Body of Evidence ccsi-4

by Max Allan Collins

  "If you were, you'd be a suspect with his alibis all ready to go."

  The grin vanished. "I'm well-organized. I'm used to a timetable, even where leisure time and socializing is concerned…. I don't appreciate this, treating me like a serious suspect." He grunted a laugh. "It's ridiculous, and frankly a little insulting."

  "Child pornography is a serious crime," Catherine said.

  Gold caught himself. "I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't."

  "Then you will supply us with the documentation we need?"

  "Yes, as soon as I can."

  "May we fingerprint you now?"

  "I have no objection."

  She rose. "We weren't aware you'd be here today, Mr. Gold, so I'll have to get my case from the car. Sergeant O'Riley will wait here with you."

  "No problem," Gold said, the picture of good citizenship.

  Five minutes later, the CSI was back in the office, ready to go to work. She walked around the desk, tripping over something and almost falling into Gold's lap. When she caught herself, she looked down at what she had stumbled over.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," Gold said, reaching down to upright what Catherine had knocked into: a black leather bag that had been leaning against his desk.

  "Your laptop?" Catherine asked casually.

  "Yes. My personal one."

  "Do you have a notepad and pen or pencil I could use, Mr. Gold?"

  This surprised him mildly, but he said, "Certainly," and complied.

  Catherine wrote down some quick instructions, and handed the little sheet to O'Riley, saying, "Take care of that, would you, Sergeant?"

  He took the note, read it, and said, "Right away."

  O'Riley exited, and Catherine went on with a leisurely fingerprinting of Ruben Gold, after which she handed him a paper towel to clean his fingers.

  "A little undignified," he said good-naturedly.

  "I know. Can make the best man feel like a common criminal. I do want to thank you for your time and cooperation, Mr. Gold."

  "Glad to do it," he said. "I know how important it is to find the person responsible for this awful thing, and Janice tells me you people have been great about your discretion, where the media is concerned."

  "It really could give your agency a black eye."

  "A terrible one. Believe me, I never meant to minimize what was at stake here, either for the children involved or…and this of course is less important…our own business interests."

  O'Riley entered and gave Catherine a curt nod.

  "Serve it," she said.

  The detective crossed the room and handed Ruben Gold two search warrants-one for his laptop and one for his home.

  Frowning, Gold flipped through the sheets, reading, saying, "What the hell is this?"

  Pleasantly, Catherine said, "Your attorney will no doubt say your computer isn't covered by the original search warrant, since you weren't in town. That's b.s., but we've nullified that argument by getting you your very own personal warrant. We'll have your laptop back to you as soon as we can."

  "These…these are faxes! These warrants were faxed to this agency!"

  Catherine nodded. "Judge Madsen thoughtfully faxed them over, when Detective O'Riley called to explain the situation. By the way, thanks for the use of the company fax machine."

  She picked up the leather bag by the strap. When she and O'Riley left, Gold was frantically punching numbers into his phone.

  Back at HQ, Nunez worked on the laptop while Catherine and Nick handled more prosaic but vital forensic concerns; and it was just before five when the two CSIs, the computer guru, Sergeant O'Riley and two uniformed police officers made an impressive appearance at the Newcombe-Gold agency.

  Their first stop was the office of Gary Randle. He was sitting at his desk and didn't even get up when Catherine led the parade into his office.

  Obviously still numb, he could only manage to raise his eyebrows, in lieu of any question.

  "I need to ask you something, Mr. Randle," Catherine said, standing at the front edge of his desk.

  He looked up at her cautiously.

  "How often do you see your ex-wife?"

  Randle reared back, as if this were the most monstrous question of all. "Never!"

  "She has visitation rights for your daughter…."

  "Supervised visitation. The last time Elaine and I were alone in a room together she tried to stab me in the eye with a ballpoint pen! Since then, at my insistence, the supervised visits with Heather all take place on neutral ground-a Lutheran church in Summerlin."

  "And you don't see your wife at the church?"

  "No. I come in one door with Heather, leave her with a court-appointed officer, and then I go out the same door. Elaine comes ten minutes later, through another designated entrance, and spends her hour with Heather. Then she leaves by the door she came in, and I come back ten minutes later, using the door I came in."

  "So-you never see her, and don't know anything about her current social life."

  "Just the little bits and pieces Heather drops, after their visits."

  "What do you know about Elaine's social life these days? From what Heather has told you?"

  "Supposedly Elaine has a new man in her life."

  "Who?"

  "I don't know, and I don't care. Heather doesn't know either, but you can ask her, if that's really necessary."

  Catherine let a breath out. "Thank you, Mr. Randle."

  His eyes were unbelieving. "That's all?"

  "For now. I'll be back in a few minutes. Stick around, will you?"

  "I'm not going anywhere."

  "One more thing, Mr. Randle?"

  "Yes?"

  "You should shut down your computer for the day. Nick needs to dust the inside of it for fingerprints."

  His chin began to tremble. "So it isn't over?"

  "Very nearly," Catherine said. "Relax."

  "Easy for you to say."

  "Mr. Randle-we know you're innocent."

  The adman looked more stunned than relieved, as Nick set to work, while Catherine led the rest of the law enforcement parade in a march down the hall.

  The group stopped next at Janice Denard's office. "Is Mr. Gold in?" Catherine asked, standing to one side of the woman's desk.

  "Yes, but…"

  "Let's go in and see him then," Catherine said, gesturing to Gold's door. "Come along, Ms. Denard."

  Catherine opened the door for the woman, who went in, with O'Riley, Nunez and the two uniformed cops following, the CSI the last to step inside the inner office.

  Catherine strode to Gold's side of the desk, the executive looking up in surprised confusion, but saying nothing.

  Denard, lamely, said, "I tried to tell them you were busy, Mr. Gold, but-"

  O'Riley said, "Ruben Gold, you're under arrest on charges of child pornography and obstruction of justice."

  Gold exploded out of his chair. "What?"

  O'Riley turned to the man's personal assistant, his secretary, saying, "Janice Denard, you're charged with obstruction of justice."

  While O'Riley recited the Miranda warning to them, Janice turned white and stumbled backward, then sat, clumsily, in one of the desk chairs, opposite Gold.

  "This is absurd," Gold said. "The ramifications of groundlessly charging a respected businessman like myself of such heinous-"

  "We have the evidence," Catherine said.

  "Evidence that has nothing to do with me," Gold said.

  "Oh, I'm not talking about the planted evidence you used to make us to believe that Gary Randle committed this crime. I mean, the real evidence."

  Gold said, "I'm going to have to ask you people to leave my office."

  Catherine laughed. "I don't think so."

  "Mr. Gold," Nick said, walking in to join the party, "perhaps you'd like to explain your flight plans and fuel bills showing you flying to Los Angeles both Friday and Saturday."

  As if punched, Gold staggered back; his expression hollow, he awkwardly settled himself into
his leather chair.

  "When I dust it," Catherine said, "your fingerprints will be on the network plug in Ben Jackson's cubicle where you disconnected it from his machine and hooked it to yours."

  Gold's mouth was open, but he wasn't saying anything.

  Nick said, "We were stuck on one little thing, though: how you sabotaged Randle's computer. Tomas couldn't trace that with computer forensics."

  Nunez, on the sidelines, skinny arms crossed, said to Gold, "That was about the only thing you did halfway right."

  "But old-fashioned forensics did the trick," Nick said. "Fingerprinting 101." He turned to the dazed-looking Denard. "Janice, your prints were on the inside casing of Randle's computer; and both yours and Mr. Gold's prints matched ones I just lifted from Gary Randle's network card. That was how you made his computer breakdown last Saturday: you loosened the network card. That's all it took."

  Janice looked over at her boss, but he wouldn't, or perhaps couldn't, look back at her. They were both ghostly pale.

  "That was fast," Catherine said to Nick admiringly, meaning the matching of the prints.

  Nick shrugged. "Warrick was sitting at the computer waiting for my call. Matched 'em right away. Mr. Gold, your agency has one fast fax machine-it rocks."

  Gold leaned on an elbow, touching his fingertips to his forehead.

  Nunez said to the exec, "The MAC address of your laptop matches the one that sent the print order for the kiddie porn. Your address also matches up to the Russian porn site where this garbage was downloaded."

  Now Gold covered his face with both hands; he might have been weeping, but Catherine didn't think so-hiding. Just hiding.

  Nunez continued: "You also left a copy of a letter you wrote to the All-American Jukebox on your hard drive. It matched the letter from the zip disk the porn came off."

  Gold looked up, his eyes wide but dazed. "But that was all deleted," he complained, incriminating himself.

  Nunez's grin was a horrible thing. "Deleted like when you deleted your e-mails, you mean? Sorry-I found all those, too."

  Gold looked stricken.

  Catherine said, "You traded a lot of e-mails with your new girlfriend-Elaine Randle. Or is it an old affair, that got rekindled somehow?"

  "She had nothing to do with this," Gold said weakly.

  "She had everything to do with it," Catherine said.

  "Elaine has already been served warrants for her house and phone records, Mr. Gold. I believe we already have her laptop in custody-that's what she sneaked into her ex-husband's house and left for us to find."

  Catherine laid it all out for him.

  You fly your private jet to LA on Friday, giving yourself a built-in alibi. Then you wing back to Henderson some time around dawn on Saturday and drive from the airport to your office. You hook your computer into Ben Jackson's cubicle and mimic his machine. Then, using your zip disk, you take the files you'd downloaded from the Internet and send them to your computer to print.

  Before you leave the office, however, you get into Randle's computer and pull the network card, just slipping it out of its seat so that when Randle tries to log on the network, he won't be able to get on. Then you drive back to the airport, fly yourself back to LA, return to your hotel and order room service, so the receipt makes it look like you slept in.

  Janice comes in early Saturday, as well, and takes the photos out of your printer, just in case anybody happens by, and sticks them in a locked drawer till Monday. In the meantime, Randle's come to work and the whole world knows that Ben Jackson's out of town, and where he keeps his password, so Randle naturally uses that machine, leaving his fingerprints there to be found by us.

  Monday rolls around and Janice comes in, gets inside Randle's machine and reseats the network card, then puts the photos back in the printer tray and calls 911.

  Then we come in, holding up our end of the charade, finding the planted pornography, and wind up busting Randle, just as we're supposed to. Elaine sues him for custody and will get her daughter back, once Randle's ruled an unfit parent.

  Gold looked completely deflated and defeated.

  "Did I leave anything out?" Catherine asked.

  "Downloading the porn," Gold said. He seemed almost in a trance, staring, staring. "Elaine…Elaine did that. She used her laptop, and mine too." He laughed, an empty, racking thing, almost a cough. "Come to think, she probably did that to have something on me as well."

  "I should have known from the start," Catherine said. "If I hadn't been blinded by my own distaste for child porn, I might have nailed you, days ago."

  Gold's eyes tightened. "Why?"

  "Janice calling the police-that was the first really suspicious thing."

  Denard sat up; she'd apparently been preparing something to say, and now she said it: "I didn't have anything to do with this. I just came in and found those printouts and did the responsible thing."

  Catherine turned to the woman and gave her a withering smile. "Oh, but you wouldn't do the responsible thing. The thing you would have done would be to contact your boss, Mr. Gold, not 911."

  Denard shook her head. "I don't even follow you. Don't even know what you're-"

  "Sure you do. Big ad agency like this this kind of situation calls for, requires, a cover-up."

  "I just thought it was my duty," Denard said.

  "Your duty was to Mr. Gold," Catherine said. "And to that ten-thousand-dollar bonus he paid you for aiding and abetting."

  Catherine gestured, and O'Riley and the uniforms handcuffed Gold and Denard.

  And led the boss and his personal assistant down the corridor, past cubicles and offices and framed award-winning advertisements.

  Nick and Nunez still had crime scene work to do.

  Catherine returned to Randle's office. As she entered, he sprang to his feet, wild-eyed.

  "Ruben? Janice? You arrested them? I saw your guys dragging them out in cuffs! What the hell could-"

  "You deserve the whole story," she said, and sat down across from him and told it to him-chapter and verse.

  Randle didn't get angry; he seemed past that, sharing the numbness that had overtaken Ruben Gold.

  "And Elaine will be arrested, too," Randle said.

  "If she hasn't been already."

  "Why…why don't I feel vindicated? Why do I only feel empty?"

  "The good news," Catherine said, "is you get to keep your daughter."

  He arched an eyebrow. "You're implying there's bad news, too?"

  She nodded, somberly. "This is going to make the papers. Your agency will be in trouble. Newcombe is in the clear, but this won't be easy to weather."

  He waved that off. "I'm good at what I do. I couldn't care less about the business end. Need be, I'll find work. The important thing is my daughter."

  He sighed, shook his head. "Leave it to Elaine to figure the best way to spend more time with her daughter was to ruin the life of the girl's father."

  "Mr. Randle," Catherine said, rising, with a regretful smile, "nobody's perfect."

  12

  LESS THAN AN HOUR AFTER SARA HAD INFORMED GRISSOM OF their disturbing discoveries in David Benson's former apartment, a CSI Tahoe and Captain Brass's Taurus descended on Benson's current residence on Roby Grey Way. They parked in the street, noses of the vehicles facing the house, blocking passage.

  Warrick Brown jumped down and headed to the rear of the vehicle. The sun loomed high now-dry and hot and not at all like spring-and those not at work in the neighborhood peeked from windows and occasionally came out, to see what all the fuss was about.

  A compelling case for a search warrant for Benson's house and car had been made based on the discovery of a hole in the apartment wall, through which Benson-the witness who had "found" the body-had apparently snaked a camera to spy upon, and surreptitiously videotape, showering neighbor Candace Lewis.

  Benson's two-story home was typical of middle-class, upper-middle-class Vegas, reminiscent of Kyle Hamilton's residence a couple miles to the we
st-stucco with a tile roof, red this time-except where Kyle's lawn was well-tended, Benson's lawn was a scruffy brown whose little green bumps were like grassy pimples on the desert's face.

  And, like Hamilton's, the house appeared to be empty, though everyone on this trip was well aware that last time they'd been wrong. Warrick, Sara and Grissom approached the house, their crime scene kits in hand, Brass leading the way.

  On the cement front stoop, Brass withdrew his nine millimeter. No one questioned that: if David Benson was the homicidal necrophiliac the evidence was indicating him to be, such a precaution seemed prudent. On the other hand, no backup had been called: this was one suspect, and the CSIs were, after all, armed.

  The doorbell went unanswered, and the peculiar sensation of tension and tedium, common working cases like this one, permeated the atmosphere.

  Brass said, "Warrick, let's check out the back. Gil, take out your handgun, would you?"

  Grissom's expression turned sour, but he complied, shifting the field kit to his left hand.

  Warrick and Brass went around the house from opposite sides, Brass to the right, Warrick around the garage, the double door of which had no windows. A side window was covered by a cream-color curtain you could almost see through-almost. The CSI made his way around back, where he found Brass had climbed a few stairs to a small deck. After checking curtained windows as best he could, the detective shook his head and they headed back to join the others.

  "I don't think our man is home," Brass announced.

  "Doesn't look like he's been here for a few days," Warrick added, pointing to the overflowing mailbox next to the front door. "This guy's not in bed with a cold."

  Sara scowled darkly. "I'd rather not think about who or what he's in bed with."

  "Time," Grissom said, "to serve the warrant."

  Brass needed no convincing: he was the one who'd gone to the judge with their evidence. "Warrick, get the ram, would you?…Trunk."

  The detective tossed Warrick his car keys.

  "Gil," Brass said, "you cover us."

  "Cover you?"

  "Cover us."

  "With the gun."

  "That's right."

  In moments, Warrick returned to the stoop with the battering ram from the Taurus. The ram was a black metal pipe with an enlarged flat head and a handle about halfway up on either side, providing an easy grip. The heft of it felt good to Warrick, natural-this baby had never failed him once.