This story is based on characters created by Anthony E. Zuiker for the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
Ghost (Part 19/26)
by Cheers
Monday Afternoon 01:32 PM
Jim Brass had his gun in his right hand and his back to the wall next to the door of room 471. With a silent nod to Officer Wyatt, who also had his gun drawn and was standing on the other side of the door, Jim began to pound with his fist.
"Mr. Stankowski?" Brass yelled. "Police! Open the door!"
There was silence on the other side. Brass listened for a few more seconds and then relaxed a little. He turned to the hotel security guy who had accompanied them and said, "Okay, open it."
Using an electronic pass key, the security guard opened the door and stepped back quickly. Jim entered the room with his gun held out in front of him. Together, he and Wyatt made a thorough sweep of the small hotel room and bath before holstering their weapons.
Jim called to the security guard, who moved into the room. "Can you get me the maid who works this floor today?"
"Sure," the young man said and then began to speak into his walkie talkie as he stepped back out into the hallway.
Brass did a cursory visual scan of the room. A gym bag lay half open on the folding luggage rack, and the notepad next to the phone had several pages torn off of it. It looked as if the maid had already serviced the room for the day. Either that or their suspect hadn't been there in a while.
Jim turned to Wyatt. "Call it in and get forensics here. I want someone watching this room every second until this guy shows up again."
With a "Yes, Sir," Wyatt moved off to notify dispatch.
The security guard returned with a middle-aged Hispanic woman wearing a maid's uniform. "Captain, this is Rosa Domingez," he introduced her. "She's working this floor today."
"Thanks," Jim said, turning his attention to the maid. "Rosa?"
"Si," she replied.
Jim came to the point. "Did you clean in here today?"
Rosa nodded. "Si. An hour ago. Why? What is wrong?"
"Nothing," Jim assured her. "I just want to know if the room looked lived in. Do you think the guest who has this room was here last night? Did you see anyone in here today at all?"
She looked past the Captain at the room beyond as if trying to jog her memory. She must clean fifty rooms a day. He couldn't expect her to remember every guest who stayed at the hotel. Her eyes lit up upon seeing the gym bag. "Si, I remember. The bed was messy and the shower was wet. I did not see a man. He was not here when I knocked. I just cleaned and left."
"But you know the guest in the room is a man?" Jim asked.
Rosa gave him a rather motherly look. "Women are not so messy as men. They don't leave the sink full of beard."
That made Jim smile. Men are pigs, no doubt about that. "Thank you, Rosa."
The maid left, and Officer Wyatt moved towards him. "A forensic team is on the way, and dispatch is sending another cruiser."
"Right," Brass said. "Now all we have to do is hope he comes back."
Monday Afternoon 02:21 PM
Sara had found no evidence that anything except the occasional nocturnal animal had been at the back of the building. There was no indication that anyone had gone through the back door of the processing center complex in months, perhaps years. It was locked. She had followed the edge of the building around the other side before entering through the same broken door Nick and Catherine had used.
Together, the three CSIs had combed the main floor and then the second floor of the office portion of the building. Nick had taken a precarious walk across the catwalks that were mounted above the main floor of the plant. At one time large heating ovens and crushing machines had sat on the concrete floors of the plant's large interior. Now, the main building was nothing more than an empty husk.
They met up at the open doorway and looked back out at the sun-baked parking lot where Warrick was finishing up. "Anything?" Catherine asked Nick.
"No," he sighed, placing his hands on his hips. "No one's been up there for a while. That's not a bad thing, either. That catwalk is a bit rickety."
"Good thing you're a lightweight," Sara kidded.
Nick gave her a sidelong look. "Look who's talking, toothpick." Then to Catherine, "Seriously, it'd be real easy to get hurt in here."
Catherine shrugged. "There'd be a hue and cry from the community to protect the kids if there WAS a community around here. Right now all anyone needs to worry about getting in here are the jackrabbits and rattlesnakes."
"Rattlesnakes?" Sara looking around nervously.
Nick grinned. "They just love a cool place to snooze after a hot day of hunting. This building would be a perfect place for it."
Just as Sara was about to retort, Warrick joined them. "I found two sets of tire tracks that look pretty fresh. Both enter at the main gate." He pointed out to the opening in the fence at the access road and then gestured toward the north end of the building to their left. "They go to the end of the building complex and back out again. I'm pretty sure it's the same car." He looked back at the group. "I made four molds for comparison with the Toyota. Should be able to tell more when we get back. What about in here?"
"Struck out," Nick said.
"What's on the north end of the building?" Catherine asked.
Sara looked at her notes. "There's an old gas pump and what looks like the remains of an old crane of some kind. I took some pictures."
Catherine headed out of the door and walked around that end of the building. They all followed her.
They found the old gas pump, the rubber hose now gone and the glass facing broken on both sides. The tire tracks that Warrick mentioned disappeared as the ground down asphalt/dirt turned into a concrete drive path along both sides of the pump. Whoever had driven up here had not backed the vehicle out put had pulled through and made a wide turn to the left before pulling back in front of the building. Catherine followed the tire track paths on foot until she came back to the pump station again.
Nick had discovered something interesting under a large metal support post. "I think I found something," he said to no one in particular.
What he had found was what looked like a long low pile of crushed black glass - perlite. Beyond the crushed unprocessed ore, there was a dried dirt puddle next to the metal post.
"Probably urine," Catherine said matter-of-factly.
"Yeah," Nick said, "and to use this post as an outhouse he had to stand on this pile of perlite."
"Transfer," Sara agreed. She placed several small pieces of the crushed black rock from the low pile on the ground in a bindle and labeled it.
"I'll take a sample from the dirt here. We might get lucky." Nick offered.
"Urethral cells?" Warrick asked.
Nick looked at him. "Maybe."
Approaching footsteps heralded the arrival of the two police officers. "We didn't find anything," O'Riley said. "Just a bunch of scrub brush and rocks." He looked at Nick, who was collecting the soil sample. "Did you do any better?"
"Tire treads and urine," Catherine informed him.
"Bathroom stop?" Trooper Blair wondered aloud.
"Possibly. Could be nothing," Catherine said. "Could be our guy. The bits of rock we found at Grissom's suggest that this could be where our suspect stopped."
"But he didn't bring Grissom back here," O'Riley said.
"Doesn't look that way," she agreed.
"Where does that leave us?" O'Riley asked.
Catherine sighed and looked out at the desert that surrounded them on all sides. "With another very small piece of the puzzle and the clock still ticking."