Body of Evidence ccsi-4
Page 24
"Bathroom," the detective said, sotto voce, "clean."
"We'll be the judge of that," Warrick said.
"I meant empty," the detective said.
They traded quick smiles, which made Warrick, at least, feel less tense; he started toward the padlocked door.
But Brass touched Warrick's sleeve. "Leave it for now. First we clear the house."
"Okay."
Brass led the way into another probable bedroom, this one on the right, also minus any bedroom furnishings, again vaguely an office: chair, monitor with cable rising of the back and padlocked closet. This one, however, lacked the scent of fresh paint.
The third bedroom, at the end of the hall, actually was set up like one: a bed with a cream-color spread, another shelf of homemade videotapes, and a TV/VCR combo atop a squat dresser. This closet door wasn't padlocked and, when Warrick opened it, he found only clothing-men's apparel, nothing fancy. The bed was king-size, but the tidy room had less personality than a Motel 6; again, the walls were blank-the only images in this house would be those appearing on monitor screens.
"Homey," Warrick said.
"Real dream house," Brass said, from the hall.
"Check the garage?"
"Yeah. Clear. Whole damn house is clear." Brass holstered his weapon, and Warrick followed suit. "Let's get you people started, before Benson gets back. I don't want Prince Charming seeing that Tahoe in back of the house, and bolting."
Warrick, Sara and Grissom unloaded their equipment and headed inside as Brass wheeled the Tahoe around back, parking it out of sight. Then the detective walked down the hill and positioned himself, out of sight among the scrub, to keep a lookout for their suspect. Brass and the CSIs would communicate via cell phone, if need be.
In the living room, Sara-field kit heavily in hand-was staring at the wall of tapes. She pointed to the row of tapes marked CANDY.
"No way I'm watching those," she said.
Grissom lifted his eyebrows. "Probably not an old Marlon Brando/Peter Sellers movie. I've got Benson's bedroom. Sara, the kitchen."
"A woman's place?" she said archly.
"Not in this house," Warrick said, somber. "I'll start with bedroom office, number one."
The small room smelled antiseptic-not just freshly painted, but scrubbed, an olfactory cocktail of latex paint and Lysol. Warrick picked up his hooligan tool-a chrome bar with machined grooves to give it a non-slip grip, with a duckbill for forcing windows along with a pike, used to break locks and latches, while the other end had a standard claw used for locks and hasps. Weighing in at about fifteen pounds, the hooligan made just the ticket for tearing a padlock off a locked closet door….
Coming down from the top, Warrick forced the claw behind the hasp and snapped it off, padlock dangling from the jamb.
The closet door slowly, creakily swung out to greet him.
Half expecting the Crypt Keeper to jump out at him, the CSI shined his flashlight inside the closet, which also appeared to have been recently scrubbed and painted in the same flat white.
Warrick set down the hooligan tool, got into his case and withdrew one of his newer toys, a Crime-lite. On loan from its manufacturer, Mason Vactron, the Crime-lite gave Warrick a compact alternate light source-no cables, no guides, size of a flashlight, with a lamp life of 50,000 hours.
He stepped into the closet and switched on the Crime-lite and the white-painted walls seemed to throb with large black splotches…with many tinier black dots around the doorknob…
…blood.
Benson may have cleaned the closet and painted it, but he hadn't hidden Candace's blood from the Crime-lite. If Warrick had even the slightest doubt about Benson being their guy, it vanished under the bright light of truth.
With his Mag-Lite, Warrick illuminated the upper corner of the closet and could see the tiny snake-head camera that was the tip of the black cable from the monitor in the room. The sick son of a bitch…
Warrick took a few moments to let pass the non-professional thoughts of what he'd like to do to this guy; then he got back to work.
In bedroom/office number two, Warrick again tore off the padlock on the closet with the hooligan tool. In this closet, he found a roll of carpeting leaned against the back wall. This gave him a momentary start, as at first he thought they had another body on their hands; but when he tipped the rug toward him, he could see nothing was wrapped in it.
But the remnant seemed a match, and Warrick was pretty sure the cut on this edge would correspond to the piece already in evidence. He took a photo of the carpet and used his Crime-lite on this closet as well; but no sign of blood. He used luminol spray, and also came up empty.
Glancing around at the little room, with the monitor and its snake camera extending to this second closet, Warrick had to wonder: had Benson prepared this second station for another victim?
But the thought went no further, as a sharp explosive sound from outside caught Warrick's attention…
…a gunshot!
Warrick was already at the front door, when Grissom came up behind him and Sara stepped out from the dining room, having been in the kitchen, asking, "Was that a shot?…That was a shot."
Then they heard two more quick reports, and Warrick yanked open the front door and rushed outside into a day that had turned into dusk. In the shadow-blue twilight, he could see down the winding drive a car had been approaching the house, a dark-blue Corolla-Benson's…but the vehicle was sagging to one side, both the front and rear tires shot out!
The driver's side door flew open, and a lanky figure emerged-Benson, in a blue T-shirt and black jeans and running shoes, sprinting away from the car, at an angle between the vehicle and the house. Brass was running up from the scrub brush where he'd been on lookout, yelling for Benson to stop.
Warrick took off after the fleeing suspect. He knew he could pull his gun and fire at the guy, but Benson was empty-handed, which meant shooting an unarmed man, and a moving target at that, which Warrick wasn't sure he could hit anyway. Brass, in the meantime, had reached the car, shielding himself behind the passenger side, but Warrick didn't figure the detective could hit Benson at this range.
Benson probably knew this area well enough to elude them, at least for a while; this was rough country, unfamiliar. They could not let him slip away.
These thoughts flashed through Warrick Brown's brain as he cut toward the running suspect. The uneven ground threatened a turned ankle, but Warrick's only thought was taking this bastard down. His arms and legs churned and he swiftly lessened the distance between them.
Seventy yards now, and Benson seemed to be slowing, breathing hard, and Warrick closed the gap, sixty yards, fifty, twenty, ten, then twenty feet…
…and he could hear Benson gasping as he ran, all but spent. At ten feet, Benson zigged, only Warrick zagged, and caught up to his prey in three more steps.
Warrick launched himself, grabbed Benson around his skinny waist, and the two of them hit the ground hard and rolled, over jagged rock and hard dirt clumps and knobby plants, as the killer's glasses flew off into the underbrush, leaving huge scared animal eyes behind.
For a moment Warrick had him, but Benson was a squirmy creature, fighting for his freedom, flailing for his life, and then a sharp elbow came around-just luck, but the wrong kind-and caught Warrick in the right temple, dropping him to the dirt.
Unconscious for at most a second, the CSI rolled onto his back and as he looked up Benson was suddenly astride him, hovering over Warrick, as a knife seemed to materialize in the man's grasp, the handle held tight in a fist, ready to stab, to plunge into Warrick's exposed chest.
Pinned there, Warrick could neither move nor get to his weapon. And as the knife began its deadly downward arc, Warrick Brown realized he could do not a thing about it-this was the end, then, on his back in the desert with a maniac's knife in his chest.
In the slowest two seconds he'd ever experienced, Warrick waited for his life to flash before his eyes, but instead a streak of scarlet did, erupt
ing out of a red blossom in the midst of Benson's heart.
The murderer's mouth dropped open in surprise, and his eyes looked down at Warrick, as if for pity.
"Hell no!" Warrick cried, and the now slack figure astride him was easily thrust aside, flopping to the sandy earth with the eyes wide but no longer registering life.
Warrick got to his feet, breathing hard, leaning on his knees, shocked to be alive. He looked down at Benson, the blade loose in the dead man's hand.
Brass came running up, pointing the pistol at the fallen suspect; though it was obvious the man was dead, Brass kicked the knife away from the limp fingers. Like Warrick, the detective was breathing heavy.
"You shot him," Warrick said.
"Do you mind?"
Warrick leaned on Brass's shoulder. "You're…you're not such a bad guy, Captain."
"I have days. You okay?"
"Yeah. Oh yeah…how about you?"
Brass shrugged, looked down contemptuously at the corpse. "Great. Don't look for me to lose any sleep over this one."
Warrick checked the body; and it was a body: David Benson was dead.
Rising, running a hand through his hair, Warrick asked, "What the hell happened?"
"Son of a bitch made us," Brass said. "Was going to turn around and drive away." He gestured with the nine millimeter. "But without any tires, wasn't so easy."
"Hey!" Grissom called from over by Benson's car. "Over here!"
Brass and Warrick hustled over to join Grissom next to the slumping Corolla. Sara was coming up from the house.
"Pop the trunk on this, would you, Jim?"
Brass reached in next to the driver's door, to comply with Grissom's request.
The three CSIs looked down into the trunk to see the wide-eyed terrified face of a young woman, her mouth duct-taped, her hands and ankles bound with black nylon electrical ties. She was about twenty, and her brunette good looks were not unlike those of the late Candace Lewis.
They helped the woman out of the trunk, cut her bonds and removed her duct-tape gag, preserving all of that as evidence. Sara led the hysterical but grateful girl toward the Tahoe to check her over, physically, and then start interviewing her.
"The new girlfriend," Brass said.
"Nice," Grissom said, arms folded.
"How so?"
He turned his angelic, ever so faintly mocking gaze on the detective. "How often do we ever find a body at a crime scene…that's breathing?"
Brass grunted an appreciative laugh.
Watching Sara with the woman who would never have to suffer the way Candace Lewis had, Warrick Brown, meaning every word, said, "It is nice, Gris. Nice to save one, for a change."
Author's Note
I would again like to acknowledge the contribution of Matthew V. Clemens.
Matt-who has collaborated with me on numerous published short stories-is an accomplished true crime writer, as well as a knowledgeable fan of CSI. We worked together developing the plot of this novel, and Matt created a lengthy story treatment, which included all of his considerable forensic research, from which I expanded my novel.
Once again, criminalist (and newly promoted) Lt. Chris Kauffman, CLPE, Bettendorf Police Department-the Gil Grissom of the Bettendorf Iowa Police Department-provided comments, insights, and information that were invaluable to this project. Thank you also to Lt. Paul Van Steenhuyse, Certified Forensic Computer Examiner, Certified Electronic Evidence Collection Specialist, Scott County Sheriff's Office (whose assistance the dedication of this book can only partly repay); to Detective Jeff Swanson, Crime Scene Investigation and Identification Section, Scott County Sheriff's Office; and to Todd Hendricks for his knowledge of cars.
Books consulted include two works by Vernon J. Gerberth: Practical Homicide Investigation Checklist and Field Guide (1997) and Practical Homicide Investigation: Tactics, Procedures and Forensic Investigation (1996). Also helpful were Scene of the Crime: A Writer's Guide to Crime-Scene Investigations (1992), Anne Wingate, Ph.D, and The Forensic Science of C.S.I. (2001), Katherine Rams-land. Any inaccuracies, however, are my own.
Again, Jessica McGivney at Pocket Books provided support, suggestions, and guidance. The producers of CSI were gracious in providing scripts, background material, and episode tapes, without which this novel would have been impossible.
As usual, the inventive Anthony E. Zuiker must be singled out as creator of this concept and these characters. Thank you to him and other CSI writers, whose inventive and well-documented scripts inspired this novel and continue to make the series a commercial and artistic success.
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