Chapter 6

Sara watched as Kurt Cochrane attached the gate opener and turned it on, slowly rolling out the steel gate beneath the railcar. A cloud of grey dust flew out as cement fell from the open gate. The body did not move.

Sara took the opportunity to get more shots of the body before Shelia Campbell could remove it. Kneeling beside her, Grissom exchanged a few words about strategy with the coroner from Pioche. Then, reaching in, the three of them maneuvered the body out of the car, pulling out more cement as they did so. The body of a young man flopped down on the boot hatch and Sara lifted her camera again, immediately snapping photos.

Sheila Campbell's gloved hand flitted through the victim's hair. "Abrasion on the back of the skull."

Grissom nodded, fingering the abrasion with his gloved hands. It was small, Sara noted, but could have bled out slowly.

The coroner flipped the body over. "Arm appears to be a bit mangled, broken in several places, but there is no bruising to go along with it."

"Post-mortem," Sara muttered to herself, "likely from opening and closing the gate on the railcar." She noticed Grissom nod in agreement.

Sheila Campbell glanced between them. "The body is beginning to decompose. Passed rigor a while ago, but I couldn't give you the time. I won't be able to get you a TOD here."

Sara watched as Grissom nodded again. Sealed in a container, away from the elements with no bugs able to get at the body either, Grissom wouldn't be able to do his thing to get TOD either. The rate of decomposition in the container would correlate to the temperature outside. A big steel container could produce a lot of heat inside, but Sara was unsure whether the powder would increase the heat, or cool the temperature inside the container. She glanced at Grissom with a smirk. "Want to throw a cadaver into a steel container full of cement and see how long it takes to decompose?"

Four faces turned to Sara with a shocked look. Grissom only smirked. "Trade humor," Sara told the group of surprised onlookers, though if all the other areas of the investigation didn't pan out, they might be doing something similar to try to recreate the conditions.

Sheriff Brackett shook his head. "First for me," he muttered almost under her breath.

Sheila Campbell brushed the matted hair away from the victim's face. Sara and Grissom crouched down to take a good look. "Anybody recognize him?" Grissom asked.

Joe Dryden and Kurt Cochrane both shook their heads. The Sheriff kneeled down beside the body. "I don't either, and there aren't any recent missing persons in the county."

"Does he have ID on him?"

The coroner's fingers slipped into the pockets of the victim's jeans. "Sorry, empty."

Grissom stood up and looked at Joe Dryden. "How long have these railcars been here?"

"Train spotted them yesterday," Kurt Cochrane put in.

Sara and Grissom shared a look, both lifting a brow. If the railcar had only arrived the day before, whatever happened inside did not happen on that site. The body indicated that. While the railcar was the crime scene, the site was not. "And before that?" Grissom asked.

Joe Dryden let out a breath. "I'll get the railroad to get you all that information."

"Where does your cement come from?" Sara asked.

"Mojave."

"California."

Joe Dryden nodded. "Gets shipped from the cement plant out there."

Grissom nodded. "We're looking for a missing person west of here," he said to Sara. She nodded in return. Grissom stood up. "Sheriff, we'll need the body transferred to our Medical Examiner in Las Vegas. We'll also need a uniform to transfer evidence to our Lab so that they can begin processing."

The Sheriff nodded. "I'll have somebody go through missing persons reports from all the towns on the line between here and Mojave as well."

"Thank you." Grissom looked down at Sara. "I'll phone Catherine and see who's available to process for us and get them to sign off on chain of custody from the officer transporting the evidence, and I'll get Brass to coordinate with the Sheriff and work on missing persons as well."

Crouching back down, Grissom helped the coroner place the body into a body bag. With all the steps and obstacles in the way, it was too hard to roll the gurney, so Grissom ended up helping the coroner to carry the body stretcher style. He closed the doors to the back of the van and then stepped back. Sara watched as the coroner's van and Sheriff's vehicle kicked up dust on their way to Pioche.

She glanced over to Joe Dryden, who was pacing around while speaking on the phone. He clipped it shut and turned to the two CSIs. "Railroad is on their way over."

Sara nodded. She looked at Grissom. "Back to sifting through cement?"

He gave a soft nod. Sara looked at the bag below the railcar, and then up at the large silo. She turned to Joe Dryden. "Can you give us a rundown on how this all works?"

"Yeah, sure." He paused. "Basically it's like a large vacuum. When we need powder in the silo, we spot a railcar. We use an electric winch to spot. Other sites have car movers, but this place is pretty small. It basically only exists because of the dams in this area." He shrugged. "Maintenance and expansion."

"You spot the car so that the gate is over the bag?"

"Yeah," he scratched his chin. "Then a bootjack lifts the bag up and seals to the gate using a gasket. The bootjack operates on air. There's a large compressor in the back of the trailer."

Sara nodded. She was wondering what the purpose of partitioning the trailer had been. The heavy equipment was stored there. "So you open up the air and it lifts the boot jack."

"Yes. Then we open up the gate. It's also operated by air. Gravity does its trick and cement falls into the bag where it gets sucked into the cyclone."

"And you open up the top hatches so that air can replace the cement that gets drawn out of the railcar."

Joe Dryden nodded. "Right, or else the pressure might try to suck in the sides of the railcar."

Grissom took that moment to step into the conversation. "How does the powder get from the cyclone down here all the way up to the top of the silo?"

Joe Dryden pointed to an unfamiliar looking machine. "Those are your blowers. Their job is to blow the cement out of the cyclone and up into the silo."

"That sounds like it requires a lot of pressure," Sara put in.

"It does, and a lot of power. Each blower has its own breaker."

Grissom nodded. "Then, the cement gets stored in the silo."

"Right, until one of the redi-mixes need a load. When that happens, a truck parks on the scale. The driver lines up his trailer hatches to the hose extending out of the silo, goes up on the platform, lowers the loading hose and loads whatever weight he is required to take out."

"What's that large tank with the hoses for?" Sara asked, nodding to the large, cylindrical tank on the other side of the scale.

"Flyash. It gets mixed with the cement at the redi-mixes when making concrete. It's the other product that moves through this site." He pointed to the small silo beside it. "That's the flyash dust collector, and this one over here is our other dust collector."

"Cement?"

"Whatever we're unloading. It runs to both the silo and the flyash pig."

"This railcar is cement, though?"

"Yeah."

"Did anything get taken out today?"

Joe Dryden frowned. "I'm not really sure. I'd have to check with dispatch."

Grissom frowned. "You're the site manager."

"Yes, but my office is in Pioche where we operate most of our business. This facility is under my management, but pretty much runs itself. There are a few truckers from Panaca and Caliente who run most of the cement loads, unless we need them hauling something else out of Pioche, and Kurt here, who unloads for us when we need it. It isn't a big enough operation to require a manager on site. I almost never make it out here, myself. Everything runs through our office in Pioche, including dispatch."

Kurt Cochrane stepped forward. "I can answer that question. Jeff took a load out today."

Grissom looked over at Kurt Cochrane. "Did he take a load out before or after you began unloading this car?"

"After."

"How full was the silo before you began unloading?"

"About a hundred tons. Close to half."

"Griss," Sara said, noticing a truck drive up with rollers under the front bumper. "I think the railroad is here."

Grissom nodded. He turned back to Joe Dryden. "We'll need to know where your driver took that load. While it isn't likely, there could be evidence in the trailer."

Joe Dryden nodded. "I can get you that information as soon as I get back to town."

"If it hasn't been unloaded, get someone to stop the truck and bring it to the Sheriff's office in Pioche."

There was another short nod. "I'll fax over all the information we have to the fax machine here for you."

"Thank you."

Grissom turned to the man stepping out of the company railway truck. Sara approached with him. "You're with the railway?"

"Yes, ma'am. Roger Warren."

"You spotted these railcars on site here?"

"Yes, ma'am, yesterday."

"And where was it before?"

"It sat on the line for a couple days here."

"And before that?"

"Came from the west. That's all I can tell you. Train dropped it off on its route. This is an auxiliary line built for the construction companies here, and all the railway employees in this area work on the line here. The town used to be a real railway hub with the main line going right through town, but there's not much reason to stop anymore, so all our work is on the auxiliary line. I can get you that information though."

"Get it," Grissom said cutting in. "We need to know every place this train stopped between here and Mojave."

"I'll pull it up on the computer back at the office and fax it here?" he stated, inflecting his voice upwards on the last word to form a question.

"That will be fine."

"One more thing," Sara said, before Roger Warren could leave. "Do you ever climb on top of the railcars to check the hatches?"

Roger Warren frowned. "Uh, no ma'am. We just spot the cars."

"But if you spot an open hatch, what do you do?"

"Close it, I guess."

"Do you check inside?"

"Never had one open before, but procedure is to check, always."

"You've never spotted one open?" Sara asked, confirming.

Roger Warred shook his head. "Nope. We railroaders have seen some crazy stuff on the tracks. Opened up a freight car once and found a Hispanic family in rags once, asking if they were in Phoenix. They had a tent set up and had been living off canned beans. Had a latrine set up on the other side of the car that was no picnic to clean up. Another time we opened up the side and found a couple of pit bulls, nothing else. Closed that car off until we could get animal control out, but these kinds of railcars, top hatches only and carrying this kind of product…sane people don't tend ride inside these cars, ma'am. Craziest thing I've ever heard of."

"Thank you, Mr. Warren."

"Sure, ma'am. Sir, I'll get you all the information on this railcar and all of its stops, including length of each stop, shortly."

Grissom nodded. "Thank you."

Sara turned to Kurt Cochrane. The young man was shifting on his feet, probably wanting to get home, or get out of there after the day he'd had. While everything there was still running, Sara felt confident that they could let him go. "We're almost done with you as well. We just need you to finish going through how this works and we'll need your fingerprints."

He frowned. "My fingerprints?"

"To eliminate from the prints we pulled from the railcar."

"I wear gloves."

Sara shrugged. "We're still going to need your prints. It's procedure."

"Oh, okay." He sounded unsure, but extended a hand to Sara. Grissom moved to her kit and retrieved a print card and ink for her. Sara carefully took Kurt Cochrane's prints and let go of his hand. "Thank you."

Kurt Cochrane nodded. "What else do you need?"

Sara frowned, thinking about how much easier it would be to vibrate the rest of the cement out of the railcar and sift it there, rather than lower herself back into the car and have to try to sift through the cement there. "Can we get the cement out of the car without it being sucked up into the silo?"

Kurt Cochrane laughed. "Sure. You just have to close the valve on hose from the cyclone to the railcar, or turn off the cyclone completely, and just vibrate the stuff down."

"How do we do that?"

Kurt Cochrane walked over to the cyclone and pushed down on a red STOP button. Immediately half the noise from the site quit, leaving only the compressor from the back of the trailer running. "There you go. If you need to start it back up again, you just hit the on button, and flick that switch to begin the unload cycle."

Sara nodded. It had seemed too obvious, but she hadn't wanted to just hit buttons without being sure.

"One more thing," Grissom said. "When we're done with the compressor, how do we shut everything down for you?"

Kurt Cochrane led them to the back and showed them all of the switches and breakers, outlining how to shut everything off, and in what order to do it in.

"Thanks for your help," Sara said, as they made their way back over to the side of the trailer. "We'll make sure everything gets shut down when we're done."

"Yeah," he shifted on his feet and glanced down at his ink stained fingers. "No problem."

"We may have more questions for you later."

"Sure, uh, my number is posted inside the office there."

Sara nodded. The young man turned away and got into his vehicle, kicking up dust as he left. She glanced around. It was just her, Grissom and the highway patrolman left.