Catherine turned over a piece of charred wood with her foot, marvelling at her own blindness. But she supposed her feelings had blinded her, it had been like that with Eddie once.
Grissom's words had brought her to her senses. She had heard them many times before but never had there been such a hidden meaning and never had he said them with less conviction. But that was beside the point; it had struck a chord and she had suddenly remembered something she should have thought of before.
With the help of Archie, the visual and audio expert, she had double-checked the video surveillance tapes from the park's cameras. It all seemed as it had before to start with; Grissom and the victim sauntered into the shot, Grissom had a hand clasped over his jaw and the woman seemed deeply troubled. She was frantically trying to reconcile with Grissom but he kept brushing her off. Finally the woman stopped and stood with her hands on her hips whilst Grissom continued walking. She shouted after him but he just raised his hand in a backward wave and walked on.
Catherine had to smile as she recognised Grissom's behaviour. He wasn't on the next tape that they checked because it showed a different part of the park. It showed the last known movements of the victim and clearly conveyed the rage she was in. Unfortunately the camera had been badly placed, or else the tree had grown there since the introduction of CCTV to the park. But whatever the reason the tree was there and it blocked out half of the shot. The victim disappeared under its canopy but never reappeared on the other side and her body had been found less than ten feet from it.
As the cameras didn't record sound, this was all the footage there was. Catherine had gained nothing from the second viewing apart from the assurance that Grissom was innocent. She had speculated the fact that he could have returned via a different route, his motive wasn't strong but she had known people killed for less. However she had quickly dismissed it in the light that he would have been captured on camera again at some point. The killer must have been waiting beneath the tree, patiently watching for his chance to strike. If indeed it was a he, the possibility of a she had not yet been ruled out.
Archie, being the expert in this field, had spotted something and rewound the first tape. He watched carefully, scanning the screen with his highly trained eye. Once he saw it again he froze the frame and pointed out an area in the background bushes. Catherine could find nothing wrong with it, it looked like a perfectly normal bush to her; it was green and leafy and short of growing an arm and stabbing the victim, she couldn't see the importance of it.
Archie had then played the tape forward slowly, frame by frame, and slowly it had dawned on Catherine. She could see the change in the bush's shape and had noticed the flesh coloured blob in its midst. Archie had known what to do; highlighting the appropriate area he had zoomed in until the pink blur filled the screen and had set about clearing the image. Under greater clarity the blur began to resemble a face and Catherine was struck with a distant recognition.
'Did the victim have a stalker?' Archie had asked when the image had become crystal clear.
Catherine could answer quite confidently in the negative. There was no need to cross-reference the still with the database, she already knew who it was. He had been the second suspect but he had had an alibi.
However, under further scrutiny, the friend had changed his story and the alibi fell through meaning there was now another suspect. After that things only got better. A shoeprint found at the scene, which originally counted against Grissom, now would help to convict the new suspect. The print had happened to be the same size as the shoes Grissom wore but had not matched any found at his house, suggesting his having dumped them. This had baffled Catherine at the time; why dispose of the shoes he was wearing but retain the knife? A trophy? But Grissom wasn't like that. Now it appeared that the suspect took the same size shoe and was partial to Rockports, for the print had been made by that make of shoe.
And so, armed with this new evidence, Catherine had returned to the scene of the crime in the hope of finding something she had missed before, which is exactly what happened.
Removing a pen from her pocket, Catherine mimicked a movement she had often seen her supervisor do. Using the pen as a probe she dug into the remains of the fire, sending flakes of ash flying and occasionally overturning the remains of a branch. Eventually she found something. Holding it up with the pen, she reached out and pulled it out of the pile of ash. Turning it over in her hands she inspected it closer.
It was obviously material. It was in a terrible state with nearly all the colour lost to the fire but she could just make out a hint of green beneath the soot. She pulled a brown envelope from another pocket and dropped the material into it. She would give it to Greg when she got back to the lab.
Another check of the pile found a mangled, but still very feminine, gold watch but nothing else. Catherine stood up and looking to her right saw the tree from the CCTV tape. It looked greatly dwarfed from this distance. Closing her eyes she envisioned the night's events.
He had been waiting for her beneath the tree, hiding under its shelter where he was blocked from the view of the camera. Before that he had hidden in the bushes from where he had watched Grissom and the victim, probably waiting for his chance with her on his own. Anyway, under the tree he had greeted her warmly for there was no sign of a struggle and it looked as if she had been led willingly into the shrubbery that grew beyond the tree. In the camouflage of the shrubs ha had attacked her swiftly and without warning, she may not have known the reason for her death.
Catherine opened her eyes suddenly; a thought had just hit her. But it had been so fleeting that it had evaded capture by her memory. Sighing, she could only hope it would come back to her when she got the results from Greg.
Packing her camera into the case, Catherine picked it up and headed back to the SUV. Finally, she thought, things were looking up for Grissom.