"Oh, and his right taillight was broken too."
"Good. Anything else distinctive about the car?"
"No. Not really. I wish I was of more help."
"You've been very helpful," Grissom said, sincerely. "We're fortunate to have a witness with your security background."
Benson broke out in a grin. "Well, thanks!"
Brass led the man back toward the Corolla.
Grissom stood shaking his head, as he watched the two men walk away. What was the old saying? "A good man is hard to find." A good woman, too, for that matter….
But a good witness? Endlessly harder…yet, for once, Grissom seemed to be on the short list of the lucky in Vegas. Despite mild and understandable nerves, Benson appeared sure of what he'd seen and that could prove very helpful in court.
What would be even more helpful, though, was evidence; even a reliable eyewitness was a human being, after all, and Gil Grissom preferred not to count on human beings.
He moved up the road to check on Sara and Warrick. They were both standing over the bundle on the side of the road now, and-engine noise attracting his attention, as he walked to join his colleagues-Grissom turned to see Benson's Corolla making a U-turn and heading back south on Las Vegas Boulevard.
As he approached, the criminalist recognized the sickly sweet stench of death, of decay; but even on the breeze, it didn't seem as overwhelming as one might expect, given its pungency.
Grissom looked from Sara to Warrick, finding no clues in their business-like expressions. He was putting on his wire-frame glasses as he said, "So. What have we got?"
"Well, it's definitely a body," Sara said, shining her flashlight down on a piece of carpeting about six feet in length and rolled three or four times around something; then, with duct tape, the whole bundle had been sealed once around the middle and around each end.
Sara gave Grissom a quick tour of the corpse, using the flashlight like an usher leading him to a theater seat. He could see at one end of the enchilada-like shape the dark hair of the top of a human head, and at the other bare feet, white but for heels blue with lividity.
"Smell is minimized," Sara said, "because this package is fairly well-wrapped…but that's not the whiff of somebody who died a few hours ago."
"Not hardly," Warrick said, with a quick lift of the eyebrows.
"Possibly a female," Grissom offered.
"From the small feet," Sara said, "I would say so, yeah. Could be a child, but not a young one-this body is over five feet tall."
Grissom nodded his curt approval of her assessment, then said, "All right. What else have we accomplished?"
"Photographed from every angle," Sara said.
Warrick added, "I've got some prints marked. I'll cast them as soon as we're done here." He pointed and Grissom followed the gesture. "Piece of red plastic up on the road."
"Taillight, maybe?"
Warrick nodded. "Taillight, maybe."
Again Grissom nodded his satisfaction. "Could be a nice find. Our witness mentioned the dump vehicle had a broken tail."
"Dumper broke it, trying to unload the body?" Sara wondered aloud.
"Possibility."
Warrick squinted at Grissom. "You seeing it, Gris?"
"I'm seeing a possibility," he said, and told them.
A white Chevrolet Monte Carlo pulls to a stop in the northbound land of Las Vegas Boulevard. It's dark and no one appears to be around. A driver in dark clothes climbs out of the car, looks around, sees nothing, then hurries around to the trunk, struggles with the rolled-up bundle inside and finally hefts it out. As he does, the bundle strikes the corner of the taillight, breaking out a small piece of plastic that falls unseen to the pavement.
Also unseen by the driver: Benson's Corolla, sitting up the road in the darkness, the surveillance-camera salesman surveiling every move the man makes.
The driver carries the rug and corpse to the side of the road, moves a few feet onto the dusty shoulder, his footprints clear in the dirt as he does, and he dumps the body to the ground. As he returns to the car, he sees his tracks and blots out some of the prints, but it's dark and he doesn't completely erase them all.
Then the driver slams the trunk lid, takes a quick look around and sees nothing; he climbs into his car and drives away.
Looking back down at the wrapped package, Grissom asked Sara, "You were about to unroll it?"
"Well, yeah," Sara said. Now she was squinting at her boss, detecting something in his voice. "Shouldn't we?"
"Let's do that back at the lab."
"You sure, Gris?" Warrick asked. "Once we remove this from the crime scene, we-"
"We've got photos, right?"
The two looked at each other, shrugged, then both nodded.
"Okay." He cast a smile on the younger CSIs, so they could tell he wasn't displeased. "I prefer to open this particular package in as clean an environment as we can get…and that means the lab."
"Not the side of a road," Warrick said, nodding, seeming vaguely irritated with himself that he hadn't come to the same conclusion.
Sara hadn't made the jump yet, it seemed, as she said, "You sure don't want to have a look now?"
He shook his head. "I bet you could never wait for Christmas morning. We'll do it at the lab."
Now Sara was nodding. A few moments later, the ambulance crew ambled up: two men, one short and thin, the other tall and thin, dressed in their blue uniforms; they took positions alongside the edge of the road and impatience came off them like heat over asphalt.
After a while, the short one asked, "How long you guys going to be?"
Grissom turned, looked at the man with a withering expression Medusa might have envied. "Well, the 'guys' and I-which is to say these criminalists-will be here as long as we need to be."
The short one shot him a defensive look, but swallowed nervously, saying nothing.
"But as long as you're here," Grissom said, suddenly cheerful, "you can help."
The tall one gulped and asked, "How?"
"Get us a clean sheet-the biggest one you've got. And a new body bag."
"Not the gurney?" the short one asked.
"Not yet," Grissom said. He held up one finger. "A sheet…" He held up another finger. "…and a new body bag. New."
They shuffled off to their ambulance, and a couple of minutes later returned with a huge white sheet and, atop a gurney they'd hauled over, a body bag, which they brought to the edge of the road.
"Okay, gentlemen," Grissom said. "Let's lay out the sheet, and then oh so carefully rest our package on top of it."
Frowning, the short one asked, "We're taking the whole thing?"
"Yes. We'll load it up and take it back to the lab."
"Carpet and all?"
Grissom's expression was only technically a smile. "When one says 'whole thing,' that would indicate carpet and all, yes. Is there a problem?"
"That thing could really mess up our…" After trailing off, the short one glanced over at the body bag.
Grissom frowned. "That's not a new one, is it?"
"Well, it's the newest one we've got," the tall one said.
Despite what people might assume, body bags were not a one-time-use article. The truth was they simply cost too much. Grissom, however, had requested a pristine one because he didn't want to have to worry about any cross-contamination.
True, body bags were cleaned thoroughly after every grim use; but for his evidence to stand up in court, Grissom knew he needed a brand-new bag.
"Warrick," he said, at last.
"Papa needs a brand new bag?"
"I don't care what anybody says," Grissom said, flicking a little grin at Warrick. "You're the hardest-working man in show business…and you're going to prove it by heading over to Nellis and tell them what we need."
"And what we need is a brand-new body bag."
"Yes."
The Air Force base would have new bags. They had very little use for them here; but they had them on hand, just
in case.
Sara gave Warrick a sunny if sarcasm-laced smile. "See-you get all the fun jobs."
"Greaaat," Warrick growled, like a depressed Tony the Tiger. "Haven't been on a scavenger hunt since grade school."
"Well, you do get to drive yourself," Grissom said, reminding him. "We'll stay here and work the scene."
Warrick grunted and strode over to the Tahoe.
Within an hour later, the piece of taillight plastic had been collected and bagged; dental stone was setting up in the footprints; and-with the ambulance crew hanging around and looking grumpy, but knowing enough now to stay away from Grissom-Warrick finally got back, a black body bag under his arm.
The purple of the red and blue of flashing lights had finally given way to the purple and pink smudging the horizon, courtesy of the morning sun, parting the darkness.
"What took so long?" Grissom asked.
"Hey, imagine the song I had to sing to sell them," Warrick said. "Starting with the guard at the entrance, then his supervisor, then the M.P.s, then the officer of the day, and the officer of the watch and God only knows how many more-I lost track. I'm lucky I'm not in the brig, or on my way to the Middle East."
"But is it a new bag?" Grissom asked, eagerly.
"Bran' spankin'. Doesn't take much to please you, does it, Gris?"
"I'm a simple soul," Grissom said, taking the body bag in his latex-gloved hands, while Warrick and Sara exchanged wide-eyed reactions to this remarkable statement.
Using the ambulance crew for assistance, the CSIs carefully laid the bundle inside the white sheet, wrapping it up as best they could; then they put the whole package into the body bag. The ambulance crew placed the body bag onto the gurney and rolled it back to their vehicle. Once loaded, they took off, the siren off now-no reason to rush with this patient.
While Warrick finished removing the casts of the partial footprints, Sara took more pictures, this time of the ground beneath where the carpet-wrapped body had been. Grissom spent the time surveying the area, looking for anything that might have come loose when they were moving the body. He found nothing, but that didn't worry him. He had evidence, lots of it, waiting back at the lab…
…and, for once, the killer had even been kind enough to gift-wrap it.
Dr. Al Robbins was waiting for them in the morgue. A good twenty to twenty-five degrees cooler than the rest of the labs, the morgue always gave Grissom both a feeling of calm and of purpose. Something about the change in temperature made the room seem more peaceful to him, the very crispness of the air inherently reassuring. The atmosphere seemed somehow…scientific. Here, Dr. Gil Grissom felt insulated from the chaos that brought him his "patients": the victims who needed him. This was the last place where Grissom saw most victims, in the flesh at least, so it became a place that filled him with a deep sense of purpose. A morgue was a kind of church to Grissom, the autopsy tray a sort of altar; but these victims were not to be worshipped, nor were they to be sacrificed. They had come here, albeit against their will, to ask him to do right by them.
To find justice for them.
And their killers.
The gurney bearing the body bag containing the carpet-wrapped corpse had been drawn up next to the metal table over which Doc Robbins spent most of his time. Grissom, Warrick and Sara had all pulled on blue lab coats and latex gloves. Robbins stood leaning against the table in his usual surgical scrubs, his metal crutch propped in a nearby corner.
"And what have you brought me today?" the coroner asked, his eyes on the body bag.
With the slightest twinkle of humor, Grissom asked, "Why, you didn't look inside?"
Robbins smiled. "Nope-just finished some reports and got in here myself. I found this waiting for me. I figured you wouldn't be too far behind."
"We don't know what it is ourselves, for sure," Grissom admitted, "other than a body that didn't die today." And then he proceeded to fill Doc Robbins in.
"So you've brought the crime scene to me, for a change," Robbins said, opening his eyes wide.
"A big part of it," Grissom said.
"I have to admit I find that somewhat…exciting."
"Why?"
"Why do you think our resident lab rat, Greg, is so eager to get out in the field? To be in on the discovery. To be part of the process from the beginning. The chance to be Sherlock Holmes, and not Doctor Watson. To have the feeling that you CSIs have when you find that crucial piece of evidence, on the scene."
Grissom shrugged a little. "You often find the crucial piece of evidence, right on the corpse. Or in it."
"True. But there's something about a crime scene that's inherently more exciting than the lab."
"I disagree. I find them equally stimulating."
Neither Grissom nor Robbins saw Warrick and Sara exchanging rolling-eyed glances at this exchange.
"Well," Robbins said. "Let's have a look."
Grissom stepped over to the bag and unzipped it. All that was visible through the opening was the white sheet. He spread the sides of the bag and Warrick pitched in to help him slide the bag down over the sheet; then carefully, Grissom peeled back the sheet and revealed the carpeting, the package still sealed with duct tape.
"I don't suppose Cleopatra's in here," Robbins said.
"Let's see," Grissom said.
3
IN JANICE DENARD'S OFFICE, COMPUTER WHIZ TOMAS NUNEZ sat at the desk while the assistant herself and Catherine Willows occupied two chairs against the wall. Nick Stokes hovered just behind Nunez, who was on his cell phone.
"Round up the whole crew," Nunez said into the phone. "Yeah, Webster and Wolf too-everybody but Bill Gates. This is gonna be a big one, my brother. Lemme tell when you get here-time is precious."
Listening again, Nunez spun toward Nick and seemed to glower at him, but it was intended for the party on the other end of the line. "No way!" the computer expert said, his voice louder, edgier. "That won't do at all. I need you all here an hour ago. Two words: kiddie porn."
This time the response seemed to please Nunez more and he almost smiled. "I knew you could make it happen." He ended the call and grinned up at Nick. "Cavalry's on the way…. Now, where's that sergeant of yours?"
"O'Riley's in the lobby with Mr. Newcombe," Catherine said.
A few minutes ago, the detective and Ian Newcombe had gone out to the lobby so the agency's co-owner could do his best to explain the situation to his staff. Janice Denard had stayed behind, and still seemed shaken. Catherine reached over and patted the woman's hand.
"I know you feel invaded," Catherine said. "Even violated. But that's part of what this is about-someone who violated this agency's trust. Someone working in this building who used your company's computers to do something that doesn't have anything to do with advertising."
"I know," Denard said, but the words didn't exactly ring with cognizance.
Of all the CSIs he might have been teamed with on this call, Nick was relieved, even glad, to have Catherine Willows at his side. When it came to crimes against children, Catherine had a definite mean streak…as did most cops, truth be told…but with her daughter Lindsey on her mind Catherine would, Nick knew, give every ounce of her skills, talent and energy to get a conviction on this one.
As would Nick.
The abuse Nick Stokes had suffered as a child was something he had dealt with. He knew the experience had played a role in his choosing law enforcement as a career; he knew, too, that he had a craving, even a need for justice exceeding the norm. Nonetheless, he prided himself on his professionalism and tried not to carry any remnants of the victim-getting-even syndrome into his work.
He was well aware, and in certain moments even relished, the opinion shared among many of his co-workers that, for all his sunny disposition, he was hardnosed and a workaholic; he knew, if they didn't, that he also strove to be fair and objective.
Still, there could be no question that his history made these cases more personal to him than the average crime, that such a case incre
ased his thirst for justice to the level of crusade. That whoever was behind these wretched photos would not be allowed to walk. No way.
"What's next?" Nick asked. "I've never worked anything of this magnitude with computers."
"Oh, you're gonna love it," Nunez said dryly, and ran a hand over his face. He was half-standing, half-sitting on the edge of the desk. Then, after considering Nick's question for a few moments, he glanced over at Denard and gave her a quick smile that to Nick was not terribly convincing. Rather contrived, in fact.
"Despite what we've told your boss," Nunez said to the woman, "we'll do our level best to try not to shut down your business any longer than is absolutely necessary-that's why, just now, I called in all the troops. The more hands I have available to me, the better off you folks will be."
"Thank you for that," Denard said, earnestly.
"So," Nunez sighed, continuing, "the first thing we'll do is load all this stuff up, get it back to the lab and, fast as we can, start imaging it."
Denard frowned. "Imaging?"
"That's computer-nerd-speak for copying," Nunez explained. "We'll copy all the hard drives and all the media in the building-floppies, CDs, DVDs, zip disks, everything. You use tape backup?"
"Yes."
"We'll need that too."
"You're…you're stripping us bare."
This choice of phrase seemed at once apt and ill-chosen to Nick.
"Yes we are, ma'am," Nunez said. "We'll get all of that stuff imaged, soon as we can, and then we'll give you copies too, so you can get your business up and running again."
"How can we do that without computers?"
"You may have to rent or lease some, for what should be a matter of days. That's strictly a business decision for you people to make."
"I'm not the boss of this place!"
"Nor am I. But I am the boss of the computers and all media 'of this place.' That's my job, and it's the law. No offense is meant, and I certainly don't relish causing a hardship to your business. Do you understand?"
The color seemed to have drained from Denard's face and Nick wondered if she was about to faint. "You'll give us copies…. What about the originals?"
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