Nick had been in the lab most of the night, processing the evidence again, looking at things he couldn't piece together in his head and singing the song on the radio under his breath.
Mrs. DeMonte was unconscious in a hospital. He felt responsible, like he hadn't done his job.
He stopped a moment, looking across everything. The band-aids were lying on the table under the light, almost a dozen or so, soaked with blood. Some were what the EMT's had removed, some were what Sara had found in the trash at the mansion. Her blouse from the trash lay on another table. He was looking at the shards of glass one at a time, trying to imagine what had happened.
What kind of transgression would have driven a husband, let alone any man to do that? He couldn't even envision it, beating your wife and then having her at a party shortly afterward looking so spectacular; either she was a fighter, or a manipulator, or just desperate to live the dream.
He lifted a piece of glass, noting how far up the shards the blood had dried, shuddering to think how far they had been in her flesh, noticing the smudges from her fingers but no prints. The blood on all the glass matched the dna on her cup, but where were her fingerprints?
"C'mon Nick, you're thinking too hard on this one," Warrick reached to turn down the stereo, looking at Nick's official lab coat get-up. "First name basis? Working on your break?"
"I was trying to get her to open up," he said quietly. "And we all work through our breaks."
"Man, she was burnin' a hole in your forehead. Should've seen that look when you told her that her husband couldn't get to her. If you ask me, she shells it out just as much as she takes it. You see the biceps on her when they took her shirt off?"
Nick frowned at him, letting the comment slide for the moment.
"Okay, get this…" he started. "She goes through a patio door, hits the ground hard enough to drive these into her shoulder. Who pulls them out?"
"Her husband?"
Nick made a face.
"She must have," Warrick finished. "Ouch."
"She had to have… because there were shards in the kitchen trash and in her bedroom. She must have pulled the large pieces out on the patio, and the small ones out when she showered. Her drain tested positive for her blood."
"Threw the stuff in the hamper and trash, showered, got out, toweled off and then put on band-aids." Warrick leaned on the table with his forearms, resting his chin on his knuckles while looking at the glass. "Band-aids? Yah ask me, that's loony."
"For wide cuts, but deep puncture ones, ones that could be covered up by band-aids. She must not have been familiar with how much they were going to bleed. My question to you then is… where are her fingerprints on the glass?" Nick held up a larger piece of glass.
"Maybe she was wearing gardening gloves, or a staff person wearing a different kind of gloves pulled them out, or she used a towel to protect her fingers."
"There's no dirt on the ones we recovered from the kitchen, and no fingerprints on the ones recovered from the bedroom either, no fibers, no nothing. Those are definitely finger smudges with no prints, a towel would have absorbed the blood, this just pushed it around like finger-paint. The only explanation is that she was wearing gloves, the only reason to wear gloves with that kind of mess is to cover something up or a botched violent murder."
"Still thinking it was a pose?" Warrick asked.
"It would be really hard to kill someone, then invite a bunch of guests over and splatter yourself with senator cocktail and have everyone singing the same story," Nick placed the piece of glass down with a small clink.
"What about the husband?" Warrick asked.
"Husband tested negative for gsr, that doesn't mean though that either of them couldn't have hired someone to kill the senator."
"But why kill the senator? The murder is what doesn't fit here." Warrick turned around and leaned on the table, crossing his arms. "So you have confirmed abuse, wife goes upstairs and pretties herself up again while the maid cleans up the mess, then comes back down in time to greet a group of people who see the senator walking and talking until he gets spattered all over Mrs. DeMonte. Wife won't talk because husband told her not to. Husband won't talk except through a lawyer, and now wife is in the hospital for the injuries. Good luck with this one," he patted Nick on the shoulder and moved out the door. "I'm gonna get some breakfast, you're welcome to come along if you want."
Nick pressed his lips together, breathing out slowly through his nose as he looked across the evidence on the tables. He was missing something.
"Fingerprints," he said particularly to himself. He pulled off his gloves and then his jacket, putting some things together in a kit and moving after Warrick. "I'm going to head over to the hospital."
"Still on the fingerprint thing huh?" Warrick asked.
"Yah," Nick said, stopping in Grissom's office before leaving.
Brass was sitting in a chair; they were both having coffee.
"I'm gonna head over to the hospital, I have a lead. Any luck with the Mr.?"
"Still refuses to speak to anyone except through his lawyer, he's still in custody," Brass said, sipping some steaming coffee from the mug. "We're waiting on a warrant for the house. There is a protective order for the wife, husband can't have any contact with her. Other than that, we're at a dead end."
"This murder doesn't make sense," Nick started.
"Then perhaps the murder was a by-product of the circumstances," Grissom said, warming his hands on the cup. Las Vegas was in the middle of late December cold snap.
"Or the people in the room," Brass said.
"So we find out more about the people in the room," Nick smiled, nodding to both of them.
"Hey Nicky," Grissom started.
"Yah," he stuck his head back in.
"Protocol," he said quietly.
Nick smiled, "Of course."
He moved down the hallway to the break room, sticking his head in. "Sara, can you do a background check of everyone at the DeMonte house and call me when you're done?"
"Sure Nick, what's up?" she was making another pot of coffee.
"Just a hunch, need a neutral pair of eyes, I'll fill you in later."
"Where are you going?"
He was already gone.