devoid of furniture but for a swivel desk chair facing a TV monitor on a small desk. A cable behind the monitor ran up the wall, and out of sight. What appeared to be a closet had its door padlocked.
Again, Warrick felt Brass right behind him.
'Bathroom,' the detective said, sotto voce, 'clean.'
'We'll be the judge of that,' Warrick said.
'I meant empty,' the detective said.
They traded quick smiles, which made Warrick, at least, feel less tense; he started toward the padlocked door.
But Brass touched Warrick's sleeve. 'Leave it for now. First we clear the house.'
'Okay.'
Brass led the way into another probable bedroom, this one on the right, also minus any bedroom furnishings, again vaguely an office: chair, monitor with cable rising of the back and padlocked closet. This one, however, lacked the scent of fresh paint.
The third bedroom, at the end of the hall, actually was set up like one: a bed with a cream-color spread, another shelf of homemade videotapes, and a TV/VCR combo atop a squat dresser. This closet door wasn't padlocked and, when Warrick opened it, he found only clothing-men's apparel, nothing fancy. The bed was king-size, but the tidy room had less personality than a Motel 6; again, the walls were blank-the only images in this house would be those appearing on monitor screens.
'Homey,' Warrick said.
'Real dream house,' Brass said, from the hall.
'Check the garage?'
'Yeah. Clear. Whole damn house is clear.' Brass holstered his weapon, and Warrick followed suit. 'Let's get you people started, before Benson gets back. I don't want Prince Charming seeing that Tahoe in back of the house, and bolting.'
Warrick, Sara and Grissom unloaded their equipment and headed inside as Brass wheeled the Tahoe around back, parking it out of sight. Then the detective walked down the hill and positioned himself, out of sight among the scrub, to keep a lookout for their suspect. Brass and the CSIs would communicate via cell phone, if need be.
In the living room, Sara-field kit heavily in hand-was staring at the wall of tapes. She pointed to the row of tapes marked CANDY.
'No way I'm watching those,' she said.
Grissom lifted his eyebrows. 'Probably not an old Marlon Brando/Peter Sellers movie. I've got Benson's bedroom. Sara, the kitchen.'
'A woman's place?' she said archly.
'Not in this house,' Warrick said, somber. 'I'll start with bedroom office, number one.'
The small room smelled antiseptic-not just freshly painted, but scrubbed, an olfactory cocktail of latex paint and Lysol. Warrick picked up his hooligan tool-a chrome bar with machined grooves to give it a non-slip grip, with a duckbill for forcing windows along with a pike, used to break locks and latches, while the other end had a standard claw used for locks and hasps. Weighing in at about fifteen pounds, the hooligan made just the ticket for tearing a padlock off a locked closet door….
Coming down from the top, Warrick forced the claw behind the hasp and snapped it off, padlock dangling from the jamb.
The closet door slowly, creakily swung out to greet him.
Half expecting the Crypt Keeper to jump out at him, the CSI shined his flashlight inside the closet, which also appeared to have been recently scrubbed and painted in the same flat white.
Warrick set down the hooligan tool, got into his case and withdrew one of his newer toys, a Crime-lite. On loan from its manufacturer, Mason Vactron, the Crime-lite gave Warrick a compact alternate light source-no cables, no guides, size of a flashlight, with a lamp life of 50,000 hours.
He stepped into the closet and switched on the Crime-lite and the white-painted walls seemed to throb with large black splotches…with many tinier black dots around the doorknob…
…blood.
Benson may have cleaned the closet and painted it, but he hadn't hidden Candace's blood from the Crime-lite. If Warrick had even the slightest doubt about Benson being their guy, it vanished under the bright light of truth.
With his Mag-Lite, Warrick illuminated the upper corner of the closet and could see the tiny snake-head camera that was the tip of the black cable from the monitor in the room.
Warrick took a few moments to let pass the non-professional thoughts of what he'd like to do to this guy; then he got back to work.
In bedroom/office number two, Warrick again tore off the padlock on the closet with the hooligan tool. In this closet, he found a roll of carpeting leaned against the back wall. This gave him a momentary start, as at first he thought they had another body on their hands; but when he tipped the rug toward him, he could see nothing was wrapped in it.
But the remnant seemed a match, and Warrick was pretty sure the cut on this edge would correspond to the piece already in evidence. He took a photo of the carpet and used his Crime-lite on this closet as well; but no sign of blood. He used luminol spray, and also came up empty.
Glancing around at the little room, with the monitor and its snake camera extending to this second closet, Warrick had to wonder: had Benson prepared this second station for another victim?
But the thought went no further, as a sharp explosive sound from outside caught Warrick's attention…
…
Warrick was already at the front door, when Grissom came up behind him and Sara stepped out from the dining room, having been in the kitchen, asking, 'Was that a shot?…That was a shot.'
Then they heard two more quick reports, and Warrick yanked open the front door and rushed outside into a day that had turned into dusk. In the shadow-blue twilight, he could see down the winding drive a car had been approaching the house, a dark-blue Corolla-Benson's…but the vehicle was sagging to one side, both the front and rear tires shot out!
The driver's side door flew open, and a lanky figure emerged-Benson, in a blue T-shirt and black jeans and running shoes, sprinting away from the car, at an angle between the vehicle and the house. Brass was running up from the scrub brush where he'd been on lookout, yelling for Benson to stop.
Warrick took off after the fleeing suspect. He knew he could pull his gun and fire at the guy, but Benson was empty-handed, which meant shooting an unarmed man, and a moving target at that, which Warrick wasn't sure he could hit anyway. Brass, in the meantime, had reached the car, shielding himself behind the passenger side, but Warrick didn't figure the detective could hit Benson at this range.
Benson probably knew this area well enough to elude them, at least for a while; this was rough country, unfamiliar. They could not let him slip away.
These thoughts flashed through Warrick Brown's brain as he cut toward the running suspect. The uneven ground threatened a turned ankle, but Warrick's only thought was taking this bastard down. His arms and legs churned and he swiftly lessened the distance between them.
Seventy yards now, and Benson seemed to be slowing, breathing hard, and Warrick closed the gap, sixty yards, fifty, twenty, ten, then twenty
…and he could hear Benson gasping as he ran, all but spent. At ten feet, Benson zigged, only Warrick zagged, and caught up to his prey in three more steps.
Warrick launched himself, grabbed Benson around his skinny waist, and the two of them hit the ground hard and rolled, over jagged rock and hard dirt clumps and knobby plants, as the killer's glasses flew off into the underbrush, leaving huge scared animal eyes behind.
For a moment Warrick had him, but Benson was a squirmy creature, fighting for his freedom, flailing for his life, and then a sharp elbow came around-just luck, but the wrong kind-and caught Warrick in the right temple, dropping him to the dirt.
Unconscious for at most a second, the CSI rolled onto his back and as he looked up Benson was suddenly astride him, hovering over Warrick, as a knife seemed to materialize in the man's grasp, the handle held tight in a
