Theories and Revelations

Sara was soaked to the skin and disheartened, but very determined. She’d finished staking out, marking, and photographing the perimeter, but the sudden storm had probably wrecked more evidence that she’d never know existed. After all, if the perp left in Greg’s car, he had to get there by a different means, and any path he might have made on foot, or even with another vehicle, would be gone.

Looking next door to the house with the incredibly loud television show, she frowned even more. With her luck, they would have been oblivious to the loudest screams Greg could have produced that night. However, they were possible witnesses, and Sara was intent on catching them now, before they got grumpy over losing sleep later.

She walked next door and knocked on the door… hard.

After several long minutes, the door opened wide, revealing a man dressed in casual slacks and a short-sleeved polo shirt. His face was handsome, but set in a fierce frown, and both eyes were blackened and swollen. The man’s nose was swollen and looked incredibly painful. There was a bandage over his head, as well, as if he’d been injured in a nasty fist fight. Dark hair swept over his high forehead and part of the bandage.

The investigator didn’t start with pleasantries, diving straight in. “There was an attack next door. Did you notice anything? Anybody?”

Blinking slowly, as if taken by surprise but too lethargic to respond any quicker, the man simply stood staring. Finally, in a cultured voice, he said, “Yes. I’ve noticed uniformed policemen and plain-clothes investigators crawling all over the place with flood lights and cameras flashing.”

Annoyance flared and Sara frowned more severely. “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary before the investigators and police arrived?”

“Yes,” the man frowned back, but it looked more like he was frowning at his thoughts than at Sara’s attitude. “The man next door works night shift, but I never noticed him leave tonight. Was he attacked? Injured? I don’t see an ambulance.” His dark eyes flicked towards Greg’s place as if suddenly he realized he should be worried about his neighbor.

“How about this morning?” Sara wouldn’t give an inch and his sudden eye flicker towards her showed surprise.

Crossing his arms slowly over his chest, the man frowned. “I was at work. I went to work yesterday morning, worked through the night, and didn’t return until late this afternoon. Do you think he was injured this morning?”

She shrugged, but the woman took in everything about this man: his bruises, his slow, deliberate movements, his measured words. Her instincts screamed that he could very well be covering something. “How did you get injured, Mister…”

“Lassiter,” he supplied smoothly. “And is this pertinent to your investigation, Officer?”

Sara let her eyes rove over his swollen face and bandaged head. “It might be.”

With a sigh, the man shrugged, arms still crossed, and said in a weary tone, “I dropped something on the floor in my office and it rolled under the desk. I went after it and stood up too fast, hitting my head on the under-side of my desk. I was in such pain that I curled forward and hit my face, too. It was foolish, painful, and utterly embarrassing. Anything else, Officer?”

“I’m not a cop; I’m a crime scene investigator. Can anyone verify for you, Mister Lassiter?” Sara let her eyes glance behind the man, through the wide-open door. She spotted an open doorway to a living area beyond, a huge television playing that overly loud sitcom.

“No and yes.” That drew her attention back to the man, and she looked up at the taller man. He clarified, “No one saw me injured; I was alone and it was before most people came in this morning. However, there are security cameras everywhere at the office, and they can probably verify my whereabouts for yesterday, last night, and this morning… my co-workers can verify for yesterday and today as well. Perhaps a custodian noticed me during the night, but I was so busy, I didn’t really notice anyone else.” The man frowned severely at Sara as if suddenly realizing something. “Do you think I attacked the kid next door?”

‘Hardly a kid,’ Sara couldn’t help thinking. “It’s standard procedure to eliminate the family, friends, and closest neighbors first, Mister Lassiter. With access to your office’s security tapes, we can verify your alibi. A DNA sample and fingerprints can also help to rule you out,” she gave him a look as if to say, ‘Do you dare or are you hiding something?’

Mr. Lassiter drew himself up to his full six feet one inch height, his back stiff, his face set in a severe frown meant to intimidate. “Miss…”

“Sidle, Sara Sidle,” she provided.

“Ms. Sidle, I am a junior partner at the firm Goering, Harding, and Lassiter. We are prosecuting attorneys, and as such often work in full cooperation with the Nevada police and crime lab; however, I do not have the authority to release the security tapes to your department. You will need to speak to Jeffrey Goering for that. As for DNA and fingerprints, I find the implications insulting at the very least. Your lab insisted in letting my daughter’s…” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, clenching and unclenching his fists repeatedly as he tried to gain control once more. Finally, he nodded. “I will not give you my DNA or fingerprints, Ms. Sidle, and I am not authorized to give you the tapes. Your lab will have to pin this attack or whatever it is on somebody else.”

Her eyes flashed, and her frown deepened, but as she opened her mouth to speak, the man leaned forward and said, in a dangerously low voice, “Your lab is inadequate to find the most sloppy of criminals, Ms. Sidle, and should be shut down. Let us hope your case is not assigned to me; I will not be an easy prosecutor to please concerning slip-shod investigations and rigged evidence. Good night.”

He shut the door in her face.

Sara clenched her fists and glared impotently at the door, pure hatred shining from her eyes. “Well, Mister Lassiter,” she bit out, “You’ve just gone from obnoxious neighbor to top of my suspect list.” With that, she turned and stormed from the neighbor’s porch, intent on letting Gil in on just what the man next door thought about the lab, his refusal of samples to clear himself… and his threat to the investigation itself.

Cath made her way carefully up the three steps and onto the stoop. Squatting down, she swabbed the pooled blood with several different sterile swabs. Using tweezers, the strawberry-blonde woman started picking up minute debris: various food chunks, some white chips, and a small bit of plastic wrap that had appeared to have temporarily adhered to a foot. She was staying as much out of Warrick’s way as possible, as he was taking careful pictures of the faint footprints they had located on the steps. Glancing over the prints, she frowned and gestured to them. “Warrick, those are… odd…”

He nodded, immediately understanding what she referred to. “Some are more pronounced than others, but they’re all of the same shoe type. I think the guy left the house then went back in for something before leaving again.”

“He made more of a smudge on the one set of prints,” Cath could see the crushed food and smeared blood under several rather defined prints. The other two sets seemed to be made by a lighter person, less smudging, less destruction, less defined. “I think he was carrying Greg during the heavy prints.”

“That’s a theory,” Warrick added impassively. Grissom was harsh concerning theories, and Warrick understood why; the entire team did. So he wasn’t about to go off on a tangent concerning preliminary assumptions. It could just as easily be that there had been two or more people of varying weights, all wearing the same shoe.

The older investigator merely shot him an annoyed look, though she held her tongue. With a sigh, she turned back to the evidence and noted something else. “Warrick, the heavy prints don’t start until the steps themselves… where the drag marks end.”

Warrick looked up, taking his eye from the camera. Looking over the prints and marks carefully, he nodded in agreement. “Now it’s a working theory.” He shot a carefully lined-up shot of the end of the drag marks and beginning of the more defined prints. “In fact, those lighter prints actually cross over the drag marks two or three times, Cath… as well as cross over the heavy prints.” He looked at her. “I think you’re right. Someone was most likely drug to the edge of the stoop then picked up and carried down the steps and over the driveway.”

It was a small triumph in evidence translation, but the implications were that Greg had been incapacitated enough to need carrying… and the perpetrator dumped his victim somewhere then took his time to return to the house for something before finally leaving.

Cath softly asked, “What could he have wanted so bad that he had to come back? It couldn’t have been to hide the knife; he sent it to us.”

“Maybe,” Warrick said, his voice tight, “that was why he returned: for souvenirs.”

In answer, Cath groaned softly and moved to take a sample from the threshold of the door itself. She worried about their young friend and colleague. It wasn’t exactly certain just how long Greg had been injured and missing. Eyes widening, Cath sudden hit upon an answer, almost cursing herself for forgetting the basics in her worry over Greg.

“Warrick, this blood is several hours old…”

His head shot up and he scrutinized the trails before him. With a nod, he agreed, feeling a bit of excitement bubble but drop at the further indication that Greg had been hurt for a long time without help. “Some is wet still, meaning there may be an anti-coagulant in here. Greg’s not on medicine, is he?”

A smile rippled across the still-pretty face of the older woman. “Not that I know of. Which means…”

“The wet blood could be our perpetrator’s,” Warrick finished, an answering smile on his face.

Despite the sound of sirens, the voices of law enforcement talking back and forth, the pounding of the rain, and the blaring sitcom next door, the musical ring-tone of a single cell phone seemed to shatter the night. Cath jumped and retrieved her phone, flicking the answer button and calling out, “Catherine Willows.” What she heard sent a chill right through her.

“It’s eleven P.M. Do you know where your daughter is?” The deep voice cut off and the connection ended.

Cath stared in horror at her phone as it issued the buzz of a disconnected phone call.