7
Jim Brass had headed to his regular restaurant for breakfast and then hopefully swing by his home for rest and a shower before his next shift started, but it didn't work like that. Just as soon as he paid for his eggs, toast and coffee, he got the word on his cell phone that someone other than Nick Stokes had found the girl. First, he didn't know what girl, and then he flashed back on young Maddie Franklin, the small darling who had vanished from the rest stop. A group of campers heading toward Pahrump had heard about the girl on the radio then noticed a naked little lady on Highway 160 some eighty miles north of Las Vegas an hour later. Ignoring his shower, Jim dashed back to the police station to make sure it was her. A brief stop by the sandwich machine near the waiting room and the small fridge in the break room, he sat across to the tiny and tired little rascal.
"Hi, princess…" Brass felt like a dad to every young girl he ever encountered. "I hope you like that PB and J. I got it specially for you."
"It's okay." Precocious Maddie Franklin sat dressed in a makeshift outfit from a t-shirt draped around her body and tied around her fifteen-inch waist. She tossed away the crusts and sipped her carton of chocolate milk.
"You know, " Brass continued. "We've been looking for you everywhere. Can you tell us where you were?"
"With the fairy queen…" The girl peeled the crusts off another sandwich.
"Oh, the fairy queen." Brass beamed over her look of the world. "I haven't seen her in years. I bet she looks different now." He smiled at bit just happy to be returning her to her parents. "Can you tell me how she looks now?"
"She's really tall…" Maddie's adorable brown eyes reflected the lights of the room. "She has long brown hair and she wears a thick fur coat down over her body. She lives in a hole in the side of the rock and eats berries, smelly fish and other stuff."
"Did she give you anything to eat?"
"Yeah, but it smelled bad…" Maddie had her polite little conversation. "Like when my daddy's dog rolls around in the trash. Roxie's a big stupid dog."
"Well, some dogs like stinky stuff." The occasionally gruff police sergeant felt his heart softened by this living pixie. "Tell me more about the fairy queen. Does she live with friends?"
"I don't know…" Maddie answered innocently. "She just seemed lonely. She liked hugging me and carrying me around."
"How do you know that?"
"She made happy noises." Maddie finished off the main part of her sandwich and sipped her milk. "Can I get some ice cream now?!"
"Well, I got to ask your parents for permission first when they get here." Jim grinned over her. "But first, can you tell me how you got away from the fairy queen. Did you run away from her?"
"No…" Maddie's legs swung a bit restlessly as she told her story at the table. "She took me swimming at the lake, but I couldn't find my clothes. She hung them on a tree. When I tried finding them, I found that road and a bunch of people found me and brought me here. Can you find my clothes? I had seventy-four cents in the pocket I want back."
"Well," Jim could not help but laugh at her misdirected concern. "We'll try and find them, but first, I'd like to know more about the fairy queen. How far do you think she took you into the woods?"
"Grissom…" Nick watched the interview with his superior from behind the mirror. "Fairy queen? What do you make of that?"
"Nothing." Grissom stood watching with the fingers of his left curled up and resting against his chin. "Kids tend to decipher the world around them by what they already know. Maddie just is explaining the facts by what she believes happened."
"You don't think she was abducted by Bigfoot?"
"Nick…" Grissom turned to the younger CSI in the darkness of the room. "Back in 1979, a thunderstorm knocked a tree into the chimpanzee enclosure at the zoo and eleven chimps escaped into the wild. Only three of them were caught, but barring enough food to eat and possibly adapting to exist in the area, I'd sooner believe they were prospering in the wild than trying to make credence for another branch on the evolutionary primate tree."
"You don't think this is evidence?" Nick looked at Grissom. The bearded entomologist thought it over a second then gave his answer.
"No."
"Grissom…" CSI Assistant Director Conrad Ecklie opened the door to the room and stood with his frustration in check. "I hear you lost a suspect in a major murder case before she could be extradited to LA?" Grissom looked to Nick and back again.
"When did this happen?"
When was thirty minutes earlier. Where was in the basement under the police department where the arrested were held before being taken to prison or bailed out by relatives. In the women's wing, usually filled with locked up prostitutes, female drug users and young teenage girls that dabbled in shoplifting, Grissom headed to the scene to determine the means of escape. It was a solely ivory-colored location with rooms separated by steel doors and chambers with numbered cells for individuals and group pens for multiple offenders. Grissom walked through to catcalls from the hookers and annoyed stares from the female gang members while Ecklie heard only hisses and boos. Their arrival ended at Cell 45A which once held the young serial killer known as Lisa Bobbitt. Entering the cell, Grissom's eyes looked round once then noticed the two bars bent apart slightly into the next cell. In that cell had been four hookers picked up from off the Strip, only one of them was hysterically cowering in fear in the corner, two laid dead on the floor and the fourth was missing. The top of the iron door to that cell had been peeled outward at the top, just wide enough for a small figure to get through it. Ecklie picked the blanket up off the bottom cot.
A large liquid pool of dissolved blood, human plasma and liquefied tissue covered the bed.