Body of Evidence

A frowning, cautious Brass raised his finger to ring the bell, but before he pressed the button, the door swung open and a tall, skinny white man in glasses, cotton running shorts and a Cowboy Bebop T-shirt jumped back a step, yipping like a watchdog.

Then the guy dropped into a martial-arts stance and yelled something in Japanese. Sara's response was not fear, rather to raise a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing.

Still in his combat pose, the man-who had a scruffy day-or-two's worth of beard-shouted in a nasal voice, in English, "Who the hell are you people?"

"Relax, Jackie Chan," Brass said, adding "LVMPD," even as he reached into his pocket for his badge wallet.

The man's only break from his stance was to use one hand to push the black horn-rimmed glasses further up his nose. "Take that ID out slow," he demanded, his voice still booming.

Brass held out his badge. Sara and Warrick pointed to the plastic ID necklaces. She noticed that their reluctant host wore old, un-laced-up running shoes that would have gone flying in any karate attack.

Was this buffoon their killer?

The skinny guy, swallowing, finally rose out of his stance and looked over each of their I.D.s, comparing their faces to the pictures on the cards.

"Sorry," he said, a little sheepishly. "Have to be careful, these days. Lotta psychos out there…. And you startled me."

Brass gave him a facial shrug. "We didn't think anyone was home."

"Well, I am home," he said, pointlessly. "But I have a bad cold. I've been in bed on NyQuil since yesterday morning, dead to the world…. A little better now."

That explained why no one had answered the bell on Warrick and Brass's first stop by the house.

Brass finally got around to asking, "Are you Kyle F. Hamilton?"

The guy nodded. "Listen, I'm a big supporter of law enforcement. I didn't mean to scare you."

Warrick's mouth twitched as he fought a smile and Sara turned her head and coughed to cover her laugh.

"How may I be of help, officers?"

Brass said, "Your car has come up in an ongoing investigation. It appears to be routine, but we'd like to talk to you about it."

"My car? Well, I haven't even been out since yesterday. I was following up on an installation at New York New York, and this cold just did me in."

With his narrow face and high cheekbones, his wide blue eyes darting from one to the other of them, Hamilton had a confused, vaguely victimized expression that reminded Sara of several other nerdy, paranoid types she'd met who'd gone into security work.

Brass was saying, "Mr. Hamilton, can we come in? This should only take a minute or two."

Hamilton said, "Of course," then to Warrick, Hamilton added, "Could you get the paper? That's why I was going outside in the first place."

"Sure thing," Warrick said with a smile, and did, then followed Brass into the house, Sara trailing them both.

The front door opened into a modest entryway with a smallish living room to the right. The hard-wood floor was covered only in the very center by a small round rug depicting the yin and yang. A white futon hugged the back wall and a small television perched on a low table against the front wall with DVD and VCR beneath. A cloth wall hanging of Bruce Lee hung prominently in the center of the far wall.

"So what's my car got to do with anything?" Hamilton asked, his face revealing a thousand dire scenarios unfolding themselves in his paranoid imagination.

"We got a report that your vehicle might have been at the scene of a crime earlier this week. We can check that out easily enough. We'd just like to take a look at your car."

The skinny guy considered that for a moment, knuckles of one hand unconsciously riding up and down scruffy whiskers. "Please don't misunderstand. I support you guys, but I know my rights. I'm a real bug about procedure. You need a warrant."

Brass withdrew the warrant from his inside coat pocket and handed the papers forward. "Here you go."

Eyes wide, horrified, Hamilton leaned back like he expected Brass to slap him with the papers. "I didn't mean you had to have a warrant! I'm happy to cooperate. I just wanted you to know I was familiar with my rights. I can waive that warrant."

"Why don't you take it. Look it over."

"All right." He grinned nervously. "It's just that…well…it's early, I'm sorry. I still have a NyQuil hang-over-that stuff puts me out! Hey, I know you have a tough job and I want to help. You just surprised me."

"Fine," Brass said.

Hamilton studied the document for a long moment, then, taking a step toward the back of the house, said, "It's this way. What makes you think it's my car? At this crime scene of yours?"

Warrick said, "The car spotted at the scene had a broken right taillight."

Hamilton stopped and the three of them nearly piled into him. Turning back, he said with a frown, "Well, then you're wasting your time."

Sara asked, "Why is that, Mr. Hamilton?"

He shrugged. "I don't have a broken taillight."

"We need to check," Brass said. "Procedure."

With a little nod, Hamilton turned back toward the rear of the house.

"So you guys are CSIs?" Hamilton said to Warrick.

"That's right."

"That must be an exciting job."

"It has its moments."

To Sara, Hamilton said, "Meet some real oddballs, I bet!"

"Now and then."

When their host got to the kitchen, he turned left and opened a door that led into darkness. Pushing open a screen door, he flipped a light switch and the two-car garage was bathed in light.

The '98 white Monte Carlo sat directly in the middle. On this side of the car, a heavy punching bag was chained to the crossbeam of the ceiling. Next to it hunkered a weight bench, with a barbell on the rack supporting about the same amount Sara could bench-press.

Hamilton led them to the back of the car and looked down at the taillight.

"What the hell!" Hamilton blurted, his head tilting to one side, as he tried to comprehend the broken light on the right rear fender of his car.

Actually, the taillight was mostly intact, a small piece broken out near the bottom, as if something had smacked against it and cracked off a piece, like Candace Lewis's body maybe.

After setting his crime scene kit on the concrete floor with a clunk, Warrick opened it and fished out the evidence bag with the piece of red plastic inside.

"What's that?" Hamilton asked, hovering, his voice unsteady.

Sara said, "Piece of a taillight found at our crime scene. We just need to see if it fits the break in yours."

Hamilton looked pale as death, and Sara didn't think it was the man's cold. He shuffled back, out of the way, as if every bad thing in his past, real or imagined, had caught up with.

Taking the piece out of the bag, Warrick fitted it into the hole in the Monte's taillight.

From the sidelines, Hamilton said, "It fits perfectly!"

"Yeah," Warrick said, dryly.

"What's it mean?"

Brass showed their host the hint of a smile. "It means, Mr. Hamilton, you're going to be answering a lot more questions and these criminalists will be searching both your house and the car."

Hamilton seemed to crumple in on himself; Sara wondered if the man was about to faint.

Then he hauled himself up straight and said, "I haven't done anything. You're welcome to search all you want-you don't have to go out and get another warrant for my house or anything. But there's nothing to find."

Warrick gestured toward the broken tail. "You don't remember doing this?"

"No. Unless…" His eyes flared; paranoia danced in them. "Maybe somebody's trying to frame me!"

"Frame you for what, Mr. Hamilton?" Brass asked pleasantly. "Why don't we let our CSIs work their magic, while you and I go have a talk."

"All right. I'm here to cooperate. I hope I've made that clear."

"Crystal."

Sara and Warrick rolled their eyes at each other and got to it: she took the car, he took the garage.

After an hour in the trunk, she had found no blood, no fibers, no hair, no leftover adhesive from the duct tape, no anything. She climbed out, perspiration matting her hair to her forehead and the back of her neck.

"This is the wrong car, Warrick," she said, matter of factly. "There's never been a body in this trunk."

"You're sure?" he asked, crossing from the workbench on the far side of where she stood. "Guy's a law enforcement freak. Maybe he cleaned it."

"Does he strike you as savvy enough to obliterate each and every trace of evidence?" She pointed to the Monte Carlo. "If Candace Lewis's body had been in this trunk, there would be some evidence of it. Blood, fibers from the carpeting, a hair, something. Instead, there's nothing but trash. What did you find?"

"Diddly," Warrick said.

Sara gestured with both hands. "You think maybe that's because there is nothing to find? I mean, geez, we found more at the mayor's house. At least those hairs confirmed Candace had been there."

Warrick mulled that for a while; then, tilting his head toward the house, he said, "Let's go have a talk with Brass."

They packed up their gear, lugged it through the house and Warrick signaled for Brass to meet them in the front yard. A moment later, Brass joined them.

"What have you got?" he asked.

They both shrugged.

Brass frowned. "Meaning?"

Sara said, "Unless this guy is the Dr. No or Professor Moriarty of crime scene cleanup, Candace Lewis was never in that trunk."

"You're sure? Didn't that taillight match?"

She nodded. "It did, and that's a significant puzzle piece, a literal one. But other than that, I can't find anything. What's Hamilton saying?"

Brass sighed. "He claims he never heard of her until she made the papers."

"You believe him?"

The detective gave a half-hearted shrug.

"He have an alibi for that night?" Warrick asked.

"Yeah-he says he was at the All-American Jukebox casino, all night."

"Gambling?"

Brass shook his head. "Installing a new security system."

"He's not a security guard?" Warrick asked.

"No," the detective said. "He installs stuff. Works for a company that handles a lot of the casinos."

Warrick frowned. "Security systems. Doesn't that ring a bell?"

Sara's mind was elsewhere. "So, he should be on videotape somewhere, sometime, night of the murder?"

"Should be," Brass said.

"Helpful," Warrick said.

Hamilton peeked tentatively from his doorway, then came outside; he was holding a cup of coffee. "Are you guys done in there?"

They traded looks, then shrugs, and finally, Brass nodded to Hamilton.

Hamilton approached them and, in a confidential manner, asked, "So, are you allowed to tell me who claimed my car was at your crime scene?"

Slowly, Brass shook his head. "Sorry."

Hamilton took a slug from his mug, swallowed, and looking Brass in the eye, asked, "I was just wondering…Was it David Benson?"

Their eyewitness!

And Benson was also an installer of security systems…. That was the ringing bell none of them had been able to answer!

Brass kept his cool. "Why do you ask, Mr. Hamilton?"

"Oh, I don't mean to be rude-anybody want coffee?"

"Thank you, no, Mr. Hamilton," Brass said. "Benson?"

His voice icy, Hamilton said, "The little bastard's been my nemesis for a couple years now. See, I work for Spycoor, and Benson works for Double-O Gadgets."

Warrick said, "You're competitors?"

"Sort of. We work the same territory for different outfits. We've had a couple of run-ins over clients and he's tried to blackball me with customers, by trying to get me in trouble with the cops."

"Can you give us the details?"

"Sure. Chapter and verse."

Sara turned to Warrick and whispered, "Grissom's mantra."

With a pained expression, Warrick replied: " 'First on the scene, first suspect.' "

"So. We've been played?"

Moving closer to her, keeping his voice low, Warrick said, "We have been played."

Brass was still talking to Hamilton. "Thank you for your time, sir. I'm going to send another detective out to get the details on Benson's other…pranks on you. But in the meantime, you've given us a real lead."

The skinny man's eyes danced behind his glasses. "Have I? Great! I can't imagine anything cooler."

"Pardon?"

"Helping break a big case, and getting Benson's ass in a sling! You know-I'm feeling better!"

The trio practically sprinted to the street and around to the back of the Tahoe where Sara and Warrick loaded in their gear. Then they moved around to the far side, so the vehicle was between them and Hamilton's house.

"What do you think?" Brass asked.

Warrick still kept his voice down. "So who checked Benson out?"

They all took turns looking at each other.

Warrick groaned.

Sara was getting her cell phone out, to fill Grissom in, when it twittered on its own.

"Sara Sidle."

"We overlooked something," Grissom's voice said.

She glanced around the neighborhood as if he were somehow shadowing them. "We just figured that out too."

"Kyle Hamilton's car may be a wild goose chase," Grissom said, "the killer sent us on."

"That's right. The broken tail matches, but the car is cleaner than Martha Stewart's sink. How did you know?"

"I was just talking to Nick and Catherine about their case, and how they'd neglected a key aspect…and it dawned on me we'd made the same fundamental mistake…"

And in unison, Sara and Grissom said: "First on the scene, first suspect."

Sara said, "Hamilton's a rival of Benson's in the security installation game."

"Now we know why Benson was such a great eyewitness. Get back here."

"We're on our way," she said, but it was too late, as Grissom had already hung up.

Within the hour, they were all working different angles, trying to learn more about David Benson. Warrick was tracking the man's work history while Sara dug into his past, looking for a connection between Benson and Candace Lewis. Grissom spent the time dealing with the various labs about the physical evidence they had, such as it was.

He was, in fact, the first one to announce any progress when he came into the room where Sara was working.

"Mobley's in the clear," he said. "Greg reports the sheriff's DNA doesn't match any of the other samples we have."

"How about Ed Anthony?"

"Clean, too. He may be our favorite suspect, but he's not the guilty one."

"Pity. How's Warrick doing?"

"Nothing so far. How about you?"

She glanced up from the monitor and gave him a small shrug. "We know Candace was a workaholic and spent very little time with friends or family. Benson's sort of a cipher, himself. Bought his house two years ago, pays his bills, seems like a regular guy."

"He may be a regular guy whose hobbies include necrophilia and framing the competition for murder. Keep digging, there's got to be something."

"You know, Gil, our eyewitness may not be the killer. He could have just used this opportunity to cause trouble for this business rival."

"I don't buy that. There's no way he fit Kyle Hamilton for a frame without having something to do with this."

"What's that," she asked innocently, "a hunch?"

He just looked at her blankly; and then his expression turned into a little grin. "Okay, that's one for you. Get yourself another, by finding the link between Candace Lewis and David Benson."

And he was gone.

Warrick Brown finished Benson's work history and came up with nothing; but rather than just sitting around, he tracked down Grissom, finding his supervisor in the trace lab bent over a work table.

"What have you got, Gris?"

"If we've learned one thing in this case, it's not to ignore the basics. So I'm going back to the one thing that can't lie."

"The evidence," Warrick said.

Peeking over his boss's shoulder, Warrick saw a strip of duct tape on the table.

"I already did the smooth side and got nothing," Grissom said. "But I thought maybe we might get lucky on the adhesive side."

"Gentian Violet?"

Grissom shook his head. "What makes duct tape strong is the fibers running through it. Those fibers absorb Gentian Violet, and if we do raise a print, we wouldn't be able to tell what it is."

"Sad but true."

"Well, I remembered this detective I met at a conference a few years back, from the Midwest-Jeff Swanson. He told me he'd been experimenting with small-particle reagent on duct tape. We haven't really had a chance to use it until now."

SPR, or molybdenum disulfide, Warrick knew, was a physical development procedure that involved the tiny black particles adhering to the fatty substances left in fingerprint residue. Though it had been successful on many different surfaces-glass, metal, cardboard, even paper-Warrick had never heard of it being used on duct tape.

"Is it working?"

"Yes. I photographed it as it was, then put on a small amount of SPR, which gave everything a charcoal color. Then I rinsed it with just a tiny bit of tap water, and that made the print appear to be floating in the water. The SPR helped remove the fibers and other background noise."

Pulling out his Polaroid MP4, Grissom took three shots in quick succession.

"What kind of film?" Warrick asked.

"Six sixty-five positive-negative."

That meant prints in less than a minute. Warrick almost patted Grissom on the back. Almost.

The boss was saying, "Swanson even said that if we use lifting tape when it's not saturated, but still moist, we can lift the print. I've been wanting to try this for some time."

The man was giddy with the science, and Warrick couldn't help but smile.

When Sara Sidle found what she needed, it was so obvious she almost tripped over it.

She printed two pages, then tore off down the hall in search of Grissom and Warrick. She found the two of them in Grissom's office, both looking beat, which was unusual for the CSI supervisor, who sat behind his desk, his shoulders hunched, arms heavy on the desktop before him. As for Warrick, he leaned against a set of shelves, likely to slide down the front and fall asleep right there.

Understandable that even bricks like Grissom and Warrick would show the strain: few cases in recent years had inspired more overtime, more double shifts than the Candace Lewis case. But Sara was about to wake her colleagues up….

"And you're this chipper why?" a sleepy-eyed Warrick asked her.

"I found it," she said, holding up the pages.

Grissom sat up, instantly alert. "The link?"

"They were neighbors," she announced, and handed her boss the sheets. Then she leaned on his desk with both hands, grinning, unabashedly pleased with herself.

"Who were neighbors?" Warrick said, coming over beside her.

She looked from Warrick to Grissom. "Before Candace moved into her condo, and Benson bought his house, they were neighbors in an apartment complex in Green Valley."

"What kind of neighbors?" Warrick asked.

"The next-door kind," Sara said.

Im midday traffic, it took a while to get there, even with Grissom giving Warrick carte blanche behind the wheel.

The apartment complex-a sprawling series of three-story buildings near the corner of Green Valley Parkway and Pebble Road-had been the latest thing, twenty years ago. Now it was a weathered roost for those unable to manage a down payment on a house trailer.

The manager-a middle-aged man with short, dark hair cut up over his ears and collar-looked to be ex-military; probably put in his twenty, Sara figured, retired and took the job of managing this place in trade for rent. The man seemed happy to see them-prospective renters, possibly-right up until Brass flashed his badge.

The office was small and cramped, the air stale despite the best efforts of a window air conditioner about ten years past its prime. Howard Thomas-as he'd been announced by a scruffy brass nameplate on his forty-dollar do-it-yourself-kit desk-sat grumpily drumming his fingers on the desktop.

"Let's make this short," he said. "I'm a busy man, and some of my tenants are allergic to police."

"Perhaps," Brass said, "they can build up a tolerance, if we have a patrol car stop by here, on the hour. Maybe they'll feel a little safer."

"You don't have to be unpleasant."

"We need to talk to you about a couple of your ex-tenants."

Thomas shrugged. "If you mean Candace Lewis, she was a model tenant-everybody liked her, everybody got along with her."

None of them was surprised that the manager had skipped a step and gone straight to Candace Lewis-as big as the story was in the media, as important as the case had been, this manager had no doubt already answered more than his share of questions about the mayor's late personal assistant.

But the manager explained anyway: "She's all you cops want to talk about. You and the TV and the papers and the FBI, you guys are sniffin' around here, every other day, seems like-and I can't get a decent renter to walk through the door."

"I hear life's a bitch," Brass said. "Now, let's talk about another former tenant-David Benson."

Thomas shrugged. "That's a new one. Who the hell is he?"

Sara said, "Lived here for two years. Left about two years ago?"

Grissom said, "That's four years, Mr. Thomas."

"Hell if I know."

Brass asked, "You keep records, don't you?"

Thomas pointed at a file cabinet. "You don't expect me to take my time sorting through there, do you?"

Sara was starting to understand why Grissom preferred insects to people.

A lanky guy in his thirties strolled into the room; he wore threadbare jeans and a tan workshirt with the name Kevin stitched in an oval over a breast pocket.

"Finished 4B," Kevin said, oblivious to the crowd in the tiny office.

"What about the bum washer in building six?"

"I don't wanna start that till after lunch."

Thomas waved dismissively and "Kevin" slipped back out the door. After Grissom shot them a look, Sara and Warrick were on the guy's tail.

The sun was high and hot, but a breeze from the west made it cooler out here than inside that stuffy office. Kevin strolled through the parking lot; he climbed into a red beater of a pickup, the box stacked full with plywood, two by fours, empty pop and beer cans, and some loose hand tools. He didn't start the pickup up, however; he was brownbagging it.

And as he unwrapped a sandwich from what might have been an evidence bag, Sara came up on the driver's side, Warrick looping around to the passenger side.

"Are you the maintenance engineer?" she asked, reaching for the most complimentary term she could muster. She gave him a nice smile.

He had just taken a bite of his sandwich, and looked up-ready to give hell to whoever'd interrupted his alfrecso dining-but then apparently liked what he saw, including her gap-toothed smile. He nodded slowly, still chewing, closing his mouth while doing so, indicating chivalry wasn't dead.

"Mind if I call you 'Kevin'?" she asked, gesturing to the name on his workshirt.

He swallowed a bite, then grinned. "Call me anytime."

Then the maintenance man seemed to sense Warrick, on the other side, and glanced at him with a frown. Warrick gave him a friendly nod.

The maintenance man returned the nod, guardedly, then turned back to Sara. "So who are you guys? Saw you talkin' to Howard."

She lifted the I.D. on its necklace. "Sara Sidle and that's Warrick Brown. We're with the crime lab? Can we talk to you while you eat?"

If Warrick had been the one asking, the maintenance man might have said no; but Kevin seemed intent on keeping Sara happy. "Sure, if you don't spoil my lunch with some gross-out shit from the morgue or somethin'!"

Kevin chortled at his own witticism and Sara managed a light laugh.

"What do you guys wanna talk about?"

"A couple of former tenants-Candace Lewis and David Benson."

"She was a babe," he said. "He was a dork. Anything else?"

Sara said, "Didn't they live next door to each other?"

"That's right."

"Did they get along?"

He shrugged. "She was nice to him. Hell, she was nice to everybody. Real doll. But Benson, he followed her around like a lovesick puppy. Carried her laundry up and down to the laundry room. Brought her groceries in for her and stuff. I always thought it was so he could try to get a whiff of her panties, pardon my French, but she thought he was harmless."

Sara frowned. "How do you know that, Kevin?"

He shrugged. "You can just tell. You know, some dorks fall for anything a babe hands out."

Warrick smiled a little, for Sara's benefit.

Kevin was saying, "That nerd had the hots for her, big time. Man, I told her she should've got a restraining order against him, but she kept sayin' he was 'sweet.' "

Reading between the lines, Sara said, "And she thought you were kind of…jealous?"

He straightened in the pickup seat. "Hey, we weren't an item. But we talked, 'cause I'm the maintenance guy, I helped her out, fixed stuff."

"And she was a nice person?"

"Yeah! I mean, she knew she was a babe. Babes know when they're babes, know what effect they have on gullible guys. Right?"

Sara didn't know how to answer that.

"But she also seemed kinda…naive. Like she didn't know she was playin' with fire. A weirdo like Benson, leadin' him on, that's dangerous, man."

Sara asked, "Did you ever talk about this with any other police, or possibly the FBI?"

"That guy Culpepper?" He shook his head. "None of them ever asked about Benson-you're the first ones." His eyes tightened. "You think the tabloids'd go for this?"

"They might," Sara said. "You could call them, if you don't mind Benson suing you."

"I don't need that shit!"

Warrick asked, "Would it be possible to see her old apartment?"

"Can't. Somebody's living there now. You'd have to get their permission, and they ain't home."

Sara asked, "What about Benson's old apartment?"

"That I could show you. Tenant after him just moved out last week."

The maintenance man finished his sandwich quickly and Sara kept an eye on the office door; but Grissom and Brass were still in there with the manager.

She and Warrick followed Kevin two buildings over and up two flights of concrete stairs to the third floor. The maintenance man led them around the building to an apartment almost at the far end of the walkway.

"Benson lived here," Kevin said, pointing to the door in front of them, "and she had the apartment on the end."

Using his passkey, the maintenance man let them in. As promised, the apartment was vacant. Tan carpeting covered the floor except for tile floors in the kitchen and bathroom. All the walls were painted white, the kitchen/dining area, the living room, the two bedrooms and the bathroom, all painted that chunky white textured paint that showed hardly any wear.

"Doesn't look too bad," Warrick said.

Kevin shrugged. "Not now. Guy that lived here last left it spotless. Even got his security deposit back."

Picking up on the implication, Sara asked, "What about Benson? Not so spotless?"

The maintenance man snorted. "You don't know how much time I spent in this dump, patching it up! Thomas charged that dork a couple hundred over the deposit."

"Why?" Sara asked.

"The asshole had holes drilled everywhere!"

"Holes? What for?"

"His goddamned shelves and video equipment."

Warrick asked, "So he had a lot of video stuff?"

"Yeah, he was really into it. See, he sold the shit, so he got it at cost. He put holes in the walls to support these metal shelves all over the place-the joint was lousy with them." He walked over to the wall and pointed to a couple of spots where there were obvious patches.

The two CSIs both looked around the apartment and finally Warrick called the maintenance man over to the far wall of the dining area where a patch was on the wall, almost at ceiling level; the patch looked larger than the others.

"Kevin, did Benson have shelves all the way up there? Be hard to reach."

"Naw, below that. I don't know what the hell he was doin', drillin' holes so high."

Sara felt something tense in her stomach. "Did you have to patch any holes in Candace's apartment, Kevin, when she moved out?"

"Few nail holes from some pictures."

Warrick said suddenly, "These shelves-Benson had lots of equipment, right? Or were the shelves mostly for videotapes?"

"Videotapes."

"Tapes, like big movies? Or homemade videos?"

"Homemade, mostly. Just plain old VHS in black sleeves…They were everywhere, shelves full of 'em, boxes of 'em."

A chill ran through Sara.

"What's on the other side of this wall?" Warrick asked, gesturing to where the high hole had been drilled.

"Other side?" The maintenance man stared at the wall, like Superman exercising his X-ray vision. "Lemme think…That would have been Candace's bathroom. Yeah-shower stall."

11

NEXT SHIFT, CATHERINE WILLOWS AND NICK STOKES SPENT most of their time working a murder on Marion Drive.

A drunk had chased his wife down the street before finally catching and stabbing her to death at the edge of Stewart Place Park. It wasn't exactly a locked-room mystery-the man still at the scene, cursing his dead wife, covered in her blood when the responding officers had shown up.

Nonetheless, a crime scene was a crime scene and required due and proper processing. Collecting the evidence from the murder site and all along the chase route back to the couple's house had made for long, tedious toil on an unseasonably warm (supposedly) spring night under the gently mocking soft-focus glow of streetlights.

Now-the two CSIs sitting in the IHOP on the Strip-they were finally getting the chance to read the financial records of their child-porn suspects, over breakfast.

Catherine had Janice Denard's payroll information in front of her, and Nick was proving his walk-and-chew-gum proficiency by alternating bites of pancake with reading Roxanne Scott's payroll history.

They had picked up Newcombe-Gold's paperwork on the seven employees on whom they zeroed in, as well as the disk that Randle claimed to have been working on last Saturday, which they'd already turned over to Tomas Nunez.

Nick-after taking a long pull on a glass of orange juice, not quite as tall as the nearby Stratosphere-nodded toward the file. "I told you advertising pays."

"Wow," Catherine said, eyes wide as she took in Denard's yearly salary.

"Roxanne Scott makes almost twice what a CSI3 makes."

"Tell me about it. Ever think you made the wrong career choice, Nicky?"

Nick grinned. "Like last night, dancing with that drunk?…Ahh, I wouldn't know what to do if I had real money."

"Well, you probably wouldn't ever have anybody shooting at you on the job," she said, alluding to a case they'd worked together a while back. They had gone to a house to collect evidence and wound up ducking gunfire.

"At least we know that's a possibility," Nick said with a shrug. "Most people who get shot at their workplace don't get a warning." He glanced down at Roxanne Scott's payroll record. "How many hours d'you suppose we'd have to work, to get a five-grand bonus?"

Her brow furrowing, Catherine looked at Janice Denard's history again. "Five thousand?…When did Roxanne get that bonus?"

"First of this month."

"That's funny," Catherine said, and licked a muffin crumb off her finger before tracing a line on the sheet of paper in front of her. "That's when Janice Denard got a ten-thousand-dollar bonus."

Nick frowned. "I thought these women had identical jobs."

"So did I." She handed him the sheet of paper.

He studied it for a moment and said, "Maybe Janice worked more hours or something."

"Seniority?" Catherine offered, but she didn't like the feeling in her gut. She had worked with Grissom long enough to know she shouldn't always trust that feeling; and this case had already confirmed that tenet, in spades. Evidence, not intuition…

But unconsciously allowing yourself to be impacted by bias was one thing, and heeding a gut instinct-developed over years and years of on-the-job experience and just plain living life in the real world-well, that was something else again.

Nick was saying, "Could be the size of the bonus is discretionary, on the boss's part."

"We better make sure to ask Ian Newcombe about that."

"Or maybe Ruben Gold-we haven't even talked to him yet. When is head honcho number two due back in town?"

Catherine shrugged. "Another good question for us to ask when we go back there."

"Which will be…?"

She glanced at her watch. "They're not even open for another forty-five minutes."

"Do I detect another double shift coming on?"

"See, Nicky? You are going to have real money. Let's go back and see how Nunez is coming along, and then head over to Newcombe-Gold."

"It's a plan."

Still encamped in the air-conditioned garage, Tomas Nunez sat hunkered at a keyboard and monitor, his hair slicked back like a black helmet. Today's black T-shirt touted a gringo girl group-the Donnas-and the lanky, biker-esque computer guru had already worked up some sweat stains, despite the coolness of the concrete bunker. His black jeans had blown a knee but were otherwise intact, while his eight-thousand-buck forensic computer whirred quietly on the floor next to him as he studied a series of images rolling hypnotically across his monitor.

"Morning, Tomas," Catherine said, holding out a cup of coffee in a Styrofoam IHOP cup.

"Morning, Catherine, and gracias." Nunez accepted the cup and took a long sip through the hole-in-the-lid.

"Is it?" she asked. "A good day?"

"We've had worse on this case," Nunez said, casting an eye toward Nick. "What, no donuts?"

"Hey, treat us right," Nick said, "and I'll make a run."

"You found something?" Catherine asked.

"You could say that…. Have a seat. Have two."

They drew up chairs, on the same side of him, with a good view of the monitor.

"The laptop you brought in? Found a bunch more pictures…"

The CSIs sat forward.

"…the twelve you've seen and maybe a hundred sad little brothers and sisters."

"So," Catherine said, with an eyebrow lift, "Gary Randle's back on the radar."

"But we still don't have his prints anywhere on that laptop," Nick reminded her. "The whole thing's been wiped clean."

"Nick, it was in his possession!"

Nunez cut back in. "Chill, you two…let me give you a few more facts to chew on, before you jump to your next conclusion."

"Ouch," Nick said.

"I ran a search for angel12.jpg and found reference to that file in unallocated space. Guess where the reference indicated it'd been downloaded from?"

"A kiddie porn website," Catherine said hopefully, "that you traced to Gary Randle?"

"How about a website…in Russia."

"Russia?" Catherine blurted.

"Si. Since the Cold War ended, all kinds of crime has flourished in the former Soviet Union, as capitalism flowers in various interesting and often vile ways."

"Less commentary," Nick said. "More data."

"Fair enough. I was able to resolve the Internet address to an IP address using a Domain Name Server Resolver; then I traced the IP address using a Trace Route site on the net, which sends a PING message to the IP, and waits for a response. It'll then trace the route the PING takes to the destination server and show where the destination-or host server-is, for the IP address."

"Soooooo," Nick said, "if we want the actual peddlers of this smut…"

"…you'll be flying Aeroflot to Moscow, then hopping a train to East Armpit, Siberia."

Catherine asked, "How does this help us?"

"It helps you. Not directly, but it gives us something to hand over to the Feds."

Processing the info aloud, Catherine said, "This means that Randle, or someone else at Newcombe-Gold, is not a child pornographer, rather a consumer of the product."

Nick said, "I have to admit, I never really thought Randle had a camera and was taking photos…"

"A guy in an ad agency," Catherine said, flaring, "with his skills and smarts? With his sexually deviant tastes? With a teenager daughter in the house? I thought he might be."

"Till now."

"Till now," she admitted. "So he's a user, not a dealer. Either way, it's still 'drugs.' "

"If it's Randle."

"If it's Randle," she granted.

Nunez said, "Hey, kids-if you're through, I got a little something from that laptop to make you smile."

Catherine said, "Don't tease me, Tomas."

"No tease: I ran E-Script, which carved out the Internet history to an Excel spreadsheet, showing websites visited, along with the dates and time of each visit…and logged on user for each site."

And, as the computer wizard had predicted, Catherine and Nick traded smiles.

"That Russian website," Nunez was saying, "was last visited Friday at four o'clock P.M., local time. The logged-on user was Randyman."

After glancing over at Nick, who seemed suitably impressed, she asked, "You got all that from the laptop?"

Nunez nodded. "Like they say on the infomercials…but that's not all: the laptop had AOL software. I got O'Riley to get a search warrant for the subjects of the AOL logs-account history, billing history and website history, along with saved e-mails. The AOL logs matched the laptop's Internet history log, so that'll stand up. Anyway, I tried to access the website, but like a lot of these child porn sites, it's password protected."

"Does this mean Gary Randle really is guilty?" Catherine asked, trying not to give in to the spinning-head feeling she always seemed to get during Nunez's explanations.

"Not necessarily," Nunez said. "All it means is those twelve pictures that you confiscated from Newcombe-Gold were downloaded from the Internet using this laptop."

"Smoking gun," Nick said.

"But who was holding it?" Catherine asked. To Nunez, she said, "Next step?"

"You need a search warrant for Randle's local telephone records, to see if the AOL access number was dialed during the times this machine was online, and the Russian website was accessed. If they match, he's your guy."

Nick took a sideways look at the laptop. "Could this machine be the one that was plugged into work station eighteen, and used to mimic Ben Jackson's computer?"

"No. The MAC address of the NIC card doesn't match the server log."

Catherine sat with arms folded, eyes narrowed. "So-there's still a computer somewhere that sent that print order…and we haven't found it."

"You haven't found it. But there's one more puzzle piece I can give you."

"Which is?"

He withdrew a sheet from his printer tray and held it up for Nick and Catherine to read. There was only one paragraph:

Given this opportunity, we will help turn Doug Clennon's All-American Jukebox into the biggest attraction in Las Vegas. By launching a major media blitz, including using our contacts at the above-mentioned publications, we can guarantee you market awareness rivalling the All-American Jukebox TV show itself.

"Some kinda letter," Nunez said.

"Pitch letter," Catherine said, slowly, eyes half-shut. "But where's the rest of it?"

Nunez shook his head. "One of the Angel jpegs got overwritten on the other sector this file was in."

"Que?" Nick asked.

Nunez smiled a little. "The memory is broken into sectors. Some files take up one, some take two, some take a lot more-it just depends on the size. But if a file is four and a half sectors, it will claim five. That half sector of unused space is called file slack. That's where I found this piece of this file."

"And this was on the same zip disk as the pictures?" Catherine asked.

"Yeah."

"What about Randle's zip disk that he was working on last Saturday?"

"Log numbers all match. He seems to have been doing what he said he was doing, when he said he was doing it…but that doesn't mean he wasn't in earlier."

"Oh-kaay," Catherine sighed. She turned to Nick. "Time to split up and search different parts of this haunted house…. You get the phone records and see if we have a match. I'll go talk to the folks over at Newcombe-Gold, and try to widen this investigation beyond just our one favorite suspect."

"Sounds good." Nick frowned. "Cath, bring O'Riley in. We don't want to overstep."

"Not on this one," she agreed. She took the piece of paper, with the partial paragraph, from Nunez. "Thanks, Tomas."

Forty-five minutes later, Catherine walked into Newcombe-Gold, Detective O'Riley at her side. They started to display their credentials to the receptionist, but she just waved them back down the big hall-their presence, however intrusive, was starting to be perceived as routine around the agency. In fact, the receptionist even smiled a little.

As they walked down the corridor toward the conference room, Catherine pondered whether to talk to Janice Denard, first, or Gary Randle; she had questions for both.

But when she turned the corner, and glanced through the glass wall of Randle's office, seeing him behind his desk, telephone in hand, the suspect made the decision for her.

He slammed down the phone, jumped out of his desk chair and ran into the hall, his face red. But his rage came out only in a word, albeit a forceful one: "You!"

He had stopped inches from her face, and Catherine-normally cool in just about any situation-was genuinely alarmed.

"Not your business!" O'Riley shouted, as heads popped up over cubicles, then just as quickly disappeared.

"This is your fault," Randle said, trembling with rage, almost in tears, stabbing the air between himself and the CSI with a finger, coming within millimeters of Catherine's chest.

O'Riley took Randle by the arm, firmly but not rough, and said, quietly, "We're not having a scene, Mr. Randle. Step back into your office. Now."

Randle swallowed, backed up, knocking into the door frame; he composed himself, as best he could, and stumbled into his office.

He was getting back behind the desk when O'Riley-shutting the door behind himself and Catherine, just inside the office-said, "Mr. Randle, I suggest you settle yourself down."

"Settle down?" He held his middle finger up, thrusting it toward Catherine. "That bitch ruined my life!"

O'Riley pointed at the adman, who reacted as if it were a gun and not a forefinger aimed at him; Randle almost fell into his chair.

Gingerly, Catherine approached. "Mr. Randle-what are you talking about?"

He covered his face in his hands. He was weeping.

Catherine glanced at O'Riley, who shrugged helplessly.

The CSI drew a chair up close to the desk; she leaned forward, handing him Kleenex from her purse. "Please, Mr. Randle. Tell me what's wrong."

He snatched the tissues from her hand and dried his face of tears and snot and then, almost comically, said, "Th-thank you."

"Mr. Randle. Please talk to me."

"That…that was my ex-wife on the phone. Somehow she and her asshole lawyer got wind of this child porn crap, and now she's suing to regain custody of Heather!" His red eyes were pleading in a face wearing hurt beyond description. "Elaine…Elaine's claiming I'm an unfit parent. She drove drunk with our daughter in the car and almost killed her. Now I'm the unfit parent?"

"I'm sorry," Catherine said, and to her surprise, she meant it.

"Please…please, just leave me alone…."

"I know this is a bad time…" Catherine began.

"Bad time! Do you think?"

"…but we have some more questions."

Randle's ravaged eyes widened. "Why, anything I can do to help, just ask!"

"If you don't want to answer, that's your option," she said. "Believe it or not, I do understand how you feel…and I only have two questions."

The ad man sat there; he might have been dead, but for a twitching around his mouth.

"Did you work on the All-American Jukebox account?"

The query so came out of left field that it seemed to jar him back into a more mundane reality. He stared at her, then said calmly, "There wasn't an All-American Jukebox account-they went with Stevens, Hecht and Thompson…or as we call them around here, S-H-i-T. We pitched the Jukebox; that was it. Now, I'm sure that piece of vital information will clear everything up. Please go."

"We will, shortly. But, Mr. Randle, we're close on this. If you're guilty, you're smart enough to know that sooner or later we're going to catch you."

"Go to hell. Please just go to hell."

"But if you're innocent, you need the guilty party caught-it's the only way to prove your innocence, and demonstrate that you really are a fit parent."

This seemed to get through to him. At least, he was thinking.

Finally, he said, "That…that makes sense, I guess."

"Good. If you're really innocent, and you help us, I promise you-as one parent to another, as one single parent to another-I'll do everything in my power to help you keep your daughter."

Their eyes locked and he looked at her for what felt like a very long time. "How many kids?"

"Like you: just one. An eleven-year-old daughter."

His eyes tightened-just for a moment-and then he said, "So that it's…that's why you've hung me out to dry."

"Pardon?"

"You have a girl the age of the kids in those photos, some of 'em. You looked at me, and saw a guy into 'porno' and you just hung me out to dry."

They stared at each other.

"Maybe I did," Catherine said.

O'Riley looked at her, stunned.

"Thank you, for that much," Randle said, simply. "…What else?"

"You worked up the All-American Jukebox pitch?"

"Yeah-it was a big deal. I was part of it. Huge disappointment."

She held out the page with the paragraph on it. "Did you write this?"

He read it. "No-this is an introductory letter. My input was more specific, including preliminary artwork; that kinda thing isn't my deal. I came in at a later stage-too late to do any good, frankly-and we didn't get the account."

"Do you know who did write it?"

"Ian or Ruben probably-that's the kind of thing they'd handle themselves, at least with big clients, like casinos."

Catherine rose. "I have other people to talk to, here," she said. "If you're going to be around, I'll come back and keep you posted."

"I will be," he said, nodding slowly. "I have plenty to do-on the phone with my lawyer, to see what we can do about Elaine."

"With luck, I'll have ammunition for you."

She extended her hand.

He looked at it; then shook it.

She and O'Riley stepped back into the corridor.

"I almost felt sorry for the guy," O'Riley said.

"I do feel sorry him," Catherine said.

The CSI led the detective to the break room, which was empty. O'Riley plopped down at a table; he still looked like he hadn't had a good night's sleep this century.

Catherine said to him, "I need to talk to Nick, then we'll go talk to Janice Denard."

He nodded, got up, and lumbered over to a soda machine.

Nick answered on the second ring.

"Nicky," she said, "tell me you got the phone records from Randle's house?"

"Yeah, I did-weird though…"

"They don't match."

"That's right!"

"Nick-I don't think Randle did it."

"Playing hunches again, Cath?"

"Don't tell Grissom."

"Hey, I plan to duck Gris for maybe a month!"

She paced as she talked. "We're going to need two more search warrants, and Tomas is going to have to do some more digging."

"Warrants for who?"

Catherine went on for the next two minutes about how her thinking had changed-including the new suspect for whom she needed the warrants-and how they should proceed from here.

"And one last thing," she said.

"Yeah?"

"Ask Tomas about Randle's computer from the agency. Is there any sign that it's been worked on by anybody, and can he tell if something was really wrong?"

"These are better ideas than any I've had lately," Nick admitted. "I'll get right on it."

Catherine, putting her cell away, turned to O'Riley, who sat with a Coke can in one hand, the other hand flopped on the table, his expression almost as numb as Randle's. He looked like a weary king waiting for an angry mob to depose him.

"You look refreshed," Catherine said. "Shall we?"

"I didn't come here for a good time," he said, using the table to push himself up.

"It's working."

Surprised to find no one in Janice Denard's office, Catherine checked her watch: ten A.M.; too early for lunch-Denard should be here, somewhere. The CSI was still pondering her next move when the door to Ruben Gold's office swung open and Janice Denard appeared.

The attractive blonde's eyes widened, but any surprise and/or displeasure was momentary, a pleasant smile accompanying her greeting, as she stepped out, closed the door, and approached them.

"Ms. Willows-nice to see you again. Detective O'Riley. You two are here so often we should get your social security numbers."

Catherine didn't bother with a polite smile. "I'm following up on a few details."

Denard gestured to the chairs in front of her desk, sitting behind it. Catherine sat, while O'Riley stayed on his feet, arms crossed, hovering in the background like a harem guard.

"I can't imagine what information I might have left to share with you," Denard said, her own smile more strained than polite.

"I'd like to ask you about the bonus you got, first of the month."

The woman's eyes narrowed just a bit. "That's a little outside the scope of your investigation, isn't it?"

"Is it? Your bonus was double the next highest, which was that of Roxanne Scott, your counterpart."

"What's the point of this line of inquiry, Ms. Willows?"

"In fact," Catherine said, with a tight smile, ignoring the question, "it's higher than any bonus the company has ever paid."

Denard stiffened. "Mr. Gold values my services."

"That's the feeling I'm getting."

"What I mean to say is, he was very generous. Which I don't believe is a crime."

"No, Ms. Denard, that's not a crime. But that doesn't answer my question, at least not fully."

Denard shifted in her chair; annoyance tugged at her eyes and mouth. "Each partner has a discretionary account that no one else has access to. They pay bonuses for cost-saving ideas, a job well done-any number of things."

The door to the inner office swung open again and framed there stood a tall, thin, mostly gray-haired individual in his vague fifties, with boyish features that seemed somehow wrong for a man his age; he began to say something, but it caught in his throat, upon seeing the two people in the outer office.

"Excuse me," he said, smiling. "I wasn't aware you had company, Ms. Denard."

"These are the police investigators I was tell you about, Mr. Gold," she said. She also smiled, hers less convincing than her boss's.

Gold wore a bright blue shirt with a black tie and suit. His eyes were dark blue, half-lidded but alert, giving him a look of perpetual caution; not a man you'd care to play poker with.

The co-owner of the agency stepped deeper into Janice's office and shook hands with Catherine, who had risen, and with O'Riley, saying "Ruben Gold…Ruben Gold."

Catherine introduced herself and O'Riley. "I'm pleased to see you're back in the office," she said. "You're one of the people we've been needing to talk to."

"Really? I was under the impression this…unfortunate incident took place while I was away."

"That's my impression," Catherine said sunnily, "but the fact remains, you and Roxanne Scott are the only two people we haven't interviewed or fingerprinted."

"Fingerprinted?" he asked.

"Yes, we've fingerprinted all your employees."

"Well, I'm aware of that," he said, with an inappropriate chuckle. "But why would you need mine?"

His voice was mild-he might have been asking her to pass the butter.

"Routine elimination. Your prints are bound to be here and there, at your own business."

He shrugged his understanding.

She went on: "Let's take this opportunity to get our few questions out of the way."

Gold turned to Janice and gave her an easy smile. "I have a little time available, don't I?"

The secretary checked her book. "Other than phone calls you need to make, Mr. Gold, you're open till lunch with Ian, right at noon."

"Good," he said, and smiled again.

It was a beautiful smile-caps, Catherine wondered-but stained faintly brownish yellow. A smoker.

"Step into my office, would you?" he asked the CSI and the detective.

They entered, Gold holding the door for them. As she slipped by the exec, Catherine noticed the scent of a citrus-based cologne. She and O'Riley took seats across from the huge mahogany desk, while Gold settled into his leather throne. Behind him was the printer where the photos had been found.

Catherine gestured admiringly at the silver airplane on the C-shaped base on the corner of Gold's desk. "Aircraft enthusiast?" she asked.

"Something of one. Actually, that little number isn't all that different from mine." He smiled charmingly, adding, "Smaller, of course."

She returned the smile. "Company plane?"

"Yes," he said, pride in his voice, "a small Lear."

"Where do you keep it?"

"Pardon?"

"Your plane. Where do you keep it?"

"Oh. Henderson Executive Airport."

An easy drive, Catherine thought: south on Las Vegas Boulevard to St. Rose Parkway, then left, and HEA was just a short distance east.

She asked, "When did you leave for Los Angeles?"

Gold's expression turned business-like, indicating he was aware the chitchat was over. "Friday afternoon."

"And the trade show you attended started…?"

"Well, there was a get-acquainted session Sunday evening, and the show started, for real, on Monday morning."

Catherine nodded. "And Friday evening?"

A little easygoing grin. "Giants-Dodgers game at Dodger Stadium. A chance to see some of the guys who'd started here."

Catherine was not a big baseball fan, but did know that the Las Vegas 51's were the triple-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

"And Saturday?"

"Slept in, had a late room service breakfast, played golf in the afternoon, dinner with friends in the evening."

"You traveled alone?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Why 'unfortunately?' "

"It's just…my job is not easy on relationships."

"Ah. I thought someone from work might have accompanied you. It was a trade show, after all."

Gold shook his head. "Ian and I've been doing this for quite a while. We're both comfortable working alone, and divide the duties, where these trade shows are concerned. Going to see the 'latest thing' can get to be old hat, in a hurry."

"You have a ticket stub from the ballgame?"

"Maybe at home."

"A receipt from your golf game?"

"On my Visa card."

"And the names and numbers of the friends you had dinner with, as well as the name of the hotel where you stayed?"

Gold's grin tried to be friendly but didn't make it; he shifted in the big chair. "You're acting like I'm a suspect."

"If you were, you'd be a suspect with his alibis all ready to go."

The grin vanished. "I'm well-organized. I'm used to a timetable, even where leisure time and socializing is concerned…. I don't appreciate this, treating me like a serious suspect." He grunted a laugh. "It's ridiculous, and frankly a little insulting."

"Child pornography is a serious crime," Catherine said.

Gold caught himself. "I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't."

"Then you will supply us with the documentation we need?"

"Yes, as soon as I can."

"May we fingerprint you now?"

"I have no objection."

She rose. "We weren't aware you'd be here today, Mr. Gold, so I'll have to get my case from the car. Sergeant O'Riley will wait here with you."

"No problem," Gold said, the picture of good citizenship.

Five minutes later, the CSI was back in the office, ready to go to work. She walked around the desk, tripping over something and almost falling into Gold's lap. When she caught herself, she looked down at what she had stumbled over.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Gold said, reaching down to upright what Catherine had knocked into: a black leather bag that had been leaning against his desk.

"Your laptop?" Catherine asked casually.

"Yes. My personal one."

"Do you have a notepad and pen or pencil I could use, Mr. Gold?"

This surprised him mildly, but he said, "Certainly," and complied.

Catherine wrote down some quick instructions, and handed the little sheet to O'Riley, saying, "Take care of that, would you, Sergeant?"

He took the note, read it, and said, "Right away."

O'Riley exited, and Catherine went on with a leisurely fingerprinting of Ruben Gold, after which she handed him a paper towel to clean his fingers.

"A little undignified," he said good-naturedly.

"I know. Can make the best man feel like a common criminal. I do want to thank you for your time and cooperation, Mr. Gold."

"Glad to do it," he said. "I know how important it is to find the person responsible for this awful thing, and Janice tells me you people have been great about your discretion, where the media is concerned."

"It really could give your agency a black eye."

"A terrible one. Believe me, I never meant to minimize what was at stake here, either for the children involved or…and this of course is less important…our own business interests."

O'Riley entered and gave Catherine a curt nod.

"Serve it," she said.

The detective crossed the room and handed Ruben Gold two search warrants-one for his laptop and one for his home.

Frowning, Gold flipped through the sheets, reading, saying, "What the hell is this?"

Pleasantly, Catherine said, "Your attorney will no doubt say your computer isn't covered by the original search warrant, since you weren't in town. That's b.s., but we've nullified that argument by getting you your very own personal warrant. We'll have your laptop back to you as soon as we can."

"These…these are faxes! These warrants were faxed to this agency!"

Catherine nodded. "Judge Madsen thoughtfully faxed them over, when Detective O'Riley called to explain the situation. By the way, thanks for the use of the company fax machine."

She picked up the leather bag by the strap. When she and O'Riley left, Gold was frantically punching numbers into his phone.

Back at HQ, Nunez worked on the laptop while Catherine and Nick handled more prosaic but vital forensic concerns; and it was just before five when the two CSIs, the computer guru, Sergeant O'Riley and two uniformed police officers made an impressive appearance at the Newcombe-Gold agency.

Their first stop was the office of Gary Randle. He was sitting at his desk and didn't even get up when Catherine led the parade into his office.

Obviously still numb, he could only manage to raise his eyebrows, in lieu of any question.

"I need to ask you something, Mr. Randle," Catherine said, standing at the front edge of his desk.

He looked up at her cautiously.

"How often do you see your ex-wife?"

Randle reared back, as if this were the most monstrous question of all. "Never!"

"She has visitation rights for your daughter…."

"Supervised visitation. The last time Elaine and I were alone in a room together she tried to stab me in the eye with a ballpoint pen! Since then, at my insistence, the supervised visits with Heather all take place on neutral ground-a Lutheran church in Summerlin."

"And you don't see your wife at the church?"

"No. I come in one door with Heather, leave her with a court-appointed officer, and then I go out the same door. Elaine comes ten minutes later, through another designated entrance, and spends her hour with Heather. Then she leaves by the door she came in, and I come back ten minutes later, using the door I came in."

"So-you never see her, and don't know anything about her current social life."

"Just the little bits and pieces Heather drops, after their visits."

"What do you know about Elaine's social life these days? From what Heather has told you?"

"Supposedly Elaine has a new man in her life."

"Who?"

"I don't know, and I don't care. Heather doesn't know either, but you can ask her, if that's really necessary."

Catherine let a breath out. "Thank you, Mr. Randle."

His eyes were unbelieving. "That's all?"

"For now. I'll be back in a few minutes. Stick around, will you?"

"I'm not going anywhere."

"One more thing, Mr. Randle?"

"Yes?"

"You should shut down your computer for the day. Nick needs to dust the inside of it for fingerprints."

His chin began to tremble. "So it isn't over?"

"Very nearly," Catherine said. "Relax."

"Easy for you to say."

"Mr. Randle-we know you're innocent."

The adman looked more stunned than relieved, as Nick set to work, while Catherine led the rest of the law enforcement parade in a march down the hall.

The group stopped next at Janice Denard's office. "Is Mr. Gold in?" Catherine asked, standing to one side of the woman's desk.

"Yes, but…"

"Let's go in and see him then," Catherine said, gesturing to Gold's door. "Come along, Ms. Denard."

Catherine opened the door for the woman, who went in, with O'Riley, Nunez and the two uniformed cops following, the CSI the last to step inside the inner office.

Catherine strode to Gold's side of the desk, the executive looking up in surprised confusion, but saying nothing.

Denard, lamely, said, "I tried to tell them you were busy, Mr. Gold, but-"

O'Riley said, "Ruben Gold, you're under arrest on charges of child pornography and obstruction of justice."

Gold exploded out of his chair. "What?"

O'Riley turned to the man's personal assistant, his secretary, saying, "Janice Denard, you're charged with obstruction of justice."

While O'Riley recited the Miranda warning to them, Janice turned white and stumbled backward, then sat, clumsily, in one of the desk chairs, opposite Gold.

"This is absurd," Gold said. "The ramifications of groundlessly charging a respected businessman like myself of such heinous-"

"We have the evidence," Catherine said.

"Evidence that has nothing to do with me," Gold said.

"Oh, I'm not talking about the planted evidence you used to make us to believe that Gary Randle committed this crime. I mean, the real evidence."

Gold said, "I'm going to have to ask you people to leave my office."

Catherine laughed. "I don't think so."

"Mr. Gold," Nick said, walking in to join the party, "perhaps you'd like to explain your flight plans and fuel bills showing you flying to Los Angeles both Friday and Saturday."

As if punched, Gold staggered back; his expression hollow, he awkwardly settled himself into his leather chair.

"When I dust it," Catherine said, "your fingerprints will be on the network plug in Ben Jackson's cubicle where you disconnected it from his machine and hooked it to yours."

Gold's mouth was open, but he wasn't saying anything.

Nick said, "We were stuck on one little thing, though: how you sabotaged Randle's computer. Tomas couldn't trace that with computer forensics."

Nunez, on the sidelines, skinny arms crossed, said to Gold, "That was about the only thing you did halfway right."

"But old-fashioned forensics did the trick," Nick said. "Fingerprinting 101." He turned to the dazed-looking Denard. "Janice, your prints were on the inside casing of Randle's computer; and both yours and Mr. Gold's prints matched ones I just lifted from Gary Randle's network card. That was how you made his computer breakdown last Saturday: you loosened the network card. That's all it took."

Janice looked over at her boss, but he wouldn't, or perhaps couldn't, look back at her. They were both ghostly pale.

"That was fast," Catherine said to Nick admiringly, meaning the matching of the prints.

Nick shrugged. "Warrick was sitting at the computer waiting for my call. Matched 'em right away. Mr. Gold, your agency has one fast fax machine-it rocks."

Gold leaned on an elbow, touching his fingertips to his forehead.

Nunez said to the exec, "The MAC address of your laptop matches the one that sent the print order for the kiddie porn. Your address also matches up to the Russian porn site where this garbage was downloaded."

Now Gold covered his face with both hands; he might have been weeping, but Catherine didn't think so-hiding. Just hiding.

Nunez continued: "You also left a copy of a letter you wrote to the All-American Jukebox on your hard drive. It matched the letter from the zip disk the porn came off."

Gold looked up, his eyes wide but dazed. "But that was all deleted," he complained, incriminating himself.

Nunez's grin was a horrible thing. "Deleted like when you deleted your e-mails, you mean? Sorry-I found all those, too."

Gold looked stricken.

Catherine said, "You traded a lot of e-mails with your new girlfriend-Elaine Randle. Or is it an old affair, that got rekindled somehow?"

"She had nothing to do with this," Gold said weakly.

"She had everything to do with it," Catherine said.

"Elaine has already been served warrants for her house and phone records, Mr. Gold. I believe we already have her laptop in custody-that's what she sneaked into her ex-husband's house and left for us to find."

Catherine laid it all out for him.

You fly your private jet to LA on Friday, giving yourself a built-in alibi. Then you wing back to Henderson some time around dawn on Saturday and drive from the airport to your office. You hook your computer into Ben Jackson's cubicle and mimic his machine. Then, using your zip disk, you take the files you'd downloaded from the Internet and send them to your computer to print.

Before you leave the office, however, you get into Randle's computer and pull the network card, just slipping it out of its seat so that when Randle tries to log on the network, he won't be able to get on. Then you drive back to the airport, fly yourself back to LA, return to your hotel and order room service, so the receipt makes it look like you slept in.

Janice comes in early Saturday, as well, and takes the photos out of your printer, just in case anybody happens by, and sticks them in a locked drawer till Monday. In the meantime, Randle's come to work and the whole world knows that Ben Jackson's out of town, and where he keeps his password, so Randle naturally uses that machine, leaving his fingerprints there to be found by us.

Monday rolls around and Janice comes in, gets inside Randle's machine and reseats the network card, then puts the photos back in the printer tray and calls 911.

Then we come in, holding up our end of the charade, finding the planted pornography, and wind up busting Randle, just as we're supposed to. Elaine sues him for custody and will get her daughter back, once Randle's ruled an unfit parent.

Gold looked completely deflated and defeated.

"Did I leave anything out?" Catherine asked.

"Downloading the porn," Gold said. He seemed almost in a trance, staring, staring. "Elaine…Elaine did that. She used her laptop, and mine too." He laughed, an empty, racking thing, almost a cough. "Come to think, she probably did that to have something on me as well."

"I should have known from the start," Catherine said. "If I hadn't been blinded by my own distaste for child porn, I might have nailed you, days ago."

Gold's eyes tightened. "Why?"

"Janice calling the police-that was the first really suspicious thing."

Denard sat up; she'd apparently been preparing something to say, and now she said it: "I didn't have anything to do with this. I just came in and found those printouts and did the responsible thing."

Catherine turned to the woman and gave her a withering smile. "Oh, but you wouldn't do the responsible thing. The thing you would have done would be to contact your boss, Mr. Gold, not 911."

Denard shook her head. "I don't even follow you. Don't even know what you're-"

"Sure you do. Big ad agency like this this kind of situation calls for, requires, a cover-up."

"I just thought it was my duty," Denard said.

"Your duty was to Mr. Gold," Catherine said. "And to that ten-thousand-dollar bonus he paid you for aiding and abetting."

Catherine gestured, and O'Riley and the uniforms handcuffed Gold and Denard.

And led the boss and his personal assistant down the corridor, past cubicles and offices and framed award-winning advertisements.

Nick and Nunez still had crime scene work to do.

Catherine returned to Randle's office. As she entered, he sprang to his feet, wild-eyed.

"Ruben? Janice? You arrested them? I saw your guys dragging them out in cuffs! What the hell could-"

"You deserve the whole story," she said, and sat down across from him and told it to him-chapter and verse.

Randle didn't get angry; he seemed past that, sharing the numbness that had overtaken Ruben Gold.

"And Elaine will be arrested, too," Randle said.

"If she hasn't been already."

"Why…why don't I feel vindicated? Why do I only feel empty?"

"The good news," Catherine said, "is you get to keep your daughter."

He arched an eyebrow. "You're implying there's bad news, too?"

She nodded, somberly. "This is going to make the papers. Your agency will be in trouble. Newcombe is in the clear, but this won't be easy to weather."

He waved that off. "I'm good at what I do. I couldn't care less about the business end. Need be, I'll find work. The important thing is my daughter."

He sighed, shook his head. "Leave it to Elaine to figure the best way to spend more time with her daughter was to ruin the life of the girl's father."

"Mr. Randle," Catherine said, rising, with a regretful smile, "nobody's perfect."

12

LESS THAN AN HOUR AFTER SARA HAD INFORMED GRISSOM OF their disturbing discoveries in David Benson's former apartment, a CSI Tahoe and Captain Brass's Taurus descended on Benson's current residence on Roby Grey Way. They parked in the street, noses of the vehicles facing the house, blocking passage.

Warrick Brown jumped down and headed to the rear of the vehicle. The sun loomed high now-dry and hot and not at all like spring-and those not at work in the neighborhood peeked from windows and occasionally came out, to see what all the fuss was about.

A compelling case for a search warrant for Benson's house and car had been made based on the discovery of a hole in the apartment wall, through which Benson-the witness who had "found" the body-had apparently snaked a camera to spy upon, and surreptitiously videotape, showering neighbor Candace Lewis.

Benson's two-story home was typical of middle-class, upper-middle-class Vegas, reminiscent of Kyle Hamilton's residence a couple miles to the west-stucco with a tile roof, red this time-except where Kyle's lawn was well-tended, Benson's lawn was a scruffy brown whose little green bumps were like grassy pimples on the desert's face.

And, like Hamilton's, the house appeared to be empty, though everyone on this trip was well aware that last time they'd been wrong. Warrick, Sara and Grissom approached the house, their crime scene kits in hand, Brass leading the way.

On the cement front stoop, Brass withdrew his nine millimeter. No one questioned that: if David Benson was the homicidal necrophiliac the evidence was indicating him to be, such a precaution seemed prudent. On the other hand, no backup had been called: this was one suspect, and the CSIs were, after all, armed.

The doorbell went unanswered, and the peculiar sensation of tension and tedium, common working cases like this one, permeated the atmosphere.

Brass said, "Warrick, let's check out the back. Gil, take out your handgun, would you?"

Grissom's expression turned sour, but he complied, shifting the field kit to his left hand.

Warrick and Brass went around the house from opposite sides, Brass to the right, Warrick around the garage, the double door of which had no windows. A side window was covered by a cream-color curtain you could almost see through-almost. The CSI made his way around back, where he found Brass had climbed a few stairs to a small deck. After checking curtained windows as best he could, the detective shook his head and they headed back to join the others.

"I don't think our man is home," Brass announced.

"Doesn't look like he's been here for a few days," Warrick added, pointing to the overflowing mailbox next to the front door. "This guy's not in bed with a cold."

Sara scowled darkly. "I'd rather not think about who or what he's in bed with."

"Time," Grissom said, "to serve the warrant."

Brass needed no convincing: he was the one who'd gone to the judge with their evidence. "Warrick, get the ram, would you?…Trunk."

The detective tossed Warrick his car keys.

"Gil," Brass said, "you cover us."

"Cover you?"

"Cover us."

"With the gun."

"That's right."

In moments, Warrick returned to the stoop with the battering ram from the Taurus. The ram was a black metal pipe with an enlarged flat head and a handle about halfway up on either side, providing an easy grip. The heft of it felt good to Warrick, natural-this baby had never failed him once.

Warrick took one side of the ram and Brass the other, as Grissom and Sara backed to the edge of the porch. Then, lining it up with the deadbolt, Warrick glanced at Brass and they swung the ram away from the door, straight back, then propelled it forcefully forward….

The head hit with a satisfying, explosive crunch, the jolt shooting up Warrick's arms through his whole body as the door burst inward, the jamb splintering into kindling.

Brass allowed Warrick to return the ram to the Taurus while he stood in the doorway, nine millimeter in hand again, and peered carefully inside.

When Warrick returned, Grissom was saying, "I'm putting my gun away."

"You do that," Brass said. Then he turned to the CSIs with a tiny rumpled grin. "Open house, gang. Refreshments later."

Brass again drafted Warrick, who drew his own sidearm, as they went through every room of the house, making sure the suspect really wasn't home.

After the detective pronounced the house clear, the CSIs went from room to room, checking drawers, closets, drains, carpeting, everything. For the next two hours and then some, they turned the house upside down and inside out, and when they were finished, they met in the foyer amid the detritus of the broken front door.

"What have we got?" Grissom asked.

Sara said wryly, "The only evidence of a crime? Looks like some people broke in here."

Grissom was not amused.

Warrick said, "If anything this place is cleaner than the mayor's place or Hamilton's"

"No blood, no hair, nothing," Sara said, then she addressed Grissom and Brass: "What about videotapes? Did you find any?"

Grissom picked up an evidence bag from his open crime scene suitcase. "Only three home-recorded: labeled NYPD Blue, Without a Trace, and Lexx. Everything else is prerecorded DVD, horror movies mostly."

"Porn?" Warrick asked.

Grissom shook his head. "Nothing rated NC-17, let alone triple X…We'll check them when we get back to the lab, but it doesn't look promising."

They loaded their gear inside and hauled it out to the Tahoe. An aura of dejection and confusion hung over them, and few words were exchanged. Sara, Brass and Grissom gathered near the vehicles while Warrick went back and put crime scene tape up across the broken door.

Nearing them, Warrick heard Brass saying, "I'll take the heat for this-Mobley's gonna be very pissed if we broke down the wrong door and the department gets sued."

"I think this is one case," Grissom said, "where Brian will cut us some slack."

Feeling movement more than hearing it, Warrick turned to see a forty-something couple sauntering over from the house next door.

In shorts and Miller Beer T-shirt, the man was tall, balding and trimly bearded, with the look of a one-time football player whose paunch said most of his sports were conducted in front of the tube, these days; his wife was a petite brunette with a ready smile and bright brown eyes, wearing a yellow sundress. They approached with a confidence that was a relief, considering how many neighbors and witnesses were wary of the police.

"Are you looking for our neighbor?" the man asked. "David Benson?"

Grissom met them halfway. "We are. Do you know where he is?"

"He works a lot," the woman said. "Very dedicated. Gone at all hours. He's in the security business."

"I'm Gil Grissom with the crime lab. And you are?"

"Judy and Gary Meyers," the wife said, as her husband slipped an arm around her shoulders. "We've lived next door for the last five years. Of course, David has only been here a couple of years…. He prefers 'David,' doesn't care for 'Dave.' "

"And you think David's at work?"

Gary shook his head and said, "I don't think so. We haven't seen him for a couple days. He's probably out at that cabin of his." He checked with his wife: "Don't you think, honey?"

"He calls it a cabin," Judy said, nodding, "but it's really a second home. Very nice."

Her husband picked up on that: "He's got all sorts of high-tech gear out there."

Warrick glanced at Gris, but the man's attention was fully on the couple.

Brass stepped up to Grissom's side, introduced himself and told the couple he'd be making a few notes; they said they wouldn't mind.

"Sounds like you've been there," Grissom said, meaning the cabin.

"Yeah, just once, though," Gary said. "He invited us out, 'cause Jude's a photographer, and David found that interesting-said he was a camera buff, himself. Told us there were some desert birds and rodents around out there, if she wanted to take some interesting shots."

"That was right after he moved here," Judy said. "But we must have overstepped, somehow."

Grissom frowned in interest. "Why do you say that?"

The woman shrugged. "Well, he hasn't invited us back since."

"You notice his video equipment," Gary said, "when I tried to talk to him about it, he got kinda close-mouthed and said it wasn't any big deal. Most people with a hobby, you know, if you're into something, you usually you wanna talk about it. Try to get me to stop talking about the Dodgers."

Grissom smiled. "I've been a Dodgers fan my whole life…and I see your point."

Warrick and Sara traded glances; Grissom connecting with a human being was always worth noting.

Grissom was asking, "Could you give us directions to David's cabin?"

Judy shook her head. "I'm directionally dysfunctional. You remember the way, Gary?"

"We only went that one time," her husband said, "but I think so…if you don't arrest me, if I steer you wrong…."

Brass jotted the route down.

"I hope David's not in some kind of trouble," Judy said. "He's nice, in kind of a quiet way."

Yes, Warrick thought, the rule of the "nice, normal" serial killer next door always seemed to pertain….

But then Gary Meyers contradicted it: "Yeah, honey, but to be honest with you? He's got a streak. Guy's an oddball. Not that that's against the law. Has he done something?"

Brass said, "We don't know yet. Just following up on a lead."

"Must be some lead," Gary said. "You busted down his door."

"Thank you for your help," Grissom said, bestowing his fellow Dodgers fan a curt smile, then turning his back on them.

Dismissed, the couple headed to their own homestead, and the CSIs and the detective huddled in the street, between parked vehicles. Brass got on his cell and called to post a patrol car to watch Benson's residence while he and the CSIs took their excursion to the country and the cabin.

Then Brass suggested, "Let's take one vehicle."

Warrick opened the driver's side door, saying, "Always room for one more, Captain."

"Why don't I drive," Brass said, holding his hand out for the keys. "I'm the one with the directions."

"You can navigate."

"Warrick, I've seen you drive."

Shaking his head, Warrick got in back with Sara.

They were at the far north end of the city; Benson's cabin was south and west out Blue Diamond Road, down some back roads, almost to the county line. After a stop downtown at the courthouse for a search warrant, the drive took the better part of an hour; but it was time well spent, much of it on their various cell phones.

Grissom talked to the County Recorder and discovered that Benson had purchased both the house and his cabin about the same time. This also provided them with an exact address, which seemed to fit the neighbor's directions.

Warrick leaned up from the back. "Why is this guy so flush all of a sudden, Gris?"

Grissom said, "See what you can find out, Sara."

And Sara got a dayshift intern to help her dig into Benson's records to find out what else they had missed. The intern told her that an aunt of Benson's had died and left him a good chunk of money, explaining his sudden move from renter of a nondescript apartment into multiple-property owner.

Warrick phoned Benson's place of employment, Double-O Gadgets, and spoke with a receptionist who seemed more than happy to talk about Benson, as long as she mistook Warrick for a security-system client.

After he clicked off, Warrick said, "Our guy's on vacation this week, and they have no idea where he is."

"On vacation at his cabin?" Sara asked.

"Didn't know. He could be in the Bahamas, or in Cleveland."

Sourly, Brass said, "Or on the run."

Grissom shook his head. "No reason to think he's made us, Jim."

Brass ground the wheel to the left and everybody leaned to one side, comically, as they headed up a dirt inlet that seemed to Warrick more like a path than a road. The Tahoe jumped and bucked and a cloud of dust that could be seen in Arizona trailed them like a jet plume.

"Really sneaking up on the guy, Jim," Warrick said, still nursing hurt feelings over the general disregard for his driving abilities.

Half-smiling into the rearview mirror, Brass said, "Still a couple more miles before we're even close enough to worry about it."

Grissom looked back at Warrick. "Consider this an intervention, Warrick-where we demonstrate what it's like to be driven by a maniac."

Brass flicked a frown at Grissom, obviously not liking the sound of that any better than Warrick.

But any criticism of Brass's driving did not prevent the detective from jostling them around several more times before turning off onto another dirt road, this one even more dubious and less forgiving. Then, once he'd made the turn, Brass took what seemed like a firebreak at a more manageable speed.

They were winding up into the foothills now and-despite what Benson's neighbors had said about the cabin being more a second home-Warrick began conjuring visions of this trip ending outside a rundown, ramshackle tacked-together hovel purchased from the Unabomber.

When they popped up over a rise, however, and got their first look at Benson's "cabin" in the distance, Warrick's notion of a shack dissolved and he realized that couple back on Roby Grey Way had not exaggerated. The house perched on a low hill to the west, a long, low-slung stucco ranch-style with a typical Vegas-area tile roof.

Grissom said, "Most people have a cabin to 'rough it,' get away from civilization. Why does David Benson need two houses, roughly the equivalent of each other, only miles apart?"

Sara said, "Do I have to answer that?"

Their supervisor went on: "He's not next to a stream, for fishing. There's nothing to recommend this location, other than its…"

"Splendid isolation?" Warrick offered.

Grissom nodded.

Only one way up the hill to the house: a curving dirt driveway that-no matter how slow they took it-would give Benson ample opportunity to spot them coming. Nonetheless, Brass took the hill slowly, kicking up a minimum of dust, though if Benson was home, they were made, no question.

They pulled up in front, in a small graveled area extending from the garage's gravel drive. A propane tank sat off to one side of the house, and next to it a large generator chugged right along, little wisps of exhaust disappearing skyward.

"Okay," Grissom said, almost to himself. "So he's a survivalist-that's one reason to have a second house, in the boondocks…."

They got out and no one made a move to unload the Tahoe. Unholstering his sidearm, Brass gave the CSIs a look that had all of them-even Grissom-unhesitatingly unholstering theirs.

Even if David Benson wasn't their homicidal necrophiliac, he was a loner in the security business who had the earmarks of a survivalist, and when the cops showed up, that type of individual sometimes…overreacted.

They went to the door, with its cement-slab stoop, the detective in the lead, Warrick right behind him, feeling beads of sweat on his brow, and not just because they were no longer in the air-conditioned vehicle.

Brass tried to peek around the curtains of the front window with no success, then turned and gave Warrick a had-to-try shrug.

Poised at the front door, with Grissom and Sara off to the sides of the stoop, weapons in hand, Brass signaled Warrick to go around back.

Which Warrick did, the gun heavy if reassuring in his hand as he skirted along the side of the structure. With no lawn out here, the desert floor seemed to crunch under his feet like broken glass, as if the ground itself were a security alarm. With his left hand, he rubbed the perspiration from his face, particularly away from his eyes, drying his hand on his shirt, and crept along. Three windows on this side-as heavily curtained as the one in the front.

In back, a twenty-foot-wide flat space extended to where the scrubby hill sloped steeply up. More windows-four to be exact, two on either side of a screened backdoor, each as heavily curtained as the others. Beyond the screen, the rear door was steel with a peephole but no window.

Warrick pounded hard on the metal border of the screen, but got no response; and it proved to be locked.

To the far side of the house, the CSI noticed three small bushes, their leaves brown and withered…and Warrick realized he'd likely located the source of the crushed leaves found in Candace Lewis's carpet cocoon.

He didn't know how far Brass and the others were-or weren't-getting, out front; but he figured if Benson did happen to be inside, and Brass succeeded in chasing him out, this was the way the suspect would be exiting…so Warrick decided this was exactly where he ought to be.

Nerve endings on alert, Warrick imagined he could feel every molecule of the breeze slipping past him. The gun now felt more heavy than reassuring, and the impulse to drop his arms down to his sides beleaguered him; but he fought it, and kept the gun up, barrel pointed at the sky.

If he leveled it, it would be for one purpose only.

Warrick took a position off to one side, preparing himself for whatever came through that door. His back was against stucco, shirt cool and damp against his back, bumps of the wall digging into him, reminding him he was alive. A good way to be…

Nothing to do but wait.

Then his cell phone trilled, and he felt himself jump a little-no one was around to see that, thankfully-and he jerked the phone off his belt, about to shut it down when he recognized the incoming number as Brass's.

"What?"

"We don't think he's here," Brass said without preamble.

"He could be burrowed in," the slightly amped Warrick reminded the detective, "just waiting to jump out and say 'boo.' "

"Is there a car, any kinda vehicle, back there?"

Warrick glanced, then felt silly for not putting it together sooner: no car out front, no car in the back, middle of nowhere, equals…

No Benson.

"No vehicle out back," Warrick said.

"Join us," Brass said, sounding laidback. "We'll do our deal with the door, you and I, then while you CSIs start working your wonders, I'll move the Tahoe around back of the house. Assuming there's room…?"

"Plenty," Warrick said, taking in the flat space.

Warrick circled the building and met Brass at the rear of the Tahoe. They fetched the battering ram and lugged it to the stoop, to repeat the action from the other house. This door proved more secure, and it took a second blow to send the puppy sailing in, this jamb splintering, too, survivalist measures or not.

After leaning the battering ram against the side of the house, Brass told Grissom and Sara to stay put and keep a watch for Benson, should he return.

Then Brass went in first, Warrick after him, guns drawn. Warrick held a flashlight in his left hand and the weapon in his right, fanning them both around.

The single curtained picture window shrouded the room, but sun spilling through the open door aided the flashlights, if also creating dancing shadows. A certain strobe-like effect resulted, and Warrick had trouble adjusting for a few moments, not able to recognize even familiar objects.

The room was air-conditioned-cold in here, which explained why the generator was working with nobody (apparently) home. Warrick recalled Doc Robbins saying Candace Lewis's body had been preserved for some time, and a chill ran through him that had nothing to do with air conditioning.

Brass clicked the light switch and revealed a medium-sized living room that was at once cluttered and stark: parked in the middle were the only furnishings-a big lounge chair and a small, round table with a coaster and a remote control, opposite a huge projection TV against the far. The cluttered feel arrived by way of the right wall, which was consumed by shelving, the upper levels home to more electronic gear than the backroom at Best Buy-several VCRs, DVD players and recorders, laserdisc player, various cameras and more. The lower shelves were lined with hundreds of videotapes, all the homemade variety, with white spines hand-lettered in black felt-tip.

Even from across the room, Warrick could make out a row of tapes labeled CANDY, volumes one and two and three and on and on….

Shuddering, Warrick glanced around the other, vacant walls-no pictures at all, not mom, not Jesus, not even a velvet John Wayne.

Brass and Warrick exchanged lifted-eyebrow glances, and the detective led the way through an archway into a dining room, each going down one side of a scuffed, secondhand-looking wooden table and two wooden chairs with spindle backs. The chair on Warrick's side was rubbed white on one of the spindles-could this indicate Candace had sat here, handcuffed, while her host fed her during her imprisonment?

Beyond the dining area was the kitchen, but Warrick couldn't move any further without exposing himself to a hallway at left. Brass indicated he'd take the kitchen, and Warrick nodded toward the hall, a choice Brass confirmed with a return nod.

Warrick had taken only a few steps down the narrow corridor when Brass whispered from behind him, "Kitchen's clear, too."

The first two doors in the hall faced each other.

As before, Brass went right and Warrick left, turning into a room bearing the fragrance of a relatively recent paint job, the walls a flat white; probably intended as a bedroom, this had been converted into a kind of office-devoid of furniture but for a swivel desk chair facing a TV monitor on a small desk. A cable behind the monitor ran up the wall, and out of sight. What appeared to be a closet had its door padlocked.

Again, Warrick felt Brass right behind him.

"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, erupting 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.