Chapter 21 : Present – 1:16 AM
Jackie held the door open for Nick as he entered the room. He walked around to the chair across from hers and sat down. Jackie joined him and sorted her papers. She hit record on the video camera before she began.
"Good morning. My name is Jackie. Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long."
Nick didn't respond, and she didn't appear to notice or care. She stopped moving and looked up at him.
"State your name."
"CSI Nicolas Stokes."
"What was your relationship with Capri Martinez?"
"There wasn't any."
"How did you feel about her?"
"I hated her, but I didn't want her dead."
"What caused you to hate her?"
"She nearly got CSI Willows and Sanders killed. She sent two EMT and me to a shootout, where one died. Two houses were burnt to the ground because she misdirected the firefighters. I don't know how many times she got floors and rooms wrong. I--"
"Did she actually send you to the shoot out?"
Nick hesitated. "What does that mean?"
"I mean, did she cause the shootout to happen?"
Nick stopped talking. He wanted to say yes. Slowly he shook his head. "No. Things were calm when we both arrived at the house. The shootout didn't start until we were leaving the house, after we knew it was the wrong one. But she still gave us the wrong directions. We were half a mile from the right location."
"You must have pushed pretty hard to have her fired."
"Yeah. So?"
"Well, if she's dead, she certainly won't be working as a dispatcher again."
"Are you saying she was rehired?" Nick asked, leaning forward.
"Is that what you'd heard?"
"I haven't heard anything about her until tonight when I was drug in here, presumably accused of her murder."
"So you didn't know that dispatch had hired her as their receptionist?"
"No. Why would I care about her being a receptionist?"
"Seems a lot of EMS and CSI have assumed she was rehired as a dispatcher."
"And it didn't bother you that Greg Sanders and Doctor Grissom helped get her that job?"
Nick looked at Greg sitting in the hall. Why would Greg have backed her?
"As a receptionist I wouldn't care."
"You were on route to a call in the window Capri was murdered. I think--"
"I didn't stop to murder her."
Jackie looked over the top of the paper at him. "I think we can rule out you as a suspect. The length of time it takes to get from the lab to the crime scene was twenty minutes. You made it in eighteen." Jackie sat the paper down. "We're done. Thank you for your time."
Nick walked out into the hall. He stopped by Greg and the two looked at each other. There were questions running through Nick's mind.
"Good luck," Nick told him and then walked away.
Those questions could wait.