Chapter 3
8:55 AM
One page and Greg was back into the print lab. He'd only left moments before, tired of watching Mandy ply her trade. He'd decided to grab a cup of coffee as he reserves were wearing down, and had barely made it to the break room when the page brought him back. He entered the room and waited for Mandy to speak. She turned to him with her trademark mischievous smile. "I've got an id. Wanda Collins, 22 years old."
"She was in AFIS?"
"Picked up on a trick roll two months ago."
"Trick roll? So the victim was a…"
"Lady of the night."
"She must work the neighborhood we found her in. Last known address?"
Mandy gave him an address and he was out the door, giving a wave goodbye as he left. Pulling out his cell phone, he made a quick call to Sofia, asking her to pick him up outside the lab.
9:51 AM
Sofia pulled up to the lab parking lot and watched as Greg jumped up from a seated position on the curb and hopped into the car. "Took you long enough."
"Greg, you woke me up. I had to shower and dress. It takes thirty-five to forty minutes to get to the lab in the morning traffic from my place. I haven't eaten yet. I stopped just long enough to pick us both up a cup of coffee. I think I made good time."
"Coffee?"
She grinned. "Yeah Greg, you thirsty?"
"I could use a coffee."
Sofia smiled and handed him a cup. She took a sip of her own before placing it back in the cup holder. "Our victim was a prostitute?"
"Yep."
"Makes sense. It would explain why it didn't look as though the victim struggled at all. The killer probably offered good money to tie her to the bed."
"She blindly agrees to being tied up, not knowing it would lead to a cruel death."
"There's no way she'd agree to it if she knew what was about to happen."
"I wonder if the killer found it morbidly poetic to cut the clitoris off of a prostitute."
Sofia shuddered. "I bet he thought he had quite the imagination."
"Sometimes when I think I've been a criminalist for a couple years now, I had to have seen almost everything, then something like this happens and it shocks the hell out of me."
"Greg, I've been doing this kind of work for about thirteen years now and I haven't yet gotten used to these kinds of cases yet. It's a test of endurance."
"I feel like I've aged more in these past two years than the rest of the years combined. Any innocent views I had before have been obliterated. This work really shakes a guy up."
"Hmm," Sofia muttered in agreement. She pursed her lips and let out a sigh, focusing on the road. It wasn't until they pulled up to the victim's neighborhood did she speak again. "Ready to burn a little shoe rubber, Greg?"
4:32 PM
Despite the graphic and vile nature of the crime, it managed to escape media coverage. Without the details of the case, all the media saw was another dead hooker in another dirty motel. The manager of the motel, wanting to keep the place as under the radar as possible, wasn't about to leak details either. The report across the newswire merely stated that a prostitute was brutally murdered in a hotel room. The media's attention was far too focused on Warrick and Catherine's case and never gave Grissom's another look. And, he was thankful for it. If the media were to get the details, they'd be all over it and Grissom knew that it was just what the killer wanted. The person who'd mutilated the prostitute went to great lengths to create a presentation. While glossing over the death of a young woman was extremely sad, Grissom was relieved that they wouldn't be indulging the killer's quest for attention. The killer certainly had his attention, and that was enough.
The afternoon had passed slowly. Hodges had confirmed the fiber in the victim's throat had matched the scarf shoved into the victim's mouth. Archie had confirmed that the 911 call had been placed by the cell phone found at the scene, and that the cell phone was a disposable, untraceable. Wendy had confirmed that all the blood found in the motel room, on the shower curtain, the scalpels, the bloody bowl, all belonged to the victim. He and Catherine had poured over the photos, trying to make sense of the crime. After he'd sent her home, he continued to look at the photos, one by one, until his eyes blurred and he could not longer make out the details he'd already committed to memory. When he did look up from the photos strewn across his desk, he found Greg standing in the doorway. It startled his tired mind. He frowned at Greg in the doorway. "How long have you been standing there?"
"I was just about to knock."
"How did the search with Sofia go?"
"Victim worked an area two blocks from the motel. Lots of people recognized her but they're all being tight-lipped. Nobody we spoke to could, or was willing, to tell us who she went off with last night. We did discover she had a pimp, a Mitch Munz. Sofia brought him in for questioning. We figured that he might have done it as some sort of depraved punishment for something she might have done, like stiffing him or trying to leave him. He didn't say a thing, but it didn't fit anyways. He had an alibi. If he was involved, he'd have to have gotten someone else to do the dirty work. And, his feet were only a size 9. Sofia let him go."
"He couldn't tell you if she went off with someone?"
"He wasn't saying a thing."
"So, we're no further than we were this morning?"
Greg shook his head. "You didn't find anything?"
"I just confirmed what we suspected all along. The untracable, disposable cell made the call, the blood all belonged to the victim, and the fiber Doc Robbins found in the victim's throat was from the scarf used to gag her."
"Great, so now what?"
"Now you go home and get some rest. You've been working for seventeen hours."
"I want to, but I don't know if I could sleep. That image isn't leaving my head any time soon."
"You'll max out on overtime very early this month if you don't go home. Try to get some sleep. I'll see you tonight."
Greg nodded and left. Grissom watched the scene from his desk before looking down at the photos again, ignoring his own advice. He was exhausted, but the last thing he wanted to do was go home to his townhouse, knowing how lonely it would feel that night. He preferred to stay in the lab where, at least he could feel a pulse around him. He'd go home soon, and be at home just long enough to catch a little sleep before shift. He picked up another photo and began to contemplate what kind of a mind would commit such an atrocious crime and why a woman would agree to be tied down to a sterilized shower curtain, no matter how much money she was offered. He didn't even want to contemplate the pain she must have suffered. He closed his eyes, maybe just a quick nap in his office.