In a World They Forgot

The Time Has Come To Set It Straight

*Greg*

"So what have we got here?" I asked Catherine as I looked around the messed up apartment, wondering what could be so important to trash a place like this.

"Appears to be a robbery that turned into murder." She said, examining the male victim who was slumped over the table where he’d clearly been sitting.

"Nasty." I commented, noticing what looked like blunt force trauma to his left temple.

"Do you want me to look around for anything useful?" I asked her, snapping the latex glove against my wrist.

"Yeah, say, isn't Miki back in the lab tonight?" Catherine said as she examined the sofa and coffee table, before turning her attention back to the corpse.

"Yeah, but I've not seen her around." I told her, remembering Miki's return to the lab and feeling a little down that I didn’t get a chance to speak to her first.

"I think Grissom sent her straight out into the field." The blonde said, looking at some books, neatly arranged on the shelf by the vic.

"Seriously?!" I turned to look at her.

"Yeah, why do you seem so shocked?"

"I just thought he'd make her do lab work for a few days before letting her back out here."

"Apparently not. I think she left with Warrick just before we came out." Catherine explained, bagging some red fibres from the laminated wooden floor.

"Hey, I got a newspaper clipping." I told her as I picked it up, carefully, so not to tear it.

"What about?"

"I can't tell. It's been torn. All I have is a date and half a headline." I said shaking my head

"We can run it when we get back to the lab. See if we can find out what the clipping was about."

I was just about to see if Miki had returned from her crime scene when my cell started ringing.

"Sanders."

"That newspaper clipping? Got the results from it." 

"Okay Hodges, I'll collect it now." I hung up and turned on my heel, heading down to the lab I had just passed. Something told me that Hodges had deliberately waiting for me to get near the lab where Miki would be before calling me. "What did you find?"

"Not much, just a clipping about a killing that happened 25 years ago." Hodges shrugged before returning to polishing the lab machines down or whatever the hell he was doing with the cloth.

I quickly scan read the article and didn’t notice anything odd about it until a second reading.

"Hodges, did you even bother to read this article?" I asked him through gritted teeth, trying to keep my temper down, my mood calm.

"Yeah, nothing special. It's just another Vegas case that went cold." He shrugged.

"Look at the names!"

"What about them?"

"How long have these results been in for?"

"About half an hour."

"You'd better hope Catherine deals with you for this, because if I have to--" I stopped there and tried to control my temper before storming from the lab and racing to find Catherine.

I finally found her in the break room talking with Nick and Sara. They looked up when I came in.

"Is Miki around?" I asked in a quiet voice expecting her to pop up from somewhere.

"She just left with Warrick again. They found some leads to follow up." Nick explained.

"Good. I think you'd better look at this." I handed the article to Catherine who read it and put a hand to her mouth.

"We need to get Grissom to find the file for this case." She said handing the paper to Nick and leaving the room.

Everyone apart from Warrick and Miki were gathered in Grissom's office waiting for him to return with the file, praying that it wasn't what we all thought. Soon he arrived carrying the dust gathered box and placed it down on the desk. I wiped the dust from it and closed my eyes tightly at the name I saw written on the label.

08/24/83

Antonio Romani.

"Is that..." Sara trailed off unable to finish her sentence.

"Has Miki ever mentioned her father to you?" Nick turned to me.

"The only thing she has ever told me is that he died before she was born." I answered honestly. “I don’t think that she knows much more than that.”

"Antonio Romani was murdered. Victim of a shooting and his killer was never found, although there were suspicions of a gang involvement in his killing. His wife refused police protection insisting that she was not going to--she was not going to give birth to her child into a world of secrets and making her grow up in a world full of fear." Grissom took his glasses off and rubbed his temples.

"That definitely sounds like Miki's mom." Nick sighed as he fell back into a chair.

"Anything else in the file Griss?" Catherine asked, folding her arms and sighing.

"Not a lot really, just how they had two suspects who they couldn't physically place at the scene."

"What do we do?" Sara knew the answer but wanted to hear it from someone else.

"We have to reopen this case." Catherine said, her eyes closed tightly as if she was trying to block some horrible sight out.

"What about Miki? She’s just come back to work." Nick asked.

"There’s a potential connection between the cases. She has to know the truth.” Sara explained, working by the book as usual.

I was quiet the whole time. Miki may not have known who her father was or what kind of man he may have been, but could we really taint the lack of memory with possible gang involvement, amongst other things? It could destroy her and I couldn’t do it.

I noticed a crease appear between Grissom's eyes. He'd noticed something.

"Where's the file from Miki's shooting?" He asked, looking at Nick who had handled the case.

"It's in the lab."

"I think we need it here."

Nick nodded and ran from the office.

"What is it?" Catherine asked Grissom, looking over his shoulder at the folder.

"These names..."

Nick walked back in, slightly breathless and carrying a thin folder that he handed to Grissom. Grissom's expert eyes scanned over the folders and he shut them both and placed them both down on his cluttered desk before looking up at us all slowly.

"I think Miki's case was unfinished business." He stated quietly.

Catherine stared at him in shock and picked up the cases and looked over them herself.

"Suspect in Antonio Romani's case was Mitchell Cavendish. The suspect we’re trying to pin to the shooting of Miki Romani was Kyle Cavendish." She read out to us all after studying them both.

"Like father, like son." Grissom said.