A thirty-six-inch Toshiba color TV ruled the room from a wheeled stand in a corner of the room, while a tan high back armchair sat to Catherine's left, where she stood at the top of the entry stairs, the chair's twin across the room next to the sofa. Both were placed at angles to the couch so they faced the TV. Speakers were mounted to the walls around the room and she noticed a black sub-woofer on the floor next to the TV stand. A DVD player and VCR were stacked on the lower shelf of the stand and through a smoked-glass door below that, she could make out a row of DVDs.
"Why go out to the movies?" Conroy asked.
"It does beg the issue," Catherine said.
"So maybe he was home watching football."
"We'll see…."
Using her Maglite, Catherine took a quick look at the DVDs, then at the other shelves of the TV stand, one of which had a few prerecorded tapes and a lot of T-120 cassettes, some with notations: "Friends season closer"; "Sat Nite Live w/ John Goodman"; and so on.
She checked the VCR: no tape. Question was, had Lipton recorded the Colts/Chiefs game, watched it after committing Jenna's murder, then hidden (or thrown away) the incriminating tape, just so he could have his TV ball game alibi?
Stranger things had happened, of course, but Catherine had a hard time buying that Lipton had strangled his girlfriend, come home, maybe had a beer while he watched the taped game, while at the same time getting his story ready for when the police came around. That seemed a reach to her.
Nonetheless, she gathered all the videotapes, including the prerecords, stacking them in front of the TV; she told Conroy to collect any video cassettes she might run across, and called the same instructions down to Sara. They would box them all up as evidence.
Catherine and Conroy checked the cushions of the furniture and behind the framed landscape over the sofa, finding nothing, not even loose change. They moved through the dining room, Conroy pausing briefly to riffle through the pile of mail on the table. She found nothing worth bagging.
The kitchen, a small galley-type affair, had a U-shaped counter at the far end, home to a double-basin sink with a couple of dirty plates and a glass in one side. The stove and refrigerator were a matching off-white, and Catherine found healthier food in the fridge than she would expect from a single guy. In the freezer and cupboards, she found nothing noteworthy.
The refrigerator had a piece of note paper held to the door by a Wallace and Gromit magnet: a list of names and phone numbers. Conroy put the list into an evidence bag and replaced the magnet on the refrigerator.
"Not much so far," the detective said.
"Well, we know Jenna was living here," Catherine said. "Or do you know a man who could keep a house this tidy?"
"Not many," Conroy admitted.
They moved down the hallway to where two doors stood opposite each other. The one to the right was a spare bedroom, the one to the left the bathroom. Conroy took the bathroom, Catherine the bedroom. Sparsely furnished with only a tiny dark dresser and a single bed covered with a tan quilt, the room with its bare cream-color plaster walls looked like a nun's cell.
A closet hid behind wooden, sliding double doors. Catherine opened one side and saw shoe and other boxes stacked from the floor to the shelf, with more boxes occupying that space.
She heard Conroy pad in from the bathroom.
"Nothing in there," the detective said. "I'm going to check out the master bedroom."
"All right. I'll be going through these boxes."
The fourth box down in the back row, a flowered Mootsie's Tootsies shoebox, presented Catherine with the prize. Opening the box-the only woman's shoebox in the stack-she found a false beard, mustache, and a small brown bottle of spirit gum.
She felt her hopes that Lipton might be telling the truth start to fade, as this discovery seemed to confirm what she'd seen in the videotape…that he had, indeed, worn a fake beard and mustache to throw people off the track, and yet still had the bad sense to wear a coat with his company's name on the back.
Lipton didn't seem that thick, but plenty of other criminals had done dumber things in the commission of their crimes. She recalled one Don Dawson, who had worked at Castaways Bowling Center. Dawson had been smart enough to know the boss had a camera in the office, so when he'd gone in to crack the safe he'd worn a mask-style stocking cap. The cap had gone nicely with the satin jacket with Castaways Bowling Center embroidered on the back, and his name, "Don," on the breast. Dawson had lasted through almost thirty seconds of interrogation before he'd copped to the robbery.
Such stories abounded in national CSI circles. Like the two star athletes who robbed a local Burger King where their pictures hung in honor on the wall; or the numerous bank robbers around the country who would write their robbery notes on their own deposit slips.
Over the years, Catherine had seen enough reasonably bright criminals do enough dim things to know that anything was possible. She carefully dropped the beard and mustache into an evidence bag, the spirit gum into another, and the shoebox itself into a third.
Sara appeared in the doorway. "Any luck?"
Holding up the bag with the fake beard, Catherine said, "Jackpot."
Sara came over with "wow" in her eyes and had a look at the treasures Catherine had dug up.
Catherine asked, "How about you?"
"Well, I found a box in the basement with two Lipton Construction jackets in it. They look new, or anyway they've never been worn."
"Anything else?"
Sara shrugged, a little frustrated. "There's some stuff down there that doesn't fit Ray. Most of it looks like Jenna's-diet books, Men Are From Mars, Cosmo's, and some other fashion magazines, buncha Vogue's."
Conroy came back in from the master bedroom. "Nothing in there. Clothes from both of them. Obviously, Jenna was living here. You want to take a quick look around?"
This was addressed to Catherine, but Sara said, "I'll go, while you finish in here, 'kay?"
Catherine nodded. "'kay."
She spent another hour going through boxes, but found nothing. When Sara and Conroy came back from the bedroom with a bag containing Ray Lipton's work boots, Catherine looked at the evidence curiously.
Sara said, "You lifted boot prints, didn't you, from the lap dance room?"
"Right," Catherine said, smiling, "and Lipton was wearing tennies when Conroy hauled him in…Good catch, Sara!"
"Thanks."
"That the only pair of boots in the house?"
"Didn't see any others."
"Well, Warrick says it always comes down to shoe prints…we'll see."
Back at HQ, the two CSIs and the detective logged in evidence for several hours. Catherine instructed Sara to line up some interns to go over the box of video cassettes, to check for a tape of that Colts game.
Shift was almost over, and the sun freshly up, by the time Catherine was back in one of the Tahoes, taking the 515 to 15 South, so she could get to the airport without having to fight morning traffic on the Strip.
Helpingstine was coming in on Southwest 826, which meant Gate C of Terminal One. A long hike, but after a cooped-up night of sitting in front of a monitor, then crouching in a closet at Lipton's, and finally logging evidence at CSI, the walk would seem like an invigorating relief.