Nick and Warrick, behind the glass, exchanged glances; Pierce discussing his wife in these terms, during the confession of her murder, was both inappropriate and weird. Grissom, on the other hand, showed no reaction—a hand on his chin, he was studying Pierce like a bug.
“I mean anything,” Pierce was saying, and he was smiling now, reminiscing, “with anybody. We got into some wild shit over the years, and we both liked it.”
“Is that where the drugs came in?”
Pierce pressed his hands flat on the table, sighed, the smile fading. “Yeah…back when we were swinging, we used to get high, grass, pills, but the most extreme thing we did was coke. In fact, it was the drugs that made Lynn get religion.”
“You said before she got religion when she almost died.”
“That was the drugs. She O.D.’d on some coke, had a seizure, I took her to the emergency room…it came out fine, but she freaked anyway. Next thing I know, she’s going to church every twenty minutes and yammering about my almighty soul.”
“Describe what happened on the day of your wife’s death.”
“We argued.”
“Tell it in detail.”
Another sigh. “Well…we argued. Lynn wanted to send Lori to some private school, some religious institution, in Indiana. Lori didn’t want to go, and I was against it, too. Lori could never stand up to her mother, so I was the one who took her on. Anyway…the argument escalated.”
“Why did Mrs. Pierce want to send Lori away?”
Pierce shifted in his seat. “Before Gary Blair came along, Lori was pretty wild—Lynn found grass in her room, once, and she was dating some rough boys. That’s when the talk started, about this Jesus school.”
“This has been an issue for a while?”
“Yes. Maybe six months. Lori started going to church, dating Gary, to please her mother. But it wasn’t enough: Lynn still wanted to ship her off to holy-roller class, to get her ‘closer to God.’ Lynn wanted to turn Lori into a goddamn clone of herself!”
“And you didn’t buy that.”
“Well, of course I didn’t want my daughter to become the same uptight, judgmental asshole my wife had turned into.”
“So—the argument escalated. Go on.”
“We were yelling at each other, and Lynn went out to the garage, kind of…saying she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. She’d made her mind up and that was that, and if I tried to stop Lynn, she’d…turn me in for my own drug use.”
“Were you still using?”
He nodded.
“Please state that, Mr. Pierce.”
“I was still using drugs.”
“The argument moved into the garage?”
“Yes…yes. Lynn said she wanted to go for a drive to get away from me, but I wanted to settle the issue.” Pierce closed his eyes, his head sagged forward. “I had a gun hidden in the garage…I felt I needed protection.”
“Who from?”
“Kevin Sadler. Lil Moe, they call him. My connection, my dealer. I owed him money. That’s why I had a gun.”
“All right. Go on.”
Pierce shrugged. “I went and got it from my tool-bench, where I kept it. I pointed it at her, just to scare her, really. Told her not to leave or…She said I was a sinner and would go to hell. That’s when I shot her.”
“Where was Lynn, Mr. Pierce? Standing there in the garage, when you shot her?”
He shook his head. “No. Lynn had already gotten into the car and started it. I shot her through the driver’s side window.”
“Then what?”
Shrugging, Pierce said, “Well, hell—I panicked. I knew I had to get rid of the body. In my job, I know a little about anatomy; I’m not squeamish about anything to do with the human body. With Lil Moe in jail, I figured I could use his house, without anyone finding out.”
“When did you do this?”
“That same night, late. As soon as I shot her, I put Lynn’s body in the trunk, wrapped in an old tarp in the garage, and cleaned up the car, and drove it over to Lil Moe’s. Put it in the garage, there. Then I walked to a commercial area and caught a cab and came back home, just before the Blairs showed up, pounding on my door, looking for Lynn…. See, I didn’t want Lori to know what I’d done, obviously…and I’m always home for dinner. So I came home, and went back to Lil Moe’s well after dark. I drove my SUV on that trip.”
“Then what?”
“I carried Lynn inside the house, down into the basement and…cut her up with my chain saw.” Finally Pierce’s cool mask began to crack; tears started rolling down his face, though he didn’t seem to notice. “I wrapped her up in the shower curtain, or anyway pieces of it, then put the…packages in garbage bags, along with the chain saw. I folded the bloody tarp up and put it in another bag. I used rocks from a garden next door to Lil Moe’s to weight them down. After that I spread more garbage bags on the floor of the SUV and put her in there. I picked up Lil Moe’s boat…there’s a trailer hitch on my SUV…and went to Lake Mead. I just rode around dropping bags into the lake until they were all gone. It was…peaceful. A beautiful night.”
“Is that all?”
Pierce sagged. “Isn’t that enough?”
Soon a uniformed officer came in to escort Pierce away, while Brass joined the CSIs in the adjacent observation room.
“How’s that for chapter and verse?” Brass asked, pleased with himself.
Grissom said nothing, his face blank but for a tightness around his eyes.
“What’s the matter, Gil?” Brass asked, a bit exasperated. “He copped to it! Life is good. We got the bad guy. Which is the point of the exercise, right?”
Grissom twitched something that was almost a smile. “We got a bad guy…but we don’t have Lynn Pierce’s murderer.”
“What? Gimme a break! The son of a bitch confessed.”
“The ‘son of a bitch’ lied,” Grissom said.
Warrick stepped up. “That was one elaborate lie, then, Gris….”
“Like all effective fiction, it had elements of truth…. For example, he cut up the body all right, that part of the confession was true. He just didn’t kill his wife.”
Nick’s eyes were tight and he was smiling as he said, “You notice he didn’t start crying, till he talked about cutting her up? Killing her, he was cool as a cuke.”
Brass looked like somebody had poured water on him; of course he looked like that much of the time. Still, his aggravation was obvious as he said to Grissom, “Do you have any idea how much I hate it when you do this to me?”
Grissom smiled his awful angelic smile. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Jim…but the evidence doesn’t lie.”
“People do,” Nick said.
“Pierce does,” Warrick said.
Brass held up palms of surrender. “Okay—tell me why.”
Grissom’s expression turned somber. “Pierce said he stood outside the car and shot his wife through the car window, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“We know from our tests that there was hardly any glass inside the car, and the blood was confined to the driver’s seat. If Lynn Pierce had been shot from the outside, the glass would have blown in and her blood would have been splashed and spattered all over the passenger side of the car. And he said it happened in the garage. That garage was clean.”
Brass’s face managed to fall further. “So we still have a killer out there?”
“Yes,” Grissom said with a nod. “But we know who it is.”
“We do?” Brass asked.
Warrick’s expression, and Nick’s, asked the same question.
Grissom raised a lecturing forefinger. “You recall when we arrested Pierce, he made that drawn-out, unnatural confession to his daughter?”
“I’ll say we recall,” Warrick said. “Nick and I both thought that was way beyond weird.”
Grissom asked, “And why would a father confess to murdering mommy, in front of darling daughter, unless…?”
Nick’s eyes
popped and his head went back, as he got it. “Unless they were getting their stories straight!
“Damn,” Warrick said. “And right under our nose.”
“We need to go back to the castle, one last time,” Grissom said. “The queen is dead, and the king is covering up for the princess.”
16
BY THIS TIME, CATHERINE AND SARA WERE BACK. Grissom took the two into his office, where they filled him in on the wrap-up of their own case. Both of them looked a little shell-shocked, and Grissom told them to take the rest of the night off.
“You’ll talk to the psychologist tomorrow,” he told Catherine.
“Great,” she said with a humorless smirk.
“And then the shooting board.”
“It was righteous,” Sara said, shaking her head.
“I’m sure. Go home, you two, and get some rest.”
Catherine was studying Grissom. “Well, what are you so excited about?”
“Me? Excited? I don’t get excited.”
“Sure you do…finding bugs at crime scenes, for example…or when you’re coming down the home stretch of an investigation.”
He owned that he, Brass, Warrick and Nick were about to search the Pierce homestead one last time.
“We’re coming along,” Catherine said.
“Absolutely, we’re coming,” Sara said.
“No. Go home, I said.”
“Shift isn’t over,” Sara said.
“It’s a big house,” Catherine said. “Four more hands to find evidence….”
Less than half an hour later, Brass and the night shift CSIs again stood in the foyer of the Pierce home—all of them: Nick, Warrick and Grissom…Sara and Catherine, too.
Grissom was looking hard at Catherine, who stood there with field kit in hand. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”
“No,” Catherine said, “I’d rather sit at home thinking about what I’m going to say to the department shrink tomorrow.”
“I’m going to take that as sarcasm,” Grissom said.
“Why don’t you,” Catherine said. “Can we get started?”
Grissom led them into the living room, where everyone snapped on latex gloves, including Brass; all five CSIs had their field kits. With the family gone, the house was deathly quiet, almost tomb-like. Despite the high that accompanied what Catherine had described as “the home stretch,” Grissom felt remorse slithering through his belly, regretting not only what had happened to Lynn Pierce, but for what would happen in the coming hours….
Nick asked, “Do we think that .44 was the murder weapon?”
“A strong possibility,” Grissom said.
“I’ll tell you what’s a strong possibility,” Warrick said. “Strong possibility that gun’s in a garbage bag at the bottom of Lake Mead.”
“Not if this family’s concerns about Kevin Sadler were real,” Grissom said.
“Which means it may still be here,” Warrick said.
“Where?” Nick asked.
“Yeah,” Sara said, mildly mocking, “just ask Grissom—he’ll know.”
But Grissom’s expression had turned cagey. “Where is the one place in this house we haven’t looked?”
“You kiddin’, Gris?” Warrick asked. “We’ve turned this place upside down, like twelve times.”
“Gil,” Brass said, “I’m here more than I’m home.”
“Remember that first night?” Grissom asked. “What was the one thing Pierce requested we do?”
“Not disturb his daughter,” Nick said, not missing a beat. “She was too traumatized.”
“That’s right,” Grissom said. “And which of us has searched Lori Pierce’s room since then?”
Their looks traveled from one face to the next, none of them able to come up with an affirmative answer. The group followed Grissom quickly up the winding stairway, and soon they were crowded into the hallway, outside the daughter’s room.
Plush pink carpeting covered the floor and a pink canopied bed dominated the left side of the room, half a dozen stuffed animals making the pink-and-red spread their jungle. Directly across from the door, a white student desk contained a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, with a single drawer in the center. The computer tower sat on the floor to the left of the desk. On the right side stood a four-drawer white chest, more stuffed animals herded on top. Along the right wall, a television and stereo perched on a small white entertainment stand with the closet door beyond that.
The Goth girl was still living in the little girl’s room she’d grown up in.
After unloading their tools in the hall, they split up, doing their best not to trip over each other—it was actually a goodsized bedroom, but with six of them working there, the space seemed impossibly cramped. Catherine took the desk and dresser, Grissom the bed, Warrick the closet, Nick and Sara worked the components of the entertainment center. Using the RUVIS on the bed, Grissom was the first to sing out.
“Someone’s been having sex on this bed,” he said, like a bear finding signs of Goldilocks.
Everyone looked over at the multiple blossoms of white showing up under the ultraviolet.
“Lots of sex,” Catherine said, raising an eyebrow.
Sara and Nick dismantled the television and stereo, finding nothing, reporting as much to Grissom.
Catherine pored over the dresser, found nothing on top or behind it, then went through the drawers one at a time. Except for a stash of condoms in the third drawer, she found nothing other than the girl’s clothes. However…
“Traces of white powder on the desk,” she said.
“Cocaine?” Brass asked.
“Greg will have to confirm, but take my word for it…that’s coke.”
No one argued with her. Their grave expressions indicated a mutual understanding that, despite the little girl surroundings, Lori Pierce had grown up, and not in a good way.
The tower, monitor, and keyboard yielded nothing, but Catherine discovered a tiny bag inside of the mouse, the source of the white powder. Smaller than the bag they found in the vent in the basement, this one too carried the little red triangle that was Lil Moe’s logo.
Catherine shared her discovery, then asked, “You suppose Pierce knows his daughter’s buying drugs from his partner?”
“Remind me to ask Daddy,” Brass said, “right after I present him with his Father of the Year award.”
The top shelf of the closet contained boxes, books, and even more stuffed animals. Warrick leafed through the hanging clothes in the closet, a peculiar mix of the Goth girl and the preppier Lori; but again found nothing.
Not surprisingly, the closet floor was cluttered with shoeboxes; propped against the wall, behind the hanging clothes, leaned a tennis racket and softball bat, a glove nearby, and a pile of magazines—Sassy, Spin, Sixteen. After moving all this stuff out, Warrick went over the flooring, his flashlight beam illuminating his way.
In the corner, he found a tiny pile of dust. Loose floorboard, he thought, and pried at the board with a screwdriver. Slowly, one end came free and he eased the board free, then the one next to it, then one more. Craning his neck over the hole and shining his light down inside, he made a wonderful, terrible discovery.
Warrick felt a nausea burning a hole in his stomach as he realized what this meant. “Got it—I’ve got the gun.”
Everyone traded looks of mixed emotion—no one had wanted this to come down this way.
Warrick bagged the .44, then went back into the hole, found the box of bullets, and two more bags of coke. “This just keeps getting better,” he said glumly.
“Next stop the Blairs?” Grissom asked Brass.
Brass used Lori’s phone book to get the number and punched it into his cell. “…Mrs. Blair, this is Captain Brass—would you check on your son, and Lori?”
“I don’t understand. They’re both in bed, asleep, Captain…Gary in his room, Lori in the guest—”
“Wake them, get them dressed, and…just sit with them, till we get there. Involve you
r husband, would you?”
“Captain Brass, I still don’t understand.”
Not wanting to alarm the woman, Brass said, “We just have some new questions that have come up, and it really can’t wait.”
“…All right, then. Please hold.”
Brass waited, everyone’s eyes on him. Several endless minutes went by, when the woman’s voice jumped into the detective’s ear. “They’re both gone! I can’t find them anywhere in the house!”
“Calm down, Mrs. Blair. We’ll handle it.”
“But…”
“You and your husband just stay put. Someone will be around. We’ll find your son and his girlfriend.”
“Like you found Lynn?…I’m sorry. That was uncalled for, I…”
“Please, Mrs. Blair. You and your husband, stay put.”
Brass pushed END and said to Grissom, “They’re not there. Lori’s gone missing—Gary, too.”
“Where are they off to?” Sara asked.
“Are they on the run?” Nick asked.
“I don’t think so,” Grissom said. “I think they’re coming here.”
“Here?” Sara asked.
“Homeward bound,” Brass said, nodding his agreement with Grissom’s unstated thinking; he gestured to Warrick’s findings. “Far as Lori knows, we’re long gone, and Daddy’s in lockup. But we might be back during the course of our investigation, and she’s got drugs and the gun here.”
“She’ll want to ditch the gun,” Warrick said.
“And use the drugs,” Catherine said.
The detective pressed quickly on, urgency coloring his tone: “Let’s pull the vehicles around the corner. If Lori is coming, let’s not tip her off that we’re here.”
Warrick, Nick and Sara moved the cars; Grissom, Catherine and Brass put the room back together, but did not replace the evidence in its hiding places. When the car-parking trio returned, all six of them spread out through the house. Warrick and Nick took the basement, Grissom and Sara the first-floor rec room, and Brass and Catherine went upstairs to the master bedroom.
A few minutes later, the garage door whirred up, then down, and Grissom heard voices coming in through the kitchen.
A muffled voice, recognizable as Gary Blair’s, said, “I’ll wait here…. Hurry up.”
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