Chapter 2

Warrick parked the Tahoe outside the Science and Engineering building and nodded to Grissom. "There's Vega's Taurus. Let's go."

Grissom nodded in agreement. "Our crime scene is on the second floor."

Detective Vega was waiting for the two CSIs when they made it upstairs. "Vic is one Anthony Kessler, professor of physics. His TA for PHYS 120 came by his office to bring him some paperwork, and found him hanging from the light fixture. Her screams attracted some other TAs, and someone called 911."

"Any possibility it was suicide?" Grissom asked.

"Not unless he decided to redecorate his office in blood first," Vega said, shaking his head. "So, not out of the question, but pretty unlikely. Fair warning, it is pretty gruesome in there."

"Who discovered the body?" Warrick asked.

Vega consulted his notes. "Amelia Ravi. She's working on her Ph. D in physics, scheduled to graduate next spring. She's in her office down the hall with her dog at the moment, we've got an officer with her, and one of the other TAs is in there as well. She was pretty upset."

Grissom nodded. "We'll get the scene photographed so we can cut the body down and get it back to the morgue, and then we'll go talk to Ms. Ravi."

Warrick nodded. "No sense keeping her here all night," he agreed as he ducked under the police tape and stepped around the corner to the grisly office, Grissom following behind him. ""Wait - stop." Opening his field kit, he bent down to photograph and swab a fair-sized spot of blood, surrounded by a few drips, on the floor a few feet inside the door. "All right, got it," he nodded, continuing into the room.

"Nice catch," Grissom nodded as both CSIs carefully stepped over the area.

"Man, Vega wasn't kidding," Warrick observed, pulling out his camera as he looked around. "Gruesome is right. One hell of a struggle went down in here; stuff's knocked over everywhere, and the glass is shattered in several of the frames on the wall. And there's bloody grafitti all over every wall - kinda hard to make out with the rust-colored paint, but the copper smell is unmistakable. You want the room or the body, Gris?"

"I'll take the body," Grissom nodded. What was left of the late Professor Kessler hung in the middle of his opulently furnished office, about four feet in front of his expansive desk. Grissom began the meticulous process of photographically documenting everything about where and how the body hung.

"All right, I'll take the bloody grafitti-fest," Warrick nodded. The writing and the many rough stick drawings of violent acts were at roughly chest height; a few had drips running to the floor. The stylized writing and crude sketches had similar angles which, combined with the general horror of the scene and the red-toned paint on the walls, made it all seem to blend together. He had to focus on one small section to make any of it out. But as he did... it hit him. "Grissom... This writing isn't in English; I don't recognize the language."

"Interesting," came the senior investigator's non-committal reply.

"I'll photograph all of this again once we add some luminol to make it easier to see," Warrick nodded, finishing his preliminary photos of the walls and moving on to capture some partial bloody shoeprints and a broken paperweight on the carpet.

"There are no stab wounds or bullet holes on this body, Warrick. There are ligatures and bruising, but the only thing that was bleeding are a few defensive wounds on his hands and a gash to his right temple – head wounds bleed heavily, but there's gotta be a few pints of blood at least on the walls, no way all of it came from our dead guy."

"Then whose is it?" Warrick asked, photographing smashed diploma frames.

"An interesting question - hopefully the DNA lab can get us an interesting answer."

"See you back at the morgue," David nodded, wheeling the gurney out.

"Go talk to our witness?" Warrick suggested, raising an eyebrow.

"You know what they say - first witness, first suspect."

As David headed for the elevator with the body, Warrick and Grissom headed down the hall. "207C," Warrick said, scanning the nameplates lining the hall. "Here we go - Amelia Ravi." He knocked on the door.

There was a loud bark in reply, followed by a "Come in."

"Ms. Ravi?" Grissom said, entering with Warrick close behind. "I'm Gil Grissom from the crime lab, and this Warrick Brown. We'd like to ask you some questions, if we may?"

The young woman behind the desk nodded, gesturing to a couple of chairs in front of the desk. "Of course, have a seat. And please, call me Amelia - the physics department as a whole doesn't much stand on formality." Her last name and her skin tone suggested that she was of Indian descent, but her English was clear and unaccented. The celery green parka draped over the back of her chair suggested that she was rather better equipped for the weather tonight than many of Vegas's inhabitants.

A brown and white canine face emerged from under the desk, peering intently at the newcomers. "Woof!"

"That's enough, Missy," Amelia said, gently but firmly, before smiling apologetically to the two CSIs. "Sorry - she's all worked up because I got so upset earlier; makes her more defensive of me."

"Understandable," Warrick nodded. "She's got a gorgeous face - what kind of dog is she?"

"I call her a malador retriever - her mother is a chocolate lab, and her father is the dog who jumped the fence," Amelia chuckled. "Best guess is a malamute or husky-malamute mix. Between her webbed feet and her snowshoes, she's probably got about the single largest set of paws in the continental US."

"Nice – bet she's loving this weather," Warrick grinned, looking around the office as he took a seat. Amelia's office was a much smaller space than Kessler's, but the sky blue paint, blond wood furniture, and flowered curtains made it feel much more inviting - it felt more like a nice place for a friendly chat, and less like an inner sanctum into which any visitor was inherently an intrusion. Three diplomas - one from a Bangor, Maine high school, a bachelor of science from a small college in Maine, and a master of science from UNLV - were framed on one wall. On the wall opposite was a whiteboard covered in vector diagrams and physics equations in various colors of dry erase marker. The whiteboard seemed to be hung awfully low, Warrick noticed - it didn't look like it would be comfortable to write on at that height. And... odd, there seemed to be a large, somewhat dirty wet spot on the floor near the door. Doubtless, it was tracked-in snow which had melted, but off of what? The shape was quite odd – two parallel marks, rather too far apart and of entirely the wrong shape and size to have been made by someone's shoes.

"She may well be the only one in Las Vegas who is," Amelia laughed. "She thinks she's a puppy all over again. Me, I hate this slop – this is one of the things I left Maine to get away from," she smirked, sniffling slightly.

"Are you all right, there?" Grissom asked. Amelia had the beginnings of a black eye, and the tell tale signs of a very recent bloody nose.

"Shaken up, but I'm fine," she assured him. Then she caught what he was looking at. "Oh, that? I fell earlier. I'll be fine."

Some part of Warrick's mind – the part that had seen far too many domestic violence cases – couldn't help wondering if she had fallen, or if she had 'fallen'.

A young man who'd been perched on the corner of the desk took the entrance of the CSIs as his hint to make a tactful exit. "Amelia, I need a latte; I'm gonna run by the coffee shop. You want anything?"

"An odwalla juice would be great - Strawberry C Monster, if they've got any left," she grinned back. "Thanks, Chris - you rock."

"Boyfriend?" Warrick asked once the office door had closed.

Amelia shook her head. "I confess, if he were to ask me out, I wouldn't say no, but at the moment, no, we're just close friends. He's another TA in the department."

"What can you tell us about Professor Kessler, Amelia?" Grissom asked. "Was he well-liked in the department?"

Amelia snorted. "Hardly. Jesus and his mama probably loved him, but I doubt you'll find anyone else around here who did."

"Why is that?" Warrick asked, raising an eyebrow. "Harsh grader?"

"No. Harsh grading is what I do - you want full credit on my exams, you'll show your work and explain your answer. You want top score on a paper or lab report, you'll use proper spelling and grammar, cite every source, and kindly save the BSing your way through it for another class. But I make sure everyone knows that at the beginning of the term, and if you make an honest effort to answer the question, I'll give you partial credit. Incidentally, I've got a wait list half a mile long for both my classes next term ." Amelia raised an eyebrow. "I assume you'd prefer I skip the pussy-footing around about not speaking ill of the dead and cut to the real reason nobody liked the guy?"

Grissom nodded. "Please." It was nice to have a frank witness who didn't need to have such information dragged out of them.

"If you were Caucasian, male, and tenured, Kessler was a rude and arrogant prick. If you were any two of the three, he was a rude and arrogant condescending prick. If you weren't either male or tenured, you were fair game for whatever small-minded, mean-spirited bullshit he found himself in the mood for that day. My idea of a fun class is making a reference to Spiderman or the Death Star in a lecture or getting an entire lecture hall groaning at bad math puns. His idea of a fun class was seeing how many female students he could make cry - waving failing test grades around in front of the class, insulting their intelligence over minor mistakes and being generally crude and demeaning, going on at length in the middle of class that science in general and physics in particular was man's work, and women should keep to the nursing program, or, better still, the kitchen – that kind of thing. Things he just didn't do with the guys. Not if their melanin count was low enough to sunburn, at any rate. He was a racist, sexist, homophobic ass. I, you may have noticed, am neither Caucasian, nor male, nor tenured. As a completely unapologetic Indian feminist, he couldn't stand me, and the feeling was mutual. For all that, though, he and I had a certain grudging respect for one another. Many other students were not so lucky."

"Why is that?" Grissom asked.

"I saw the man for the bully he was, and called him out on it, but even I have to admit that he was a brilliant physicist and an expert in his field. He respected the fact that I busted my ass enough to force him to give me the A, even with his, frankly, blatantly biased grading practices. More than that, though, I think he respected me for the fact that I wasn't afraid to stand up to him. When he gave me crap, I calmly told him that I was having none of it. I've dealt with my fair share of bullies, and I've learned not to take their nonsense. Didn't raise my voice, didn't stoop to insults, didn't cry - at least, not in front of him. I think it about drove him crazy, but in the end, I was... something of a worthy adversary."

"What was his area of expertise?" Grissom asked.

"Classy, even if the man himself wasn't." Amelia caught the questioning glances. "Sorry – too used to the jargon. Kessler wrote the book on Classical Mechanics. Literally."

"Gotcha. But if he was that bad, why was he still around?" Warrick asked.

"The official reason is because he was, as I said, an absolutely brilliant physicist, and one of the leading experts of his generation when it comes to classical mechanics."

"And the unofficial reason?" Grissom asked.

"Politics," Amelia replied, spitting the word out as though it tasted foul. "And its old friend, funding. In addition to bringing in a lot of grant money simply by being a very active and very respected researcher and publisher, Kessler's uncles' dog's nephew's sister's old college roommate, or some equally convoluted relation, is a major benefactor both of the engineering program and the university as a whole. Said benefactor is a major contributor, in particular, to the pet project of the Dean of Science, Engineering, and Technology. Dean Radcliffe may have hated Kessler's guts – and it's no secret that he did – but he does like grant money. Consequently, Kessler was slapped on the wrist the few times he crossed the line into sexual harassment, and anything less than that... let's just say, many blind eyes were turned over the years."

"Okay – so, if you didn't like Kessler, and he didn't like you... how'd you wind up as his TA?"

Amelia shrugged. "Someone had to do it. None of the TAs liked Kessler, and he didn't care for any of us either. I said I'd do it because one, I simply like TAing the intro class – aside from my own specialty of electricity and magnetism, it's one of my favorite classes to teach because it has a wide variety of content; keeps things interesting over the semester – and two, I would rather it be someone who he can't intimidate. Both the other TAs who had room in their schedules to take that class are on the list of 'people he's made cry at the front of a lecture hall'. I didn't want to put them in that position again if I could help it."

"Can you tell us where you were between 8:00 and 10:00 tonight?" Grissom asked.

"In the math lab over in classroom building, from about 7:00 until just after 11:00. I had a pre-exam review session with a bunch of my students from PHYS 226 for an hour, and then I spent the next three hours helping the math TAs out with tutoring – there's some nasty flu bug going around campus right now. A couple of their TAs are home, trying to keep down something other than gatorade and ginger ale, and there are quite a few undergrads panicking over calculus with exams coming up, so I said I'd lend a hand. When I wasn't tutoring, I was sitting in the math lab, grading for PHYS 120."

"Can anyone verify that?" Grissom asked.

"Sure, I can get you the names of the math TAs I was with," Amelia nodded, taking a post-it note from her desk and writing down a couple of names and phone numbers. She passed it to Grissom, then peaked under her desk.. "Watch your tail, Missy.," she nodded before looking back up. "I think I know where this is going, and there's a minor detail you should probably know about. Aside from the fact that I'm a pacifist..." Bracing her palms on the edge of her desk, she pushed her chair back, revealing that it was, in fact, a wheelchair. A scuffling of paws could be heard beneath the desk, and Missy came out, setting her head in her mistress's lap. She was wearing a service dog ID vest over some sort of medical harness. "I don't have the physical capacity to have gotten up there and tied off that rope, let alone gotten him into it."

"Ah," Warrick nodded. Amelia may have had motive, but it didn't look like she had either means or opportunity. They would have to find out who did... "What happened, if I may ask?"

Amelia nodded. "It's no big secret – it's a birth defect. I've got a lower skeleton that's put together bass-ackwards, and neuromuscular problems to go with it. Then I went and developed very early osteoarthritis a couple of years ago. Never rains but it pours;" she said wryly.

"How does it affect your physical abilities?" Grissom asked.

"It's a chronic pain condition, with all the joys that that entails – I'm on enough prescriptions that I have to be very careful what OTCs I take and anything recreational like, say, alcohol is out of the question. Some days I'm good to go with my day-to-day pain control and maybe an anti-inflammatory for the arthritis – others, I need 12 milligrams of fentanyl before I'm physically capable of getting out of bed. On reasonably good days, I can walk with forearm crutches – how far and how fast varies depending on the day that you ask me; it's far more tiring than using the chair, and gets much more difficult if I'm already having a bad pain day. Cold and humidity are bad – my family will tell you that I've been predicting storms with better accuracy than the Weather Channel since I was about four years old. Consequently, in bad weather, I mostly use the crutches for transferring from the chair to the car and the like, though I try to be up and around for an hour or so a day when I'm feeling up to it. Without crutches, walking is out of the question. I tire easily, I tend to drop small objects very easily, and when I'm tired, my speech tends to slur a bit, but aside from that, I function mostly normally from the waist up."

Warrick nodded. "All right. How did you discover the body?"

"I left the math lab at about ten after eleven – I had told Kessler I'd have the grades as of the end of class to him by 11:30."

"Wait – eleven thirty at night?" Grissom asked.

Amelia nodded. "Kessler was a night owl – I don't think I ever even heard of him being on campus before noon, and he was usually in his office from about 6:30 or 7:00 to around midnight. Turns out twenty minutes wasn't long enough – when I got over here, I discovered that someone had parked in the priority space without tags, leaving the only parking at the bottom of the hill. It's a steep grade, and difficult for me to get up under the best of circumstances, and the slush makes getting around with wheels much, much harder. By the time I got up here, it was 11:40, and it went without saying that Kessler would be fit to be tied. I had a whole bunch of muddy slush stuck in my spokes and I didn't care to be yelled at for tracking that as well, so I parked my chair in here and headed down the hall with my crutches. I've been feeling this storm coming since about noon yesterday, so I was walking even slower than usual, took me a good five minutes or more probably to get down there. Halfway down the hall, Missy started going absolutely ballistic, barking her head off."

"Was that normal for her?" Grissom asked.

"Absolutely not. It was beyond weird – like all service dogs, she's very well trained, and I've never known her to bark without reason when she's wearing her vest. At first, I figured she was maybe just excited about the snow. But as we got closer to his office, she was getting more and more worked up. Just as I was about to knock, she actually jumped on me. For a mobility dog, that's an absolute no-no; and I've never known her to do that. In retrospect, I can only conclude that she smelled that something was very, very wrong, and was trying to keep me away from it. My balance is very poor under the best of circumstances, and between me and a 75 pound dog, it isn't even a contest – I went over like a feather. I tried to catch myself on the door – I guess it wasn't latched; I hadn't noticed between being in a hurry and trying to get my dog to shush – whatever the reason, it didn't take my weight, and I faceplanted in the doorway."

"Is that how you got that black eye?" Warrick asked.

Amelia nodded. "I must've fallen on the handle of my crutch. My pain threshold is high enough, and I was already hurting enough from the weather, that in all honesty, the black eye didn't even register – I didn't notice until Chris told me. I only noticed the nose bleed because it was dripping all over my hand once I got up. Not the sort of thing to make me feel better after seeing that, believe me."

"I can imagine. What happened next?" Grissom asked.

"Getting up from the floor is difficult for me – Missy wears a specialized harness to help me up, but I can't use it flat on my face like that, and there wasn't room in the doorway for me to turn over. At first I couldn't see much of anything aside from Kessler's carpet, but I eventually managed to get my elbows under me enough to be able to look up. That's when I saw Kessler. Becky and Jason tell me I screamed like a banshee; they heard me from their offices at the end of the hall. Jason and Chris helped me up and got me back here – I was pretty weak in the knees by that point and didn't trust my balance even with crutches – and Becky called you guys."

Grissom nodded. "We'll need your fingerprints to eliminate yours from our crime scene. If you wouldn't mind, I would also like a DNA sample to identify any blood that may have fallen when you fell. I can get a warrant, if you would prefer."

Amelia shook her head. "Won't be necessary – there's no sense in making your job more difficult, or, for that matter, in pulling a judge out of bed at... whatever ungodly hour it is right now; time loses all meaning during Dead Days. I'll be happy to give you whatever you need."

"Thank you for being so understanding," Grissom nodded. "We'll also need to print Missy, and your shoes and crutches.."

"Can be arranged," Amelia nodded, whistling for her dog. "So is that called a four-card, or what?" she asked, smirking slightly.

"Works for me," Warrick laughed. "But you first. How far into Kessler's office did you go when you discovered the body?" Warrick asked, pulling out a ten-card and an ink pad.

"Let's see – I'm just under five feet tall, and Missy tripped me up about a three feet outside the doorway... Accounting for forward momentum, trigonometry says my nose probably met the carpet about two to three feet inside the door. At any rate, wherever I landed is how far in I went – when Jason and Chris got me up, we certainly didn't go further in. And Missy didn't go in at all – she'd have had to literally walk over me."

"And here I told my high school math teacher I'd never have a use for trig in the real world," Warrick laughed. "All right, let's get Missy's four-card – do you have any suggestions as to the easiest way for her?"

"Front paws will be easy – back paws might be a challenge," Amelia replied. "But let's see how it goes. Missy, sit." Once the dog had complied, she gently touched the back of one front leg. "Give." Setting Missy's paw in her lap, she nodded to Warrick. "All right, you should be good to go for the first one – I want to get her used to the idea before we start messing with her back feet."

"Right," Warrick agreed, printing Missy's front right. "One down, three to go."

The front left was printed without incident. Now for the hard part. "Missy, up." She set one hand, palm up, by her wheel. "Step." As the dog put her paw in her hand, Amelia nodded to Warrick. "All right, now try." She scratched the dog behind her ears with her free hand. "Easy girl – you're all right. That's it, I won't let you fall."

At last, Warrick was done with all four paws. "Sorry about that, Missy."

Laughing, Amelia reached into the pocket of her cargo pants and extracted a dog treat. "Give her that, and all sins will be forgiven," she grinned.

"All right – here you go, girl," Warrick said, giving her a scritch.

Tail a-wagging, Missy happily chomped her treat.

Grissom, meanwhile, had already printed the crutches, tape-lifted some carpet fibers from them, and readied a swab. "All right, just open wide – don't even need you to say 'ah'" he nodded.

"Can do," Amelia nodded.

Grissom nodded, sealing and labeling the swab. "I think that's all we need for tonight – if we have any more questions later, we'll let you know. Are you going to be all right getting home? You've had a pretty big shock." Crime scenes involving hangings tended to be among the worst, as far as shaking people up.

"I definitely shouldn't be driving," Amelia agreed. "Chris said he'd give me a ride home; we live in the same building." She looked up as there was a tap at the door - a very precise rhythm, clearly some sort of standing signal. Tap... Tap... Tap-Tap... Tap-Tap-Tap.

"Fibonacci's sequence," Grissom stated.

Amelia nodded. "Yes," she grinned. "Come on in, Chris," she called.

"One Strawberry C Monster, coming right up," the young man grinned, waving the plastic bottle. "Last one," he laughed.

"Fabulous," Amelia laughed. "Last thing I need before exam week is the Math Plague."

"No kidding," Chris laughed. "You about ready to head for home, 'Melia?"

"Like you wouldn't believe."