CSP: Crime Scene Pretender
Jarod straightened the collar of his shirt before pushing open the door of the large building in which was located his newest Pretend. The air inside was cool, and at a temperature which reminded him of the Centre, but there was none of the oppressive atmosphere that was immediately noticeable in that place. He let the door fall closed behind him and moved along the hallway, stopping the first person he saw: a woman with shoulder-length brown hair who was heading in his direction.
“Excuse me,” he
asked. “Can you direct me to Gil Grissom’s office?”
The woman stopped,
deliberately eyeing him from head to toe in a manner reminiscent of Miss
Parker, before steadily meeting his gaze. “You are?”
“Jarod Petersen,”
the Pretender replied. “And you?”
“Sara Sidle.” She
gave him another searching glance. “You can come along with me. I’m going there
now.”
“Thank you,” he
murmured, falling in beside her as she strode along the hallway.
They remained
silent until they arrived at the office to see the man whose photo Jarod had
already seen in his investigation of the Las Vegas Crime Lab peering fixedly at
a six-legged object in a jar.
“Gil?” Sara asked,
and he looked up, placing the jar on his desk.
“Got something?”
“Here.” She handed over
a folder and then jerked her head in Jarod's direction. “Jarod Peterson. He
asked to be directed to your office.”
Gil stood up and,
as Sara left the office, offered his hand. Jarod could see the copies of the
files he had carefully created and sent off several days earlier.
“I got your
application,” Gil told him. “You’re only being loaned to us for a short time, I
believe.”
“A few days,
probably, at most,” Jarod replied, firmly shaking the outstretched hand. “I
have to be back at our office by Monday morning. But I wanted to get some ideas
of how things work here.”
“Fine,” Gil
replied. “Unless something comes up, I’ll let you sit in on a couple of the
cases we’ve got on at the moment. Come and I’ll introduce you to the others.”
Gil was giving Jarod
an outline of the cases when they arrived in the tearoom, in which four people
– two men and two women, including Sara – were sitting. As soon as Gil and
Jarod appeared, the red-haired woman leaned forward and pulled a folder off the
table, holding it out to Gil.
“Finished the
Murray case,” she announced. “I sent the new findings to Brass.”
“And?” Gil asked,
accepting the folder.
“Premeditated
murder,” came the reply, and Jarod only just managed to keep his surprise from
showing on his face. His reason for this latest Pretend had been to work on
that exact case, having believed, from various newspaper reports he had read,
that it seemed as if the killer would get off.
“Oh, by the way,”
Gil said, lifting his eyes from the pages, “this is Jarod Petersen. He’s
joining us for a few days. Catherine Willows,” he added, gesturing at the
redhead. “Nick Stokes and Warwick Brown. And you’ve already met Sara.”
Before Jarod could
do more than acknowledge the introduction, a cell phone rang. Gil pulled his phone
out of his pocket and answered it, his replies mostly monosyllabic.
“Catherine,” he
ordered as soon as he ended the call, “Jarod and Sara, you’re with me. Nick,
you and Warwick are still waiting on lab results, aren’t you?”
“Yup,” Nick agreed.
“But Greg promised to put a rush on them.”
Jarod got the
feeling that Gil only just prevented himself from replying as Sara got up to
join Catherine, Gil and himself in the doorway. Moments later, Gil having given
the address to Catherine, Jarod was in the passenger seat of her car while Sara
and Gil took another to the crime scene.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Jarod was hurriedly
introduced to Jim Brass as the four investigators walked up the path of the
house in which the murder had taken place. Police were already cordoning off
the house and preventing people from entering or leaving the premises. A male
on a stretcher was being loaded into an ambulance, a white pad strapped to an
injury on the back of his head, and a young blond woman was following the EMT
to the vehicle, which had pulled up into the driveway.
“Victor Wilson,”
Jim told them as they arrived at the doorway to the house. “He still hadn’t
properly regained consciousness yet. The woman with him is Anna McCleod. Our
victim,” he continued as they walked further into the house, “ is Patrick
Valenti. It’s a little messy in there,” he added, understating the case, as
they saw the moment they entered the room.
The room was quite
small. A dark-haired man in his mid-30s lay on the floor, his face resting in
blood that had obviously come from the massive wound on the back of his head.
The blood had pooled on the floor, seeping over the slate tiles in front of the
fireplace. A bottle of vodka, still sealed, lay unbroken beside his hand. Nearby
stood a table on which was a collection of other bottles, most of which
contained alcoholic beverages.
Blood dripped from
a bookcase that stood in the corner and there were sprays of it on the ceiling
and two walls. A large round ashtray lay on the floor beside the body. The sash
of the window stood about a foot open and a light breeze made the end of the
rolled blind rattle against the pane.
Another table stood
in the corner. It held a telephone, a blank notepad and a fan, the blades of
which revolved lazily and made little difference to the air in the stifled
room.
“Hmm,” Gil mused,
taking in the scene, his gaze coming to rest on the dead man. “Obviously
someone wasn’t a fan.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Ten minutes later,
the team was working hard at the tasks to which Gil had allocated them. Sara
was taking photos of the scene, Gil was checking for blood, and Jarod and
Catherine were checking out the victim.
“Took several blows
to kill him,” Catherine remarked.
“One wouldn’t have
made as much mess,” Jarod added. “But you’d have to be lucky to get it first
time. Or else be very expert.”
“And our killer
wasn’t,” Gil told them. “They’ve tried to wash away the evidence. There’s blood
in the bath in the ensuite.”
“No footsteps to
the bathroom, though,” Jarod commented as he looked around the room. “Our
killer went to wash their hands?”
“Probably,” Sara
agreed. “I’m done.”
Gil nodded at two
men who had been hovering in the doorway, and who came in to take the body back
to the Crime Lab.
“Sara, you stay
here and finish up,” Gil ordered. “Catherine, I want you and Jarod to see what
you can find out from anyone here. I’ll see what our other friend can tell us –
if anything.”
The four people
split up. Jarod and Catherine asked pointed questions of the other partygoers,
but most of them had had no idea that anything had happened until the police
arrived. This was the deceased’s apartment, and he had come to Vegas looking
for work, having recently been fired by the insurance company for which he had
worked for eight years. Catherine obtained his parent’s address, and as the
police allowed the numerous partygoers leave, she and Jarod went back to check
on Sara.
They found her just
packing away her things.
“All done,” she
announced. “Anything exciting come up?”
“Not so far,”
Catherine told her. “And I just got a call from Gil. He couldn’t talk to our
other vic. He said he’d meet us back at the lab when we’re done.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Some time later,
they were watching Dr. Robbins performing the autopsy.
“Cause of death:
three or possibly four blows to the head. Time of death, about nine o’clock
last night.”
“Blood trails
indicate four,” Sara put in. “Three separate swing patterns on the ceiling, and
the first shot’s a freebie, of course.”
Dr. Robbins
recognized this with a nod before pulling the sheet back to reveal the
athletic-looking corpse. “Nothing out of the ordinary. No cuts, no bruising.
I’m guessing he was taken by surprise – attacked from behind. There’s no sign
he tried to defend himself.”
“So it all comes
down to what Victor Wilson can tell us,” Gil commented. “And that friend of his
– Anna McCleod.”
“Anna McCleod is
our victim’s girlfriend,” Jarod announced, having received this piece of
information from one of the people he questioned.
“So much the
better,” Sara replied. “She can give us some idea about him – enemies and so
forth. Should we get her in?”
“For the moment,
we’ll talk to them both together at the hospital,” Gil told her. “I’m waiting
on a call to say that we can talk to Wilson.”
“She seemed very
calm, considering it’s her boyfriend who’s dead,” Catherine remarked as they
headed out into the hallway.
“She and Wilson
seem… very close,” Gil said, having paused to choose his words.
Before Jarod could
get out the response he was contemplating, Nick and Warwick came up to them.
“We’re done,” Nick
announced.
“Good,” Gil
replied. “Sara, fill them in on this case. Until something else comes up, Nick,
I want you to wait for lab results and let me know them as soon as possible.
I’ve got Greg checking for alcohol, the usual drugs, etcetera. Warwick, I want
you to check the photos I had Sara take. I want to get a map of the scene drawn
up as soon as possible. Catherine and Jarod, we’re going to the hospital. I
want a word with Anna.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
They arrived to
find the doctor waiting for them, having received a call during the trip to say
that Victor was ready for their questions. They were shown into his room, to
find Anna sitting on the bed, but she quickly stood up and took the chair
beside the bed when they appeared. Gil introduced himself and the other two
CSIs, before asking Victor what he could remember about the attack.
“I was trying to
protect him,” Victor said, almost before Gil had finished the question. “I knew
she wanted to kill him. She shoved me backwards and I caught my foot on
something. That’s all I remember.”
“She?” Catherine
asked.
“Jessica,” Victor
told her. “Jessica Stiles. I went into the room and they were arguing. They
used to go out, but it ended badly. I’d just shut the door when she picked up
the ashtray and hit him with it. I went to help him, but I was on the wrong
foot and she shoved me.”
“And what about
you, Miss McCleod?” Gil prompted, turning to the young woman. “Were you in the
room when all this was happening?”
“I was watching the
door,” Anna replied shortly. “But I was the one who called the police. When
Victor didn’t come out, I tried to get in, but the door was locked. So I went
around the outside of the house to look in through the window. When I saw them
lying there, I called the police.”
“Did you open the
window?” Jarod asked.
“Yeah.” Anna
glanced his way, but quickly turned her attention back to Gil. “I wanted to help
them. But I couldn’t get in.”
“Did you see
Jessica leave?” Gil queried.
“No. Nobody came
out of that room between the time Victor went in and the time I went around to
look in the window.”
“You’re sure about
that?” Catherine confirmed.
“One hundred per
cent sure,” Anna replied.
“Tell me about
Patrick,” Gil suggested.
Anna shrugged
slightly. “Oh, he was nice enough. Sweet when he wanted to be. Gentle.”
Jarod glimpsed a
flash of an emotion he suspected might have been envy in Victor’s eyes, before
turning his attention back to Anna. “If you’ll forgive me saying this, you
don’t seem overly concerned about your boyfriend dying.”
“We were finished,”
Anna said flatly. “Sure, we were still going out officially, but I caught him
with someone else, and…”
“Who?” Gil
demanded.
“I don’t think
that’s any of your business,” she told him icily.
“On the contrary,
as your boyfriend is now dead, anyone who might have had a reason to kill him
is my business,” Gil retorted.
Her eyes fell and
she examined the floor for a moment. “Jessica Stiles,” she replied eventually.
“And why would she
have been arguing with him, do you think?” Gil asked in wry tones.
“How should I
know?” she demanded, her blue eyes shooting sparks. “Ask her – if she’ll tell
you. She’s a great liar.”
There was a moment
of silence, and then Gil gestured at a brown paper bag standing on the floor
beside the bed. “Are these yours, Mr. Wilson?”
“Yeah, I… I guess.”
Victor looked concerned. “Why?”
“We’d like to take
them to see if we can get anything off them that might help in the case,” Gil
explained, then, noticing that Victor’s expression was anxious, “Is that a
problem?”
“I’ll bring you in
some more,” Anna told him soothingly.
Gil took the bag
before Victor could protest further and the three investigators left the room.
“Interesting,”
Catherine said lightly. “Quite a network of emotional attachments.”
“And, unless I’m
wrong, there’s another one in the process of being created,” Jarod put in,
looking back through the window to see Anna stroke Victor’s cheek, once more
sitting on the bed beside him.
Gil handed
Catherine the paper bag. “Take those back to the lab and see if you can get any
epithelials of unknown persons who could be our killer. Jarod, you and I are
going to talk to Jessica Stiles.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
A woman in her
early 30s with auburn hair and green eyes opened the door in response to Gil’s
knock. “Can I help you?”
“Gil Grissom and
Jarod Petersen, Las Vegas Crime Lab,” Gil told her, flashing his badge.
“I suppose this
isn’t about my job application?” the woman asked.
Gil ignored this.
“Jessica Stiles?”
“Yes.”
“We’d like to talk
to you about Patrick Valenti.”
She stepped aside
to allow them in, and Jarod noted the anxious expression in her eyes as they
moved into her living room.
“Is he dead?” she
asked flatly as they sat down.
“What was the
extent of your relationship with him?” Gil asked in return.
Jessica met his
gaze. “I know the tricks of your trade, Mr. Grissom,” she said coldly. “Tell me
if he’d dead and I’ll answer as many of your questions as I think is wise.”
“Yes, he is,” Gil
told her bluntly. “He was killed last night, at a party I believe you also
attended.” He paused, waiting for her to say something, but she remained
silent. When the silence had continued for some minutes, Gil continued. “Do you
want to tell me what went on last night?”
“I thought you
wanted to know about what you called ‘my relationship with him’,” she shot
back, lightly rubbing her right hand with the fingers of her left.
“Tell me anything
‘you think is wise’,” he retorted.
“Patrick and I
dated two years ago for about eighteen months. We broke up about six months
ago, when we felt that it wasn’t working. It was a shared decision.”
“And when did he
start going out with Anna McCleod?” Jarod asked.
“I believe it was
about a month ago,” Jessica told him, turning slightly in his direction as she
said this. “He had fancied her for a long time – he likes blond women – liked,
I should say – but, to the best of my knowledge, he was faithful to me during
the whole of our relationship.”
“And how faithful
was he to Anna?” Gil queried.
“I have no idea,”
Jessica replied. “I never saw any sign of him cheating on her, though.”
“She suggested to
us that he had a recent affair with you,” Jarod offered.
“Crap,” she replied
succinctly. “I’d had my turn with him. If I wanted him that badly, I wouldn’t
have agreed to break up with him in the first place.”
“Why don’t you tell
me what happened last night?” Gil suggested.
She thought for a
moment, obviously choosing her words, before beginning to speak.
“I got to the party
about eight o’clock. Patrick and a whole bunch of other people were around the
pool. I went into the bedroom to dump my stuff, but Pat told me to put it in
the living room, as he wanted to keep the bedroom clear. I guessed he was
hoping to have some time alone with Anna, so I just dumped it where he told me.
He followed me into the living room and we started talking. A few others came
in, some as they arrived and others from the pool who wanted to use the
bathroom.”
“When did Anna and
Victor arrive?” Jarod asked.
“They were already
there,” Jessica told him. “Most people were. I was late. Pat usually started
his parties pretty early and bought pizzas or something for dinner.”
“Did Patrick
smoke?” Gil asked suddenly, and Jessica shot him a puzzled glance.
“No.”
“Tell me about
him,” Gil suggested.
Another hesitation
preceded her words. “He was a pleasant enough individual if things were going
his way,” she said eventually. “He could lose his temper fast enough if they
weren’t, though. He never hit me or anything, but then I knew better than to
get in his way.”
“Can you think of
any reason why people would want him dead?” Jarod asked.
“Nothing springs to
mind,” she retorted.
Gil reached into
his pocket and extracted a piece of card, but before he could say anything,
Jessica held out her hands.
“Fingerprints,” she
said in return to the surprised glance Jarod shot at her. “Go ahead.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
The whole team
gathered to review the evidence they had collected so far.
“No fingerprints on
the ashtray,” Sara reported. “There was only blood from our vic.”
“Wilson’s clothes
contain both his blood and that of our vic,” Warwick put in. “Tox reports said
there was some alcohol in our vic’s blood, but below the legal limit. With his
build, he’d have been unlikely to be affected by it.”
“What about
nicotine?” Jarod asked.
“None,” came the
reply.
“The room doesn’t
show anything extraordinary,” Nick added in his turn. “No footprints. Blood
spatter shows the arc of the ashtray, and there are also faint trails that
might be a path to the bathroom. I went back over the place with luminol, but I
couldn’t get anything else. My guess is that the marks are drips from the
fingers.”
“I got fingerprints
from the window that match those of Jessica Stiles,” Jarod reported. “They
suggest that she opened the window, but there’s no transfer. I went with Nick
and checked that, and there was not sign of blood, apart from a few drops that
flew off the ashtray during an upswing, judging by their splatter patterns.”
“I found blood from
both our vic and Wilson on Wilson’s clothes,” Catherine told them. “Wilson’s
seems to come from his head wound, but I’m not sure about our vic’s. There are
sprays that seem to fit with those we found on the ceiling and the walls.”
“Interesting,” Gil
mused. “So do we have a complete picture of what happened yet?”
Warwick turned to
the computer in front of which he was sitting and brought up a plan of the
room. “I’ve gone on what we were told by Wilson and McCleod,” he announced.
“Our victim was standing facing the table. Stiles was probably standing here,”
he brought in a small silhouette and placed it near the coffee table, on which
could be seen a computer drawing of the ashtray. “They argue,” Warwick
continued, “and our vic takes out some of his frustration by trying to open the
vodka, but it’s not opening easily. This gives Stiles a chance to club him over
the head with the ashtray the first time. Then Wilson comes in, sees what’s
going on, and comes to help.”
As he moved another
silhouette into the picture, Sara continued with the characters’ movements.
“Stiles shoves Wilson backwards and he falls. With both him and the vic
unconscious, she locks the door and then clubs our vic to death. Maybe she
thinks Wilson is already dead, or she doesn’t want a double murder on her
hands. Anyway, she leaves the ashtray on the floor and goes to wash her hands.
Then she leaves through the window.”
“I’m not so sure,”
Jarod said, after a moment of silence, and the others turned to him. “For that
to work, there would have to be blood on the window. It wouldn’t be possible to
avoid transfer. And according to Stiles, our vic was given to aggression. If
they were arguing, why take out his frustration on the bottle when he could
take it out on her?”
“She stays out of
his way,” Gil reminded him.
“But if he was
coming towards her, that makes it a little difficult to take him by surprise,
and particularly to get a knock that hard to the back of his head, and then,”
Jarod went on, warming to his topic, “if he was coming at her and she grabbed
the ashtray as something to use defensively, her prints would be on it. She’d
hardly ask him to hold on a moment while she used her shirt or gloves or
something to grab it.”
“So you don’t think
she did it?” Sara asked.
“No.” Jarod shook
his head and, at Nick’s invitation, took over the computer, moving the
silhouettes around the model of the room. “I think either she had help,
possibly from Wilson, or someone else did it.”
“So Wilson kills
our vic, and then Stiles knocks out Wilson?” Gil proposed.
“It’s possible,”
Jarod replied. “Or someone else did. The main thing I don’t think fits for her
is motive. She had her time with Patrick Valenti, according to what she told
us, and we’ve got no reason to doubt that. Why would she need to have an affair
with him? If she was as close to him as she was suggesting, she would probably
have known that he and McCleod were almost finished, and she could have waited
until that was over before making her move.”
“So what did happen
then?” Sara asked, looking miffed at having her pet theory contradicted.
“If we assume it’s
not premeditated – and most of the evidence suggests that it isn’t – I’m
inclined to think that either Wilson did it alone, they did it together, or
someone else entirely did it. Was there anyone else who had opportunity?”
“Not according to
the testimonies,” Catherine told him. “But it’s a party. It’s hard to keep
track of everyone all the time in a situation like that, with people moving
around constantly.”
There was a moment
of silence while the others digested this information.
“What do we know
about our main suspects?” Gil finally prompted.
Catherine produced
a sheet of paper showing links between the victim and the suspects they had so
far.
“Our victim,
Patrick Valenti, was going out with Anna McCleod,” she began, “but used to go
out with, and seemingly remained friends with, Jessica Stiles. It seems that
Anna McCleod is also emotionally attached to Victor Wilson.”
“So what do we have
to go on?” Sara asked. “Motive?”
“The only one who
seems to have a real motive is Jessica Stiles,” Warwick replied. “Jealousy of
the fact that our vic and Anna were together. Maybe Anna might have been
jealous of Jessica, but there’s no sign that she was ever in the room.”
“Why was she
watching the door?” Nick asked suddenly. “Who goes to a party to stare at a
door all night?”
“Mistrust of her
boyfriend,” Jarod suggested. “Or maybe wanting to keep an eye on Wilson.”
“I want to find out
more about Wilson, and Stiles,” Gil declared. “Warwick and Sara, you go back to
all the people who were at the party and find out what they knew about them.
Catherine, find out everything you can about Jessica Stiles. Nick, you look
into Victor Wilson. Jarod, you and I are going to get a warrant for Jessica’s
clothing. I want to see what she wore to that party.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Jessica Stiles
seemed unsurprised when Jarod and Gil turned up at her house again, this time
armed with a warrant, and made no protest, allowing them inside and showing
them to her wardrobe and washing basket.
“My shoes are on
this shelf here,” she said, showing them the pairs of shoes lined up on a shelf
that stood at about elbow height in the wardrobe. Then, taking down a pair,
“These are the ones I wore at the party.”
She retreated to
her desk and sat down to watch Gil go through her clothes. Jarod, meanwhile
found himself in her bathroom, with a wicker basket, in which were obvious
dirty clothes. As he collected the clothes and placed them in paper bags,
numbering them according to the order in which he found them in the basket, he
glanced around the room.
The vanity
contained a variety of bottles and jars, mostly skincare products, as well as
the usual toothbrush and paste. A plastic basket hung from the taps in the
shower and held several bottles of shampoo and conditioner. There were safety
strips on the bottom of the shower, in the bath and also on the floor. The most
noticeable thing about the room was that it was scrupulously clean. Even the
mirror was free of any spots.
“I guessed you’d be
coming and cleaned up a little,” Jessica’s voice said from behind him, and he
turned to find her standing in the doorway.
“Very perceptive of
you,” Jarod replied. “What made you think that?”
A tiny smile curled
the corners of her mouth before fading. “That’s my little secret,” she
retorted.
Gil came out of the
bedroom at this point, carrying several bags of clothes. “We’ll probably want
to ask you some questions,” he told her.
“I’ll stay by the
phone,” she replied drily as they left.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
The team met again
several hours later to compare notes.
“All right,” Gil
began, “we found no traces of blood on any of the clothes from Jessica Stiles’
home. This either supports Jarod's theory, or else she hid or destroyed the
ones she wore that night after she killed our vic, depending on which way you
look at it.”
“She’d know how to
cover her tracks,” Catherine said. “Brass checked her background. She’s an
ex-CSI. She gave up the job six months ago.”
This revelation
resulted in a moment’s stunned silence, while Jarod thought that this at least
explained her knowledge of their questioning and the likelihood of them
returning with a warrant.
“Anything else?”
Gil asked.
“I contacted some
of her ex-workmates,” Catherine told him. “Everyone I spoke to said that she
was cool and collected when she was working, but pleasant and friendly outside
of it.”
“Why did she quit?”
Jarod asked.
“I don’t know,”
Catherine admitted. “Her boss showed me her letter of resignation. She didn’t
give a reason. Just some vague stuff about the pressure of the job. And he told
me that she hadn’t had any personal cases in the last few months that might
have brought her to it.”
“She resigned her
job at about the same time as she broke up with our vic,” Sara commented.
“No one at work
knew much about her outside relationships,” Catherine put in. “I asked. Only
one of her colleagues had met Patrick Valenti, but even then it was at a work
gathering, so she couldn’t say much about him. Most of her comments were about
his appearance, etcetera. Nothing helpful.”
“What about Victor
Wilson?” Gil asked, turning to Nick.
“He’s been
unemployed for about five years, ever since he graduated from college,” Nick
told him. “He only just scraped through his degree. I couldn’t get hold of any
details about ex-classmates. I did talk to his old principal, but he barely
remembered him.”
“And the people at
the party?” Gil prompted, turning his attention to Warwick and Sara.
“The general
consensus was that Victor Wilson had a hot temper when he wasn’t happy about
things,” Sara replied. “Most people barely knew him. It seems he came along
with Anna McCleod to a lot things that she went to. He and our vic seemed to
know each other, though. Some people remember other parties when they’d be seen
in conversation together.”
“Pleasure?”
Catherine asked.
“Business,” Sara
responded flatly. “More than one person said that it seemed like they were
negotiating something.”
There was another
moment of silence while the six people in the room considered the new
information and tried to fit it into the various possible scenarios of the
case. Gil broke the silence.
“I think we need to
find out some more details about that night. Let’s get Jessica and Anna here.
Warwick, you and Catherine take Anna. Sara, you and I will take Jessica. Nick
and Jarod, let’s go over that crime scene one more time, just to make sure we
haven’t missed anything.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
“I arrived at the
party at around 7:30pm,” Anna said, in response to Catherine’s questions.
“Victor came with me. He doesn’t have a car, so I drove him. He lives a few
blocks from me.”
“And what did you
do when you got there?” Catherine asked.
“We stayed out by
the pool for a while, talking to people I knew, and then we went inside to get
a drink. I was chatting with someone in the hallway while Victor went in to get
drinks for us. I saw that Jessica was already in there, and I could hear Patrick’s
voice. After a while, the door was closed. I don’t remember who did it. I
waited outside for a while, chatting to people. I never saw anyone come out
until I tried the door.”
“Nobody else went
in to get a drink?” Warwick prompted.
Anna glanced at her
lawyer, who sat beside her, and who nodded, before she answered. “There was a
tub of ice out by the pool that had beer and sodas and stuff in it. Patrick
kept vodka and spirits and stuff in his living room.”
“And nobody else
wanted that sort of drink?” Warwick queried.
“I just told you, I
was watching that door from the time Victor went into the room. Nobody else
went in,” Anna replied impatiently.
“And you never went
in yourself?”
“No!”
Catherine changed
the angle of questioning. “Tell me your opinion of Jessica Stiles.”
“She’s a slut,”
Anna said bluntly. “She was always trying to catch Patrick’s eye and talk to
him. She wanted to get him back. Couldn’t deal with the fact that he liked me
better, probably.”
“When did they
break up?”
“I don’t know.”
Anna shrugged graceful shoulders. “I only know that, a month ago, he started
hitting on me. I’m not stupid. I know what the signs mean. And even if they
were still going out, she obviously wasn’t satisfying him, if you know what I
mean.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
In another room,
Jessica was proving to be less willing to talk. She had come alone, and Gil had
been quick to remind her that she could have a lawyer if she wanted one.
“I know what I
should and shouldn’t say,” came the reply. “I spent years in your shoes, Mr.
Grissom. I probably even know what questions you’re going to ask.”
“Then what say you
start answering them right away,” Gil suggested.
She met his gaze
steadily, her expression reserved. “All right. What time did I arrive at the
party? About eight. Was I alone? Yes. Why was I late? Because I hate being one
of the first to arrive. What did I do? I went to find Pat and tell him that I
was here. I’ve already told you where he was and what we did. Would you like me
to repeat it for the benefit of your colleague? ”
“That won’t be
necessary,” Gil told her. “Let’s talk about you. You were a CSI until six
months ago. Why did you resign?”
“The pressures of
work,” Jessica replied. “I’d been doing it for close to ten years and it was
wearing me down. I thought about transferring to a different area, but decided
I wanted a complete break. I’m looking for something else now. Hopefully
something in the media field.”
“What are your
impressions of Patrick Valenti and Victor Wilson?” Sara asked.
“I’ve already told
Mr. Grissom about Patrick. He had a hot temper, but usually he was nice enough.
Not a particularly calm person, but it was certainly always exciting around
him. Victor Wilson wasn’t someone I knew particularly well. He and Pat met some
time ago. I’m afraid I don’t the extent of their relationship, other than that
it seemed businesslike. He always hung like a limpet to Anna. I don’t think
he’s a particularly nice person, but that’s a personal feeling based on having
only had a few conversations with him, although he’s been to almost every party
I’ve attended for the past few years. He isn’t very good at talking.”
“Can you think of
any reason why either of them might want to kill Patrick Valenti?” Gil asked.
Jessica thought for
a moment. “No,” she admitted finally. “I can’t.”
“And what about
yourself?” Sara prompted. “Maybe a little jealousy about Patrick finding
another woman so soon? Unhappy that he found himself a partner and you didn’t?”
Jessica looked up
at the other woman coldly, her green eyes flashing. “If you’re going to charge
me with murder, Miss Sidle, I’d rather you just got on with it instead of
trying to slander my character,” she said in icy tones.
“We aren’t going to
charge you,” Gil told her. “Not yet anyway. Tell me more about the party. When
did you leave?”
Jessica sighed
impatiently. “I stayed talking with Patrick until about half past eight, maybe
a little later. Victor came in a little before I left. I got the feeling Pat
wanted to talk to him, so I didn’t hang around. Then I met Brian outside the
room and he asked me to drive him home.”
“Brian?” Sara
prompted.
“Brian Chandler. An
old school-friend of mine.”
“And why did he ask
you to drive him home?” Gil queried.
“He’d had a bit to
drink and didn’t want to risk driving. He’s only just got his license back
after losing it for being DUI, and he’d caught a lift to the party with another
friend of his to get there. He had to work early, so he asked me to drive him
home. When I got out to his place – it’s on the other side of the city – I
decided I didn’t want to go back to the party, so I went home instead.”
“Did Patrick know
you were going to do that?” Gil asked.
“I didn’t tell him,
if that’s what you mean, but it wasn’t really any of his business what I did.
It’s not like we’re still together.” She turned her gaze on Sara. “Or that I
want to be.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Nick and Jarod had
drawn an imaginary line down the room and were busy in their respective halves.
The blood had been cleaned up from around the fireplace, but marks on both the
slate tiles and on the walls and ceiling showed where it had been.
“I got a partial,”
Nick announced from the window. “Palm print, I think. It’s too big for a
finger.”
“On the glass?”
“No, the ledge.
And,” he held up a little envelope, “cloth scrap.”
“Any blood on it?”
“I’ll check back at
the lab,” Nick told him. “Any luck on your side?”
“More fibers like
those we found on our vic’s body,” Jarod told him. “Did we get a match on
those?”
“No, they were too
bloody. Are these better?”
“They’re certainly
cleaner,” Jarod told him. “They’re on the table here, beside the bottles, near
where our vic ended up.”
They continued to
work in silence for a moment before Nick looked up again. “So do you think she
did it? The woman?”
“Jessica Stiles?
No, I don’t.” Jarod shook his head. “Call it gut instinct, but I just can’t believe
she’d do it. My only problem is trying to work out why anyone else would.”
Nick murmured his
agreement as he turned back to collecting his print.
“You know,” Jarod
said suddenly, casting an eye around the room. “There’s something wrong with
all of this.”
“What?” Nick asked.
Jarod cast another
searching look around before realizing what it was that had disturbed him. He
went to the door and bent down to look at the look.
“This has been
jimmied open by the police or the EMTs, right?”
“We know it was
locked,” Nick reminded him.
“So where’s the
key?” Jarod asked. “It should be in the door, right? Or in a pocket. But we
haven’t found it yet, and we’ve been through our vic’s clothes, and Jessica’s.
It’s nowhere in this room that we’ve found. So where is it?”
“Good point,” Nick
agreed. “I’m done here so I’ll take a look outside and see if I can find it.
You keep on in here.”
Jarod continued to
work while Nick searched the garden, but the rest of the evidence seemed to
have already been collected. Finally, an hour or so after they arrived, with
Nick having failed to find the key, they headed back to the lab.
Jarod went to try
to get a match with the fibers he had found while Nick took the cloth scrap to
test it for blood. Catherine came to tell them what had been said during the
interview with Anna McCleod and Gil appeared just in time for Nick to announce
that the cloth scrap had no blood.
“How about those
fibers?” Gil asked Jarod.
“Most match our
vic’s shirt,” Jarod told him. “But there are a few that seem to be from
Wilson’s shirt.”
“Gil,” Jim Brass’s
voice demanded from the doorway at this point. “Someone here to see you.”
The group looked up
at this, but only Gil spoke. “Who is it?”
“He said his name’s
Brian Chandler.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
“So, Mr. Chandler,”
Gil began, “what can we do for you?”
“I…I had to come
and tell you,” Brian began, his tones revealing his nerves, before suddenly
changing his tone and the direction of his speech. “I read about Pat’s death in
the paper, and I figured most people wouldn’t have noticed me at the party. I
thought maybe I could help.”
“On the contrary,
we’ve already heard you were there from Jessica Stiles,” Sara told him.
“Yeah, she… she
drove me home,” he agreed.
“What do you do for
a job, Mr. Chandler?” Gil prompted.
“I’m a bank teller.
I… I open the bank every morning for the other employees, so I have to get
there early. That’s why I left the party so early.”
“What did you
really come to tell us, Mr. Chandler?” Jarod demanded at this point, thinking
that the man’s nerves reminded him of Broots and knowing from his experience
with the Centre employee that directness was the best way to approach him.
“W… what did A…
Anna say about what she was doing before P… Pat died?”
Gil’s gaze became
suddenly fixed. “She says she was watching a certain door. Do you know
differently?”
“Yeah!” Brian
blurted out, pushing his glasses up his nose as they slipped down. “She was a
little drunk. She’d been drinking steadily ever since I got there. Spirits
mostly. She was pretty gone. Thought she was sober as a judge though. But I…
I’ve always had the hots for her.” His face glowed red. “I talked her into
bed.”
This revelation was
met with no overt response from the investigators.
“How long,” Gil
asked calmly, “would you say you spent there?”
“Only about twenty
minutes,” Brian told him. “I got her in there about eight. Maybe a bit later, I
don’t know for sure. I guess it was around eight thirty when she left. I went
out to the pool and saw Jessica getting herself a drink. I asked her to drive
me home.”
“Was there anyone
in the hallway when you left?”
“No. Jess got her
bag and we left. The next thing I know, I’m reading in the papers that Pat’s
dead.”
Gil nodded slowly
before he spoke. “Mr. Chandler, I wonder if you’d do me a little favour. Play a
little game with us.”
Brian looked
puzzled. “Like what?”
“All you have to do
is walk down the hall,” Gil told him. “Anna’s still here. I want her to see
you.”
“Oh, I get it.”
Brian looked relieved. “You want her to realize that I’ve told you what
happened so she’ll admit she was telling the truth. I watch a lot of detective
dramas,” he replied in answer to the questioning glance Jarod shot him.
“As it happens,
you’re right,” Gil replied. “Thank you for coming and telling us all that, Mr.
Chandler. It’s been very helpful.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Anna broke down at
the sight of Brian Chandler and admitted that she had had sex with him when she
had claimed to be watching the door, blaming the drink Patrick had mixed her
for the ‘lapse of judgment’. However she denied knowing what had happened in the
living room, and as there was no proof of her being there during the murder,
they decided that she had no further use to the investigation.
The team sat down
for yet another discussion.
“That palm print I
found matches Jessica Stiles’ hand,” Nick reported. “But it’s facing into the
room. The scrap of fabric on the window ledge comes from the shirt we found in
her laundry basket. There’s also a soda stain on the shirt that runs onto the
skirt. Those are definitely the clothes she wore to the party, or at least that
she was wearing in that room at some point.”
“Which means she
could still have done it,” Sara pointed out. “We can’t pin down the time of
death to the exact minute. What if it was earlier than we think and she did do
it – killed them, I mean – and slipped out. Anna and Brian are in bed together
and everyone else is out by the pool. She could change clothes without anyone
seeing her and then be outside to meet Brian and set up a nice watertight
alibi.”
“But we don’t have
reasonable doubt,” Catherine reminded her. “Without that, we’ll never get a
conviction on this.”
“You know,” Jarod
began slowly, “maybe we’re asking the wrong questions. There’s one person in
this we really don’t know anything about. Our victim. All we know about Patrick
Valenti is that he was in his mid-thirties, was probably pretty athletic, and
someone hated him enough to kill him. We don’t even know why someone hated him
that much.”
“He was an
insurance salesman,” Sara offered. “I was told that much.”
“Jessica liked him
but thought he was dangerous,” Gil added. “Anna thought he was ‘nice’, but she
also thought he was gentle…”
“She also never
called him by the shortened version of his name,” Jarod put in, suddenly
realizing this for the first time.
“Some of his other
friends called him ‘Pat’ when we talked to them,” Nick added.
“Isn’t a little
bizarre that his girlfriend wouldn’t use the same short?” Jarod asked. “So if
we discount what she told us, as she obviously isn’t reliable, considering we
know she’s lied on at last one occasion, we’re left with a short-tempered,
violent man who was fine when he got what he wanted.”
“So if he didn’t
get it and went off at the deep end, and someone was afraid for their lives,”
Gil continued, “we would have a set-up for murder.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Jarod felt that something was wrong when they pulled up in front of Jessica
Stiles’ house, and a glance at Gil showed that he seemed to have sensed the
same unease, because he had pulled his gun out of his holster and was holding
it at the ready. Then Jarod realized what had caught his eye – the front door
was standing slightly ajar. He stepped up beside Gil and they quickly covered
the short distance between their car and the door.
“Miss Stiles?” Gil
called as they approached. “It’s Mr. Grissom from the Crime Lab. Are you–?”
He stopped
suddenly, and at the same moment, Jarod noticed the note on the front door.
‘To the
person who finds me,’ it read, ‘I’m sorry.’
Gil almost threw
his gun into its holster and shoved the front door open so hard that it nearly
slammed back in his face.
“Miss Stiles!” he
yelled. “Jessica!”
By unspoken
agreement, the two men split up, Jarod going towards the bedroom and bathroom,
while Gil went into the kitchen area. It was Jarod who found Jessica, sitting
upright in the bath, her head lolling back, her eyes closed and face gray. A
plate lay on her lap and a glass in her limp hand had fallen onto its side, the
contents having drained away down the plughole, her black pants soaked along
the path of the liquid.
“Gil!” he yelled,
dropping to his knees and feeling urgently for a pulse. An instant later, Gil
was behind him and pulling his cell phone out of his pocket to call for an
ambulance.
Jarod looked
desperately around the room and his eyes fixed on the bin. With a bound, he
crossed the room and yanked off the lid, pulling out two packets of ibuprofen
tablets, both of which were empty. He showed them to Gil, who reported the
discovery to the person on the other end of the line, before Jarod returned to
the woman’s side and once more checked for a pulse, shaking her in an attempt
to wake her, which produced no effect.
The ambulance
pulled into the driveway almost before Jarod had realized that Gil had ended
the call, and he stepped away while the EMTs began to treat her. He moved out
of the room, finding himself in her bedroom, and looked around, noticing a
range of bottles on the bedside table. Most, he saw, were painkillers of
varying strengths, and he wondered if Jessica had been trying to decide which
drug would be the best for her intention.
The unconscious
woman was loaded onto the gurney and wheeled out of the house, Gil still
providing his details to the EMTs, and Jarod followed them out into the living
room. For the first time, he noticed the folded note on the table and, seeing
that it was addressed to Gil, stuffed it into his pocket. He took one last
searching look around the room before following the group out of the house and
closing the door.
In the car, Gil
stared at the steering wheel blankly for a moment and Jarod hesitated before
speaking.
“The prognosis for
someone who overdoses on ibuprofen is good, if they get medical treatment in
time,” he offered softly. “She’s still alive, Gil.”
“I’ve never had
anyone try that before,” Gil murmured. “Not because of me.”
“It’s unlikely to
just be you – or us,” Jarod told him. “Very rarely will a suicidal person
decide to take action because of one thing. It will be a whole combination of
things.”
There was a moment
of awkward silence, with Jarod desperately searching for something to say but,
for once, being unable to come up with the appropriate words.
“I don’t believe
she did it,” Gil said suddenly. “It just wouldn’t be in character.”
Jarod guessed that
the other man was referring to the murder of Patrick Valenti rather than her
attempt to take her own life, and Jarod agreed. It would be out of character
for someone feeling so depressed to take such violent action against somebody
else when they would be willing to do that to themselves.
“Let’s get back to
the lab,” Gil declared, turning the key in the ignition. “I want to run the
scene and see if we’ve missed anything.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Once back in
familiar surroundings, Gil seemed to regain his usual attitude, although Jarod
guessed that he was still shocked by what he had experienced, as was Jarod
himself. He had had very little experience with suicide during his time out of
the Centre, and certainly none while he had been inside it.
“Everyone take on
the role of someone involved in our crime,” Gil ordered the team. “Jarod,
you’re Patrick. Warwick, Victor. Catherine, I want you to be Jessica, and Sara,
you’re Anna. Nick, you get to be Brian.”
“I’ve waited so
long for this,” Nick joked, leering at Sara, and the others laughed.
The room was set up
to resemble the living room of Patrick Valenti’s house, with a chair
representing the door.
“Okay, it’s eight
o’clock and we’re running with Sara’s scenario that Jessica was the killer,”
Gil directed them. “Jessica arrives at the party and comes out to find everyone
out by the pool. We’ll move time forward to when Jessica and Patrick come into
the living room,” he continued, and Jarod and Catherine stepped into the space.
“Patrick has a bottle of vodka in his hand,” giving Jarod an empty flask that
stood on a nearby table, along with several other props, “and they start
arguing, possibly about Anna. Patrick turns, maybe to get a glass or a
corkscrew or something, and Jessica picks up the ashtray,” he handed a book to
Catherine to represent the ashtray, “and slams it into the first point of
impact, the nape of the neck.”
Catherine pretended
to club Jarod on the back of the neck, and Jarod immediately dropped to the
floor. Then he rolled over and looked up at the people around him.
“There wasn’t
enough force to drive me forward,” he declared. “We found Patrick’s body like
this,” he rolled onto his face again and stretched out, “but being hit like
Catherine just pretended to hit me, I’d drop on the spot. I wouldn’t be thrown
forward.”
The others
considered this for a moment, but Gil decided to continue the simulation
anyway.
“Victor comes into
the room and sees what’s going on,” he went on, and Warwick stepped past the
chair. “He comes to help and Jessica shoves him backwards.”
Catherine pushed
Warwick in the chest, and Warwick stumbled backwards.
“He got a long way
into the room before Jessica noticed him,” Sara mused. “All the way from the
door to the other side of the room. Would she really give him that much
chance?”
“And how do I get
Victor’s clothing fibers on me if he’s all the way over here?” Jarod demanded.
“At what point does he touch me?”
“Okay, so this
isn’t working,” Gil admitted. “What say we try it with Jarod's scenario and the
story Jessica told us?”
“Want to take over
being the corpse and I’ll be the narrator?” Jarod asked with a grin, but Gil
just told him to lie down again.
“Actually, no,
don’t,” Nick interrupted. “Let’s start from the time Jessica arrives again.
We’ll get a better idea if we do.”
Jarod got his feet
and dusted himself off before putting the flask down on the table.
“So everyone’s at
the party,” Gil said. “Jessica goes to drop her stuff in the bedroom, but
Patrick tells her to put it in the living room. They end up there together and
talk. Jessica takes a seat on the windowsill, explaining how that palm-print
got there. They’re friends, so they talk about mundane things, maybe work or
how Jessica’s hunt for a job is going.”
“Victor comes into
the room to get a drink,” Warwick announced, swaggering in.
“And Anna takes her
place outside the room,” Sara added. “The door is closed,” Gil obligingly moved
the chair, “and then Brian starts making his advances.” As Nick moved towards
her, she reached out and stopped him with a hand on his chest. “Let’s just all
imagine that bit instead, shall we?”
“It’s about eight
o’clock, or maybe a little later, which ties in with the times Jessica gave
us,” Jarod put in. “Anna and Brian head for the bedroom, and the conversation
in the living room becomes a little intense.”
“Jessica feels
uncomfortable and leaves, tearing a scrap off of her shirt as she gets up, ”
Catherine said, rising from the chair that had represented the windowsill. “She
goes out to the pool to get a drink, but is hardly noticed because the party is
in full swing. Apparently there were some pretty explicit games going on in the
pool.”
“Victor and Patrick
start to talk business after one of them locks the door,” Jarod added.
“Victor locked the
door,” Catherine said. “I found a key in his pocket, but I assumed it was his
house key or something. I’m guessing it’s the key to that room instead.”
“Okay, so once the
door’s locked, they get down to whatever their business is.”
“Blackmail,” Jim
Brass suddenly put in from the doorway. “I checked his police records. Patrick Valenti
has a report for blackmail against him, but the victim refused to testify.”
“We have motive,”
Catherine said, her eyes shining.
“Okay, so Patrick’s
blackmailing Victor,” Gil added. “Maybe they reach a deal. Patrick gets the
vodka to celebrate and Victor gets the ashtray. They’re about the same height,
so if Victor swung the bookend horizontally, it’s going to create the impetus
to send Patrick full-length onto his face.”
Warwick picked up
the book. “Sorry,” he apologized to Jarod, before vigorously swinging the
object, but Jarod dropped in the last second before the book would have come
into contact with his neck and lay on the ground. The flask fell from his hand
and rolled a few inches away.
“Victor leans over
and beats him in the head three more times in an up-and-down motion,” Gil went
on, and Warwick made banging motions with the book, hitting the floor on either
side of Jarod's head with it, “reaching backwards with his arms each time to
get a good swing, hence the blood spatters we found on the walls and ceiling
and his clothes. Then he goes into the bathroom to wash his hands…”
“And feet,” Warwick
added. “Standing here, like we know he was because of the angle of blood
spatter, he would have to have got blood on his feet. It’s a pool party. Who’s going
to be wearing shoes? And there weren’t shoes in his bag of clothes.”
“So after he
finishes beating Patrick, he drops the ashtray,” Sara commented, “takes off his
t-shirt and pants and wraps the bloody side of them around his feet to stop
himself from walking bloody footprints across the carpet to the bathroom, where
he sits on the side of the bath, washes his feet, goes back into the room,
dresses himself…”
“…and throws
himself onto the bookcase,” Gil put in. “It might not have been premeditated,
but he was certainly thinking clearly enough afterward.”
“Adrenalin,” Jarod
remarked to the room in general.
“Meanwhile Anna and
Brian have finished their romantic little rendezvous,” Nick added, “and Anna
comes back to take up her post at the door. Brian comes out a little later,
passes her and goes out to the pool, where he finds Jessica, who is having her
soda, and asks if she wouldn’t mind giving him a lift home”
“By the time they
go back through the house, Anna is on her way around to look in through the
window,” Sara puts in. “She sees the bodies and calls 9-1-1. What time did the
call come in?”
“Nine-oh-four,”
Warwick told her. “They dispatched an ambulance and the police right away.”
“So Jessica was in
the clear and Anna knew nothing about it,” Jarod finished.
“He’ll plead
extraneous circumstances,” Nick warned.
“He still killed
Patrick,” Sara reminded him. “And his actions afterwards show that he was aware
of the full implications of what he’d done. He can plead whatever he wants, but
the evidence clearly shows his actions.”
“Let’s get all this
in the report,” Gil directed brusquely. “Jim, have Victor brought in. I’ll bet
there are still Patrick’s epithelials and blood under his toenails that he
wouldn’t have cleaned away yet.”
The team scattered.
Jarod followed Gil down the hallway to his office and, as they went inside, Gil
turned to him.
“You know he’s
still going to try to suggest that Jessica did it.”
Jarod smiled. “I
think I can provide you with further proof that she didn’t.” He reached into
the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the note he had found at Jessica’s
house. “Here. This is addressed to you.”
“I know what it
says,” Gil said dismissively. “I’ve been thinking about it, putting myself in
her place. If it were me, one of the worst things I could imagine happening to
me would be to get locked up with the people I’ve helped jail. That’s why she
tried to kill herself.” He accepted the note and shot a curious glance at
Jarod. “But what other evidence is there?”
Jarod shot him another
glance, his lips curling into a small smile. “You’ll see,” he retorted, and
quickly left the room.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Jarod let himself
into the staff-room of the hospital and found a white medical coat, clipping on
one of the many fake IDs he carried around in his bag. Hanging a stethoscope
around his neck, he easily blended in with the other doctors who walked the
hallways and managed to access a computer, locating the room in which Jessica
Stiles had been put.
He paused outside
the room before going in. Jessica lay in bed, her eyes closed and the fingers
of her right hand rubbing at the knuckles on her left. Jarod nodded as if this
confirmed something. Jessica’s eyes opened as he closed the door behind him and
she looked him up and down before turning her head away.
“I should have
guessed you weren’t a CSI,” she muttered, and he grinned.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she
responded. “Something about your manner. It was too sympathetic.”
Jarod couldn’t help
chuckling as he pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat in it. “Don’t you want
to know why I’m here?”
“Probably want to
know how I killed Patrick,” she retorted.
“No, actually we
already know that you didn’t,” he told her, and smiled again as her head
snapped around and she stared at him.
“But you were sure
I had.”
“Some of the others
were sure. I was always a little unsure.”
“Why?”
He met her gaze.
“Murder, particularly something as spontaneous as Patrick’s death was, doesn’t
fit your personality. You don’t act spontaneously. The only time you looked
surprised was when you were first told about Patrick’s death. Since then,
you’ve planned every stage, and you knew what was going to happen before it
did. You cleaned up your house and put away your medication so that we wouldn’t
know about your condition. You hid away all the little toys that you use every
day so we would never know. You knew what questions you were going to be asked
and had planned your answers – all expect the one about whether Patrick smoked
– before you said them. That isn’t consistent with spontaneity. Patrick’s death
was definitely the action of someone who doesn’t have a great deal of patience
and doesn’t think their actions through. Someone like Victor Wilson.”
Jessica’s eyes
widened. “Victor! He did it? But why?”
“Because Patrick
had been blackmailing him. I don’t know why yet, although I dare say Victor
will tell the others in an attempt to lessen the charges against him. But
Victor snapped, as short-tempered people have a habit of doing. Unfortunately,
he allowed anger to overwhelm him and bludgeoned Patrick to death.”
Jessica considered
this for a while, staring at the ceiling. Finally, when she turned her gaze
back to Jarod, he could see that the tension in her eyes that had appeared
during their first interview was gone.
“I don’t think I
ever really loved him,” she said in surprised tones. “That was really why we
broke up. I just realized one day that, although I cared about him as a friend,
I’d never really felt the fluttering of the heart and all those other signs
that are supposed to show you love someone. Or are in love with them.”
“And you’ve already
had your period of mourning,” Jarod suggested. “Probably that first night. Your
old job as a CSI taught you so much about death that you don’t fear it any
longer. That’s why you could take those tablets. Death by your own hand at a
time of your choosing was preferable to death at the hands of one of the people
you’ve been responsible for locking away.”
She nodded slowly,
but her eyes remained dry as she looked back at the ceiling. Then she turned to
him once more.
“So what is it?”
she asked, and there was a teasing note in her voice. “What is the condition of
mine that you mentioned before? You know everything else, so of course you know
that, too.”
“You have
arthritis,” he replied. “At a guess, it’s rheumatoid arthritis. You’re about
the right age for it. It’s probably already affected your waist, knees, and
shoulders. You suffer from peripheral neuropathy in your hands, and you rub
them to try to ease the tingling and numbness. The pain became too great for
you to continue working about six months ago, so you quit. You also broke up
with Patrick at the time because you felt that it wasn’t right for someone with
your condition to go out with someone as athletic as he was. In fact, you’re
embarrassed by your arthritis, which is why you didn’t tell us about it.” He
shot her a curious glance. “What stage are you up to?”
“The second one,”
she sighed. “Mostly limited movement so far, but others things are coming, too.
And it’s pretty bad in my waist and knees. They’re the worst areas so far,
although my shoulders are catching up fast.”
“You can only lift your hands until they’re level with your shoulders,” Jarod guessed, recalling the low shelves all over the house. “You have safety strips in your bathroom to keep from falling over and breaking a bone as the osteoporosis develops in later stages. Your kitchen will be stocked with devises to help you – a kettle that can be poured without lifting, knives that have handles to stop you from needing to twist your wrists, jars and bottle openers, electric can openers, things to chop your food, caps to help you turn the taps more easily,” he glanced over at the object that lay beside her hand on the bed, “and a reaching device so that you don’t have to get up and down more than necessary.”
When she remained
silent, he shot her another sharp glance.
“There’s something
else,” he suggested. “Not just embarrassment.” He thought for a moment, before
an off-hand remark came back to his mind. “I know. You didn’t want to reveal your
condition in case it restricted your chances of getting another job.”
“I was right,” she
said, smiling slightly. “You aren’t a CSI.”
“No,” he agreed
with an answering smile, standing up and preparing to leave the room, “I’m
not.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
“Victor Wilson’s
pleading insanity, caused by the stress of Patrick Valenti blackmailing him,”
Catherine told Gil as the man came into the break room.
“Good luck,” Nick
snorted.
“He might get it,”
Warwick commented.
“He might,” Gil agreed
cautiously, making a mental note to send Jarod news of this development as he
had promised.
“Oh, Gil,” Jim
Brass announced from behind him, “I was looking for you. I’ve got someone for
you to meet.”
Gil and the others
looked up to see Jim in the doorway.
“We have a new
media liaison with the unit,” he continued. “I brought her along to meet you
all.”
There was a united
sigh for everyone in the room as he stepped aside to reveal Jessica Stiles
sitting in a wheelchair. She smiled sweetly at them.
“Nice to meet you.”