Title: Due Diligence

Author: Jeanny

E-mail: jeannygrrl@hotmail.com

Rating: R

Character: Lindsey

Spoilers: Season 2 Through Dead End.

Distribution/Archive: Go right ahead, if you like, just let me know where it's going.

Disclaimer: I don't own them, would that I did. The characters herein belong to Joss, Mutant Enemy, Greenwalt, Fox, etc. I'm merely using them to tell my own little story.

Feedback: Please! I need it.

Summary: A CSI x-over. The key to living with an evil hand? Keeping it occupied.

*******************

Me? I'm unreliable. I've got these evil hand issues...and I'm bored with this crap. And besides, I'm leaving, so if you wanna chase me, be my guest...and remember: evil. - Lindsey, Dead End

*******************

An ex-lawyer with an evil hand is a surprisingly unemployable proposition.

Of course, when he'd left Wolfram and Hart Lindsey hadn't exactly expected to be seeking employment any time soon. He'd made certain he was financially secure in case he'd needed to flee a long time ago...and, of course, there was the part where he expected his former employers to kill him. But their interest in him seemed to wane as soon as he passed the Los Angeles city limits, a process delayed by Angel's juvenile little prank with the sign. Lindsey's hand clenched uncomfortably whenever he thought about that.

No, money wasn't the problem. The problem was depressingly simple. Too much time on his evil hand. Time to get into trouble, and trouble was what Lindsey so very much didn't need or want. He'd had his fill of trouble enough already. So a job seemed like a good way to keep busy, but there was the matter of what kind of employment. And the not-insignificant matter of where. For a while he moved from town to town quite a bit, till he finally found a place that seemed to make the hand tingle and yet somehow relax at the same time. He decided that was a good sign; Vegas became his new hunting grounds.

The thought of practicing law again was pretty much anathema; it had always been a means to an end anyway. He bummed around singing and playing the guitar for a bit, but even in a place with a million attractions he felt it was bringing him too much attention. Anonymity was the key. So he bluffed his way through an interview and got a job waiting tables, but quickly found that was a bad place for the hand. Too many knives.

Finally he got himself a job dealing blackjack at the Miroro, a small run down casino catering only to the most desperate elements. A place where his false credentials and story merited no more than a cursory look and listen. Where his own haunted eyes looked across every day at eyes even more haunted. Where his strange dealing habits earned him the nickname Switch, to the point where he had his nametag changed; he had never really answered to that invented name anyway. And they cared not a whit that he sometimes was dealing from the bottom of the deck, most notably when he was dealing right-handed. It was all good for a while, until he met Maureen Mackenzie.

Lindsey hadn't even realized he was homesick until he met her. Fresh faced blonde, just off the bus from Stillwater, Oklahoma and still smelling of farms and open places. Why such a sweet, soft-spoken girl had come to Vegas, why she wanted to work in the Miroro, she never would say. When he would try to press she'd just smile enigmatically and throw the question back in his face...not like he would answer either. He kind of admired her for not bothering to lie.

He had started to talk to her just to listen to the soft twang that sounded like his mother, his grandmother...she wasn't much of a conversationalist but she prattled on and he didn't care, enjoying the sound of home. She could see the sparkle of interest in her eyes, but he couldn't bring himself to act on it at first. Maybe she reminded him too much of his mother. Or maybe she reminded him of Darla. Either way everything in him was screaming to take it slower than molasses. If at all.

Everything but the hand, of course.

The hand wanted Maureen. It was drawn to her in a way that it had wanted no other woman. Lindsay feared it was that air of innocence that surrounded her. Sometimes he thought she was the only untainted thing in this town. He wanted to shield and protect her. The hand wanted to corrupt her...to caress her silken flesh softly, to hear her moan...to feel her writhe about as it moved between her thighs, feeling for the spot that would bring her to climax, but not giving her that release until she begged for it...to leave bruises on milky white flesh as she pleaded for him to stop...

How he could know what the hand was thinking - that the hand was thinking - Lindsey would never have been able to explain. It was just a fact of his life, like cards and his guitar and the seldom-seen yet inevitable sunrise. Like the lust for Maureen's body the hand felt. Like the lust for blood.

He had to get it away from her. He didn't want to...he genuinely liked her, and she had made Vegas seem like home, something he'd thought impossible. But this would end badly, and he couldn't let that happen...

"Switch?" she called softly, touching his arm. He turned, the hand pulling her head urgently closer, until their lips met and his will faded. A few hours later, he climbed wearily into his car and drove until the gas tank ran dry. Then he wept until his tears ran dry. Then he almost casually opened the trunk and took out the thing that he'd been keeping there since he left Los Angeles. The thing he'd known he'd need at some point. Just a fact of life.

Like the sunrise.

*******

"Grissom? You busy?"

Grissom looked up at Warrick's frowning face and sighed, immediately looking back down at the printouts and reports that had been absorbing him the better part of two days. The data didn't make sense. Gil Grissom had a gift for seeing patterns where most people saw nonsense, but this time he only saw the nonsense.

It was aggravating. He sighed again.

"Does it matter?" he snapped, not entirely in answer to Warrick's question, then exhaled sharply. "What can I do for you?" he asked in a more agreeable voice, still not looking up. Warrick shifted uncertainly, but continued. He'd been working for Grissom long enough to know what was causing this mood.

"I wanted to tell you that the prints came back on last night's scene."

"The desert?" Grissom confirmed absently.

"Yeah...I thought you might find it interesting," Warren said, handing over the printout he was holding, "since you're working the Mackenzie murder." Grissom took the report and began speed-reading. The pattern was starting to form, but what it was forming into was something out of science fiction.

"Any other body parts?" he asked. Warrick shrugged.

"Scoured a five square mile radius around the original crime scene. So far, nada."

Grissom nodded. This was pretty much as he had expected. He pushed back from the desk, making real eye contact with the younger man for the first time.

"So what we have is a hand. The hand of a man who committed a murder a little more than two days ago, even though he was already very, very dead."

"That hand didn't come off of a corpse," Warrick protested. Grissom eyed him seriously.

"It didn't. It came off a murderer." He lifted the file he'd been perusing, closing it and tossing it to Warrick, who almost dropped it in surprise. "The body of one Bradley Scott was found just outside Los Angeles eight months ago, missing several body parts, including the right hand. Maureen Mackenzie was murdered by someone with Bradley Scott's fingerprints. On his right hand only. And then the hand shows up in the desert shortly thereafter. Someone attached the hand in place of his own to commit that murder. I'm guessing her ambidextrous friend from the casino."

"The guy that disappeared and apparently never existed," Warrick mused, frowning as he worked through it in his head. Grissom waited patiently. "Man, that had to have been some kind of advanced limb grafting...there has to be a record of a procedure like that, somewhere."

"You're right. But there's nothing. I've looked everywhere I know to look. Other countries. Called in a few favors, got the low down on some of the less official, more experimental kinds of treatments. Nothing. Even checked out some psychic surgeons in South America. No one's doing anything at that level." Grissom paused, considering. That last statement was possibly untrue. One of the doctors he had pointed to had given him the name of a man who had vehemently asserted that he knew of such a procedure. Claimed it was some kind of demonic ritual taking place underground in L.A. Grissom was open-minded enough to conceive that such a rite might exist. He was even willing to consider the idea that supernatural forces were involved in this, in the sense that he believed that supernatural forces were merely natural forces that were as yet not understood by science. But the man that had given him this information was locked up in a mental ward, having ripped his own eyes out of his head. Not exactly a source one could rely upon.

"What about the other set of prints at the Mackenzie scene? Looked like someone was trying to save her."

"No matches. But I think they belonged to our murderer too." At Warrick's questioning look, Grissom held up his left hand, nodding. Warrick made a choking sound.

"From his other hand? You're saying he tried to kill her with the one hand and save her with the other? Grissom, that's impossible. Isn't it?"

"Improbable maybe. But Sherlock Holmes once said that when you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

They spent a long moment silent, each with his own thoughts before Warrick handed back the folder with a sigh.

"So...what do we do?" he asked.

"We move on. For now." At Warrick's disbelieving look, Grissom continued, almost gently, "I don't like it either. But it's a fact of this business. We're never going to solve them all. The evidence will always lead us to the water, but we won't always be able to drink."

Warrick looked at him blankly, then grinned.

"New metaphor?" he smirked. Grissom gave him a small smile as he stood, stretching.

"More like mixed. I was going to ask Sarah if she'd like to join me for a cup of coffee, you want to come?" Without waiting for a response, Grissom began strolling down the hall. Warrick fell in easily slightly behind.

"Grissom?"

"Yes?"

"What do you think is going on with this guy?" Warrick asked. Grissom sucked his check thoughtfully.

"I think he's suffering, probably worse than if the police had caught him," he answered slowly. He stole a sidelong glance at his companion. "He genuinely cared about that girl, you know."

"And now he's got to deal with what he's done," Warrick concluded.

"I can't even imagine that kind of pain and loss."

"Yeah. But he killed her," Warrick protested. Grissom suddenly pulled up short, one eyebrow raised as he appraised his friend. Through experience Warrick knew the next words out of his boss' mouth would make him feel very foolish.

"I was talking about the hand."

*******************

You know, I think there should be a sequel. Maybe...