Trials and Tribulations
Chapter Six
(Interior, Courtroom, continuation. Greg is seated beside the judge. Grissom and Sara sit together at the plaintiff's table, holding hands.)
"Could you tell us what you discovered on Dr. Grissom's email account?" asked the judge.
"If I could back up a little," Greg asked, and the judge nodded, "Nick Stokes, Julie Finlay, and I worked out what it would take for Basderic to set Sara up for Wynard's murder."
(Flashback, hallway of CSI Lab, Greg, Finlay and Nick are in conversation)
Greg is thinking out loud. "Sara thinks Basderic committed the hotel murder; that the whole thing's an elaborate set-up aimed at her."
Finlay said thoughtfully, "If that is what's going on... think about what that would take."
Greg added, "Exactly. What would it take..? Seriously. If Basderic wanted to pull
it off - kill Taylor Wynard, frame Sara... What would that require?"
"Well, for starters, he'd have to know Sara was gonna be at the hotel?"
Nick responded. "Not impossible. Sara made the reservations online two weeks ago. If
he hacked into her email..."
"Okay, what else?" Greg asked.
"A million things," Finlay said, imagining, "He'd need to get in and out of Sara's house. And her hotel room, while she was there..."
"He'd have to arrange for the victim to be at the hotel, too," Nick added.
"Well, assuming Basderic's the one who took the photos, he knew about their
previous encounter."
"So maybe Basderic approaches Taylor, pretends to be a friend of Sara's, tells
Taylor she's going to be alone on her birthday, so..."
"That's a hell of a lot." Finlay said.
Nick considers it, then said, "Frank's Diner was four months ago. If Basderic's been planning to get back at Sara ever since..."
"Who better than a crazed and obsessive sociopath to pull it off?" Greg finished.
"So... if he set her up, there has to be evidence of it, right?" Finlay asked.
"We just have to find it." Nick said with determination.
(End Flashback)
"So after Basderic was arrested, we seized his computer and cell phone and all his files. We also obtained his phone records," Greg explained. "He was pretty sloppy. Didn't even bother deleting his old emails. The ones Grissom just read to you? Came from his address. Then, with permission, I was able to access Grissom's junk mail files. There I found the real emails that Sara sent. They are loving…affectionate…sad, sometimes…but nothing like the fake ones. For one thing she never addressed him as Grissom, always Dear Gil or My Love…she always signed them Love, Sara. They are kind of private, so…"
"That's all right, we don't need to hear their private correspondence. I can say for certainty that you, Ronald Basderic, will be charged in addition with tampering with electronic mail. And stalking by use of electronic mail, which is a Class C felony." Judge Wilcox said sternly. "Now we get to the most serious charge of the case. The murder of Taylor Wynard. What can you tell us about that?"
"At first we concentrated our efforts in proving Sara innocent. For starters, Sara was out cold when the murder occurred. Tox results found that Sara's blood alcohol level was still 0.3 and the sleeping pills, Zolpidem, were 0.9 milligrams per liter more than 12 hours after the murder. Sara insisted she had taken a single 5 mg pill, so we had Hodges test the pills. Sure enough they had been tampered with and were twice the indicated dosage. In fact they were powerful enough that in combination with alcohol, might have resulted in coma or death."
Grissom sucked in a breath. Sara squeezed his hand and they looked at one another.
Greg continued to explain about the tampering with the door lock mechanism, Sara's hair planted in the shower drain of Taylor's hotel room, and the knife mysteriously materializing in Sara's dishwasher.
"All right, it seems clear that Ms Sidle was framed for the murder. Can you prove that Mr Basderic actually did it?"
"We can, Your Honor," Sara's lawyer answered. "The phone records that CSI Sanders brought up prove that he, Ronald Basderic, was in contact with Wynard up until minutes before he was killed. We have surveillance video of Basderic in the hotel that night, but no record of him staying there." Mr Bancroft approached and showed the judge video footage on a portable player. "He is seen exiting the casino floor and taking an elevator. Thirty minutes later, he reappears, with new dark stains on his sleeves and shirt front, clutching a bundle of what appears to be bedsheets. Basderic then took the bundle to the parking garage and drove away."
"Suspicious, certainly, but not proof. Do you have anything else?"
"Basderic's taped confession."