Sin City ccsi-2

by Max Allan Collins

  Warrick shrugged. "Whichever."

  "I'll take the trunk."

  "Go for it, drive-in boy," Warrick said dryly, and opened the passenger-side door. Sinking to his knees, next to the car, he shone his Maglite on the floor and started going over the carpeting, inch by inch. After his inspection he would vacuum the floor as well; but for now, he just wanted to see the car, up close and personal.

  The two CSIs worked in church-like silence, each focused on his particular task. Nothing on the passenger-side floor, nothing in the glove compartment, nothing wedged into the seat. Warrick looked in the cup holders, in the console storage area, even ejected the plastic sleeve of the CD player and found nothing.

  Moving around to the rear of the vehicle, Warrick stopped for a moment. "Anything?"

  Nick was bent over the trunk, his face buried under the spare tire. "Nothing-you?"

  "Zip squared. Somebody's cleaned this car within an inch of its life. It's like it just came off the showroom floor. It's got everything but the new car smell."

  Nick beamed at him, mockingly. "I know where you can get a little spray can that'll provide that, if you want."

  "I'll pass."

  "So we keep lookin'?"

  "Keep looking," world-weary Warrick said, and moved to the driver's side of the car.

  As he went to lean in, the beam of his flashlight swept over the headrest and…something glinted.

  It was there, then it was gone-like the car had winked. Warrick frowned. The Avalon had tan cloth seats…what could've glinted?

  He swept the flashlight over the headrest a couple of times, but nothing showed up. The car did not wink at him. He leaned in, inspected the headrest, saw nothing. He raised the Maglite so that the beam shone straight down. Leaning in closer, he looked at the seam that ran across the top of the headrest. Then he saw it…

  …gleaming up at him: a tiny piece of glass.

  After photographing the mini-shard at rest, Warrick tweezered the fragment free. He carefully studied it for a moment, but its miniscule size kept its origin a secret.

  After bagging his prize, Warrick went back to the seam. Moving slowly, a stitch at a time, he found first one blonde hair, then another. Both hairs, like those on the brush already in evidence, could easily belong to Lynn Pierce Then he found another hair-shorter, darker.

  Bingo, he thought.

  He stored all three hairs in separate baggies and went back inside the Avalon for one last look at that helpful headrest-first the side on the right, then the top, and finally down the left side, nearest the door. He shone the light at the underside of the headrest and picked up on a tiny spot on one of the stitches, about the size of a period. His experience told him the answer to a question he didn't bother to ask.

  "Found it!" he yelled, but his voice remained cool.

  "All right," Nick said, coming around from the back. "Found what?"

  "Blood."

  Nick leaned in. "Where?"

  Warrick showed him.

  "I think we have a crime scene," Nick said.

  Warrick said, "I think we have a crime scene."

  They got a photo of the blood speck, after which Warrick carefully scraped the tiny dot into an evidence bag.

  Grissom strolled in and looked through the open driver's door. "Clean car."

  "Too clean," Nick said.

  "And yet not clean enough," Warrick said.

  "Give," Grissom said.

  They explained what they had found so far.

  "What's next?"

  "Luminol," Warrick answered, shrugging as if to say, What else?

  "If there's one spot of blood in that car," Grissom said, nodding, "there's probably more."

  When they sprayed the luminol on, any other blood would fluoresce. No matter how carefully the car had been cleaned, blood would glow blue-green at even one part per million.

  "Before you hit that interior with luminol," Grissom said, "are you otherwise through in there? Anything else you found? Noticed?"

  Nick could sense they were being sucker-punched, but nonetheless he shrugged and said, "No, that's it."

  Warrick, though, said, "Why, Gris? You got something?"

  Grissom leaned inside the car for a look of his own; his eyes were everywhere. "How tall was Lynn Pierce?"

  Nick thought that over. "Five-four?"

  "That's right," Grissom said, withdrawing himself from the vehicle. "And if she was five-four and drove her car to the airport and left it parked there…why is the driver's seat all the way back?"

  Nick and Warrick traded how-the-hell-does-he-do-it looks.

  Grissom asked, "Or did you move the seat, Warrick? Going over the interior?"

  Warrick shook his head.

  Grissom turned to Nick, asking pleasantly, "You?"

  Another head shake.

  Grissom looked at Warrick. "Thoughts?"

  Warrick sighed to his toes, holding up his hands in admission of frailty. "I'll fingerprint the power-seat button…then we hit the interior with luminol."

  "Smart thinking," Grissom said, then he turned and left.

  "I hate him," Nick said, admiringly.

  "Yeah," Warrick said. "He's good."

  The power-seat button stuck out from the side of the seat like a tiny shiny peanut. Warrick dusted it…and found out it too had been wiped.

  "This is starting to piss me off," Warrick said as he reached for the luminol. "Every time we get hold of something, it grins and gets away."

  Warrick started at the floor and worked his way up, spraying the luminol on the driver's-side floor mat, the seat, and then the headrest. Instantly, the surfaces became dotted with bluish green pinpoints.

  "Nick," Warrick said, "you gotta see this."

  Nick peered in from the passenger side. "Uh oh…I don't think Lynn Pierce caught her flight."

  Gravely, Warrick shook his head. "Flew apart, maybe…." He sprayed luminol over the backseat and the passenger side, but all the blood seemed to be concentrated in the driver's seat. "Let's get the seat covers off, and see what's underneath."

  The two used utility knives and, whenever possible, followed seams, to cause as little damage as possible, preserving the seat covers. Nick climbed in the back and attacked the driver's seat from the passenger side, while Warrick knelt on the floor next to the car and started cutting the edges on his side. In short order they had the covers off the seat, the back and the headrest.

  Then they were staring in disbelief at the foam rubber cushions. Dark stains spread ominously from the headrest down the back to a low spot on the back edge of the seat.

  Finally Nick said, "Somebody got shot in the head…would be my guess."

  "Educated guess," Warrick said, eyebrows lifted. "Damn…. Let's find out if it was Lynn Pierce."

  "We got hairbrush hairs," Nick said. "But DNA testing is going to take a while."

  "Then the sooner we get the ball rolling with Greg, the better…. After that, let's talk to Gris-but I think I already know what he's going to say."

  Warrick shot Polaroid photos of the interior while Nick took a small scraping from the seat to use in a DNA test. After stopping by Greg Sanders in his lab, they called on Grissom, who was buried in paperwork in his office.

  They explained their findings and showed him the photos of the blood-spattered seat. Grissom stared at the photos long enough to make Nick uneasy.

  Finally Grissom said, "All right…first thing, line up one of the day shift interns to start calling the glass companies in town."

  Warrick nodded. "To see if anybody's replaced the driver's side window of a white '95 Avalon in the last few days."

  Nick, nodding, too, said, "On it."

  Grissom studied one of the photos again. "It's probable that fragment of glass you found came out of the original window."

  "Yeah, that's our take on it," Warrick said.

  "But we need to know, don't we?" Grissom tossed the grisly photo on his desk and his grin was a horrible thing. "And now we get a sea
rch warrant and go over the Pierce house again. Only this time…we do it right."

  Nick tilted his head. "But we don't have enough to arrest Pierce-do we?"

  The CSI supervisor considered that for a long moment. Then, he rattled off his mental findings, clinically: "There's the tape where he threatened to cut up his wife and there's blood in the car, but there's no body, no weapon, no DNA match for a while-I don't think we can even speculate on a motive, yet."

  "In a bad marriage," Warrick said, "you won't have to look very hard."

  "But we haven't looked yet," Grissom reminded them. "And the DA isn't going to want to even talk to us, if we don't find something better than what we have now."

  "That's a crime scene," Nick said, frustrated. "Broken glass, blood spatter…"

  Warrick was nodding, punctuating his colleague's points. "Nick's right, Gris."

  Grissom said, "I'll go along with you on that, Nick-that's a crime scene…but what's the crime? Who's the victim? Isn't it also possible that the short dark hair and the fingerprints belong to a victim who isn't Lynn Pierce?"

  Warrick rolled his eyes and asked, "Who else could it be?"

  "Or maybe it's not a victim at all. Maybe it's the daughter-maybe she or her mom had a nosebleed."

  "Ah, man," Nick groused, "you don't believe that!"

  "I don't believe anything yet, Nick. The evidence will show us the way-we just need more of it."

  Warrick leaned a hand on the desk. "Odds are the blood is Mrs. Pierce's, Gris. I mean, we can't find her, she doesn't seem to be using any of her credit cards or her phone card-the blood's in her car…"

  "The odds say it's her," Grissom agreed. "But we don't play the odds. We put all our money on science…. Now, we start with the Pierce house again and find out the truth. You two go on out there. I'll call Brass and meet you there-we don't have enough for an arrest…yet…but I know just the judge to give us a search warrant."

  An hour later, as dawn was breaking, Captain Jim Brass parked his Taurus behind the black Tahoe in the Pierces' driveway. "I don't see your people," Brass said.

  "Maybe they're already inside," Grissom said.

  "Without a warrant."

  Grissom gestured with open palms. "Maybe-Pierce has cooperated so far."

  "I don't like him-he's an arrogant prick."

  "You have some evidence, Jim, that led you to that conclusion?"

  The detective gave the criminalist a tired smile and pointed to his own gut. "Yeah, this-it's my prick detector."

  Grissom's smile was skeptical. "A judge and jury may want more."

  Brass summoned half a smirk. "That's what's wrong with our judicial system."

  The two men climbed out of the car and walked up the sidewalk to the front door. Grissom was about to ring the bell when Warrick pulled the door open.

  "He let us in," Warrick whispered, stepping out onto the stoop. "He didn't even bitch about getting woken up."

  Grissom asked, also sotto voce, "What have you told him?"

  "Nada," Warrick said, doing the umpire "you're out" gesture. "Not even that we found the car. Just that his wife was officially missing now, and we needed to step up the investigation…apologized for the early hour."

  Brass was impressed. "Nice work, Brown."

  Warrick ignored the compliment, saying to Grissom, "You can give him the warrant, though-he's in the living room."

  His voice still low, Grissom asked, "Find anything?"

  "No…. Either this guy is really good, or there's nothing to find."

  "Stick with it."

  Warrick headed in and disappeared down the hall to the left, as Grissom and Brass walked into the living room where Owen Pierce stood in fresh blue jeans and tasseled loafers, a blue Polo shirt open at the neck; he was unshaven, and sipping a cup of coffee.

  "Morning," Pierce said. "Can I get you guys some coffee?"

  "No thanks," Brass said, though the smell of it was tempting. He handed Pierce the warrant, who accepted it without looking at it.

  "May I ask why you believe you need a search warrant?" He seemed more hurt than indignant. "Haven't I made my home available to you, in every way?"

  Brass gave Grissom a look and the CSI supervisor stepped forward. "We've located your wife's car, Mr. Pierce."

  "You…the Avalon, you mean?" He sounded genuinely surprised, his expression hopeful.

  "Yes, sir," Brass said. "A few hours ago at McCarran."

  Pierce tried out a smile, looking from the detective to the criminalist. "Well, that's a break for our side, isn't it?"

  Brass wasn't sure who exactly was on "our side," as Pierce defined it. "It's a break in the case, Mr. Pierce. But I'm afraid the situation has taken a serious turn."

  Grissom, flatly, declared, "We found blood on the driver's seat of your wife's car."

  "The driver's seat was…there was blood?" His hopeful expression vanished, but nothing replaced it-an alert sort of blankness remained. He set his cup down on a nearby coffee table.

  "Actually, the car was clean, sir." Grissom shrugged. "Well, except for a drop of blood on the headrest."

  Pierce's face remained impassive as he stared Grissom down. "One drop?"

  "One drop-but that was to enough to indicate we should look…closer."

  Curiosity filled the void of his expression. "And how did you do that?"

  "We peeled off the seat covers. Those can be cleaned, but underneath? Practically impossible. And we discovered a large quantity of blood on the seat's cushions."

  Now confusion colored Pierce's face. "Under the seat covers? What the hell does that mean?"

  "The amount of blood indicates the probability of something violent happening in the car…. The absence of blood on the seat covers indicates someone covering up that violence."

  Shaking his head, seemingly feeling helpless, Pierce said, "I don't know what to say, Mr. Grissom…Detective Brass. Other than, I hope to God Lynn's all right."

  God again,Brass thought. He's all over this god-damned case.

  Grissom was asking, "Have you had an automobile accident, in the Avalon? Was it necessary to repair the driver's-side window of your wife's car recently?"

  "No-why?"

  "We also found glass in the car…and we believe it came from the driver's-side window."

  Pierce began to pace a small area. "I don't know how that could be possible…" His eyes were wide, a frown screwing up his face. "That window's never been broken."

  Grissom changed direction. "Do you own a gun?"

  "What? No. Of course not."

  "Never? With all these outdoorsman prints, ducks and geese and deer, I thought maybe you were a hunter."

  "No. Not since I was a kid, with my dad…. I just like looking at a landscape that isn't desert, once in a while. Where are you going with this, Mr. Grissom?" Then a mental light bulb seemed to go on for Pierce, his eyes flaring. "You're here looking for a gun…. You think I killed my wife!"

  Brass stepped forward. "We're not making any accusations, Mr. Pierce."

  Pierce was shaking his head, his eyes wild now. "There's blood on the seat of my wife's car…so that means I killed her? This is absurd-you should be out looking for her! She's alive, I'm sure! You don't have any evidence."

  Grissom said, pleasantly, "That's why we brought the search warrant, Mr. Pierce."

  Warrick stepped into the living room and said, "Gris? A word?"

  Grissom turned to Pierce. "May we use your kitchen, to confer?"

  "Oh," Pierce said with a sarcastic wave, "be my guest! By all means!"

  Other than not bothering the sleeping Lori Pierce, Nick and Warrick had searched the house from top to bottom, giving the home a much more thorough going over than the first time.

  "No gun," Nick told Grissom and Brass, leaning against the kitchen counter. "No bullets, either-nothing to indicate that there's ever been a gun in the house."

  "No significant new evidence?" Grissom asked glumly.

  "Not of murder," Warrick said,
and gave them a cat-that-ate-the-canary grin.

  Grissom and Brass just looked at him.

  Warrick milked it for a few seconds, then he spilled: "I found this little darling in a vent in the basement…"

  And he held out a clear plastic bag containing a small amount of white powder. The baggie had a small red triangle stamped in one corner, a dealer's mark.

  "Coke?" Grissom asked. "Pierce has cocaine in the house?"

  "That's right," Warrick said, pleased to be the man of the hour.

  "Not very much, though," Grissom said.

  "Misdemeanor," Brass said.

  "But enough to book his ass," Warrick pointed out. He held up the baggie. "You recognize this?" He showed Grissom the triangle, Brass too.

  "Never seen that mark before," Grissom said.

  Neither had Brass.

  Grissom asked, "And there's nothing else pertaining to Mrs. Pierce?"

  Nick shrugged. "Sorry, Gris. No gun, no bullets, no blood, no nothin'. We went through everything, even the drains…zippo."

  They followed Brass and Grissom into the living room, the detective heading for Pierce, who was seated on the sofa, sipping his no doubt cold-by-now coffee.

  "Mr. Pierce," Brass said, "I'm placing you under arrest."

  The therapist's eyes widened, but the hand holding the coffee cup remained steady. "For…murder?"

  Brass shook his head. "Possession of cocaine."

  Grissom held up the evidence bag for Pierce to see.

  Pierce made a face, tried to wave this off. "Oh, Jesus, that's years old! I forgot it was even in the house."

  Brass put on his patented grin. "I know this'll be hard for you to believe, Mr. Pierce, but that's not the first time I've heard that."

  "Hey, I used to snort some, but I haven't used since, hell…forever. It's an innocent mistake. When I got off it, that's one little stash I missed, when I threw out the rest."

  "Interesting defense," Brass said.

  Pierce let out a weight-of-the-world sigh. "Fine, fine…. Will I need my lawyer?"

  "This small amount is just a misdemeanor, Mr. Pierce," Brass said. "Probably not, but of course it is your right to seek counsel."

  "No, to hell with it," Pierce said, standing. "Let's just get this over with, so you can get back to the business of finding my wife…. Are you going to slap on the cuffs?"