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Valentine
Chapter
Five – Leads
‘What
do you mean you don’t have any suspects!’ a very angry father, Scott Michaels
grilled Brass and Catherine. ‘How can you not have a suspect!’
Brass
held up his hands, attempting to placate the man. ‘Mr Michaels, we don’t have a
suspect right now. Believe me, that
all could change. You just need to let us do our jobs.’
All
of the man’s anger was suddenly replaced with terrible grief, and he sunk down
onto a chair and began to weep. ‘Haley… Haley,’ he sobbed.
Catherine
sat down near him. ‘Mr Michaels, I’m so sorry for your loss. Can you think of
anyone who would have wanted to harm Haley?’
For
a moment, the grieving father was unable to speak. Finally, his eyes met
Catherine’s. ‘She shouldn’t have even been out of the house. I told her to stop
seeing Jason. Didn’t want her around him, after his psycho ex-girlfriend
threatened her.’
Catherine
and Brass shared a look. Finally, a lead. ‘Do you know this ex-girlfriend’s
name?’ Brass asked him.
‘Stacey…
something,’ Mr Michaels thought for a moment. ‘Stacey… Marks, maybe?’
‘When
did she threaten Haley?’ Catherine asked him. ‘Can you tell us what exactly
happened?’
Michaels
was beginning to get himself back under control. Looking almost embarrassed to have
been crying, he impatiently wiped the tears from his face.
‘Haley
came home about a week ago… last Wednesday, I think. I could tell she’d been
crying, was really upset. I asked her what was wrong and she said that she’d
been on a date with Jason and they’d run into Stacey. The little bitch had
really tore into Haley, hit her, pulled at her hair. Said that Jason was hers
and she’d put Haley in hospital before she’d let her date him.’
‘Did
you report this to the police?’ Brass wanted to know.
Michaels
shook his head. ‘I didn’t… I didn’t think it was that big a deal. Girls fight
over guys all the time.’ Catherine could see he was getting upset again. ‘I
didn’t think… I didn’t like Jason anyway, so I told Haley to stop seeing him. I
thought that would be the end of it.’
Tears began to roll down his face once more. ‘This is my fault, isn’t
it? If I had called the police last week…’
Catherine
shook her head. ‘There was no way you could have know this would happen, Mr
Michaels,’ she told him gently. ‘And we don’t know that this girl Stacey had
anything to do with your daughter’s death.’
‘But
we will check her out,’ Brass assured him. ‘Just in case.’
---
‘What
have we got?’ Grissom asked as he strode into the break room, cutting the
chatter and bringing the briefing to order.
‘Possible
suspect,’ Catherine told him. ‘Brass and I interviewed Haley Michaels’ father a
few hours ago. Apparently, boyfriend Jason’s ex threatened Haley last week.
Brass is running down the name, but no luck as yet.’
‘How’s
the evidence coming?’ Grissom asked.
‘DNA’s
back on the condom,’ Nick informed the group. ‘Clive’s DNA on the inside,
Mary’s on the outside.’
‘The
victims. No surprise there,’ Catherine remarked. ‘What about the fingerprint
you got off the car door?’ she asked Warrick.
‘Spoke
to Jackie at the end of last shift,’ Warrick replied. ‘No match to the vics. So far, it’s an unknown. Maybe our perp.’
‘So
we’ve got nothing?’ Sara summed up, frustrated.
‘We’ve
got evidence to tie to a suspect, when we develop one,’ Grissom corrected her.
‘And we’ve got a distinctive M.O.’
‘So,
what are we thinking? Are the hearts part of some weird ritual, or is he
cutting them out as a Valentine’s gift to his honey?’ Warrick pondered.
‘Man!
Whatever happened to flowers and candy?’ Nick said with disgust.
‘Diamonds, Nicky,’ Catherine admonished
the young CSI. ‘A woman likes diamonds for Valentine’s.’
Sara
made a noise of disgust.
‘What?
You don’t like diamonds or you’re not a fan of the holiday?’ Catherine asked
with a smirk.
‘It’s
not a holiday. It’s an excuse for card manufactures to make money in the slow
season between Christmas and Easter,’ Sara announced. ‘It’s a meaningless,
capitalist farce.’
‘Cynic,’
Nick said under his breath.
‘Hey,
I like romance as much as the next woman,’ Sara told him. ‘But Valentine’s is a
crock.’
She
suddenly became very aware of Grissom’s gaze on her. Trying not to look up and
meet his eyes, she felt her face flush. Inwardly she winced. She always did
that – make a big deal out of something stupid – say something, simply for the
sake of saying it, and ending up with it sounding like a major belief system.
Warrick
had been watching this exchange with amusement, and saw Sara start to blush. He
let her suffer for a moment before helping her out.
‘Okay,
so… what else we got? Because DNA and fingerprints are coming up empty. Do we
know who was last with the second couple?’
Catherine
answered him. ‘Scott Michaels didn’t even know his daughter had left the house.
He banned her from dating Jason last week, after the incident with the
ex-girlfriend. And her friends say they hadn’t seen her since school let out at
3.30.’
‘What
about the boyfriend?’ Grissom asked. ‘No one missed him?’
‘He
lives alone,’ Catherine told him. ‘No one to
miss him, from what we can tell. Brass is looking into it.’
‘What
about their car?’ Nick asked. ‘It hasn’t turned up yet?’
‘Not
yet,’ Catherine answered. ‘Brass has an APB out on it. Hopefully it’s only a
matter of time…’ She was interrupted by her pager. ‘Speak of the devil,’ she
remarked as she plucked the device off her belt and looked at it. ‘Brass has
located the ex-girlfriend. I’m going to go talk to her. Catch you guys later,’
she said as she left the room.
‘Okay,
in case Catherine’s lead doesn’t pan out, Sara, I’d like you to follow the
M.O,’ Grissom said, looking at the brunette. ‘A person just doesn’t wake up one
morning and start cutting out hearts. They develop a taste for it. Go on the
FBI database, look for anything similar. Don’t limit yourself to just the
hearts. Any murders where the victims were mutilated. Couples killings. Any
murders where two killers were thought to have been involved. Let’s try and
work out the pattern.’
‘On
it,’ she told him, uncurling herself from the chair and heading out of the
room.
‘According
to the two friends, Clive and Mary drove off in their car at around
‘That
part of the strip has a bunch of cameras on the street too,’ Warrick told him.
‘I’ll see if I can lay my hands on that footage too.’
With
that, he and Greg left the room.
‘Nicky,
until the second couple’s car turns up, I want you sifting through missing
persons,’ Grissom told the remaining CSI. ‘We didn’t find the first couple for
four days. I hate to think it, but there may be more out there, waiting to be
found.’
---
The
sullen girl sitting opposite Catherine couldn’t have been more than 17. She sat
with her arms and legs crossed, completely defensive, and refusing to look
either Brass or Catherine in the eye. After twenty minutes of interviewing the
uncooperative teenager, Catherine had just about enough.
‘Two
people, that you know, were found murdered last night,’ she said bluntly. ‘You
don’t seem very broken up about it.’
‘I
loved Jason,’ Stacey told her. ‘Everyone deals with grief in their own way.’
‘Right,’
Brass replied, with a tone that made it crystal clear he didn’t believe the
girl for a moment. ‘And yours is to sit there and chew gum without so much as a
tear. Yeah, you really seem broken up about it.’
‘I
am broken up,’ Stacey said, looking angrily at him. ‘You don’t know how I
feel.’
‘What
about Haley?’ he asked her. ‘You broken up about her death, too?’
‘I
don’t give a shit about her,’ Stacey replied. ‘That rich bitch stole my
boyfriend.’
‘Really?
From what I hear, he broke up with you,’ Brass told her. ‘What’s the matter,
Stacey? Not used to getting dumped? Maybe wanted a little revenge on the new
girlfriend?’
Stacey
didn’t reply.
‘So
you decide, hey, he dumped me. Why not kill them both?’ Brass continued. ‘Was
it a ‘if I can’t have him, no one will’
kind of deal?’
Stacey
suddenly looked scared. ‘You’re not pinning this on me! I didn’t kill them!’
‘You
threatened Haley last week,’ Catherine said. ‘You attacked her.’
‘Yeah.
So? Doesn’t mean I killed her,’ Stacey replied. ‘I’d never hurt Jason. I love
him.’
‘Where
were you last night?’ Brass asked.
‘In
my room.’
‘Can
your mom or anyone else verify that?’
‘She
works nights.’
Catherine
opened up her field kit and took out a sterile swab. ‘Stacey, I’d like you to
give us a DNA sample and your fingerprints.’
The
girl looked fearfully at Catherine. ‘Don’t you guys’ need, like, a warrant or
something.’
‘We
can get one, if you’d prefer,’ Catherine replied. ‘But if you’re telling the
truth and you really had nothing to do with Haley and Jason’s murders, then
giving us this sample will rule you out as a suspect.’
Stacey
thought about that for a moment. Finally, she nodded. ‘Okay. Whatever.’
‘Smart
choice,’ Catherine told her.
---
Nick
had only begun checking missing person’s records when he found something. Limiting
his search to the past week, he had already found one couple who had gone
missing. Jessica Reynolds and Mark Lewis had disappeared two days after Clive
and Mary, the first couple. Nick silently prayed that they had simply run off
together, and were not lying dead, somewhere in the desert, waiting to be
found. Printing off the record, he continued combing the database.
On
a hunch, he widened the search to state-wide, to couples who had gone missing
in the past five years. There were surprisingly few cases that were still
active. Three in total, which he printed off. One case caught his eye. A 16
year old girl and her 17 year old boyfriend, who had disappeared together a
year and a half ago. The guy had turned up, after almost 6 months, saying that
he had broken up with the girl after she started acting ‘weird’ and ‘violent’.
She had run off when he tried to get her to go home. Her whereabouts were still
unknown.
Definitely worth checking out, Nick thought to himself.
---
Warrick
almost missed the car. He and Greg had been going through footage for a few
hours at that point. The amount of footage was simply huge. Even with an
approximate time, there were so many cameras recording that particular part of
the strip, it was still a big job. In the end, it was Greg who spotted the
victims car.
‘Whoa,
Warrick man,’ the new CSI said. ‘Wasn’t that it?’
Warrick
ran the tape back and paused it at the moment Greg indicated. ‘Good call,
Greg,’ he told him.
The
two victims, Clive and Mary, were in their car, apparently saying goodbye to
their friends. A moment later, the car drove off.
‘Wait
a minute…’ Warrick muttered, running the tape back again. A moment after the
car pulled away from the curb, another car drove through the frame. ‘I
recognise that car…’
He
dug through the other tapes, putting one on after another, looking for the
right moment in the tapes. Ten minutes later, he found it.
Thirty
seconds before Clive and Mary drove away from their friends, another car, the
one that had followed them, was parked around the side of the restaurant. A
figure, probably male, was sitting in it. Another figure, female this time, ran
towards the car and jumped in. A few seconds later, they had driven out of
frame.
‘She
was coming from the direction of the restaurant,’ Greg observed. ‘Keeping
lookout?’
‘Then
she sees our victims leaving, runs to her car, and they start tailing them,’
Warrick continued. He was jiggling the digital enhancement controls. ‘Damn it.
I can only get a partial plate number.’ He jotted it down and handed the paper
to Greg. ‘Run this and see what we get. I’m going to see if I can get a better
image of our two suspects.’
---
If
never ceased to amaze Sara the level of violence one human being was prepared
to inflict on another. Even with everything she had already seen in her career,
there were constantly new mutations of evil springing up, each more ugly and
disturbing than the last.
Such
horrors she was discovering as she went through FBI records, looking for
anything that might match this particular M.O. Always professional, nothing she
read in the case files upset her physically. She read them with the cool
detachment that her job required. But in the private enclosures of her mind,
which she seldom shared with anyone, she despaired for the human race once
more.
Printing
off anything that sent up a red flag, she already had a few interesting leads
to follow when she spotted something that got her attention. Six months ago, a
teenage couple were kidnapped by two people ‘a man and a young woman’ who may
have been ‘in her late teens’. They were held, at knife and gun-point, for
around 6 hours, while the couple terrorised them, describing how they planned
to kill them. The victims were asked repeatedly if they were ‘truly in love’.
Eventually they were dumped out in the middle of the desert after the female
kidnapper became ‘bored’.
As
the report printed, Sara stretched, and found her mind wandering towards more
pleasant thoughts. As many times as she thought about her blossoming
relationship with Grissom, she still didn’t quite believe that it was
happening. Unconsciously, she touched her fingers to her lips, thinking of how
his lips had felt when he kissed her that morning. She wondered where he had
learned to kiss like that. His kisses were passionate yet gentle, sensuous and
so full of promise. She felt a tingle up her spine at the prospect, wondering
when he would decide to take the next step. After being the one doing all the
chasing for four years, Sara was now more than content to sit back and let
Grissom do the work. For now…
Focus, Sara. She gave herself a mental shake. She had work to do.
Just as she was settling down to continue searching, another tingle up her
spine alerted her to the fact that the object of her distraction had entered
the lab behind her. Without turning round, she continued to type, but a smile
had crept onto her face. When he walked up and stood close beside her, so close
she could smell his clean, unperfumed scent, her grin
widened.
‘Hey,’
she greeted him.
‘Hey,’
he replied, a gentle smile in his voice. ‘Found anything?’
‘Yeah.
A few cases caught my eye. This one in particular.’ She handed him her most recent
printout.
Grissom
spent a moment reading the report. He was as intrigued as Sara. ‘The
boyfriend’s still local,’ Grissom remarked. Sara looked at him and knew what he
was thinking. Stepping back and gesturing to the door, he smiled at her. ‘Shall
we…?’
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