Wray was waiting for him.
"Did you get any sleep?" he asked her.
"Some," she admitted, "I was intending on getting more, but I got a call on some information being sent over and I gave up at that point. Brody's asleep, he got in later than I did."
Young turned and they walked together to the periphery of the crime scene.
"What can you tell me?" he asked, tucking his hands behind his back. Years out of the military and he still couldn't get out of the habit of dropping into parade rest.
"Mr Telford was found slumped in the driver's seat with a gun shot wound to the chest. By rights he should be dead, but it glanced off a rib and moved upwards through his chest to lodge in his upper chest and missed his major organs. He's a tough man. He was alone and I've checked, he left Doctor Rush and Mr Greer at Icarus."
She gestured at the car full of snow and the scattered flakes on the drivers seat.
"Whoever shot him expected him to die quickly but by the time Miss Richmond arrived, he was pretty covered in snow. The cold might even have slowed his heart and stopped him bleeding out." Wray shrugged. "I'm no doctor."
Young moved round to get a better look into the car without approaching. He wrinkled his nose at the brimstone smell as the CSI took sulphur casts of tracks in the snow. There was a large bloodstain on the drivers seat and a small blood icicle on the steering wheel, but no bloodstains outside the car that Young could see.
"There's no sign of a struggle." He noted.
"Which fits with the other piece of information we have." Said Camile. "I called Icarus to check on Mr Greer and Doctor Rush, as they all left the fire scene together in this vehicle last night."
Young nodded.
"Greer was still on duty," she continued, and said that after they saw Doctor Rush into his apartment at Icarus, Telford took a call on his mobile phone which seemed to surprise him and left immediately. It was a company phone and Miss Armstrong released the phone records to us immediately. He took a single call from a disposable phone at a quarter to six am."
Young looked around as he calculated where he was in relation to the Icarus works. Snowflakes began to drift down slowly again.
"It'd take him three quarters of an hour maybe, to make it from there to here in this weather."
Camile nodded.
"That's what Becky said. Which would make half past seven the earliest he could have been here. Say a quarter to eight to give him time to get out of the building." Camile mused. "The pregnant girl found him at approximately twenty past eight."
Young looked at the snow in the car and the direction in which the snow had been blown generally.
"CSI will have to give a proper estimate, but that snow in the car looks reasonable for half an hour with the door open."
They watched for a while as, having finished taking casts of footprints and tyre tracks in the snow, the CSI started to work across the scene with a metal detector carefully avoiding damaging the sulphur casts. He moved slowly until, not five feet from the car door, he found the shell casing buried in the snow. He turned to look at them.
"Point three two by the looks of it," he said. "small semi-automatic maybe?"
He bagged it carefully and stored it safely with the other evidence.
"And now we need to start looking at hand guns." Said Camile.
"That'll take some time." Young said seriously. "Half of Icarus have a permit to carry concealed, all the security staff and most of the research staff. There's serious security concerns. Those scientists are working on weapons and explosives technology, they're a terrorist's wet dream. There are serious security benefits to being located in a tiny town where everyone knows everyone and strangers stick out like a sore thumb."
Camile nodded.
"Have there been any problems with that sort of thing?"
Young shook his head. "Not here, but I understand it was one of the issues that sunk Carnegie-Wallace."
"What happened?"
"One of their senior researchers was abducted by some fundamentalist Christian group who wanted to blow up a federal building. Ended badly."
"What happened?"
"The researcher killed himself rather than provide information to the crazies. Hung himself three weeks after being abducted."
"I haven't even had a chance to read all the files we've been moving so fast, but let me guess, one of Eli Wallace's family."
Young gave her a rueful look. "Uncle actually, his dad turned to drink and drugs after his kid brother died and eventually bit his gun."
"Which might give us a fit between this and the other crimes?" Camile looked around the scene then shook her head, evidently disagreeing with her own statement.
"I overheard Telford last night on the phone to someone." Young said. "Hadn't even had a chance to write it up yet, just a note in my notebook. Telford was making a promise to keep someone's father's dirty secrets that he'd been keeping for years."
Camile looked at him with interest.
"Well the age must restrict it." She said "Makes it most likely to be Chloe Armstrong or Eli Wallace, although it could still be someone else."
She stared around the crime scene again.
"This just doesn't fit, Everett." She turned back to him. "Why shoot Telford when you want to burn people alive in their own homes?"
Young stuffed his hands in his pockets.
"Telford was living in the guest apartment at Icarus." He said. "I thought he was back home, but maybe he's not. The first power outage left his water pipes frozen and when the power came back on again and thawed everything, his house flooded and shorted out all the electrics. House was unlivable, he's had workmen in there for a couple weeks."
Camile nodded slowly, putting her hands on her hips and surveying the car again through the snow flurries now drifting down.
"So the only way to get him would be to lure him out. Small hand gun, deserted road. You would expect him to die of the cold pretty quick even if the shot didn't kill him immediately."
Young looked up the road.
"Except Ruki Richmond was driving over to her parents place."
They fell silent again watching the CSI work.
"So we need to locate where the call was made from." Young said. "You can get that done?"
Camile nodded.
"And establish who has alibis." She said.
Young's mobile rang. He fumbled it out of his pocket with gloved hands and dragged of a glove to answer it.
"Young."
"It's James, sir."
"What's the news Vanessa?"
"Telford survived the surgery." She said. "They removed the bullet and they're hoping he'll recover."
Young felt the muscles in his shoulders relax from where they had tightened the moment she had started speaking. Camile was watching his intently as they spoke and he put his hand over the mouthpiece to whisper quickly.
"Telford made it." He took his hand away from the phone "Stay with him Vanessa, we don't want whoever had a go the first time to get to him before he wakes up."
"That's what I was going to suggest sir."
Young smiled despite himself.
"Keep me posted. We're drafting in support from the State Police so I'll get someone to relieve you later. Have they said when they think he'll come round?"
"Not yet. He was unconscious on admission and they aren't promising anything."
"We can only hope he'll come round and tell us who shot him."
"I'll keep you posted sir." She promised.
Young rang off and turned back to Camile.
"Telford made it through surgery, but hasn't come round yet. He's been out since he was found."
"Deputy James is guarding him?"
Young nodded.
"Will one guard be sufficient?"
"Vanessa's an ex-marine." Young said with a nasty grin. "Any attempt on Telford would result in a nasty shock for whoever tried it. A quick way to deal with our murderer, but it'd cheat us out of a trial. I want to catch this bastard alive."
They both turned at the sound of a truck on the road. In the near distance the crime lab's tow truck made a careful descent of the slope towards them.
"Scene done?" he asked the CSI.
The man nodded.
"I've got as much as I can without moving the vehicle, and everything on the vehicle that needs to be examined in situ." The man removed his latex gloves, dropped them in a plastic refuse bag duct taped to his truck then held out his hand.
"Vince," he said, "Vince Morrison."
"Everett Young, pleased to meet you."
The man's hands were absolutely freezing and his fingers were past pink and white to being almost blue.
"Coffee?" Young asked.
"I'd sell my soul for a cup." Said Vince.
Young pulled out hteh flask and some plastic cups, pouring coffee for the three of them and a fourth cup for the tow truck driver, who was pulling up behind and a little way away from Telford's vehicle. He grabbed the pack of cookies and passed them out.
The tow truck driver wasn't one Young had met before, but the small party shared coffee and a brief chat about the poorness of the weather and roads before, coffee finished, Vince and the tow truck driver set about securing the SUV then getting it on the truck.
After the truck had left it was only another hour before Vince pronounced the scene about as clear as he was going to get it. He packed his gear and accepted another coffee.
"You'll get the lab report as soon as I can get it to you." He said. "With a serial it's priority on everything." His face was grim.
"Thank you Vince." Camile said.
"One thing though," Vince said, "I need to confirm the sizes in the lab, but the only unidentified shoe print I found looked pretty small. It's a partial, toe imprint only, the paramedics crushed the rest treating Telford. I'll have to measure it up, but I'll get it done first."
Camile and Young stared at him.
"You're saying it's a woman?"
Vince sighed and frowned.
"I'm saying at first glance it's a small unidentified print, but I'd keep an open mind."
He turned still frowning, got in his van and left, driving off into the increasing snow. Camile looked at Young, eyebrows raised.
"Do you know how many female serial killers there are?" she asked Young.
Young looked at her, fingers tensing around his coffee cup.
"If everything I've read, and everything I've seen on television is to be believed, not many."
Camile nodded.
"Television is right on that count at least." She took a step back, shaking the last dregs from her coffee cup onto the snow. "I'll follow you back to the office."
They got into their respective vehicles and started the slow drive back to the office.