Robbins picked up the thread. "She'd ripened past keeping her in the house or apartment or garage he was holding her in. He had to get rid of her, so he did what he could think of."
Sara nodded. "Left her by the side of the road."
Grissom asked Robbins, "Any idea how long she's been dead?"
"He tried to preserve her, but he wasn't very successful," Robbins said. "Rigor has come and gone and there's some post-mortem lividity."
Rigor mortis started as little as two hours after death, Sara knew, and was generally gone within forty-eight to sixty hours; post-mortem lividity meant that the blood had begun to pool after the heart stopped pumping.
She asked, "You figure he kept her lying on her back?"
The coroner shook his head. "The lividity is concentrated more in the buttocks and lower back. She was reclined at least slightly, and since the killer tried to preserve her, I'm going to say he probably kept her in a bathtub or perhaps a trough of some kind. There's also some marbling."
Marbling was a part of the putrefaction process; the veins took on a purple or bluish pigment under the skin, due to the decomposing blood.
Robbins asked a question: "How long has she been missing?"
Grissom said, "Three weeks-give or take a day or two."
"She's probably been dead half that time, anyway."
That was all Robbins had for them, for the moment.
"As the tests start coming back," the coroner said, "I'll have more for you."
"Don't by shy about staying in touch, Doc," Grissom said. "The politics of this smell worse than your patient."
"Not like you, Gil," Robbins said, "getting involved in politics."
"I'm not involved in politics." The CSI supervisor lowered his gaze upon the dead woman; with the science out of the way, his guard was down, and Sara could see the pity in his eyes. "Unfortunately, Ms. Lewis here was."
Then Grissom began issuing orders to his team members: "All right, let's split up. Warrick, find out what you can about the piece of taillight."
"All over it, Gris."
"Sara, get that missing persons file and go over it like a crime scene."
"Ecklie's shift drew that case, you know."
"I know. I just don't care. Go over that file, make sure we know all we can, and meanwhile, I'll check with the labs. End of shift, my office."
When Sara arrived at Grissom's office some three hours later, the door was open, but neither her boss nor Warrick were there; for a fleeting instant, she had the feeling that the meeting had been moved and no one had bothered to tell her. A little kneejerk paranoia was starting to kick in when Warrick ambled up from his tiny office.
"Where's Gris?" he asked.
Hanging just outside Grissom's door, she shrugged. "Just got here myself. Find anything?"
"Maybe. How about you?"
"I think so."
Warrick chuckled. "You notice how gun-shy Gris has made us, about forming our own opinions?"
She grinned. "Tell me about it."
That was when Grissom arrived.
"Inside," he said.
They entered his office and spread out, Grissom sitting behind his desk, Warrick leaning against a set of shelves to the left of the entrance, Sara remaining near the door where she could see them both.
Grissom began speaking without preamble: "The trace lab is working on the carpeting and the duct tape."
"Anything yet?" Sara asked.
"Results from the mass spectrometer say that the carpet is made of polypropylene-olefin."
"Gezzundheit," Warrick said.
Grissom gave Warrick the look he seemed to reserve for those times when his young CSIs exhibited humor too sophomoric for his tastes. "It's actually a good thing."
"Why?" Sara asked.
"Only about twenty-two percent of manufactured carpeting," Grissom said, not referring to any notes, "is made from that particular compound."
"Which narrows our search," Warrick said.
"Which narrows our search. What did you two find out?"
Warrick and Sara traded looks, then she nodded at him to go first, which he did.
"The plastic is from a taillight; we were already pretty sure of that. But I found a partial part number stamped on the inside, and ran that."
"And?"
"And the piece of plastic came from one of three types of cars: a 95-01 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, a Chevy Lumina from the same years or a Chevy Impala from 2000 or 2001."
Grissom frowned in thought. "What did Mr. Benson say he saw?"
Also not referring to notes, Warrick said, "A white Chevy, possibly a Monte Carlo."
Sara said, "Could we possibly have actually found a reliable eyewitness?"
"Let's not jump to that conclusion," her boss said. Then he asked Warrick, "How many 95-01 white Monte Carlos registered in Clark County?"
"Car's only five years old, so there's quite a few. White ones? Just under a hundred. All Monte Carlos, Luminas and Impalas that fit the profile, and all the others-just in case our eyeball witness got the color wrong, or the car had been repainted-there's just about a thousand."
"Tell me you started with the short list."
"I did. Already put it on the radio-patrol cars'll be watching for a car that matches."
"Good."
Warrick twitched a smile. High praise from Grissom.
Who moved onto to his other CSI, saying, "Sara?"
"Biggest news is Ecklie's people found definite evidence that Mayor Harrison was having an affair with Candace Lewis."
Grissom sat up. "How definite?"
"Well…real definite. Like, his DNA was in her bed."
Grissom's mouth dropped open like a trapdoor; the CSI supervisor rarely expressed surprise so blatantly. And the normally laid-back Warrick straightened up, the usually half-lidded eyes wide open.
"Ecklie's people," Grissom said, in a measured manner, "found His Honor's DNA in Candace's bed…and said nothing?"
Sara shrugged. "I don't know about that. File doesn't indicate whether or not they informed the sheriff or the FBI or either or neither…no notes in the file mention anything to that effect."
Warrick let out a bitter chuckle. "Well, at least Ecklie didn't leak it to the press."
Sara had not followed the story intently, but anyone in Las Vegas-really, anyone in America with cable or access to a newsstand tabloid-knew the parameters of the case.
And for conclusive evidence of an affair between the Mayor and Candace to be the one bit of information about the case to have fallen through the cracks…well, that was unthinkable. The hell His Honor was currently living through would have been multiplied by a factor of ten.
Grissom's eyes were grim. "Warrick, stay on the carpeting and the car." Turning to Sara, he added, "Get that file-we're calling on Sheriff Mobley."
Ten minutes later, Sara was standing in the sheriff's outer office; her "day" was supposed to be over, and the city government's was just beginning. A recent City Hall renovation had garnered the sheriff the extra room and his civilian secretary, a very efficient-seeming woman in her forties, was doing her best to convince Grissom he couldn't enter Mobley's private office.
"You simply can't go in there," she said again, her voice growing more shrill.
But the preoccupied Grissom was already almost past her now, his hand on the knob of a door marked PRIVATE, and only when the woman gripped him by the arm did he turn to acknowledge her presence, despite the fact that probably most of the building had heard her all-but-scream at him.
"What is it you want?" he asked, frowning mildly.
"I said you can't go in there-Sheriff Mobley is in a very important meeting and doesn't wish to be disturbed."
"I'm afraid he's going to be," Grissom said, "when he sees this." He held up the file folder. "You tell Sheriff Mobley that Gil Grissom from CSI has discovered suppressed evidence from the Candace Lewis case…and see if he doesn't make time for me."