The Key
"Make sure you keep this door propped open," Brass said as he led them into the room. "It locks when it shuts, and we don't have a key."
Nick whistled, looking around at the private library. "Hey Griss, maybe when you give me that raise, I'll get a mansion like this one."
"Fat load of good it did this guy," Sara observed, leaning over the homeowner's body. "Looks like strangulation. What did David say?"
"He agreed." Brass nodded to the corpse. "Folks, meet Richard Cumberland. His son reported him missing after he didn't show up to his daughter's wedding." He glanced at his watch. "My shift ended two hours ago. Have fun with ol' Moneybags here." He left, nodding to the uniform outside the door.
"Okay," Grissom said, opening his kit. "Greg, print the door. Sara and Nick, go over the body, take photos in triplicate. I'll work the rest of the room."
They processed the library quietly. Grissom found several fibers and a long blonde hair by the fireplace, and placed them into evidence bags.
Nick studied the victim's neck bruising and shook his head. "Strangulation. Now that's a rough way to go. If I had my choice, it'd be a gunshot to the brain. Wouldn't feel a thing."
"What about sleeping pills?" Sara reasoned. "You'd just go to sleep and wouldn't wake up."
Grinning, Nick nodded his head toward Grissom, whispering, "He'd probably choose death by insect."
"It can be a quick exit," Grissom said loudly from across the room, startling them. "The funnelweb spider can kill a man in eight seconds. But that's not how I'd choose to go."
"What is?" Sara asked, curious in spite of herself.
He raised an eyebrow. "Old age."
Nick and Sara glanced at each other. In their line of work, it was easy to forget that some people died of natural causes.
Greg finished printing the outside door handle and got to work on the inside one, propping open the door with his knee. He stuck the bindle in his mouth while he dusted. "Hey Gishom, I ha a questia."
"You ha a questia?" Nick repeated, hiding a smile.
Greg spat out the bindle. "I'm sorry, does my speech impediment offend you?"
"Children," Grissom admonished lightly. "Greg, what's your question?"
"Well, this door locks automatically when you shut it, and the lock's pretty complex. So if the responding officer found the door shut when he arrived, how'd he get in? And unless the killer was a locksmith, or MacGyver, he had to have had a key to have gotten out."
It was a good point, and they took a moment to consider it.
"Officer!" Grissom called. The policeman outside poked his head in. "Were you the one who found the victim?"
The man nodded.
"How did you get into the room?"
"Maid let me in," he said. "We questioned her, but then she had to leave to pick up her granddaughter. She's about a hundred years old, no way she could strangle that guy."
"Thanks, buddy," Nick called, and the policeman nodded and left, pulling the door closed behind him.
"No!" they all shrieked in unison.
There was silence from the other side of the door, until finally they heard a faint muttering that sounded foreign.
"What'd he say?" Sara whispered to Nick. He shrugged.
Grissom glanced at the wall of books next to him and plucked out a large volume, flipping through it. "Yup, thought so. he said 'shit' in German."
"I'm calling a locksmith!" They heard the policeman's footsteps retreat, and then there was silence.
"I was done printing the door," Greg sighed.
"We finished processing the body," Nick added.
Grissom nodded. "Yeah, and I got all I could from the room. So I guess we wait."
They sat in silence, Sara mentally going through her grocery list while Grissom perused the shelves of books.
"Score!" Greg pulled a couple of ping pong balls from under the couch, and he and Nick started throwing them back and forth. They tired of it after a while, and the silence descended again.
"This sucks," Nick groaned. "I'm hungry."
Sara hummed in agreement. "I have this weird craving for corn chips."
"You're smelling Greggo's feet."
She looked at Greg in horror, and he managed to look embarrassed.
"I'm pulling a triple. didn't have time to change my socks."
A sudden chuckle from Grissom made them turn around. "Huis Clos," he said, pulling out a book. "No Exit, by Jean-Paul Sartre. Rather fitting, don't you think?"
Nick rolled his eyes.
"Hey Grissom, if you had to be stuck in a room with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be?" Greg asked, stretching out on the floor.
Grissom came over and sat on the couch, squinting thoughtfully. "William Shakespeare. And Socrates. And Abraham Lincoln. And-"
"We got it, Griss, a room full of dead guys," Nick said. "I'd want to be locked in with Christy Turlington. or Cindy Crawford. Unlike Greg, who'd probably want to be stuck with the Teen Girl Squad."
"Soooo good!" Greg chirped.
Nick threw a ping pong ball at Greg's head. "What about you, Sara? Who'd you choose to be stuck with?"
She blushed and shook her head. "It's embarrassing."
Nick scoffed. "Can't be more embarrassing than Teen Girl Squad."
"Owww, my hopes of reaching first baaaase!" Greg howled. Sara started to giggle, snorting accidentally.
"Okay," Nick said, "I'll tell you some of my embarrassing moments. Like the time I got disoriented in football and ran into my own end zone."
"And by football, he means foosball," Greg stage-whispered.
"I did play football," Nick insisted. "I just. you know. kind of sucked at it."
"I played baseball," Grissom piped up. "Designated hitter. My arm never quite got the knack of throwing long distances, but the physics of the bat and the ball made sense to me."
"I never had time for sports," Sara sighed, massaging the back of her neck. "Too busy studying."
"Well, it paid off," Greg said. "Who knows where we'd be without your smarts? Half the criminals in the Vegas jail would be out on the streets."
Nick and Grissom nodded in agreement. Sara swallowed a pleased smile.
"Uh, you guys still in there?" The policeman was back, tapping on the door nervously.
"No," Nick called.
There was silence, then: "Really?"
Grissom chuckled. "Any luck with the locksmith, officer?"
"He's working on it right now."
Sure enough, they heard the scratch of metal on metal. Nick and Greg got up, cracking their backs in unison.
"I think my foot's asleep," Sara murmured. Grissom offered her his hand and pulled her up, holding on a beat longer than necessary.
Finally the door popped open. The policeman shifted from foot to foot in the doorway, looking sheepish as Grissom approached him.
"So tell me," Grissom said conversationally, walking out with the cop. "How do you know German?"
Nick gathered his kit and camera. "Greg, you riding with me?"
"Yup, I'll meet you out there." Greg grabbed the rest of his bindles, packing them up as Nick left. He looked up and noticed Sara still standing in the middle of the room, a soft smile on her face. "Sara?"
"Hmm?" She blinked. "Oh, yeah, I'll meet you back at the lab." She picked up her kit and headed for the door.
Greg picked up the copy of Huis Clos, replacing it on the bookshelf. "Hey Sara?" he called.
She poked her head back in. "Yeah?"
"Who was it that you'd most want to be stuck in a room with?"
Her eyes twinkled. "You three."