Body of Evidence

'Mr. Randle-we know you're innocent.'

The adman looked more stunned than relieved, as Nick set to work, while Catherine led the rest of the law enforcement parade in a march down the hall.

The group stopped next at Janice Denard's office. 'Is Mr. Gold in?' Catherine asked, standing to one side of the woman's desk.

'Yes, but…'

'Let's go in and see him then,' Catherine said, gesturing to Gold's door. 'Come along, Ms. Denard.'

Catherine opened the door for the woman, who went in, with O'Riley, Nunez and the two uniformed cops following, the CSI the last to step inside the inner office.

Catherine strode to Gold's side of the desk, the executive looking up in surprised confusion, but saying nothing.

Denard, lamely, said, 'I tried to tell them you were busy, Mr. Gold, but-'

O'Riley said, 'Ruben Gold, you're under arrest on charges of child pornography and obstruction of justice.'

Gold exploded out of his chair. 'What?'

O'Riley turned to the man's personal assistant, his secretary, saying, 'Janice Denard, you're charged with obstruction of justice.'

While O'Riley recited the Miranda warning to them, Janice turned white and stumbled backward, then sat, clumsily, in one of the desk chairs, opposite Gold.

'This is absurd,' Gold said. 'The ramifications of groundlessly charging a respected businessman like myself of such heinous-'

'We have the evidence,' Catherine said.

'Evidence that has nothing to do with me,' Gold said.

'Oh, I'm not talking about the planted evidence you used to make us to believe that Gary Randle committed this crime. I mean, the real evidence.'

Gold said, 'I'm going to have to ask you people to leave my office.'

Catherine laughed. 'I don't think so.'

'Mr. Gold,' Nick said, walking in to join the party, 'perhaps you'd like to explain your flight plans and fuel bills showing you flying to Los Angeles both Friday and Saturday.'

As if punched, Gold staggered back; his expression hollow, he awkwardly settled himself into his leather chair.

'When I dust it,' Catherine said, 'your fingerprints will be on the network plug in Ben Jackson's cubicle where you disconnected it from his machine and hooked it to yours.'

Gold's mouth was open, but he wasn't saying anything.

Nick said, 'We were stuck on one little thing, though: how you sabotaged Randle's computer. Tomas couldn't trace that with computer forensics.'

Nunez, on the sidelines, skinny arms crossed, said to Gold, 'That was about the only thing you did halfway right.'

'But old-fashioned forensics did the trick,' Nick said. 'Fingerprinting 101.' He turned to the dazed-looking Denard. 'Janice, your prints were on the inside casing of Randle's computer; and both yours and Mr. Gold's prints matched ones I just lifted from Gary Randle's network card. That was how you made his computer breakdown last Saturday: you loosened the network card. That's all it took.'

Janice looked over at her boss, but he wouldn't, or perhaps couldn't, look back at her. They were both ghostly pale.

'That was fast,' Catherine said to Nick admiringly, meaning the matching of the prints.

Nick shrugged. 'Warrick was sitting at the computer waiting for my call. Matched 'em right away. Mr. Gold, your agency has one fast fax machine-it rocks.'

Gold leaned on an elbow, touching his fingertips to his forehead.

Nunez said to the exec, 'The MAC address of your laptop matches the one that sent the print order for the kiddie porn. Your address also matches up to the Russian porn site where this garbage was downloaded.'

Now Gold covered his face with both hands; he might have been weeping, but Catherine didn't think so- hiding. Just hiding.

Nunez continued: 'You also left a copy of a letter you wrote to the All-American Jukebox on your hard drive. It matched the letter from the zip disk the porn came off.'

Gold looked up, his eyes wide but dazed. 'But that was all deleted,' he complained, incriminating himself.

Nunez's grin was a horrible thing. 'Deleted like when you deleted your e-mails, you mean? Sorry-I found all those, too.'

Gold looked stricken.

Catherine said, 'You traded a lot of e-mails with your new girlfriend-Elaine Randle. Or is it an old affair, that got rekindled somehow?'

'She had nothing to do with this,' Gold said weakly.

'She had everything to do with it,' Catherine said.

'Elaine has already been served warrants for her house and phone records, Mr. Gold. I believe we already have her laptop in custody-that's what she sneaked into her ex-husband's house and left for us to find.'

Catherine laid it all out for him.

You fly your private jet to LA on Friday, giving yourself a built-in alibi. Then you wing back to Henderson some time around dawn on Saturday and drive from the airport to your office. You hook your computer into Ben Jackson's cubicle and mimic his machine. Then, using your zip disk, you take the files you'd downloaded from the Internet and send them to your computer to print.

Before you leave the office, however, you get into Randle's computer and pull the network card, just slipping it out of its seat so that when Randle tries to log on the network, he won't be able to get on. Then you drive back to the airport, fly yourself back to LA, return to your hotel and order room service, so the receipt makes it look like you slept in.

Janice comes in early Saturday, as well, and takes the photos out of your printer, just in case anybody happens by, and sticks them in a locked drawer till Monday. In the meantime, Randle's come to work and the whole world knows that Ben Jackson's out of town, and where he keeps his password, so Randle naturally uses that machine, leaving his fingerprints there to be found by us.

Monday rolls around and Janice comes in, gets inside Randle's machine and reseats the network card, then puts the photos back in the printer tray and calls 911.

Then we come in, holding up our end of the charade, finding the planted pornography, and wind up busting Randle, just as we're supposed to. Elaine sues him for custody and will get her daughter back, once Randle's ruled an unfit parent.

Gold looked completely deflated and defeated.

'Did I leave anything out?' Catherine asked.

'Downloading the porn,' Gold said. He seemed almost in a trance, staring, staring. 'Elaine…Elaine did that. She used her laptop, and mine too.' He laughed, an empty, racking thing, almost a cough. 'Come to think, she probably did that to have something on me as well.'

'I should have known from the start,' Catherine said. 'If I hadn't been blinded by my own distaste for child porn, I might have nailed you, days ago.'

Gold's eyes tightened. 'Why?'

'Janice calling the police-that was the first really suspicious thing.'

Denard sat up; she'd apparently been preparing something to say, and now she said it: 'I didn't have anything to do with this. I just came in and found those printouts and did the responsible thing.'

Catherine turned to the woman and gave her a withering smile. 'Oh, but you wouldn't do the responsible thing. The thing you would have done would be to contact your boss, Mr. Gold, not 911.'

Denard shook her head. 'I don't even follow you. Don't even know what you're-'

'Sure you do. Big ad agency like this this kind of situation calls for, requires, a cover-up.'