We aren't able to figure out much more about the case from observing the interviews, so we decide to get transcripts of their statements and take a long lunch to study them. Vince and Gary offer to show us one of their favorite restaurants, a little-known Italian place, so we all troop three blocks over to Lombardi's Ristorante.
"Pizza's good here," Gary informs us as we follow a college-aged waitress through a maze of tables and down a flight of stairs.
"Gnocchi, too," Vince adds, ushering Sara and Sharon to the table ahead of the rest of us.
We haven't been seated for more than ten seconds before Sara whips the folded-up statements out of her pocket. "Who wants what first?"
"I want food!" Sharon says, pushing Sara's hand away. "The case can wait!"
Sara looks over at me, obviously expecting me to back her up about the importance of the statements, but I keep my eyes on the menu, studiously avoiding her gaze and saying innocently, "This wood-burning oven pizza sounds great."
She swats me in the back of the head with the papers. Such conduct simply cannot be condoned by an effective supervisor, I decide, and before she knows what I'm doing, I grab them from her hand, give her an answering bop on the head, and stick the statements into my back pocket. "Sharon's right. Food first, crime later."
"Oh, fine. You never get excited about anything," she whines.
I glance over at her and say an innocuous "Okay," all the while giving her a look that tells her I could answer her accusation with something very interesting, but am too polite to.
She reaches under the table and pinches my leg. I grab her hand and hold it there, pressing it into my leg. Upside: she can't injure me any more. Downside: now we each only have hand to handle the menus.
I look up and notice that Sharon and Alex are watching us like they wish they had popcorn to go with the show. Gary and Vince are watching the four of us like we're insane, which, to be fair, we probably appear to be. I frown at the group, but get no reaction.
"So," Alex says in his I'm-pretending-nothing-weird-is-going-on voice after a few seconds of this stand-off, "what's everyone getting?"
I sigh and drop my menu on the table. "Sausage pizza."
Sara sets hers down too. "Pizza. With olives, not meat," she adds, giving me a prudish look.
I roll my eyes and wait for Sharon and Alex to share. "Fusili," Sharon says when she realizes that the entertainment's over for the moment.
"What the hell's 'fusili'?" Sara asks, looking suspicious.
Ooh, I know the answer to this one! I grin at her. "Imagine your hair on a day you don't straighten it. Now imagine thick spaghetti twisted into that shape - that's fusili."
"Ew," Sharon says, "I really don't want to feel like I'm eating Sara's hair when I eat my lunch."
"You'll survive," Alex tells her. "I'm going to have the gnocchi."
"Mmm, starchy goodness," Gary interjects. Shaken out of our little flirtatious world, Sara, Sharon, Alex, and I all just stare at him blankly.
"We're definitely missing something here," Vince says to Gary under his breath. "How long have all you guys known each other, anyway?"
We all exchange glances. "Depends on who you're asking about," Sara tells him. "Grissom and I have known each other for more than ten years. Sharon and Alex claim to have just met this week. Grissom and I didn't know Sharon and Alex until we got to the workshop - oh, not counting when this one," she says, pointing at me, "tried to pick Sharon up on the plane."
"I did not!" I say, aghast. Sharon looks slightly uncomfortable, and I catch the questioning look Alex gives her. Ahh, blackmail material for the next time she gives me or Sara a hard time! I catch Alex's eye and say, "Too bad you weren't there to save her from the Amazing Eyebrow man."
"The what?" say the three men.
Sara chokes on her sip of water and ends up spitting most of it all over my sleeve. I try not to crack up while she coughs and attempts to recover.
"Oh god," Sharon groans when she's sure Sara's breathing again. "Don't remind me of that guy! I'm going to have nightmares, I swear!"
"What's an 'eyebrow man'?" Vince tries again.
Sara, Sharon, and I look at each other. Neither woman volunteers anything, so I guess the explanation is up to me. "Sara, Sharon, and I all came out on the same flight. On this flight there was also a...repulsive-"
"Hairy," Sara adds.
"Smelly," Sharon volunteers.
"A repulsive, hairy, smelly man," I summarize, "who seemed to think he was irresistible to women. He practically groped Sara with me standing right next to her."
"And I got seated next to him!" Sharon says, sounding persecuted. "One grope and I got the hell out of there."
"And that was before he consumed four mini-bottles of Absolut," I add.
Silence reigns as the three newcomers try to digest our tale.
Sara squeezes my hand, hard, and I look at her to find her biting her lip to try to keep from laughing. "Oh sure," I whisper in her ear. "We can joke about it now."
"Hey, you're not the one who was the victim of...of frottage!" she stage-whispers back, elbowing me in the side.
"I'm not even going to ask what you two are discussing," Vince says. "Because if it involves what I think you just said, I'm staying far away from it."
Our protests are interrupted by the appearance of our waitress, who takes our orders and disappears again with impressive speed.
While we wait for our food, Sara takes the opportunity to steal the statements out of my pocket and smooth them out on the table. "So we've got: a statement from Angelo Salta, the suspect; a statement from Elise Logue, the victim; and two short statements from witnesses Andrea Moore and Jorge Torres. Who wants what?"
I grab for the victim's statement, barely beating out Sharon, who glares at me. Alex selects the male witness's statement and tells Sharon that if she's nice she can share with him, Vince and Gary take the female wit's, and Sara announces that she'll just supervise me. We start reading:
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
E.L.:I was walking to work from my apartment. Only a few blocks, and I've done it every day for two years. I didn't even consider that anything could go wrong. But today, I was turning the corner right before my office and someone ran into me. I got slammed into the wall, hard, and for a few seconds while I tried to catch my breath, I was too out of it to process what was going on. I guess that was as long as he needed to get started, and before I could get my thoughts coordinated he had dragged me down through an open set of cellar doors. I don't know what building it was, but whatever it was, no one came downstairs the whole time he had me down there. I was just starting to recover from the shock of being crushed against the wall, and before I could get it together enough to do something, he was on top of me, kind of spread-eagled, with one of his hands holding my wrists over my head and his legs holding mine down. He used his free hand to...um...
Interviewer: Take your time, Miss, but we do need you to provide as much detail as you can.
E.L.: He used his free hand to jerk my pants open. They had a button at the waist, and he just pulled once and the button flew off. I started talking, asking him what his name was, why was he doing this, all the stuff they tell you to say to distract an attacker, but it didn't seem to work and he just kept going. He, uh...a little while into it, he told me I had to close my eyes, but by then I'd been staring at him for five minutes already. I did it, though. I'm not stupid. But I still couldn't, uh, I couldn't fight back. He had me pinned down so completely that the only part of my body I could move was my torso, and...
E.L.: stops talking and cries quietly 1 minute
E.L.: I'm sorry. It's...if I moved my body, it made things worse. I mean, he was already...there...and moving...made it hurt more. So once I figured out that I couldn't move my arms or legs, I just lay there while he did it, waiting for it to be over. I couldn't fight. And then he was done, and he just got up off of me and kicked me in the side, and told me that I better not move. As soon as he was gone, I got up anyway. My clothes were torn up. I couldn't button my pants. I think I had dirt ground into my skin from the floor of that room. I went back up the stairs he had pulled me down, and came out on the street. I didn't know what else to do, so I just walked the half-block to my office. I wouldn't tell them what was wrong, but I guess it was kind of obvious that something had happened to me, and they called the police.
E.L.: pause 10s
E.L.: He was really big. Over six feet, maybe close to six-five. He wasn't fat, but he was just...thick. Heavy enough to hold me down. Dark hair. Dark skin, but he wasn't black. Maybe Mexican or Italian.
Interviewer: Did he talk enough for you to tell if he had an accent?
E.L.: Not really. He said a few things, but not much, and I didn't hear anything strange in the way he talked.
Interviewer: Can you give us any more description?
E.L.: Um...well, I thought it was weird that that cellar door was conveniently open like that. Maybe he's from around there and checked it out first? Or set it up?
Interviewer: Ok, Elise. You've done great, and you've given us a lot of detail to work with, so I'm going to go pass all this information on and we'll get started looking for this guy. Here's my card - if you have any questions, problems...give me a call. If I'm not by the phone, it'll redirect to the switchboard and you can just ask to speak to a detective.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
I look up from the paper and meet Sara's eyes. This woman was a fantastic witness compared to what we usually get, and I have to keep reminding myself that this isn't my case and the information she gave isn't relevant to my task.
"Line counts," Sara mumbles beside me.
"Right." I look back at the statement and start counting.
"Only one and a half for exposition," Sara says before I can.
I nod and move on. "Sixteen lines in the body," I say after a few seconds.
"Do we count the question-and-answer part with the detective at the end?" she asks me.
I shrug. "I don't think so. It's not part of her original statement."
"Then it's six lines for the conclusion." She pulls her notes out of her bag and studies them. "Body gets the most, conclusion less, exposition least," she reads off the page. "That's the profile for truthful statements. Our statement matches it."
"So she's telling the truth," I summarize.
"Probably. But there's also the 'hedging' words and stuff to look for."
That was the point where the lecture had begun to lose my attention, so I'm probably useless with regard to these linguistic hedge things. I'm saved from having to admit that by the arrival of our food, which smells so good that I have to hold myself back from grabbing at the pizza before it hits the table.
I eagerly stuff three bites of pizza into my mouth, chew, swallow, and look around the table. Everyone seems to be doing the same thing; it's been longer since breakfast than we realized.
After a few minutes, the feeding frenzy dies down and we start to look up from our plates. "Anyone finish their statement?" Sharon asks, jabbing her fork threateningly at Alex as he tries to steal some of her pasta.
"We did," Sara says. "The victim's statement. She's telling the truth."
Thoughtful looks abound. After a few seconds and another bite of his gnocchi, Alex says, "We finished with the suspect's, and...it looks like he's telling the truth, too."
"Reasons?" Gary queries, grabbing a bit of cheese of one of the pizza platters and dropping it into his mouth.
"Line count. Lack of hedges. Definite statements."
"Same for ours," I say. "So if this method is for real, then you guys-" I nod to Gary and Vince - "had better start looking for a new suspect."