“But we’re pretending to help him out,” Warrick said.
“I didn’t hear that,” Grissom said, sweetly.
Warrick, Nick, Catherine, and Sara rode in the Tahoe, Grissom rode with Brass in the detective’s Taurus. Just before midnight, they arrived at the castle-like house on the impressive sloping lawn, lights shining out downstairs windows, sending sword-like shafts of light into the dark.
Brass and Grissom led the way to the front door. The detective rang the bell and had to wait only a moment before the door opened to reveal a muscular man in dark slacks, black T-shirt, and black loafers, dark hair peppered with gray. The man stood before Grissom like a mirror reflection—only, Brass thought, this was Gil Grissom on steroids.
Brass smiled, mildly. “Mr. Pierce?”
The man nodded. He seemed anxious. “You’re the police?”
Touching the badge on his breast pocket, Brass affirmed, “We’re the police—sorry it took us so long to respond to your call…. We had to round our people up.”
Grissom flicked Pierce an insincere smile. “We’re a full-service operation, Mr…. Pierce, I assume?”
Still not inviting them in, Pierce nodded.
Grissom lifted the necklace I.D. “Gil Grissom, Las Vegas Criminalistics. This is Captain Jim Brass, and this is our Criminalistics crew.”
Pierce regarded the considerable assembly overflowing his front stoop. “Then…you haven’t found my wife?”
“No, sir,” Grissom said, “I’m sorry, as yet we haven’t.”
Pierce shook his head. “I don’t understand what you’re doing here. I gave all the information to the officer, on the phone. Shouldn’t you be out looking for Lynn, Detective…Griswald, is it?”
“It’s Grissom, Mr. Pierce, only I’m not a detective. I’m a supervisor of Criminalistics.” He flashed another empty smile. “And we are out looking for your wife. That’s why we’re here. You see, we handle crime scene investigation.”
A puzzled look tightened Pierce’s face. “Crime scene? I don’t understand. This isn’t a crime scene—my wife walked out on me.”
“Sir, my understanding is, you don’t know that for sure. She might well have been abducted.”
“Well…that’s possible. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to…admit that to myself.”
Grissom nodded in supposed sympathy. “Also, there’s the matter of the Blairs.”
“The Blairs.”
“Yes. Your wife called them in the afternoon…said she would come by, never materialized. They said they spoke to you.”
Pierce sucked in air, his expression turning sheepish. “Oh. I see…look, when they came by, I was embarrassed. I told them that Lynn went to visit her brother to, you know, get rid of them.”
Frowning, Brass asked, “You wanted to get rid of them?”
“They mean well, Detective…Brass?”
“Yes. Brass.”
“They’re kind of busybodies, Detective Brass. Judgmental types—Bible beaters? And the wound was fresh, Det…uh…Mr. Grissom. I needed to be alone while I sorted some things out.”
Grissom shrugged one shoulder. “Then why did you telephone the police?”
He shrugged both his. “I wanted someone to help me find her. I thought maybe Lynn and I could find a way to work out our problems.”
“So, then, you really don’t know where she is?”
Pierce shook his head. “Nope, no idea.”
“And you weren’t here when she left?”
“No. I was at my office…my clinic.”
“That makes abduction a real possibility, Mr. Pierce. And that’s why we’re here.”
He frowned. “Just because I have no idea where Lynn is? And because she made a phone call?”
“Yes, sir.” Grissom’s expression turned almost angelic. “We want to help you. Maybe we can find a clue as to what happened to your wife.”
“But,” Brass said, with half a smile, “we can’t help you out here on the stoop.”
Pierce sighed again, shrugged with his eyebrows this time. “Well—if it’ll help find Lynn…of course, come in.”
The response surprised Brass a little, and he exchanged glances with Grissom, who the detective figured had also been expecting objections from Pierce, not cooperation—particularly if a crime had gone down within these castle walls, earlier today.
Pierce stepped back inside and held the door as the group trooped in, moving through a small entryway into a larger anteroom of a home whose walls were cream-color stucco with dark woodwork. A winding staircase disappeared up a landing at left, and a hallway was at left also, with the dining room visible through one arched doorless doorway, in the facing wall, and, to the right, a living room yawned through another archway. The furnishings were colonial, tasteful enough, but a bit at odds with the castle-like architecture.
Brass asked, “Is there anyone else in the house, sir?”
“Just my daughter.”
Grissom asked, “Was she here when your wife left?”
“No. I’m afraid not.”
A teenage girl stepped down the winding stairs into view. She wore Nikes, nice new jeans, a big white sweatshirt, with her long blonde hair pulled back and held in place with a blue scrunchy. Her pretty face—she resembled her father, though the eyes were wider set—was well scrubbed and her bright blue eyes were rimmed red. She glanced down at the contingency in the anteroom, and froze on the landing.
“This is my daughter,” Pierce said, “Lori.”
The girl gave a barely perceptible nod, then turned and disappeared back upstairs.
Pierce sighed again and said, “You’ll have to forgive her, please. This has been hard for both of us, but especially for Lori. She’s taken it pretty hard, the idea of her mother…abandoning us.”
Brass nodded. Grissom was looking around, taking in the framed wildlife artwork.
“Will you have to…” Pierce looked for the words. “…disturb Lori, when you make your search?”
Brass glanced at Grissom, who gave a little shrug.
“I don’t think so, sir,” the detective said. “We’ll leave her alone for now…though it’s possible we might have some questions later.”
“I understand.”
Grissom approached Pierce, standing a little too close, as if having a better look at an insect specimen, and said, “Mr. Pierce, if you and Captain Brass will wait in the living room, we’ll get to work. Then we’ll talk to you when we’re finished.”
“All right.”
For the next two hours, the CSI crew—in latex gloves but wielding little else of their elaborate equipment—crawled over every inch of the house, examining everything from the basement to the garage, speaking to the teenage girl only to ask her to step out of her bedroom for a few minutes. When they had finished, they conferred in the kitchen, careful to keep their voices down as they discussed what they’d found, and hadn’t found.
An eyebrow arched, Catherine said to Grissom, “There are gaps in the closet. Some clothes and shoes gone, apparently.”
“Consistent with Lynn Pierce packing up and leaving,” Grissom said.
Catherine smiled humorlessly, nodded.
Sara was nodding, too. “Yeah, and there’s a row of suitcases in the basement, with a space in it—so maybe one of them is gone. Space on the shelf above, where a train case could’ve been.”
Warrick piped in: “Only one toothbrush in the master bathroom. Some empty spaces on her makeup table, like she took perfume, makeup, stuff like that.”
“No sign of her purse,” Nick said. “And there was no blood in the drains, no knives missing that I could tell, no sign anyone did…what he said he would…on the tape.”
“I’d sure like to bring a RUVIS in here,” Catherine said, referring to the ultraviolet device that would show up blood stains.
“I don’t think we can justify that,” Grissom said. “If there is a crime here, we don’t want to do anything that would be thrown out of court…. So what does this
house tell us?”
“She may have gone,” Catherine said.
Sara’s eyebrows were up. “Or somebody may have made it look like she left.”
“Gris,” Warrick said, “I did find one thing that could be significant.” He showed them a clear evidence bag with a hairbrush in the bottom.
Grissom took the bag, held it up and looked at it as if it held the secrets of the universe; several blonde hairs dangled from the brush. He asked, “Does a woman pack up and go, and leave her hairbrush behind?”
“Maybe Sara,” Nick said with a grin, and Sara grinned back and elbowed him, a little.
Grissom focused on the hairbrush in the bag. “Why don’t we ask Mr. Pierce about this?”
They followed their supervisor into the living room where Pierce and Brass (his notepad out) sat on a couch in front of a thirty-six-inch Toshiba in an early-American entertainment hutch (just like George and Martha Washington used to have); CNN was going, with the mute on.
“Anything you’d like to share?” Brass asked Grissom.
“You’ll be relieved to know,” Grissom said, “that there are no signs of a struggle anywhere in the house.”
“I could have told you that,” Pierce said.
Catherine said, “We don’t see any overt indications of abduction.”
“That’s a relief, anyway,” Pierce said, letting out a big sigh—too big, maybe.
Grissom offered up his patented smile. “What can you tell me about this, Mr. Pierce?”
And he held up the bag with the brush.
“Well…that’s Lynn’s,” Pierce said.
Catherine asked, “Would you say your wife is well-groomed, Mr. Pierce? Takes pride in her appearance?”
Pierce bristled. “She’s a beautiful woman. Of course she’s…well-groomed.”
Catherine’s smile was utterly charming, her words casually heartless. “Does she usually go off without her hairbrush?”
“Maybe she has more than one.” Pierce held his hands out, palms open. “How should I know?…Anyway, she only uses a brush when her hair is long. Lynn had her hair cut recently—it’s barely over her ears. I’ve seen her combing it, but not brushing.”
Sara said, “I noticed three computers in the house, Mr. Pierce.”
He nodded. “Yes. Lori’s is in her bedroom, mine is in the basement—I have my business programs on that—and in the spare bedroom, Lynn has her own for e-mailing her friends and, I don’t know, whatever else she does.”
Grissom said, “We’d like to take Lynn’s computer with us, if you don’t mind.”
Pierce winced at that one. “You want her computer?”
With a brief nod, Grissom said, “May help us track her movements. See if your wife e-mailed someone to notify them that she’d be coming for a visit. Can you access her account?”
“Afraid I can’t. She has her own password…. Even the closest couples have privacy issues—who doesn’t want to have a few secrets?”
Grissom said, “Secrets don’t stay secret long, in my world, Mr. Pierce.”
Catherine asked, “How about a cell phone? Does Mrs. Pierce have one?”
“Why, yes—she carries it in her purse, all the time.”
“Have you tried to call her since she turned up missing?”
“Of course!”
“And?”
A shrug. “And it comes back ‘out of service.’ ”
Catherine thought about that, then asked, “May we see last month’s bill?”
Starting to look mildly put-out, Pierce said, “Well…all right.”
“And her credit cards and bank statements?”
Pierce gave Grissom a sharp look, as if to say, Can’t you keep this underling in check?
Grissom turned on the angelic smile again. “It’s an old, old theory, Mr. Pierce—follow the money. Wherever Mrs. Pierce is, she’s spending money, somehow or other…and unless she left carrying a massive amount of cash, there should be a credit-card trail to follow.”
The color had drained from Pierce’s face. “Well…Now, she could have taken cash with her, quite a bit of it. But I wouldn’t know.”
“You had separate accounts?”
“Yes.”
Catherine said, “Privacy issues?”
Pierce ignored that, looking instead at the CSI chief. “Lynn’s from a wealthy family, Mr. Grissom. She has a considerable amount of money beyond what I earn…. There’s her money, my money, and our money—lots of couples are that way.” With yet another sigh, he rose. “I understand you’re just trying to help…. I’ll get you the papers you need.”
Brass, still seated, asked, “Do you have a recent photo of your wife we could take?”
“Yes. Of course. I’ll get one for you.” Pierce left the room, and they could see him going up the stairs; in a few minutes he was back, handing Brass a five-by-seven snapshot. “This was taken at her birthday party, just two months ago.”
Grissom took the photo away from Brass and looked at the casual image of a haggard, haunted-eyed blonde standing rather somberly next to several laughing female friends, a HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner in the background. In her late thirties, early forties, with short hair that flirted with the collar of a blue silk blouse, Lynn Pierce had blue eyes that matched her daughter’s, high cheekbones with a touch too much blush, a long but graceful nose, nicely full lips, and a stubby flat chin. She was neither beautiful nor unattractive—a “handsome” woman, as they used to say. As she stared up at him with clear, piercing eyes, Grissom got the impression that she was a no-nonsense, down-to-earth person.
The somberness of her expression, however, seemed almost to speak to him, as though there were something she needed to say.
Fifteen minutes later, after forced-friendly handshakes and goodbyes with their host, the group trooped back out of the Pierce home, Catherine’s arms piled with papers, Nick lugging Mrs. Pierce’s computer.
As the rest of the CSI team loaded what they’d taken into the Tahoe, Catherine, with arms folded like a Sioux chief, faced Grissom. “Your tape not withstanding…the evidence shows no signs that any crime has been committed on those premises.”
Nearby Brass was rocking on his heels. To no one in particular, he said, “You really think Owen Pierce is the distressed husband he claims to be?”
“You looking for an opinion?” Grissom asked. “I don’t do opinions.”
Catherine was smiling, though, regarding her boss with cat’s eyes. “You don’t fool me.”
Grissom’s brows rose. “I don’t?”
“Something’s wrong in that house, and you know it.”
Grissom frowned at her. “I don’t know it,” he said.
And he stalked back toward the Taurus, Brass following him, throwing a shrug back at the quietly amused Catherine.
“Retaining water,” Catherine said to Sara.
“And me fresh out of Midol,” Sara said.
Grissom got in on the rider’s side and sat and brooded. He didn’t know that something was wrong in that house—but he felt it.
And he hated when that happened.
For now, he had nothing to go on. Nothing to do but return to HQ and wait for a real crime to come in.
And hope it wasn’t a murder, and the victim: Lynn Pierce.
3
A day later, and Lynn Pierce remained among the missing—the only change in status was that she was now officially listed as such.
Grissom was seated at his desk in his office, dealing with paperwork. The CSI supervisor would not have admitted it under torture, but the face of the sad-eyed blonde in that snapshot haunted him.
Still, at this stage, little remained appropriate for his CSI team’s attention: no sign of foul play had been found. There was only the husband’s threat to kill his wife to go on…and how many husbands and wives, in the heat and hyperbole of an argument, had threatened as much?
He had assigned Sara to the case, and she had drawn upon her considerable computer expertise to track the woman’
s credit cards; but none of the cards had been used since Lynn Pierce’s disappearance, and the woman hadn’t been to an ATM or used a phone card either. E-mails from friends were piling up unanswered and none of her recent cyber-correspondence mentioned a trip or hinted that she might be preparing to run away.
If she was alive, she would leave a trail—this Grissom knew to a certainty; the absence of such, so far, only substantiated his conviction that she had been killed. This was not a hunch, rather a belief built on the circumstantial evidence thus far.
Sara, sitting at her computer, had looked up at him with eyebrows high, and said, “She could be paying her way with cash—she does have money of her own.”
“Check for withdrawals, then.”
“Maybe she kept a stash of cash, somewhere.”
“What, under a mattress? No, if that’s the case, it’ll be in a safety deposit box—check with her bank on that, as well.”
Sara smirked at him. “But that’s the point of safety deposit boxes—nobody knows what goes in and out, banks included.”
Grissom lifted a finger. “Ah, but the banks record who goes in and out, to have a look at their safety deposit boxes…. See if Lynn Pierce has done that, lately.”
Sara, nodding, went back to work.
Even as he sent Sara scurrying to check, Grissom didn’t hold much stock in the notion that Lynn Pierce was funding her disappearance, paying as she went. From what he had gathered thus far, this was a woman of faith and family who spent little money on herself.
The phone rang. Grissom, who hated having his thoughts interrupted, looked at it like the object had just flipped him off. It rang a second time, and finally, he reached for the receiver.
He identified himself, listened for several moments, writing down the information, and then told Jim Brass, “I’ll have a team there in under fifteen minutes, and see you in five.”
Grissom glanced at his own notes.
A dead woman—not Lynn Pierce—needed their attention.
Catherine Willows—typically stylish in a formfitting green V-neck ribbed sweater, tailored black slacks and ankle-high black leather boots—was peeling an orange when Grissom walked into the break room and handed her his notes.
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