Binding Ties

That really got Damon's attention; he took a long pause and swallowed and said, 'Holy shit…I remember him. It was in the papers when I was in college! Damn…you think he did this?'

Grissom and Brass exchanged glances; then the CSI supervisor shrugged. 'We don't know. He's been inactive for something like eleven years. We'll see.'

'You'll be working with me, of course,' Damon said. 'I mean, it is my case.'

Again, Brass started to say something and Grissom cut him off. 'Certainly.'

'Well…then…good.' Damon nodded, put his hands on his hips and puffed up a little bit. 'Glad that's understood. Good.'

Turning his attention to his team, Grissom asked, 'Well?'

Nick said, 'Nothing that seems related in the backyard.'

'Front yard looks clean too,' Warrick said. 'Got a partial footprint, but it could be nothing.'

'Or something,' Grissom said.

'Or something,' Warrick said with a humorless smirk.

'I got a sample of the neighbor's prints,' Sara said. 'But she claims she never touched the bell or the knob. She says she just looked inside, saw the 'horrible thing,' and called 911.'

Grissom began to smile-just a little. 'Possible fingerprints, possible footprints, DNA evidence…. We've started with less. And we have an M.O. match to past crimes. What do you say, gang? Shall we cast out our line, and reel in a killer?'

Two

O ne of the nice things about living in Vegas, Captain Jim Brass knew, was that if you wanted to get away from everything and everybody, and go completely unnoticed, well…you could.

All you had to do was head out to the Strip.

Crazy as it seemed, the busiest part of Vegas was-for locals-the easiest place to hide. Of course, some residents worked there; but the ones who didn't-and those who did, in their off-hours-generally avoided the area like an active desert nuclear test site.

The Strip's never-ending influx of cash, after all, came from visitors. If Las Vegans wanted to go out to eat or even gamble, they steered well away from that massive neon hive of tourist traps, and found places in the less trendy, and less expensive, corners of the city.

Was it Sherlock Holmes or maybe Poe's Dupin who said the best place to hide is in plain sight? That maxim made the Strip the perfect place for Brass and Grissom to hold their meeting with Perry Bell and David Paquette of the Banner. The detective and the CSI had little chance of running into anyone who would know all four of them, and at this point, Brass figured a low profile wasn't a bad thing.

But it did trouble him that he had to start his investigation by talking to members of the media, as the goal of keeping this a by-the-book inquiry included staying off the public radar as long as possible.

Walking down the stairs from the parking building connected to the Sphere, Brass said to the CSI, 'I don't mean to keep you away from valuable time at the lab.'

Grissom shrugged. 'I got the feeling you wanted Catherine and me to spot you on this.'

'Spot me how?'

'Keep you from prematurely throwing harpoons, Captain.'

'Gimme a goddamn break, Gil. I been on this case, what? An hour, and already you're thinking I'm-'

'An hour on this case?' Grissom's smile was gentle and not at all mocking. 'Isn't that more like, going on a decade or more?'

Brass felt a surge of warmth for his friend and colleague-something that wasn't a common emotion between the two, at least not one that either man allowed to enter in very often.

Still, the detective couldn't keep the real feeling out of it, when he said to Grissom, pretending to kid, 'So- you're really there for me, huh, Gil?'

Without a beat, but not allowing his eyes to meet Brass's, Grissom said, 'Always.'

The Raw Shanks Diner huddled in a far corner of the casino, near the back. A fifties motif ran rampant through the place-everything from the Fiestaware plates to the menus to singing waiters and waitresses who served up Elvis, Little Richard, and Fats Domino tunes to the luncheon crowd.

A tiny waitress with corn rows and a big voice was belting out the Etta James classic 'At Last' as Brass and Grissom took seats on opposite sides of a corner booth, getting as far away from the karaoke waitress as possible. A waiter with a pompadour haircut a sixteen-year-old Frankie Avalon would have envied brought them coffee while they waited for the newspaper men to show.

A place this relentlessly entertaining, no sane local would ever frequent.

Grissom said, 'A suggestion?'

'Sure.'

'Let's not pose the copycat theory.'

Brass nodded. 'Yeah. Good idea. Be interesting to gauge their reactions.'

The detective was less than halfway through his coffee when the crime beat writer, Perry Bell, waved at him from the hostess stand. Two other men huddled behind him-David Paquette, the Banner's Metro editor, and Bell's research assistant, Mark Brower.

The captain had known Bell and Paquette for the better part of eleven years, and Brower he'd met not long after the man took the job as Bell's assistant, maybe seven years ago. Or was that eight? Brass sighed to himself, struck by how the years were slipping away, and yet how immediate the old CASt case still felt.

Brower had, no doubt, heard all of the stories about CASt, but hadn't been part of the original coverage. The guy was in his early thirties now, and would have still been in journalism school somewhere or even high school, when the crimes occurred.

The hostess, the diner's idea of Sandra Dee (ironically, a waiter was doing Bobby Darin's 'Splish Splash' right now), spoke to Bell, who pointed at Brass, then moved past Gidget to waddle toward the table, Paquette and Brower trailing.

Bell was all smiles, but Brass wasn't: He was wondering just why the hell Brower was even along on this trip. Damn it, he had told Bell that he wanted to meet the two of them, Bell and Paquette, alone….

A roly-poly man with a thick brown toupee parted on the left, Perry Bell looked like he'd been trapped in a time warp in the disco era-witness the wide-lapeled brown suit with yellow shirt, its top three buttons open to show a gold Star of David medallion on a gold, chest-hair-nestling chain. The huge open collar of the shirt extended like giant wings outside the jacket.

Bell had a concrete block of a head with a large glob of loose mortar serving as a nose. His deep-set dark eyes peeked out from under broad, heavy brows and as he approached, his wide mouth broke into an easy, if uneven and tobacco-discolored, smile.

'Got a hot lead for me, Jimbo?' Bell said, extending his hand.

Yes, Brass thought, a real wordsmith….

'We'll get to that,' Brass said, shook the moist hand, and gave it back to its owner.

'Must be big,' Bell said, turning to shake Grissom's hand as well, 'if you're bringin' 'round the Crime Scene Investigator's Crime Scene Investigator-great to see you, Gil.'

The big build-up got a curt nod out of Grissom.

'You all know my boss and buddy, Dave, here.'

Nods were granted to the editor.

Paquette had mischievous blue eyes and a ready smile; his blond hair had long ago flown south for the winter and showed no signs of coming back north. But Brass thought both the editor and his columnist seemed forced in their bonhomie, with each other as well as Brass and Grissom.

Though Paquette and Bell had been peers at the time their book CASt Fear came out, their careers had taken significantly different routes. Easy-going with a ready-smile, happy in his fate, editor Paquette now supervised his old pal, whose career had hit a groove more than a decade ago only to have the needle get stuck: A crime column that had gone briefly national had flamed out in syndication, making a bumpy local landing.

Perhaps out of the grace of his old friend, Bell and his column were hanging on.