A Twist of Fate:
The Case of the Tar Man
By
A. Rhea King
"I have to finish my tar man," Greg argued.
"The way you're going at it, you're going to kill him a second time…"
As Greg pulled up to the storage unit building, he knew there was something about this case he was going to hate. Brass was waiting at the entrance of the storage unit building with a large, far-too-happy grin. Brass only smiled like that when he knew the CSI were going to hate the crime scene.
Greg climbed out of his Denali and walked up to him.
"What? What is it?"
Brass's smile grew. He turned and led Greg.
"The storage manager called it in. That's him over there." Brass pointed at a nerdy looking man talking with another officer.
Greg and Brass entered the building, walking down a hall toward an officer guarding an open storage unit.
"He was going to rent this unit today. He and the renter-to-be came in, he opened the door, and found the body. He thought the smell he had was coming from one of the other units, so imagine his surprise."
The two stopped at the open door and Greg stared.
The body – or at least he thought it was a body – sat on a chair in the center of the unit. It was covered with a black substance and feathers.
Greg sat his kit down and pulled latex gloves out of his pocket. He looked up at Brass, who still wore that irritating smile.
"You're enjoying this too much."
Brass shrugged. "I have to find amusement where I can. You always seem to provide me with an ample supply."
Greg sighed, grabbing his kit. He walked up to the body and timidly poked a finger at it. He pulled his hand back and strings of the black stuff clung to his glove. The further he pulled his hand back, the longer the string from the body to his glove grew. He shook his hand and the strings danced with the movement. He yanked his hand back and that only made the strings longer.
"UGH!" Greg growled.
With his other glove he pulled off his glove and the substance stuck to his other glove. He dropped them on the floor and backed up next to Brass.
"So… Ace… How you going to tackle this one?" Brass asked.
Greg had no idea.
#
Robbins and David stopped working on Nick's victim when the doors were shoved open. Greg came in pushing a cart cluttered with items. He stopped, looking around the morgue.
"Where's my vic?"
"The tarred and feathered corpse?" David asked.
"Yeah."
"Over there." Robins pointed to the exam room in an alcove off the morgue.
Greg looked in the direction Robbins had pointed. His corpse sat on the autopsy table, still in a body bag.
"Why is it still in the body bag?"
"Did you really think we were going to get tar all over the morgue?" Robbins asked. "And if you get tar anywhere in my morgue, you're cleaning it up."
"We don't know if its tar," Greg corrected him.
"And I'm the Queen Sheba."
Robbins and David chuckled about the joke. Greg frowned at them, but decided it wasn't worth arguing about. He headed for the alcove.
"What are you doing with all that stuff, anyway?" David asked.
"Everyone I asked had an idea about how to get the tar off. I've never had to remove tar from anything, so I figured I'd try them until I found one that worked."
"Greg," Robbins stopped working. He pulled off his gloves and followed Greg. "You can't just try things haphazardly."
Greg stopped, turning to him. Hopefully he asked, "Do you have a good idea?"
Robbins stopped walking, sighing. "No. I really don't know how to get the tar off."
"Doctor Robbins," David called.
"Just a minute, David. Why don't you call Grissom before you dive in and see if he has any ideas?"
"I don't want him to think I can't handle this."
"Uhm… Doctor Robbins," David said, his voice raising a couple of octaves.
"Just a minute, David. Greg, he won't think that. If you really don't know what you're doing, call him. He'd rather you call him than try to do it yourself and ruin any evidence that might be on the corpse."
"Doctor Robbins, we have a serious problem here!"
Robbins turned. Greg looked around him. Fire ants were pouring out of the corpse that David had just finished the Y incision on. He was slowly backing away from the body, staring at the body with widening eyes.
"Damnit! David, grab fire extinguishers."
Robbins hobbled back to David, taking the fire extinguisher he handed him. The two started spraying the corpse with CO2. Greg turned and pushed his cart over to the alcove. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed Grissom.
"Hey, Grissom. I have a question. I can't move on my case until I can get to the corpse. No, I mean yes. It's here in the morgue, but—"
"OW!" David screeched. "Get 'em off! Get 'em off!"
Greg looked back at the two. David was dancing around the room, batting at ants that had climbed on him. Greg quickly looked away before he started laughing.
"Nothing. Robbins and David are having issues with a corpse. Anyway, my corpse is covered in—"
Something crashed and he looked back again. The ants were starting to make their way off the autopsy table.
"Call hazmat, David. Tell them to get down here now!" Robbins ordered.
"My corpse is covered in tar," Greg finished, turning his attention back to his corpse. "No. I… Yes. I'm assuming it's tar. It looks like tar, it's sticky like tar. Grissom… Grissom… Grissom. Can we roll with the assumption this is tar for the moment? Great. So if it is, how do I get it off? No, I don't know how much. How would I know that? You realize that if I stick a ruler in this stuff I will probably never get it out, don't you? Where? Okay, I'll—"
Something else crashed and he turned. Robbins was fending off ants. David had climbed onto the desk and was making a phone call.
"Grissom, I gotta help these two. You said an hour for every quarter inch of tar, right? Got it. Bye."
Greg hung up and jogged over to a fire extinguisher on the wall. He yanked it off and started spraying ants with Robbins.
#
Greg wore a full face shield and chipped at the tar that had hardened between the body and the body bag with a pick and reflex hammer. He glanced up when Robbins came into the morgue.
"You're still here?" he asked.
"Unfortunately."
"Haven't gotten far, I take it."
"Naw." Greg started chipping some more. The pick suddenly slipped and stabbed through the tar into the body. Serum and blood began oozing from the hole, like it had from the other five holes Greg had inflicted on the deceased entombed in the tar.
"Damn," Greg muttered.
Robbins looked up, watching him quickly plug the hole with heavy duty paper towels.
"How many times have you done that?" Robbins asked.
Greg smiled sheepishly at him. "Not many."
David came in wearing scrubs. "Okay. I'm off to get X-Ray's of Warrick's soap mummy. I should be back in an hour."
"Take butterfingers Greg with you."
"I have to finish my tar man," Greg argued.
"The way you're going at it, you're going to kill him a second time. Go help David with the mummy."
"Why isn't Warrick helping David?"
"He had to go back to the well," David told him, "We were worried the adipocerous corpse would start to decay if we didn't get it to a clean room soon. He had to leave evidence there."
Robbins walked over to Greg, plucking the pick and reflex hammer from his hands. "Go with David. Be a good CSI."
David and Greg both laughed. Greg pulled off his face shield. "Lead the way David. I'm dying to see this mummy."
David walked out of the morgue, telling Greg, "It's fascinating! The guy doesn't look like he's been dead for even a day!"
Robbins slid the face shield on and picked up a skull saw. He went to work on Greg's victim.
#
Greg pranced up to Grissom and fell into step with him as he walked. He was beaming with pride, but Grissom didn't notice. He was engrossed in a stack of printouts and notes.
"Guess what?" Greg said.
"What?" Grissom asked. He didn't look away from his reading.
"The tar is bitumen and sand."
"And what does this tell you?"
"Well, two things it's used for are making mummies and sealing wooden ships, but I doubt that's the case here, so that leaves only roofing and road construction. Since there was so much, chances are the suspect in one of those professions."
"You don't think a homeowner could have purchased it to roof their home?"
"Do you know many homeowners that would want to?"
Grissom looked up, thinking about that. "Not really, but start with what's easiest to verify. Call all resellers who sold larges amounts of tar to homeowners, and then verify the surface area of what the homeowners say they were roofing. If that checks out—"
Grissom stopped when they heard Nick yell and turned. He was after Hodges again and Hodges looked terrified.
"Nick's been like that for three days now," Greg commented. "What is wrong with him?"
"Greg, you have a case to work on," Grissom told him.
Greg hurried off, happy to put distance between him and Nick.
Grissom started walking toward the lab and dialing a number. He was almost to the door when Nick stormed past him and Hodges dashed out the opposite exit. Grissom looked both directions, not sure which person he should go after.
"Yeah?" Jim said on the other end.
"Jim, I need you to check out a missing person's report for me…" Grissom began.
#
Greg held his head up with one hand. With the other he moved the mouse and arrow keys to go through screens of people that might one day be a suspect – but so far weren't any of his. He looked up at Catherine when she stopped next to him.
"Rough case?" she asked.
No." Greg thought about that answer. "Yes." He thought again. "I don't know. Maybe."
"Well, now that we have that uncertainty cleared up…" She smiled.
He didn't return it.
"What's going on?"
"I don't have any leads. The storage unit manager never saw the renter; he said he thinks it was a guy. He was wearing a scary looking bunny costume, paid cashed, and gave the name as Donnie Darko. And—"
"Did you look up that name? That's pretty unique."
Greg sighed. "That's the name of a character in a movie. I've watched it enough times to catch the whole scary looking bunny costume the killer wore."
"Oh. What about costume rentals?"
"None in Las Vegas. And all the feathers came from two related chickens which doesn't narrow anything down. So I searched for homeowners who had purchased tar for roofing their homes. None bought more than was expected for their home size, none have records, and none are missing. So got lists of construction workers. There's over two hundred, half have some kind of a record, half of those have records that would normally flag them. Except that none of them are missing, none have gone missing or quit any time around when this guy died and since I don't even know what this guy looks like or who he is, I have no connections." Greg looked back at the screen. "I really hate this case." He looked down at his cell when is started ringing. He opened it and hit speaker. "Yeah?"
"Greg, we're done," Robbins said.
Greg sat up, smiling. "Really? I'll be right—"
"I meant we aren't going to try getting any more tar off this corpse, Greg. We're destroying the body at this point."
Greg stared at his phone. "But… Nothing came back on his DNA. The X-Rays aren't giving me anything. I can't solve this without prints or a face."
"I'm sorry." Robbins did sound sorry. "We did the best we could. Do you want to make the funeral arrangements? I wouldn't normally ask but…"
"No. Go ahead. Thanks, Doc." Greg tapped his phone to end the call. He sank back in his chair, staring at the screen.
Catherine patted his shoulder. "Tough luck. Go home. I'll see you in two days."
She walked out, leaving him to sulk over his failure.
#
Greg glanced up when he heard someone walk past the break room couch he was laying on. Warrick passed him, heading for the refrigerator. He looked back up at the ceiling, throwing a ball against it. Warrick appeared at the top of his sight, holding his leftover lunch container in one hand.
"Yeah?" Greg asked.
"You free tonight?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"I need your help with something. Can I pick you up at seven?"
"I guess. Help with what?"
"We'll have to figure that part out when I pick you up."
"K."
Warrick sighed. Greg looked up at his thoughtful expression.
"You didn't really think we always won, did you?" Warrick asked.
Greg caught and held his ball, staring at it while he pressed his fingers into the soft material.
"I guess I did."
"Sorry man. Sometimes we lose."
"I don't wanna lose."
Warrick shifted his weight. "Sometimes you have to. See you at seven."
"Yeah."
Warrick left and Greg resumed tossing his ball. Warrick's words fell on deaf ears. He didn't want to lose. Ever. He wanted to solve all his cases, even if they led to no suspects. He didn't even know his victim's name – that bugged him most of all. Greg's mind wandered back to the start of the case and he began reanalyzing the evidence, hoping for an epiphany.
#
The minute he hit the door, the entire bar started welcoming Nick. He smiled, laughed, passed out hugs and a few kisses to women, handshakes to men. Warm, caring Nick had returned, marked by only a few red dots where the vanished pustules were still healing.
Warrick and Greg trailed in behind him.
"You just had to let him pick the bar tonight, didn't you?" Greg yelled over the music.
Warrick smiled. "Hey, I'll suffer a night at some hick bar if it means Nick'll come to work in a good mood in two days. Wouldn't you?"
Greg thought about that a moment. "Is that a trick question?"
Warrick laughed.
Nick suddenly emerged from the crowd in front of them. "There's a table over there." Nick pointed them in the direction. "I gotta a rain check I gotta pay up on."
"With who?" Warrick asked.
Nick pointed over his shoulder at a red head in a tight tank top, jeans, and cowboy boots. Everything about her curves was a head turner. Warrick and Greg both smiled.
"Gillian. She's been asking me to dance with her for weeks."
"You want us to order you anything?"
"Naw! I'll get something when I come over." Nick disappeared into the crowd with Gillian.
Warrick and Greg made their way to a table and sat down on tall bar stools. Greg leaned over the table.
"Have you ever seen Nick in a mood like he was in?"
"Yeah. Back when we were rookies. The first time it happened, we damn near got into a fight at a crime scene. I finally got tired of it and called up his oldest brother up – Nick does whatever James tells him to so I was hoping he'd talk some sense into Nicky. Instead he tells me that not even God himself could bring Nick out of these moods. He said it only happened when something got a hold of him in the wrong way, and only he could figure out how to get free from it. But when he did, he told me to take him to a country bar and let him dance till he dropped, or hire him a hooker for the night. The bar's cheaper!"
Greg laughed.
"Hey, are you two Warrick and Greg?"
The two turned, staring at the women watching them. One was a blonde and average. She wore a western cut shirt with rhinestones and silver studs, a miniskirt and boots. Her friend was a tall African-American, flawless smooth skin, long curly hair, a midriff tank top, and tight blue jeans revealing her long legs that ended in pearl white boots.
"Yeah," Greg and Warrick answered.
"Nick said you two don't know how to do the Cotton Eyed Joe," the blonde said. "He asked if we'd teach you. It's the next song."
"What's the Cotton Eyed Joe?" Greg asked.
Warrick reached over and smacked the back of his head. "Say yes to the lady."
"I mean yes," Greg said with a smile.
Warrick slid off the stool and held out his arm. The dark woman slid her arm into his and they disappeared. Greg waited until Warrick disappeared.
"You know Nick Stokes?" Greg asked the blond.
"Honey, everyone here knows Nick Stokes," she answered with a smile. "All the guys wish they were him, all the girls wish they were his. You coming?"
"Right behind you."
She led him to the dance floor as the Cotton Eyed Joe started.