Disclaimer: Any and everything pertaining to CSI: Crime Scene Investigation belongs to CBS. I'm just slightly delusional and letting my imagination out to play...
Notes: This really is amusing me far more than I expected. I'm also bumping the rating up to an 'R'... I'm writing this at about a BBFC certificate 15 level (which is what CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is over here in Blightly), but there isn't a comparable rating in the U.S. system used on So; fairly graphic, but not in a gratuitous or overly ghoulish fasion... I think...
Triangle.
Chapter Two- Single Bullet Theory.
"The extensive lividity markings along the dorsum and buttocks indicate that the body was laying on its back from the time of death up until just prior to removal to the dump site." The muted tapping of Doctor Robbin's walking stick underscored his opening words to Grissom as the senoir criminalist entered the refridgerated domain of the autopsy suite. "Good evening Gil."
"Evening," Grissom moved closer to the pathologist and the body laid out on the table, expression inquisitive. It was indeed the evening now-- Warrick and himself had stayed at the desert crime scene until the sun had cleared the edge of the horizon and the sky had turned a deep, day time blue, before finally calling it a day.
Warrick had left the lab before Grissom... had arrived back in just after the older CSI-- prompting a muttered comment about 'like a machine' that Gil didn't entirely understand... and was now firmly ensconced in one of the light box rooms comparing the footprints that he had obtained at the crime scene.
"Did you recover a bullet?" Grissom stopped a short distance from the autopsy table and gave Robbins an expectant look.
Robbins returned the look over the top of his wire framed glasses and shook his head slightly. "No, the shot was through and through--" a pair of mosquito forceps were used as impromptu indicators, "--entry was on the left side of the thorax, between the third and fourth ribs, the projectile tracked straight through and exited nominally on the right side." The pathologist leaned back and pointed with one hand at the first in a series of blown-up glossy photographs. The bright image centred and focused on the messy exit wound on the victim's back.
"As you can see the exit wound was close to the spine, between the fourth and fifth ribs. It actually blew clear the lateral spinous process of T5." The next photograph along showed, at the centre of Robbin's neat incisions, the remains of the fifth thoracic vertebrae; it's right side almost completely demolished. "The subsequent avulsion and displacement of bone and disc matter into the spinal column severed it completely-- the shock alone would have been a concievable cause of death." The harsh black and white monchrome of a radiograph film pinned on the illuminated viewer confirmed the pathologist's summation.
Grissom waited patiently. "However," Robbins continued, mosquito forceps pointing at the entry wound again, "the bullet also ripped through the left ventricle and pretty much destroyed the medial right lungfield." Robbins straightened up. "Exsanguination into the thorax was fast, less than thirty seconds, and the damage to the heart also triggered off a massive series of fibrilations."
"A heart attack." Grissom stated.
"Essentially, yes." The pathologist nodded once. "This man was dead before he hit the ground."
"We're looking for a patch of ground with a lot of blood and a fragment of bone, then." Grissom sounded strangely dissatisfied at the prospect of 'a simple murder'.
Robbins smiled briefly, a mere twitch of his lips. "Not quite, Gil," he assured. "I found something rather interesting in the wound tract--"
The inquisitive expression raced back over Grissom's face, and he leaned forwards once more, eyes focused on the single bullet hole, framed as it was by the thick, deep lines of the Y-incision. "Oh?"
"Yes, foreign matter along the entire length of the tract-- fragments of some sort of fibre, to be more precise." Robbins straightened up and turned away from the body on the table, finding what he wanted amongst the neatly laid out collection pots and laboratory equipment on the polished metal surface of a moveable trolley. "Here," A clear plastic pot with a white screw lid was selected and handed over to Grissom, who accepted it, bringing it close to his face to examine the contents clumped at the bottom of it.
"Fibres-" a statement, rather than a question, which Grissom quickly followed up with, "I found something similar on the exterior edges of the wound at the scene- mixed in with tissue and blood; too badly to identify clearly. I logged them in with Greg at the beginning of the shift."
"I cleaned up some samples and sent them up to Greg for analysis-- I'd be surprised if they weren't the same as your fibres-- however I don't believe that they are from the clothing of the victim."
"Oh?"
"I had David take samples of the all the fabrics to send to Trace as well, but by sight alone, the fibres I found in the wound appear to be light in colour; cream possibly, or white. In contrast, the victim's clothing was black and orange in colouring. The vest is one of the local community sides." Robbins nodded at the neatly folded and tagged items of clothing. "David also took up a picture of the logo on the vest."
"Good." It would have taken a score of Nobel-winning scientists a decade to figure out if Grissom was surprised by any of the information given to him by the pathologist.
"If you find anything else--"
"I'll give you a page, Gil." Robbins nodded his head. "Now, I've got to deal with the latest victim of the gang war Catherine and Sara are working on." In saying that, he turned away from the dissected corpse they were standing over and indicated a shapeless looking black body bag laid out on another autopsy table.
"Bad?" Grissom looked mildly interested; the body bag didn't have a body shape to it.
Robbins sighed. "Well, this one was found in a burnt out old Ford Cortina in an alley off the south end of the strip."
"Ah," a look of understanding broke over the night shift supervisor's face. "I'll leave you to it." Grissom made his way over to the large swing doors that led out into hte corridor and began to make his way back up to hte more familiar territory of the CSI lab.
-----
The white light source from the comparative microscope gave a smooth, bright backdrop when viewed through the eyepiece lenses and created a faint halo of shadow around the fibres laid carefully on the slide on the viewing platform. Both fibres were a pale beige colour, changing to a washed out looking brown where blood staining was still apparent. Warrick had used several different optical filters and focus settings and had managed to determine that both were organic; most likely having the same origin.
The CSI had also provisionally decided that the fibres were hairs from a canid of some description, although he was awaiting DNA typing results before setting any conclusions in stone. Most of the hairs; both those collected by Grissom at the scene, and those sent up by Doc Robbins, also had one-- in some cases two-- burnt ends; the carbonisation and destruction of the cortex-medulla boundary was quite apparent. Warrick also had a theory about the cause of the burning, one that he was going to bounce of Grissom when the senoir CSI put in an appearence.
Warrick's eyes were beginning to burn from staring down the light microscpe and the two sections of thread laid out on the slide stage were blurring and dancing in a way that had nothing to do with adjusting the fine focus dial. I need a coffee break. The CSI sighed and stretched as he leant back and sat up. His neck muscles popped and he grimaced slightly. I don't get how Greg copes doing this all shift...
Speaking of the lab technician in proximity to the need for coffee made Warrick remember that now would probably be a good time to see if he could find where Greg had hidden his latest bag of coffee in an attempt to keep it secret; something that was never as sucessful as the young man hoped.
Leaving the lab cubicle and making his way along the artifically lit corridor towards the mess room Warrick noticed that Greg's lab was empty of the rumpled looking technician-- although the muffled thudding of the cd player sitting on one of the work surfaces indicated that the absence was only temporary. The CSI picked up his pace; an absence of lab tech in the lab often meant that said lab tech was brewing coffee-- decent, drinkable coffee-- in the break room. Coffee that could be appropriated.
Pushing open the door to the break room, Warrick was disappointed to note that the messy space was deserted; except for the persistant odour from some experiment Grissom had set up by the window (a glass vivarium tank, some soil, worms and-- as far as Warrick could tell-- not much else), the background clutter and the coffee machine.
Warrick paced into the room and sourly eyed the humming coffee machine; he needed caffiene, but was not looking forward to ingesting the sludge that seemed to pass for coffee around the police building. He was beginning to agree with Catherine's theory about their boss secretly experimenting with the coffee machine. Except-- the coffee machine wasn't exuding its usual brewing odour of old socks cut with motor oil-- Warrick made his way over to the counter and the percolater and found his nose being plesantly surpised by the unmistakable smell of Blue Hawaiian coffee.
Well, it'd be rude not to...