It was almost one o'clock in the afternoon, and the body wouldn't come up for autopsy until night shift started. The day shift and swing shift coroners were notoriously territorial about which bodies they worked on, so Carter James would have to wait for Robbins to slice him open and find out what he could.
Not that there was much of a mystery about what had killed him, but hopefully the coroner would be able to give them a better approximation of the weapon used, as well as a time frame over which the injuries had been inflicted. Warrick had left Grissom a message about the evidence on the surveillance tapes - could all that damage have been inflicted in just a half an hour, when the complications of transporting the body were added in?
She stifled a yawn with the back of her hand when she opened the back door of the Tahoe and removed her kit and the box of evidence, shutting the door with her shoulder and following Grissom into the building. They split off wordlessly as he handed her the few packets of evidence that he'd kept with him for her to go enter them into the evidence vault. He would need to begin the linear regression right away, but with a body that had only been exposed for twenty-four hours or so, Sara had high hopes that it wouldn't take long and they could go home.
Sure enough, he was deep into his calculations when she re-entered his office and sat down on the couch, watching him silently for a few minutes. He blinked and looked up, and turned his head over his shoulder to smile at her, which she returned. He returned to sticking bugs with pins, and she fished into her bag for the book and continued to read Much Ado About Nothing.
A knock on the doorway jolted her out of a light doze, the book spread open across her chest, and she blinked a few times to see Erin Conroy standing there, yet another manila folder in hand. "Sorry if I'm disturbing anything."
"No, no," Sara reassured, sitting up straight. Grissom was completely lost in thought, measuring and thumbing through reference books. She had a brief moment of worry that he simply hadn't heard the detective knock, but then he looked back over his shoulder and shrugged, obviously expecting Sara to talk to the new woman.
Sara set the book down, careful to place a bookmark in the pages instead of just resting it open on the spine. She'd done that once at home and Grissom's horrified look, while amusing, had quickly disabused her of the habit. Following Erin into the hallway, she shut the office door behind her.
"What's up?"
"Statements from the doormen and other apartment residents, as well as the manager who's on duty during the day." She passed over a signed statement. "His name is Horace Meek. He said that at about nine-thirty yesterday morning a man fitting Sam Tolmen's description knocked on his door, obviously enraged, and demanded to be let in to Carter James's apartment. Said it was a matter of life and death, but he wasn't on the approved list of people that James had indicated at the beginning of the year were allowed entrance to the apartment in case of emergency, so Meek refused. By his best estimate, Tolmen left the office at nine forty-five. That fits in with Warrick's calculations based on the security tape. I also took statements from the across-the-hall neighbors, and they said that they heard someone banging on the door and yelling around the same time. They figured it was private business, so they didn't report it."
"Well, if Tolmen spent at least half of his time in the manager's office, then that leaves us with a pretty narrow window to have killed James in. Did anyone hear anything that could have been the murder?"
"Next-door neighbors to the left heard some 'weird' sounds the previous night just before midnight, but when I questioned them further, they admitted it could just as easily have come from a TV show." Erin shrugged. "Still, it's something to go on."
"Whoever did this was incredibly lucky," Sara observed. "No one reported the noise, and he didn't meet anyone going down the back staircase or out the service entrance."
"That might lend weight to the around midnight thought. There wouldn't have been too many people in the halls, and it would have been dark outside - easy to get the body from the back entrance to whatever vehicle was used to transport."
"The body was resting on a plastic tablecloth," Sara offered. "We found it when the coroner took the body away. I saw similar tablecloths in the linen closet at the apartment, but it could just as easily have been brought to the scene." She paused, considering.
"Also, fax came through for you from the hospital - Bianca Tolmen's medical records." Erin handed over the second sheet in the folder.
Scanning the information quickly, Sara nodded to herself. "The folic acid was first prescribed about a week ago. That would coincide with the time Sam Tolmen told us that his sister called him and told him that James was starting to lose it."
"Do you think she told him, and that's what sent him over the edge?" Erin asked.
"We'll never know. They're both dead. And we'll never know if the baby was his or not. The pregnancy's too early to test accurately for paternity. But judging from the analysis Greg did on the bedsheets, I doubt it was his." She finished scanning the medical records and handed them and the witness statements back to the detective. "Thanks for the update."
"No problem. Go home, get some sleep. You look beat."
Sara made a face at the detective, and returned to the office to find Grissom slipping on his coat. "Are you finished?"
"No," he disillusioned her. "But I'm at a stage where I can take a break for a few hours, and I saw you dozing off. Let's go home and get some sleep."
"Nothing. Zip. Nada."
Nick jumped. "Catherine, you have got to stop sneaking up on me like that."
Her smirk told him she wasn't about to stop anytime soon. "None of the fingerprints - other than Bianca's - matched either AFIS or the prints Sara took from the dressing room. Dead end. We're going to have to wait until the body gets back to see how many of those fingerprints were James's."
"Well, I've got something." He clicked back to the browser he'd left open. "Check out what he was researching."
"If he weren't dead, I'd say we've got a good case," Catherine observed as she clicked through the websites.
"We're sure it was him, then?"
"Oh, yeah. Grissom called me on his way back. Sara made a positive visual ID based on the photos from his apartment." She pulled up a chair and sat next to him, cradling her chin in her hands.
"Well, dead or alive, we have enough evidence to prove that he killed Bianca Tolmen. Warrick called me about five minutes ago. They didn't find any strychnine in Mallory Smith's apartment, and she was the only other person with motive and opportunity to plant the poison. No pun intended."
Catherine rolled her eyes at him, and he grinned charmingly in response.
"Anyway, we know from Mallory's statement, correlated by the timestamp on the credit card report, that James dropped the roses off just before the wedding scene. Mallory put the roses in the dressing room, Bianca entered, took a deep sniff, and at that point it was a foregone conclusion. The poison had entered her system. We can extrapolate that based on where Sara found the roses - stuffed in the trash - that it was after she took a sniff that she read the card and realized it was from her fiancé, and that they were an unwelcome gift."
"But an expensive one," Catherine said wistfully. "Two dozen roses? Very nice."
"Yeah, well." Nick squirmed slightly in his seat. "It's a style. Not all guys are the roses type."
Her smile was suddenly bemused, and she tipped her head to the side, resting her cheek on her knuckles, blonde hair cascading over her hands and brushing the top of the lab table. He was intensely grateful when she didn't push any further. "Go home, get some sleep," she advised him, changing the subject.
"You too," he returned, but was already closing down the laptop, popping out the disk where he had saved the screen caps of the strychnine webpages. "I'm going to drop this off and then I'm gone."
"I'll walk with you and refile these fingerprints, and then I think I'm going home too."
Warrick woke to his alarm, and rubbed a hand over his face blearily. Ten PM - seven hours of sleep that he'd badly needed. After returning to the lab empty-handed, he had found that all the other night shift CSIs had gone home at some point over the afternoon. Brass had caught him on his way home, had updated him briefly on the pertinent details - Sam Tolmen still missing, body initially ID'd as Carter James, evidence of strychnine research on James's laptop - and had, after promising him to call as soon as Tolmen was found, urged him to go home.
It hadn't taken much urging, and Warrick would never be able to swear under oath exactly how he'd managed to get home safely, but he had, and had mustered up barely enough energy to make a quick sandwich that he ate while on his way to bed.
Now, he showered quickly and made coffee and toast, toothbrush sticking out of the corner of his mouth, and took a few minutes to check his email and the day's sports scores before eating and dressing fully.
Catherine was standing guard over the coffee pot when he entered the break room, and she turned to smile at him when he entered and took a seat wearily. Without asking, she poured him a cup, which he took gratefully, nodding his thanks. Nick entered on his second gulp and poured himself a cup, silently offering them each a refill - Catherine declined, Warrick accepted - before sitting down next to Catherine and toying with the handle of his mug for a few seconds, swiveling the ceramic back and forth on the table.
Catherine reached over to stop his movements, and he grinned sheepishly, taking a drink. Warrick leaned back in his chair and took slow, leisurely sips after the gulps of the first cup.
It was a comfortable routine, as they savored the few minutes before shift actually started, enjoying each other's company in a setting uncharacteristically lacking blood and gore. There was something easily simplistic about it, three friends sitting together. They could have been in the break room in a sterile corporate setting, instead of three doors down from a ballistics lab. For a little while, it was good to keep that illusion.
"Hey," Sara said with a smile, breaking the silence and smiling as she entered the break room and made her way straight to the coffee pot. This time, Catherine accepted a refill, and Nick and Warrick declined.
"Hey," Warrick acknowledged, and sat up. "Grissom here?"
She shrugged. "Doubt it. He was still in the shower when I left." She took a seat next to him.
Across the table, Nick squirmed visibly, and Catherine looked faintly amused at his discomfort. Sara blushed slightly as she realized what she'd said, and this time the silence was an awkward one.
"Then we've got time," Warrick decided. "Nick, I've got a bill that says I kick your ass in Goldeneye at least twice before shift starts."
"You're on."
Catherine rolled her eyes with a wry grin, muttering something about boys and their toys, and Sara grinned impishly, leaning behind her to snag a magazine out of the rack, thumbing it open to an article on computer-aided fiber analysis.