Previous part of Ghost.

***

Monday Morning 04:40 AM

Greg looked out through the windows of the DNA lab and saw Nick coming up the hall. Grabbing up the report, Greg rushed out to meet the CSI.

"Nick!"

Nick stopped in his tracks. Greg practically skidded to a stop in from of him.

"What is it, Greg?"

"Hot off the presses," Greg informed him. "I got a match."

"A match?" Nick ask, a bit confused. "In Grissom's case?"

"Yeah," Greg said without the usual bravado.

"From the blood we found at his house?"

"No, I'm still working on that. This is something else," Greg told him and handed Nick the report.

Confusion was replaced by comprehension as Nick took the paper and read the results. He looked at the graphic of the thirteen markers. They all matched.

Nick barely took the time to thank Greg before sprinting down the corridor.

Monday Morning 04:48 AM

"Warrick!"

Sara, Catherine and Warrick heard Nick seconds before he practically ran through the door of the evidence examination room. Catherine had just arrived and was telling Sara and Warrick about her conversation with the Sheriff and Eckley.

"Warrick," Nick repeated.

"Yeah," Warrick responded.

Nick's words seemed to stumble over each other trying to get out of his mouth. "You called in the tow on the 411, right?"

Warrick's eyebrows furrowed. He was trying to catch up with his friend. "The car you found out on Blue Diamond?"

"Yeah, man. You called the tow in?" Nick asked again.

"Yeah, I did."

"The car's not here. I checked. Are you sure?" Nick pressed.

"I called," Warrick told him. "The driver said they'd have it here by morning. They're backed up tonight."

"What's this about, Nick?" Catherine asked.

"The blood I found in that car," Nick informed his co-workers, "is Grissom's."

Monday Morning 05:12 AM

Jim Brass had spent the past several hours working with the team of officers assigned to going through Grissom's old case files. They were looking for individuals who might have a motive to attack and abduct Gil. The list that they were compiling included everyone who had been incarcerated as a result of an investigation involving Grissom, who was now out of jail, and who was not verifiably out-of-state last Friday evening.

The list was astonishing in its length. Grissom has been a busy, busy boy. Either that or he was very good at his job. Jim knew it was a combination of both.

Brass looked at the list they had compiled so far and sighed. With both cops and criminalists, the problem of accumulating people with motive enough to cause great bodily harm was the same. It was an occupational hazard. Everyone knew the risks involved with the work. The better you were at the job, the longer the list. Put away a bad guy, gain an enemy for life.

It didn't take a long career to bring the dangers of the job home. The lesson they had all learned from the loss of Holly Gribbs was one none of them would soon forget. It only takes one bad guy to end a career … or a life.

Jim stood up and headed out of his office. It was time to do what detectives did best - the legwork.

Monday Morning 05:23 AM

A white '95 Toyota Corolla sat in the garage of the crime lab. Its delivery had taken several calls to Lewes Towing, the company contracted with the LVMPD for police impound towing, including Criminalistics. Surprisingly, it had been Sergeant O'Riley who had expedited the arrival of the suspect vehicle at the lab. He had gone to school with the owner of the towing company, and when Brass said something about the holdup, O'Riley had made a call that placed this vehicle at the top of the priority list.

Catherine watched from the window in the hall outside the garage as Nick, Warrick, and Sara divided up duties and set to work processing the vehicle. There was nothing she would have wanted more than to be involved in collecting the evidence from the car - except possibly the opportunity to scream at Gil Grissom for getting himself into so much trouble.

This Toyota was the first real piece of good news they had received since the "official" investigation into Grissom's disappearance had begun. It seemed like an eternity since the night before when they had all asked each other if anyone had seen Gil. What had been a curious and unsettling inquiry had turned into an ugly reality so quickly that she really hadn't had time to adjust to what had happened.

Now, Catherine was "officially" in charge of the investigation, and that son of a bitch Eckley was making sure all the other cases that had come into CSI over the last few hours were being assigned to guys from the dayshift. She had made it very clear to Eckley that if he wasn't going to give this case one hundred percent of his effort, he needed to stay the hell away from it.

There wasn't much talk amongst the team as they began the process of examining every inch of the vehicle. Catherine knew they were in the zone, and that there wasn't anything that would escape them. The transfer from the attacker or attackers would be found. It could be days before AFIS gave them a hit off the prints they had found at Grissom's, if it gave them a hit at all. The car might lead them in the right direction more quickly. She only hoped that what they found led them to Gil soon, and that he was still alive.

"You better be alive," she told the missing Grissom. "I'm going to kick your ass when we find you." She turned and headed out of the crime lab. Catherine had Lindsey to deal with this morning before returning to work and the very unpleasant prospect of updating Mrs. Grissom as she had promised.

***

Monday Morning 06:07 AM

The initial search of the Toyota turned up very little. The team took all the necessary initial photographs and finished a preliminary visual search. The trunk and glove compartment were both completely empty. There was an old napkin under the front passenger seat, and this was bagged and sent to Greg. No other items were found in the interior compartment. Any evidence they collected would have to be the kind not immediately noticeable. The kind most people don't think to worry about. The kind of evidence a good CSI knows to look for.

Sara swirled the dusting brush over the panel on the inside of the front driver's side door. Once the dusting powder was evenly distributed, she visually searched and researched every square inch of surface, tape-lifting any print or partial print she found. When that was done, she moved to the dashboard. As soon as she was through, she would take the prints she had to the print lab for processing and move to the back seat.

Nick already knew the blood samples he had collected earlier from the back seat of the stolen vehicle belonged to Grissom. He needed to know if there was any more blood in the car: Grissom's, an attacker's, or otherwise. He was also looking for transfer of hair or other fibers. He used a small handheld ALS to visually search every inch of the rear passenger compartment. He found several short, curly gray and brown hairs where he had previously found Grissom's blood. These he collected, labeled, and sent to Greg in the DNA lab.

The upholstery, carpet fibers, and foreign materials were Warrick's purview on this gig. He had started in the trunk because Nick was dealing with the blood in the back seat while Sara was lifting prints in the front. Warrick had already taken a two inch by two inch section of the interior carpet from the trunk. He would also take a sample of the upholstery fabric from the rear portion of the back seat once Nick was done. Warrick tape-lifted samples of the detritus he found in the trunk. As Sara moved to the passenger side of the front seat, Warrick moved to the driver's side and began his visual inspection of the floorboard there. He found what looked like small pieces of crushed black glass. He collected specimens from the floor mat, gas pedal, and brake pedal. If the driver of the car was involved with Grissom's disappearance, some of the bits of glass could easily have been transferred into the building where Grissom lived.

"I've got the owner in case anyone is interested."

All three CSIs stopped what they were doing and looked up at the speaker. Sergeant O'Riley stood at the door to the garage.

"Hey, O'Riley," Nick called.

"What'd you find out?" Sara asked.

O'Riley opened the folder he held and gave them a rundown of the information he had collected. "Owner is Robert Sellers. He lives at 1127 West Navajo Road, Flagstaff, Arizona. He works for Coconino County New Energy Technologies as a renewable energy specialist – solar technology. Local police verify he reported the car stolen from the company parking lot six days ago. By all accounts, Mr. Sellers is a stand-up guy: wife, two kids, steady on the job. No connection to Grissom that we can find. Fingerprint card is being faxed to us as we speak."

"The fingerprints will help with elimination," Sara said to no one in particular.

"Flagstaff," Warrick said thoughtfully. "That's off I-40."

"It is," O'Riley confirmed.

"I-40, crossroads of the southwest," Nick added. "Doesn't narrow the search for our car thief much, does it?"

"I take it there's no hit on the prints from his house," O'Riley said.

Sara's face told him the story before she said a word. "Not yet."

Monday Morning 06:56 AM

Almost as soon as Catherine returned to the crime lab, her beeper went off. Looking at it, she recognized the Sheriff's number. It was time to update the good Sheriff, but before she did that she wanted to check in with the team and see where they were.

Catherine found all three of her CSI co-workers right where she had left them. They were still hard at work processing the Toyota.

"Hey, guys," she said as she entered the garage.

Warrick stood up from his position on the other side of the car to look at her. "How's Lindsey?"

"She's fine. I left her with my sister." Catherine stooped to look inside the car. "Find anything?"

Nick looked up from the back seat where he and Sara were finishing up with the last of the fingerprint lifts. "Tons of prints," he began. "Sara's already sent a bunch to the print lab. I found a few errant hairs that look like they could be Grissom's. No more blood though. Warrick found some ground black glass on the driver's floorboard."

"Yeah," Warrick jumped in. "And those shoe prints I found in the stairway were from a pair of Red Wing boots. I'm thinking we need to go back and see if there's any transfer in Grissom's building."

"Any idea what kind of glass?" Catherine asked.

"Nah," Warrick said. "Trace is working on it now."

"Okay," Catherine said, standing back up. "Warrick, you and Nick go back and see what you can find."

"And me?" Sara asked.

"Stay with the prints," Catherine said. "The sooner we have a match, the sooner we have a suspect we can find."

Catherine's beeper chose that instant to go off again. When she looked, she wasn't surprised to see the Sheriff's number displayed.

Monday Morning 07:25 AM

Sara was in the print lab while Warrick and Nick were on their way back to Grissom's house. Catherine had called the Sheriff and given him a full update on their progress. She decided that now was a good time to update Gil's mother as well.

Catherine again collected the information she needed and headed back to the TDD station. This was a task she was not looking forward to. As she walked her mind's eye could easily see a young curly blond-headed boy bounding across a yard and throwing himself into the waiting arms of a woman who had the same warm face pictured in the frame on Gil's desk.

When you had children, you were a mother for life. No amount of growing up would make Gil any less his mother's son. Catherine already knew what it was like to fear for a friend. She could only imagine the panic that must be fearing for a child, no matter how old, who was lost.

***

Monday Morning 07:43 AM

The DNA results started to come back. He had compared the two hairs Nick had sent from the suspect vehicle to the hairs from Grissom's comb and found a perfect match. Greg felt his heart sink further and further as each new sample of blood tested came back with the same result.

Compiling the reports into a single folder, he set out from his lab to find Catherine. No way he was going to beep her with this.

Monday Morning 07:46 AM

Larry Collins was working in Trace when the samples from Grissom's case came in. The samples from the suspect vehicle, the toothbrush and comb Greg sent over from DNA, and the few tape-lifted samples from Grissom's house sat on his lab counter. Like everyone else in Criminalistics, Larry wanted to be a part of finding out what had happened to his boss.

Grissom was the kind of man that other guys wished they could be more like. He was a legend. Larry didn't deny that he felt that way. Not in the privacy of his own thoughts, anyhow.

Someone was going to uncover the crucial piece of evidence that would tell them where Grissom was. Was is selfish to want to be that guy? Probably, he decided. But selfish or not, Larry really did want to be the guy who broke the case. Not just because it would mean maybe saving Grissom's life, but because it would mean other people at the lab would give him some of the same respect Grissom enjoyed.

He had heard the hushed conversations in the break room and listened to everyone go on about how they just wanted Grissom to be okay. Perhaps they all did, but everyone likes to make a mark, to be the hero. That sort of thing seemed to come so easily to Grissom. Maybe … well maybe now it was Larry's turn to shine.

Monday Morning 07:48 AM

"Day three," he managed to choke out with an extremely dry mouth. A small sliver of sunlight made its way to the bottom of the mineshaft. Gil moved to sit in the warm glow of the sunshine. He only had a few short hours of direct light each day. He had to take advantage of it.

He worked on his makeshift sling again. It was the only thing that he had tried since finding himself down here that seemed to work, but using the sling was wearing on him. His shoulder and ribcage ached. He was becoming weaker with each passing hour and didn't know how long he could keep it up.

Broken ribs kept him from raising his right arm above the level of his shoulder but with a web tied from his shoe laces and secured to the metal loop at the end of his belt he had been able to fashion a decent sling. Using the sling underhanded, he was able to get enough velocity on the rocks and throw them high enough into the air to do some good. Gil thought that if he managed to send rocks up on the ledge above his head often enough, he would disturb enough earth that anyone looking down into the shaft would realize something or someone had recently fallen in. The trick was to keep from being hit by the rocks as they rolled back down the slope again and dropped back into the shaft. He remembered just how long the drop was.

The wind had been knocked out of him when he landed at the bottom of the shaft. He had lain still for a long time to recover from the fall and waited for the sickening nausea to subside enough to sit up. Once he was able to move around, he had begun to explore his prison. It had taken him half a day to determine that he was in some kind of mining pit. The support timbers had degraded to such a degree that Gil had concluded it was abandoned. The bottom of the pit was much wider than the opening, which made a nearly twenty degree slanted turn at about fifteen feet above the bottom of the shaft. The walls inclined inward at nearly the same slope. Climbing out would be nearly impossible even for someone in good health and uninjured.

In his current condition, Gil was trapped. He had been for three days.

He had a compound fracture of the left radius and ulna sustained in the fall into the shaft, at least one broken rib, perhaps two, and he was pretty sure his nose was broken. The progressive dehydration and insidious fatigue compounded by constant pain made him a poor candidate to successfully scale a flight of stairs. That thought brought a half smile to his face. No point in completely losing his sense of irony.

Gil didn't like his chances. The amount of blood he had lost should be sufficient to arouse significant suspicion if someone knew where to look. But the odds that his team would find the car used to bring him to this place were not in his favor. There was no way to climb out and no way to communicate with the world outside the pit except to yell, but by now his voice was all but gone. The base of the shaft couldn't be seen well from the entrance above. He estimated he was at least twenty feet below ground level, maybe more. His attacker had planned this dump well. Gil had to give him that.

His initial search and multiple subsequent searches of the shaft reinforced the feeling of entrapment. There was a small horizontal tunnel that extended into the ground approximately eight inches from the base of the shaft in the west wall, but the opening was far too narrow to allow passage of a man. The purpose of this tunnel was a complete mystery to him. Perhaps it was an air shaft to allow fresh air to reach the bottom of the pit when machinery was in use, or perhaps it had provided a conduit for power cables or pipes of some kind. Besides this tunnel, a few assorted bits of rusted metal, rotting timbers, and rocks, there wasn't much in the way of help for him.

He had been dumped there to die. The good news was that he wasn't dead yet. The bad news was that if someone didn't find him soon, he would be.

Monday Morning 08:12 AM

Sara sipped at her coffee and stared at the screen as the computer ran through the myriad prints that made up the AFIS database. It had been hours since Mandy had inputted the handprint from Grissom's front door. Everyone knew that an AFIS search could easily take days, but Sara knew that Grissom probably didn't have that kind of time.

Why was it taking so long? Thirty-six hours. Everyone knew that there were only thirty-six hours after a disappearance to find someone with any real chance that they might still be alive. After that the probability of finding Grissom alive dropped precipitously. They were at hour fifty-six now … and counting. "Damn it," Sara said to the empty room.

What was it Warrick had said last night? That Grissom thought he would leave CSI and no one would notice. No cake in the break room, he'd just be gone. How could Grissom think that he could just walk away and no one would care? What the hell was he thinking when he said that? A single tear ran down her cheek. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"Hey. No emotions in here."

Sara looked up and saw Grissom leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed, a knowing half-smile on his face.

"It's taking too long," she told him quietly. "Fifty-six hours…."

"You can't get too close to the victim."

She looked into his blue eyes. "He's special to me. I can't help it."

He blinked at her. "It's just a case, Sara."

"Not to me," she said softly, another tear finding its way down her face. "Not to any of us. You should know that."

She closed her eyes once more, trying to force the tears to stop. When she glanced up again, he was gone.

Sara looked back at the computer screen, willing it to tell her something, anything. "Come on," she said through gritted teeth. As if taking her command literally, the displayed graphic began to flash and the computer beeped at her.

AFIS had found a match.

***

Monday Morning 08:23 AM

Jim Brass turned the knob to his office door and pushed the door open with his foot. He reached his desk chair and dropped rather than sat into it. He was beat. It had been over fourteen hours since he had left his home and gone to work. He had no idea how long it would be before he saw his bed again. One thing was certain - it wouldn't be today.

Leaning his elbow on his desk, he ran a hand over his face. Jim grimaced as his hand moved over the rough stubble of his beard. He didn't want to know what he looked like. He took out the electric razor that he kept in the second drawer for those all too frequent occasions when he was away from home for far too long. There was still a great deal of work to be done.

Damn Grissom. The list of potential suspects in this case was too long, and it would take too much time to check on every name. Time Grissom didn't have. The man had proven himself too good at his job.

Calling what Grissom did a job was probably an injustice, Jim mused. Gil didn't have a job as much as he was the job. This was something Jim understood. He had known police officers who did the job and he had known police officers who just were cops – at the core of who and what they were was the need to be a cop, not just do the job. The same was true for Gil Grissom. Somewhere there had to be a special dictionary with descriptions of all the professions there had ever been. If there were such a volume, he was sure that Grissom's picture illustrated the entry for a crime scene investigator.

Being a criminalist fueled Grissom. His list of completed cases was impressive. Since Gil had joined the Las Vegas Crime Lab, it had moved from fourteenth to second among forensic labs across the nation. That was no coincidence. Grissom's passion for forensics made it happen. Jim had seen it with his own eyes. Although most of the time he had given the credit to the expansion of the metropolitan Las Vegas area, the infusion of funding into the police force, the effort he himself had put into the running of the unit, and the general advancements in the science of forensics itself. All of those things had helped, no doubt about it. But none of it would have elevated the lab so significantly without a scientific mind with a passion for justice, quirky though it may be. Wrap it all up in a bow and you get Grissom with a capital G.

Jim turned on the razor and set about the task of shaving off his eight AM shadow. He did it mechanically while his mind returned to the impossible task of deciphering the enigma that was Gil Grissom.

Quirky probably wasn't the best way to describe him. A living study in paradox was better. Jim knew that Grissom was what women considered handsome. Their experience in the Sports Bar on Friday night was proof enough of that. With the two young studs, Brown and Stokes, sitting at the same table, the guy the waitress went for was the middle-aged geek with a penchant for bugs and dead bodies. Man, life was bizarre.

When Grissom opened his mouth, you never knew what he would say – he could share the oddest piece of trivial minutia that popped into his head, or he might admit that he had just made a mistake. How many people in the world are willing to tell you about what they didn't do right? Not a hell of a lot.

The Kaye Shelton case was the most vivid reminder of Grissom's integrity that Jim could think of. When his bugs had said that the victim was dead three days instead of five, everyone thought a murderer would go free. Then Gil figured out he had made a mistake. The crazy guy sat up with a dead pig wrapped in a blanket for nearly a week to prove his own mistake and nab the husband. When the lunatic Sheriff shot down the evidence, Grissom and his team went back to square one and proved the husband was guilty anyway, without the bugs. Damnedest thing Jim had ever seen. Months later, Jim had overheard Eckley grumble about Grissom getting the case published in some nerd rag. The scientist in Grissom couldn't leave the case alone any more than the investigator would.

Grissom was the go-to guy for information concerning just about anything you'd care to name. Ask him a question he didn't know the answer to and he'd gladly tell you he didn't have a clue. Ask him the same question twenty-four hours later and you'd probably get more detailed information than you really wanted on the matter. That was Grissom.

He was also a natural leader with a hatred for advancement. Why be the boss if it means letting someone else have all the fun doing the drudge work? But then, Gruesome Grissom never met a corpse or a crime scene he didn't like. It was the drudge work, the investigation that made the man stand out from among his peers. Grissom loved the puzzles. Solving them was the reward. It didn't matter to Grissom who noticed how good he was at his job. Hell, he'd probably do the job for free if the county would offer to feed and house him.

And that was the single most annoying aspect of the man's character. Grissom didn't care who was involved. He had no political savvy, no fear of reprisal, no need to impress, no desire to placate. If there was a crime committed, no matter by whom or for what reason, Grissom was determined to solve the mystery and see that justice was done. Gil stepped on toes often. Important toes. Powerful toes. Goddamned Grissom had stepped on the Sheriff's toes so often that the poor man would probably have started to wear steel-toed shoes around the criminalist if he thought it would make Grissom go easier. That was a pipe dream.

The mental image of the Sheriff in steel-toed shoes made Jim smile. It annoyed the hell out of Jim when Grissom had a burr under his saddle about something, but it usually made for good theater. And, as with all really good theater, when Grissom was involved, the good guys usually won the war. John Wayne would be proud.

Yeah, Jim thought, but even the Duke bought it in the end of The Sands of Iwo Jima. An enemy sniper took the hero out despite the success of the allied forces. What did it matter if the result of all the work Grissom had done was that there were so many potential suspects to wade through that there was no way they were going to find the right guy with the right motive, the right opportunity, and the right handprint in time to do a damn bit of good? Jim had a detail of eleven guys out helping. Even with that kind of manpower, they were looking at another full day before exhausting what possibilities they had. And there was no guarantee that the person or persons they were looking for was on the list in the first place.

Just finish with the razor and get back at it, he told himself. Before he was able to quite finish shaving, his cellphone began to ring.

"Now what?" he muttered.

Turning off the razor, Jim pulled his phone out of his inside coat pocket and answered it. "Brass."

"Brass, Sidle. AFIS gave us something."

Monday Morning 08:38 AM

Catherine had just gotten back to the conference room after telling Grissom's mother about the official case when Greg Sanders had shown up at the door. He had hand carried the reports to her - unheard of for the young lab tech who loved beeper tag as much as he did loud rock. Now she was staring at the results from the blood samples Greg had processed. She was glad she hadn't had this information when she was conversing with Mrs. Grissom. The story she had to tell Gil's mother was hard enough without having to tell her this.

"How's it going?"

Catherine looked up to find Doc Robbins standing near the end of the glass conference table. The Chief Medical Examiner for Clark County worked the night shift by choice, just as Grissom did. Both men preferred the autonomy that the graveyard shift provided. They may be administrators, but they were both men of science first. "Hey, Doc. Are you through for the night?" she asked the ME.

"I am, but I get the feeling you're not," Robbins told her, nodding at the open folder on the table. "Good news or bad news?"

She thought about that question for a second and then pushed the folder across the table toward him. "You tell me."

Robbins took a seat across from Catherine and slid his metal crutch under the table before pulling the file the rest of the way toward him and putting on his glasses. The folder contained several DNA reports that all identified the blood donor as Gil Grissom. Blood samples had come from the floor of his home, walls and railings from the building he lived in, and from a Toyota vehicle. The samples from the rear seat of the Toyota also contained nasal mucus and saliva. Grissom had been bleeding from a head wound that was most likely accompanied by some kind of facial trauma.

When he looked from the report and met Catherine's eyes he knew she understood completely how bad the implications from the report could be. There were other less horrific possibilities as well. "It could be a simple nose bleed," he offered.

"Yeah, it could be," she replied leaning back in her chair. "But it's probably not." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"How do you know that?" Robbins challenged, not willing to jump to the worst possible conclusion immediately.

Catherine shook her head slightly and spread her arms. "If you had a beef with Grissom would you stop at giving him a bloody nose? I wouldn't."

He couldn't stop the grin that spread across his face. Grissom could have that effect on people. The man was not a people person. His compassion, real enough and seated deep in his character, found an outlet in becoming the voice of the victims he encountered. Watching Grissom piece together what had happened to a murder victim was a thing to behold. He could talk to the dead much more meaningfully than most people talked to the living.

Catherine wasn't dealing with this case as well as she'd like, that was obvious. Robbins could see the frustration and anger that lay just below the surface of her professional mask. "It must be difficult for you," Robbins told her.

That brought a hollow laugh from her. "It's nothing compared to what his mother must be going through," she said.

"You've contacted her then?"

"Yeah," she shook her head. "Before we knew how bad it was. I updated her this morning."

"How's she taking everything?" he wanted to know.

She looked back down at the file on the table. "Like Grissom would. She thanked me for all the hard work we're doing to find him." The burden of the situation was showing in her face. "God, Doc. I'm a mother and I didn't know what to tell her."

He looked her in the eye. "The truth."

She thought about that for a moment. "The truth is, things are going from bad to worse. Not exactly a message of hope."

***

Monday Morning 08:43 AM

This work was best done with little more than a flashlight and a good pair of eyes. Nick and Warrick had decided to split up. Nick took the top of the stairwell while Warrick started at the bottom. They worked toward each other on hands and knees, one step at a time.

The waffle-patterned grooves of the metal steps managed to catch just about anything that could be scrapped off the bottom of a shoe. Nick had no difficulty collecting multiple samples of dirt and bits of asphalt or glass. It remained to be seen if anything that he found was similar to what Warrick collected in the suspect vehicle.

Warrick had the same problem. There was no shortage of dirt, soil, glass, plastic, and metal bits found. He knew he was looking for black glass and did find that. He also found green, clear and brown glass. He took samples of every kind of glass present.

"How's it going?" Warrick asked Nick as he moved up the stairs to the next landing. Nick was midway down the last flight of steps to be searched.

"Well, I did find some bits of dark glass," Nick told him. "We'll have to take it back to the lab to see if we're even in the ballpark, though."

Warrick nodded. "Yeah, I had the same problem." He looked up the stairwell. "Did you have a chance to check the hallway and entryway yet?"

Nick shook his head. "Not yet. I've still got this last bit."

"Got it. I guess I should start upstairs," Warrick suggested.

"Okay, partner," Nick nodded standing up and stretching his back. "I'll join you as soon as I'm done down here."

Warrick turned to head up the stairs.

"Hey, Warrick?" Nick waited for Warrick to look back at him. "You know, I can't help wondering what Gris would think about us doing what we're doing."

"What. You mean investigating his disappearance?" Warrick asked.

"No, man," Nick replied. "I mean combing through his life like we would a suspect's."

"What do you think he'd do if it were one of us?"

Nick shrugged. "This is different."

Warrick's forehead tensed. "Because it's Grissom? How does that make it different?"

Nick narrowed his gaze. "Are you trying to tell me that you don't feel … weird doing this?"

"No, I feel it too," Warrick admitted. He did feel it. Maybe too much. He hadn't thought about much else since the discussion with Sara, despite what he told her. "But worrying about it will only make us go gray."

Nick smirked a little. "Like we both haven't already added some of that to Grissom's head."

"Yeah, I know what you mean." Warrick always wondered why Gris hadn't fired him. Just the look of disappointment on his boss's face two years ago had been enough to make him wish Grissom had.

The look on his friend's face told Nick he had hit a sore spot that obviously hadn't healed. "Hey, man, I didn't mean…."

"Don't sweat it." Warrick said immediately. "I'm going to go up and get started on the entryway," he said, wanting to get away without offending.

Nick nodded and said no more. Warrick headed up the stairs. When he reached the front door of Grissom's house, he pulled a new pair of latex gloves out of his back pocket and donned them. Using his pocket knife, Warrick cut the Crime Lab seal and opened the door.

There was a quiet in the house that was a bit unnerving. Warrick had been here before. They all had. The dwelling gave the impression of a nineteenth-century academic. A mind more than a man seemed to lived here. A very active and interested mind.

Shaking himself out of his reverie, Warrick got down to business. He turned on his flashlight and kneeled down to inspect the concrete floor of the entryway. Working methodically, side to side, Warrick inched his way along the floor. There was precious little to find.

Warrick stopped when he reached the dried blood on the floor. Sitting back, he looked over at the briefcase, still lying on the floor. When he picked it up a file fell back to the floor, spilling its contents. Warrick picked up several pieces of paper and recognized them as office memorandums. He gathered them all up and started to put them back in the folder when he noticed the subject line of the memo on top. It read: Warrick Brown.

A quick perusal of the memo told him that Eckley was complaining again. Warrick had not gotten his Tahoe in for servicing on time. Going through several more memos he realized that Grissom had gotten complaints about lots of things: Greg's music in the DNA lab, Sara's "abuse" of overtime, sick calls, and general perceived lapses in administrative ability. Warrick guessed that Grissom received mountains of these kind of complaints, almost none of which he brought to the team. Grissom just handled things.

"It's true. The man does have to put up with a lot." Warrick said to himself.

"So do you." His head shot up to see Grissom standing next the bookcase, a lopsided grin on his face.

"What?" Warrick asked, unsure of what to say.

"Put up with a lot," Grissom said.

"Like what?"

Grissom cocked his head to the side. "Like unwarranted doubts."

"Not so unwarranted." Warrick insisted.

Grissom's smile reached his eyes at that. "You've kept your word. I'm proud of you."

"Wait until we find you. Then you can be proud." Warrick said, looking back at the paperwork in his hands. He realized he felt a little awkward.

When he looked up again, Grissom was gone.

Monday Morning 09:06 AM

Jim Brass found Sara and Catherine in the print lab. They were waiting for him.

"You look like hell," Catherine told Jim as he entered the room.

"Flattery will get you nowhere," he replied as he approached the lab counter. He opened the file he had brought with him and dropped it in front of them.

"What have you got?" Sara asked, already craning her neck to look at the information in the file.

Jim took a deep breath before beginning. "Paul Stankowski was convicted in 1979 of second degree murder in Los Angeles County California. He was sentenced to fifteen years under California Penal Code 190. He was released four months ago from Corcoran State Prison."

"Wait a minute," Catherine said, confused. "He was sentenced to fifteen years but did twenty-three. That doesn't add up."

"It does if you're a lowlife who likes to assault correctional officers," Jim said. "Our man, Paul, had another eight years tacked on for giggles and grins."

"I bet he wasn't giggling when they let him out," Sara remarked.

Catherine was still not sure about something. "Okay, he did the time in prison. What has this got to do with Grissom? Gil had to be, what, twenty-four when this guy was sent up?"

Jim nodded. "I was getting to that." He referred to the file he'd brought. "Gil Grissom was the youngest coroner in Los Angeles County history. According to his personnel file, he had started doing crime scene sweeps with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department as a part of a graduate fellowship program out of UCLA. Guess who found the body of the person Pauly was convicted of killing?"

Surprise flooded Sara's face. "You're kidding."

***

Monday Morning 09:20 AM

As the morning light marched across the sides of his prison, he realized he was beginning to shiver from the cold. Only Gil knew the temperature of the air was rising, not falling. His fever was getting worse. The dehydration was becoming severe. It had progressed to the point that he didn't need to urinate anymore. His legs cramped occasionally and he was mildly nauseous almost continuously. His prison would soon be a coffin. Might as well call a spade a spade, Gil thought.

Okay, not as poetic as it could be, but an appropriate metaphor for Vegas. He would have laughed if he had had the energy.

Gil had been thinking about how he wound up in his current situation. He had been blindsided by events. Arcane circumstances had conspired to bring him to this point. Now, when his contribution seemed the greatest, he faced the real possibility that his last contribution would be the mystery of his death.

Finding the body of Chad Campbell had changed the way he looked at his life. He had always known that he would work with death. It didn't frighten him the way it seemed to frighten everyone else. Even as a boy he had found the process of death interesting. As soon as he was old enough, he had done the logical thing and become a coroner. Gil found out very early on that he could hear clearly what a dead body had to say. His mother called it a gift. She had even called him Sherlock Bones.

An attempt to laugh at the memory brought on a cramp in his side that doubled him over. He had to lie very still for several moments before he could breathe without pain. The nausea was so bad that it made his head pound. It was harder to see. The inside of his mouth was sore. He couldn't swallow, although he desperately wanted to.

What was he thinking about?

Sherlock Bones. That was it. He had been like Sherlock, fascinated by the puzzles that came with dying. Taking the police ride along that day had brought Gil face to face with the wonders of investigating a murder from a whole new perspective. He had found the body, but not only that: Gil had followed the case through to the end. Working with the medical examiner, Gil had collected the insects that had eventually established the timeline of the body's decomposition. This was the case that had birthed a passion for entomology in him.

It was also the first time Gil had testified in court. He could not remember ever feeling so intimidated as the day he initially took the oath and then took the witness stand. He testified as to how he had found the body, the condition the body had been in, the insects he had collected, and to the transfer of the body to the morgue. The Assistant District Attorney told him he was a natural on the stand because his had communicated his thoughts so clearly.

Gil had never considered himself vain, but if he had ever had an "Ah ha!" moment, then this had been it. He had been born to be a criminalist. Not just a criminalist, but a forensic entomologist. He spent the next six years becoming what he believed he was meant to be. He made a conscious effort to learn, expand, and hone his skills. The science was a means to that end. If he were to mourn the loss of anything, it would be the career. In reality, his career had become his life, and there was very little about that that he regretted.

Another cramp forced all thoughts of mourning out of his head.

Monday Morning 09:39 AM

Greg couldn't stand the wait any longer. He had paced around his lab for twenty minutes. There was work enough for him, true, but none of it would help find out where Grissom was. The action on that score was in Trace. He headed out of the DNA lab on a mission.

The comparative microscope captivated Larry's attention. He didn't hear Sanders' arrival. Consequently, he jumped at the sound of the foreign voice in his lab.

"Whatcha got there?" Greg asked, standing inches away from Larry.

"Jesus!" Larry half-shouted, leaping back several feet from the microscope.

Greg seized the moment and leaned in to take a look.

Larry stared at the younger lab tech, stunned by his ballsy nosiness. "Hey! That's my work there, Pancho."

"And fine work it is," Greg told Collins, adjusting the scope to suit his better vision. Larry was a bit near-sighted. What Greg could see were two almost identical pieces of what appeared to be siliceous rock crystals of some kind. "Hmmm," Greg continued, "interesting."

Larry grabbed Sanders' shoulder and pulled him away from the microscope. "What do you think you're doing here?" he said angrily. "Don't you have enough crap in the DNA lab to keep you busy?"

Refusing to be deterred, Greg scanned the counter next to the comparative microscope and found the Trace report for the specimen being examined. He picked it up and backed away from Collins.

"Elemental analysis of the sample found in front floorboard of suspect vehicle," Greg read aloud, "thirty-three point eight percent silica, seven point two percent aluminum …."

Collins yanked the report out of Greg's hands. "Get the hell out of my lab," Larry snarled. "I can handle the analysis myself."

Greg stood his ground. "You've been working on this stuff for two hours now."

Larry seethed. "What the hell difference is that to you?"

Now it was Greg's turn to be hot. "The difference is that Grissom's life is on the line. Did you give this preliminary analysis to Catherine or Warrick?"

Larry clenched his jaw. What the hell right did Grissom's pet have coming in here and telling him how to do his job? Larry had been doing his job in this lab for nearly twice as long as Sanders had been there. Everyone knew that Grissom liked Sanders. The shit this asshole could get away with infuriated Larry. This evidence was going to come from the Trace lab, not DNA. Larry wanted to be sure of his findings before making his report, that was all. This case was too important to him to take the chance of making a mistake.

Greg could see the red rising dangerously in Collins' face. He didn't care. This was too important. If Collins wasn't going to get this analysis done in short order, then Greg would. "I thought so," Greg spat. He turned on his heels and headed out the door. He was still on a mission.

Stocking down the corridor, Greg ran through the procedure in his head. Photograph, lift, document. He wasn't field trained. Not yet. But he had read the textbooks and the procedure manuals. This was something he could do. This was something he HAD to do. Time, she was a wastin'.

He arrived in the garage in short order and found everything he needed already there. Being careful to don gloves, Greg picked up a flashlight and opened the front driver's side door of the Toyota. It didn't take long to locate more of the dark siliceous rock grains he had seen under the comparative microscope. Greg grabbed the camera that was sitting on the workbench and checked to see if it had film. Pleased to find that it did, he focused on the grains of black glasslike material he had found and took a picture. He was about to set the camera down when it occurred to him that he should be safe and take another. That done, he set the exposed polaroids down side by side and labeled them with his name, the time and date, and the case number. He had committed the number to memory by simply typing it into the computer in the DNA lab so often.

All that remained for him to do was to tape-lift the sample. He did this and labeled the white edge of the tape the same way he had labeled the photos. Greg then removed his gloves, dropped them in an evidence bag and labeled it. He gathered up the photos, evidence bag, and sample and headed back to his lab.

The GC Mass Spec should be able to give him a quick rundown of the elemental composition of the sample he had collected. Greg had a hunch about this glass and if he was right, there might be a better way to find the needle in the haystack.

***

Monday Morning 10:18 AM

Warrick pulled the Tahoe into a parking space in front of the Las Vegas Criminalistics building. Nick was opening the passenger side door to get out when his beeper went off. So did Warrick's. Both men looked at their messages.

"Pow wow," said Nick, placing his beeper back in its belt holster.

"Ditto," Warrick said, looking at his own page information.

Entering the building, the CSIs could sense that the mood inside the Crime Lab had changed. Something had happened. They looked at each other and picked up their pace, moving rapidly down the hall toward the evidence room.

They arrived to find Sara, Catherine, Jim Brass, and Greg waiting for them. The assembled group looked up as Nick and Warrick entered.

Nick set the evidence bag that held the samples they collected down on the table. He addressed Catherine. "What's up?"

Catherine got right down to it. "We know who the handprint belongs to," she told them.

This WAS news to Nick and Warrick.

"Who?" Warrick asked immediately.

Jim Brass spoke up. "Paul Stankowski from Moorpark, California. He was convicted in 1979 of second degree murder. Grissom testified at his trial."

Warrick and Nick looked at each other in surprise. This was a solid piece of information. Nick knew this was good news but approached it with cautious optimism. Knowing who a suspected attacker was didn't immediately help them find Grissom. "Do we know where this guy is?"

Jim shook his head. "We have a detail trying to determine Mr. Stankowski's whereabouts right now."

"We do know that he drove the Toyota," Sara offered. "Prints on the steering wheel and door handles match the handprint from Grissom's front door."

"There's more," Jim continued. "Arizona State Police report finding an abandoned vehicle at a rest stop outside Riordan. Turns out the vehicle was stolen. The vehicle was registered in California. Prints in the car match our suspect."

Warrick mind was racing. "Riordan. That's on I-40."

Jim nodded. "Just outside Flagstaff."

"Where the Toyota was stolen from," Sara said.

Nick was putting it together. "So our suspect steals a car in California and drives to Arizona where he dumps it. He steals new wheels in Flagstaff and comes to Vegas to hunt down Gris."

"Who," Sara pickup up the ball, "he attacks and transports in the back of the stolen Toyota to … where?"

Greg Sanders nervously fidgeted with the report he held. "The blood and hairs Nick found in the backseat of the Toyota belong to Grissom. There's no doubt he was in the car."

This wasn't new information for Nick but he swallowed hard at hearing it anyway. "What about the bits of glass on the driver's floorboard?"

Greg nodded at the file he held. "Yeah, it turns out it's not glass but a siliceous crystal called perlite."

"Perlite?" Brass asked. "Is that helpful?"

Nick ignored the question for the moment. A bell was ringing dully in his memory. "Can I see that report, Greg?" He took the file Greg offered him. "Thanks, man."

"Wasn't Trace working on those samples?" Warrick asked Greg.

Greg shrugged his shoulders. "It was taking too long, so I decided to lend a hand."

After a quick scan of the file, Nick began to tap the report and answered the question. "I think that this can lead us somewhere helpful."

"Really?" Greg asked, surprised.

Catherine could see the wheels turning inside Nick's head. "What do you know that we don't know, Nick?"

Nick looked up from the report. "I'm not sure. Let me do some checking." With his head buried in the report again, he headed out of the room.

Catherine followed Nick out of the room with her eyes before turning back to the others still in the room. "Okay, what do we have that's outstanding?"

"I've got the court records from Stankowski's trial coming from California. I've also put through a request for the case notes from the LA County Coroner's office. I'll go through everything when it arrives. Should be anytime," Sara said. "They put a rush on it."

"I've got some shoe leather to burn," Jim told Catherine.

"Do you think this creep is still in Vegas?" Greg asked the detective.

Jim put his hands in his pockets. "What I think doesn't matter. My experience tells me that this guy isn't going anywhere until he's sure he's finished what he came here for. Whether or not he's done that …." He shrugged and left the thought unfinished. Jim nodded to Catherine and headed out the door as well. There was a lot of ground to cover in the search for their suspect.

Warrick pointed to the brown bag filled with the samples he and Nick had collected in the stairwell of Grissom's building. "I've got this to go through as well. It may be nothing, but if any of this stuff turns out to be …."

"Perlite," Greg added.

"Yeah, perlite," Warrick picked up again, "then whatever Nick's got cooking might prove to be a real break for us."

Catherine nodded. "Okay. I think it's time to update the Sheriff again. I'll give you a hand when I get back."

"Thanks," Warrick said. Everyone headed their separate directions. The clock was still ticking and everyone knew that with the time went the possibility for a good outcome to the case.

Monday Morning 10:38 AM

The Crime Lab reference library was extensive and included texts on just about every scientific discipline, manuals on field techniques and laboratory procedures, and several forensic journal series. It wasn't hard to locate a text on geology.

Finding what he was looking for took a little research. Once Nick did unearth the information he needed, he compared that to the report Greg had given him.

The report contained the elemental breakdown of a sample from the Toyota:

ELEMENTIAL ANALYSIS (PERLITE, CRUDE)

Silicon 33.8

Aluminum 7.2

Potassium 3.5

Sodium 3.4

Iron 0.6

Calcium 0.6

Magnesium 0.2

Trace 0.2

Oxygen (by difference)47.5

Net Total97.0

Bound Water 3.0

Total100

"Crude perlite, huh," Nick said to himself. What he found confirmed his hunch. Now all he needed to do was discover if his hunch led him closer to Grissom.

Nick dropped his pen in the crease of the open book in front of him and rubbed his eyes. He felt hungry and tired. The next order of business should be some sort of food. He'd think better.

Almost immediately he felt guilty about that. When was the last time Grissom ate anything? Could he even eat?

"Damn," Nick whispered.

"You're right."

Nick looked up and found Grissom standing on the other side of the table. His arms were crossed and his face held that knowing smile that Nick was so used to seeing.

"About what?" Nick asked his boss.

"You'd think better if you had something to eat," Grissom told him.

Nick swallowed hard. "I've got to try and figure this out." He glanced back down at the book. "It could be nothing but …."

"You're good at your job, Nick," Grissom said softly. "Trust your instincts."

Surprised, Nick's head snapped up. Grissom was gone.

***

Monday Morning 10:55 AM

"We're working on both areas," Catherine was telling the Sheriff on the phone. "The fingerprints led us to identify Stankowski. If the mineral analysis can identify a unique location, we'll have somewhere to begin a search."

"Then I hope this lead is a solid one," the Sheriff's voice told her. "I've put every available man on this, Catherine. Everyone wants to find Gil."

For once, she thought, the Sheriff sounded completely sincere. He and Gil may have had their differences, but no one would dispute the value Gil held for the department. "We appreciate the support, Brian."

"He's one of our own," Mobley said.

"Yeah," Catherine replied, unable to keep the fatigue out of her voice. "I'll call you when we have anything more concrete."

"Thank you, Catherine."

They hung up.

Catherine sat back in his chair. She had called from Gil's office. The closed door gave her a modicum of privacy. When Gil was there he almost never closed his door. He wanted people to be able to find him, to talk to him, to ask questions if they had them. She chided him often for his lack of people skills, but there was a bit of dishonesty in that. Gil did have people skills. He was a natural teacher. He imparted information with just about every breath. What he couldn't do well was judge his effect on the people around him.

She was sure that Grissom had no idea how much his absence from CSI, even for this short period of time, had affected the entire unit. No cake in the break room my ass, she thought.

The building suffered from a hushed tension. Larry in Trace was furious with Greg. Something about territory. Damn. She had sent Larry off to finish with the comparison analysis Warrick had sent him. Greg she decided to leave alone. Greg's issue had nothing to do with territory. He, like she, wanted to find Grissom as soon as humanly possible. As much as Catherine wished everyone at the lab felt that Grissom's case should be a priority, she knew that there were those there who didn't feel so warmly toward their supervisor. Grissom could be a hard-ass when the situation warranted it. While he was usually soft-spoken - a trait that led some to erroneously believe he didn't care – Gil could get angry. Rarely, but he could.

So could she. She, on the other hand, was not so adept at keeping her emotions segregated from the work. Catherine had always admired Gil's ability to step away from what he felt and just do the job. In turn, Gil admired her ability to live with the decisions she made in her life. He would regret a poorly made decision for a long time. That's why he made so few, she supposed.

As much as Catherine would love to advance on the job, she knew that Gil was better qualified to run the unit. They weren't alike, and the way they would face a problem was very different, but what Gil was able to accomplish with the tools at the lab bordered on brilliance. Catherine still had a lot to learn from him.

Okay, she told herself, that was bullshit. She fought the emotion that advanced on her. She didn't want to be deal with how she felt right now. There was too much to do. The truth was she didn't know exactly what she felt. Catherine simply wasn't ready for Gil to be gone from her life. She wanted to yell at him when he was thoughtless, to lean on him when she was unsure, to see his face every day when she felt overwhelmed, and to know that he would just be there. His steadiness had been something that, up to now, she had taken for granted. Nothing about her life had been very steady. Gil had always been that way. She had used that fact to berate him when she was angered, but if she were going to be honest it was the thing about her friend that she valued the most.

"Where the hell are you?" she asked his empty office. Before her emotion could completely take control she rose and escaped out the door. She had promised to help Warrick in Evidence. At least in there, she could leave behind her thoughts about life with Gil Grissom for a little while.

Monday Morning 11:22 AM

Warrick had managed to match the perlite crystals from the Toyota to three samples collected from the lower sections of the stairwell in Grissom's building. The implication was that the suspect had entered the building from the back. How he had done that without a key to the door or without prying the door open was unclear. He could have arrived earlier, exited the door and propped it open, then reentered when Grissom came home.

Catherine had gone through all the samples, identified possible matches for closer inspection, and sent the rest for simple elemental analysis to Trace. They worked in near silence.

When Catherine had arrived to help him, Warrick had asked her how she was doing. She hadn't met his eyes and gave a noncommittal answer. Warrick hadn't been able to decide immediately whether to push the issue or give her some space. When she wasted no time before diving into the work, he chose to leave it alone for now. He kept an eye on her, though.

She had known Gris longer than any of them. Their friendship gave her a latitude with the boss that none of the rest of them enjoyed. Catherine had to be feeling it, maybe more than the rest of them were. What Warrick didn't know was if she was dealing with it well. Maybe it wasn't his place to know.

Nick's arrival interrupted the quiet. He slowed his pace as he entered the room and glanced around. "Is everything okay in here?"

Catherine looked up from the samples she was examining. "Fine. Do you have anything?"

Nick narrowed his gaze for a moment. If he didn't miss his guess, Catherine was anything but fine. "Cath, are you okay?"

She sighed and ran her hand through her hair. Nick was just concerned about her, she knew that. But she didn't want to discuss how she felt. Trying not to sound as exasperated as she felt, she repeated, "I'm fine."

The look on Nick's face told her that he didn't believe her. Warrick saved her from losing her temper.

"What did you find out about the perlite?" Warrick asked.

Nick kept his gaze on Catherine for another second. He finally looked at the file he carried and answered Warrick's question. "I think we have a place to start."

Warrick's eyebrows shot up. "No joke?"

Moving the rest of the way into the room, Nick put the file down on the table. "Perlite is a form of volcanic glass. The ore we found is the crude crushed variety. The processed form of perlite is used in all kinds of products. What we found is unprocessed."

"Unprocessed?" Catherine asked.

"Yeah," Nick continued. "The ore or crude perlite is mined in pits. Then it's crushed for processing. When the crushed crystals are heated to above sixteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit the bound water expands, causing the crystal to pop like popcorn. What you get after cooling is a strong lightweight material that holds water and air well. Processed perlite is used in construction, horticulture, and in industrial concrete and plastics."

Warrick shrugged. "So what's so special about what we found?"

"I'm getting to that." Nick picked up a sample of the crushed crude perlite. "These small bits of crushed perlite are not natural. They're also not processed. So that means that they were mined and then prepared for processing."

Now Warrick was catching on. "So this form doesn't occur naturally in the soil."

Nick was nodding. "That's right."

Catherine understood where he was going. "If we knew where the perlite was processed, we might find where our suspect has been."

"And if the suspect was at the processing site, there might be a chance Grissom was there." Warrick concluded.

"Exactly," Nick grinned. "I did some checking with the Nevada State Mining Commission. There is only one perlite processing center within fifty miles of Vegas and only three within a hundred miles. They faxed me a list."

"I'll call Brass," Catherine said.

"Already done," Nick told her. "Ten minutes ago."

She smiled. "Get Sara," she told him. "Let's go."

***

Monday Afternoon 12:57 PM

It was obvious from the neglected state of the building that this ore processing plant had not been in use for quite some time. The windows were dusted over from countless wind storms, common in the high desert. One of every four or five windows was cracked or broken. The sliding metal entry door was rusted open, and the concrete bricks from which the building had been constructed had long ago lost any paint they sported to the blowing sands of Southern Nevada.

A black Tahoe, a State Police cruiser, and an unmarked LVMPD Ford Taurus pulled up outside the sagging chain link fence that surrounded an ancient paved parking lot. Most of the area had degraded to dust, and the parking lot outside the building complex seemed more sand and scrub brush than asphalt.

There was very little life in Goodsprings, Nevada. The town had sprung up in the middle of the desert to serve the mining industry that had once flourished here.

There had been a railroad spur built to service the local mine rail traffic. When the mines closed, the service spur had gone quiet and weeds had grown over the tracks. The town itself had dried up under the hot Nevada sun. Today, only a handful of diehard residents remained to hold off extinction.

The processing plant lay three miles outside of Goodsprings, just east of the abandoned railroad spur. According to the information Nick had obtained from the State Mining Commission, this plant was still the property of the Crystal Gorge Mine Company. The owners of the company had readily given permission to search the property. Cooperation with local authorities went a long way in preventing unnecessary reclamation ordinance hassles.

Four criminalists from Las Vegas exited the vehicles, accompanied by Sergeant O'Riley and Trooper Blair. Everyone wore sunglasses – combat gear to ward off the brightness of the relentless midday high desert sun. There was no sign of life about either the building complex or the surrounding property except for the call of a faraway crow.

"How do you want to play it?" Warrick asked Catherine.

She looked around and made some quick decisions. "Divide and conquer," she told the team. "Nick and I will take the main entrance. Sara, see if there's anything around back. There must be another way into the building complex."

Sara nodded. "You got it."

"Warrick," Catherine continued, "find out if there are any signs our Toyota or some other vehicle was in this parking lot recently."

Warrick looked over his shoulder. "Roger that."

Turning to the two police officers present, Catherine asked rather than instructed. "Would you fellows mind helping with a search of the grounds?"

"My pleasure," Trooper Blair responded. It wasn't more than eighty-five degrees out – a balmy fall day for this area of Nevada. Besides, when a member of law enforcement was in trouble, there should be no need for asking. Help was given whenever and wherever it could do some good, no questions asked.

"No problem," O'Riley said, grateful for something, anything, to do that might lead to Grissom.

Catherine briefly touched O'Riley's arm. "Thanks." She looked at the rest of the team and nodded toward the processing plant. "Let's get to it."

With field kits or flashlights, they all fanned out to begin searching for Gil Grissom outside the ghost town of Goodsprings, Nevada.

Monday Afternoon 01:11 PM

His shift had long since ended. He should have gone home and gone to bed. He should have, but that wasn't where he was. Instead, Greg found himself watching Grissom's tarantula slowly make its way across the bottom of its glass home.

Larry had gone home and Denise was now working in Trace. That meant that Greg didn't have to tiptoe around the lab in an attempt to stay out of Larry's crosshairs. The rest of the night shift team was either out in the field or had gone home. Greg figured that if he hung around the lab he'd be likely to find out information faster.

The rumor mill in the lab was faster than any official channel known to man. Information could be transferred so quickly in the lab that it seemed to travel faster than the speed of light. That's how it had been when Holly Gribbs was shot and Brass was removed as head of the lab. Just about everyone in the lab knew that Grissom was going to be the new boss before Grissom knew it.

Now the rumor mill had very little to speculate about. Grissom would be found either dead or alive. Or he might not be found at all. And, in true Vegas style, odds makers were taking bets. That thought made Greg's stomach turn. Greg loved all things fun and light-hearted, but making book on the outcome of this situation seemed cruel. The boss had to have family somewhere. Greg had heard that Catherine was calling Grissom's mother to give her updates. What would Grissom's mom think if she knew people were wagering on the case's outcome? God, that was sick.

The tarantula had settled at the far end of the terrarium. He was full from a day of eating and oblivious to the circumstances of his owner.

"Probably just as well," Greg said to the spider.

"He thanks you."

Greg whirled around to find Grissom standing in the doorway to his office.

"I was just making sure he was okay," Greg explained.

"And he thanks you for it," Grissom said. "So do I."

Greg thrust his hands into his pockets. "I just figured someone had to until … you know."

"Yeah," Grissom said gently, "I know."

"I won't let anything happen to him," Greg continued nervously. "He'll be safe and sound when you get back."

Grissom smiled warmly at the lab tech. "I appreciate that, Greg. You have a good heart. It's what will make you a good criminalist someday."

"Really?" Greg asked, surprised. He looked back at the tarantula, too embarrassed to meet Grissom's eyes. Turning back, he found that the doorway was empty. The boss was gone.

Monday Afternoon 01:25 PM

Jim Brass met Patrolman Wyatt in front of the reception desk at Arizona Charlie's. The off-strip hotel and casino was a favorite for locals needing a getaway. Located on Decatur Boulevard west of the strip, Arizona Charlie's boasted a large full featured casino, cheap rooms, and abundant inexpensive food options. It also had the advantage of being slightly out of the way while being on a major bus route. The casino was exactly thirty-five cents from the center of all the action.

"What have we got?" Jim asked Wyatt.

Officer Wyatt handed Jim a copy of a registration form. "Hotel security gave me this. A Paul Stankowski registered here three days ago, room 471. He prepaid for his room in cash."

"How many days?" Brass inquired.

"Five," Wyatt answered.

"Did you check the room yet?"

Wyatt shook his head. "I was told to wait for you, Captain."

Brass looked up from the registration form. "Okay. Let's see if Mr. Stankowski is in."

***

Next part of Ghost.