'Exactly. Normally, we'd run a string or flagging tape twenty feet to a second stake, aligning it with the streak in the snow that showed the bullet's path. But with snow this deep, I simply ran the second stake as straight as I could, and planted it without the string.'
Sara asked, 'And the bullet never deviates from the path in the snow?'
''Never' isn't in my lexicon,' Maher said. 'If the slug hit a rock or something, deviation is possible, even probable-but with snow like this to slow the bullet, the path won't be altered much.'
Grissom gestured back toward the toboggan. 'Which is where your metal detector comes in.'
'Yes,' the constable said. 'Lucky I brought it along for my presentation, eh?…I think we'll find the bullet within three feet of that line, on either side.'
'This technique,' Grissom said. 'How often is it successful?'
'Most of the time…'Always' isn't in my lexicon, either.' He turned toward the hotel manager, who was still under the tree, and called, 'Mr. Cormier!'
'Yes, sir?'
'Need a favor!'
Cormier came over. 'What can I do you for, Mr. Maher?'
Pointing just beyond and to the left of the body, Maher said, 'Take the shovel and clear me a space in the snow, oh, three by three feet.'
Nodding, Cormier asked, 'How deep?'
'Down to the dirt, please. We're creating a control area.'
'Shovel's just about my level of high tech,' Cormier said, and marched off to the toboggan, where he fetched the shovel and went over to start digging.
While Grissom worked on casting footprints, Sara helped Maher get his metal detector assembled and running. Giving him room, she accompanied the Canadian as he and it traveled back and forth over the track the bullet had taken. Every time he pointed at a spot, she placed a smaller stick.
She'd marked only two spots when he stopped, stared at the ground in confusion, and said, 'Well, that's weird, eh?'
'What is?'
'Gettin' a beep here, on something a whole lot bigger than a bullet.'
'Any idea what?'
Maher shook his head. She inserted a stick at the spot and he kept moving. When he finished, four different places had been marked by Sara in that fashion.
Sara asked, 'Now what?'
'We run the metal detector over our control area,' Maher said.
She watched as he ran the detector over the bare spot Cormier had created.
'All right,' Maher said. 'It's clear-no metal in the dirt. Sara, get a garbage bag from the sled, would you?'
Sara trotted over, grabbed one of the black bags, came back and handed it to Maher.
As he ripped out the seams, Maher said, 'Now we'll cover the bare spot Mr. Cormier made for us.'
'Oh,' Sara said, understanding. 'We're going to put the snow we marked onto the plastic, and sift through it.'
Maher nodded. 'But first we dig. You take those two,' he said, pointing at the two marked spots nearest the downhill end of the line. Then he went over and knelt in the snow, next to two spots further up the line. 'And I'll take these two.'
Sara had hardly begun to dig down when she saw something pink, and froze. 'Constable! Grissom!…I think you both better see this.'
They came over.
Grissom crouched over her find. 'Blood…'
Maher, hovering, asked, 'What the hell's that doing here?'
Reflexively, they all glanced back toward the snowy hump of the body almost ten yards uphill; but the victim wasn't talking.
Maher looked from Grissom to Sara. 'Didn't you say the only blood was near the body?'
'That's right,' Sara said. 'We didn't see any this far down.'
Grissom asked, 'Could this patch of blood have already been covered by snow?'
'I don't think so,' Sara said. 'Not in the time between our hearing those shots and coming onto this crime scene.'
Maher's expression, in the fuzzy cameo created by the parka, was thoughtful. 'Could be someone covered it on purpose, hastily kicked snow over it…. Besides those footprints, you see any other disturbed snow?'
Grissom said, 'No,' and Sara shook her head.
Then she asked her boss, 'Do you have one of those bug specimen bottles on you?'
A small bottle materialized in Grissom's gloved palm; he handed the container over to her.
Using the cap, she shooed the pink snow into the bottle, then closed it. She handed the little bottle to Grissom and went back to her digging, only now she was more careful, much slower, searching every inch to make sure she didn't miss any evidence. Maher went to work on his spots, and Grissom returned to footprint duty.
Stripping off her gloves, she started digging with her fingers, not trusting the shovel or even her gloves to keep her from contaminating any more evidence. The cold and wet of the snow was kind of refreshing at first, but it only took a couple of minutes before her fingers turned red and the tips started to numb up.
She was just starting to think taking off the gloves was a really dumb idea when she touched something hard.
Her hand jumped out of the hole as if she'd been bitten by a snake.
'Are you all right?' Grissom asked, running over to her. He sounded genuinely concerned.
'Something metallic,' she said. 'Not small…'
They both looked toward Maher, working at his own spot; but his eyes were on them, as well. The constable came over and drew a forceps from a pocket. 'Can you get it with this?'
'Should be able to.' She accepted the tool, inserted her bare hand and the forceps down into the hole. Maneuvering carefully, she worked the ridged jaws around the object. Squeezing, she dragged the object out of the snow, like pulling a tooth. It felt heavy and came out slowly. When the object finally appeared from the snow, they all froze, as if the cold had finally caught up with them.
Only it was not cold, rather shock.
'A knife?' Maher asked, as if he wanted confirmation of what his eyes had shown him. 'You said our vic was shot.'
'He was,' Grissom said.
Sara held up the knife in the jaws of the forceps, squinting at it. The thing wasn't that big-blade no more than four inches long.
'Our victim was shot, all right,' she said. 'And so…how do we explain this?'
'More blood,' Grissom said, almost admiringly.
A pink sheen covered much of the blade.
They all traded looks.
'There's no knife wounds in the body, right?' asked Maher.
'None plainly visible,' Grissom said. 'Does this mean our killer took defensive wounds away from this scene?'
All three looked up the hill to where the body lay, almost thirty feet away.
'Blood,' Maher said. 'How is that possible?'
'There's not much blood here,' Sara said, meaning both the knife blade and the snowy stuff she'd gathered.
'Which means?'
