Body of Evidence ccsi-4

by Max Allan Collins

  Nodding, Ecklie left the office, his eyes never landing anywhere near Grissom and Sara.

  With just the three of them in the room, the silence seemed deafening. Finally, Mobley was the one to shatter it. "I know," Mobley said, "I don't have to tell the two of you what to do."

  Still on his feet, Grissom nodded, picked up the report and headed toward the door, Sara following him. They were almost there when Mobley's voice stopped them.

  "Am I in the clear as a suspect yet?"

  Turning back, Grissom said, "Not yet."

  "DNA?"

  "Don't have those results yet."

  "I suppose it would be mean-spirited to hope it turns out Ed Anthony did it."

  Grissom managed a miniscule smile. "Not really, considering it would probably kill you politically."

  Mobley grunted a laugh. "Sometimes, Grissom, having an apolitical asshole like you on the team is a real benefit."

  "I appreciate the compliment, Brian. And if it helps-I believe you're innocent."

  "Don't tell me that's a hunch?"

  "An educated one. Just don't tell anybody."

  The sheriff tried to smile but couldn't quite muster it.

  In the hall, all business, Grissom said to Sara, "We need a search warrant for Mayor Harrison's house and home."

  Sara frowned. "Will a judge give us a warrant based on that DNA evidence?"

  Shrugging, Grissom said, "Not only were they having an affair, we also have His Honor's fingerprints in her car, day she disappeared. Go to Judge Giles-he'll listen to reason."

  "All right."

  They were still walking down the hall when Grissom's cell phone chirped. He took it from his belt, punched a button, and raised the phone to his ear. "Grissom."

  He listened for a while.

  Then he said, as they walked along, "All right. Sara and I have something to do here…. Well, that'll make Mobley feel a little better, anyway."

  He listened again, Sara unable to read him.

  "All right-stay in touch." He punched the end button then and replaced the phone on his belt.

  They walked a little and then Sara asked, "Do I have to beg?"

  "That was Warrick-he got carpeting samples from the sheriff's house. None of it matches our remnant."

  "That's good news, I guess. For Mobley, anyway."

  "One step at a time," Grissom said. "We still have other suspects."

  "Like the mayor."

  "For one. Now, let's get that search warrant and ruin Mayor Harrison's day."

  7

  GARY RANDLE'S BELLIGERENCE WAS NOT ENOUGH TO EARN Catherine Willows a search warrant for the suspect's house. But it did provide extra weight in landing her a court order for fingerprinting the Newcombe-Gold employee, which meant-the courthouse being the courthouse-the process took till Wednesday morning. In the meantime, however, Catherine and Nick had learned a good deal about the advertising man.

  A few quick calls Tuesday evening had confirmed that Randle had indeed been in the agency offices over the weekend. Janice Denard and several other employees all remembered seeing him, though none could verify whether he'd been working at his own desk or had perhaps been in Ben Jackson's cubicle. And no one seemed to know what project Randle might have been working on.

  For all Janice Denard's efficiency, Catherine had the feeling that Newcombe-Gold was a pretty loosely run ship.

  When the court order came through this morning, Nick had talked Catherine out of accompanying him to take the man's fingerprints.

  "Really, Cath," Nick said. "It's not just necessary-how many CSIs does it take to screw in a light bulb, anyway?"

  "AC or DC? Fluorescent or incandescent?"

  But in the end, she sent Nick off to Newcombe-Gold, by himself.

  Probably a good call. She was still pissed at Randle for balking and making such a scene, yesterday. Sure, the man was well within his rights; but there was just something about the guy that got her hackles up. Her presence might only serve to accelerate a simple fingerprinting into another scene….

  Thanks to some speedy imaging work by Tomas Nunez and his trusty compu-posse, the ad agency would be back at work some time this morning. They were using copies of their old drives, but all their information was there, and they could return to business as usual. At least that problem was out of the way, and it would encourage Newcombe-Gold to be even more cooperative in what could prove to be difficult days ahead.

  While she waited for Nick's return, Catherine for the third (or was it the fourth?) time went through what they had learned about Randle, thanks to investigative work by O'Riley, who had talked to neighbors and other agency employees, and seen to the routine computer checks.

  Divorced from an alcoholic ex-wife named Elaine, Randle had sole custody of their fourteen-year-old daughter, Heather; he volunteered as a youth counselor at Scenic Peak Presbyterian on Del Webb Boulevard in Summerlin. He and his daughter lived in a two-story stucco home on Crown Vista Lane, not far off Fort Apache Road and Prize Lake Drive.

  Randle had originally lost custody of the girl in the divorce, but when Elaine was charged with DUI and reckless endangerment of her daughter, the father had gotten the child back with little trouble. For her part, the ex-wife seemed to have kept her nose clean since her last arrest five years ago. Court records showed that she still had contact with her daughter, through supervised visits.

  Looking vaguely nautical in today's ensemble of white Polo with horizontal navy stripes and navy Dockers, Nick Stokes came jauntily back in, waving a white card. "Stop the presses-got the dude's prints, right here."

  "When you say 'dude,' are you trying to make me feel young?" Catherine asked, swinging around in her chair. "Because it's not working…. Let's get these loaded in the computer."

  "You got it."

  They were in the corridor in seconds.

  Nick said, "And I'm just saying 'dude,' 'cause I'm just…saying dude."

  Catherine stopped abruptly and so did Nick, who looked at her wide-eyed as she touched his chest with a forefinger. "Nicky, never forget-it's all about me."

  He grinned at her. "Sometimes that does slip my mind."

  They were on the move again, Catherine saying, "I want to know ASAP if there's a match."

  "Wouldn't it be nice if we could nail this guy."

  Catherine looked sideways at him. "You think he's guilty?"

  "I don't think anything!…I just meant…Well…he is a good suspect."

  "He's a great suspect."

  "That's doesn't make him guilty, Cath."

  "No. Of course not."

  "Only the evidence can do that."

  "Right, Nicky. Hey, we're cool."

  "You don't think…'cause of…your daughter…My background, and…"

  "Nick! We're professionals."

  They had already fed the prints of all the other employees into the computer; and of the two sets of prints on Ben Jackson's keyboard, one belonged to Ben himself, and the other set remained unknown.

  "Either Randle is our match," Nick said, "or…"

  "Or we're back to square one. I hate going back to square one."

  Nick shrugged as they turned the corner on the corridor. "Maybe not square one. Ruben Gold left town Friday, yeah, but we should still look at him, talk to him…and Roxanne Scott was in the office on Saturday."

  Catherine threw a smirk at Nicky. "And if neither of them pans out?"

  Another shrug, but less upbeat. "We really are back at square one."

  Catherine dreaded that-starting over, and maybe looking outside the company somehow. Newcombe-Gold employed a rent-a-cop security outfit, which O'Riley was looking into; maybe some security guard had…

  But Catherine knew she was getting ahead of herself. First things first.

  While Nick took care of the fingerprints, Catherine checked in with Nunez. The computer expert had returned the ad agency's equipment, but he was still sifting through the copies he'd made for himself.

  She found the tall, unl
ikely computer geek still in the garage where he and his crew had first set up. The others were gone, and Nunez was left to wade through the mountain of information on his own.

  "What's new?" she asked, giving him a smile.

  Glancing up from the screen of his monitor, he said, "You clearly haven't heard." Catherine frowned. "What haven't I heard?"

  "Hey-I'll tell you, but don't shoot the messenger."

  "Well, not to kill, anyway. What, Tomas?"

  "Mobley took me off your case…. Temporarily! Just temporarily…."

  Catherine felt red-hot anger rising inside her, but she managed not to detonate all over Nunez. "And why would the esteemed Sheriff Mobley do that?"

  He sighed, shrugged. "Sorry-but some thoughtless asshole hacked into a bank last night, and the sheriff's got me on that. I'll start working your stuff again, ASAP-but Mobley's on my tail to find this hacker, stat."

  "Gee, I wonder if this bank has a president or chairman of the board who's a potential contributor to Mobley's mayoral campaign or anything…"

  "Hey, I don't do politics!"

  Her hands came up in front of her and she pressed them together, her knuckles turning white.

  "Easy, Cath-it's not all bad news."

  "Improve my mood. Quick."

  Nunez did his best: "We imaged and processed all thirty hard drives using Encase, version four."

  Catherine nodded-she'd heard of, though never used, the Guidance Software product. She knew it allowed for bit-by-bit copying of hard drives, zip disks, USB devices, even Palm Pilots.

  "Then," Nunez was saying, "I verified the copies using an MD5 Hash algorithm."

  "Of course you did," she said, invoking a light humor she didn't feel, both of them knowing she had no idea what an MD5 Hash whatever-the-hell was.

  "It's like a digital fingerprint," Nunez said. "The odds of two files having the same hash value and not being identical is two raised to the 128th power, or 340 billion billion billion billion to one."

  She shook her head. "You can't get better odds anywhere in Vegas."

  "Not unless you're the house. Cath, that's about the same as winning the LOTTO four in a row."

  "So, we're sure you got everything then."

  "Damn sure," he said. "And that's not just the files-it's deleted files, file slack and unallocated space. If there was ever kiddie porn on any of these machines, I'll find it."

  "That's good news. But when?"

  "Either when I catch the bank hacker, or when Mobley decides to let me get back to it."

  "Before the interruption, did you find out anything?"

  Nunez nodded. "The hard drive in Ruben Gold's computer was negative for any child-porn pics."

  "Okay-that's a start."

  "I couldn't find any pictures on any of the client computers, either."

  "Client computers?" she asked.

  "The other machines in the network."

  "So how did our pictures get there?"

  A shrug. "Lots of possible ways-I just don't know which one yet."

  Not liking the sound of this, Catherine made sure she was following Nunez, asking, "So there's no porn on any of the computers?"

  "Not even a casual hit on an adult site. And just to make sure, I ran an E-Script to carve all the jpegs out of each hard drive-and none of those resembled the ones from the printer."

  She knew jpegs-that is, .jpg files-were the common photo format for pornographers to use. "But did the print order come from work station eighteen or not?"

  His answer didn't really sound like an answer to the CSI: "I searched the network server hard drives."

  Striving for patience, Catherine nodded as if she followed this. The truth was, her daughter Lindsey probably knew more about the actual workings of the machines. Embarrassing as it might be to a scientist like Catherine, the guts of the things were completely foreign to her. Nunez, however, was babbling on: "I found print files showing pictures angel1.jpg through angel12.jpg were sent to Ruben Gold's computer."

  "Which led to?"

  "Me looking in the network logs and finding that the pictures came from a client computer using an IP address of 1.160.10.240."

  "Okay-I can't even pretend you haven't lost me…."

  "An IP address is an identifier for a computer or a device on a TCP/IP network. These networks route messages based on the IP address of the destination."

  "The destination," she said, "not the sender?"

  He nodded. "Don't panic just yet-there's more. Date and time stamps on the print file showed that it was created early Saturday morning. Then the IP address found in the server log showed that it came from client computer number eighteen."

  Relief flooded through her. "So-we were right; and everything you've done has cemented that."

  "That would be a great big si."

  "But on the other hand, we really haven't gotten any further."

  Nunez's face fell, a little. "No, we really haven't…and as long as Mobley's got me on this bank hacker, we're stalled."

  "If you can steal a little time for me…"

  "I will. You know I will.

  "Thanks, Tomas."

  Exasperated, Catherine strode off.

  She found Nick hunkered in front of the AFIS computer.

  Without waiting for him to look up, much less report, she launched into her tirade: "Mobley took Tomas away from us to track down some bank hacker!"

  Nick shrugged. "Grand larceny trumps kiddie porn, I guess."

  "Trumps kiddie porn?" she fumed. "Are you serious?"

  He gave her a sideways look, then turned to face her. "No. I wasn't."

  But she was already off the runway, and there was no coming back: "Just because this isn't a murder or a crime involving money, Mobley's willing to stick these abused kids on the back burner! Well I sure as hell am not!"

  Nick patted the air in front of him until she lapsed into silence. "Why-do you think I am?"

  "No, but…"

  Reasonable as Nicky was being, Catherine could not stop the white-hot anger coursing through her. An urge to tear the lab apart caused her to tremble and she fought to stay in control. She fell into the chair beside Nick and she sensed his hand on her shoulder.

  Her frustration was palpable now, a heaviness in her body, a rage in her brain, and a thickening of her tongue. She felt tears flowing. "Shit! Shitshitshit!…If you tell Grissom I broke down, I'll…"

  "Hey, dude," Nick said gently. "Your secret's safe with me."

  She laughed a little, though still crying, and Nick got her some Kleenex. She said, "It…it's jus…just…I'd like to track down that bastard Mobley and curse him into next week…."

  "I hear you."

  "Nicky, those girls in those photos-they're barely older than Lindsey!"

  "I know."

  "And the department just doesn't seem to care."

  "I know that, too."

  And she fell into his arms, she in her chair, he in his, and patted his back, as if he were the one crying.

  He pushed her away, and smiled at her, providing more Kleenex. He reserved one for himself, but his voice was strong as he said, "We'll solve this. We will solve it. Now-how about some good news?"

  Her trembling had subsided a little. "Yeah. Yeah, some good news…I could use it, I could really use it…."

  Nick's grin was almost pixie-ish. "Gary Randle's prints…are a match."

  "Oh, Nicky. That's great. I told you he was a good suspect."

  "No, you said he was a great suspect."

  She drew in a deep breath-she felt as though she'd been held under water for too long, and only now was just bursting through the surface.

  Nick said, "Those were his prints on the keyboard in Ben Jackson's cubicle."

  "How about AFIS?" she asked, meaning the national fingerprint database.

  "I put him through," Nick said, "but he's got no priors."

  "It's enough for a search warrant. We can get inside that house now!"

  "Yes we can," he said, nod
ding. "Make the call, Cath. And I'll get O'Riley up to speed."

  An hour later, the CSIs were back at Newcombe-Gold, moving single-file down the corridor toward Randle's office with Nick in the lead, holding a wad of papers in one hand and his CS case in the other. Catherine, carrying her own case and more papers, tagged right behind him with O'Riley trailing her. As the procession approached the conference room, Janice Denard stepped out in their path.

  "Did you find out anything?" she asked.

  "Still digging," Nick said, with a nod of hello, and then walked on.

  The blonde office manager fell in beside Catherine, who said, "Getting closer," then handed the woman a copy of the new search warrant.

  Denard dropped out to read the document, while the others kept going. The half-glass front wall of his office warned Randle of their approach and he was out of his chair even before they were completely through the door.

  "Now, goddamnit, this is harassment!" He was coming around the desk as he spoke. "Didn't you already get your damned fingerprints?"

  Nick stood and faced the ad man. "And I do appreciate your cooperation, earlier; and you don't even have to answer our questions, about whether or not you were here this weekend-we already know you were."

  O'Riley stepped up, taking a referee's position, as the two men continued the tense exchange.

  "So I was here! Damn it, I work here!" Today, the adman wore an expensive charcoal suit, white shirt and a red and blue diagonally striped power tie.

  "You know," Catherine said from the sidelines, in a tone that pretended to be light, "you might want to ease up on the attitude…. It's not going to reflect very well."

  Randle glared over at her. "What are you talking about?"

  But it was Nick who spoke next: "It's not just that you were here this weekend, Mr. Randle-but that you also used Ben Jackson's work station." The CSI held up the sheaf of papers. "We matched your fingerprints."

  Randle's anger evaporated and he laughed out loud, as he took a step back, as if reappraising not just the situation but these law enforcement officers.

  "You're kidding, right? Is that what this is about? Me using some poor schlub's computer, while he was out of town for the weekend? Is this some weird crackdown Gold or Newcombe instigated?"

  Catherine stepped forward. "Actually, it is about you using some poor schlub's computer over the weekend. And it is police business."