Grissom spent the better part of an hour and a half, finishing in the stairwell. He gathered scores of prints, but had very little confidence that any would prove helpful. The downside of public places, even one as seldom used as this stairwell, was that crime scene investigators could get buried under the sheer volume of information, most of which had no bearing at all on their case.
The hotel room looked like any other one in Vegas, with only a few differences. The bedspread lay askew, puddling near the bottom of the bed. A champagne bottle sat on the dresser with two glasses next to it. Clothes hung in the small closet and the victim's shaving kit was laid out neatly in the bathroom. A briefcase, a pile of papers and a Palm Pilot lay arrayed on the round table in the corner.
'I'll take the table and the bathroom,' Sara said to Warrick, 'you get the dresser and the bed.'
'I had the bed last time.'
Shaking her head, she said, 'It's all the same, Warrick.'
He gave her a slow look. 'Like hell it is.'
She threw her hands up. 'Okay, you take the bathroom. I'll take the bed.'
Glad he didn't have to enter the DNA cesspool that he knew existed on those sheets, Warrick entered the bathroom. On the right, the sink was clean. Next to it, on the counter, the signs of an exceptionally neat man. A washcloth had been laid out, a razor, toothbrush, toothpaste, and a comb lay on top of it, each one approximately an inch apart. Behind them stood deodorant, shaving cream, mouthwash and aftershave, each with the label facing front, each item about one inch from its neighbor, soldiers at attention. Warrick took quick photos of the bathroom, then passed the camera to Sara, who did the other room.
Lifting the wastebasket onto the counter, Warrick peered inside, thinking how his job seemed at times two parts scientist, three parts janitor. All he found was the tamper-proof shrink wrap from the mouthwash bottle and some wadded-up tissues . . . but one of the tissues had a lipstick smear.
'He had a woman here,' Sara called from the other room.
Warrick looked quizzically at the tissue, then into the mirror, finally out into the other room to make sure Sara wasn't just messing with him, but she was nowhere in sight. He said, 'I've got a tissue with some lipstick in here, says the same thing.'
'Lipstick on one of the glasses and a cigarette butt with a lipstick stain in the ashtray. I'm betting our victim didn't smoke Capris.'
Exiting the bathroom, Warrick studied the skinny cigarette in the bag in Sara's hand. 'Not exactly a macho cigarette, is it?'
'Unless John Smith wore lipstick, it's not his brand.'
Warrick almost smiled, and Sara put the evidence bag inside her kit, then moved to another, smaller, black briefcase. Opening it, she pulled out what looked like a telephoto lens with a pistol grip on it.
'I see our friend RUVIS made the trip,' Warrick said.
'Yep,' Sara said, flipping the switch on the gadget-Reflective Ultra-Violet Imaging System. 'If John Smith and his lady friend had sexual congress in this bed, RUVIS will show us.'
'You make it sound so political.'
The machine had been on for less than ten seconds when Sara let out a long sigh.
Warrick asked, 'What's wrong? Didn't you find anything?'
Sara rolled her eyes. 'What didn't I find? These sheets are covered with stains.'
She handed the RUVIS to Warrick. He turned toward the bed and looked through the lens. With only the UV illumination, the bed looked like a giant camouflage blanket as the stains shown up like large white flowers in half a dozen different spots. 'Busy guy if those are all his.'
'You think they are?'
'Nope. Remember when Mike Tyson got busted?'
'Sure,' Sara said. 'Indianapolis.'
'Right. The criminalist who investigated spoke at a seminar I went to. He said the suite went for eight bills a night. And the hotel was less than a year old.'
'Yeah?'
Warrick turned off the RUVIS and set it back in its case. 'How many semen stains do you suppose he found?'
Sara shrugged.
'One hundred fifty-three.'
Her eyes widened. 'A hundred and fifty-three?'
'Yep . . . and none of them were Tyson's.'
Making a face, Sara said, 'I may never stay in a hotel again.'
'I heard that,' Warrick said, and went back to work in the bathroom. He pulled some hairs from the shower drain, but found nothing else. Within minutes, he rejoined Sara in the other room. While she continued to take samples from the bed, he bagged the Palm Pilot, the papers, the champagne bottle and glasses.
'You know,' Warrick said, in the bathroom doorway, 'Grissom never once mentioned anything to me, about, you know . . . me working an investigation in a casino.'
Still hard at it, Sara said, 'Well, that's Grissom.'
'Yeah. I just wasn't sure he would ever trust me again.'
Studying him now, Sara asked, 'Warrick?'
'Yeah.'
'Is it tough for you?'
'What?'
'Being around it. A casino, I mean.'
He looked at her for a very long time. 'No harder than a recovering alcoholic working a crime scene in a liquor store.'
Her gaze met his. 'That hard?'
A slow nod. 'That hard.'
Awkwardly, she said, 'Look, uh . . . if I can help . . .'
'If anybody could help,' he said, 'we wouldn't be having this conversation.'
They continued working the scene, silently.
4
THE LAS VEGAS CRIMINALISTICS DEPARTMENT-HOUSED IN A modern, rambling one-story building tucked between lush pine trees-was a rabbit warren of offices, conference rooms, and especially labs, with a lounge and locker room thrown in for the hell of it. This washed-out world of vertical blinds, fingerprint analysis, glass-and- wood walls and evidence lockers was strangely soothing to Catherine Willows-her home away from home.
Catherine had managed to pick up her daughter Lindsey from school, have a quality-time dinner, and even catch a couple hours of sleep before coming into work a little after nine in the evening.
Now, a few minutes after ten, her eyes already burned from the strain of studying the computer monitor. Buried in the minutiae of an unsolved missing persons case-this one a fifty-two-year-old white man named Frank Mayfield who had disappeared thirteen years ago-she sensed someone standing in the doorway to her left.
She turned to see Grissom there, briefcase in one hand, the other holding a stack of file folders and a precariously balanced cup of coffee. In a black short-sleeve sportshirt and gray slacks, he managed to look casual and professional at once. He held the door open with a foot.
'You're in early,' he said.
'Trying to figure out who our mummy is.'
His eyes tightened. 'And you are . . . ?'
'Going through missing persons cases, back ten to twenty years ago. The preliminary report says Imhotep died about fifteen years ago.'
He was at her side now, the coffee cup set down on the desk. 'How many cases?'
'No more than grains of sand in the desert,' Catherine said, stretching to release the tension in her spine. 'You know, there's been over thirty-two-hundred missing persons calls in the last two years alone.'
Grissom shook his head. 'Any luck?'
'Not yet.'
