Stepping back, the killer pointed the pistol at his fallen victim and fired a second shot, the muzzle flash a bright white light. And at that precise moment came Bobby LaFay carrying his tray. Once again the killer turned, raising the pistol toward the waiter, the tray of food spilled all over the floor, this time not only silently but in slow motion, and both men took off running in opposite directions. The killer sprinted by one more time, his arm still up, his face still hidden, no distinguishing marks, no rings on his fingers, no bracelet on his wrist, nothing.
Turning to Brass, Grissom said, 'You're bringing in all the tapes from this morning, right?'
'Yeah.'
'Then I'm going back upstairs.'
Brass made some quick arrangements with the tech, then accompanied Grissom back to the fourth floor, where Warrick approached them, a plastic evidence bag in hand.
'What have you got for me?' Grissom asked.
Holding the bag up for inspection, Warrick said, 'Five large-money clip in his front left pants pocket.'
'Well, the tape didn't look like a robbery anyway,' Grissom said.
Warrick asked, 'Anything else good on the tape?'
'Looks like a pretty typical mob hit,' Brass said.
Giving Brass a sideways look, Grissom said, 'Let the evidence tell us what it was. Don't be so quick to judge.'
Brass rolled his eyes.
Sara ambled up to join the group. 'Found a shell casing under the body, but there's no sign of the second one.'
Grissom nodded and led them back to the murder scene.
'I've gone over every square inch of this hallway, Grissom,' Sara said somewhat peevishly. 'There isn't a shell casing here anywhere.'
Warrick nodded his agreement. 'We've been over it twice, Gris-there's nothing.'
Grissom's eyes moved over the hallway, took in the spilled tomato sauce and the trail of water from the vase that had held the carnation. His eyes followed the trail of wet carpeting, his gaze finally settling on the door across the hall. 'Can we get into that room?'
'Someone's in there,' Brass said, pulling out a list from his pocket.
Careful where he placed his feet, Grissom moved into the opposite alcove and knocked on the door.
'Mr. and Mrs. Gary Curtis,' Brass announced.
Grissom heard a shuffling of feet on the other side and the door slowly opened. He stood face to face with a fortyish man with a peppery goatee.
'Can I help you?' the man asked.
Looking down at the end of the trail of water in the corner of the doorjamb, Grissom saw the brass shell casing winking up at him. 'You already have, Mr. Curtis, you already have.'
Brass said to the guest, 'We're conducting an investigation, Mr. Curtis.'
'I know,' Curtis said, mildly annoyed. 'I was interviewed already. How much longer are my wife and I going to be confined to our room?'
Brass smiled meaninglessly. 'Not long. Be a good citizen. Murder was committed on your doorstep.'
Curtis frowned, shrugged.
Ignoring all this, Grissom had bent down to scoop the casing into a small plastic bag; now he was holding the bagged shell casing up to the light. 'No such thing as a perfect crime.'
Brass said, 'That's all, Mr. Curtis,' and the guest was shut back in his room.
Grissom pulled a keycard from his pocket. He glanced at Warrick and Sara. 'Party in Mr. Smith's suite. Interested in going?'
Warrick asked, 'Get that keycard from the manager?'
With a quick nod, Grissom said, 'You bagged the victim's, right?'
'You know I did.'
'Well, you can't use that one, 'cause it's evidence. But now you two can do the room.'
Warrick accepted the keycard.
Sara asked her boss, 'What about you?'
'I'll take the stairwell.'
'We're on it,' Warrick said, and they retreated across the hall.
The EMTs now loaded John Smith onto a gurney and wheeled him down the hall toward the elevator.
'You can let these people off this floor now,' Grissom said to Brass. 'Have them take all of their bags with them-the manager needs to get them new rooms.'
'It's a busy time of year,' Brass said. 'Might not be rooms available. . . .'
'Then have 'em pitch tents in the lobby, I don't care. This is a crime scene, Jim.'
'Yeah, I was just starting to gather that.'
The sarcasm didn't register on Grissom. 'Station some of your men in the hall, though, and keep them to this side.' He pointed to his left. 'We don't want them tromping through like a chorus line. Just get them on the elevator and get 'em out of here.'
Brass nodded and got out his cell phone. Warrick and Sara disappeared into the victim's room while Brass and Grissom walked to the stairwell.
The first thing Grissom did was run a piece of duct tape across the door latch so they could get back into the fourth-floor corridor. The fire escape stairwell consisted of eight textured metal steps rising to a metal landing, then did a one-eighty down eight more stairs to the third floor. No point in working the textured stairs, but the landings made Grissom smile.
'Sit on these and you'll be okay,' Grissom said, pointing to the flight up to the next floor.
'Swell,' Brass said, and sat, and made his phone calls.
When the fourth-floor landing yielded nothing, Grissom moved down to the next one.
On his hands and knees, he used a rubber roller to flatten a Mylar sheet on the landing. Black on the downside and silver on the upside, the sheet would help him lift footprints out of the dust. With the sheet pressed flat, Grissom turned to the small gray box nearby. The box's front contained a switch, a red light, a voltmeter, and two electric leads, one ending in an alligator clip, the other ending in a stainless steel probe roughly a quarter-inch in diameter.
Brass, off the phone, asked, 'How about footprints?'
'We'll know in a second.'
Grissom fastened an alligator clip to one side of the Mylar sheet, then touched the probe to the other side of the sheet. When the meter on the front of the box spiked, he smiled and removed the probe. Turning off the box, he took off the alligator clip, then turned his attention to the Mylar sheet.
'Here we go,' he said, rubbing his palms on his pants legs.
Carefully, he pulled back the Mylar sheet, revealing two distinct footprints, one going up, one going down.
'Wouldn't you know,' Grissom said. 'One of them stepped right on top of the killer's print.'
'One of them?'
'Either your man Patterson or the manager. Judging from the print, probably the manager.'
'What makes you think it's the killer's footprint?'
'Running shoe. Looks like the bloody one in the hall, but it might just be wishful thinking, and the manager is wearing something smooth with a rubber heel. Florsheim maybe.'
Next, Grissom dusted the right-hand banister between the landing and the third floor. The railing on the same side between the fourth floor and the landing yielded dozens of prints. The odds of getting a useful one from the killer were maybe one in a thousand or so. Guests, hotel staff, both security and maintenance, fire marshals, and who knew who else had touched these railings since the last time they were cleaned.
Looking up through the railing at Brass, Grissom asked, 'Can you find out who cleans this stairwell and how often?'
'No problem. Find anything?'
'Anything?' Grissom echoed, with a hollow laugh that made its own echo in the stairwell. 'More like everything. It's a fingerprint convention.'
