Maggie Winterbourne drummed her fingers on the steering wheel of her Jaguar. She looked out her side window to see if there was any decent reason for the red light to be lasting so long. The sky was an inky black that set off the brilliant jewel tones of the many lights that adorned the famous Las Vegas strip. Her attention snapped back to the intersection before her as two fire trucks sped past with their lights flashing and sirens blaring. Without further ado, the light changed to green and the line of traffic before her started moving.

Maggie shifted gears and her magnificent racing green Jag leapt forward like an eager stallion. Settling more comfortably into the buttery leather seat, she absently watched the landscaped shift from strip malls and outlet stores, to the palm tree lined peace of her upscale neighborhood. "Almost home." She sighed to herself as she started mentally planning her evening.

Gerald, her husband, would likely already be home. Being the head of neurosurgery at Desert Palms had its perks, and one of them was that he could pick his hours. She fervently hoped that at some point her career would allow the same, but her real estate business was demanding much of her time at the moment. She smiled slightly. What had started as three inherited properties had quickly ballooned into one of Las Vegas's most prominent apartment management companies. Just this evening, she had secured a deal to transform one of her newly acquired properties into condos. Now she just wanted to get home to her husband and celebrate this new milestone with a quiet dinner and a bottle of Chrystal.

Maggie was jolted out of her reverie as she caught a hint of movement to her left. She screamed and slammed on the brakes as a figure of a man stumbled out in front of her car, but it was too late. With a sickening crunch, the man was suddenly on the hood of her car careening towards the windshield. The crack of his head hitting the safety glass was almost lost in the whoosh of deploying airbags.

With a trembling hand, Maggie opened her door. The man she had hit lay in a crumpled heap beside the car. Maggie fished for her cell phone and after one unsuccessful try, dialed 911. In a voice weak with shock, she gave her location and explained her situation.

The calm capable voice of the emergency operator asked. "Are you injured? Is the man you struck breathing?"

Any vestiges of calm Maggie had being holding on to fled with that question. "I'm fine, I think. I, I don't know about the man! I don't know how to tell! I'm no good at first aid! What should I do?"

The operator's voice remained calm. "Emergency personnel have been dispatched and should be there momentarily." As if to confirm this, sirens wailed in the distance and were rapidly growing louder.

___________

Catherine Willows checked her notes for what seemed the tenth time then gave them over to Grissom with a frustrated sigh. "I can't concentrate, so here. You'd better give me directions or we'll wind up out by Lake Mead."

Grissom looked over at her with concern. "Troubles at home?"

Catherine grimaced. "Linds and I had another huge fight. Her teacher wants to see me after I get off work. My daughter was caught smoking." She quickly looked at Grissom with a mixture of anger and hurt in her eyes. "I don't know what to do any more. My telling her not to do something seems just to spur her on to bigger and worse things. It seems the only peace I get is at work. Which is strange considering what we do."

Grissom shook his head. "I have no idea. Cath this isn't exactly my area of expertise, but you know I'll always be there for you, even if you just need someone to talk to."

Catherine pulled her Denali in behind two cruisers and turned to her partner. "So, by the way, are you going to tell me why we're here to gather evidence in a simple case of car versus pedestrian, while the rest of the team is covering the Halloween bank heists and God knows what else?"

Grissom just serenely gazed back at her and shrugged. "When I was putting together tonight's schedule, I didn't think it would require more than two people to go over all that bank footage. Anything else that comes in can be handled by the others. Look, I understand the stress you've been under lately with Lindsay. I figured a few cases that wouldn't require overtime might just be what the doctor ordered, and I guess I was right."

Catherine grinned at him as she shut off the ignition. "And your reason for working said easy case with me would be?"

Grissom grinned back as he opened the door. "Supervisor's prerogative."

They grabbed their field kits and made their way over to the small knot of uniformed personnel by the flare lit accident scene. Grissom made the introductions.

The lead accident investigator opened his notebook and gave them the run down of what they had learned so far. "Mrs. Magdaline Winterbourne was on her way home when the pedestrian apparently came out of nowhere. She was unable to stop. According to the skid marks she was going the speed limit. The victim was dead on the scene. We're just waiting for the coroner. The man wasn't carrying ID."

Catherine looked at the car. "That's a newer Jag. Don't they come with a black box like the ones they use in airplanes?"

The officer nodded. "Ya, useful little gadget. We'll leave that for you guys to look at that when you get the car back to the garage. I think the poor lady was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don't know what this guy was up to, but he definitely isn't from this neighborhood. Mrs. Winterbourne is over at the ambulance being treated for shock if you want to talk to her. I've already got a statement from her."

Catherine nodded her thanks. "The statement she gave you should do for now." Catherine didn't like it when any officer made assumptions in a case. It tended to cause tunnel vision during an investigation. With a slightly forced smile she thanked the officer for the information and joined Grissom by the battered Jaguar.

Grissom was taking pictures of the damaged front and the spidery cracks running through the windshield. He lowered the camera and looked at her. "What did you learn?"

Catherine shrugged. "So far it just looks like an unfortunate accident. The officer checked our victim for ID and found nothing."

Grissom exhaled a frustrated sigh. "They know no one is to touch the body until after the coroner has checked it. What is getting into some of these uniforms? They know the drill and yet stuff like this keeps happening. It's just lucky for us this looks pretty straight forward because a defense lawyer would have a field day."

Catherine shook her head. "I know. I know. You're preaching to the choir here Gil. Maybe they all just watch too much TV? Oh, Here's David now. I'll tell him what our eager investigator got up to."

"Be gentle." Grissom warned. "You could get that poor cop suspended for this. There is more than enough animosity between our departments as it is."

Catherine glared at Grissom with anger shining in her eyes. "What would you have me do? Wait until one of these guys screws up on a really big case? You said it yourself, a lawyer would love to uncover procedural problems like this."

Grissom turned back and continued working over the Jaguar. Catherine was right. He'd just have to hunker down and wait for the fallout that would likely hit his office desk.

David looked frustrated and out of sorts as he hurried up to the two CSIs. "Sorry I took so long, but it's been nuts. I just came from a scene where a lady shot her husband. He thought he'd give her a scare by dressing up as a ninja and sneaking through the bathroom window. She thought he was a burglar, shot him and I got the call. What is with these nuts? It's still three days until Halloween and this is the second case of death by bad costume idea we've had?"

Catherine nodded sympathetically and squared her shoulders to give the young assistant coroner even more bad news. "Well, this looks pretty straight forward except the traffic investigator over there has checked the body already for ID so it's been moved."

David crouched by the body and pulled back the tarp. "I'll tell Dr. Robbins. He won't leave things at a firmly worded memo this time. This guy has definitely been moved. There is no way he could have landed on his back after being hit. Look at the trauma to his legs. This man was found on his side."

Catherine shuddered as she looked at the shattered remains of the man's knees poking through his shredded dress pants. She observed. "Young black man in an upscale neighborhood wearing what appears to be a very cheap polyester suit. What was he doing here?"

Grissom wandered over from where he had been working and raised his eyebrows. "Selling magazine subscriptions? We have no way of knowing."

David had inserted a thermometer to take the victim's liver temperature. He checked the results and then quickly reviewed the information on his clipboard. "This can't be right."

Both Catherine and Grissom looked over at David who now looked even more flustered. Catherine crouched for a look at the digital readout on the thermometer. "Isn't that temp too low?"

David nodded. "Yes, by about four degrees. His temp should only have dropped about one degree from time of death. I'll have to take a sample of vitreous liquid back at the morgue to use as confirmation of time of death. These thermometers are usually very accurate, but the way my night's been going . . . you know."

After David had left with the body, Catherine started carefully checking the blood stained patch of asphalt that was now exposed. She took swabs of the blood. Her maglight suddenly lit up a small scrap of white trapped at the edge of one of the bloody smears. "What have we here?" She lifted the delicate object with tweezers for a closer look.

Grissom looked curiously over her shoulder. "Looks like a chicken feather splattered with blood."

Catherine nodded as she sampled one of the small droplets. "Yes and that's a problem. Our victim suffered major trauma when he was hit, but this looks like arterial spray. Look at how small the drops are. I'll have the lab check it against the victim, but I have a sinking feeling it's not his."

_____________

The hand on the clock seemed to be moving through molasses. It was just three in the morning, but it felt more like six. Catherine sat back in her chair and stretched. She hadn't been getting enough sleep and it always seemed to hit her hard when she was doing reports.

Catherine looked up from her paperwork and massaged her temples as Greg bounced enthusiastically into her small office. "Hey Greg. Were you out in the field with Nick tonight?"

"Yep." Nodded the young tech turned CSI. "Ninja versus bullet. Bullet won. I was just picking up some samples for another case and saw this one with your name on it. I thought I'd bring it along."

Catherine favored Greg with a brilliant smile. "That was sweet of you. Thanks." As Greg left she looked at the top sheet of the report on the feather. "Chicken feather and chicken blood. Hmmm."

Grissom paused outside her door and sipped his coffee. "Hmmm what?"

Catherine shuffled papers and looked up at him. "The feather was chicken like you suspected. The blood was chicken too. The road by a traffic fatality is not the usual place to find the detritus from a slaughtered chicken don't you think?"

Grissom drained his mug and set it on Catherine's desk. "Maybe Doc Robbins has some answers for us. I just got a cryptic message from him. Apparently there is something very strange about our victim."

Catherine joined Grissom at the door. "Something very strange according to Al is very strange indeed."

_________

Al Robbins greeted the two CSIs as they entered the autopsy suite. He stood beside the sheet draped corpse of their accident victim and opened a folder. "I ran your victim's prints and came back with a gaming card for Lucien Lecreaux, 21. He's a Baccarat dealer originally from Haiti."

Grissom nodded. "Well that's good. Any address for him?"

Doc Robbins shook his head. "Not really, just a mailbox, but that's not why I called you. According to the computer, Mr. Lecreaux has been dead for three days already. According to the death certificate already issued, Mr. Lecreaux was brought to Desert Palms on Wednesday with vital signs absent. They tried to revive him, before calling TOD twenty minutes later. He was released to relatives yesterday."

Catherine walked over for a closer look at the body. "David said the body temp was unusually low, but if he'd been dead that long it would have been much lower than 4 degrees?"

The coroner handed the file to Catherine. "The vitreous fluid we tested showed his TOD to be consistent with the accident. His body temp was low, but a fluctuation there isn't unheard of. He has signs of attempts to resuscitate here and here." With a gloved finger the doctor indicated two slight burns left by the defibrillation paddles. "I called the pathologist over at the hospital. There has been no clerical error. This man has died twice."

Grissom muttered. "Dead man walking."

Doc Robbins shook his head. "We'll see if anything pops up when I do the internal."

Catherine looked at Grissom. "I thought this case was supposed to be simple and straight forward?"

Grissom shrugged. "Most of them look that way at first.