Chapter Four: A Red Ford Explorer
At the beginning of their next shift, the entire graveyard team gathered in the layout room. They were putting together what they'd learned the night before to see how much information they had on the case.
"Okay, so what did you learn at the hospital?" Grissom inquired.
Catherine spoke up, "At this point, there were three fatalities all from the same family. At the time of our interviews last night, the little girl from the Honda was still listed as being alive."
"I received a message from the hospital earlier that she is alive and in stable condition," Grissom interjected.
"So we interviewed the others. The man who was driving the big truck was a 54 year old and he was pretty shaken up about the whole thing. We gathered from him that a red SUV swerved into his lane without warning and he tried to avoid a collision and that's when he crossed into the northbound lanes. Judging by the skid marks I noted where he crossed the median, he missed hitting the cement barrier by about 50 feet. If the SUV had cut him off just slightly sooner, he would've hit the barrier and the rest of the accident might have been prevented.
"The three people in the Mercedes seemed to suffer relatively minor injuries. The woman who was driving was pretty concerned about the damage to the car. Then we met her husband who was a real jack ass. He was more worried about his expensive car than the fact that there were other victims in the accident. I think that's about all the information we got from the hospital last night," Catherine looked at Sara to see if she had anything to add.
"That about covers it," Sara said quietly.
"While I didn't talk to the guy, so I don't know personally what he was like, I can't blame him for being mad about the Mercedes. Those things run easily a hundred grand," Greg put in.
"Yeah, that's still no excuse for how that man acted," Sara shook her head.
"No," Catherine agreed, "it's certainly not."
"Anyway, back to the accident," Grissom cleared his throat.
"Warrick and I managed to track down some eye witnesses and we know that we are looking for a red vehicle with a partial license plate ending in AJK. Thanks to the tread marks Greggo collected, we've narrowed it down to a Ford Explorer, likely 1996-2000 model," Nick added, "we're narrowing down a list of possible vehicles. I guess the guy in the SUV cut someone else off and that's how they got his plate number. They were on their way back home when they came up on the accident."
"Well I think your Ford may have actually made contact with my truck, I found a scratch on it that had red paint transfer," Catherine nodded, "I'll make sure to get it over to Hodges and have him analyze it to see what type of vehicle the red paint came from."
"All I can tell you from my initial observations on the sedan is that a significant amount of force was exerted on it. The passenger cabin was completely caved in and I'm amazed that anyone came out of it alive. That big of a truck versus a smaller car is no contest," Grissom put in.
"Sounds like we've got a lot of work still to go," Warrick sighed.
"I have a lot of evidence left to sift through from the Accord," Grissom nodded, "you two keep working on locating the Explorer. Greg, you can help me sift through more evidence. Sara and Catherine work on what you collected from the truck and the Mercedes."
The team went their separate ways and began looking more closely at the tiny bits and pieces of evidence that they'd collected. Catherine took her paint sample to Hodges and he determined that it was Ford's stock color of red for Explorers in the year range they were searching for. She also ran the blood sample she'd collected from the Mercedes just to be sure that Sandra was, in fact, driving and not her drunken, angry husband. If he was, it probably hadn't contributed to the accident much, but the guy was such a jerk, Catherine would love to nail him on a DUI. When her results came back, the blood was a match to the sample they had received from Sandra at the hospital, so their story seemed to be true.
Nick and Warrick had narrowed down their list of potential vehicles to only 4. Two of them were not AJK plates, but in the dark of the night as a major crash was happening, an 'I' could look like a 'J' and so they took close similarities into consideration. Now they just had to go and personally visit all the R.O.'s and see if they could find anything probative. The first name on the list was a Jessica Anderson who lived in an apartment in town. They paid her a visit around 11PM and found her both home and awake.
"Hello, what can I do for you?" she answered her door.
"Hi, are you Jessica Anderson?" Nick asked.
"Yes sir," she replied.
"Jessica, let me cut to the chase," Warrick jumped in, "do you own a 1996 red Ford Explorer?"
"I sure do, first new car I ever bought. Of course with gas prices now, I wish I'd bought a smaller car," Jessica explained, "hindsight is 20/20 I guess. Why do you ask?"
"We're with the crime lab and we're trying to find an SUV that might have caused a chain reaction accident last night," Nick explained.
"Oh my God, that one that they talked about on the news? Where those three people were killed?" she asked, worriedly.
"That's the one," Nick nodded.
"So, where were you last night around 10PM?" Warrick asked.
"Same place I am every week night at 10PM, still working," Jessica told them, "I work down at Caesar's Palace, feel free to contact them and verify that I was there. I get off work at 10:30PM every night, I'm not usually home until right about now. In fact, I got here just before you guys showed up."
"Would you mind if we got a quick look at your vehicle, just to make sure it hasn't been in any recent accidents?" Nick queried.
"If it will prove that I'm not a suspect, go right ahead," she stepped out of her apartment and led them to where her SUV was parked.
Nick and Warrick both quickly looked over the vehicle, and found everything to be in good shape. There were some rock chips and minor damages that you'd expect from a car that was driven for approximately 11 years. Nothing that would indicate that it had been involved in any accidents and definitely no white paint transfer.
"All right Miss Anderson, it looks like you're not the person we're looking for," Warrick informed her.
"Good, I know that if I was ever in accident I would stop. How can anyone run from a scene?" she shook her head.
"It's possible the person didn't realize that they'd started the chain reaction, but we won't know for sure until we find 'em," Nick shrugged, "thank you for your cooperation, we appreciate it."
"No problem, I hope you find the person responsible," Jessica said as she headed back to her apartment.
"Well that was a bust," Nick sighed.
"One down, three more to go," Warrick said, "I'm sure we'll find our guy."
"Unless our eyewitnesses were not reliable, we're going on what they told us," Nick reminded him, "it's possible they got the wrong license plate number or it was unrelated to the accident."
"Have some faith, my man, I think our guy is on this list: Mark Bay, James McGrane or Edmond Juarez," Warrick read off the remaining possibilities, "besides, we've got plenty of our shift left to visit the rest of these people."
"You're right, who's next?" Nick asked.
"Well Mr. McGrane is the next closest person on our list," Warrick checked the addresses.
"Okay, let's go pay him a visit," Nick backed out of his parking spot.
The CSIs visited both James McGrane and Edmond Juarez who lived in the closest Vegas suburbs. Both visits turned out to be busts. That left the remaining name on their list as Mark Bay who lived in Henderson. They decided to check in at the lab before making their last visit. If Mark Bay wasn't the one they were looking for, it would be back to square one and they wanted to warn Grissom of the possibility as well as find any updates on the case.
A/N: And voila, there you go with chapter four. I will try to have chapter five posted sometime tomorrow (before the new episode is on because I know I'd rather be watching that than reading some story). Once again, thanks for reading and for reviewing. I'm glad that you are all enjoying the story so far.