"Well, cause of death is pretty easy to determine."
Grissom raised an eyebrow at Sara, then rose from his crouch next to the body of a teenage girl. "The knife to the heart would seem to be COD but leaving it behind could be to distract us from the truth. This light rain has washed away some of the blood or there wasn't much to begin with. Get more pictures of that before we lose it all," he instructed.
Sara complied as they both moved around the body.
"Grissom," the medical examiner beckoned, "There's something in her left hand."
Crouching again, Grissom carefully opened the fingers and drew out a scrap of paper. Shielding it from the rain, he unfolded it and read, "Pure, colonnade, 11:30 Monday."
"She's too young to get into Pure," Sara said, placing the note in an evidence bag.
"It's an outdoor club, anyone can pass through." Grissom checked his watch. "It's 10:45 and we're nearly at Caesars."
"Sounds like she was planning to meet someone."
"Let's see if we can take that meeting."
*****
Buffy checked her watch and tried to tune out the loud music and glittering lights around her.
"Stop that," her companion complained. "It's ten seconds after the last time you checked. Let's get drinks."
Buffy glared at Spike who looked way too comfortable leaning up against a column, watching the pretty people party. "I don't know why we couldn't just send this girl the money for bus fare."
"Because she'd seen a Bringer lurking outside her school, and why would anyone turn down a trip to Vegas?"
"I have work to do."
Spike snorted lightly at that, bringing an even more exasperated look from the Slayer.
"And a bar instead of her house? Why?"
"Girl's one of the smart ones. Didn't want to bring them down on her family. This is a good choice. In the open yet crowded. No chance for ambush here."
"You know way too much about this stuff."
Spike just grinned at that, silently acknowledging his evil past, then whistled down a waitress.
"I don't want anything to drink," Buffy protested.
"Who said I was ordering you anything?"
She rolled her eyes at that and checked her watch again.
*****
As they approached the colonnade, Grissom and Sara scanned it for anyone who might be on the look out for a teenage girl.
"It's not much of a clue to go on. She must have known who she was meeting."
"No clue is too vague to ignore. That young woman at the end. She's looking for someone."
"Yeah, but the guy who's hovering over her is busy drinking," Sara added, then nearly stumbled over her feet as his head turned and piercing blue eyes locked on hers for a long moment, then he bent down to his companion and whispered something.
*****
"Gun oil and blood twenty feet to the right."
"Huh?" Buffy glanced around, then up at Spike. "I repeat, huh?"
"That couple, they're armed and smell like blood. Slayer's blood," Spike clarified, his face grim and his voice tight. "I don't think our Potential is going to make this meeting."
Buffy's shoulders sagged momentarily, then she shook off the grief and nodded. "You're sure." It wasn't a question. "Let's get out of here, then."
"Excuse me," the older man of the approaching couple said over the music and crowd chatter. They'd moved quickly, more quickly than Spike had anticipated and while he tried to slip away, Buffy took his arm and held him there.
"We can answer a few questions," she whispered. "We don't really know anything, not even her last name."
"I'm Gil Grissom, Las Vegas CSI. This is Sara Seidel. Can we ask you a few questions?"
Buffy shrugged. "I guess so."
"We found this note at a crime scene." He held it up. "Something tells me you two are waiting for someone."
Buffy looked at Spike who frowned at her, then nodded. "Yeah, a sixteen year old girl asked us to meet her here."
"The note was found in the hand of a murder victim. I think we should go somewhere more formal to continue this interview."
"Look," Spike protested. "We didn't know the girl. The meeting was arranged through a third party."
"At eleven o'clock on a weeknight between two adults and a teenage girl? That sounds a bit suspicious," Sara suggested.
"Oy, it wasn't like that."
"Spike, shut up," Buffy hissed then turned her attention back to the older gentleman. "It was a business thing. We don't even know her last name."
Sara looked at Grissom, then smirked at the blonde woman. "What's your name?"
*****
Buffy paced in the interview room, glaring at the mirrored wall as she passed it each time. She could sense the presence behind the glass and silently cursed at how easily things had gone south. It was supposed to be an easy mission--go rescue the girl, as Spike put it, and bring her back to the bosom of way too many people in Buffy's house.
The door opened and she stopped pacing. It was the male criminologist who entered and gestured to the table.
"Please, take a seat Miss Summers."
She'd given them her name. Spike had clammed up. Of course, any name he gave them was going to be suspicious and/or non-existent.
Grissom sat at the table and Buffy reluctantly joined him. He opened a file. "You have an interesting file from California. Several sealed incidents as a juvenile, a few others as an adult. No arrests, but you're flagged as someone to watch." At her shrug, he continued. "Your friend isn't saying a word. You do know that only looks bad."
"We haven't done anything wrong. This is all a big misunderstanding. We were contacted about Genna. People know we're looking for certain girls and, oh, crap, that sounded really bad." Buffy sighed and ran her hands through her hair, tugging at the roots in frustration. "All we wanted to do was keep her safe."
"You knew she was in danger." When Buffy didn't respond, Grissom continued, "Genna Vanderley was killed by a large, curved blade to the heart that was left in situ. There were signs of defensive wounds on her hands and arms. She fought back. There was no attempt to remove the knife or remove any evidence. There were prints and genetic material."
"We didn't kill her."
"That I know. Time of death was between nine-thirty and ten o'clock. You were checking into your room at the Best Western at that time. There was a time stamp on your registration and on the video footage."
"You've discovered a lot in the last three hours."
"I'm sorry to have kept you so long," he had the grace to look a bit chagrined, "but there are some discrepancies in the evidence and we needed to rule you and your friend out as suspects."
"Discrepancies?"
Grissom frowned for a moment, then removed a page from another file and turned it around before pushing it across the table towards her. "These are the prints on the knife handle. They don't match anything in any of our databases. In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd say they weren't completely human."
"Look right to me, but I'm no expert." Buffy silently prayed that sweat wasn't breaking out on her forehead. Dealing with the incompetent and purposefully blind Sunnydale police was one thing, but this guy seemed to know what he was doing.
"And the epiphilials, skin cells," he added at her blank look, "are corrupted. They're seventy- five percent human and twenty-five percent something else."
"So maybe a dog or something came across the body and rubbed the knife. Why are you showing me this stuff?"
"Up until yesterday Miss Vanderley appears to have led a normal teenage life. The product of divorced parents who both remained active presences in her life, a part-time job at McDonalds, a member of the gymnastics team at her high school, a B student. Her mother was dating again, but no one serious, and Genna had no major quarrels with either parent. And then yesterday she told her mother some creepy guy in a cape was hanging around her school and followed her home. By the time her mother looked, there was no one there, and they didn't call the police. Mrs. Vanderley told us that Genna received a phone call last before school yesterday, unusual in itself, and the phone call rattled her, but she refused to tell her mother who was on the line, and went on to school. Genna jotted down something before she left and her mother provided us with the notepad. It was easy enough to see the impressions of the note we found on her body. Was that call from you?"
'"...No. I told you, someone else arranged for us to meet Genna."
"Why."
Buffy fell silent for a long time, then finally looked up with tired eyes. "Mr. Grissom, you're not going to solve this murder. I'm sorry Genna's dead but we didn't cause her death. Our presence here didn't play into it one way or another. She would have died even if we'd never heard of her."
"But, you know why she died."
"Yeah."
"It would give her parents some closure."
"No, it wouldn't." She sighed softly. "I shouldn't have said anything, but it's nearly three thirty in the morning and I never get enough sleep."
There was a knock on the door then Sara entered holding a pile of computer print-outs. She and Grissom conferred for a moment, then she exited and he turned back to Buffy.
"We've found nine identical murders of teenage girls across the country in the last two months, one in Sunnydale two and a half weeks ago." He looked both grim and angry as his fingers tightened around the pages. "A serial killer and no one has made a connection until now?"
"People have made the connection, Mr. Grissom," she said softly. "There's just nothing anyone like you can do."
"I refuse to accept that."
'"You'll never find Genna's killer and chances are he won't strike here again. Holding us won't solve anything. We wanted to help her, not hurt her. Her death is on me because they got to her first."
Another knock on the door and another middle-aged man stepped into the room, his expression angry.
"Let them go, Grissom."
"Sheriff," he started to protest, rising to his feet.
"The orders come from high up. Cut them loose and close the file."
"You can take my witnesses but you can't stop me from investigating."
Buffy rose and laid a gentle hand on Grissom's arm. "I can tell you're a good man, Mr. Grissom. Let this one go. I'm sure there are too many victims in this town that need your expertise. Solve those crimes and bring their families' peace. I'll do what I can for Genna. We're on the same side."
"I don't like it when I don't get answers."
"Neither do I but there are some questions that a man of science like you just can never answer. In fact, you can't even understand the questions." With a sad smile she slipped out of the room and found Spike waiting in the hall with Sara.
"We being charged?" Spike asked, hands dug deep into the pockets of his duster, violence simmering beneath his skin.
"No. Giles. Come on." Buffy started down the hall towards the marked exit and Spike followed her.
Sara looked at Grissom as he stomped out of the interview room behind the Sheriff who was ignoring him. "What just happened?"
The Sheriff continued down the hall and once out of sight, Grissom turned to his companion. "I have no idea. I've seen this only a few times before with diplomats."
"If those two were diplomats, I'll eat my shirt," she snorted. "That guy, there was something really weird about him. He stayed in a corner of the room the whole time, ignoring me. For a few minutes I left him and went into the observation room and he didn't move. I couldn't see him. He never stood before the mirror."
"Miss Summers made a few confusing statements."
"Well, at least we know her name and where she's from. We could follow up."
"Maybe a trip to California might be in order," Grissom replied contemplatively. "There's too much going on here."
"We'd have to do it off the books."
"And without the Sheriff's knowledge." Grissom sighed heavily. "I can't just let this go, Sara. There are too many questions and I don't believe Miss Summer's statement that there are some questions I can't understand."
Sara snorted out a laugh. "She obviously read you all wrong."
"I do love a mystery and Genna Vanderley deserves answers."
End