Warrick got what Doc Robbins was talking about, with his Sherlock Holmes speech, because the lanky CSI felt the same way. Every crime scene brought opportunities to outthink a bad guy, to outsmart a criminal. Justice was the goal, and you could express that in various high-flown ways; but the truth of the CSI game was that it was, in part, a game.
Though he'd never spoken these thoughts and feelings aloud, not even to another criminalist (and certainly not to Grissom), the rush Warrick felt when he chased down that crucial piece of evidence, putting some perp behind bars, was not unlike the euphoria he'd felt riding a hot streak, back in the days when gambling ruled his life. "As with every grand opening," Grissom said dryly, "start by cutting the tape."
After withdrawing a utility knife from his pocket, Warrick cut the three strands of duct tape. The enchilada-shaped bundle loosened and the sickly sweet scent of decay rose like foul if invisible smoke.
Sara and Warrick took a time-out to apply some vaporizing ointment around their nostrils, to cut the smell. Doc Robbins seemed immune at this point, and nobody even bothered to pass the jar of Vick's toward Grissom-Warrick knew Gris's attitude was that this was science, and smells told you things, and were just generally part of the deal.
Soon, Warrick, Grissom and Sara were each slowly peeling off a strand of tape, placing them in individual evidence bags for later examination. God only knew what kind of fibers or other evidence might be embedded in the adhesive and there might even be, if they got really lucky, a fingerprint somewhere. Ironically, the tape and carpeting would probably tell them more about the killer than the victim's body.
Warrick had to fight the urge to just unroll the damn thing, and quickly-an urge he knew Sara shared and probably, though the man would never admit it, Grissom, too-and see what grisly present the killer had left rolled inside the piece of carpeting. Doing that, however, could destroy valuable evidence; and that knowledge alone prompted Warrick to calm himself and take his time.
They unrolled the bulky bundle once, exposing a sixteen-inch-wide piece of carpeting. This was the time-consuming, tedious work that TV cops always seemed to get done during a commercial break. In reality, the process could take anywhere from one to several hours, depending on what they ran into.
When Warrick looked at the exposed piece, then at what remained of the roll, he knew damn well they were going to accumulate some serious overtime on Cleopatra.
Sara took more photos as Grissom and Warrick went over the piece with their mini Maglites and tweezers. Robbins's part would come soon enough, but he hovered behind them, his gloved hands folded Buddha-like over his belly as he watched their every move, as if expecting them to yank the killer bodily out of the remnant.
Once they had gone over the section carefully, Warrick put a new bag in his hand-held vacuum and went over the section. When this process was finished, these bags would be sent to Trace for chemical analysis of their contents.
Before long they were unrolling a second section. Sara took pictures of the exposed piece from four different angles, then the three of them got down on their hands and knees, and went over the fabric practically fiber by fiber, just as they had the last one.
Warrick put another bag in the hand-held vacuum and went over this section. Finding nothing, they unrolled another sixteen-inch swath, and then another, and another….
By the time they exposed the first piece of the corpse's flesh, Warrick's stomach was growling and they had piled up over two dozen evidence bags with hair, fibers, a penny and material that appeared to be crushed leaves.
Another hour of intensive work passed before they had the body free. It lay on the floor at their feet, the three of them looking down at it. The stench challenged the Vick's Vapo-Rub around Warrick's nostrils, and whether his growling stomach craved food or not, Warrick Brown just wasn't interested in eating, right now….
"As we thought, female," Sara said. "Mid-to-late twenties?"
"That's how I call it," Warrick said, and Grissom nodded his agreement; then Warrick and his boss lifted the body onto the coroner's metal table. Utterly free, now, of her casing of carpet, Cleopatra emitted a sick perfume that seemed to engulf the whole room. Grissom sniffed at the air, like a dog seeking just the right spot.
Warrick wondered if Gris could actually estimate stage of decay by the degree of smell; but, that being a talent he had no wish to develop, Warrick did not seize the opportunity to ask.
Robbins bent over his new patient. "Some decomposition. She's been dead for a while."
Nude, the woman had matted black curly hair cut into a low-maintenance pageboy. Her face was still basically intact, although both jaws seemed to have been broken post-mortem, and were now offset by at least three inches, the flesh around her mouth having begun to tear away.
Her eyes were closed; her face, composed and peaceful. But a bizarre aspect struck them alclass="underline" she wore too much makeup, almost clownishly so-crimson lipstick, an abundance of rouge, mascara nearly dripping from her eyelashes. Applied way too heavily, and carelessly, and perhaps hastily.
Was the makeup post-mortem, too? It seemed…fresh.
"Area around her right eye," Sara said, clinically, "swollen…heavy makeup layered over the welt can't disguise the fact she's been punched in the face."
"Good," Grissom said, as if to a student.
But then, they were all students of Grissom's.
"She was beautiful once," Grissom said.
Sara looked up, almost shocked. "That's not very…scientific."
"Beauty is a subjective thing," Grissom admitted, staring down at the face. Was that sadness in his eyes? "But by the standards of our culture…even with the damage, the camouflaging, perhaps ritualistic makeup…this was a beautiful young woman."
Warrick could only agree. The woman's olive skin had gone drab and gray, but in her long straight nose and wide full lips, the shadow of the beauty that had been seemed obvious to Warrick.
Gently thumbing open her eyelids, Robbins revealed large, lifeless brown eyes that Warrick imagined might well have sparkled with life…before her death.
"Petechial hemorrhaging," Grissom said.
Robbins nodded, studying his patient. "Sign of asphyxia."
"The welt tells us she was punched before she died-question is, how long?"
Robbins shrugged facially. "We'll know when I've finished the autopsy."
Her skin was a mottled gray, blue and white mess that would indeed tell them a long, detailed story about her death, once Robbins completed his work. Her torso and limbs seemed to be in relatively good shape, but for a dark necklace of torn flesh that suggested the cause of death-strangulation-and something, in its own way, even more disturbing. A vicious tearing of the flesh around her vagina, coupled with the broken jaws, gave Warrick an unsettling notion of what this body had endured after the murder.
Sara's eyes were tight, but if the horror before them, and all it suggested, had shaken her, she was not letting it show. Clinical, professional, she was the first to say it.
"Necrophilia?"
Grissom nodded.
Sara bent to study the victim's face-specifically, the broken jaws causing the bottom half to be offset; this, with the swollen eye and garish makeup, gave Cleo a slightly surreal appearance.
"My turn," Sara said. "For an unscientific observation."
"What?" Grissom asked.
"Something familiar about her," Sara said, cocking her head a little. "It's hard to look past the makeup and the distortions caused by beating and death, but…I'd swear I know this woman from somewhere."
Warrick and Grissom both took a closer look too; they had been looking at a corpse, and now they looked at the person, trying to see through the destruction and obscene face paint.