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"Guys, meet Rebecca Warren, ex-cheerleader of the Arizona Wildcats, more recently a cocktail waitress, likely from one of the bigger casinos on the strip," Sara introduced her fellow investigators to the deceased. "She lives downstairs in Apartment 1," she continued. "It seems that she and Lindy Black exchanged bedrooms for the night." Nick and Warrick stared at her as if she'd grown an extra head. She completely understood their dubious expressions.

Nick glanced at the pretty African American woman sprawled in what looked like peaceful slumber in the teenage girl's bed. "But...why?"

Sara had no idea how to answer that. "Maybe she was babysitting? The Blacks have other children, too, right?"

"John Jr. and Marshall," Warrick answered, remembering Grissom's introduction to the crime scene. "That might explain why Rebecca Warren was here, but not why Lindy was in her apartment."

"Okay, let's say she was babysitting," Nick started theorizing as he turned on his UV light, scanning the body for any physical signs of trauma, "and she fell asleep. The Blacks came home, decided to let her keep sleeping, and sent Lindy downstairs since there were no extra beds here?" Even as he said it he sounded very doubtful of the scenario.

Warrick looked thoughtful for a moment, but it was clear that, like Nick and Sara, he didn't buy it. There was a sofa in the living room that the girl could have slept on, so it seemed doubtful that Lindy would be sent down to the other woman's apartment alone. It would defeat the purpose of having a babysitter in the first place if they sent the girl downstairs to stay on her own. Besides, from the family portrait, in Warrick's opinion, even the youngest of the three children appeared old enough to not need babysitting unless the parents and older siblings were all going to be gone overnight. There had to be a different explanation.

Maybe he would find it when they checked the other rooms of Apartment 4. He left Sara and Nick to continue their work in Lindy's room and moved on to check out the brothers' rooms.

The first door he came to was adorned with "Keep Out", "Hazard Area", and "No Trespassing" signs. "Sorry, kid," he acknowledged the signs as he pushed the door open. He was relieved to discover that there was no body in this room. Perhaps one of the Black children had survived, after all. There was still something about the room that bothered him. Like the other rooms he'd examined tonight, this one was meticulously neat. Not a thing was out on the dresser, nor was there anything on the floor. There was a bookshelf next to the door, and it only took a brief glance to notice that the books had been carefully alphabetized.

Warrick glanced back at the door. The signs had led him to expect this to be a room of a rebellious teenage boy, but that's hardly how it looked from the inside. Teenage boys who kept their rooms this thoroughly organized were few and far between. Warrick had been paying such attention to the fact that there was someone else sleeping in Lindy's bed to notice that the girl's room was likewise spotless, but now that he thought about it...except for the smoke, water, and fire-damaged areas, every room in the whole apartment building was remarkably clean. There was something very wrong with the whole crime scene.

That assessment was further solidified as he pushed open the other boy's bedroom door. Not a thing out of place, except the boy himself. In the boy's bed was a man of about thirty, who did not match the family portrait. Not only was this man obviously in the wrong bed, Warrick wondered if he were also wearing the wrong clothes. It didn't seem logical at all for this man to be wearing a Good Charlotte t-shirt to bed--especially one that was several sizes too small for the man's large frame.

Warrick snapped pictures, trying not to let the questions running through his head to keep him from getting the job done. They would, of course, analyze it all later, but for now he was just there to do the preliminaries of the investigation.

"How did they all sleep through it? A whole building full of people, you'd think that at least one of them would wake up. The odds that they were all heavy sleepers are pretty slim," Sara commented to Nick as she leaned over Becky Warren's body, searching for any indication of struggle, anything to explain why she wouldn't have woken up.

"Drugged maybe?" he wondered aloud. "We'll want to get full toxicology reports from Dr. Robbins." He switched off his UV light, his preliminary investigation of Rebecca Warren's body complete. No physical signs of struggle, no blood, and no semen or other signs of sexual assault on her bedclothes or the sheets. He did find a couple odd hairs that he carefully extracted and dropped into an evidence bag.

Leaving Sara to finish up in Lindy's room, Nick headed to start the preliminaries on the master bedroom. He felt ill as he discovered the boxer-clad body of the younger Black son intimately entwined with the body of an older woman--a red-head, not blonde like Mrs. Black--wearing a barely-there nighty. He stood frozen in the doorway, staring at the image that was just wrong on so many levels. The boy couldn't be more than twelve or thirteen, the woman old enough to be his mother. Despite the horror of the scene, he couldn't tear his eyes away, nor could he make himself go forward, into the room.

He was still standing in the doorway he didn't know how many minutes later when he felt a hand on his shoulder. "You okay?" Catherine's voice broke him out of his stupor.

"Yeah. I'm fine. Just...needed a minute," he answered her, not looking at her. He knew as soon as she saw what he'd been looking at, she'd understand why the victims in this room had thrown him. But there was a job to do. They needed to finish up with the bodies so that they could be moved.

He slowly approached the bed, turning on the UV light, dreading what it would reveal. He ignored Catherine's startled gasp as she saw what he'd been looking at.

"Do you want me to do this room?" she asked quietly as she watched him begin the examination in an obviously forced calm manner. Even if he hadn't confided to her a few months before about what had happened to him when he was just a child, she would have known that there was something wrong. "I'll do this room," she changed tactics as he continued mechanically going through the motions of examining the bodies. "You go on up and start on Mr. Andrews' apartment," she made it an order.

Nick looked up, torn between being indignant and grateful at the way she was pushing him out of this portion of the investigation. It did hit a bit close to home, but he would maintain objectivity; he wouldn't let it cloud his judgment. But he backed off, somewhat relieved.

Catherine gave him a reassuring smile as he brushed past her, heading for the last apartment. Once he was out of the room, she set to work on examining the bodies. She was relieved to find that there was no sign of sexual activity other than the posing of the bodies. There were no unexpected bodily fluids on the scant clothing or either body. No obvious bruising. No needle marks in the obvious spots.

It wasn't until her alarm went off signaling it was time to go out and change her filter and she was leaving the apartment that she noticed the family portrait. Her jaw dropped as she recognized the couple she'd examined downstairs in Apartment 2. She turned as Warrick emerged from one of the bedrooms. She pointed to the portrait and opened her mouth, but couldn't find the right words to even start her questions.

"Let me guess, the Blacks weren't where they were supposed to be," he summed up the situation. He chuckled dryly as her mouth snapped shut, her eyes still wide with surprise. This was going to be one strange puzzle to put together.

***

Author's note: Thank you to those who've reviewed here and via email. It's really appreciated! This is my first attempt at a CSI fic, so I'm still kind of getting used to the characters. I feel like this is a little slow getting going, and I may combine a couple of these shorter set-up chapters once I get into the main part of the story. Thanks for sticking with the story, I'll be getting to the real investigation in the next chapter or so. :)