Wherefore
Chapter 1
I've seen more than my share of dead bodies. Shot, strangled, sliced, diced, even a few that died from natural causes. I've seen jumpers, sleepers, hangers, and bleeders. But for some reason, this is different.
I can feel it right away, when I enter the hotel room. It's not what's there, it's what's missing. There's no odor of sex and greed, that stale smell of excess that seems to seep into every breath of Las Vegas. No, this room smells like a home. Faint traces of baby powder and shampoo, and a touch of high-end perfume.
The sound of sobbing draws my attention. A dark-haired woman is sitting in the corner, holding a baby and struggling to give a statement to Vartann through tears. Every once in a while, the baby whimpers, and the woman rubs its back with that maternal immediacy that all decent mothers have. She reminds me a little of my mom, maybe.
I blink. Not my mom, but she looks like someone I know.
"Sara."
Turning, I see Greg waiting for me in the bathroom. "Hey," I greet him. "Sorry I was late, I had to stop and get gas."
"No problem," he says easily, then motions to the body. "Vic is Josephine O'Dell, age seventy."
Doesn't seem right. Seventy-year-old women ought to be playing bridge and drinking tea, ironing faded doilies and stroking their cats. Seventy-year-old women shouldn't be lying on the bathroom floor of the Tangiers with their throats slit. I sigh and crouch down, opening my kit.
"You've taken preliminary photos?"
Greg nods. "Printed all the doorknobs, handles, and light switches too."
"It didn't take me that long to get gas," I say suspiciously. "You're taking your time collecting the evidence, right?"
"Yes, Mom," he replies, rolling his eyes. Involuntarily, I glance back at the weeping woman in the next room. God, who does she remind me of?
He catches me looking. "That's the vic's daughter, Juliette. They're here from California on vacation."
The body has soft hands, I notice, as I scrape under her manicured fingernails. There's a jar of expensive moisturizer on the sink, she must have used it regularly. For some reason, I'm glad my hands are covered by latex gloves. I have a feeling Josephine would disapprove of my cuticles.
"How long were they staying?"
Greg's swabbing her nose and mouth. "A week. They were supposed to leave tomorrow."
"Does this seem odd to you?" I ask quietly. "Look at her clothes, her jewelry. Not to mention her toiletries." He glances at the sink as I continue. "This woman had money. And by the look of the room, she and her daughter weren't spending any time gambling - it's filled with shopping bags and baby toys. You can shop anywhere, especially in California. So why did they come to Vegas, and stay in a casino?"
"They won the trip." Vartann's standing in the doorway. "Mrs. Davis was a contestant on a trivia show, and one of her prizes was a week-long stay at the Tangiers."
"Mrs. Davis?"
He jerks his thumb behind him. "Juliette Davis. The daughter."
"Which trivia contest?"
I want to remind Greg that we're here to collect evidence, and not to gossip, but I'm curious too.
"The Wizard."
"Whoa," Greg and I gasp in unison. The Wizard is a game show that came out about a year ago. The premise is that there's this guy, Frank Collingswood, who professes to know everything. He goes up against contestants, battling it out to preserve his title as The Wizard. To my knowledge, no one has ever beaten him.
"It was a tie," Vartann says, answering my unspoken question. "So she won the prizes, but she didn't dethrone him. The episode is set to air next week." His cell phone rings, and he steps out into the hallway to answer it as we continue to process the body.
In general, Greg and I work well together. He's thorough and earnest, and he's got a good eye. He's also impetuous and quick to jump to conclusions, but that's gotten better with time. When he started training to become a CSI, he'd get flustered at the sight of the decomps, the mutilations, the kids. But he's developed a thicker skin, and with the exception of that corpse last month with the live snake in its stomach, little has fazed him lately.
We finish up with the body and get to work on the rest of the room. No sign of shoeprints, but then the hotel room carpet would have wiped any dirt off of the soles before the killer stepped foot on the bathroom tile. Greg checks the toilet, lifting up the seat to see if a man used the facilities and was off with his aim. No such luck, though.
"Did you scrape under her fingernails?"
I spin around to see Juliette Davis standing behind me. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but you can't come in here."
"I just wanted to make sure you scraped," she says, her lips trembling slightly at the sight of her mother's body. "If she put up a struggle, there could be skin cells from her attacker under the nails." I guess our faces give away our surprise, because she adds, "I used to be a forensic scientist."
Interesting. She's in her early forties, I'd guess, and that makes her too young to have retired. We lose a lot of people in my profession to burn-out or disillusionment, but I can tell by the way she's looking over the corpse that neither was the case for her. She's dealing the same way I would - by looking at the scene clinically, staying detached. Tears can wait, but the evidence can't.
"I'm Sara Sidle," I say, standing up. It's clear that she remembers CSI protocol, because it doesn't occur to her to try to shake my hand, as most victims' family members do. "I'm a CSI Level Three, and this is Greg Sanders, CSI Level One. We got all we could off her, and yes, I scraped her nails."
She nods, somewhat pacified. "Thanks."
It might be helpful to have a scientist as a witness, I realize. "Do you notice anything out of the usual in the bathroom?" Other than your dead mother, of course. Stupid, Sara. But she's looking around with that same clinical eye.
"Everything looks like it did when I left."
"And what time was that?"
"Around nine." Her eyes fill with tears again. "Ian always gets fussy that time of night. I carried him down to the casino floor, hoping all the stimulation from the noise and the lights would tire him out. It took about an hour or so, and when we came back up." Her eyes stray back to her mother.
"Mrs. Davis-"
"Juliette, please," she says.
"Juliette. I know Detective Vartann probably asked you this already, but can you think of anyone who'd have a motive to hurt your mother?"
She laughs mirthlessly. "I'd almost forgotten that CSI lingo. Ask the vic's family who would hurt them, not kill them, so the family feels protective and not upset."
I shrug awkwardly, embarrassed in spite of myself.
"Everyone liked my mom," she tells me firmly. "This has to be a random murder."
"But with what motive?" Greg asks from behind me. "Not robbery, since she's wearing several thousand dollars' worth of jewelry. Not sexual assault. So why?"
"Some people like to kill," she says, in that same detached way. "I put in fifteen years as a CSI, and I can tell you definitively, some people just like the rush."
"Okay," Greg concedes, "but usually those are the most elaborate crime scenes." He motions to the floor. "Her throat was slashed in one motion, and that's it. No mutilation, no identifying signatures."
In the next room, the baby begins to cry. Juliette rushes over to take him out of the baby seat, showering him with kisses. "Look, I'd love to help in any way that I can," she says, rocking Ian back and forth with a slight bounce. "Obviously I can't help with the investigation, but any background I can offer."
"Would be welcome," I finish for her. "If you like, we can talk back at the lab."
"That sounds good," she says, flushing with relief. It finally occurs to me that she has nowhere else to go.
"You can ride with me."
Greg and I load the evidence bags into his car and, after making a few silly faces at baby Ian, he leaves. Juliette and I secure the baby car seat in the back of my car.
"He's cute," I observe. It's not a matter of opinion. This kid's face belongs in magazines. He's got his mom's big brown eyes, along with dimpled cheeks and a winning smile.
"He's my whole life," she replies, smoothing his blond hair gently.
We get in the car and head to the lab. There's construction on the main route, so I pull onto a side street, passing a group of hookers and dealers on the corner.
"I bet the Vegas crime lab is hopping," she says, staring at the working girls. "Sin City, and all that."
"We keep busy," I respond simply.
"A lot of weird cases?"
Thinking back to the furries and the man-baby, I nod. "At this point I think I've seen it all."
"You ever see your own mother, lying dead on the bathroom floor?" Her voice is sharper than she probably intends, and she flashes me a contrite look.
"No," I say quietly, glad that she said mother and not parent.
We arrive at the lab, and she remarks on the size.
"We're ranked second in the country," I tell her proudly. "After Quantico."
"Well, sure," she says, getting out of the car and unbuckling Ian. "Quantico will always be first, they've got more funding than they know what to do with."
As we walk into the building, we chat amiably about the struggle for federal funding and keeping up with technology, and it strikes me how much I like this woman. It's unusual for me to connect with anyone so quickly, and I can only assume it's because of the strong resemblance to. whomever.
"Let's talk in here." An interrogation room is free, and we slip in. She laughs at the mirrored wall, asking if the cigarette-smoking man is behind it, and I like her even more.
"It's funny how it all comes back," Juliette muses, looking around. "The feel of a crime lab, the hustle and bustle and. sort of righteous energy that they have. I miss that."
"How long ago did you leave?"
"Three years," she sighs. "The hours were too much of a strain on my marriage. We were trying to have a baby, and my husband blamed my two miscarriages on my work stress. Eventually I had to choose between my career and my family."
"That's rough," I murmur, and I mean it. This job has become my whole life, and I can't imagine being made to leave it. "Is it really that hard to balance a personal life and a career in forensics?"
She nods reluctantly. "For me, yeah. Right from the start. At first I only dated coworkers, since they understood the hours and the psychological strain. At one point I was even engaged to one of them. But I needed someone who was outside the job, who didn't know the rate at which skin dissolves, and didn't care to know. I met Robert and married him nine years ago."
"What does he do?"
"He works in my family's business." Seeing my blank look, she adds, "My father founded O'Dell Financial Group."
Holy cow. No wonder the mother was so well-dressed. O'Dell Financial has made the Fortune 500 for the past twenty years, and last year it cracked the top fifty.
My phone rings, and I answer it with an apologetic smile. "Sidle."
"It's Grissom. What's the status on the Tangiers case?"
"I'm talking to her daughter right now, in Interrogation Room Two."
Juliette smiles faintly.
"Okay if I stop in? What's the woman's name?"
"Of course. Her name's Juliette Davis."
"I'll be there in a few. Just have to check with Charlotte on something."
I close my cell phone, pleased at the warmth in Grissom's tone. It's become more regular as of late, and I'm kind of getting used to it. It doesn't even occur to me to be jealous of Charlotte, a lab tech who went out with Grissom a few times before I came to Vegas. I think over the women that I've seen him show an interest in - Charlotte, Teri Miller, and me - and I've got to say, it doesn't seem like Grissom has a "type." The only thing we all have in common is that we work in forensics. And we're, you know. women.
"Someone joining us?" Juliette asks, leaning over to check on a sleeping Ian.
"My boss. He likes to pop into our cases when he gets a chance, to give a fresh perspective."
She nods absently. "When do you think the coroner will release my mom's body? I'll need to start on funeral arrangements."
"Depends," I say apologetically. "You know how it is."
"I do," she agrees. "Take all the time you need, I know evidence can be found where you least expect it. I'll just need to know when to book the funeral parlor." She turns inward again, like I do with the really rough cases.
The door opens just then, and Grissom comes in with his nose in the case file. "Mrs. Davis, I'm-" He looks up at her and pales. "Julie."
"Gil." She's just as pale. "You. you're Sara's boss?"
His face is slack with what I can only call abject horror. He stares at her, then the baby, then me. Then he turns abruptly and leaves the room. I wince as the door slams shut behind him.
Juliette swears under her breath, closing her eyes.
"What was that?"
She opens her eyes but can't quite meet my gaze, looking instead at the mirrored wall. I look there too, trying to catch her eye in the reflection. Clearing her throat, she murmurs, "Remember that coworker I was engaged to?"
My throat closes up, and I feel my heart pounding in my chest. Not because of the revelation that Grissom was once in love, had once proposed to a woman. Not even because of the violent turn the case has just taken. I'm looking at Juliette's reflection next to mine, and we could be sisters. Maybe Grissom has a type after all.