Body of Evidence

She found the tall, unlikely computer geek still in the garage where he and his crew had first set up. The others were gone, and Nunez was left to wade through the mountain of information on his own.

'What's new?' she asked, giving him a smile.

Glancing up from the screen of his monitor, he said, 'You clearly haven't heard.' Catherine frowned. 'What haven't I heard?'

'Hey-I'll tell you, but don't shoot the messenger.'

'Well, not to kill, anyway. What, Tomas?'

'Mobley took me off your case…. Temporarily! Just temporarily….'

Catherine felt red-hot anger rising inside her, but she managed not to detonate all over Nunez. 'And why would the esteemed Sheriff Mobley do that?'

He sighed, shrugged. 'Sorry-but some thoughtless asshole hacked into a bank last night, and the sheriff's got me on that. I'll start working your stuff again, ASAP-but Mobley's on my tail to find this hacker, stat.'

'Gee, I wonder if this bank has a president or chairman of the board who's a potential contributor to Mobley's mayoral campaign or anything…'

'Hey, I don't do politics!'

Her hands came up in front of her and she pressed them together, her knuckles turning white.

'Easy, Cath-it's not all bad news.'

'Improve my mood. Quick.'

Nunez did his best: 'We imaged and processed all thirty hard drives using Encase, version four.'

Catherine nodded-she'd heard of, though never used, the Guidance Software product. She knew it allowed for bit-by-bit copying of hard drives, zip disks, USB devices, even Palm Pilots.

'Then,' Nunez was saying, 'I verified the copies using an MD5 Hash algorithm.'

'Of course you did,' she said, invoking a light humor she didn't feel, both of them knowing she had no idea what an MD5 Hash whatever-the-hell was.

'It's like a digital fingerprint,' Nunez said. 'The odds of two files having the same hash value and not being identical is two raised to the 128th power, or 340 billion billion billion billion to one.'

She shook her head. 'You can't get better odds anywhere in Vegas.'

'Not unless you're the house. Cath, that's about the same as winning the LOTTO four in a row.'

'So, we're sure you got everything then.'

'Damn sure,' he said. 'And that's not just the files-it's deleted files, file slack and unallocated space. If there was ever kiddie porn on any of these machines, I'll find it.'

'That's good news. But when?'

'Either when I catch the bank hacker, or when Mobley decides to let me get back to it.'

'Before the interruption, did you find out anything?'

Nunez nodded. 'The hard drive in Ruben Gold's computer was negative for any child-porn pics.'

'Okay-that's a start.'

'I couldn't find any pictures on any of the client computers, either.'

'Client computers?' she asked.

'The other machines in the network.'

'So how did our pictures get there?'

A shrug. 'Lots of possible ways-I just don't know which one yet.'

Not liking the sound of this, Catherine made sure she was following Nunez, asking, 'So there's no porn on any of the computers?'

'Not even a casual hit on an adult site. And just to make sure, I ran an E-Script to carve all the jpegs out of each hard drive-and none of those resembled the ones from the printer.'

She knew jpegs-that is, .jpg files-were the common photo format for pornographers to use. 'But did the print order come from work station eighteen or not?'

His answer didn't really sound like an answer to the CSI: 'I searched the network server hard drives.'

Striving for patience, Catherine nodded as if she followed this. The truth was, her daughter Lindsey probably knew more about the actual workings of the machines. Embarrassing as it might be to a scientist like Catherine, the guts of the things were completely foreign to her. Nunez, however, was babbling on: 'I found print files showing pictures angel1.jpg through angel12.jpg were sent to Ruben Gold's computer.'

'Which led to?'

'Me looking in the network logs and finding that the pictures came from a client computer using an IP address of 1.160.10.240.'

'Okay-I can't even pretend you haven't lost me….'

'An IP address is an identifier for a computer or a device on a TCP/IP network. These networks route messages based on the IP address of the destination.'

'The destination,' she said, 'not the sender?'

He nodded. 'Don't panic just yet-there's more. Date and time stamps on the print file showed that it was created early Saturday morning. Then the IP address found in the server log showed that it came from client computer number eighteen.'

Relief flooded through her. 'So-we were right; and everything you've done has cemented that.'

'That would be a great big si.'

'But on the other hand, we really haven't gotten any further.'

Nunez's face fell, a little. 'No, we really haven't…and as long as Mobley's got me on this bank hacker, we're stalled.'

'If you can steal a little time for me…'

'I will. You know I will.

'Thanks, Tomas.'

Exasperated, Catherine strode off.

She found Nick hunkered in front of the AFIS computer.

Without waiting for him to look up, much less report, she launched into her tirade: 'Mobley took Tomas away from us to track down some bank hacker!'

Nick shrugged. 'Grand larceny trumps kiddie porn, I guess.'

'Trumps kiddie porn?' she fumed. 'Are you serious?'

He gave her a sideways look, then turned to face her. 'No. I wasn't.'

But she was already off the runway, and there was no coming back: 'Just because this isn't a murder or a crime involving money, Mobley's willing to stick these abused kids on the back burner! Well I sure as hell am not!'

Nick patted the air in front of him until she lapsed into silence. 'Why-do you think I am?'

'No, but…'

Reasonable as Nicky was being, Catherine could not stop the white-hot anger coursing through her. An urge to tear the lab apart caused her to tremble and she fought to stay in control. She fell into the chair beside Nick and she sensed his hand on her shoulder.

Her frustration was palpable now, a heaviness in her body, a rage in her brain, and a thickening of her tongue. She felt tears flowing. 'Shit! Shitshitshit!…If you tell Grissom I broke down, I'll…'

'Hey, dude,' Nick said gently. 'Your secret's safe with me.'

She laughed a little, though still crying, and Nick got her some Kleenex. She said, 'It…it's jus…just…I'd like to track down that bastard Mobley and curse him into next week….'

'I hear you.'

'Nicky, those girls in those photos-they're barely older than Lindsey!'

'I know.'

'And the department just doesn't seem to care.'

'I know that, too.'

And she fell into his arms, she in her chair, he in his, and patted his back, as if he were the one crying.

He pushed her away, and smiled at her, providing more Kleenex. He reserved one for himself, but his voice