CSI:New York : Who Are You? (Don Flack/OFC fanfic)

Piece By Piece

An hour later, after bagging up the trash from the Tam's home, Danny and Olivia had it spread out over a layout table in the lab. Both CSIs had donned labcoats and latex gloves and were meticulously picking their way through the pile of garbage. The house was still an official crime scene, Susan Tam had spent the night at a hotel in Upper Manhattan and there she'd remain until CSI had gathered every shred of evidence and the crime scene tape was removed.

'Ever wish you'd gone to law school?' Danny said as he peeled a soiled receipt from the back of a soggy milk carton. 'Gotta bodega receipt for two hundred bucks. I don't even spend that in a month.'

'You saw the contents of their fridge,' Olivia said carefully rifling through her end of the table, 'free-range, organic, imported cheese...high-end consumables.'

'What's life without a daily dose of colors and additives?' Danny dropped the receipt into an evidence bag and placed it to one side.

'I do well enough.'

'What was that? You want me to get Adam to analyze the energy drink you had earlier? I'm pretty certain that pink's not natural.'

She just smiled. 'Okay, well, everything here seems to back it up, the Tam's were extremely well-off and when it came to their diet, they liked to eat good.' She picked out a small white box and glanced at the name of the restaurant on the side, Sa-Wad-Dee. 'Even their taste in take-out is classy.'

'My kind of take-out?'

'If your kind of take-out is a seventy-five dollar Thai.'

Danny looked pained at the very thought. 'Seventy-five bucks on take-out? Who are these people?'

Olivia opened up the carton. 'I've got rice, looks like...smells like saffron.'

'I gotta box, too. Same place, Sa-Wad-Dee,' Danny read off the name, 'haven't these people heard of Mr. Vong's down on East 54th and his all you can eat special for twenty bucks?' He sniffed at the carton. 'Green curry.'

Olivia began rooting through the pile once more and came across yet another white carton. This one was half full. She lifted the lid and looked inside. 'Another green curry.'

'Considering how much this cost you'd think they'd have saved the leftovers,' Danny said. 'That would feed me for a week.'

Olivia set the carton aside just as her attention was caught by something shiny and what looked like orange foil hidden just underneath a broccoli floret. She picked it out and was somewhat surprised to see it was an empty chip bag. She frowned. 'This isn't right...'

'What's that?'

'Cheese chips,' she said holding aloft the bag.

Danny quirked an eyebrow. 'Now that's something you wouldn't expect to find, given what we know about their diet.'

The Tam's didn't have any children but even if they had Olivia doubted they would have been allowed to eat junk food. 'These things are full of additives and artificial flavors,' she stated glancing at the nutritional information listed on the back, 'it doesn't seem right they would eat something like this.'

'Maybe they didn't,' offered Danny. 'But maybe another person on our scene did.'

'Yeah.' Olivia held the bag up to the light, perusing it. 'Chips are full of fat, greasy...'

'Fingerprint,' nodded Danny. They were on the same page. 'Bag it.'

Olivia bagged the empty chip bag. Her mind already beginning to work over-time.