Killing Game Page 5

  Brass joined the CSIs. They watched as the ambulance pulled away, taking Grace Salfer from the comfort of her Los Calina residence to a waiting steel autopsy tray in the domain of Dr. Albert Robbins.

  Grissom was well aware that some considered him a cold fish, a scientist whose emotions—if any—were buried deep; but the truth was he felt the loss of life of each murder victim with a profound melancholy that the alchemy of his will transformed into resolve—resolve to see that a woman whose long life had ended in pointless violence would at least find justice.

  Greg Sanders, heels of his hands on his haunches, risked a nervous smile. “Meanwhile, back at the lab?”

  Sara stood with arms folded tightly, shivering at the morning cold; so did Sofia, making unwitting twins of the pair.

  Grissom did not respond to Greg. His eyes were searching the grounds for the Home Sure Security golf cart. “What became of our fellow ’law enforcement professional?’ ”

  “Uh, Susan Gillette?” Greg suddenly looked worried; had he goofed? “Security guard left as soon as I took her shoes. Was I supposed to—”

  “You did fine, Greg.” Grissom granted his charge a brief smile, knowing how edgy Greg could be around him at a crime scene; but that would improve—actually already had. “No reason to hold her.”

  “Ah. Good. Excellent.”

  “I just wanted to know if a Home Sure technician had been here to examine the alarm in the last week or so.”

  “I didn’t think to ask.”

  “Well, neither did I, till just now. I’ll get the information from their office.”

  “Home Sure, you mean?”

  “Yeah. Meantime, we need to get one of our own techs out here to go over that alarm, and determine if it’s been tampered with.”

  Sara had taken her cell phone out halfway through that. “How about Hendricks?”

  “Call him,” Grissom said to her. “Perfect man for the job.”

  The CSI supervisor sent Greg, Sofia, and Sara back to the lab in the SUV with what little evidence they had gleaned. Along with Brass, he remained at the Salfer house and waited for the electronics whiz.

  Barely fifteen minutes after Sara’s call, Hendricks drew up to the curb in an unsightly, battered gray van far older and closer to the bottom of the department-vehicle food chain than the Crime Lab’s high-end SUVs. Next to the electronics van, Brass’s standard-issue Taurus looked like a tricked-out ride. Misunderstood by much of the department—even among the more eccentric personalities in the lab—Duane Hendricks was a first-rate expert in his field. Even Grissom had to admit the guy was an odd duck, endlessly discussing such disparate obsessions as the Kennedy assassination, Shecky Greene, and Britney Spears.

  Hendricks emerged from the van like a skeleton reassembling itself. Nearly six-five but likely weighing in at maybe one-fifty, with long, stringy, blond hair, and black glasses too big for his spade-shaped face, Hendricks wore torn jeans, and a black T-shirt with some undefinable skull logo. He might well have been a rock group roadie, lost and stopping for directions to the gig.

  He ambled up to Grissom and offered a thin-lipped smile. “Hey, Gil.” The tech gave only a noncommital nod to Brass. “I just got to work and caught the call in the locker room—hope you don’t mind the street clothes.”

  “Duane,” Grissom said, “glad you were available. Ready to get to work?”

  “Always. Electronics never lie—drive you crazy, but they never lie…. Sara says you guys have an alarm you want me to have a gander at. In there?”

  “In there.”

  They began toward the house, and the electronics whiz said, “What’s new with the bugs? Win a race lately?”

  Grissom smiled sideways at the tall tech. “Actually, yes. My new star’s named Strip Search.”

  “Ha! Cool connotations—mucho meaningful depth.”

  Brass had a glazed look and was making no effort to join the conversation.

  But the exchange between tech and CSI revealed another reason why Grissom liked this so-called oddball. Hendricks never thought it weird that Grissom trained and raced roaches, and he always asked about them, sincerely interested, accepting the creatures as Grissom’s pets and even close friends (some days, they were).

  On the front stoop, the whiz asked, “What would you like this alarm to tell you?”

  “If it’s been tampered with—when, how; and could it have simply been shut off at the security-company office? And if so, can you be sure enough to call it evidence, and not opinion?”

  “Electronics don’t lie. Show me the baby and I’ll teach it to talk.”

  Brass finally entered in. “That simple?”

  The shaggy head nodded. “Once I know what I’m looking at…and get inside it.”

  “Well,” Grissom said, opening the door, “keypad’s around to the right.”

  They stepped inside and shut themselves in.

  Hendricks regarded the keypad like a safe-cracker might a wallsafe, Grissom and Brass giving him breathing room.

  Brass said, “Security guard unlocked the door when I got here—the alarmnot turned on.”

  “But we found fresh fingerprint smudges on the keypad,” Grissom added, “indicating it’d been used recently.”

  Hendricks nodded. “Meaning somebody turned it on or off…or both.”

  After the CSI instructed him to wear latex gloves and avoid surfaces within the device that might hold a fingerprint, the tech went right to work.

  Then Grissom and Brass watched as the technician removed the keyboard’s face plate, set the cover aside, and carefully freed the keyboard of its casing. Gesturing with his head, Hendricks called Grissom to his side and handed the CSI the guts of the alarm keypad.

  “Hold still,” Hendricks said.

  The keypad lay face down, flat in Grissom’s latex-gloved hands, a nest of wires curling up still attached to the wall, maybe eight inches away. Using a small Maglite and a tool that looked like a dental pick at one end and a screwdriver at the other, Hendricks poked and prodded at the wires and the connections.

  Brass took a step closer. “Should you be able to open that so easily?”

  Shrugging and half-smirking, Hendricks said, “Not much of an alarm—seven-digit key. Sends a signal to the Home Sure office—that’s the phone line you see—and there’s a siren to insure that the burglar gets plenty of warning to clear out before the guards show up. Also, probably gives the homeowners a heart attack, particularly in this neighborhood; and gets the neighbors in the act, too.”

  Brass winced. “And that’s it?”

  “That’s about it,” the tech said with another shrug. “Some alarms are state of the art—this one is bottom of the barrel.”

  “But it’s a gated community,” Brass said. “Big money, to live here…”

  That got yet another shrug from the technician. “Home Sure provides security, but figures they’ll never need anything but the most perfunctory gear.”

  Grissom said, “Gated community—security people patrol the grounds, and all the windows have Home Sure stickers—usually burglars avoid any house that might have any kind of security.”

  “Yeah,” Hendricks said, “if they’re never going to need it, why put in anything good? You know electronics—the current stuff is hugely expensive, but five year’s ago’s model goes for a song.”

  “True enough,” Brass said again.

  “Me, I’ll stick withmy security system, which with my JFK website I may damn well need.”

  “Boy,” Brass said, “youmust really have a state of the art system.”

  “I do,” Hendricks said with a crooked grin. “A Rottweiler.”

  Grissom and Brass traded a look.

  “Anyway,” Hendricks went on, “from what I can see, this puppy hasn’t been tampered with, phone line connection’s intact, audible alarm hooked up—but there’s no way to tell if it’s still linked to the home office.”

  “If the electronic link to the master alarm systemhas been switched
off,” Grissom said, “can we tell where that happened? Here at the keypad, or at the home office?”

  “Can’t tell you just from eyeballin’ it. You’ll have to access Home Sure’s records. They’ll have ’em, even for cheap-jack crap like this.”

  “Why?” Brass asked.

  “Insurance liability. If the homeowner requests it be turned off at the security office end, and then gets robbed, Home Sure will have a record to protect ’em from frivolous lawsuits.”

  Brass nodded. “Why would Mrs. Salfer have shut it off?”

  “Maybe there’s a short that caused the siren to keep going off, inadvertently,” Hendricks said, “and the old gal got annoyed.”

  Grissom said, “According to the security guard we spoke to earlier, a Susan Gillette, Mrs. Salfer was in fact having problems with the device.”

  Hendricks grinned evilly. “Wanna see why she would?”

  Then, without further warning, he used the screwdriver end of his tool to undo a connection and pop loose the wire.

  A siren screamed, filling the house.

  Brass’s mouth was wide open, making a sight gag—it was as if the detective were the source of the screech—but Grissom was too busy trying not to drop the keypad to be amused.

  Hendricks reattached the wire and the sound ceased. “I rest my case.”

  Brass seemed to be contemplating how many years he’d get for strangling the stringy tech as Hendricks snugged down the screw again. When he finally spoke, he did so slowly. “Well, thank you, Duane,” he said acidly, “for the generous demonstration.”

  “Hey, you’re welcome,” Hendricks said, oblivious to the detective’s sarcasm. “This’ll also let ya check out the response time of the golf cart patrol.”

  Grissom and Brass went out to stand on the front stoop while Hendricks put the keypad back together again.

  Three minutes and a few seconds later, a Home Sure Security cart rolled up to an abrupt stop, and a big guy climbed down out from behind the wheel, calling from the driveway: “What’s thedeal, anyway?”

  Brass crooked a come-here finger.

  The big guy in the brown uniform sighed and trudged up the driveway.

  The detective stepped down from the stoop and met the guard, who planted himself before the homicide captain with hands on hips.

  This specimen of Home Sure’s crack force stood at least six-five and weighed in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds, which stretched the limits of his uniform, not to mention the golf cart. The guard had light brown hair parted on the right, a mustacheless goatee that gave him the look of a bad guy wrestler on TV. The nameplate on the guard’s shirt read:GOFF .

  “Our technician was just doing a test on the alarm,” Grissom said.

  “Yeah, well we know you’re working a crime scene here. But how ’bout a little professional courtesy?”

  Grissom just looked at the man; Brass the same.

  “I mean, if you guys think all I got to do is run around answering false—”

  “I don’t care what you have to do, Mr. Goff,” Brass said, stepping up to the much bigger man. “This is a homicide investigation—a murder that happened on your company’s watch, by the way—and we’re going to do whatwe need to do.”

  The two men’s eyes locked and held.

  Grissom watched in fascination this wordless battle of wills. Just as the rabbit instinctively understands it shouldn’t mess with the dog, this rabbit—although of Harveyesque proportions—somehow suddenly knew not to further bait the alpha canine, even one of Brass’s pit bull dimensions.

  The battle, therefore, was brief, the guard grinning awkwardly. “Well, of course, obviously, we wanna cooperate any way we can with you guys.”

  His dominance established, Brass asked not unpleasantly, “Were you responding because you heard the alarm go off, Mr. Goff?”

  “No—I was a couple of blocks over.” A thumb gestured over a shoulder. “The alarm tripped at the home office.”

  Grissom asked, “So this home alarm sends a signal directly to the Home Sure office?”

  Goff nodded. “Then they radio the carts and the gate shack.”

  Frowning, Grissom said, “Still, it took you a good three minutes to get here.”

  Glancing at the cart with a wry smile, Goff said, “These things aren’t exactly built for speed. Like I said, I was a couple of blocks over, and out of the cart—talking to a resident.”

  Grissom asked, “What’s the response time when there’s only one cart—like last night?”

  The guard pondered that momentarily. “If the guard’s on the other side of the compound? Could take five minutes, maybe six. No more than that, though. Why do you ask? My understanding was Mrs. Salfer’s alarm didn’t go off, last night—not the audible hereor the silent downtown.”

  “That’s right,” Brass said. “We’re just covering the bases. What’s the procedure, when the alarmis tripped?”

  “When the call comes, we roll to the house. Next, we ascertainwhy the alarm tripped…and call you people in, when appropriate.”

  “And it’s not always appropriate.”

  “No. Actually, hardly ever is. See, sometimes these alarms, they just…go off.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah, really. The equipment is, frankly, not the greatest—shorts out sometimes. Also, people might go on vacation, leave a door ajar or something, wind blows, door opens, alarm goes off. Or one of these old folks gets up in the middle of the night and wanders into an area with motion detectors. Tons of harmless ways they can go off. Hey, we try not to bring you guys out here for no reason.”

  “We appreciate that,” Brass said. “What’s the rest of the procedure, for a false alarm?”

  “Not much to it. Guards have keys to all the residences, and the keypad codes—it’s just a reset job.”

  “That happen often?”

  Goff shrugged with one beefy shoulder. “Few times a week. These alarms weren’t designed to protect Fort Knox, you know.”

  Hendricks came out on the stoop, saying, “He’s got that right…. I’m done, by the way.”

  “Thank you for your help, Mr. Goff,” Brass said. “Care to do me one more professional courtesy, and supply the address of Home Sure’s main office?”

  “Sure,” Goff said.

  Brass jotted the address in his notebook and Goff elaborated: “Down Charleston, over by the hospital.”

  “Thanks,” Brass said. He turned to Grissom. “Finished here?”

  “For now,” Grissom said. “Mr. Goff can lock up the Salfer house.”

  “You want me to set the alarm?” Goff asked.

  Brass frowned. “What? Why?”

  “I mean, it’s a crime scene, right? Wouldn’t want anybody tampering with it.”

  Brass smiled, nodded, said, “With you people on patrol, we should be fine,” then out of the guard’s sight rolled his eyes at Grissom.

  But before the man got very far, Grissom said, “Uh, Mr. Goff?”

  The guard turned.

  “What’s to stop one of your Home Security force from using a key to enter a residence? Then, using the code, shut down the alarm before it went off?”

  Thinking about it, Goff said, “Nothing.”

  Grissom nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Goff.”

  “Hey, but if you meanSusan , hell—she’d never do that. She’s honest as the day is long. She wanted to be a cop, I meanreally wanted to be a cop, but she was too short. You know they have these dumb rules and restrictions that keep a lot of good people off the LVPD.”

  “That wasn’t an accusation, Mr. Goff,” Grissom said with a gentle smile. “Just a hypothetical.”

  And Grissom thanked Goff who—satisfied with Grissom’s response—nodded and returned to his golf cart, which (like its driver) was certainly not built for speed.

  Turning his attention back to the tech, Grissom asked, “You get anything else, Duane?”

  Hendricks shook his head. “Alarm looked fine. No internal tampering.”


  “Nothing else?” Brass asked.

  “Like I said, electronics don’t lie, Captain—but sometimes, unfortunately, they don’t have much to say.”

  Brass had no reply for that.

  When the lanky tech and his gray van had gone, Brass asked Grissom, “What about these fingerprints off the keypad you mentioned?”

  “Hendricks says it’s seven digits to key the alarm. There were smudges on five keys; other five were clean.”

  Brass frowned. “Only five keys? So, what…the other keys were wiped clean?”

  “Probably not,” Grissom said. “More likely, numbers repeat in the code. And the smudges were existing prints possibly made that way by gloves worn by whoever last accessed the keypad.”

  “You think Mrs. Salferdid set her alarm, then—and the killer turned it off?”

  “It’s a workable hypothesis.”

  “That’s your way of saying ‘hunch,’ right?”

  Grissom gave Brass a small grin. “No need to be insulting.”

  When Sara and Greg entered the autopsy room, Dr. Albert Robbins—the man they expected to find presiding over Grace Salfer’s autopsy—was nowhere in sight. Across the room a body covered with a white sheet lay on one of several steel tables. The fluorescent lighting heightened the chamber’s typically icy feel, which only seemed to warm in the presence of Robbins himself.

  Enjoying the momentary solitude, Sara glanced over at Greg, who was shivering; and when the door at the far end of the room opened and Dr. Robbins came in supported by his metal crutch, Greg actually jumped a little. Robbins still wore his blue scrubs, but his plastic face shield and white paper breathing mask had been set aside.

  Balding, his beard gone mostly to white, this was a man who had long since come to terms with a life filled with death; as properly serious as any coroner, he nonetheless had eyes that could laugh and was possessed of an impish smile, though neither were on display at the moment.

  “Sorry I wasn’t here when you came in,” he said, leaning his crutch in its familiar resting place in the corner. “I finished a few minutes ago and stepped out for some coffee. You haven’t been waiting long?”

  Sara shook her head. “We just got here.”