4
"You want my opinion…" Coroner Al Robbins analyzed the human sludge at a molecular level to make sense of it. "It's not sludge; it's residue" He looked over the microscope to Grissom.
"What's your determination in that?" Grissom asked.
"Well," Robbins hobbled on his good leg through the dimly room. The room was dark except for glowing x-rays and light reflecting off surfaces. "If it was just sludge expelled by the victim, I would have expected some stomach acid mixed in with it, but instead, all I see are exploded blood cells, degenerated skin cells, free-floating lymphatic material and a lot of inert plasma. It's almost as if it were… rejected."
"So," Grissom wished he had taken more human biology. "We're not far off from a degenerative disease."
"Degenerative is right…" Robbins turned to wash his hands and dry them. "It's almost as if these cells were filtered through something, robbed of all nutrient and stability and then just discarded as if… whatever had taken them had drained all it could from them."
"If that's the case…" Grissom reflected on this new information. "This would be all that's left of Connors."
"What happened to the other ninety percent of him?" Robbins spoke what Grissom was thinking.
"Maybe, just maybe…" Grissom started creating a radical theory. "That is ninety percent of him."
Twenty miles from the security and excitement of the city, Catherine Willows thanked the good Lord that she never had a father that took her camping. The morning sun was already out and underneath her CSI gear, she felt like a baked potato. Amidst the other volunteers searching, she was constantly swatting away mosquitoes, she had little leaves and twigs traveling down the back of her neck and she had stumbled or nearly fallen twice as they checked the trails between Winchester and Las Vegas. Sheriff Max Walters coming up behind her had caught her once, but the only reason she expected he stayed behind her was to admire her figure.
"Okay," Walters paused and took out his canteen to take a drink. "I'm starting to think we're looking in the wrong place. I think the girl might have been abducted." He offered her water, but she had her own.
"I believe you're right." Katherine sipped her own flask and looked through the arid woodland. "A little girl lost out here would want to be found plus, she could not get this way on her own." She reached for her cell phone. "Nick, where are you right now?"
"Back to the lab," The handsome criminologist hopped from his Denali and proceeded inside. "I got an Amber Alert out plus I've made contact with a chopper. I'm going on the second air search in a minute." He paused to get a drink from a vending machine. "Anything new with you?"
"Nothing much…" Catherine sweated and fussed with her hair to keep cool. "I'll let you know if I get anything." She turned to reattach her cell, but when she did, something caught her eye. She noticed a depression in the dirt by her left foot. It was shaped like a footprint, and it was a good sized one at that. Walters noticed her pulling out a measure and her camera.
"Ever couple weeks," Walters noticed her distraction. "Someone reports on a large hairy man rummaging around their camp site or breaking into their cabin."
"Fascinating…" Catherine snapped her photo.
Back to the lab, Warrick Brown turned round with a slight sigh. He reached up and tiredly palmed the top of his head, watching his buddy and partner Nick Stokes once again coming toward him. Sweaty, sunburned and tired, Nick had just spent eight hours combing the wilderness west of Winchester for the missing Franklin girl. He was covered in bits of leaves, he had dry dirt across one leg and the seat of his pants, faint debris caught in his hair and his face was still perspiring as his body temperature tried to cool him. After some rest and something to eat, he was going back out again, this time in a helicopter for a much more broad search.
"Well, look at you!" Warrick chuckled a bit. "It looks like you've been camping!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" Nick held his fresh cold water bottle to his face to try and cool off. "I hear you got a new lead in that old Caldwell case we had. What, another pool of human sludge?"
"Yeah," Warrick looked up with his hazel eyes. "Another crime scene…"
"Anything to link the two besides the sludge?"
"Yeah, and how…" Warrick continued. "The girl who vanished with Connors was described as looking like that Kelly Clarkson from American Idol, but get this, young Will Danvers, who vanished two months ago, he went to Piedmont High School. His guidance counselor was… Lisa Bobbitt, the same girl who vanished with Connors. She left the high school two weeks after his disappearance for the job at the college."
"That's a bit more than a coincidence." Nick sipped his bottled water from the machine. "So, did you hear we might have a sample of Bigfoot DNA in trace."
"Aw, Nick…" Warrick scoffed at the idea. "Don't tell me you believe that stuff. I mean think about it… Europeans settle this continent four hundred years ago and find every indigenous Native American tribe there is to find except a race of hairy seven-foot-tall apes? I don't think so."
"Yes, yes…" Nick tried to debate it. "A race of intelligent apes that have managed to avoid detection except for random sightings over several years. There are parts of this country that have still to be explored, places that have remained unchanged for over ten hundred years."
"It's next to impossible that an undiscovered great ape could be living in the United States wilderness." Warrick stuck to common sense.
"Not really…" Nick stuck more to the possibility. "There are new species being discovered everyday… like that deer in Vietnam." He tipped his cold water back to his lips.
"Nick…" Warrick placed his hand on Nick's shoulder. "I have to tell you something. Vietnam is a lot different than the United States."
"You seem to be forgetting…." Greg came around Warrick to get into this conversation. "That long before our ancestors came to this country, the Native Americans already knew this thing existed and even worshipped it." He bounced his gaze back and forth between them. "I mean, they've got drawings of these things around pictures of ordinary things like wolves, bears and deer. If these things didn't exist, why would they chronicle them with things they experienced every day."
"The guy's got a point." Nick started liking Greg a bit more.
"In fact," Greg continued. "My Uncle Olaf used to tell me stories from Sweden about…"
"You guys are killing me." Warrick chuckled at their beliefs. "Come on, Stephen King…" He pulled Greg with him. "You're helping me at the university." He tugged at the former lab tech to get him used to the field. After a bit of searching in the employee records at the university by way of a subpoena, Jim Brass was driving toward North Las Vegas and Montgomery Street in particular. The university mailed Bobbitt's paychecks to a post office box, but her address was listed as a former Fifties-style restaurant in a high-crime neighborhood. The structure still had its typical burger shack shape with derelict speakers on posts in back, but the windows were boarded up like a fortress. Patrol cars converged on the weed-strewn and litter-filled site and a few teens not yet into their criminal careers dashed off the sidewalks in fear of their would-be prison futures. A few honest but struggling families sweltering in the heat sat on their front stoops and watched the military-like routine of police officers and the SWAT teams swarm the front of the location and take their positions. At the forefront, Sergeant Jim Brass took command. He looked upon his armored and unarmored officers, twenty-three in all, garbed in body army and flak jackets and took his position behind a patrol car.
"Lisa Bobbitt…" He responded first through a megaphone. "We have a warrant to search the premises. Come out with your hands up!" He stood down waiting a response. There were no windows. The building had been sealed up like a fortress. Out the corner of his eye, agents with high caliber rifles dashed to cover the back door. Jim held his hand up a moment to lead the bust then gave permission to storm the place. A battering ram carried by four officers plowed the front door down ahead of the teams and eight officers streaked ahead with their guns at the ready.
"I love this job." Brass checked his gun and responded next. Once inside, his eyes scanned the interior. Anything restraunt-like had been removed. There was no front counter nor tables and booths except for one row across the front. The former dining room had been set up like a study and living room with carpeting, tasteful but not expensive furniture and a rollback desk against the wall to the kitchen. SWAT officers poked around plants and furniture, sticking their gun tips under and behind chairs and past an aquarium of lionfish. The location was dark except for a ceiling fan with a light illuminating the room. The kitchen area looked relatively the same, possibly in the same condition it was a few years ago when it was still a business, maybe just a bit cleaner. The only things in the walk-in freezer were a tub of Neapolitan ice cream and a stack of frozen steaks. The cooler only held a box of Chinese food, a jar of grape jelly, a partial pudding cup and half a jug of iced tea. The décor consisted of yard sale art: a picture of Elvis painted on velvet, an amateur landscape painted over a mirror, a heavily stained imitation of Currier and Ives and a "Star Wars" movie poster in a protective glass case. One of the SWAT members exited the restroom area and gave the clear signal as Grissom entered the location.
"Well, this is cozy…" He entered ahead of Sara.
"She's set up better than I am." Sara pulled on her plastic gloves to look for evidence. "Kitchen, first?" She got a nonverbal reply from him and moved past the officers for a detailed search.
"Well, this is nice…" Brass stood by as officers took control of the property. He leaned down to look at the fish in the tank. "I mean, it's a bit dark with the windows covered over, but I guess you get used to it." He watched Grissom wander past him, treading lightly around the coffee table and sofa and poke through the blanket and pillow on the sofa. Behind him, a TV Guide on the coffee table was folded open to a particular day. He snapped a few pictures of the magazine before picking it up and scanning through it. All the horror movies for the week had been circled and planned with little notes scribbled around them. For the late night airing of the movie Night of the Demons from 1986, Bobbitt had scribbled the name, Angela and the words "infestation," "possession" and "demonic." On a mid-day listing for Friday The 13th: Jason Lives, the words "psycho," "weapons" and "body count." His forensic and intellectual priorities working, Grissom turned the page and read the words "presence," "UFO nonsense" and "goddess" around the 1958 classic Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman being repeated on the Sci-Fi Channel.
"Look at this…" He showed it to Jim. "She's been psychoanalyzing the horror movies she's watching. In fact…" Grissom looked around the room. "I think this entire place is a façade."
"A façade…" Brass shifted nervously in this place. "You mean… it's not real?"
"She lives here, but she doesn't really live here." Grissom explained and continued toward the desk. "She doesn't own a single personal item… anything that reflects her character. No bric-a-brac, no hobbies, no past, no… life…"
"So, she's a psycho."
"No, psychopathic killers go through their business of killing others because they think it's how to be normal." Grissom had moved over to Bobbitt's desk. "I think Bobbitt lives like this because she knows she's abnormal and is trying to be normal. That's not a psychopath; that's a mental aberration." He snapped a few photos of the scene, opened the drawer and snapped a few photos of it hanging open. He pulled out a large binder and looked through it. "Now, we know where she's been getting her aliases…" Separated by name and dividers were Xerox copies of newspaper articles about the other Lisa Bobbitt's murder spree through Boston and New York City, printed Internet pages about the notorious Fifteenth Century Blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory, ritualistic cult killer Angela Franklin from Salem, Oregon, accounts of the New England hatchet woman Lizzie Borden and several other female killer from history and abroad.
"Bobbitt, Bathory, Borden…" Brass mulled over the names. "She's trying to be more like them?"
"Or she's trying to take the power out of those names." Grissom answered. "I mean, no one would think twice about the name Bundy if old Ted hadn't killed all those girls from Washington to Florida."
"Grissom…" Sara emerged from the side door to the kitchen. "That kitchen is immaculate. There is no sign she does any sort of cooking. I think she eats entirely take-out." She made a sound of annoyed jealousy. "How does she eat that stuff and still stay so spry? I found nothing but hamburger bags and pizza boxes in her trash."
"Good genes?"
"Another thing…." Sara had a grocery list taken from the front of the cooler. "Listen to this note to herself… '1310 Hazelton, Try and eat something else for a change.' What do you think that means?"
"1310 Hazelton is the address for Alpha Sigma Rho Fraternity where Connors vanished." Brass spoke up.
At the end of the block, Bobbitt came around the corner from the local Chinese food place. Her boots scraping the sidewalk, and a Styrofoam cup of soda in her hand, she sipped her drink as she turned round the corner of a row of lower-class homes and immediately noticed the flashing lights around her home. Removing her straw from her mouth, she sighed lightly annoyed at the spectacle and turned into the other direction with her take-out for another place to eat.