Mortal Wounds Page 2

  “Got anything?” Grissom asked.

  “I’ve got a footprint in the blood,” Warrick said, “but it’s smeared, like the guy slipped trying to take off.”

  Carefully stepping around Sara, Grissom moved in next to Warrick and followed Warrick’s gaze.

  Warrick was right: the footprint was useless. Turning on his haunches and lowering his head, Grissom carefully studied the hallway. “Look,” he said pointing another three feet down the hall, behind Warrick. “Another one.”

  Warrick got to it, checked it, then turned back to Grissom. “Smeared too.”

  His head still bent down near the floor, Grissom said, “Go another yard.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Ever use Leuco Crystal Violet?”

  Warrick shrugged. “Yeah, sure, but it’s been a while.”

  Grissom grinned. “Now’s your chance to get back in practice.”

  Brass walked up as Warrick withdrew a spray bottle from his black field-kit bag. “What’s that?”

  “See the spot on the carpeting?” Grissom asked.

  The detective shrugged. “All I see is a dirty carpet.”

  “There’s a bloody footprint there.”

  “Really.”

  “Yes—we just can’t see it.”

  Brass frowned. “A bloody footprint we can’t see?”

  “The red cells have all been rubbed off the shoe, but the hemoglobin and white cells remain.”

  Warrick carefully sprayed an area of the rug and picked up the lecture. “This is Leuco Crystal Violet—a powder. But here today on the Home Shopping Network, we’ve added it to a solution of sulfosalicylic acid, sodium acetate, and hydrogen peroxide.”

  With a small chuckle, Brass asked, “If it’s going to explode, you mind giving me a heads up?”

  As the solution began to work, Grissom jumped back in. “It’s going to work like a dye and bring out the footprint in that dirty carpet.”

  “No way.”

  “Way,” Grissom said as the spot on the floor turned purple, showing the outline of a running shoe.

  “About a size eleven, I’d say,” Warrick said. “Now we photograph it.”

  Brass asked, “Can you match that to anything?”

  Grissom nodded. “Once we get it back to the lab, we’ll tell you exactly what kind of shoe that print belongs to. After the database tells us, that is. Then, when we get a suspect, we’ll be able to compare this to a shoe of his and give you an exact match.”

  “Hey, Grissom,” Sara called. “All I’m finding is pasta and a salad. And let me tell you, the buffet at Caesar’s is better.”

  “Keep digging, anyway. And, Warrick?”

  Warrick’s head bobbed up. “Yeah, Gris?”

  “Make sure you do the stairwell—that’s the way Elvis left the building.”

  Warrick nodded.

  “So—mob hit?” Brass asked.

  Grissom led Brass back up the hall toward the elevators. “Too soon to tell.”

  “Robbery gone wrong?”

  Grissom ignored the question. “Let’s go see the videotape.”

  “Go ahead,” Brass said. “I’ll join you after I head upstairs and talk to that guy first.”

  Grissom’s eyes tightened. “Our FBI man with the cannon?”

  “Precisely.”

  “The tape can wait. I’ll come with you.”

  “Fine. You interface so well with the FBI, after all.”

  Upstairs, Brass led the way out of the elevator. Grissom slid in next to him as they moved down the hall toward room 813. Pulling his service revolver from its holster, Brass signaled for Grissom to hang back out of the alcove.

  Frowning, Grissom stopped short of the doorway as Brass moved into the alcove and knocked on the door with his left hand.

  “Just a sec,” said a muffled voice beyond the door.

  His feet set, Brass leveled his .38 at the door, which thankfully had no peephole. Peeking around the corner, Grissom watched as the door cracked slowly open. He saw the big man in boxer shorts—and the monstrous automatic in his beefy hand.

  And Grissom said, “Gun!”

  Brass ducked out of the alcove, plastered himself to the wall, away from the door, and yelled, “Police! Put that gun down, and open the door, and put your hands up—high!”

  Silence.

  “Do it now!” Brass said.

  The door opened and the big man—hands way up—stepped back. His expression was one of alarm, and he was nodding toward the nearby bed, on which the pistol had been tossed.

  “I’m unarmed!” he said. “Unarmed…”

  Brass forced the big man up against a wall.

  “Spread ’em.”

  He did as he was told and Grissom eased into the room behind the pair as Brass frisked the man.

  “Why the gun, sir?” Grissom asked, his voice cool.

  Over his shoulder, the big man said, “I deliver jewelry. It’s for protection.”

  Brass jumped in. “Did you know a murder was committed downstairs this morning?”

  The man looked thunderstruck. “No! Hell no! You don’t…you don’t think I did it?”

  Grissom moved forward. “Let’s slow down for a moment. What’s your name, sir?”

  “Ron Orrie.”

  “ID?” Brass asked.

  Orrie nodded toward the nightstand. “My wallet’s right there.”

  “Do you have a permit for the pistol?”

  “In the wallet, too.”

  Grissom studied the gun for a moment, a .45. “Is this your only handgun?”

  Looking nervous, Orrie nodded. “Only one I have with me.”

  Glancing toward Brass, Grissom shook his head. “Wrong weapon. Too big. John Smith was killed with something smaller.”

  Brass didn’t seem so eager to let Orrie off the hook. “Why did you tell the waiter you were with the FBI?”

  Orrie shrugged. “I didn’t want to explain my business. The more people that know what I do, the better chance I’ll get knocked over. It was my own damn fault. Normally, I wouldn’t have left the gun laying out. But I’d ordered breakfast from room service and he showed up before I was completely dressed and had it holstered.”

  The detective looked skeptical.

  Grissom thumbed through the wallet, finding a New Jersey driver’s license and concealed weapons permits from both Jersey and New York. “You are in fact Ronald Eugene Orrie,” Grissom said as he compared the photo on the license to the man, “and you have up-to-date concealed weapons permits.”

  “I know.”

  “With your permission, I’d like to have your hands checked for residue.”

  “What…what kind of residue?”

  “The kind a gun leaves when you fire it.”

  “I haven’t fired a gun in months!”

  “Good. Any objection?”

  “No…no.”

  “Thank you. Someone from criminalistics will come to see you, within the hour.”

  The man winced. “But can you make me stay in this room? I don’t mean to be uncooperative, but…”

  A frown seemed to involve Brass’s whole body, not just his mouth. His whole demeanor said, I knew it couldn’t be this easy, and Grissom’s eyes replied, They never are.

  Brass said, “Mr. Orrie, do you have a concealed weapons permit from the state of Nevada?”

  Orrie shook his head.

  “Then you know you can’t leave this room with that gun, correct?”

  The man nodded.

  “If I catch you on the street with it, I’m going to bust you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And don’t tell anyone else you’re with the FBI.”

  “No, sir…I mean, yes, sir.”

  “And wait here until somebody from the crime lab comes to see you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And if we decide to search your hotel room, will you require us to get a warrant?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are we done h
ere?” Grissom asked.

  Brass still seemed to want to hang on to the only suspect he had. Finally, he said, “Yeah, we’re done.”

  Grissom said, “Let’s go look at the tapes.”

  2

  Nick Stokes, at the wheel of the crime lab’s twin black Chevy Tahoe, threw a smile and a glance out his window, as if someone on the sidelines of his life might be able to make sense of it—a ref, maybe. “Can you believe this shit?” Nick asked, as he drove up the Strip in medium traffic. “Only fifteen minutes before the end of shift!”

  In the passenger seat, Catherine Willows’s reddish-blonde hair bounced as she shushed him, her cell phone in hand. Catherine tapped numbers into the phone and punched SEND, then waited impatiently.

  The phone was picked up on the third ring. “Hello.”

  “Mrs. Goodwin?” Catherine asked.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Catherine. We caught a case. Can you get Lindsey off to school?”

  The woman’s voice was warm, even through the cell phone. “Sure, no problem.”

  “How is she?”

  “Sleeping like an angel.”

  Catherine felt a heaviness in her chest and a burning behind her eyes. “Thanks, Mrs. Goodwin. I owe you.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Mrs. Goodwin said, “we’ll be fine,” and hung up.

  She’d no sooner pressed the END button on her phone than Nick started again on his litany of woe.

  “Do you know who was going to meet me for breakfast after shift?”

  “Surprise me.”

  “A cheerleader.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah, a beautiful UNLV cheerleader.”

  “As opposed to one of those homely UNLV cheerleaders.”

  “Now I gotta miss breakfast. This girl was getting out of bed for me.”

  Despite her anxiety over Lindsey, Catherine couldn’t help but laugh. “No comment.”

  A chagrined smile flickered across Nick’s well-chiseled features.

  Catherine liked the idea that Nick finally seemed to be coming out of his shell; though the demands of the job kept her—and Nick—from thinking about their own problems, giving them focus, she knew that crime scene investigation was also the kind of work from which you should have at least an occasional break. She’d finally learned as much, and she hoped that now Nick would too.

  She asked him, “What do we know about this call?”

  Shaking his head, Nick said, “Some construction workers got an early start today, trying to beat the heat. They found a body under a junky old trailer.”

  “New body, or junky old body?”

  “That’s all I know, Cath.”

  They passed the Mandalay Bay, crossed Russell Road, and turned into the construction site for the new Romanov Hotel and Casino. Supposedly the Strip’s next great resort, Romanov would play thematically on the opulence of Czarist Russia, the main building modeled after Nicholas and Alexandra’s palace in St. Petersburg, featuring rooms based on those of the actual palace. And if Catherine knew anything about Vegas, the joint would also have dancing Rasputins and Anastasias.

  Right now, however, a construction crew had been engaged to clear away debris from the years the lot had stood vacant and become something of a dumping ground. The sun glinted off metallic garbage and presented a rocky, rubble-strewn landscape more suited for Mad Max than Russian royalty. A line of pickups on the far side told her that a pretty good-sized crew was working at the site.

  She spotted a semicircle of construction workers standing around the remnants of an old mobile home trailer, staring at something on the ground. Behind them a few feet sat an idling hydraulic excavator, its bucket still hanging over the back of a dump truck where it had been left by its operator. Off to one side, maybe twenty yards away, sat two black-and-whites, the patrolmen leaning against them, sipping coffee, shooting the breeze. Beyond that squatted the unmarked Ford of an LVPD detective.

  Nick braked the SUV to a stop near the yellow dump truck. Catherine threw open the door only to be met by a wall of heat that told her she’d be sorry for leaving the comfort of the air-conditioned truck. Nick piled out the other side, they grabbed their field kits, and Catherine led the way to the huddle of men.

  Burly, crew-cut Sergeant O’Riley separated from the construction workers and met them halfway.

  “Never seen anything like it,” he said.

  “What?” Nick asked.

  “The guy’s a damned mummy.”

  “A mummy,” Catherine said.

  O’Riley extended his arms, monster fashion. “You know. A mummy.”

  Nick shrugged at Catherine. “A mummy.”

  She smirked at him. “Come on, daddy-o….”

  The cluster of construction workers split and made room for them to pass.

  The rusted hulk of the former trailer looked as though God had reached down and pulled out a fistful of its guts. Through the hole, beneath what was left of the floor, something vaguely human stared upward with dark eye sockets in what looked like a brown leather head.

  “Anybody gone in there?” she asked.

  The construction workers shook their heads; some stepped backward.

  She set down her field kit and turned to O’Riley. Sweat ran down his face in long rivulets, his color starting to match that of his grotesque sports coat. “You wanna fill me in, Sergeant?”

  “The crew came in at four-thirty. Trying to get ahead, work when it was cooler, so they could knock off at noon.”

  Catherine nodded. It was a common practice in a desert community where the afternoon heat index would probably top 130 degrees.

  “They’d only been at it about an hour or so when they found the mummy,” O’Riley said, waving toward the trailer.

  “Okay, get a couple of uniforms to cordon off the area.”

  O’Riley nodded.

  “We want to make sure that he’s the only one.”

  Frowning, O’Riley said, “The only one?”

  Pulling out her camera and checking it, Catherine said, “A lot of stuff’s been dumped here over the years, Sarge. Let’s make sure there’s only been one body discarded.”

  Nick, at her side, said, “You think we got Gacy’s backyard here?”

  “Could be. Can’t rule it out.”

  O’Riley called to the uniforms and they tossed their coffee cups into a barrel and plodded toward him.

  “Oh,” she said, lightly, “and you might as well send the construction workers home. We’re going to be here most of the day.”

  Nodding, O’Riley spoke briefly to the uniforms, then talked to the foreman, and slowly the scene turned from a still life into a moving picture. The workers dispersed, their dusty pickups driving off in every direction as the patrolmen strung yellow crime-scene tape around the junk-infested lot.

  “Times like this,” Nick said, as the yellow-and-black boundary took form, “I wish I’d invested in the company that makes crime-scene tape.”

  “It’s right in there with the smiley face,” she agreed.

  Catherine stepped into blue coveralls, from her suitcaselike field kit, and zipped them up; she was all for gathering evidence, just not on her clothes. She put on a yellow hard hat, the fitted band feeling cool around her head, for a few seconds anyway.

  While Nick and the others searched the surrounding area, Catherine took photos of the trailer. She started with wide shots and slowly moved in closer and closer to the leathery corpse. By the time she was ready to move inside the wreck, with the body, Nick had returned and the cops were back to standing around.

  “Anything?” she asked as she reloaded the camera and set it on the hood of the Tahoe.

  “No,” Nick said. “Our ‘mummy’ has the place to himself.”

  “Okay, I’m going in.” She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and picked up her camera again.

  “Careful.”

  Catherine tossed him a look.

  “I’m just saying, Cath, it’s rusty metal, unstable�
�”

  “I’ve had my tetanus shot.”

  Entering through a huge bitelike hole in the trailer’s skin, she picked her way through the rubble, slipped through the gash in the floor and slid down next to the body, half of it now exposed to the sunlight pouring in through the wide tear in the roof. The ground felt cooler in the pools of shadow beneath the trailer. She noticed hardly any smell from the cadaver and, judging from the condition of the skin, he’d been dead for quite a long time.

  “White male,” she said, snapping the first of half a dozen photos.

  Outside, Nick repeated her words as he wrote them in his notebook.

  Finishing the photos, she set the camera to one side. The body had been laid to rest on top of a piece of sheet metal, probably a slab of the trashed trailer’s skin, and slid in under the dilapidated derelict. Though the killer had hidden the body well, he’d also managed to protect it so that instead of rotting, the corpse had mummified in the dry Nevada air.

  They did indeed have a mummy of sorts.

  Moving carefully, Catherine examined the body from skull to oxblood loafers. The eyes and soft tissue were gone, leaving empty sockets, and the skin had contracted around the bone, resembling discolored beef jerky. Shocks of salt-and-pepper hair remained and the teeth were still intact. Good.

  The clothes had held up surprisingly well, though the narrow-lapeled suit had probably faded from popularity well before this poor guy ended up buried in it. She checked the victim’s coat pockets as best she could and found nothing. She could tell, even through the clothes, that some of the man’s organs had survived. Shrunk, but survived. It wasn’t that unusual in a case like this. Moving down, she went through the corpse’s pants pockets.

  “No wallet,” she called.

  Nick repeated her words.

  In the front left pocket she found a handful of change and counted it quickly. “Two-fifteen in change, the newest coin a nineteen-eighty-four quarter.” She put the coins in an evidence bag, sealed it, and set it to one side.

  Again, Nick repeated what she had said.

  She looked at the victim’s hands and said, “He’ll never play the piano again.”

  “What?”

  Shaking her head, she said, “The killer hacked off the victim’s fingertips at the first knuckle.”

  “Trying to make it harder to ID the guy if anybody ever found the body,” Nick said.