Chapter 10

"Any ideas why that one guy's shoulder is green?" Sara asked Grissom as she was driving them back to the lab. "Have you seen anything like it before?"

Grissom had some of his entomological samples on his lap and was sorting through them.

"My guess, there is probably a bullet in his shoulder and the green is due to oxidation of the bullet. The bodies we usually deal with aren't in the ground long enough for that to happen." He hardly looked up at her at all.

"Cool, that means the bullet is still in the body. Hopefully we have something for ballistics to work with," Sara replied, opening another bottle of water as they waited at a red light.

Sara enjoyed the fresh air streaming in through her open window.

Back at the lab she retrieved the bag of fresh lemons from her locker. She made a mental note to restock as she stepped into the shower. The lemon juice helped a lot to rinse the smell from her skin. She always kept several pairs of clean underwear and at least two change of clothes in her locker. The underwear she had different categories of nice-ones-for-daily-wear, to-be-worn-for-stinky-jobs such as dumpster diving, and to-be-used-in-severe-decop-cases. This last category she would often just dump in the trash after use. You never go the smell completely out of your clothes, so she came up with this system. She put on a clean pair of lab-overalls to go down to the morgue, she knew she would need another shower after working with the decomposing bodies, so she didn't bother changing into her spare clothes. She stuffed her dirty clothes into Ziploc bag to be washed at home and headed for the morgue. She wasn't surprised to find Grissom already there. He was also wearing an overall and she briefly wondered if he had a similar system, coloring at the though. Small droplets of water still clung to the short curls at the back of his head from his own shower. It made her swallow hard as she thought of what he might be wearing under his overall. She felt the heat rising to her face and started studying the body in front of her intently.

"I'll autopsy the two freshest bodies. The other two are almost completely skeletonized. Those must wait for the anthropologist." Doc Robbins was explaining the morgue technicians but he looked at her as she entered. "Hi Sara"

She smiled briefly. "Hi Doc."

Grissom glanced up as she came in and smiled before turning back to the body.

The smell permeating the morgue was horrendous, though fortunately not as bad as it was that time with a body enclosed in a bag. That was the one and only time Sara had ever puked from the stench.

"Where's Nick?" Sara asked Grissom.

"He went home to shower and change his clothes. He'll be back in about an hour."

Sara watched as Doc Robbins carefully and skillfully removed the clothes from the first victim to be autopsied. Victim number 3. The one with the green shoulder Sara and Nick had dug up. If the clothes weren't removed in the correct way, you risked disarticulating the fragile fingers. Or pulling the decomposing skin off the body, basically degloving it. Sara continued to watch as the Doc worked, whistling tunelessly through his teeth, and though that he made it look very easy. She and Grissom bagged the clothes he removed so that they could analyze it later. The fluoroscope had shown that there was indeed a bullet lodged in the victim's shoulder. Doc Robbins removed it, and Sara bagged it to be taken to ballistics. There was two more bullets lodged in the victim's skull, but that would have to be boiled down first before the bullets could be retrieved. The autopsy revealed that the victim was a young male, probably in his early twenties. So victim number 3 became John Doe 3. Cause of death was a gunshot wound to the back of the head. Doc Robbins estimated time of death roughly a year ago, Grissom collected more samples to add to his entomological timeline.

The second body to be autopsied, body number 4, seemed to be the freshest one. Doc Robbins estimated time of death only a few months ago. It was a body of a middle aged male with a single gunshot wound to the back of the neck. The fluoroscope again showed the presence of a bullet. Sara and Grissom again bagged the clothes. They worked in companionable silence and Sara wished it could've lasted a lifetime.

They were on their way back to the lab when they met Brass coming towards them.

"Jeez I thought you said you were going to take a shower," he complained.

"We did," Sara answered, turning red as soon as she heard her own words.

Brass lifted his eyebrows replying "Well go take another one".

Sara noticed that Grissom had gone quite red too.

"Do you have anything for us?" Grissom asked as they set off towards the lab.

"The house has been owned by the same guy for ten years, Justin Hall. He lives there with his wife and daughter, who just turned 16. Before that the property was in his mother's name, Patricia Hall, who also lives with the family. Apparently they have no idea how bodies came to buried in their back yard." He finishes, flipping his notebook closed and returning it to his breast pocket.

"Any idea as to the ID of the victims yet?"

"We'll have to wait for the dental exam and the anthropologist to confirm ID. But Doc Robbins is fairly sure all four victims are male. Most of them were shot in the back of the head, but there is a huge time gap between victims. Also the ages of the victims vary considerably."

"Do you think we have a serial on our hands Gil?" Brass asked

"We are too early in the investigation to tell," Grissom replied, shrugging his shoulders.

"By the way, the sheriff is looking for you, the press had somehow gotten wind of the discovery of the bodies."

Grissom groaned and Sara knew he hated this part of his job. The part where he had to placate the press and the politicians who often lost sight of the case itself in order to make it more sensational. Giving him a sympathetic look, Sara headed for the ballistics department. At least they could get started on that bullet. She took another shower and this time changed into her normal underwear and spare clothes.

She was just about to start browsing through missing persons reports connected to the Hall family when Nick joined her. He brought some more sandwiches with him and they sat eating them while Sara filled him in on the case so far. Sara made sure to keep one for Grissom to the side.

They started sifting through missing person records using the specs provided by Doc Robbins. They had many hits, but without more information, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Not having much luck Sara went in search of Grissom, seeing if he needed any help. She found him in one of the lay-out rooms, sorting his entomological samples.

"Need any help?" Sara asked as she eyed the organized chaos on the big table.

"I'm sorting the samples first by case, then by species, and then we'll be able to place them in order."

He replied, holding the box of examination gloves out to her. She showed him his sandwich, and he nodded in appreciation. Donning some gloves she set to work. The samples from every site were piled separately. Grissom was done with the pile from victim number 1 and was just starting on the pile from victim number 2. Sara tackled the pile from John Doe 3. She had some knowledge of insects herself, having studied the entomological textbook Grissom gave her once many a sleepless night. Once in a while she would ask for Grissom's help in identifying a species, especially from immature stages, but all in all Sara made almost no mistakes. After the insects were sorted into species, Grissom started putting them in chronological order. It seemed that the first body found, victim number1, had been dead for approximately eighteen to twenty years. Victim number 2 was the oldest, having been in the ground for about thirty years. John Doe number 3 had been dead for five to seven years and the final body, John Doe number 4 for about a year.

Sara assigned a big whiteboard to each of the bodies, using a fifth board for information that the four victims had in common. For each numbered body she filled in all the information they had gathered so far, from the preliminary autopsy results to Grissom's estimated timeline.

"Listen to this guys," Nick said as he came in then paused. "Wow you work fast," He remarked, looking up at Sara's boards.

"So we have a timeline for all of the victims? Why would there be such big gaps between victims, presuming it's the same killer?" He asked glancing at the estimated timelines.

"We don't know yet," Grissom answered. "What have you got Nicky?"

"Oh, yeah, me and Sara were combing through missing persons reports right but without much luck. Then I searched for police reports about that house or the Hall family. Get this, a young girl named Jessica Hall died at that house 28 years ago. According to the police report it was ruled a suicide by hanging. She was aged 15."

They were silent for a moment, pondering this over.

"What the hell went on in that house?" Sara asked incredulously.