Body of Evidence

be on the end of that kind of thing.'

'No one does,' Grissom said. 'Can you describe the man?'

The witness glanced at Brass-again, they'd been over this ground, obviously. Brass said, 'It doesn't hurt to go through these details several times. I'll listen carefully, Mr. Benson, and jot anything new you might think of.'

Benson nodded, drew a deep breath, and started in. 'He was tall-probably taller than any of us. And he was Caucasian. You know-white?'

Grissom, considering that a rhetorical question, merely stared at the bespectacled Benson.

Who went on: 'He was kind of skinny, I'd say-one-twenty-five, one-fifty maybe.'

'What about his clothing?' Grissom asked.

Benson shook his head. 'At night like this, about all I can say is…dark clothes. Really all I could tell from this distance.'

'Was he in coat or jacket?'

'No. His arms were bare.'

'Was it a T-shirt, or a shirt with sleeves?'

'I couldn't say.'

'Hair color?'

Shrugging, Benson said, 'Dark hair, I guess. Again, from this distance…'

Grissom nodded.

'I did ease forward,' Benson added, 'when he got back in the car, but all I got was a partial plate number. Will that do any good?'

Grissom's gaze went from Benson to Brass, who held up his notebook to show he already had it, and the CSI's eyes returned to and settled on the witness. 'Nice job, Mr. Benson.'

'Oh, and his right taillight was broken too.'

'Good. Anything else distinctive about the car?'

'No. Not really. I wish I was of more help.'

'You've been very helpful,' Grissom said, sincerely. 'We're fortunate to have a witness with your security background.'

Benson broke out in a grin. 'Well, thanks!'

Brass led the man back toward the Corolla.

Grissom stood shaking his head, as he watched the two men walk away. What was the old saying? 'A good man is hard to find.' A good woman, too, for that matter….

But a good witness? Endlessly harder…yet, for once, Grissom seemed to be on the short list of the lucky in Vegas. Despite mild and understandable nerves, Benson appeared sure of what he'd seen and that could prove very helpful in court.

What would be even more helpful, though, was evidence; even a reliable eyewitness was a human being, after all, and Gil Grissom preferred not to count on human beings.

He moved up the road to check on Sara and Warrick. They were both standing over the bundle on the side of the road now, and-engine noise attracting his attention, as he walked to join his colleagues-Grissom turned to see Benson's Corolla making a U-turn and heading back south on Las Vegas Boulevard.

As he approached, the criminalist recognized the sickly sweet stench of death, of decay; but even on the breeze, it didn't seem as overwhelming as one might expect, given its pungency.

Grissom looked from Sara to Warrick, finding no clues in their business-like expressions. He was putting on his wire-frame glasses as he said, 'So. What have we got?'

'Well, it's definitely a body,' Sara said, shining her flashlight down on a piece of carpeting about six feet in length and rolled three or four times around something; then, with duct tape, the whole bundle had been sealed once around the middle and around each end.

Sara gave Grissom a quick tour of the corpse, using the flashlight like an usher leading him to a theater seat. He could see at one end of the enchilada-like shape the dark hair of the top of a human head, and at the other bare feet, white but for heels blue with lividity.

'Smell is minimized,' Sara said, 'because this package is fairly well-wrapped…but that's not the whiff of somebody who died a few hours ago.'

'Not hardly,' Warrick said, with a quick lift of the eyebrows.

'Possibly a female,' Grissom offered.

'From the small feet,' Sara said, 'I would say so, yeah. Could be a child, but not a young one-this body is over five feet tall.'

Grissom nodded his curt approval of her assessment, then said, 'All right. What else have we accomplished?'

'Photographed from every angle,' Sara said.

Warrick added, 'I've got some prints marked. I'll cast them as soon as we're done here.' He pointed and Grissom followed the gesture. 'Piece of red plastic up on the road.'

'Taillight, maybe?'

Warrick nodded. 'Taillight, maybe.'

Again Grissom nodded his satisfaction. 'Could be a nice find. Our witness mentioned the dump vehicle had a broken tail.'

'Dumper broke it, trying to unload the body?' Sara wondered aloud.

'Possibility.'

Warrick squinted at Grissom. 'You seeing it, Gris?'

'I'm seeing a possibility,' he said, and told them.

A white Chevrolet Monte Carlo pulls to a stop in the northbound land of Las Vegas Boulevard. It's dark and no one appears to be around. A driver in dark clothes climbs out of the car, looks around, sees nothing, then hurries around to the trunk, struggles with the rolled-up bundle inside and finally hefts it out. As he does, the bundle strikes the corner of the taillight, breaking out a small piece of plastic that falls unseen to the pavement.

Also unseen by the driver: Benson's Corolla, sitting up the road in the darkness, the surveillance-camera salesman surveiling every move the man makes.

The driver carries the rug and corpse to the side of the road, moves a few feet onto the dusty shoulder, his footprints clear in the dirt as he does, and he dumps the body to the ground. As he returns to the car, he sees his tracks and blots out some of the prints, but it's dark and he doesn't completely erase them all.

Then the driver slams the trunk lid, takes a quick look around and sees nothing; he climbs into his car and drives away.

Looking back down at the wrapped package, Grissom asked Sara, 'You were about to unroll it?'

'Well, yeah,' Sara said. Now she was squinting at her boss, detecting something in his voice. 'Shouldn't we?'

'Let's do that back at the lab.'

'You sure, Gris?' Warrick asked. 'Once we remove this from the crime scene, we-'

'We've got photos, right?'

The two looked at each other, shrugged, then both nodded.

'Okay.' He cast a smile on the younger CSIs, so they could tell he wasn't displeased. 'I prefer to open this particular package in as clean an environment as we can get…and that means the lab.'

'Not the side of a road,' Warrick said, nodding, seeming vaguely irritated with himself that he hadn't come to the same conclusion.

Sara hadn't made the jump yet, it seemed, as she said, 'You sure don't want to have a look now?'

He shook his head. 'I bet you could never wait for Christmas morning. We'll do it at the lab.'

Now Sara was nodding. A few moments later, the ambulance crew ambled up: two men, one short and thin, the other tall and thin, dressed in their blue uniforms; they took positions alongside the edge of the road and impatience came off them like heat over asphalt.

After a while, the short one asked, 'How long you guys going to be?'