Binding Ties

'You want to try the bell?' Damon asked.

Grissom shook his head. 'No. Might disturb fingerprints.'

The NLVPD detective frowned. 'Why, is this a crime scene?'

'Do we know it isn't?'

Damon had no answer for Grissom, and the house had no answer for Grissom's knock.

The second time the CSI knocked harder, trying the knob as he did, finding the door locked, not surprisingly.

After a brief wait, Carrack and Grissom hit the door with a ram. The lock burst, the frame splintered, the door swung open and leaned drunkenly to one side. The foyer opened into a living room at right, a staircase along the left wall. Straight ahead, down a short hall, Grissom could see into the kitchen.

Brass was the first one through, but he did not get far.

The detective pointed to something dark on the floor and said, 'Blood! Everybody freeze.'

The house was dark and Grissom had to pull out his Maglite to shine it on the floor next to Brass to get a clear look: a small dot of dark blood on the hardwood floor.

Grissom said, 'Good catch, Jim-looks dried.'

Brass got his gun out with his right hand and turned on a small flashlight with his left. 'Just the same, we're going to clear the house before you guys come in.'

'Nobody's been in or out, Captain,' Carrack insisted. 'I swear.'

'Let's clear the house, shall we?' Brass said to the patrolman, gun in both hands, snout up. 'Plenty of time for you to cover your ass, later….'

Damon pulled his pistol as did Carrack, and soon the two of them were moving up the stairs, eyeing the second floor suspiciously.

Grissom and Sara stepped tentatively inside.

'Stay,' Brass said them, then eased into the living room, and out of sight.

Grissom examined the blood under his flashlight beam again, moving closer, kneeling.

'This blood is indeed dried,' he said.

Sara said, 'Whatever happened here…? Happened some time ago….'

From upstairs came Carrack's and Damon's voices, alternating as they went from room to room, a word batted back and forth like a tennis ball:

'Clear!'

'Clear!'

'Clear!'

'Clear!'

Brass emerged from the rear of the kitchen. 'From the living room you run into the dining room at the back, then the kitchen on the left-all clear.'

Top of the stairs, Damon said, 'Upstairs, clear!'

Grissom moved the light from the original dot of blood toward the kitchen. He found another, then another, and so on, the trail-not of breadcrumbs, like Hansel and Gretel, but blood drops-leading back into the kitchen and off to the left.

'What's in that direction?' Grissom asked Brass.

'Closed door,' Brass said. 'Probably leads to a mudroom, and the garage.'

'Let's have a look.'

Brass looked unhappy. 'Maybe I should take one of the guys with guns with me first…'

'It'll be fine,' Grissom said.

'One condition,' Brass said.

Grissom knew what that condition was: He transferred his flash to his left hand and got out his handgun; behind him, Sara did the same.

The kitchen was a big galley with the dining room visible through a doorless entry to the right. Going the other way, Grissom opened the door into a small room that held a washer, a dryer, and a small table for folding laundry on the opposite wall between two doors.

The far door, Grissom figured, would lead to the garage.

Carrack had looked through the garage window earlier, so they were fairly certain that was empty. The blood trail stopped at the nearer door, on the left.

Grissom hesitated to open the door.

Few things bothered him more than the possibility of being personally responsible for destroying evidence; but if someone was behind the door, and still alive, that concern was overridden.

Prints be damned, Gil Grissom's latex-gloved hand settled on the knob, and he opened the door to peer in at a tiny landing above a dozen descending plywood stairs, a two-by-four bannister on the right side. Without hesitation, Grissom flipped a switch that turned on a light overhead as well as several in the basement below.

Behind him, Brass said, 'Damn it, Gil, that hasn't been cleared!'

Grissom turned to Sara and said, 'Stay here.'

Then, ignoring the detective's admonition, Grissom-gun in one hand, flash in the other-started down….

Very few homes in Vegas even had basements, and the CSI was surprised that Bell's house would be one of those that did. As he took the creaking steps a slow, careful one at a time, the CSI could see more blood on the stairs-not just drops-and a small puddle off to the left on the floor.

At the bottom, having already taken care not to step in any blood, Grissom took in a much bigger pool, running out from under the stairs like something leeching up from the earth.

But the earth wasn't the source of this coagulating fluid.

Shining his light back there, Gil Grissom ruled out Perry Bell as a suspect.

Seven

A fter positioning Officer Carrack and Detective Damon on the first floor, Jim Brass came down into the basement, his cop senses-honed by twenty-five years on the job-tingling, and (like Grissom) careful not to disturb blood evidence. His radar wasn't registering danger-this was the 'something's wrong' tingle. Though his gun was in one hand, Brass strongly sensed he was not entering a fire zone, rather the aftermath of something…wrong.

On this case, with its ritualistic crime-scene fetishism, the detective knew before even reaching the last step, what he would see….

Brass came around the stairs and shone his flashlight into the open area beneath. The beam hit the large puddle of blood and followed its flow to the missing right index finger and then over the plump nude dead body. Seemingly with a will of its own, the flash found the face of Perry Bell.

That was when Brass realized he'd been at least a little mistaken-he had thought he had a fix on exactly what the crime scene would look like; but after the carefully staged murders of Sandred and Diaz, this tableau came as a shock…

…of recognition: The real CASt was back.

The reporter's lips were painted with lipstick that mingled with blood dried on his face from a broken nose. Beaten almost beyond recognition, Bell had suffered more than any other victim, past or present, of CASt (or the CASt copycat). Semen was splashed on his lower back. Blood was everywhere in the basement, not like the neat amputations of the copycat, but spattered and sprayed.

'God-damn-it!' Brass exploded.

He wound up to throw the flashlight, but caught himself just before he let it fly. Instead, he turned it off, and jammed it into his pocket.

'I didn't work the original crime scenes, Jim,' Grissom said evenly. 'But I take it…this is the real deal.'

Shaking his head, breathing hard, Brass let out a few choice epithets, then said, 'Well at least we know he's still out there-and in our jurisdiction. He didn't move away or get run over or…shit, Gil, this…'

Grissom, awkwardly, touched Brass's arm with a latexed hand. 'Do the work, Jim. Shake off everything else.'

Brass nodded, swallowed. 'This is even more brutal than the crime scenes from years ago. It's like CASt nurtured a…special rage for Perry. Who was, after all, the reporter whose book chronicled the original spree. Making money off CASt, saying 'bad' things about him.'