"Whatever it takes to prove to you that I had nothing to do with this."
Nick smiled beatifically. "Then maybe you can clear up why your fingerprint was found on a vase in Ms. Tolmen's dressing room."
"What?" The question seemed to have taken her completely by surprise. "You dragged me all the way down here to ask me that?"
"Just answer the question, Ms. Smith," Brass said.
"I don't see why it's a big deal."
"Why don't you tell us what happened?" Nick asked, doing his best to be soothing.
"The roses. Right. Okay, fine." She blew an exasperated huff out through her lips. "It was right before the big wedding scene. I remembered at the last minute that I'd left my garland down in the box office."
"Kind of an odd place for you to leave something that important," Brass pointed out.
"Yeah, well, I was down there before the show started, making sure some tickets I'd had reserved were still there. Friends were in from out of town. I put it down and didn't realize I'd left it there until right before the wedding scene. I remembered, ran down, and grabbed the garland." Mallory sat back and crossed her arms.
"And?"
"There was a guy standing just inside the lobby, next to the first box office window. He looked really confused, so I asked him what he was doing. He showed me the roses - gorgeous flowers, probably cost the sucker a fortune - and he said he needed them delivered to one of the actors."
"And that didn't strike you as odd?" Brass asked incredulously.
"I've seen odder." Mallory shrugged fluidly. "It's theater. It attracts the crazies."
"So what did you do?"
"I told him I'd take them up and put them on Bianca's dressing table. I did so. I don't see why this is such a big deal."
"What did he look like?"
"Tall. Blond. Built. Very built...and preppy. Khakis, polo shirt, nice leather jacket." She rubbed her chin absentmindedly and for a moment it seemed like she was smiling at the memory. "Kinda nervous-looking, too."
"Did he look like someone who would be delivering flowers?"
"I have no idea what that's supposed to look like," she snapped out, and Nick had to concede the point.
"And there's nothing else you're leaving out?" he prodded, and received a glare in return.
"No. Nothing. Look, I was just trying to do the decent thing, y'know? If I'd known it would get me hauled to the police station in the middle of the night, I would've told him to come back when the show was over." Her arms tightened where they were crossed against her chest, and she set her jaw obstinately.
"No one hauled you anywhere, Ms. Smith," Brass pointed out. "You came here of your own free will."
"Only because I know you already think I have something to do with this, because I was Bianca's understudy. And I didn't. I just wanted to prove it."
"O-kay," Brass said, clearly exasperated. "You can go."
"Not just yet," Nick said, holding a hand up. "Have you ever heard of strychnine?"
Her face was completely blank. "No. What is it?"
"Poison. It was found on the roses, and it's what killed Bianca Tolmen."
She stared. "No way. I was right next to them. I carried them up to her room!" Panic began to show in her face, and her eyes grew wide. "How poisonous is the stuff?"
"Very," Brass said, and seemed to take no small amount of glee in it.
"But you would have exhibited symptoms at the same time as Bianca," Nick interjected quickly to forestall the rising panick attack with an upheld hand. "You'll be fine."
Her features still told them that she was by no means recovered from her near-death brush. "You're sure?"
"Very."
She seemed to relax, marginally. "Can I go now?"
Brass drummed his fingers on the table and looked sideways at Nick, who shrugged. He had no objections. "Sure."
She stood up and glided from the room, dancer's training evident in the flow of muscles, and despite himself, Nick couldn't help watching the way she moved.
"It's almost too good a story to be true," he finally commented once the door had shut and the officer had followed Mallory out.
"Yeah," Brass said. "Convincing little panic there about the strychnine."
"I think it was real," Nick admitted. "There was too much terror for it to be fake."
"Maybe." Brass rubbed his chin with his hand. "Maybe. We'll have to check with the florist's and see if they made any deliveries to the theater that night."
Nick checked his watch. Eight in the morning. "I've got the list - I'll tackle that next."
"Willows." Catherine balanced the box of evidence against her hip as she answered the cell phone on her way out of the apartment building.
"Catherine. How are you coming in processing James's apartment?" Grissom's voice reached her ear just as she squinted her eyes against the morning sunlight.
"Loading up the Tahoe now," she told him. "We've got the initial blood spatter analysis, blood swabs, DNA comparison pieces, some stained bed sheets, and Sara's getting the laptop now to go over at the lab. Some bloody footprints, fingerprints, the works. Nothing that jumps out, unfortunately. Conroy already brought the surveillance tapes back to the lab?"
"She did," Grissom confirmed. "I was just going to have Warrick start on them. I think I have the rest of your puzzle, though."
"I wasn't aware we were missing a piece," Catherine asked, momentarily confused.
"The body, perhaps?"
She wasn't sure that counted as part of the puzzle, but she was shocked enough to set the box down with a thud and turn her attention to the cell phone. "They found him?"
"That's what we need to go find out. Caucasian male, early twenties, badly beaten. Found a few miles outside of town off a hiking trail. I'll need either you or Sara to meet me at the dump site." There was something in his voice that would have told her, even if she hadn't been aware of their relationship, that it was really Sara he wanted to join him.
"Sara," she said instantly. "Lindsey will be getting up for school soon, and I've got some kind of parent-teacher conference at ten."
"That's fine then." She could tell how carefully he was trying to keep his tone neutral, but she had known him for nearly fifteen years now. She let him keep his illusions.
"Give me the directions, and I'll send her as soon as we drop all this back off at the lab."
She was scribbling down the last of the directions from memory - he'd hung up a few seconds earlier - when Sara came up behind her, carrying another evidence box with the laptop and disks she'd found in the study, as well as a few other personal items that might give them a clue as to James's movements over the past few days; agenda, notes, bills, and other random pieces of a life left behind. "What's up?"
"Grissom," Catherine replied dryly. "We've got a DB that might be Carter James. As soon as we get back to the lab and drop this off, you're to go meet him at the dump site. Directions," she added, and passed the slip over to Sara after the other woman set the evidence box down next to its twin in the back of the Tahoe.
A flush of pleasure crept up Sara's cheek as she accepted the scribbled directions, and she smiled. "Sweet. If it's James, maybe we can get a better idea of time of death and whatever weapon was used."
Catherine barely restrained herself from rolling her eyes, keeping her tongue firmly in cheek as she shut the back of the Tahoe. "Whatever turns you on." The flush turned crimson, and Sara ducked her head away. Catherine didn't hold back the snort this time, and rounded to the driver's seat. "C'mon. I need to get home to wake Lindsey up, and you have a date over a DB."
"That has got to be one of the worst jobs out there," Archie commented as they watched Mark the doorman bored in fast-forward. He shifted, checked his watch, leaned against the side of the entryway, shifted again, stuck his hands in and out of his pockets, and repeated those tiny gestures ad nauseam.
"I dunno," Warrick said with a shrug. "I bet it pays well."
"Enough to make up for being mind-numbingly tedious?" Archie snorted. "No way."
With quick reflexes, he flicked the tape back to real time as someone else appeared onscreen in the entryway. He froze the shot, zoomed in - it wasn't James. Another flick brought them back to fast forward.
"And this isn't tedious?"
The lab tech tipped his head back and forth in a so-so gesture. "It can be. But there's an end in sight. And no two cases are ever exactly the same." The tape slowed to real-time again, zoomed in again. Not James.
"I'm starting to think we needed more than two days' of tapes," Warrick said idly, and rested his chin on his hands where they were crossed over the back of the chair.
Mark was replaced by the day shift door man. Fast-forward, pause, zoom in.
"That's him," Archie said, bringing the copy of a picture they'd taken from Bianca's dressing room next to the screen to compare.
"Damn. Timestamp reads...1858 the day Bianca was killed. Now we need to see if he left again." Warrick noted the time down and Archie set the tape in fast forward once again.
Two hours later, they reached the section of the tape that showed Catherine, Sara, and Erin crowding into the small entryway, and CSI and lab tech held back a snicker at the awkward little dance they performed.
"That gives us about thirty hour window." He noted down the timestamp for the time Cath and Sara had arrived - 0057. "That's pretty good. Okay, now we need still shots of everyone who entered and exited during that time."
In the end, they came up with a total of thirty-seven individuals who had entered and exited during that time frame, some of them more than once. Three of them had their faces obscured. They weren't James - that much was evident from posture and body type - but their faces weren't visible for any number of reasons.
"How much detail can you get me on that one?" the CSI asked, tapping the screen that was currently displaying a slight young man in a baseball cap who had entered at about 0917 the day after Bianca was killed."
"I'm not promising anything," Archie warned, but the image on the screen lurched as he zoomed in, and bars began to clean up the focus. It lurched again so that the man's face and cap were filling the entire screen, the bars swept repeatedly, clearing away digital garbage and painstakingly restoring the image pixel by pixel.
Eventually, they were able to read the embroidered lettering on the cap.
"Elton Software Solutions," Warrick read out loud, and wrote it down. It wasn't a company he was familiar with. "And when did he leave again?"
The screen shifted and moved into fast-forward; the young man in the cap had been one of the ones they'd tagged as entering and exiting. When they once again saw the familiar cap and slight build, the timestamp read 0952.
"Half an hour or so," Archie supplied. "Would that be long enough?"
"Depends on what Catherine and Sara have to tell us. Let's track the others."
"The others" turned out to be a man and a woman. Her face was identifiable on her way out; she'd entered at 2246 the night Bianca was killed wearing a stylish hat and evening gown and exited at 0712 the next morning dressed in a business suit. His face was still obscured, and when they zoomed in, Warrick noted that he was wearing a leather jacket and broad-rimmed cowboy hat, and had a muscular, powerful build. He entered at 0037 and exited at 0807 dressed in different clothes but still wearing the cowboy hat.
Next, they moved on and sorted out the people whose faces had been identifiable, and who had entered but hadn't exited. It was possible that they'd left by a utility exit or some other back door, and since they knew the body had been dumped outside of town, it made sense that their killer hadn't just walked out the front door with a bloody corpse.
That left them with four options; two women and two men.
"Next step is to run these by the apartment manager and find out how many of them actually live in the building. Thanks for your help, Archie," Warrick said, clapping the lab tech on the shoulder and collecting the printed images.
"Anytime."