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Chapter Three - Worrying Developments
The woman sitting opposite Catherine in
the Tangiers suite could have been Sara. Jill Davenport was young and
fresh-faced - in her early 30s but easily passing for a woman in her 20s.
Dark hair fell loose about her shoulders.
"Is Sara okay?" she wanted to
know, a look of deep concern in her eyes. "I thought she was really
street-smart. Otherwise I would have made sure she got to her car okay."
"There's some concern that she might
have been drugged last night. Can you remember everything about your evening
with her? What you both drank? Who might have had access to your glasses?"
Catherine asked her.
Jill thought for a moment. "Sara only
had one drink. Played with it for a while, if I remember correctly. I don't
know what she was drinking. She was the one who went to the bar."
"What was your impression? Beer,
wine, spirit of some kind?" Brass pushed her.
"Orange juice," Jill replied.
"It looked like orange juice. Of course, she might have had something else
in it, but I don't know."
"And what did you have?"
Catherine asked.
"Campari and soda."
"And what time did Sara leave?" Catherine
went on.
"Um, around 11, I guess. Maybe a
little before," answered Jill. She paused, apparently thinking about it.
"Yeah, I think it was maybe ten to 11."
"You guys hadn't seen each other in a
while, right?" Brass took over. "Why would she meet up with you at
"Well, you know Sara..." Jill
answered cryptically. "Come to think of it, she didn't really seem to be
in the mood. Kept looking around her. Uneasy. Checking her watch. Like there
was somewhere she had to be. I asked her if she had to work, but she said it
was her night off."
"Back to the drink," Catherine
interrupted, not liking the implication of what she was hearing. "Did
anyone come near it? Was it brought to the table by a waiter, maybe? Did Sara
leave the table at any point? Maybe to go to the ladies room?"
"No," Jill answered. "Like
I said, Sara went to the bar, brought the drinks to the table herself. And she
didn't leave the table until she said she was going home."
---
The whole team was assembled round the
table in the break-room. Sara sat facing Grissom, hugging a large sweater
around her as though freezing. She had never felt so exposed.
He had insisted on processing her himself.
After he had drawn her blood, Grissom had proceeded to collect evidence from
her. Fibres from her clothing. Skin from under her finger nails. Now she sat at
the table with them in silence, as the team attempted to figure out their
latest bizarre case.
"Planted finger print. Planted hair.
Planted bugs. Is there anything about this crime scene that wasn't
staged?" Nick wanted to know. "And why Sara? Why is our prep trying
to point the finger at her?" He was taking this personally, remembering
all too well when he was falsely suspected of murder.
"Well, the finger print was planted
on the outside of the bottle, but our guy didn't bother with the inside,"
Catherine added. "No saliva, just beer. When anyone drinks from a beer
bottle, you can always expect to find some of their saliva mixed with the
contents. Backwash. But, in this case, zip. Means the perp probably emptied the
beer out of the bottle before placing the print. Maybe to make it look like
Sa... someone had been drinking from it."
Catherine cast a nervous glance at Sara,
who had yet to react to anything being said.
"No other prints anywhere else around
the body, though. Including the note. Perp was clean."
"Not that clean. Your perp may have
left a print on the shell casing y'all recovered," interjected Bobby
Dawson as he strode into the break-room. "Finger print came back as
unknown. Jacqui asked me to run the results over to you, since I was coming
this way myself."
Warrick shook his head, confused.
"That's kind of sloppy for someone who took such care to leave nothing but
planted evidence. Prints on bullet casings are an amateur mistake."
"What about the bullet?" Grissom
wanted to know.
"Matched the one I test fired from
the, uh..." he paused, glancing at Sara. "From the gun, y'all brought
in."
"So, it was my gun," Sara stated in a dead voice. "This keeps getting
better and better. Brass will be in here to arrest me any minute."
"No one's going to arrest you,"
Grissom told her. "My gut's telling me you were drugged. Wouldn't have been
hard for our killer to take your gun, use it and return it before you came
to."
"You finger print wasn't on the
casing Sara," Catherine went on. "And I think it's a safe assumption
that you don't use the type of ammo we found at the scene. You use Hydra-Shok,
like the rest of us, right?"
Sara nodded.
Catherine went on, "Well, the bullet
we recovered looked to me like a Black Talon. Am I right, Bobby?"
"Close," the ballistics expert
replied. "
"You can say that again,"
Grissom replied. "Cut like a buzz-saw through the victim. Would have kept
going too, if it hadn't hit that concrete wall. You have a chance to look at it
yet, Bobby?"
"Yeah. Not much to see though,"
Bobby answered. "Got ripped up pretty good with the impact. We're not
going to get much from it."
"Thanks Bobby," Catherine said when
Grissom didn't reply. Bobby nodded before leaving the room.
"So someone took my gun, reloaded
with Talons, getting their fingerprints on the bullet casing, and then loaded
it again with my own ammo?" Sara reasoned. "Why change ammo if the
gun was already loaded?"
"The talon is high performance,"
Grissom told her. "Incredibly destructive, like Catherine said. It was
over-kill. Someone wanted to make sure they'd kill our victim with one
shot."
"So, if they weren't wearing gloves, and
their print is on the bullet they fired, doesn't it stand to reason their
prints might be on my ammo?" Sara reasoned.
"Your bullets are with fingerprints
now. They're the next run," Nick told her.
"Okay, so the perp is trying to throw
us a curve by planting Sara's print and hair. But why the bugs? To throw off
time of death?" Warrick wanted to know.
"Well, that he didn't
accomplish," Grissom answered. "The Doc places time of death around
Grissom was doing a good impression of
being all business, but Catherine could tell that every word was causing him
effort. She had never seen him this worried, or this lost.
"And what was with the note?"
Nick wanted to know. "It almost sounds as if the killer's quoting you,
Grissom."
Before he could answer, Judy rapped on the
door, carrying a package.
"Sorry, Dr Grissom. A courier just
dropped this off. It's marked Urgent,
so I thought I'd better bring it straight to you."
Taking it from her, Grissom mumbled a
vague "Thanks". He
began to brief his troops.
"So, we got time of death, but
identification's being held up until we can get hold of dental records. Nicky,
start looking into missing persons. Males, who've gone missing in the last 48
hours, for starters. Warrick, check out the warehouse. It's part of an
industrial complex, so they should have some kind of CCTV. Try and talk to the
owner. Find out who might have had access."
Nick and Warrick rose to their feet, glancing
at Sara with concern on their way to the door. She looked up as they moved
passed and gave them a brave smile. Grissom tore open the envelope and began to
reach inside.
"See you later Sara," said Nick,
supportively.
"Take it easy," Warrick added.
"Catherine..." before Grissom
could continue, Greg arrived at the door.
"Uh, Grissom..." he began
hesitantly. "Can I have a word outside?"
Sara looked at Greg, but he couldn't meet
her eyes.
"Greg?" she asked, fear starting
to prickle at her. "Did you get the results of my blood test?"
"Uh, well, yeah... Um, Grissom."
Greg shifted uncomfortably, still not looking directly at Sara.
"Greg," Catherine began evenly.
"Sara has a right to know..."
Greg hesitated again. Finally he raised his
eyes to look at Sara. He looked at her with such sorrow, like a man who had
finally been faced with the reality of what he did.
"Sara, you were drugged," he finally said.
"What was it?" her voice small
now.
"Rohypnol."
Grissom's hand had stilled inside the
envelope. Catherine looked from him to Sara, unable to determine who was more
devastated by the news. The look on Grissom's face turned from horror to
confusion. Slowly his withdrew his hand from the envelope, bringing with it a
pale green thong and a note.
"What the...?" he started,
picking up the note without thinking. Unfolding the paper, he read the single
line and dropped it to the table.
Concentrate on what cannot lie...
Sara looked from Grissom's face to the
satiny green material in front of him. A sudden realisation struck her.
"Those are mine."
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