"Yeeaaah," Warrick said. "I do feel like I've seen her somewhere before. Damn! What is it that's so familiar about her?"
Gil Grissom felt a cold burn settle in his stomach; he recognized this woman.
"Meet Candace Lewis," Grissom said.
The two young CSIs looked at him with wide eyes. Then they looked down at the autopsy tray.
Warrick was first to find his voice. "Oh, shit…."
Sara was studying the face through narrowed eyes. "You think this is Mayor Harrison's personal assistant? I don't know about that…." But Sara kept looking, then finally she said, "No," but it wasn't a disagreement. "No, no, you're right. Yeah, I see it, guys. It is her."
This, Grissom thought, was all they needed right now….
In the three weeks since Candace Lewis's disappearance, the young woman-previously all but unknown to the media-had garnered more Vegas coverage than Danny Gans, Clint Holmes and Siegfried & Roy combined.
The twenty-eight-year-old brunette, personal assistant of Mayor Darryl Harrison, had attended a political dinner not long after the first of the month; and then, on her way home that evening, she had fallen off the planet.
Her car, a three-year-old Lexus, had been found in the driveway of her townhouse within a gated community near the intersection of Green Valley and Wigwam Parkways. Fingerprints in the car matched Candace's and Mayor Harrison's prints were found on the passenger doorhandle and seatbelt; but no one else's prints were found anywhere in or on the vehicle.
Given the arid nature of Vegas, Grissom hadn't been that surprised that no other prints had been found. Fingerprints exposed to the weather didn't last long here; and even those protected by being inside the car and under a carport didn't have a terribly long lifespan. For his part, Mayor Harrison explained his fingerprints in Candace's car by saying, "On the day she disappeared, we went to lunch together…and that was the only time I ever rode in her car."
The mayor's story had been backed up by Jill Ganine, a KLAS reporter with a nose for news and the teeth to hang onto a story. She arrived at CSI HQ with a videotape shot by her cameraman that showed Mayor Harrison climbing out of Candace's Lexus on the day in question. But almost from the moment the tape had aired, tongues had wagged around the city that the "lunch" was actually a euphemism for something else altogether. So, whether the tape had exonerated Harrison, or merely suggested a motive for him, was still an open question. To Gil Grissom, anyway.
Most of the media though-KLAS and Jill Ganine excepted, their take on the story having been established at the outset-did not have Grissom's open mind or need for proof.
Mayor Harrison had been vilified for the alleged affair, particularly in the newspapers; and of course the political and sexual aspects of the case, added to the glitzy Vegas backdrop, caught the attention of the national media. In a matter of a few weeks, a promising political career-the result of years of hard work and meticulous grooming-had been reduced to a talk-show joke.
"How deep are we standing in it?" Warrick asked.
"I don't think science has come up with that measuring tool as yet," Grissom said, mock-pleasant.
Sara said, "So it's a media crime. How does that affect us? Can't we just fly in under the radar? Doesn't it help that we're night shift?"
"Well, let's take it point by point," Grissom said.
He held up one finger.
"Until just now," he said, "Candace Lewis was a missing person, and a probable kidnapping, with the investigation under the jurisdiction of the FBI; and now she'll be ours again."
"Isn't that a good thing?" Sara asked.
He answered by holding up a second finger.
And saying, "Let's not forget that we picked up the body at the doorstep of a federal installation, in a high-profile political case. So, maybe the FBI isn't out of our hair just yet."
"Not a good thing," Sara admitted.
Grissom ticked off a third finger. "The late Ms. Lewis is the personal assistant to the mayor and, rumor has it, his lover."
A fourth finger came up.
"Not to mention," he continued, "that Mayor Harrison's chief political rival right now happens to be the man likely to run against him in the upcoming election…."
"Unnnggggh," Sara said.
Warrick had the glazed expression of a caught carp.
"…Our boss."
"Our boss," Grissom said amiably. "Sheriff Brian Mobley."
Captain Jim Brass chose this moment to come walking into the morgue, and noticed Grissom's upraised hand with four fingers raised. With a smirky little smile, the detective said, "What you cipherin' there, Jethro?"
The pop culture reference didn't penetrate Grissom's concentration, and he motioned with that upraised hand, in a presentational manner, to the body. Brass's eyes followed the CSI's gesture.
"If I may," Grissom said, "Jim Brass-meet Candace Lewis."
"Holy shit," Brass said, his normally sleepy eyes wide awake, whites showing all around. "Does the press know?"
Shaking his head, Grissom said, "We just now I.D.ed her. We won't make an official identification until we check her prints."
Brass was at the edge of the tray, looking down at the garishly made-up corpse. "Oh, that's her, all right. Hell." He cast his mournful gaze on Grissom. "You and I better go see Mobley, my friend-this is gonna get real ugly."
Grissom grimaced, not relishing the notion. "Do I need to go? Isn't that more…administrative?"
The cliché most people fell back on to describe Grissom and Sheriff Mobley was oil and water; the CSI supervisor himself viewed their relationship as more along the lines of gasoline and a lit match. It wasn't so much that Grissom didn't like Mobley-he didn't really have enough regard for the man for that to be an issue.
Despite all the blustering about law and order during his campaign, Brian Mobley was a politician first and a sheriff second; and Grissom disliked politics intensely. The constant battles over the CSI budget had been so bitter that Grissom had even considered resigning the supervisor's post so he could concentrate on the science; but in the end, he'd stayed on when he realized that if he didn't fight the budgetary constraints, no one would.
Only the high success ratio of arrests-to-convictions-they were rated number two crime lab in the nation-had helped convince Mobley (and other politicians) to keep the money flowing. With tourism the primary industry, keeping Vegas safe was a priority; this, added to the CSI success rate, enabled the lab to tap into the top technology in the field. But it also meant Gil Grissom had to deal with Brian Mobley far more often than he cared to.
"We're both going to have to deal with Mobley," Brass was saying, "throughout this mess-so I'd advise you to come. I can't force you."
"Let's get it over with, then," Grissom said. Turning to Sara and Warrick, he said, "Start working the evidence-I'll be back when I can."
"Fingerprinting first?" Warrick asked.
"Yes-and let me know for sure this is Candace. I know, I know…it's her. But let me know when it's officially her. For one thing, we'll have a family to notify."
A sober moment followed this observation.
Then Grissom said, "DNA can wait. All right?"
"All right," Sara said.
Warrick merely nodded, already gathering the evidence bags.
Stepping up to the tray, Robbins said to Grissom, "I'll page you if I get something significant during the autopsy."
"Thanks, Doc," the CSI supervisor said.
Then Brass and Grissom were walking down the hall, the former calling Mobley's cell phone.
"Brian," Brass said, "take my word for it, it's important. And it's not something you want broadcast over an unsecure line…. Okay. Fifteen minutes is fine…. No, Grissom's office…. That's right, Grissom's office."