Killing Game

  They Found Only Two Prints,

  on the Top of the Dresser.

  Sara dutifully took pictures before Grissom lifted them.

  “Mrs. Salfer?” Sara asked, nodding toward the prints.

  Grissom said, “Probably. Do you notice anything about this scene?”

  Sara looked around the room and thought back to what they had seen downstairs. “Very clean.”

  “Exactly,” Grissom said. “It only stopped raining a couple of hours ago, rained since noon yesterday. Ground outside should be a mess, and there should be—”

  “Water or wet footprints on the floor.”

  Grissom nodded. “With rigor present, that tells us she was killed last night, during the height of the storm.”

  “Yet the house is bone dry…and so is the body.”

  “The evidence never lies,” Grissom said, “but someone may be trying to lie to us through the evidence.”

  Original novels in the CSI series:

  by Max Allan Collins

  CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

  Double Dealer

  Sin City

  Cold Burn

  Body of Evidence

  Grave Matters

  Binding Ties

  Serial (graphic novel)

  CSI: Miami

  Florida Getaway

  Heat Wave

  by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  CSI: New York

  Dead of Winter

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  AnOriginal Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  A Pocket Star Book published by

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10,20

  Copyright © 2000–2005 by CBS Broadcasting Inc. and Alliance Atlantis Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  “Alliance Atlantis” and the stylized A design are trademarks of Alliance Atlantis Communications, Inc.

  All Rights Reserved.

  CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION and related marks, CBS and the CBS Eye Design are trademarks of CBS Broadcasting Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-1629-3

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-1629-8

  POCKET STAR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  For Lee Goldberg—

  media man.

  I would like to acknowledge my assistant on this work, forensics researcher/co-plotter

  Matthew V. Clemens.

  Further acknowledgments appear at the conclusion of this novel.

  “Man’s dying is more

  the survivors’ affair than his own.”

  —Thomas Mann

  “Any man’s death diminishes me,

  because I am involved in mankind.”

  —John Donne

  “A detective who minds his own business

  would be a contradiction in terms.”

  —Rex Stout’s ARCHIEGOODWIN

  WINTER WEDGED ITSELF INTO THEVegas valley, temperatures turning cold—by Sin City standards, anyway—with a high in the mid-fifties predicted for the coming afternoon. The thermostat had risen sharply after Christmas, and stayed there through the New Year’s celebration; but now, a week into another year, a stiff wind blew down off the mountains turning litter into projectiles, women’s skirts into billowing parachutes, and walkers into bad mimes trudging forward against frigid mountain gusts.

  Just last night, a half-inch of rain had pelted the area, Mother Nature forcing the desert to acknowledge the change of seasons, if only for a couple of days. Though the temperatures would rise back into the nineties soon enough, the city was currently wrapped in a cold, damp shawl, an indignity this desert fun capital could barely endure. Overhead, dark clouds threatened yet more moisture, and—other than the pedestrians who seemed to constantly patrol the Strip, visitors whose vacations made no allowance for less-than-ideal weather—the city hunkered down, waiting for the arctic blast to slide off to the east, the valley huddling indoors to dream about spring.

  Cold did not prevent the tourists from cramming the casinos, while the locals forlornly watched the newspapers and TV, as their chance of winning the major league baseball franchise (that vacated Montreal at the end of the season) slipped away to Washington, D.C. A groundswell of support in the nation’s capital had made the dream of a Vegas major league ball club yet another waking disappointment; but there was still the possibility of expansion, and that meant hope.

  That was the one thing never in short supply in Sin City: despair’s idiot grinning twin—hope. The water table might be coming up snake eyes, the land available for construction would possibly be gone in the next couple of years, real estate prices were already climbing toward the top of the tower at the Sphere; but the residents of Vegas still had hope.

  As long as the visitors kept coming—and they were, at the rate of nearly one-hundred thousand a day (McCarran Airport had, in fact, just reported a record forty-one-point-four million travelers through its doors last year)—things would be swell, great, terrific, every damn day New Year’s Eve.

  After all, hadn’t this very town—which, in the living memory of some residents, had once been little more than a wide spot in the road—just hosted the second largest New Year’s Eve celebration in the United States? Right behind New York’s Times Square? More than a quarter million revelers had counted down the last ten seconds in Vegas this year, and—if trends held—even more would be here next year. What said “hope” better than tourists celebrating the possibilities of the year to come by spending money inyourtown?

  With the election scant weeks behind him, Sheriff Rory Atwater wasted no time in celebrating the success of the LVPD, pointing to a mere ninety-five ringing-in-the-new-year arrests. Not one to let a good media opportunity slip by, Atwater also informed the reporters that—although crime was admittedly up nine percent in the last year—his department had overseen a major drop in violent crime. In the past twelve months, murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults were all down; and this year, under his leadership, the LVPD would continue on that road. Keeping violent crime down made the city fathers happy—such statistics ran in papers nationwide, read by countless potential tourists.

  And that wasn’t the only good news: In the last year alone, a record thirty-seven-point-four million of those tourists had added thirty-two billion dollars to the Vegas economy. With money like that rolling in, the locals told themselves, so what if they ran out of water? You could always drink something a little stronger….

  The hypnotic allure the city held over the American public had made several transformations over the course of the sixty years since Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel had built the Flamingo; but the country’s Sin City love affair had gone on, unabated. When the cool, sexy Rat Pack sixties ended, made anachronistic in a country ripped asunder by Vietnam, the casinos experienced a dip in attendance; so (always a back-up plan in Vegas) strategy shifted, eventually turning Sin City into Disney World with casinos.

  The tourists had never stopped coming, but their numbers once again swelled. Then when the family atmosphere started to grow tired, the city morphed into a playground combining Sin City of yore with family fun and a large serving of Hollywood glitz, the latter a technique dating back to Bugsy himself.

  And more than just tourists came—i
n recent years an average of five thousand per month took up residence in the Las Vegas valley. Whether drawn by the absence of state income tax, the gambling, job opportunities, or the weather, these new Las Vegans quickly became part of the fastest-growing town in America.

  Some hit it big, most do not; but always the hope of something better glimmers just around the corner, and each visitor—whether tourist or new resident—has dollar-sign eyes, hungry with somehow getting a piece of that thirty-two-billion-dollar pie.

  Some don’t really care how they get it, either—hook, crook; steal, kill. Those who consider themselves above the law, and entitled to their taste of that ever-growing pie, will do whatever they have to, to whomever they have to, to get their “rightful” piece…to get what they think they deserve.

  The investigators of the LVPD criminalistics bureau—representing one of the most renowned crime labs in the world—feel the same way.

  That is, the crime scene investigators also want to see these individuals get what they deserve….

  1

  Monday, January 24, 6:30A.M .

  LOSCALINA NESTLED IN THEfoothills at the far west end of Summerlin. Packed in north of Far Hills Avenue, just west of Desert Foothills Drive, the gated community was a relatively new addition catering to upper-middle-class dwellers of a…certain age. Such words as “senior” or “elderly” were not spoken here; and when these folks ate at a restaurant at 4:30P.M ., the reason was preference, not the savings afforded by an “Early Bird Special.”

  Not as trendy, nor as full of star power, as Lake Las Vegas—its more opulent eastside counterpart—Los Calina (“The Hills” in less romantic English) catered to older money, clients who wished to remain very private while living in something resembling luxury. Residents were mostly well-to-do retirees still able to live independently. Gardening, garbage collection, and other rudimentary services were provided or overseen by the Los Calina Association, in essence overseen by the residents themselves. For a retirement community, this made other local options—even pleasant facilities—seem like nursing homes without staff, at best, and tenements, at worst.

  A slim but shapely woman in her early thirties, Sara Sidle—dark hair dangling out under a black CSI baseball cap, her attractive oval face somber—pulled the black Tahoe into the Los Calina entrance to stop at a guard shack that squatted between theIN andOUT gates. The small, mostly glass structure (about the size of a double-wide phone booth) was the architectural equivalent of the guard who lumbered out of it, sweat rings on his short-sleeve brown shirt beneath meaty arms, despite the chill and the shack’s thrumming window air conditioner.

  In the passenger seat next to her, Gil Grissom stared straight ahead; he might have been catatonic, but was merely absorbed in his own thoughts. Pushing fifty, his hair and trim beard touched with gray, the CSI supervisor wore his customary loose-fitting black shirt and slacks, and an identical ballcap to Sara’s. Grissom had never been talkative, but since the Crime Lab’s deputy director, Conrad Ecklie, had unceremoniously broken up the graveyard-shift team, Grissom had become ever more interior.

  Still, Sara could tell her boss was keeping up the appearance that everything was fine, as best he could; but she was attuned enough to him to detect differences out around the edges. In fact, Sara figured she knew Grissom better than anyone else in the crime lab, with the possible exception of Catherine Willows (recently appointed swing shift supervisor, but for years, Grissom’s right hand).

  Sitting quietly behind Grissom was Greg Sanders, the former DNA lab rat who had just completed his final proficiency, his two-tone hair (dark brown, orangeish blond) looking more controlled these days. Slender, with a narrow, handsome face, Greg fixed his eyes on something outside the vehicle—Sara knew that he had long since learned not to make conversation with Grissom, who on occasion still made life hard for the twenty-something former lab tech.

  Nonetheless, Sara felt the young scientist—who had taken the “new kid” mantle from her (thank Godsomebody finally had!)—had already turned a corner. The glib, flirty “kid” had receded into a more serious, committed criminalist—didn’t take many nights on the streets for a CSI to develop that kind of detached, no-nonsense attitude.

  In the seat behind her, the newest member of theirnew team—Sofia Curtis—also sat in silence. Studying the woman in the rearview mirror, Sara thought the attractive CSI with the long blond hair—today pulled back in a loose ponytail—had already shown herself to be a highly competent investigator.

  But they should be getting to know one another better by now, only Sara couldn’t bring herself to let down her guard. Sofia had been the acting day-shift supervisor, seen by many as the much-despised Ecklie’s lap dog. When Curtis had sided with Grissom against the vitriolic Ecklie, the woman had been punished with banishment to the graveyard shift and the recently dressed-down Grissom team.

  That should have endeared Curtis to Sara. And, yet, try as she might, Sara couldn’t help but wonder if they might not have a spy in their midst….

  Then, shaking her head at her own (probably ridiculous) paranoia, Sara turned toward the square-headed, blunt-featured guard, who awaited like a carhop at her window, which she powered down.

  “Can I help you?” the guard asked, and somehow she managed not to request a milkshake.

  Not that the fiftyish guard didn’t look properly official, clipboard at the ready,EVERETT stenciled on the nameplate pinned to one side of his brown uniform shirt, the other bearing a silver badge with a pressed-in logo—HOME SURE SECURITY.

  She lifted her laminated ID on its necklace for his inspection. “Crime lab.”

  “Oh.” His face saddened. “You must be here for Mrs. Salfer….”

  She nodded.

  “Pity. Nice lady.”

  Leaning over toward Sara, close enough for her to get a whiff of the scent of his soap, Grissom asked the guard, “Have you been here all night, Mr. Everett?”

  “Nope,” the guard said, shaking a concrete-block head that seemed to swivel on his shoulders without benefit of a neck. “Jack, the night guy, he called in sick—flu. Going around, cold weather maybe.”

  “When did you come in, Mr. Everett?”

  “About five.”

  Sara checked her watch—six-thirty. Why all these cases seemed to fall toward the end of shift was a bigger mystery than most of the crimes themselves.

  Grissom was asking, “And who was here overnight?”

  The guard looked at the shack like the answer might lie inside.

  Grissom frowned. “Don’t you know, Mr. Everett?”

  He shook the blocky head. “Place was empty when I got here; we been short-handed. Office called me to come in early, so I did—don’t know what the problem was, if any. Could be nobody was out here from eleven last night till I come on.”

  “The ‘office’ called you?” Sara asked. “What office is that?”

  He thumped his badge with a forefinger. “Home Sure. We have the contract for security here at Los Calina.”

  Grissom’s smile was faint. “How long do you anticipate holding onto that contract?”

  The guard sighed. “Yeah, I know. No one in the guard shack, and here we have a…a damn murder, or something. Hell of a thing.”

  “Isn’t it?” Grissom said pleasantly. “Thank you, Mr. Everett.”

  And the CSI supervisor sat back, eyes forward, in a manner that told Sara it was time to move on.

  Sara said to the guard, “Thank you, sir,” and powered up the window.

  Giving them a nod, the guard backed away, then returned to his shack; you could almost see the sweat rings growing, despite the “cold” that was giving everybody the flu.

  After a moment, the gate slid open, and Sara eased the SUV through, rolling twenty feet to a stop sign at a T-intersection. Houses went off in each direction, side streets veining to God only knew where.

  “Which way to Arroyo Court?” she asked Grissom.

  Sofia leaned forward. “Left here, then tak
e the first right; then, when you can, another left.”

  “You’ve been here before?” Grissom asked without looking back.

  “Just a couple months ago,” Sofia said. “I did a seminar on identity theft for the residents. That was at the main office building. Which is the other way, to the right; but they showed me around while I was here.”

  “You’re good,” Sara admitted with a smile.

  Sofia said, “Call it a gift for street names.”

  The streets in question wound past lines of stucco houses, both one- and two-story, all looking new and fronted by a lush carpet of green grass—a real rarity in these drought-stricken days.

  Sofia’s directions, not surprisingly, turned out to be right on the money, and they were soon parked in front of a large, two-story tile-roof stucco, with a two-car garage attached on the left; and the lawn looked every bit as well-maintained and manicured as the others around it. This struck Sara as decadent, in an oddly mundane way.

  Two cars had beat them here: an LVPD squad in front of the Tahoe, and Brass’s familiar Taurus, parked in the wrong direction on the other side of the street. A blue-and-white golf cart—a clear plastic covering protecting it from the rain, and the Home Sure Security logo painted on the front—was nosed in at an angle, not quite pulled into the driveway, and an ambulance in the driveway itself. Right now the EMTs were packing up their gear and loading it back into the ambulance—obviously in no hurry.

  Sara hated seeing the defeat on their faces. She’d talked to enough of these men and women, over the years, to know that they were well aware they couldn’t save every one on each call; but that didn’t stop them from trying…or from feeling like shit when death won another one.

  Already in strictly-business mode, Grissom said, “Big house.”

  “Evidently,” Sara said, “ ‘retired’ doesn’t mean you have to downsize.”