Disclaimer: I don't own them.
A/N: It's been a while for this one. Sorry to keep you guys waiting. I was working out the details with the evidence. It's surprisingly difficult.
Thanks go to my awesome beta, Pati, who quite literally saves you all from some ridiculous typos.
Hope you guys like it. Review?
Chapter Eight:
It was just after nine when their detective called and said they were free to come process. Grissom made the decision to go with Nolan to process the hardware store, which the owner had willingly opened for them without the warrant, and left Sara to reprocess the old evidence. They arranged that Sara would put the evidence away, at whatever place she was at, at eleven thirty. If Grissom and Nolan had finished with the hardware store, they would pick her up together to go meet with the chair of the Theatre Department. If it took longer than expected, Nolan would pick her up while Grissom remained behind.
They weren't going to let him do anything alone, from now on.
The ride over to the scene was… awkward. In the locker room, Nolan had been so bewildered by the lead they'd missed that he couldn't speak. And, Grissom even pitied him a little bit. He was a level one getting very little guidance—Craig couldn't expect him to catch every mistake a detective made. To be absolutely fair, it really wasn't within CSI's job description to call the University and get suspect lists. Grissom and Sara were just used to Vegas, where criminalists took initiative and the lines between detective and CSI were not always so clearly drawn.
He was kind, explaining the lead they were following and stating it as the reason they'd come into the lab so early. He said they'd figured they would go over the evidence again while they waited for Nolan to arrive or the detective to call, just in case. …Not that Grissom was above pointing out Nolan's mistakes, especially after dinner the night before, but there was no reason to create more animosity between them until (or unless, he reminded himself) they found something he'd actually missed.
But Nolan had gotten his bearings in the hour and a half between Grissom's explanation and the drive to the scene; and he wasn't any happier with Grissom than the older man was with him. He looked determined, his features set, a crease between his eyebrows. He clearly had not forgotten their confrontation the night before.
"…Are you interested in Sara?"
Grissom raised an eyebrow and glanced at the young man. "She's one of my best CSIs." Probably the best, if he didn't have to worry about her overdoing it and staying up for three days on every case. Still, Grissom didn't like the somewhat relieved look on Nolan's face, so he added after a pause, "…And a beautiful woman."
The young man narrowed his eyes. "You haven't changed a bit since you worked here, have you? Craig was righ—"
"Craig unfairly represented me, apparently, because he has a past with me that it seems he has yet to deal with. I'm sorry that Sara doesn't seem to be falling for your charms, but that has nothing to do with me."
"…What does it have to do with then?" He asked aggressively, but there was a bit of desperation in his voice too. He was really asking what he was doing wrong. Grissom felt a stab of pity, and shook his head, giving the kid a real answer.
"If I could explain the enigma that is woman—specifically, that woman…" He trailed off, but his meaning was clear enough. Nolan frowned, but nodded too. After a long moment, he decided for honesty.
"You want her too, don't you?"
Grissom parked the lab vehicle and gave his younger counterpart a rueful eyebrow raise. "She's yet to meet a man who doesn't." He opened his door and slipped out, ending the conversation.
The hardware store was not truly a hardware store anymore. All the shelves were collapsed and piled along a far wall, there was no inventory, and other than the random, rouge nail lost along the floorboard, it had likely been quite clean when it closed. There was a thick layer of dust over everything, the windows were thoroughly frosted as there had been no heat to warm the place all winter, and there was also no electricity.
Grissom put Nolan to work setting up the portable lighting as they only had one officer on the scene. The uniform in question was diligently standing at his post at the door, wearing multiple layers and looking like he wished very much that he could step inside and close the door, if only to get away from the wind. To Grissom's surprise and satisfaction, Nolan was quite diligent about checking the floor for evidence and hugging the walls as he went about his task, even if there was very little to see.
The front door, which was not covered by any cameras, had a deadbolt that had been broken externally. From there, there was a single row of footprints in the dust from the front door, through the employee door, and up to a window by the back door. Beneath it there was hardly any dust, as if the killer had paced by the window until the right time. Then there were two shoe prints from window to door. He had Nolan taking pictures of all the shoe prints, even though Grissom was well aware that they matched the one they'd found in mud in the alleyway and therefore gave them no new information.
He went to dust for prints on the various doors their killer had to've touched, even if he knew it was unlikely he'd find any. Not only had there been evidence that the killer might have been wearing leather gloves, but in this weather, even innocent people probably wouldn't remove their gloves. The store had not been heated, after all. There were no tools left behind, so the killer had to have taken them with him.
The only thing the scene really told them was that they were right to think that the figure on surveillance tape, coming from this building, had been their killer, and that he'd known his way around the area. He'd known that Collin would use the alley to walk home, he'd known where there were cameras to avoid and he'd known his way through the store. More importantly, he'd apparently had a way to know when Collin was in the alleyway; he'd paced here, waiting, left the building, presumably been the slight shadow disturbing the liquor store lights in their surveillance camera, and killed Collin on the other side of the liquor store.
The windows would have been iced over, the way they were now, and even then, Grissom didn't think they provided a great vantage point. Even if there had been evidence that the killer had cleared the frost away, he probably wouldn't have been able to see even as far as the liquor store.
With a frown, Grissom stepped out the front door, having dusted and found nothing, and moved down to the liquor store. He was mildly surprised to a closed sign on the door, considering that nothing ever closed in Vegas, least of all liquor stores, but there was a clerk inside who came over when Grissom knocked and held up his credentials. The door swung open with the clatter of a bell.
"Can I help you? We don't open for another fifteen minutes…"
"I'm with the Crime Lab. We were here a couple days ago, looking at your surveillance tapes." He showed the young man his identification more closely. "I just had a question about your light out back."
He blinked in surprise, and then stepped back to let Grissom inside. The door fell closed and the man handed the ID back. "I'll help if I can. I don't usually work nights."
"It works on a motion detector, I know, as there were giant gaps in the feed. But how far away can a person be, in the alleyway, and not set off the detector?"
The young man frowned. "I, ah… I don't know. Pretty far, I think. That thing is always turning on, even if there isn't anything on the surveillance. They're both on motion detectors, but the camera runs all day. The light is set to turn on at a certain time each day. I know it sounds weird, but that's why I don't like working nights. If you're alone here and the light keeps flickering on and off, you just feel like there's someone sneaking up behind you. It makes you nervous."
Grissom tilted his head, and then nodded. "Would you be willing to turn the light on for me, briefly? I'd like to run an experiment—figure out exactly how far away we can trigger this thing."
"Oh, sure. You betcha. Do you want me to turn it on right now?"
Grissom smiled a little at the young man's accent and shook his head. "Let me get my people into position. I'll be back."
He cleared the alley, put Nolan inside the hardware store by the iced-over window, and had the clerk turn on the light. He moved to the far entrance of the alley, and slowly took each step at a time, waiting for the one that would set off the light. It was a ways down, but still a good length from the store itself when it turned on. He pulled out his phone and hit send twice; Nolan picked up.
"Yeah, I can just barely see it on. If it had been dark though, it would have been like a giant, flashing target."
"Okay. Come out through the door, and walk along the far side of the alley, like our killer did."
Grissom could easily see the door open and the figure approach. But he was quite a ways down, and in the dark it might have been harder to see. …If Collin had been looking at his feet or… listening to music… anything like that, he could have missed it. At least, until his killer walked into the light, hugging the wall beneath the camera to avoid being caught on tape.
Grissom had Nolan come stand at the place where he had stopped and measured for himself the distance between the light and the young man. Fifty feet, exactly.
"Let's try this one more time," Grissom said, glancing at his watch. They would have just enough time before they would have to leave if they wanted to log in evidence before they headed over to the University. "You go back by the window, I'll go to the edge of the alley. I'll walk at a normal pace, you come out as soon as the light turns on. Walk just slightly faster than normal—you're probably either nervous or jonesing for a kill."
Nolan looked quite alarmed at this description, but hurried back to his place, and Grissom retreated. Moments after, the light went out again. He stored that information away and reminded himself to go over the liquor store footage again, later today.
At the entrance to the alleyway, he strode forward at a normal pace, and watched as the light turned on and the door at the end of the alley swung open. Nolan strode towards him, and he worked to keep his pace measured. They met roughly twenty feet from the light, out of sight of the camera. Grissom glanced around. A few feet behind him was the telltale blood spatter they'd seen a couple days before.
"So, either I was walking too fast, or…"
"He might not have come as far as this. Maybe he saw his attacker and stopped. Or maybe he tried to run. The leather under his nails implies a struggle…"
Grissom looked around again. "Yeah. It does."
Nolan packed up the lights from their scene while Grissom went back into the liquor store. He thanked the young man who'd helped him and introduced himself belatedly, apologizing for not having done so. The clerk identified himself as Alex Olson, which made Grissom smile. Everyone was an Olson here.
They piled back into the lab vehicle and arrived at the lab ahead of schedule. Grissom sent Nolan to print the pictures and log them and the memory card into evidence, while he sought out Sara. She was still in the layout room where they'd left her, and she was eyeing, strangely enough, their original shoeprint.
"What are you working on?"
She frowned, a crease appearing between her eyebrows. "This shoe print. Presumably the killer's. You can see that the person wearing it has too small of feet."
"…The weight isn't evenly distributed?"
"The toe of the shoe hardly left any impression at all. You'd expect the deepest impressions to be the heel and the ball of the foot, and the next deepest along the outside of the sole. Instead, we have the heel, the top part of the sole, and a line along the outside between them, but not close enough to the outside of the shoe to be typical. The print is a men's size twelve; the foot itself is probably a men's nine."
"Autopsy indicated our killer was male—the blows were inflicted with a decent amount of upper body strength."
Sara nodded, but kept looking down at the mold. Grissom tilted his head. "There's something else?"
Her frown deepened and she shook her head. "There is. I just… don't know what. I feel like something is nagging at me and I just can't place it."
Grissom tried to think of what she might be unable to bring into focus, and came up empty. He shrugged. "You'll think of it. Are you coming with us, or staying here?"
"No." She said, packing evidence back up—taping new seals and signing, removing her gloves and signing the envelope into which they went, and then piling everything back into its box, and re-taping and signing the edges of that. "No, I'm coming. Just let me return this. I'll meet you guys downstairs?"
"Sure."
Grissom headed back to the vehicle and pulled it around front. It occurred to him belatedly, after ten minutes in which neither of them appeared, that Nolan and Sara would likely have met in the evidence locker. He frowned, wondering what on earth could be taking them so long, and had half a mind to go inside and search them out. But then they walked out, together, and Sara was laughing. He gripped the steering wheel tighter.
He remembered again why he left Minneapolis. Lab romances were never a good idea, but love triangles in the lab were even worse.
