Sin City

by Max Allan Collins

  Grissom wished the TV jackals hadn’t jumped so quickly to the conclusion that it was Lynn Pierce; more than that, he wished he could keep himself from making that jump. The torso could, after all, be any of hundreds of missing women. Evidence, he told himself, just wait for the evidence and all will come clear.

  “We have no new information on Lynn Pierce,” Brass said.

  Cooper jumped in. “But you did find a body?”

  Brass seemed unsure how to answer that. “Not entirely true,” he finally said.

  That was a nice evasion, Grissom thought; but as he listened to the reporters and the detective play twenty questions, Grissom kept his eyes on Ned Petty. Working carefully, the innocent-looking reporter was nearly around the tape line set up by the uniformed officers, as he and his cameraman moved toward the ambulance. The reporter was to Grissom’s right, and slouching as he moved, no one—other than Grissom—seeming to notice Petty closing in.

  Slipping behind the ambulance, to block the media’s view of him, Grissom moved around until he was hidden by the ambulance’s open back door, waiting.

  With the body bag riding atop it—the rather odd shape of its contents plainly visible through the black plastic—the gurney was rolled by the EMS guys to the back door of the ambulance. Petty stepped forward, his microphone held up as he said, “Clark County paramedics load the body…”

  “May I help you?” Grissom interrupted pleasantly, stepping out from behind the door and directly into the path of the cameraman’s lens.

  Petty didn’t miss a beat.

  The reporter swiveled, said, “On the scene is one of Las Vegas’s top crime scene investigators, sometimes the subject of controversy himself—Gil Grissom. Mr. Grissom, what can you tell us about the victim?”

  And Petty thrust the microphone toward Grissom, like a weapon.

  Maintaining his cool, Grissom gave the camera as little as possible—a blank face, and a few words: “At this point, nothing.”

  Petty fed himself the mike, saying melodramatically, “That didn’t look like a human body on that stretcher.”

  The mike swung back toward him, but Grissom said only, “That isn’t a question.”

  “Do you believe you’ve found Lynn Pierce?”

  Another shrug, this one punctuated by a terse, “No comment.”

  Finally the ambulance doors closed behind him, the paramedics all loaded up now, and the ambulance left—no siren; what was the rush? But the newspaper contingent made a race out of it anyway, peeling from the lot in pursuit of the emergency vehicle.

  Having the scene to themselves again, Nick, Warrick, and Grissom gathered their gear, and left, finally letting Lake Mead start the process of getting back to normal—tourists would soon enjoy the sunshine shimmering off the lake, unaware of the gruesome events of the morning.

  That night, a few hours before the official start of his shift, Grissom—blue scrubs over his street clothes—slipped into the morgue where Dr. David Robbins still had the torso laid out on a table.

  A whole body, a female body, Lynn Pierce’s body. She is already dead. In a sparse bathroom, the body sprawls in a tub, unfeminine, undignified. A chainsaw coughs and sputters and spits to life, then growls like a rabid beast.

  First it gnaws through the arms at the shoulders, then the legs below the hip sockets. The gnawing blade eats through the neck, severing spinal cord, nerves, and muscle. The body is limbless, headless.

  The animal feeds on, but its keeper aims too low and the saw grinds to a halt in the middle of the pelvic bone and that blade is pulled out savagely, bringing with it a rope of intestine. With a snarl the blade shivers back to life, and this time the keeper aims higher, severing the body, just above the navel.

  Pieces are packed into garbage bags with something to weigh them down, and hefted into the trunk of a car, driven to Lake Mead, loaded onto a boat beneath cover of night, dumped into the dark waters, here, there, scattered to the sandy bottom to never be found—save for one piece somehow freed, escaping the depths, floating, armless, legless, finding its way into the boat of the Fish and Wildlife man.

  As Grissom approached, Robbins looked up. The pathologist had been at Grissom’s side for so many autopsies they had both long ago lost count. Robbins, too, wore a blue smock.

  “You know,” the coroner said, gently presenting the obvious, “the DNA test is going to take time…no getting around that.”

  Grissom shrugged. “I came to find out what you know now.”

  Using his single metal crutch, Robbins navigated around the table. “I could share my preliminary findings.”

  Just the hint of a smile appeared at the corner of Grissom’s mouth. “Why don’t you?”

  “There’s this.” Robbins pointed toward the victim’s episiotomy scar. “She’s had at least one child.”

  Grissom nodded curtly, and moved on: “Dismembered before or after her death?”

  “After death.” Robbins gestured. “No bruising around where the cuts were made. If she’d been alive…”

  “There’d be bruises at the edges of the cuts. If the dismemberment didn’t kill her, what did?”

  Robbins shook his head, lifted his eyebrows. “No other wounds. Tox screen won’t be back for a couple of days, at least…. Truthfully, Gil, I haven’t got the slightest idea how she died.”

  “She is dead.”

  “Yes. We agree on that. But if the tox screen doesn’t reveal something—and I doubt if it will—we may never know cause of death.”

  “Any other good news?”

  “One very good finding—birthmark on her left hip.” Pulling the light down closer to the torso, Robbins highlighted the spot, which Grissom himself had glimpsed, earlier, at the lake.

  Grissom rubbed his forehead. “Be nice to have a little more.”

  “Well, really we’re just getting started,” Robbins said, touching the corner of the table as if that might connect him to the victim in front of him.

  “What’s next?”

  “We’ll deflesh the torso.”

  “Good. Maybe the bones will talk to us.”

  “Yes. Let’s hope they have something interesting to say.”

  “They often do,” Grissom said. “Thanks, Doc. I’ll be back.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  Grissom made his way back to the break room where Warrick and Nick each sat with a cup of coffee cradled in hand. The coffee smelled scorched and the refrigerator in the corner had picked up a nasty hum. Although he liked working graveyard—because it helped him avoid dealing with much of the political nonsense, and obtrusive building maintenance, which happened nine to five, as well—Gil Grissom wondered why his day shift counterpart, Conrad Ecklie, never seemed to get around to getting that fridge fixed…much less teach his people not to leave the coffee in the pot so long that it became home to new life-forms. That was one scientific experiment Grissom was against.

  Filling Nick and Warrick in on what Robbins had told him, Grissom concluded, “I want to know who she is.”

  Warrick shook his head. “Well, that could take a while.”

  Grissom’s voice turned chill. “I want to know now. Not in a month or even a week, when the DNA results roll in—now. Find a way, guys,” Grissom said, heading for the door, “find a way.”

  Still shaking his head, Warrick called out, “Gris! Two hundred people a month disappear in this town, you know that…a lot of them women. How are we going to track down one of them without DNA?”

  From the doorway, Grissom said, “Eliminate the missing women who haven’t had children.”

  Warrick, thinking it through, said, “And any that aren’t white.”

  Nick was nodding. “And then we’ll track one down who had a birthmark like that on her left hip.”

  “See,” Grissom said, with that angelic smile that drove his people crazy. “We have a lot.”

  Moments later, Grissom was back in his office, seated behind his desk, jarred specimens staring accusingly at him f
rom their shelves. A voice analysis report of the audio tape provided by the Blairs was waiting on his desk, and he read it eagerly.

  He never would have admitted it to the reporters, and certainly not to his team, but Grissom was battling a small yet insistent voice in the back of his mind that kept telling him that they had just found Lynn Pierce.

  And since one of his chief tenets was that the evidence didn’t come to you, you went to it, Grissom picked up the phone and got Brass on the line.

  “Jim, did you get a detailed description of Lynn Pierce beyond the photo her husband gave us?”

  “I didn’t, but the officer that spoke to Owen Pierce on the phone…he did. Why, what do you want to know?”

  “Distinguishing marks?”

  He could hear Brass riffling through some papers.

  “A small scar on her left hand,” Brass read, “an episiotomy scar, a bluish birthmark on her right shoulder…”

  The torso didn’t have a left hand or a right shoulder.

  “…and another birthmark, uh, on her left hip.”

  Grissom let out a long, slow breath.

  “Jim, that was her in Lake Mead.”

  “Damn,” Brass said, the disappointment evident in his tone. “I was hoping…”

  “Me too.”

  “But if she’s been killed, at least we have something to go on. We need to get over to Pierce’s before the media…” The phone line went silent.

  “Jim, what is it?”

  “I just turned on a TV, to check…we’re too late. It’s already on channel eight.”

  “I’ll call you right back.” Grissom hung up and strode briskly toward the break room, pulling his cell phone and jabbing in Brass’s number, on the move. In the break room (Warrick and Nick long gone), he turned on the portable television on the counter and punched channel eight. He heard the phone chirp once, and Brass answered.

  “I’ve got it on,” Grissom said.

  They watched as Jill Ganine stood next to Owen Pierce, the physical therapist, in dark sweats, towering over the petite reporter, on the front stoop of his home.

  “Mr. Pierce,” Ganine said, her voice professional, her smile spotwelded in place, “as you know, the severed remains of a woman were pulled from Lake Mead this morning. Do you believe this to be your wife?”

  Pierce shook his head. “As I’ve told the police, Lynn left us…both my daughter and myself. Lynn and I’d had some problems, and she wanted time by herself…. We will hear from her.”

  “But, Mr. Pierce—”

  “I have to believe that the poor woman found today is someone else…” He touched his eyes, drying tears—or pretending to. “I don’t wish anyone a tragedy, but…I…I’m sorry. Could I…say something to my wife?”

  The camera zoomed past a painfully earnest Ganine in on Pierce. The big man steadied himself, rubbed a hand over his face, then looked into the lens.

  “I’d just like to say to Lynn, if you’re listening or watching—please, just call home, call Lori…that’s the important thing. We so need to hear your voice.”

  Giving a little nod of understanding, Ganine turned to the camera, as Pierce disappeared behind his front door. “That’s the story from the Pierce house, where the little family still holds out hope that Mrs. Pierce is alive and well…and will soon get in touch with them…. Jill Ganine for KLAS News.”

  Grissom clicked off the television.

  “You believe that shit?” Brass asked in Grissom’s ear.

  “What I believe doesn’t matter. Melodramatic TV news is irrelevant. What matters is the evidence.”

  “Like the birthmark?”

  Grissom said, “And the audio tape.”

  “Shit! Damn near forgot about that tape.”

  Grissom said, “I just got the voice analysis back—and it’s definitely Pierce talking. He threatens to cut his wife up in little pieces and now we have a piece of a woman…”

  “Not a ‘little’ piece, though.”

  “No…but one with a birthmark identical to a marking his wife’s known to have. Can I assume, Captain Brass, you’ll be on your way to call on Owen Pierce, soon?”

  “Meet me at my car.”

  8

  AT THE SAME TIME GIL GRISSOM WAS MEETING UP WITH Jim Brass in the parking lot, Catherine Willows sat before a monitor at a work station in her office. The TV remote in hand seemed grafted there, as grainy images slipped by on the screen, rewinding, then playing again, rewinding….

  Despite her glazed expression—Catherine had been at this three hours—she was alert, and the unmistakable aroma of popcorn penetrated Catherine’s concentration. Keenly tuned investigator that she was, she turned toward the doorway. There stood Sara Sidle, typically casual in jeans, blue vest and cotton blouse, holding out an open bag of break room microwave popcorn like an offering to a cranky god.

  “If that smelled any better,” Catherine said to her colleague, “I’d fall to the floor, and die happy.”

  Sara placed the steaming bag on the counter, away from the stack of tapes they’d been plowing through, and wheeled her own chair up beside Catherine’s. “Careful—don’t get burned.”

  “In this job? When don’t you get burned…?” Taking a few kernels, Catherine blew on them, then popped the popcorn into her mouth. “You know, normally I have a rule against eating while I work—I don’t have your youthful metabolism.”

  “Yeah, right…. Anyway, when was the last time you had a meal? Christmas?”

  “Well…maybe New Year’s….”

  Sara smirked triumphantly. “My point exactly. We’ve got to eat something sometime, don’t we?”

  “We’ll take a break when we come to a break…. I just feel…I don’t know, guilty somehow, taking off before anything’s been accomplished.”

  “Feeling guilty is one thing,” Sara said, shoving the bag at her again. “Feeling faint is another.”

  Catherine glanced at Sara—when an obsessively dedicated coworker tells you to slow down, maybe you ought to listen. And yet Catherine kept at it, the grainy video images crawling across the screen. Right now she was viewing the angle behind the bar. In the frame, the guy in the hat, dark glasses, and Lipton Construction jacket, strolled through then disappeared. Rewind. Again.

  “That might be Lipton,” Sara said, leaning in, eyes narrowed. “Then again, with this picture, it might be Siegfried or Roy.”

  “Or their damn tiger.” Catherine sighed, shook her head. “We’ve got to get a better look. Where’s Warrick, anyway?”

  Audio-visual analysis was Warrick Brown’s forensic specialty.

  Sara shrugged. “Off with Grissom and Nick. They’re neck-deep in the Pierce woman’s murder.”

  Catherine looked sharply at Sara. “That torso’s been identified positively?”

  “Close enough for Grissom to call it science and not a hunch. And I think our likelihood of borrowing Warrick for this, in the foreseeable future, is—”

  “Hey! You remember that one guy?”

  Sara’s eyebrows went up. “I’m good, but I need a little more than that to go on.”

  Then Catherine traded the remote for her cell phone and punched in Grissom’s number.

  “Grissom,” the supervisor’s voice said, above the muted rumbling of motor engine and traffic sounds that told her he was on the road; he was, in fact, on his way with Brass to Owen Pierce’s residence.

  “Gil, I’ve got a problem.”

  “Jenna Patrick?”

  “Yeah,” Catherine said. “The videotapes are so grainy, not even Lipton’s mother could ID our suspect. I’m assuming you can’t spare Warrick—”

  “Normally when you assume you make an ass of u and me. This is one of the rare other occasions.”

  Catherine rolled her eyes at Sara; a simple “That’s right” would have been sufficient. Into the phone, she asked, “Gil, who was that guy?”

  Again Sara raised her eyebrows. Grissom, however, had no problem deciphering who Catherine meant, answering w
ithout hesitation: “Daniel Helpingstine.”

  “Helpingstine,” Catherine echoed, nodding. “That’s right, that’s right.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Can I borrow Warrick?”

  “No.”

  “Then I have to spend a little money.”

  “That’s what we have—a little money. But do it.”

  At that, they both clicked off, no good-byes necessary. She rose and moved behind her desk. Sitting down, she quickly found the leather business-card folder in a drawer and riffled the plastic pages.

  “Helpingstine?” Sara asked, still perplexed; she hated not knowing what was up.

  “Yes.” Catherine was flipping pages. “I guess you must’ve been out in the field, when he stopped by—manufacturer’s rep from LA, who was here, oh…maybe six months ago…. Here you are!…He was pushing this new video enhancement device called Tektive—not computer software, a standalone unit.”

  “What’s it do?”

  Catherine started punching buttons on the cell phone again. “Just about everything short of showing the killer on the Zapruder film, if Helpingstine’s to be believed. He might be able to out-do even Warrick, where this security tape’s concerned.”

  On the other end of the line, the phone rang once, twice, three times, then a recorded message in Helpingstine’s reedy tenor came on, identifying the West Coast office of Tektive Interactive.

  Catherine waited for the tone, and said, “I don’t know if you’ll remember me, Mr. Helpingstine, this is Catherine Willows, Las Vegas Criminalistics. If you could call me, ASAP, at—”

  She heard the phone pick up, and the same reedy tenor, in person, said, “Ms. Willows! Of course I remember you, pleasure to hear from you.”

  “Well, you’re really burning the midnight oils, Mr. Helpingstine.”

  “My office is in my home, Ms. Willows, and I just happened to hear your message coming in—you’re nightshift, if I recall.”

  This guy was good. But she could practically hear him salivate at the prospect of a sale.

  “That’s right,” Catherine said, “nightshift. Never dreamed I’d get a hold of you tonight—”

  “It’s been what, Ms. Willows—six months? How may I help you? Are those budget concerns behind you, I hope?”