Binding Ties

'He isn't paranoid. We are after him.'

Eight

A t a chair by a counter in a lab, Sara Sidle greeted the sheaf of test results that Greg handed in to her as if her birthday had come early.

'You'll be pleased,' Greg said from the doorway.

'I'm pleased to get anything solid,' Sara said. 'I'm tired of processing air….'

'If you do, keep an eye out for hydrogen.'

She grinned at him and said, 'Thanks for the tip,' and he was gone.

Finally, Sara thought.

The first sheet said the lipstick used on Diaz was an exact match to the shade used on Marvin Sandred-Bright Rose by Ile De France. This tended to confirm the theory that the vics shared a killer, which was further supported by the next page stating that the rope from both murders had the exact same chemical makeup.

Next was a photo that showed a fracture match between the end of the rope that had killed Sandred, and one end of the rope that murdered Enrique Diaz.

'Doesn't get better than that,' she said aloud to the empty lab.

'What doesn't?' Grissom asked, loping in.

'We know that the same person killed Sandred and Diaz.'

He came over to where Sara sat and leaned in. She walked him through it.

'Our most important product,' he said. 'Progress.' He pulled up a chair. 'Now what about the manila envelope from the Banner?'

'Prints on it belong to the three employees-David Paquette, Mark Brower, and Jimmy Mydalson. Their prints were on the letter too. That of course just confirms what we already knew about who handled the envelope at the paper. How about you? Get anything on the handwriting?'

'Going to see Jenny now. Care to come? We might both expand our vocabulary.'

Jenny Northam was a handwriting expert who'd done freelance work for CSI for years, but recently came aboard full-time. In her own digs, she had sworn like a pissed-off longshoreman with Tourette Syndrome; but here at CSI, Grissom had been encouraging restraint.

As Sara and Grissom headed for Jenny's cubbyhole, the CSI supervisor seemed lost in thought, not an unusual condition for him. Sara didn't mind the silence-she was trying to work it all out in her head.

Finally, as they approached Jenny's office, Sara stopped and said, 'Bell wasn't killed by the same perp as Sandred and Diaz, was he?'

Grissom gave her a guardedly hopeful look. 'This opinion rises from evidence?'

'Yes-the brutality of the beating and the amount of blood. Does Doc Robbins confirm the finger was cut off while the victim was alive?'

'He does.'

'And from the photos, the semen appears spattered, random, not in what I believe you aptly described as the 'poured' fashion of the other two.'

Nodding, Grissom said, 'All well-observed, Sara, but still circumstantial-we need better results from physical evidence before we start drawing conclusions. For example, if the semen at the Bell scene does not match the planted Orloff DNA at the other two.'

'And I presume Greg is working on that.'

'Yes. But DNA takes time.'

'Too bad this isn't a TV show,' she said. 'We could have the results after commercial….'

Before long they reached the ajar door of the Crime Lab's handwriting expert, Jenny Northam. Grissom knocked, then entered without waiting for a response.

Jenny was on the other side of the small lab, rolling around on her wheeled office chair like a drunken race car driver with a stuck accelerator. Petite, barely five feet and maybe one hundred pounds, the dark-haired Jenny ruled over various expensive equipment, which took up three of the walls and most of the large light-table in the middle, the infield of Jenny's makeshift racetrack.

'Any luck?' Grissom asked without preamble.

'Freakin' A,' Jenny said, her voice too deep to come out of that tiny body. 'Or do you prefer 'frickin' A'?'

'Either is better than the alternative,' Grissom said, 'but I prefer results.'

'Results I got out the wazoo,' Jenny said.

Sara covered her smile with a hand. Jenny was doing her best to fit in at the sometimes politically correct CSI workplace, but there were still occasional lapses.

Jenny was saying, 'I compared the Banner letter to the ones from the original CASt investigation.'

'Yes?' Grissom asked.

'The paper's different, though both are common bond, and the writing's in ballpoint. Small, precise but childlike-what you'd see from some damn prodigy.'

Sara said, 'I was the first to read the letter, and I was struck by the perfection of the handwritten spacing, the evenness of the lines.'

'Damn straight! But it's unlined paper! There's a kind of…genius behind them.'

Grissom said, 'Surely you're overstating.'

'Well I'm not overstating when I say this is as good a match as I've ever seen. This will hold up in any court, and a blind monkey could make this match.'

'Just the same, Jenny,' Grissom said, 'I'm content to stick with you.'

The handwriting expert was thinking about that as Grissom strode out, Sara falling in alongside him.

'You knew it was a match,' Sara said.

'If not,' Grissom said, 'it would've been an expert forgery…and how many people had enough access to the original notes to pull that off?'

They went back to Grissom's office where they found Warrick waiting.

'I got Bell's phone records,' he said.

Grissom said, 'Al says the lack of rigor mortis shows Bell had been dead approximately forty-eight hours.'

Warrick nodded. 'Within an hour of when he made the call to his daughter.'

'If he was forced to make the call,' Sara said, 'his nose was probably already broken. Didn't she notice that he sounded funny?'

Warrick said, 'If Perry was talking to his daughter, knowing CASt was about to kill him…did he manage to give her a clue of some kind?'

Grissom said to Sara, 'Give her a call and find out.'

The supervisor took his pocket notebook out, flipped a couple of pages, tore one out and handed it to her.

'There,' he said.

'Grissom,' Sara said, leaning in. 'I don't think it's appropriate, a CSI being the one who tells this poor kid that her-'

'She knows. Brass already made that call.'

And Grissom went out.

Sara looked at Warrick, who had a wry half-smile going. 'I can do it,' he said, 'if you're uneasy about it.'

'No. Thanks, but no, I can do this. I should do this….'

Going back to the lab, Sara got out her phone and dialed the number.

Patty Lang picked up on the first ring; the voice was tired-and was that anger as well? 'Hello?'

'Ms. Lang?'

'Yes.'

'This is Sara Sidle. I'm a CSI with the Las Vegas Crime Lab. I'm very sorry to bother you at a time like this.'

'No, you're not bothering,' Patty said, an edge in her voice. 'You're working on my father's murder, aren't