here. Just a second..."
He knocked on the door, and shouted the trademark "Las Vegas Police" before bashing it clean through. As if to reinforce the frailty of the place, the door collapsed. Sara watched in total disbelief, the way it crashed down on the thin carpeting of the living room with a nerve-harping clang. Greg didn't seem prepared for it, either; he literally pressed his lower jaw back up with one finger before gesturing"ladies first".
She wasn't sure she appreciated the sentiment like she should have, given the aroma. But she took it the way it was meant, and stepped ahead of her loyal friend into the dark room.
Whatever the stench was, it was definitely getting closer... The further she went in, the fewer places she could turn her head for clearer air.
Greg came up to her shoulder and began to direct his light all over the room. "There has got to be an obvious source for that. It's too strong to come from anything small."
"Not necessarily..." Sara answered.
"I suppose not." He coughed. "But I'd like to think there's some sense left in the world..."
"Me, too," she muttered. "But then I woke up underneath a car... An upside down car, in the desert..."
Try as she might not to go there, it had been in her head since the end of the meeting back at the lab. Or rather, since she'd woken up in Nick's arms that morning, if she was honest with herself. But Greg didn't answer it. Not outright, anyway.
"I hear ya," was all he said. "So, catch me up on the whole case with Nick, and the shooting. Did it turn out well with I.A.?"
She turned over a couch cushion, and glared hard at the white fabric beneath it. "As far as I know. On Nick's end, anyway. They had some disturbing things to say beyond that, though."
"Like what?"
Greg had migrated to the small dining room, where Mitchell was circling back around till he was by them again.
"A lot of shootings," she replied.
There were flies on the ground by the empty plant pot. Their buzzing got louder the closer she came.
"'A lot of shootings'?" repeated Greg, disbelievingly. "Not to sound like a dick, but so? That's a huge part of this job."
"Yeah, but you didn't hear what I heard," Officer Mitchell interjected, in the act of holstering his pistol. "Sheriff Ecklie was on the phone with somebody while Captain Brass' was chasing down the warrants, and we heard the number's up to 100,000. In two weeks... Actually... this was case number 100,000."
Sara tried to block Greg's melodramatic reaction out. Though she had been just as shocked when Nick had told it to her, she didn't feel like she had the space in her mind needed to gauge just how justified the long, drawn out gasp from her crime scene partner was. Not with more and more flies coming up on her...
One thing Greg said did come through, though. And she would think about it later, when she had some time. "It's like a massive uprising on law enforcement, or something. Somebody's aiming high with this one..."
"I don't know," answered Mitchell. "All I know is, I'm not about to hang it all up."
"Neither am I," Greg insisted. "I just can't believe there's been that many of them, that quickly."
Sara rounded the corner into the other room. There were the flies, all gathered in the corner she was about to step in. Something was sitting in a pile, there. And the disgusting scent suddenly registered with her.
"Oh, no... Hell, no..." she mumbled. "Uhm... Greg...? I'm leaving this one with you."
The sound of his footsteps – muffled, though slightly, on the thin carpeting – reached her ears. "Leaving what?"
And then he saw it. Now, that was a gasp well-earned. "Oh, my God... Why?!"
There was a pile of feces on the carpet. Literal, human feces, lying in wait in the corner of the small extra room, right before the bedrooms and bathroom.
"Why do I have to collect?!" he began to protest. "You found it! I was talking to Mitchell, I was slacking! You should get credit...!"
A smile, both savage and playful, broke out on her face. "No. I think you've earned this one. Call it my personal punishment. And we won't mention to Russell. Er... Nick."
Greg's eyes made a funny motion, and his lip twitched a little. "You wouldn't make Nick do it if he was here."
"True. He's my boss. But go ahead and take it, anyway."
"He's just your boss for the night," answered Greg, resolution to unpleasantness ringing in his voice.
"Whatever. I'm going to check the kitchen."
"Uh... you might want to check the bathroom," Mitchell suggested. "I think there's more of it in there."
Sara threw a hand out at Greg. "Don't touch that! If the mess is worse in the bathroom, I'm making you do that."
He didn't even frown. He whipped his hands above his head, and a full grin was in place when he spoke back to her. "You never miss anything, huh?"
"You bet," she shouted back.
But the mess in the bathroom was of a different kind. Thousands of little pieces, all scattered on the floor, of different building materials. Though there was an un-flushed pile in the toilet, it was still enough to satisfy her vindictive jabs toward Greg. She sighed in relief, and set her kit down. This was going to be okay.
But as she squatted down to begin opening her kit, she caught it. Right in the middle of the construction materials, semi-hidden beneath the plaster, was the picture she guessed was left there on purpose. And the knife, with thick fibers on it, was poking out from beneath some small steel bars... She applied gloves, and began to take the precautionary photographs...
But as she reached for the evidence, there was a loud crunch. She felt like she had sunk a little. A look of surprised confusion came to her face.
"Sara?" called out Greg.
"Ye–"
CRACK. There it went.
An elderly couple in the apartment below were suddenly greeted with a woman, coming right through their ceiling, and landing directly on their dinner table. Along with a mess of construction materials... There was a scream, probably from the old woman, and Sara felt herself rolling off the table and onto a couple of chairs. Adrenaline-fueled reactions caused her to grip the chair her upper body had hit, but her lower half swung with force right off the other one.
"OUCH!" she cried out.
"Holy shit!" came a voice from above. Greg's...
Sara's breathing was the only sound she registered when the noise and the dust had settled. She looked around, slightly panicky, and then up. Just in time to see something rolling towards her, on the fringe of the hole. That something being the sink...
She dropped to the floor, and pressed away from it with her hand. And just as she felt the same rough carpet from the apartment above greet her back on the apartment below, the sink from the bathroom overhead gave in. It crashed onto the kitchen floor, and spread out all over, in pieces. She sat up and sighed. Her eyes were for the couple in the kitchen, first. Seeming to be unharmed, she then looked to Greg.
But it was Mitchell whom she heard first. "Piece of shit apartments..."
"But that's not what it was."
On the back edge of the ambulance, behind the apartment building, where Sara was now being examined for trauma, Brass was filling her in on the latest discoveries.
"Somebody weakened that apartment on purpose."
She looked up from where she was sitting, her eyes narrowed against the pain it took for her arm to be moved around. "What...?" she asked disbelievingly. "How the hell did they do that?"
"By buzz saw." It was Greg who answered, waving plastic bags in each hand; looking closely, Sara could see that one of them was marked "biological evidence". "I rooted through the pieces on the floor, and found little saw marks on the ceiling. Hidden by the thinly-applied re-plaster..."
The faint sounds of the residents protesting the situation seemed to fade in to where Sara was. She leaned forward on the arm that didn't hurt, and let her head rest on the palm of her hand. A lone sniffle, which may have sounded like the start to crying, escaped her. And then Greg was there, one arm draped over her shoulder. It felt nothing like a distant sensation... one that she remembered, but did not recognize, and sometimes wished that she had given everything else up for... But it was enough of a comfort to make her lean into him.
"Why do these things keep happening to me?" she asked the question that she couldn't quite chase off. "No offense, but why couldn't you have fallen through the floor?"
They both laughed. She, and Greg... Like old times. Far, far behind them, it seemed. And they were joined, if briefly, by Brass.
But after a few moments, he straightened up. "Okay... Stay here, Sara. I'm gonna go interview the old people."
"Oh, no," she said. "I'm going in on this one. This is something I've just got to hear..." And she made a noise of effort with the heaving of herself off the ambulance.
The paramedic did not complain about her moving, but Greg did. "Sara, come on... You've just crashed through a ceiling and into somebody's kitchen table. Why don't you just take a seat?"
"I need another laugh," was all she answered with.
Brass looked to the paramedic, as if to get his permission. But, perhaps at the tone behind Sara's abrupt answer, the aforementioned paramedic lifted both hands in a surrendering gesture. "I ain't about to question the lady's work ethic," he said. "She's not hurt severely. If she wants to go back to work, let her."
For a moment, there seemed to be no better friend in the world. Sara smiled warmly at the man, and then stepped to Brass' side for the next step in their investigation. Comfortable, and confident... And ready for the adventure to follow.
And what an adventure it soon became. As they approached, the little old lady Sara had just about fallen into came storming up to her. The very picture of righteous indignation, with a rolling pin in hand to complete the scenario.
"Now, listen, here, young woman...!" she began to scream.
Sara leaned back, a little indignation of her own hanging just outside the realm of her patience.
"You do not just fall in on somebody's dinner date! The mess is inexcusable! I want it taken care of, and I want it taken care of immediately! We do not–!"
"–Ma'am!" Brass had to shout, too, to get his voice above hers. With several failed, quieter calming measures under his belt, first...
She rounded on him with fiery eyes, and flung both hands to her hips. Sara's aggravation left a little with the sight of that rolling pin dangling...
"I promise you, my CSI co-worker, here did not just drop in on your dinner date voluntarily. Okay...? And don't worry, we will get through the process, and find out who's responsible for fixing your roof. That's not what we're here about; it's just kind of a given to most people."
The woman's nostrils flared, but she kept listening in silence.
"What we need to know is what you know about the weakness in your ceiling."
"I shouldn't think I'd know anything about that," she shot back. As if it, or anything about the current situation, made any kind of sense... "I've never seen a ceiling just... cave in, you know?"
"I know," Brass said. "Believe me, I know. I see a lot of weird things in this business, but this one's not one of the more common occurrences. Thank God..."
The fatherly look of concern that was in his eyes, as he shot them sideways at Sara, warmed her up a little. Despite the lack of up close care in her present life, there were those people around who always seemed to know what she needed...
"But somebody tampered with your ceiling. They made kind of a mess doing it, too. Didn't you notice the discoloration of your ceiling?"
"I can't say I have, no." Perhaps the weight of what had just occurred was finally sinking in; she seemed moderately more concerned about the implications behind it, all of a sudden.
"Then I don't suppose you could tell me who did it... Or who might have done it? Or even when it might have been done?"
She shook her head. But it was then that her gentleman friend finally spoke.
"I know it wasn't like that last night," he added. "I remember because I was looking up at the fan, thinking it needed a new light bulb. And checking the ceiling for leaks."
He was a little slower speaking, but much less abrasive. And there was a kindness to him that Sara appreciated. Enough to offer him a very slight and short smile.
But one that the old woman with the rolling pin did not miss. "Now, don't you get any funny ideas about stealing my man!"
Complete shock overtook Sara, and her professionalism went on a momentary hike. Her jaw hit the gravel, and her arms unfolded so that they could dangle at her side.
Brass confiscated the rolling pin, as she waved it for emphasis at Sara. His lips were very tightly pressed, and she knew that he wanted to laugh as much as she had.
"Ma'am..." he said for the fiftieth time. "Please, try to focus. We need details. We need evidence..."
"Well, perhaps I could help with that." Greg had approached, and there was a very accomplished-looking expression on him. He raised the photo frame, in an evidence bag, with one hand. "I think I recognize somebody in this picture."
He was talking about Brandon, of course... but it was the woman in the picture he pointed to, as he held it out to them. "Do you know these people at all?"
Both the old lady and her much-coveted man leaned in to examine the picture more closely. The man even moved his glasses up.
But the answer surprised Sara more than a little. "I do..." the woman confessed. "I do know them."
Sara stood up straighter. "What?"
"That young lady, there?" continued the woman. "That was my daughter."
"Our daughter..." the man said. "And that fine-looking gentleman, there, is our grandson."
The address provided by the storage guard took Nick to a familiar place: the neighborhood in which the first crime had been committed. He could see that as soon as he laid eyes on it. The only question had been, how close would it get...?
As it turned out, right across the street. The police tape was still very visible when he looked back at the miserable house. As he climbed down from the SUV and made his second stupid choice of the night: approaching a potential suspect's house without backup... His hand came up somewhat unwittingly to his gun... but he did not stop at all as he crossed the porch and gave the doorbell a ring.
It didn't take long for the potential suspect to come to the door, though. The sounds of game show voices on a television cranked down, and then, there he was. Jason the janitor... Brandon's self-professed understanding buddy.
The buddy who – upon registering the presence of a strange man on the porch – looked a little confused. "Yes?"
"Jason Veran?"
"That's me," he confirmed. "What can I do for you?"
At first, all Nick could do was sigh. There were so many answers to that question.