The Art of Death

By: Sleepwalking Dreamer

A CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Fan Fiction

DISCLAIMERS:

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation © A. Zuiker and CBS

Mercia Stella Fiammeta di Salmileri, Anthony Wright, Ciara Julia Celeste di Salmileri, and Alec Marvail © Sleepwalking Dreamer

Ami Tejada © Noelle Pico

Literary excerpts © their creators

NOTES:

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and CSI are a most potent combination, especially if one happens to be a writer with a hyperactive imagination. The events preceding this fan fiction are drawn from Noelle Pico's original story, which is, at the moment, untitled and unpublished.

The villain I have used (who is, more or less, like the villain I created for Noelle's story) is not based on anyone I have heard of or anyone I have known in real life. Perhaps, one could say that this is my dark alter ego manifesting itself in my writing. Well, better merely as something on paper and in ink than someone in reality.

THANK YOU TO:

The people behind Project Gutenberg, for supplying the world with copies of the writings of the great literary masters for free

The visual and literary arts masters, whose works I have made use of here

Noelle Pico, for allowing me to borrow Ami Tejada

TEASER:

The body of a young woman has been found, walled with bricks and mortar into an alcove in the private wine cellar of a man living in the posh district of Las Vegas. Unfortunately for the Las Vegas CSI members, it seems that their suspect is a very clever and very intelligent person: no prints, no fibers, and no bodily fluids have been found on the crime scene. Their only clue is a computer printout containing a quote from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado."

Two weeks later, they are brought in once again to investigate another murder: this time, the victim is found sitting in a chair in the middle of her own family's mausoleum, at the local cemetery. Again, another computer printout is found with her, but containing a different quote: one culled from "Spirits of the Dead" - another poem by Edgar Allan Poe.

After this second murder, they get word from the CSI office in Washington DC that a series of murders exactly like the ones occurring in Las Vegas were committed in the Capital six months ago. Mercia di Salmileri, the CSI who worked the DC murders, has come down to Sin City to work with Grissom and his team over what has been dubbed the "Poe Murders." However, things get out of hand as another series of murders are committed - this time, following Dante Alighieri's Divina Comedia.

Two killers. Two targets. Grissom's team is suddenly split up over the two cases, running around in a wild goose chase in an attempt to find out whom the targets of these murders are. Unfortunately, it seems that even Grissom never realized that the real target was close at hand...

Episode One: Wine and Murder

3:45 A.M. Thursday, November 13: Las Vegas

She whimpered helplessly, the double padding of cloth and duct tape clamped over her mouth serving only to muffle her cries. She tried to struggle against the heavy iron chains that were bound around her waist, but she couldn't. The padlock clinked and clanked against the links, a reminder that she could not escape.

Unable to do anything, she stared at her kidnapper, who stared right back at her with cold, hard eyes.

She suddenly wished she hadn't been so stupid as to accept drinks from a total stranger. She knew that she should have kept her head, tried to make sure that she didn't get herself drunk. But the stranger had just kept on buying her drinks, and she just kept on drinking them.

But now, it was too late for regrets.

Just then, much to her surprise, her abductor began stepping back, moving away from her. Her heart leaped. Maybe she still had a chance.

Her kidnapper paused at the entryway of the alcove, staring at her for a long moment. Black-gloved fingers reached into the folds of the jacket, and pulled out a Ziploc plastic bag. Inside, she saw that there was a folded slip of bond paper. The kidnapper opened the bag, drew out the piece of paper, and dropped it at her feet.

She stared at the paper, completely bewildered. What was she supposed to do now?

She heard a soft shuffling sound, and she looked up at her abductor. Almost from out of nowhere, a bucket filled with something that looked like cement had materialized, along with a pile of bricks.

She watched, almost fascinated, as her kidnapper began to quickly yet efficiently layer together the concrete and bricks over the entrance of the alcove. There was the soft scraping sound of a trowel against stone as more concrete and bricks were placed, one on top of the other, over the entrance.

The layers had already reached half the height of the alcove when it hit her. She was being walled in. She was going to die.

She tried her best to scream, tried her best to make some sound, to do something to alert anyone at all to what was happening to her. She tried to slap the chains against the wall, tried to lift her legs, but she realized that she couldn't. The chains were just too heavy, and she felt too weak.

Eventually, the last brick slid into place, and all light was blotted out. And she knew then that she would die slowly.

Very, very slowly.

3:24 P.M. Thursday, November 27: Las Vegas

"And just who called the cops, and eventually us, out here, by the way?"

Nick Stokes shrugged his shoulders. "The owner, Mr. O'Leary. He called the pest exterminator this morning to have his wine cellar checked. Mentioned something about a dead rat. But then the exterminator came back, and said that it was probably not just a dead rat, because the smell was different. He said it smelled like-"

"A rotting corpse." Sara Sidle nodded her head. She glanced at the CSI: Las Vegas supervisor, Gil Grissom. "Gris, do rotting rats and rotting humans smell different?"

Grissom shrugged. "I suppose so. Variations in chemical composition, mostly from the food consumed, can make a difference in the scent of a decaying body. I suspect that someone who removes rats - dead or otherwise - from houses would know the smell of a dead rat from a dead human."

Nick chuckled wryly. "They all smell the same to me: bad."

Sara smiled, and shook her head. They had been called in to investigate what they suspected was a body in the wine cellar of Johann O'Leary, after the pest exterminator Mr. O'Leary hired said that there was something more than just a dead rat in the cellar. So now here they were, clambering down the steps that led to the underground wine cellar.

She stopped at the doorway, puzzled. "These look like the doors of a meat locker," she said as she ran a gloved hand over the doorframe.

"It's to maintain the temperature in the cellar," Mr. O'Leary - a man sometime in his sixties, with a half-bald pate and a jumpy manner to him - explained as they stepped in. "Wines have to be stored at a particular temperature, or else they go bad. And with Las Vegas weather fluctuating all the time, well..." He chuckled nervously, and then continued. "Building the cellar underground does around half the job for me already. The air circulation system and the doors keep everything at an optimal temperature for storage."

Nick squinted his eyes slightly as he glanced at the walls. "Why brick walls?"

"The brick is semi-porous, and lets the cellar breathe. Circulating recycled air is just as bad for the wine as the wrong storage temperature." That was Grissom now, and he was peering intently at the racks that contained bottles that were labeled as having come from the Champagne region of France.

Nick grinned. "Care to cite your source on that?"

Grissom gave him a level gaze. "Internet."

Sara was looking at the machines that were installed overhead. "All of this to make sure that you don't end up with some very expensive vinegar." The scent of wine was very potent here, almost intoxicating. She was no wine connoisseur, but she was absolutely positive that she was standing in a room filled floor to ceiling with some of the best vintages in the world.

But as she moved further down the narrow spaces between a rack of New Zealand's best pinot gris and Spanish Sherries, she was hit with a smell that was the exact opposite of the sweetness coming from the wine.

Nick, who was standing behind her, reacted with a wrinkle of the nose. "Unless someone has been down here and drinking these wines while eating some really funky cheese, I think we just smelled our victim."

Grissom came up behind them, sniffed the air, and frowned. "It's coming from over there." He pointed to the very end, between a rack of merlots and Cabernets.

Sara followed Grissom, and stared at the wall in front of her. Immediately, she knew that something was wrong. Turning to Mr. O'Leary, she asked, "Have you remodeled your cellar lately?"

"No, I haven't," Mr. O'Leary replied, blinking in a confused manner. "The last time I remodeled this, it was only to have it expanded."

"And just how long ago was this remodeling?"

"I don't know...three months ago, four, I suppose. I was away at Australia, going on a tour of the vineyards and wineries there. Why, what's the matter?"

Grissom pointed to the wall. "The color of the mortar between these bricks doesn't match the mortar used on the others. Based on that, I would say that this area of the wall was placed up much more recently than three months ago."

Nick frowned. "But the bricks are of the same color as the others, so that means that they are roughly the same age." He squinted his eyes. "Now the question is: who would have access to your cellar long enough to take down this wall, and then rebuild it?"

"I-I don't know," Mr. O'Leary squeaked. "There are security cameras over the cellar doors, and the house has alarms too - laser-triggered, top of the line. If anyone was going in and out of my house, I would have known about it, because the alarms would have gone off, or at the very least the cameras would have caught them."

Grissom nodded, and glanced at Nick. "Nick, you go and get the tapes from the last three months." He turned to Sara. "Sara, you go and get some tools. We're going to have to break this wall down."

Sara sighed, and nodded. "Going."

A few minutes later, Sara came back with chisels, hammers, and trowels. She handed a few to Grissom, took a chisel and a hammer herself, and the two of them started chipping away at the mortar that held the bricks together. They had to be very careful - after all, the bricks might contain some evidence of who had placed them there, and so they were evidence as well.

The first few rows of bricks had been taken down when the god-awful stench of rotting human filled the wine cellar. Even the strong, musky fragrance of the nearby bottles of wine didn't help keep away the stink. Sara coughed to clear the smell and mortar dust from the back of her throat, and went back to work.

Eventually, her hands aching and cramping from wielding the chisel and hammer, enough of the bricks had been cleared, revealing a small rectangular alcove behind it. This alcove, however, was not made of brick, but of concrete - a sure sign that it had not originally been a part of the cellar. There was also a part towards the back that looked like there had been a door there once, but it would take further investigation before they could confirm that.

Sara knew she had never seen a corpse like that before. It was a young woman - a little on the petite side, wearing slacks and a spaghetti-strap top, with a watch and a thin silver necklace around her throat, no pendant. Her mouth was covered with duct tape, and her feet were bound in the same manner as well. Her hands were behind her back, and Sara bet her salary that they had been bound using duct tape too.

But what was most troubling about the entire thing was the heavy iron chain that was tied around the victim's waist. It was one of those heavy-duty, industrial strength affairs that were used for gates. There was a padlock there as well - hooked through the links to make sure that they didn't fall off or slip out.

Her gaze fell on the floor, and she was most puzzled by what she saw: a folded piece of paper, there near the feet of the victim. She nodded towards it. "Gris, look."

Grissom followed the direction of her head, and frowned. He glanced at Sara questioningly. "What do you think it is?"

She shrugged in response. "Maybe a note from the vic? Or," here she smiled grimly, "something from the killer."

"It's the latter," Grissom said as he carefully picked up the paper from the floor. He looked it over. "Looks like your typical bond paper. Nothing special: no corporate letterheads, and no watermarks. Just plain bond paper."

"That you can find in a million bookstores," Sara said quietly. She knew what that meant: there was nothing unique enough about the paper that would give them a clue as to who the suspect - or the victim - could have been.

Going back into the clearer light of the cellar, Grissom delicately unfolded the paper on the floor. Sara knew that he - the both of them - were hoping that whatever was placed on the paper, it would be handwritten, and thus give them another vital clue to the identity of the suspect.

There was no such luck, however, because the contents of the paper were computerized. But that didn't quite grab Sara's attention at the moment. It was what was written that did:

"For the love of God, Montresor!"

"Yes," I said, "for the love of God!"

Sara blinked. That sounded familiar, she thought. "I know I've heard that somewhere before. I just don't remember."

Grissom stared hard at the paper. "For the love of God, Montresor... Yes, I said, for the love of God... That's a quote from Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Cask of Amontillado'." He looked back at the body in the alcove, and Sara noticed his lips tighten.

Just then, Nick came back. "Hey Gris, I got the tapes from the-holy shit." He coughed, and covered his nose. "So that's where the smell was coming from, eh?" He squinted at the body. "Jesus, who did that to her?"

"That's what we're trying to find out," Sara replied as she stood up, brushing off the mortar dust from her clothes. "Grissom found something on the floor near the girl's feet: a computer printout."

"Really? What does it say?"

In reply, Grissom handed the paper to him. "It's a quote from a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe, entitled 'The Cask of Amontillado'."

Nick blinked as he looked at the paper. "I think I read that when I was in high school. Something about a guy getting walled up in a wine cellar-" He stopped, and stared at the girl in the alcove. "I do not believe this..."

Sara squinted at the body. "Looks like we have ourselves a serious psychopath, folks."

Grissom straightened up slowly, never taking his eyes off the body. "Let's get an ID on her as soon as we can. Something in my gut tells me that this is going to be a long case."

1:39 A.M. Friday, November 28: Washington

He sighed, and rubbed his eyes tiredly. It was another long night in the DC branch of CSI, and he was only too glad to be on his way home. He didn't expect to be working so late that he had already started his day-off in the office.

Time to close up shop, he thought as he picked up his jacket, slid it on, and made his way out of the office. It was a rather slow, quiet night, and for that he was only too glad. It meant that there was no trouble in DC, and for that he was always very grateful.

Hard to believe that, almost six months ago, both the day and graveyard shifts had been hard at work, putting together all the effort that they could manage to solve just one case: what was known in official records as the Landowe murder case, but what the media had dubbed as the "Poe Murders."

But now that case was finally over and done with, and everyone was very much relieved.

He smiled as he passed by the lab, and peered through the glass doors at the person inside. He knew that there was no one more relieved than the one sitting at the table, peering through a microscope.

He waited for her to peel her eyes away from the microscope before he pushed at the doors so that his head was inside the lab. "Mercy?"

Mercia di Salmileri looked up, chocolate brown eyes peering at him curiously. "Yes, Tony?"

Anthony Wright, supervisor of the Washington crime lab, smiled at the young woman. "I thought that you had already gone back home."

Mercy shrugged, and gestured to the microscope. "I needed to check these samples again before I left. Just wanted to be sure."

"Really? What do you have?" Tony stepped into the lab, and peered into the microscope. After adjusting the lenses, he saw what looked like several sharp red sickles.

"These are blood cells we took from our suspect," Mercy explained. "As you can see, the red blood cells are unusual. They're a genetic anomaly in some people. Causes what is called sickle-cell anemia - after the shape of the cells themselves. They evolved in people as a natural defense against malaria."

Tony nodded as he moved away from the microscope. "I see. And you compared this with the blood found in the victim's car?"

Mercy nodded, and proceeded to produce two photographs. "This was the one taken of the cells from the car." She gave him a photo of the cells in the microscope. "And these," she passed him another photograph that looked very similar to the first one, "was taken of the suspect's blood cells. As you can see, they match."

"Ah. But this is-"

"Not enough to convict him of murder, I know, but I've sent them in for DNA testing. The results should be in by tomorrow."

Tony smiled. "Very good." He looked over his shoulder at the hallway, and when he saw no one there, he turned back to Mercy, and gave her a mischievous smile. "Darling, you look tired. What say you and I go to my place, I turn on the Jacuzzi, and we settle down to some good champagne and quality time, hmm?"

Mercy's face softened with a coy smile. "You are making me a very indecent proposal, Mr. Wright. What makes you think I'll fall for it?"

Tony's smile became even wider when he felt her stocking-clad toes skim beneath the hem of his trousers to rub against his ankle. It was the game they always played in the office: they had to be professional and indifferent to one another when they were working, but outside...well, these "games" they played with each other in the office were almost as good as foreplay in the bedroom.

And to think, they had never been like this until six months ago.

He leaned forward, and whispered in her ear, "You playing footsie is all the proof I need. How long has it been since we last..." He trailed off, knowing that she would understand his words.

"Hmmm, nearly three months," Mercy replied, her voice soft.

"Well now, don't you think we both deserve a break?" He frowned slightly. "Or is it that time of the month again?"

She smiled apologetically. "It's that, actually, or I wouldn't be able to say no." She withdrew her foot, slid it back into her shoe, and stood up. "I suppose you're right, there's nothing much I can do for this now except wait for the DNA results." She picked up her jacket, swung it around, and slid her arms into the sleeves. After adjusting the collar, she turned once more to look at him, and she smiled. "So, do I take my car, or am I to go with you?"

He smiled slightly at her as they headed out of the lab, and towards the parking lot. "Depends on where we're going: your house or mine."

"I have my period, Tony. You know what that means."

"Hey, can't the words 'sleep with you' mean anything other than sex when it comes to the two of us?"

"Your sheets might end up ruined."

"That's what the dry cleaners is for."

She was laughing, though now she didn't really argue with him. "I don't have any clothes with me."

"Then I'll lend you one of my shirts. You always did look very sexy in my clothes."

They were in the parking lot now, and that was probably why she had enough courage to reach out and slap him on his rear. "You evil man you!"

He gave her a teasing look as he slid his car key into the lock. "And is slapping butts an Italian custom, or is that just you?"

She made a face. "It's pinching butts, not slapping them, and it's not a typically Italian custom. But you'd be surprised how appreciative we can be of a nice, tight ass."

"Ah. And is that what attracted you to me in the first place?"

"I was going to say that it was your intelligence and wit, but after you said that, I decided not to make your ego even bigger than it already is."

He chuckled, and waited for her to slide into the passenger's seat beside him before he leaned over, and kissed her gently on the corner of her mouth. He lingered a while, and then pulled back, sticking the key into the ignition and starting up the car. Once he heard the purr of the engine, he turned to glance at her, smiling. "Your house or mine?"

"I really couldn't care less," she murmured tiredly as she strapped herself into the seat, and rested her head against the window, her eyes closing in sleep.

He smiled, and shook his head as he peeled out of the parking lot, and headed for his house.