Body of Evidence

paint that showed hardly any wear.

'Doesn't look too bad,' Warrick said.

Kevin shrugged. 'Not now. Guy that lived here last left it spotless. Even got his security deposit back.'

Picking up on the implication, Sara asked, 'What about Benson? Not so spotless?'

The maintenance man snorted. 'You don't know how much time I spent in this dump, patching it up! Thomas charged that dork a couple hundred over the deposit.'

'Why?' Sara asked.

'The asshole had holes drilled everywhere!'

'Holes? What for?'

'His goddamned shelves and video equipment.'

Warrick asked, 'So he had a lot of video stuff?'

'Yeah, he was really into it. See, he sold the shit, so he got it at cost. He put holes in the walls to support these metal shelves all over the place-the joint was lousy with them.' He walked over to the wall and pointed to a couple of spots where there were obvious patches.

The two CSIs both looked around the apartment and finally Warrick called the maintenance man over to the far wall of the dining area where a patch was on the wall, almost at ceiling level; the patch looked larger than the others.

'Kevin, did Benson have shelves all the way up there? Be hard to reach.'

'Naw, below that. I don't know what the hell he was doin', drillin' holes so high.'

Sara felt something tense in her stomach. 'Did you have to patch any holes in Candace's apartment, Kevin, when she moved out?'

'Few nail holes from some pictures.'

Warrick said suddenly, 'These shelves-Benson had lots of equipment, right? Or were the shelves mostly for videotapes?'

'Videotapes.'

'Tapes, like big movies? Or homemade videos?'

'Homemade, mostly. Just plain old VHS in black sleeves…They were everywhere, shelves full of 'em, boxes of 'em.'

A chill ran through Sara.

'What's on the other side of this wall?' Warrick asked, gesturing to where the high hole had been drilled.

'Other side?' The maintenance man stared at the wall, like Superman exercising his X-ray vision. 'Lemme think…That would have been Candace's bathroom. Yeah-shower stall.'

11

NEXT SHIFT, CATHERINE WILLOWS AND NICK STOKES SPENT most of their time working a murder on Marion Drive.

A drunk had chased his wife down the street before finally catching and stabbing her to death at the edge of Stewart Place Park. It wasn't exactly a locked-room mystery-the man still at the scene, cursing his dead wife, covered in her blood when the responding officers had shown up.

Nonetheless, a crime scene was a crime scene and required due and proper processing. Collecting the evidence from the murder site and all along the chase route back to the couple's house had made for long, tedious toil on an unseasonably warm (supposedly) spring night under the gently mocking soft-focus glow of streetlights.

Now-the two CSIs sitting in the IHOP on the Strip-they were finally getting the chance to read the financial records of their child-porn suspects, over breakfast.

Catherine had Janice Denard's payroll information in front of her, and Nick was proving his walk-and-chew- gum proficiency by alternating bites of pancake with reading Roxanne Scott's payroll history.

They had picked up Newcombe-Gold's paperwork on the seven employees on whom they zeroed in, as well as the disk that Randle claimed to have been working on last Saturday, which they'd already turned over to Tomas Nunez.

Nick-after taking a long pull on a glass of orange juice, not quite as tall as the nearby Stratosphere-nodded toward the file. 'I told you advertising pays.'

'Wow,' Catherine said, eyes wide as she took in Denard's yearly salary.

'Roxanne Scott makes almost twice what a CSI3 makes.'

'Tell me about it. Ever think you made the wrong career choice, Nicky?'

Nick grinned. 'Like last night, dancing with that drunk?…Ahh, I wouldn't know what to do if I had real money.'

'Well, you probably wouldn't ever have anybody shooting at you on the job,' she said, alluding to a case they'd worked together a while back. They had gone to a house to collect evidence and wound up ducking gunfire.

'At least we know that's a possibility,' Nick said with a shrug. 'Most people who get shot at their workplace don't get a warning.' He glanced down at Roxanne Scott's payroll record. 'How many hours d'you suppose we'd have to work, to get a five-grand bonus?'

Her brow furrowing, Catherine looked at Janice Denard's history again. 'Five thousand?…When did Roxanne get that bonus?'

'First of this month.'

'That's funny,' Catherine said, and licked a muffin crumb off her finger before tracing a line on the sheet of paper in front of her. 'That's when Janice Denard got a ten-thousand-dollar bonus.'

Nick frowned. 'I thought these women had identical jobs.'

'So did I.' She handed him the sheet of paper.

He studied it for a moment and said, 'Maybe Janice worked more hours or something.'

'Seniority?' Catherine offered, but she didn't like the feeling in her gut. She had worked with Grissom long enough to know she shouldn't always trust that feeling; and this case had already confirmed that tenet, in spades. Evidence, not intuition…

But unconsciously allowing yourself to be impacted by bias was one thing, and heeding a gut instinct- developed over years and years of on-the-job experience and just plain living life in the real world-well, that was something else again.

Nick was saying, 'Could be the size of the bonus is discretionary, on the boss's part.'

'We better make sure to ask Ian Newcombe about that.'

'Or maybe Ruben Gold-we haven't even talked to him yet. When is head honcho number two due back in town?'

Catherine shrugged. 'Another good question for us to ask when we go back there.'

'Which will be…?'

She glanced at her watch. 'They're not even open for another forty-five minutes.'

'Do I detect another double shift coming on?'

'See, Nicky? You are going to have real money. Let's go back and see how Nunez is coming along, and then head over to Newcombe-Gold.'

'It's a plan.'

Still encamped in the air-conditioned garage, Tomas Nunez sat hunkered at a keyboard and monitor, his hair slicked back like a black helmet. Today's black T-shirt touted a gringo girl group-the Donnas-and the lanky, biker- esque computer guru had already worked up some sweat stains, despite the coolness of the concrete bunker. His black jeans had blown a knee but were otherwise intact, while his eight-thousand-buck forensic computer whirred quietly on the floor next to him as he studied a series of images rolling hypnotically across his monitor.

'Morning, Tomas,' Catherine said, holding out a cup of coffee in a Styrofoam IHOP cup.

'Morning, Catherine, and gracias.' Nunez accepted the cup and took a long sip through the hole-in-the-lid.

'Is it?' she asked. 'A good day?'

'We've had worse on this case,' Nunez said, casting an eye toward Nick. 'What, no donuts?'