CSI Mortal Wounds

by Max Allan Collins

  She placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Tell me when you find something.”

  Catherine moved on.

  She found Warrick Brown—still working on the tire marks—at a computer terminal, fingers flying on the keyboard. His manner was cool, deceptively low-key. Catherine considered Warrick an intense, even driven investigator—the sharp, alert eyes in the melancholy face were the tell.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  He looked up at her glumly. “The tire mark closest to where Missy got dumped is a General. It’s an aftermarket tire that fits a lot of SUVs.”

  “Which tells us an SUV stopped along the stretch of road where Missy Sherman was found.”

  “Yes—an SUV that may or may not have been driven by the killer who dumped the body there. With a tire distinctive enough to say it belongs to an SUV, but not narrowing it down much.”

  “So,” Catherine said, “nothing.”

  “Not nothing,” he said. “It’s a start.”

  “Some people say the glass is half-full.”

  “Grissom says, dust the glass for prints and see who drank the water.”

  Catherine chuckled softly. “What about the other marks you casted?”

  “Two motorcycles.”

  “Probably not significant.”

  “Probably not,” he agreed. “One tire from an ATV, which is a possibility, but a stretch; the others still unknown.”

  Catherine nodded. “Keep working it.”

  “You know I will.”

  As she moved down the hall, Catherine savored the sweet thought of solving a case day shift had dropped the ball on. That was hardly the top priority, of course—finding the truth and making it possible for justice to be meted out remained much higher on her list; but she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit the appeal of outshining Sheriff Mobley’s lapdog, Conrad Ecklie.

  First-shift supervisor Ecklie, after all, gloated over each perceived victory, and had a ready excuse for every loss. He’d made his bones badgering the other two shifts at any opportunity. It would be nice, Catherine thought, if they could find a way to shut him up, if only for a little while.

  In the morgue, Dr. Robbins was doing only marginally better than the others.

  “Definitely, suffocation,” he said. “And it was a plastic bag.”

  “We know this because…?”

  The bearded coroner showed her a sheet of paper. “Read for yourself—tox screen came back, heightened CO2 level.”

  “All right,” she said, “at least that’s something.”

  “Yeah, but that’s all I can tell you on the subject. If you’re waiting for me to identify the type and brand of the plastic bag, you’ll be disappointed.”

  Catherine shook her head, patted his shoulder. “You’re never a disappointment to me, Doc…. Just keep looking.”

  That left Nick and the videotapes. She found him in the break room with an open bag of microwave popcorn, a Diet Coke, and the remote. His three-button gray shirt had flecks of popcorn salt on the front, his black jeans, too.

  Draped in the doorway, she said, “Midnight movies, huh? What’s playing—Rocky Horror?”

  “Well, it’s the time warp, all right,” he said, and his grin had a little pride in it, which encouraged Catherine.

  “Meaning?” she said, at his side now.

  “These year-old tapes gave up something. I think. You tell me…. ”

  She pulled up a chair and said, “Pass the popcorn.”

  He did, and she nibbled, while he went on: “First, you have to understand that there are no cameras on any of the exits at the Mandalay Bay…so we have nothing of cars leaving the premises.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t want it to be too easy, right?”

  “That’s a sentiment I’ve never quite grasped.” He backed up the tape a ways and hit PLAY. “This is at just about 1:35 P.M.”

  The tape rolled and Catherine, munching the popcorn but glued to the screen, watched the grainy black-and-white image of cars turning into the Mandalay Bay parking lot from the Strip. The camera looked down at the cars and made it impossible to see inside the vehicles. Three or four cars rolled by before she saw what Nick wanted her to see, a Lexus RX300, pulling into the lot.

  “That’s Missy?” Catherine asked.

  “Yeah. Their Lexus had a Michigan State sticker in the rear window, and it’s tough to see at this angle, but, if you know it’s there…”

  He showed her what he meant, and Catherine was able to catch the sticker with its helmeted Spartan head, despite the high angle, or enough of it anyway to sell her on this being Missy’s Lexus.

  “Now the next car…” Nick backed the tape up again, and let the tape play again until the Lexus pulled through the camera shot once more, and was replaced by a dark, boxy car. “…is Regan Mortenson’s gray Camry.”

  “All right. Both women were at the Chinese restaurant. Any security tapes available from inside the place?”

  He nodded. “The two of them walking through to the restaurant and again when they’re leaving. One on one camera, other on another.”

  “They arrived together,” Catherine said, no big deal, “they left together.”

  “The tape doesn’t lie. It’s just like Regan told Brass and me, only…look at this.”

  Nick fast-forwarded the tape, the clock in the corner rolling over in high speed. Just after 11:45 P.M., he slowed the tape and brought it to normal speed.

  As the grainy images flickered across the monitor screen, Nick said, “I was going through the rest of the tape at high speed…probably the same way Ecklie’s guys did it…but my soda took a tumble and as I reached out to catch it, I stopped the machine right about here.”

  Cued up properly, the tape revealed several cars rolling past the entrance without pulling in. A few made the turn into the lot, then at 11:49—according to the timer in the corner—an SUV slowed as it approached the entrance, rolled by, then sped up and disappeared.

  Catherine froze, a half-handful of popcorn paused in midair. “Holy…That looks like…”

  “It sure does,” Nick said, and he backed the tape up until the SUV was once again in front of the entrance, then still-framed the image and—using a nearby computer keyboard—punched keys, zooming in on the side of the vehicle, a Lexus RX300, same color as the Shermans’. It wasn’t terribly clear, but in the rear window was the white-and-green Michigan State sticker, Spartan head and all.

  Catherine returned the handful of popcorn to the bag. Quietly, as if in church, she said, “And Ecklie’s people never noticed this?”

  “Apparently not—no record of it.” Nick shrugged. “I might’ve missed it, too, if I hadn’t almost knocked over my Coke. We were all looking for cars coming in the entrance, not passing it by…. Let me tweak this a little…. ”

  He zoomed in even closer and tried to clear the picture. It remained a little pixilated, but the sticker was unmistakably the Michigan State sticker on the passenger rear window of a Lexus RX300.

  “What,” Nick asked, “are the odds that this is someone else’s Lexus with exactly the same Spartan sticker, in the same position on the same window?”

  “Grissom would give you a figure,” Catherine said. “I’ll just say, slim and none. But, Nick—that car was found in the parking lot!”

  He nodded. “That’s a fact.” Gesturing at the still frame again, he added, “Another fact: this is the main entrance. There are other ways into that lot, and not all are covered by security cams.”

  Catherine, amazed, said, “Can we ever see the driver?”

  “I don’t think so. We’ll try some image enhancement, but with the angle, and reflections…Probably not gonna be lucky on that one.”

  “Nick, what about talking to the people inside the hotel, when the SUV drove by?”

  “Even assuming the driver came inside at some point, there’d be thousands of people in that casino alone. And that was over a year ago. How are we going to track them down?”

&n
bsp; “You’re right,” she admitted. “If this crime had gone down yesterday, we’d be facing tough odds—a year later…. So Missy was abducted in her own car, and driven off, and after her murder, the Lexus was returned to the lot?”

  “Looking that way.”

  She thought for a moment. “If the Chinese food in Missy’s stomach is undigested, then by the time her car comes back to the hotel…”

  “She’s dead,” Nick said.

  Perplexed, Catherine pointed at the screen. “Then who the hell is driving that Lexus?”

  “Maybe somebody who owns a chest freezer.”

  “May,” Catherine said, “be.” She pushed a button on the intercom. “Warrick?”

  His voice crackled back over the line. “Cath?”

  “Head over to the video lab, would you?”

  Soon they were showing Warrick the tape; then they shared with him what they’d surmised.

  “If you’re thinkin’ I need to put my proctology tool up that Lexus,” Warrick said, shaking his head, “I gotta tell ya—that baby wasn’t that spotless at the dealership. Anything I find could’ve been easily displaced when Sherman had the interior professionally cleaned.”

  Catherine asked innocently, “You ID those other tires yet?”

  Warrick twitched half a smirk. “That’s a work-in-progress.”

  “Which is the better lead?”

  “The Lexus.”

  “Well, then,” she said. “Round up a detective and head back to the Sherman place.”

  Warrick stood and gave her a grumpy look. “You know, if Gris was here—”

  “He’d send your ass out to the Shermans to pick up that Lexus.”

  Warrick considered that for a second. “Yeah, he would,” he admitted, and was gone.

  Jim Brass drove Warrick back to the quiet upper-middle-class housing development; calling on people so late at night—it was approaching midnight—was something Warrick could never get used to, rolling into slumbering neighborhoods, delivering nightmares.

  Again, one light was on upstairs, and another in the living room of the mission-style house on Sky Hollow Drive. No loud TV emanated, however, and Alex Sherman answered on the first knock. For a change, they were expected: Brass had called ahead, though the detective had given the man no details.

  His white sweatshirt (with green Michigan State logo) and green sweatpants rumpled, Sherman greeted them with the hollow look of a man who was either sleeping way too much or hardly at all.

  “Do you know something?” he asked, his tone at once urgent and resigned. He had lost his wife and even the best news could not bring her back.

  “We do have a lead,” Brass said. “You remember Warrick Brown, from the crime lab?”

  “Of course.”

  Warrick picked up the ball. “Could we step inside? We need to talk again.”

  “Sure…come on in. I made coffee.”

  They did not refuse the offer. This time it was Warrick who sat beside Sherman on the couch, while Brass perched on the edge of a nearby chair. Sherman’s dark razor-cut hair stuck out here and there at odd angles, and the man’s glasses rode low on his nose. He hadn’t shaved in a while.

  “I’m a little out of it,” he admitted. “I’m getting calls from Missy’s relatives, and…I haven’t even made the funeral arrangements yet.”

  Brass said, “It’s hard getting used to the idea of your wife being gone.”

  Sherman looked sharply at the detective. “I was used to her being gone. What I’m not used to is her being back…and murdered…and…”

  Warrick thought the man might weep, but it was clear he was way beyond that. Nothing to do but get into it….

  “Mr. Sherman,” Warrick said, “did you ever wonder why it was that you couldn’t find your wife’s SUV that night?”

  Sherman shrugged—not just his shoulders, his whole body seemed to capitulate. “I assumed I was just…too screwed up. Too worried and anxious to tell my ass from a hole in the ground.”

  “It never occurred to you that the car actually may not have been there.”

  Frowning, Sherman said, “What are you talking about? It was found right there in the lot.”

  Warrick nodded. “What did you say at the time, when you were questioned?”

  “I said, I know my own car, and it wasn’t there or I would have seen it.”

  “You were right.”

  Sherman didn’t grasp Warrick’s meaning yet. “But like I said, I’ve come to realize I must’ve been so out of it…” Sherman’s features had a hard, almost sinister look as he turned a burning gaze on the CSI. “Or…are you saying something else?”

  “I’m saying something else, sir. Tonight, we finally figured out why you didn’t see the Lexus.”

  “My God,” Sherman said, jumping ahead a step, sitting up; it was almost as if he’d been woken with a splash of water. “You mean it really wasn’t there?” Sherman finished for him, his eyes widening a little behind his glasses.

  Warrick nodded slowly.

  “Well, where the hell was it, when I was looking for it?”

  “That’s just it—we don’t know.”

  “Then how do you know it wasn’t there?”

  Warrick explained, in some detail, what had been discovered by Nick, going over the surveillance videos.

  Sherman’s voice rose, and possessed a tremble that might have been sorrow or anger or perhaps both, as he said, “Why, after more than a goddamn year, are you people just now figuring that out?”

  Warrick searched for words. Should he tell the grieving husband that the reason was because Nick spilled a pop can? Or maybe share with him the superiority of Grissom’s graveyard crew over Ecklie’s day shift?

  Brass, who’d been quietly sitting drinking the coffee, now sat forward and bailed Warrick out. “A year ago,” he said, “a whole different set of investigators, assigned to a missing person case, were looking for cars coming into the hotel. Now, one of our crime lab investigators, new to the case…the murder case, Mr. Sherman…caught a glimpse of what looked like your car driving past the entrance.”

  This seemed to placate Sherman, who said, “Well, you told me fresh eyes would be a good thing for the investigation. And I appreciate the validation of my original statement…but what good does it do?”

  “Plenty,” Warrick said. “We think Missy was abducted in her own car, driven away and the car brought back to the Mandalay Bay and parked again.”

  “To confuse the issue,” Brass said.

  “All right.” Sherman seemed more alert now. “What can I do to help?”

  Warrick said, “Allow us to take your van into custody and search for evidence again.”

  This seemed to disappoint him. “The police didn’t find anything a year ago. And the van has been cleaned since then. Stem to stern.”

  “We know. But with this new information, we need to take another look. We hope you won’t ask us to go to the trouble of a warrant, because that will slow us down.”

  Sherman said, “Whatever it takes. It means a lot to me that you people are doing something.”

  As Brass went back to the Taurus to call for a tow truck, Warrick said, “We appreciate this, sir. And we’ll stay at it until we find whoever did this.”

  Sherman’s expression seemed doubtful. “No offense, but you hear a lot about unsolved cases, and even about people who get caught and then walk…”

  “We have high arrest and conviction rates, Mr. Sherman. We’re ranked the number two crime lab in the country.”

  Sherman found a smile somewhere. “Well, I guess I know what that means.”

  “Sir?”

  “You try harder.”

  Warrick returned the man’s smile.

  “I’ll get you the keys,” he said, and went off.

  The tow truck showed up quickly and, within an hour, Warrick had the SUV in the CSI garage, ready to do his own search of Missy Sherman’s Lexus.

  The exterior was clean and he checked for prints, but
came up with only a few, probably mostly Sherman’s, and maybe those of employees at the car wash. Warrick had already asked Brass to contact Premium Car Wash and take employees’ prints. Any employees who’d quit in the meantime would have to be tracked down; once again, Warrick was glad not to have Brass’s job.

  He compared the prints from the Lexus with Sherman’s prints on file; one of two sets of prints on the driver’s door and the hood belonged to Sherman. The other set belonged to some John Doe—a car wash employee, maybe…but almost certainly not Missy’s killer.

  Being essentially a liquid, fingerprints on the exterior of the vehicle would have long since evaporated in the dry Vegas heat. A fingerprint found in, say, Florida, where the humidity was much higher, would evaporate more slowly. The only way that fingerprint belonged to the killer was if the killer had touched the van a hell of a lot more recently than when murdering Missy.

  Warrick also got prints, some full, some only partials, from the other door handles on the vehicle and also from the hood; but all proved to be Sherman’s. Getting trace from the tires—to see where the vehicle had been during its missing time—would be useless after the car wash, and Ecklie’s people had neglected to do it at the time of discovery because they’d assumed they knew where the SUV had been the whole time.

  And when we assume, as Grissom was wont to say, we make an ass of you and me.

  Warrick opened the rear hatch and combed the carpeting for clues. As he expected, Alex Sherman’s cleaning up after Ecklie’s people had left little evidence behind: a scuff mark here, a stray hair there.

  The scuff mark on the plastic seemed to have come from something black and rubber, but probably not from Missy Sherman’s shoe. Chances were that if she had been thrown back there and scuffed the plastic with the heel of her shoe, more than one such mark would’ve been left.

  As for the hair, it was black and short, more likely from Alex Sherman than from his wife or her killer.

  Still, Warrick took a scraping from the scuff mark and bagged the hair. He just didn’t expect them to pan out.

  More of the same awaited him in the backseat, where he bagged a fiber or two and another hair, the latter looking like it was indeed from Missy—black, but much longer than a stray from Alex’s razor-cut, where it might have fallen from the driver’s seat. He drew a blank on the front passenger seat, then finally made his way to the driver’s side.