Scene Four
Back at the New York Crime Lab, Mac and Stella had decided that divide and conquer was the best way to collect up the relevant information on the case. Concerned about the vic's body, Mac went straight to see Sid and Hawkes, leaving Stella to check up on the evidence collected at the scene. She went first to Lindsay, more curious about the goop they had found at the scene than in the CCTV footage that Adam was painstakingly analysing, or the prints that Danny was running.
"Hey Lindsay, what have you got for me?"
"Hey Stell." Lindsay gave Stella a huge grin. She had a self-satisfied look in her eye that made Stella realised that this was going to be good. "So, this gloop? It's spit."
"Saliva?" Stella pulled a disgusted face. "I've never seen saliva like that before, or in such big quantities."
"Guess you don't spend much time looking at frog spit." Lindsay responded, and Stella figured this was why she had that glint in her eye. "Yep, frog spit. The green colour is from algae that frogs sometimes ingest along with quantities of water that they need to store to create the mucus that protects their skins and aids gaseous exchange."
Stella took the sample bottle from Lindsay and held it up to the light. Sure, enough, there was a faint green tinge to it that made Stella feel as nauseous as if her face was going the same shade. She put the bottle back down a little too quickly, the bottle over-balancing and rolling in a tight circle about the surface. She indicated at another bottle on the bench. "Is that spit to?"
"No," Lindsay replied. "Did you know that frogs can stick to and climb vertical surfaces but they have to climb down backwards?"
"Backwards?" Stella was used to Lindsay's informational bursts, and so she patiently waited for Lindsay to continue.
"Yeah, backwards. You see, because their rear ends are so much bigger than their heads, if they came down head first, they'd well..."
"Fall heels over head." Stella finished with a smile. "Okay, I'll bite. Why?"
"Frogs used a method called wet adhesion to stick to surfaces in the same way a wet piece of paper sticks to glass. The mucus produced by their toe pads forms a layer of fluid between the surface and the discs. As long as no air bubble breaks that layer, they stick to the surface." Lindsay was clearly enjoying herself. "The tension is that close to the wire that the extra weight of the back end mixed with gravity would cause the frog to fall. That sample is the mucus found on the ceiling along with the four-toed footprint, which also showed signs of enlarged, circular toes similar to those in frogs."
Frog spit, frog mucus, frog footprints on the ceiling, a body that was inhuman and no real signs of anything other than pure weirdness, Stella was beginning to wonder if this case was just some weirdo's idea of a practical joke on the CSI team. Thanking Lindsay for her educational report, Stella popped in on Danny.
"All the prints found at the crime scene were Senator Kelly's or from Lisa Dunbarr." Danny didn't even wait for a hello before launching into his report. "Guy had a damn good cleaner, or he never had any visitors."
"According to Flack, Lisa Dunbarr's diary showed that they'd had the cleaners in two days ago." Stella nodded. "Carpets, furniture, windows, the works. And no visitors since."
"So Lisa's lookin' real good as a suspect right about now."
Stella nodded, clapping Danny on the back before going in search of Adam and his CCTV footage.
When he got to the ME's office, Mac found Sid and Hawkes staring at a pool of water on one the autopsy tables. "You done with the autopsy already?" He asked, a little surprised that the two men could have finished so quickly with such a unique case.
"This is all that's left of our vic's body, Mac." Sid informed him, wonder and amazement clear in his voice.
"You're kidding." Mac insisted, convinced that the guys were playing some elaborate joke.
"Wish we were, Mac." Hawkes replied quietly. "We took a blood sample, fingerprints, DNA and photographs, but before we could start the autopsy, he just swelled up and..."
"Burst." Sid finished when Hawkes couldn't.
"Burst?" Mac clearly didn't believe them.
"Seriously, Mac, he just burst into water! Look, we took the liberty of recording the procedure since this case was one of a kind." Hawkes took up the story again, giving Sid a look that thanked him for providing a suitable adjective. He gestured at a screen and began to run it. Mac watched as Hawkes finished taking prints, Sid scraped under the Vic's nails, Hawkes drew some blood whilst Sid took a urine sample from the bladder. As they took photographs from all angles, sure enough, the Vic's body began to swell. It wasn't so obvious a first, but then both Hawkes and Sid stepped back and watched in disgust as the body popped, disappearing completely and nothing but water splashing all over the table.
Mac was speechless. He just couldn't believe was he was seeing. He ran the video back again and again, each time half-convinced that he would see a different conclusion to the recording, or see something that would tell him how Hawkes and Sid had managed such an elaborate deception, but there was nothing. Mac finally stopped running the playback, but couldn't find anything to say.
"We've run an analysis," Hawkes anticipated the question that might have been on the tip of Mac's tongue, "and found quantities of adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine within the water."
"Those are the base nucleotides that make up DNA." Mac confirmed almost to himself, relieved to be able to associate something relatively normal to this case. "You're really serious on this?"
Both of them looked at him with straight faces and he nodded his acceptance. They weren't kidding. Okay, the case had just got weirder than ever. It wasn't humanly possible for a body to transform into water. Not possible at all. "Alright," he took a breath and tried to steady himself. His nerves were beginning to fray on this one. "I'll let you guys clean up. I'm going to see Adam, see if CCTV caught anything unusual."
Stella caught up with Mac, both of them on their way to see Adam. She filled him in on Lindsay and Danny's findings as they walked. In return, he filled her in on the crazy goings on in the morgue. As he had, Stella assumed it was a joke, until Mac was forced to show her the video of the autopsy-that-never-was. She went as silent as Mac had, her jaw dropped in amazement. Mac had to smile, knowing he'd have had a similar look on his face, not too much earlier. They went on to get the summary on the surveillance footage.
As always, Adam was muttering nonsense to himself as he reviewed the CCTV footage that Flack had provided him with. Both Stella and Mac paused to listen to a little of his inane babbling, but were unsure if it was a film he was quoting from or if he was just talking to himself. It made Stella smile and Mac frown. Mac cleared his throat and Adam spun round in his chair and greeted the pair enthusiastically.
"Lisa Dunbarr's lying." Adam's words cut off anything his audience might have said. Adam turned his chair back to his screen. "Senator Kelly never left the office; he arrived at 08.00 yesterday morning and never left. Watch this; Lisa leaves the office at 18.07, takes the elevator down to ground level, and leaves through the foyer. So far so good."
"But?" Mac asked quickly, getting the hint that there was more to this story.
"See here? 01.43 She returns to the office, then leaves again at 02.10, she lied."
"Gives her twenty seven minutes to commit murder. Plenty of time."
"Not to contradict you boss, but we are assuming this is murder?" Adam asked.
"All I know is that we have frog spit, giant frog prints, and frog mucus all over our crime scene. We had a body in the morgue with one arm 8.2 inches longer than the other, now all we have in the morgue is a puddle of water with some DNA fragments in it." Mac told Adam firmly. "Does that sound like natural causes to you? Stella, have Flack bring Lisa Dunbarr in, she's got some questions to answer..."
A/N : Big nod to the reference books "Animal" published by Dorling Kindersley and "Vertebrate Life (6th Ed)" by , C Janis, & J Heiser , without which this chapter would have been, well, very wrong instead of slightly dodgy. Yes, I have taken a few liberties; we'll just call it artistic licence and have done with it okay?