Gold said, "I'm going to have to ask you people to leave my office."
Catherine laughed. "I don't think so."
"Mr. Gold," Nick said, walking in to join the party, "perhaps you'd like to explain your flight plans and fuel bills showing you flying to Los Angeles both Friday and Saturday."
As if punched, Gold staggered back; his expression hollow, he awkwardly settled himself into his leather chair.
"When I dust it," Catherine said, "your fingerprints will be on the network plug in Ben Jackson's cubicle where you disconnected it from his machine and hooked it to yours."
Gold's mouth was open, but he wasn't saying anything.
Nick said, "We were stuck on one little thing, though: how you sabotaged Randle's computer. Tomas couldn't trace that with computer forensics."
Nunez, on the sidelines, skinny arms crossed, said to Gold, "That was about the only thing you did halfway right."
"But old-fashioned forensics did the trick," Nick said. "Fingerprinting 101." He turned to the dazed-looking Denard. "Janice, your prints were on the inside casing of Randle's computer; and both yours and Mr. Gold's prints matched ones I just lifted from Gary Randle's network card. That was how you made his computer breakdown last Saturday: you loosened the network card. That's all it took."
Janice looked over at her boss, but he wouldn't, or perhaps couldn't, look back at her. They were both ghostly pale.
"That was fast," Catherine said to Nick admiringly, meaning the matching of the prints.
Nick shrugged. "Warrick was sitting at the computer waiting for my call. Matched 'em right away. Mr. Gold, your agency has one fast fax machine-it rocks."
Gold leaned on an elbow, touching his fingertips to his forehead.
Nunez said to the exec, "The MAC address of your laptop matches the one that sent the print order for the kiddie porn. Your address also matches up to the Russian porn site where this garbage was downloaded."
Now Gold covered his face with both hands; he might have been weeping, but Catherine didn't think so-hiding. Just hiding.
Nunez continued: "You also left a copy of a letter you wrote to the All-American Jukebox on your hard drive. It matched the letter from the zip disk the porn came off."
Gold looked up, his eyes wide but dazed. "But that was all deleted," he complained, incriminating himself.
Nunez's grin was a horrible thing. "Deleted like when you deleted your e-mails, you mean? Sorry-I found all those, too."
Gold looked stricken.
Catherine said, "You traded a lot of e-mails with your new girlfriend-Elaine Randle. Or is it an old affair, that got rekindled somehow?"
"She had nothing to do with this," Gold said weakly.
"She had everything to do with it," Catherine said.
"Elaine has already been served warrants for her house and phone records, Mr. Gold. I believe we already have her laptop in custody-that's what she sneaked into her ex-husband's house and left for us to find."
Catherine laid it all out for him.
You fly your private jet to LA on Friday, giving yourself a built-in alibi. Then you wing back to Henderson some time around dawn on Saturday and drive from the airport to your office. You hook your computer into Ben Jackson's cubicle and mimic his machine. Then, using your zip disk, you take the files you'd downloaded from the Internet and send them to your computer to print.
Before you leave the office, however, you get into Randle's computer and pull the network card, just slipping it out of its seat so that when Randle tries to log on the network, he won't be able to get on. Then you drive back to the airport, fly yourself back to LA, return to your hotel and order room service, so the receipt makes it look like you slept in.
Janice comes in early Saturday, as well, and takes the photos out of your printer, just in case anybody happens by, and sticks them in a locked drawer till Monday. In the meantime, Randle's come to work and the whole world knows that Ben Jackson's out of town, and where he keeps his password, so Randle naturally uses that machine, leaving his fingerprints there to be found by us.
Monday rolls around and Janice comes in, gets inside Randle's machine and reseats the network card, then puts the photos back in the printer tray and calls 911.
Then we come in, holding up our end of the charade, finding the planted pornography, and wind up busting Randle, just as we're supposed to. Elaine sues him for custody and will get her daughter back, once Randle's ruled an unfit parent.
Gold looked completely deflated and defeated.
"Did I leave anything out?" Catherine asked.
"Downloading the porn," Gold said. He seemed almost in a trance, staring, staring. "Elaine…Elaine did that. She used her laptop, and mine too." He laughed, an empty, racking thing, almost a cough. "Come to think, she probably did that to have something on me as well."
"I should have known from the start," Catherine said. "If I hadn't been blinded by my own distaste for child porn, I might have nailed you, days ago."
Gold's eyes tightened. "Why?"
"Janice calling the police-that was the first really suspicious thing."
Denard sat up; she'd apparently been preparing something to say, and now she said it: "I didn't have anything to do with this. I just came in and found those printouts and did the responsible thing."
Catherine turned to the woman and gave her a withering smile. "Oh, but you wouldn't do the responsible thing. The thing you would have done would be to contact your boss, Mr. Gold, not 911."
Denard shook her head. "I don't even follow you. Don't even know what you're-"
"Sure you do. Big ad agency like this this kind of situation calls for, requires, a cover-up."
"I just thought it was my duty," Denard said.
"Your duty was to Mr. Gold," Catherine said. "And to that ten-thousand-dollar bonus he paid you for aiding and abetting."
Catherine gestured, and O'Riley and the uniforms handcuffed Gold and Denard.
And led the boss and his personal assistant down the corridor, past cubicles and offices and framed award-winning advertisements.
Nick and Nunez still had crime scene work to do.
Catherine returned to Randle's office. As she entered, he sprang to his feet, wild-eyed.
"Ruben? Janice? You arrested them? I saw your guys dragging them out in cuffs! What the hell could-"
"You deserve the whole story," she said, and sat down across from him and told it to him-chapter and verse.
Randle didn't get angry; he seemed past that, sharing the numbness that had overtaken Ruben Gold.
"And Elaine will be arrested, too," Randle said.
"If she hasn't been already."
"Why…why don't I feel vindicated? Why do I only feel empty?"
"The good news," Catherine said, "is you get to keep your daughter."
He arched an eyebrow. "You're implying there's bad news, too?"
She nodded, somberly. "This is going to make the papers. Your agency will be in trouble. Newcombe is in the clear, but this won't be easy to weather."
He waved that off. "I'm good at what I do. I couldn't care less about the business end. Need be, I'll find work. The important thing is my daughter."
He sighed, shook his head. "Leave it to Elaine to figure the best way to spend more time with her daughter was to ruin the life of the girl's father."
"Mr. Randle," Catherine said, rising, with a regretful smile, "nobody's perfect."
12
LESS THAN AN HOUR AFTER SARA HAD INFORMED GRISSOM OF their disturbing discoveries in David Benson's former apartment, a CSI Tahoe and Captain Brass's Taurus descended on Benson's current residence on Roby Grey Way. They parked in the street, noses of the vehicles facing the house, blocking passage.