“No,” Jacks answered.
Cippolina added, “I don’t know where in hell he coulda got to.”
Sara was right behind Lopez when the chief called over his two investigators, Adam Bell and Troy Hamilton. Bell, blond and in his mid-thirties, sported tiny laugh lines around light blue eyes; he wore a Boot Hill PD windbreaker over a white shirt and jeans. Hamilton’s outfit was the same, except his shirt was blue; he weighed maybe fifty pounds more than Bell, was about ten years older, and his hair had gone gunmetal gray.
“Either of you boys seen Tom Price?” Lopez asked.
Bell and Hamilton looked at each other, then shook their heads in unison.
“Was he even working today?” Bell asked.
Scratching his neck, Jacks said, “I do remember seeing him around three, come to think of it…beginning of shift?”
Lopez heaved another of his trademark heavy sighs. “Nobody’s seen him since then?”
Bell shrugged, Hamilton shook his head.
As the local cops spoke, Sara noticed a man in a cheap tuxedo, possibly a pit boss, rising at the far end of the snack bar and making his way toward the far exit.
“Sir,” she called to him, but he either pretended not to hear her or actually had not.
“Sir,” she called, loudly this time, the group around her all snapping their heads in his direction.
The guy looked back and now seemed to be deciding whether to stop or make a run for it.
“Keith!” Cippolina said.
The guy froze.
“Mr. Draper,” Jacks shouted in his cop voice, “get your ass back over here. Pronto.”
But Draper hesitated.
Jacks took an ominous step in the man’s direction, the others starting to fan out, a practically instinctive move, making themselves less of a cluster target.
Finally, Keith Draper started back toward the group of law enforcement. He had short black hair, a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, and sharp dark blue eyes. The tux looked like he had been wearing it a while, and the black dress shoes had not seen polish since the Clinton administration.
Draper had taken only two steps toward them when his right hand went into his jacket pocket and their hands all went to their pistols.
“Freeze, Keith!” Jacks ordered, his pistol in hand.
Draper took another step.
Jacks’s gun barrel leveled at Draper.
“Whoa,” Draper said, the hand moving away from the pocket, fingers splayed to indicate that hand was still empty, “Cody! Easy!”
“Then don’t move, Keith,” Jacks said.
Lopez and Bell each had their pistols drawn now and had fanned out so each had a clean, clear shot. As Jacks kept Draper covered, Lopez and Bell moved in from the sides. While Bell got the man’s right hand and swung it behind him, Lopez dipped into the jacket pocket and pulled out a small blue pistol.
“Gun!” the chief said.
Frightened murmurs filled the snack bar.
Bell wasted no time forcing Draper down. “Spread ’em, Keith,” he said, his voice high, tense. “You know the drill….”
Draper started to say something, but Sara couldn’t make it out.
“Do it,” Lopez interrupted.
Draper complied, and Bell cuffed him and patted him down.
“Clean,” Bell said, helping Draper back to his feet.
“Keith,” Lopez said as he holstered his own pistol, “what the hell are you doing with this piece?”
Draper whined, “I always carry it.”
“Why in the hell did you reach into your goddamn pocket? You got a death wish?”
Draper shrugged. “I…I was going to give it to you.”
“Oh?”
“The gun! Hand over the gun….”
Jacks was shaking his head. “Goddamn…you fired it during the gunfight, didn’t you, Keith?”
“Well…they were all shooting!” Draper pouted. “I was trying to protect the customers, is all.”
“Then why were you sneaking out just now?”
No response.
“You were going to ditch the pistol, right?”
Draper said nothing.
Grissom stepped forward and Lopez dropped the pistol into an evidence bag the CSI held out.
“Smith & Wesson 2214,” Grissom said. “Quite possibly the same caliber that killed Nick Valpo. And possibly Vanessa Delware, as well.”
Every eye in the snack bar had turned to Keith Draper. He was crying now, shaking his head.
“I didn’t think I hit anyone….”
“Oooh, Keith,” Lopez said, “you’re in a lotta trouble. You wouldn’t have any idea where Tom Price is, would ya?”
Draper shook his head and kept sniffling.
The police chief shook his head. He glanced at his CSI guests, and his gaze settled on Grissom. “I tell you, Doc, sometimes I don’t know what’s worse—the bikers or the casino employees.”
5
Saturday, April 2, 2005, 12:45 A.M.
WARRICK HAD DEPOSITED TOMAS NUÑEZ at a workstation in a lab office, with the Ames computer hooked up to a flat screen.
Nuñez had a room-filling personality. He was shorter than most people perceived, and older, though the thinning hair should have been a giveaway. The charismatic computer guru projected a bandito vibe in his faded jeans and black T-shirt (emblazoned with the spiked wheel logo of Colombian singer Juanes), and his shoulder-length black hair (slicked back and ponytailed) bore modest, almost stylish streaks of gray; his black mustache seemed more droopy than usual, but late-in-the-day CSI calls like this one weren’t SOP.
“You want to know all you can, naturally,” Nuñez said.
“Naturally,” Warrick said.
“But these things can take time. Fast track or slow?”
“Fast would be cool.”
Nuñez said, “I can give you both—from what you’ve told me, I have a few ideas about where to look. That’ll get you on track, fast; then I can go through in-depth, so when you go to court, every digital ‘i’ and ‘t’ will be dotted and crossed.”
“No wonder Catherine adores you, man.”
“From your lips to her ears…. Check back in an hour, amigo.”
“Office is yours.”
A throat cleared and Warrick glanced over at Greg, in the doorway, paperwork in hand.
Warrick slipped out into the corridor with the young CSI. “Got something already?”
“Couple of prints off the note, couple more off the envelope.”
“Good start.”
Greg gestured with a head nod down the hall. “David told me that Dr. Robbins is ready to go over the autopsy with us—can you get away?”
“Your timing and the doc’s are perfect. Tomas says he may have an idea or two about the suicide note in an hour or so.”
“Cool.”
Warrick stuck his head back into the office and told the computer expert he was heading over to Doc Robbins’s domain.
“If you get something before I’m back,” Warrick said, “call my cell.”
“You really want to wrap this one up quick, don’t you, jefe?”
“If it’s a straight suicide, I want to get out of the bereaved husband’s life. But if he’s a murderer, I’d like to do his late wife a favor and not have him sleeping in their double bed, enjoying the extra room.”
“I hear you,” Nuñez said, and turned back to the screen.
Warrick and Greg walked briskly to the coroner’s wing, got into blue scrubs, and joined Dr. Albert Robbins in the autopsy room, a sterile chamber, cold in several senses of the word, with tiled walls and floor and metal doors—not Warrick’s favorite place to be, but always a vital stop to make on the journey to justice.
The body of Kelly Ames lay nude on the metal table; Dr. Robbins stood on the opposite side as the two CSIs joined him. Graying, with short hair and a full beard, Doc Robbins had warm, crinkly eyes that seemed at odds with these surroundings, not to mention his profession. Warrick h
ad known Doc Robbins for some time now and had never once seen the man lose his professional cool or his personal compassion. The coroner possessed one of the sharpest minds in the department.
“David said you have doubts this is a suicide,” Robbins said blandly, leaning over the body, his metal crutch occupying its usual place in the corner while he worked.
Warrick shrugged. “Let’s say I’ve got issues.”
“That’s good to have, issues,” Robbins said. “Because there’s no doubt Kelly Ames was murdered.”
Greg’s eyes tightened. “You know that because her skin isn’t red?”
“It was a good indicator,” Robbins said, switching to teacher mode now. “Do you know why?”
“Well, I don’t claim I knew this before Warrick told me.”
“And what did he tell you?”
“That people exposed to lethal doses of carbon monoxide turn that shade.”
Smiling gravely, Robbins said, “That’s one of the symptoms. If, as in Kelly’s case, her skin hasn’t turned color, what would be the next step?”
Greg knew he was being quizzed, but from what Warrick saw, the kid seemed to be thriving on it.
“I’d come knocking on your door and ask you to do a blood test…to tell us if there’s CO in Kelly’s lungs.”
“Good. But you don’t have to knock, I can tell you right now—no carbon monoxide in her lungs at all. Which tells us…?”
Greg didn’t hesitate at all. “She was dead when somebody put her in that car and staged a suicide.”
Warrick said, “Which is likely why she had on the odd combination of colors and a T-shirt on inside out.”
Nodding, Greg said, “Someone else dressed her.”
Warrick asked the coroner, “What about time of death?”
Robbins also didn’t hesitate. “Sometime around noon.”
“Which is when Kelly’s husband said he was on his way to work.” Warrick studied the somber, pretty face belonging to the corpse on the slab. “Did you find anything else?”
“Cotton fibers in her nose and lungs. She was suffocated with a pillow, most likely.”
Greg said, “So she was in bed, in pajamas or lingerie or undies or whatever, and the murderer smothered her and then got her into some clothes and into the garage and the car.”
“That’s a reasonable reconstruction,” Warrick said. To Robbins, he said, “Thanks, Doc.”
“Sure. Warrick?”
“Yeah?”
Robbins, his face blank and yet infinitely sad, nodded toward his patient. “Let’s see if we can’t do right by her.”
“That’s gonna happen,” Warrick said with quiet confidence.
He and Greg left the autopsy room, got out of the scrubs, and—in the corridor—Warrick said, “So far, we’ve got two suspects, the husband and the friend.”
“Why the friend?” Greg asked.
“You know the rule, Greg—first on the scene, first suspect. Who called nine-one-one?”
Glumly, Greg said, “The friend.”
“That makes you unhappy?”
“Yeah, well, I liked her. She was nice.”
“You mean she was a hottie.”
Greg frowned. “Hey. That’s not fair. I’d just hate to think she’s a killer, is all.”
Warrick shook his head. “Do you want chapter and verse on how many hotties have torn up chicken coops since I started this job? I don’t care if she lives at the Playboy Mansion or she’s some little old lady offering us cookies—this is business. Stay objective, and let’s check out both the friend and the husband.”
“Good idea,” Greg said. “…I’ll take the friend.”
Warrick sighed, then laughed. “Oh-kay. Just remember what I said, and meet me where Nuñez is working, in an hour.”
They parted ways and Warrick found himself a quiet office where he could try to corroborate Charlie Ames’s story.
Tonight’s return to graveyard provided him a reminder of why he preferred swing shift. Here he sat in an office just after one A.M., with no one he could call at Cactus Plastics to find out what time Charlie Ames had come into work and no one to question about Megan Voetberg’s assertion that Ames was having an affair with a coworker, and that his wife knew about it.
Most of the questions Warrick really wanted answered would have to wait until sunup, toward the tail end of the shift. This was an old pattern, a constant night-shift problem, that he hadn’t missed at all. In the meantime, he settled for doing background on Charlie and Kelly Ames, tapping the many data banks, local and national, that didn’t care what time it was.
High school sweethearts who went to college together at UNLV, the Ames couple had been married a little over two years. After college, Kelly had worked briefly for an insurance company before taking the job at the postal encoding station that allowed them to work roughly the same hours. Charlie, who had spent college summer internships at Cactus Plastics, had graduated to a decent job there. If something had gone south with their marriage, their online story didn’t reveal it.
An hour later, Warrick knew little more than that and was running late to meet Greg. After shutting down his computer, Warrick trotted off and found Greg sitting with Nuñez, both of them wearing headsets, bouncing to two different rhythms, the pair having traded iPods.
“I like this,” Nuñez said, too loud. “What is it?”
“The last Garbage CD,” Greg said, his voice also rising to where he could hear it over the headphone volume. “Great, isn’t it?…This is pretty tight, too.”
Nuñez said, “That’s Molotov. Latin punk.”
Normally, this musical detente across cultures and even generations (Nuñez being at least twenty years older than Greg) would have given the music-loving Warrick a warm glow. Tonight, the only glow in him came from a burning desire to capture whoever murdered Kelly Ames.
Greg looked up, saw Warrick, then grinned and jerked the buds out. “You gotta hear this stuff. Tomas, what’s this band again?”
“Molotov,” Nuñez repeated.
“Molotov,” Greg said, slipping the buds back on. “This rocks.”
Warrick shook his head and Greg grinned sheepishly; the buds came out again.
“Sorry,” Greg said.
Warrick tried to soften the blow: “I’ll have a listen after we close the case.”
But it came out harshly, and the mood in the room changed as abruptly as if Grissom had just walked in and found them using a Bunsen burner to warm up pizza.
While Greg looked chagrined, Nuñez only smiled.
All professionalism now, Greg said, “Megan Voetberg checks out. She’s the real deal.”
“You already had that opinion,” Warrick said.
“Hey,” Greg said, hurt or pretending to be. “She may be hot, but work is work…and her story checked out, and nothing suspicious turned up.”
“What about prints from the note and envelope?”
“Just one set,” Greg said. “And here’s the fun part—they don’t match Kelly Ames.”
Warrick thought about that. “We’ll run them through AFIS and—”
“Hey, amigo, you want a killer,” Nuñez said, his grin growing wider, “I got a killer for you.”
“That sounds definitive,” Warrick said, and pulled up a chair.
“Your guy Ames is not an idiot,” Nuñez said. “He’s even kind of smart…just not—”
“Smart enough,” Warrick said.
“Had enough on the ball to figure out somebody might go poking around in his computer.” Nuñez pulled out a printout and handed it to Warrick, keeping a duplicate in hand for himself. “Hubby wrote the suicide note after Kelly was gone.”
Warrick digested that for a moment, then asked, “How could you know that?”
“Here’s how smart Kelly’s husband was—smart enough to change the clock, move the file, delete the original, then change the clock back. To the naked eye—the untrained naked eye, anyway—it looked like Kelly typed the suicide note within
an hour of her time of death.”
“And we know she didn’t how?”
“’Cause of the metadata.”
“The meta what?” Warrick asked.
“Metadata,” Nuñez said. “That’s where our smart killer turns very, very dumb.”
“Well,” Greg admitted, “I never heard of metadata, either.”
“Yes,” the computer guru said, “but you aren’t a murdering husband faking his wife’s suicide…. See, metadata is basically data about data. It’s embedded in every Word document, Excel spreadsheet, and PowerPoint presentation. Tells when the original file was created…and the metadata for the suicide note? Over an hour after Kelly’s TOD.”
“Whoa,” Warrick said. “Never mind Catherine, Tomas. I love your ass.”
“Well, I do have my moments,” Nuñez grinned. “But be prepared to love more of me, ’cause that’s not all I found.”
“Oh?”
“Found a bunch of deleted e-mails coming from…and going to…the same address—[email protected].”
“Which is who?” Warrick asked.
Nuñez shrugged. “And now love fades—afraid I can’t find that out until morning. Get me a court order, and I’ll talk to the internet service provider and find out.”
Greg asked, “Where were the deleted e-mails?”
“In unallocated space on the hard drive,” Nuñez said. “When you delete something on your computer, it’s not really gone forever.”
Warrick said, “I knew that.”
Greg said, “Me too,” but seemed to be covering.
Nuñez ignored both of them and explained anyway: “Deleted things go to unallocated space on the hard drive until that space is used by some other file.”
Nodding, Warrick said, “And how many e-mails did you uncover?”
“Couple hundred.”
“Whoa,” Warrick said, his mouth dropping open like a trapdoor. “How many?”
“A couple hundred,” Nuñez repeated, “at least.”
Warrick, shaking his head, said, “How is that even possible?”
Stroking his mustache, Nuñez asked, “How much memory on your first computer—a meg maybe?”
Warrick shrugged. “Yeah, I think.”
Nuñez gestured to the computer tower on the counter. “This puppy has an eighty gigabyte hard drive. Takes a lot longer, these days, to start reusing hard drive space…unless you’re downloading movies or something.”
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