Grissom, Sara, and Greg approached the place where Archie was discovered. However, it was now high noon and the whole crime scene was bathed in the sun, giving them more than enough light to work with. Grissom and Greg went under the tape, while Sara stepped over, and the three of them surveyed the scene.
"Has anyone touched anything?" Grissom asked Logan, who was overlooking the scene.
"Nothing," answered Logan. "All yours."
"Good," answered Grissom, opening his kit. Sara and Greg did the same.
The scene was not pretty. There was a large pool of dried blood where Archie had bled out. There was a spray pattern going perpendicular away from the pool, and a smear parallel to it.
"Arterial spray," said Sara, looking at the spatter.
"Must have hit the artery in his leg," added Greg.
"And this is where he sat bleeding," said Grissom, looking at the pool. "So what's the smear?"
"If Archie struggled around, he might have dragged his leg across that spot," suggested Greg.
"There's no way he could have brought his leg round all the way back there," Sara pointed out. "Unless he turned around."
"But there are no droplets from the pool to the smear," said Grissom.
They put a marker on each bloodstain, and Sara photographed them while Greg and Grissom sniffed around for more evidence.
"Hey, look at this," said Grissom, pointing to a trail of small blood droplets leading away from the scene.
"What do you think?" said Sara. "Run-off from the weapon?"
"Probably," said Grissom, putting down a marker for every droplet. "But the trail stops here, so it's probably not going to get us far."
"Well, we know he went this way," said Sara. "Maybe we can find a weapon."
Grissom was about to stand up after putting down the last marker, when he noticed a spot off to the side, which looked as though the drop was in the process of flying to the right.
"We just might," said Grissom distantly, as he went to the bushes on the side of the road and started rummaging through them. A few moments later, a small, grim smile appeared on his face.
"Find something?" asked Sara, leaning in.
"Jackpot," remarked Grissom, standing aside to give Sara a look. And indeed it was.
Lying there, in the grass, a layer of dried blood darkening it to the hilt, was a Japanese tanto.
"Bag it," Grissom told Sara. "I'm going to see how Greg's doing."
Grissom walked over to where Greg was examining something on the apartment building steps. "What have you got, Greg?"
"Bloody footprint," said Greg, putting a marker down on it. "But I dunno if it's our killer's, or if the witness who broke up the fight stepped in the pool."
He took a photo of it.
"I'll figure out what kind of shoes that belongs to when we get back to the lab," said Greg, standing to face Grissom.
"Good work," said Grissom. "Officer Logan."
"Yeah?" said the policeman, approaching Grissom.
"You and Greg go inside and talk to the woman who saw Archie get attacked," he said. "Do you know who it is?"
"Yeah, one Sheila Keston," said Logan.
"Good," said Grissom. "Go see what you can get from her."
Greg and officer Logan entered the apartment building. Sheila Keston was standing a short ways away, pacing and chewing her fingernails. She looked very anxious about the whole situation.
"Excuse me, Ms Keston," said Logan as they approached her. "I'm Officer Logan, and this is Greg Sanders from the Las Vegas crime lab. We'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Okay," said Sheila, her voice shaky.
"Tell me exactly what you saw last night, Ms Keston," said Greg, taking out a notepad.
"You can call me Sheila," she said, before starting. "Well, I had just gotten undressed for a shower when I heard someone shouting and screaming outside. I went to the window and looked out, and saw a Korean-looking guy pinned to the ground. The guy holding him down was trying to slash him up with a big knife. So I shouted at them, and the attacker ran off. I got my bathrobe on, called the police, and came running out. A few minutes later, the police arrived."
"Could you see what the assailant looked like?" asked Greg.
"No, his face was covered."
"Did you notice anything physically about him?"
"Well, he looked like he was in good shape. He was about the same height as Officer Loki here."
"Logan," the officer corrected.
"Did you hear him speak?" asked Greg.
"No, he didn't say anything. Just looked up, stabbed him, and took off."
"Thanks," said Greg. "You've been very helpful."
Greg went outside and reported to Grissom what Sheila had told him.
"Keep her under surveillance," said Grissom. "You and Sara get back to the lab and see if you can match the blood on that knife, and find out what kind of shoeprint that is."
"What about you?" said Greg.
"Don't complicate things, just go back to the lab."
---
"What have you got for me?" said Grissom, striding into the room where Sara and Greg were working. They were both looking through a book of shoeprints, comparing them to the footprint photograph.
"Nothing yet," said Sara, flipping the page.
"What about the blood on the knife?"
"Waiting for a result from DNA," said Greg. "And we ran the fingerprints on the hilt through AFIS. They are a match to Dustin Orwell, a chef at the Buccaneer Bay restaurant."
"Sara, come with me," said Grissom. Sara accepted without hesitation; shoeprints wasn't the most emotionally stimulating job at the lab. But she did feel a small twinge of guilt at leaving Greg alone to do the boring stuff again.
"Where are we going?" asked Sara as she and Grissom walked down the hallway.
"The Buccaneer Bay restaurant," said Grissom. "I want to have a talk with Mr Orwell."
"Whoa, did I hear Buccaneer Bay restaurant?" said Warrick, who had just emerged from the break room.
"Is that important?" asked Grissom.
"Well, it's a connection," replied Warrick. "Tony Sherman took his fiancée, Liz Novia, to the Buccaneer Bay restaurant the day the threat was received. They were regulars there."
"If they were regulars there, Orwell could have gotten to know them well enough for them to have him over," speculated Sara. "He could have made the call when they weren't around."
"We shall see," said Grissom.