This is becoming an all-too familiar routine – I am really sorry that this chapter took so long, but the whole JF/GE mess sent my muse packing, and real-life biting me in the rear end didn't really help either. I hope anyone who reads this understands. Thanks to my faithful betas Anne and Ash, and there's no such thing as too little feedback.
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Grissom was up earlier than usual. It had been a while since he had been out on a date, let alone one that ended well. There was no other way to put it – he was nervous. It was the only explanation he was not sleeping at four in the afternoon, as he usually was.
The phone in the kitchen rang and he picked it up. "Grissom."
"It's Brass. I hope I didn't wake you up, because I've got something you'll want to see."
"Well, you didn't, but I've got something planned. Call someone else."
"Reconsider. I've got two words for you: Moriarty's back."
---
An annoyed Sara got out of her truck. Grissom was waiting for her on the curb.
"You've got to be kidding, right? This isn't a joke is it?" Sara asked.
"If it's a joke, it's not funny. Especially not for our DB." Grissom deadpanned.
The pair crossed the crime scene tape and saw Brass just outside the door, supervising the organized chaos that was a crime scene. He looked up when he saw the approaching duo.
"Your vic's in the bathroom. Name's Jeffrey McCaffrey, age 30. Anonymous tip."
"How anonymous, Jim?" Grissom asked.
"Pay phone anonymous. Moriarty himself called it in, I bet."
"Wouldn't bet against it. Officers only went in to secure the scene; we're ready for you guys." Grissom and Sara both moved towards the door, but Brass stopped them. "Grissom, can I talk to you for a moment? Sara can do the walk-through."
Grissom gave Brass a look, but he relented. He nodded to Sara, who took the two steps up to the small bungalow. Eventually, the two were left alone on the small porch.
"I read Catherine's preliminary report on the lab shooting," the police captain began.
"Yeah," Grissom replied. "She already told me."
"Then you know what it says about your initial reaction."
"Yeah. I can't explain it. I've spent years as a criminalist. It's not the first time I've had a gun pointed at me. I've dealt with something like that before. I'm not sure there is an explanation."
"Gil, I don't blame you. You're a scientist, not a cop. Sure, you CSIs are armed. Sure, Nick Stokes shoots better than most of the PD. At the end of the day, though, you're not supposed to be in something like that. That's our job, not yours," Brass said, in effect absolving Grissom of any blame in the shooting – not that there was really any to begin with.
Grissom entered the small bungalow, and found Sara in the living room, having completed her walkthrough. "Nothing too suspicious. Some uneaten food in the kitchen. No signs of forced entry, so our vic must have let the killer in."
"Another disguise, possibly. Let's see the body," Grissom said.
The CSIs entered the bathroom and saw the body. He was laying face-up in the shower stall that doubled as a bathtub. The victim didn't have any clothing on, and the all-too-familiar postcard was tied to a finger.
"No gunshot wounds, no stab wounds. No obvious physical injuries," Grissom noted.
"Correct that," Sara said. She pointed to two small burn marks on his arm. "Taser marks, maybe?"
"Well, a taser isn't enough to kill someone. It would explain why there are no defensive wounds, but we still don't have a cause of death."
"Puncture wound. Looks like from a needle, perhaps. He injected something into our vic."
"Could be air. Could be snake venom. Let's dust for prints," Grissom said. Sara handed over the jar of red fingerprint powder, and they both brushed the edges of the bathtub with it, looking for prints. There were none; the tub had clearly been wiped down to remove any potential evidence.
Brass came into the room just then. "I just got a call from O'Riley. He went over to the armored truck company our vic works for. According to the manager, he reported for work about two hours ago."
"That doesn't make sense. How could someone dead turn up for work?" Sara asked.
"Sara... what would be the standard description for our victim?" Grissom answered.
The junior CSI was perplexed by the question, but answered it anyway. "White, Caucasian, around 200 pounds, slightly over six feet in height, sandy blonde hair. Nothing out of the ordinary, could blend in almost anywhere."
"Sounds like our description for Moriarty," Grissom said.
"So... what are you saying? Is this guy our Moriarty?"
"No, I don't think so. But, he could be posing as our vic at his job."
The trio moved out of the bathroom so that they could examine the bedroom. Brass pulled out his cellular phone to make some calls, while Grissom used his ALS on the bed. Sara went to the closet, where she quickly found something.
"Guys," she said, calling out for the two men. "Take a look at this." She was peering into the closet, examining the victim's clothes. It was dominated by the off-gray uniforms, but in between them there was an empty clothes hanger. "One of the uniforms is missing."
"Call the company," Grissom said. "Jeffrey McCaffrey may be at work at this very moment."
---
Grissom was right. The grey truck pulled out of the Bellagio and headed for the airport – or so it seemed.
Moriarty, posing as Jeffrey McCaffrey, was up front driving. He was alone; the two other guards where in the back, probably bored to death. It wasn't unusual for the guards to catch some sleep, if that was possible for them.
What incredible luck, isn't it? A guard who just happens to be very close to my physical description draws driving duty on a truck carrying millions of dollars in cash.
When you're good, you're lucky. And I know I'm damn good.
The guards in the back couldn't see outside very well, so they weren't aware when the van took a right when it should have taken a left.
The truck continued making its way through the streets of Las Vegas, eventually coming to a stop in a neighborhood filled with rather cheap and run-down apartments. They halted next to a vacant lot.
The two guards were alarmed, and tried to call for the driver on the internal radio. There was no response. One of them banged his fist hard on the steel plate near the cab, but it was all for naught.
They were surprised when the door at the back suddenly opened. They didn't have time to react before they fell down in a bloody heap, shot in the chest. The sounds had been masked by a speeding car, which had rolled past the parked truck just at that moment.
That was quite a coincidence. That car covered any noise my gun made pretty well. Now, time for the loot.
He climbed into the back and saw the money – inside sacks, with money bands stamped with the crests of various casinos keeping the cash in stacks of 100 bills each.
I have hit the jackpot. How much money is in here – 10 million dollars, at least? Now, to get it to my vehicle...
The van had the livery of a business on the side – one that didn't exist. It took three trips for him to move all four sacks into the van. In any other neighborhood, it would have attracted attention but here, it didn't. People minded their own business here.
The white van pulled out of the lot, leaving behind the armored truck and the two corpses. It wasn't a moment too soon, for only a minute later a police car pulled up behind the abandoned vehicle. Brass had put out an all-points bulletin, or APB, out for the armored car. The two officers carefully approached the car, guns out in front of them.
The senior cop had been a cop for all of his adult life, and thus wasn't too surprised by the bloody sight before him when he pulled the back door open. He wasn't too fazed by the blood and gore he saw – until he heard a moan from one of the bodies. One of the guards was still alive, but just barely.
The officer was, for the first time in his professional career, shocked.
---
Catherine and Warrick crossed the crime tape and saw Grissom jump out from the back of the armored van. Sara came out from the front just then, and the four CSIs began an impromptu conference not far from the vehicle that had become a crime scene.
"Where are Nick and Greg?" Grissom asked.
"Caught in traffic. They're on their way," Catherine said. "He hit an armored van? How did that happen?"
"He first killed the driver at home earlier today, then posed as him. Van was taking older bills from the Bellagio to McCarran for disposal. He drove them out here, shot the two guards out back, and took the money. He must have had a spare vehicle parked in the lot over there," Grissom said.
"Must have taken a while to get all the information he needed to pull this off," Sara added. "We don't have anything new from the van. Forensically, it's a dry hole."
"Alright. Cath, Warrick, check the lot, see if there's any evidence there. I'll send Nick and Greg to Desert Palm-" Grissom said, before Warrick interrupted him.
"Desert Palm? I thought the guards were shot."
"They were," Grissom replied. "David took one back for Robbins already. The other one is in critical condition."
"Damn," Catherine said. "We have an eyewitness."
"Yeah. He slipped up again. Let's go to work," Grissom said. Warrick and Catherine moved to the lot, while Grissom noticed that Sara had moved several steps towards the middle of the road. He moved beside her.
"Grissom, we could have two eyewitnesses," Sara said.
Grissom's eyes moved to the object Sara had been looking at. It was a yellow box with lens beside a streetlight.
"Speeding camera," Grissom said. "It's a long shot, but it's worth a try."
"I'll head back for the lab and check out the records," Sara said.
"Wait up," Grissom said. "I should head back anyway, go over what we've collected. And I need to think."
"About what?"
"We still don't understand how he thinks, Sara. He commits one crime after another, but we still have no idea why. We can't stop him if we're always one step behind."
"We may not want to know where he's going, Grissom."
---
Sara reached for her coffee as she examined yet another photo of a speeder captured on film. The computer database for the photos of the cameras was organized by date, but not by the camera that had taken the photo. As a result, Sara had had to wade through all the images taken in Clark County for the one-hour period between the departure of the van from the Bellagio and the arrival of the police.
Just as she took a sip of her coffee, she found what she had spent the past few hours looking.
The photo showed the armored truck parked by the side of the road – and behind it, there was Moriarty, his hands out before him, pistol in his hand. His face was clearly visible.
Sara zoomed in on the picture and clicked a few buttons to enhance the picture. She went to her notes, only looking up when a beep told her the enhancement was done.
She looked up at the enhanced picture and frowned. Sara had an almost perfect memory, and she was sure she had seen it before. She just wasn't sure where.
Harvard, maybe? Yeah, I think I saw him during some of my math classes... can't be sure, and it's not something we can really use.
Sara went back to her notes and tried to make sense of another piece of evidence left at the scene. It was the same postcard left at the previous scenes, but there was a difference: on the back was written the number 6174.
Just then, the dots came together in Sara's mind. Wait a minute... 6174 isn't just any ordinary number. It does mean something.
She opened the Internet browser, checking if the vague memory from a math class more than ten years ago was correct. It was, and she stood from her chair looking for Grissom. She found him heading for the garage.
"What do you have?" he asked.
"We got lucky – the speeding camera captured our suspect just as he shot the two guards. Did Nick and Greg get anything from the survivor?"
"Doctor won't let them – still recovering from surgery. Bobby already checked the bullets out – same type the guards use for their own guns. Picture good enough for ID?"
"Oh yeah. I'll let Brass have it and send it out to all the major hotels and casinos," Sara said. "One more thing. Our suspect may be a mathematician."
"Reason?"
"The number he left on the postcard isn't just any number. It's a Kaprekar number-"
"Discovered in 1949 by an Indian mathematician. If you re-arrange the digits of most four-digit numbers from highest to lowest and subtract the same number, but with the digits from lowest to highest, you'll get another four-digit number. Keep repeating the process, and you end up with-"
"6174. For example, start with 5644, 6544 minus 4456 is 2088, 8820 minus 288 is 8532, 8532 minus 2358 is 6174."
"It's not that advanced mathematically. Doesn't prove our guy is a mathematician."
"Grissom, I've seen the guy before. Nothing I can take to court, but I swear I've seen him before."
That caused Grissom to stop in his tracks. With anyone else, he would have ignored it as a coincidence – something he didn't believe in. With Sara, though, he knew there was something to back it up, even if it wasn't usable in court. "Where?" Grissom asked.
"College. Can't put a name on it, but I swear, I saw him in one of my math classes."
Grissom just raised an eyebrow. "Doesn't really help. Harvard's a big place."
"I know, but it's something to think about." The two were now inside the garage. Sara could see that a van from the coroner was set up on jacks, as if they were about to take tire prints.
"Grissom, what's this about?" Sara asked.
"Catherine and Warrick recovered two sets of tire prints at the scene. Same type, so we think they're both from the getaway vehicle. However, one set of prints appears to be from deflated tires. We need to know how flat his tires were – it might tell us if he had to make stops at any nearby gasoline stations. This truck is close in size to the truck actually used, and we've put in enough weight inside to estimate how much money was taken. So, all we have to do is deflate one tire a little bit at a time, take the print, and see which one matches the one they found."
"You do realize this could take a while, right?"
"Well, we still have most of shift left. Shall we?"
Sara could only nod in surrender.
---
Sara wiped the sweat from her forehead using the sleeve of her blue coveralls. Taking tire prints was never an easy affair; the heavy vehicle and the number of prints they had needed had made the task that much harder.
Grissom looked at the final tire print and compared it with the sample Catherine had taken. It was a perfect match. "The tire was about as flat as we could make it and still allow the vehicle to drive away," he said.
"It wouldn't have stayed that way for very long," Sara said. "He must have had to inflate the tire somewhere in the area."
"Call Brass. Have him check gas stations in the immediate area."
"Got it."
---
Nick and Greg strode into AV room. Grissom and Sara were waiting for the pair.
"We have the video – and more. Greg has it," Nick announced.
Greg had a flair for the dramatic, and he slowly removed something from a brown evidence bag. It was a 9mm pistol.
"Beretta 9mm. Same type the guards carried," Sara said.
"It gets better. There were twelve rounds in the magazine; full capacity is fifteen. Add one in the chamber, and you've got four bullets missing."
"Same number used on the guards. Greg, take it to Ballistics for comparison," Grissom ordered. The former nodded and left the AV lab.
"Cue the videotape up," Sara said. Soon, the tape was playing on the large screen inside.
On the screen, the white van pulled up next to one of the pumps. The driver – it seemed that it was Moriarty – was dressed in the coveralls so favored by utility workers and refueled his vehicle. That done, he bent down, grabbed the nearby air hose, and pumped the nearly flat tire full of air.
It wasn't much, but they had something new: the plate number of the van. Nick quickly ran it through the DMV database.
"That's strange," the Texan said. "Registered owner matches the business painted on the side."
"It's not stolen?" Sara asked.
"Nope," Nick replied.
"Check the city and state databases for permits, local taxes, that sort of thing," Grissom ordered.
More keystrokes followed, but Nick soon had a frown on his face. "The company's registered here, but beyond that, I can't find anything."
"Shell company?" Sara speculated.
"Looks that way," Nick said.
"Owners?" Grissom asked.
"Another company, not registered in Nevada. Grissom, I think this is a little beyond our expertise," Nick said.
"This sounds like money laundering," Grissom said.
"Why would a money launderer be involved? I don't get it. The more we find out, the less sense it makes," Sara said.
"It may not make sense to us, but it makes sense to someone," Grissom replied.
---
The next day, Grissom rubbed his forehead as he went over the Moriarty case. Some progress had been made, but not much.
Archie had taken the photo of Moriarty from the speeding camera and enhanced it until it looked like it had been captured by a professional photographer. Now every casino and hotel knew what Moriarty looked like. Grissom doubted, however, that Moriarty would really expose himself that way.
The other lead they had was the plate number from the getaway van. Brass was now trying to run down the ownership of the van, but it had proved more difficult than expected. The business that owned the van had been the gateway into a nest of shell companies. The detectives were having a very hard time with that one.
Grissom was startled by the knock from his door. It was Brass.
"Our federal brethren aren't always useless," the cop said. "Evidently, the shell companies were already under investigation by the FBI. There may be links to the Russian mob."
"Doesn't tell us how to catch him, Jim."
"Well, this might. One of the companies in the network owns a warehouse just outside of town. I've got an invitation to drop by," Brass said as he held up a search warrant.
Grissom stood up from his chair and was about to head for the exit when Brass spoke up again. "One more thing. Guess who was one of the warehouse's previous occupants. Paul Milander."
"Paul Milander?" Grissom asked, astonished.
"After he vanished, city seized it and tried to sell it off. No buyers, though. Couple of months ago, some outfit ponies up the money and takes the title, no questions asked.
"And the plot thickens," Grissom said.
"Yeah, well, this plot's about to come to a screeching halt. SWAT's on the way. Let's go."
---
To be continued...