Skin Deep Page 12

  “They win or lose together, and we root for them,” Catherine said. “Modern drama.”

  “Or sport.” Langston nodded again. “About their possible relationships, I won’t have an idea until I’ve thoroughly explored the networking area. And even then, there’s no assurance I’ll find conclusive answers. It’s reasonable to surmise they connected on the site if they mixed outside it—but by no means definite.”

  Catherine produced a sigh. “We’ll have to wait and see,” she said. “Keep me posted if anything turns up.”

  “Will do,” Langston said. “I’ve also left cell-phone messages for Cody Vaega, the expert on ink formulations.”

  “He’s off somewhere or other giving a lecture, right?”

  “Holding a class on tribal body art,” Langston said.

  “Got it,” Catherine said. She took a halfhearted sip of the watery coffee. Better than a cupful of nothing, she figured. “Okay, I’m gonna drop by Nick’s office—”

  “Knock, knock.”

  Catherine and Langston both turned toward the sound of the voice and saw Sara Sidle leaning into the room from the corridor.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “I was trying to find Hodges—either of you see him?”

  “Yeah,” Catherine said. “Around ten minutes ago.”

  “In his lab?”

  “Down the hall toward my office,” Catherine said. “I thought he might’ve been on his way back to the lab.”

  “I just came from there,” Sara said. “He wasn’t around.”

  “Did you check the evidence room?”

  “No,” Sara said. “Should I?”

  Catherine nodded. “He’s been busy logging stuff.”

  “Log—” Sara cut herself off and frowned. “What about my epithelials?”

  “I don’t think he’s gotten around to them.”

  Sara looked surprised. “He told me he’d rush the analysis.”

  “The evidence clerk’s nowhere to be found.” Catherine shrugged. “Hodges bitched about having to do his job tagging and coding Nick’s photo discs.” She paused a beat. “Has he told you what he’s hoping will turn up on them, by the way?”

  “Photos that might link Noble to Judge Dorset,” Sara said. “I’m not sure if there’s more to it… you know how he is sometimes.”

  Catherine thought the word was quiet—for the most part when he was chasing a hunch. And generally, the quieter he got, the stronger the hunch.

  She drank as much of what was left in her coffee cup as she could bear and tossed the rest. “I’m heading over to see Nick. If I bump into Hodges again, I’ll tell him—”

  The cell phone rang in Catherine’s waist pouch, her eyes automatically flicking to the wall clock as she reached for it. Five A.M. on Sunday, still well before daybreak—nothing good ever came of the phone ringing at this hour. She thought of Lindsey at home alone—God, she hoped Lindsey was home; the kid had gotten into trouble more than once being someplace besides where she was supposed to be—but then she saw Brass’s name flashing on the caller display.

  “Jim,” she said, “what’s up?” And was silent as he told her and signed off.

  Catherine lowered the phone from her ear. Nothing good, no. But her heartbeat had slowed in her chest. The bad news wasn’t about Lindsey. In this world, where lightning struck with such random mercilessness, there was no guilt in feeling relieved that you’d dodged a bolt.

  “It’s a double homicide at Floyd Lamb Park,” she told Langston. He was now her only audience, Sara having already ducked back into the hall. “We’d better hurry.”

  “There’s more,” he said, reading her face.

  Catherine nodded. “Let’s go,” she said. “I’ll give it to you on the way.”

  Heading out the door to the car lot, Catherine realized she had never gotten around to dropping in on Nick. Not that she wouldn’t have her chance. For a CSI, all things usually lead back to the lab—and when it came to urgent interruptions from Jim Brass, you could pretty well count on it.

  7

  AS CATHERINE WOULD have discovered had she not gotten repeatedly and variously sidetracked, Nick wasn’t in his office but had left it to bring one of Noble’s photo discs over to Archie Johnson in the audiovisual tech’s minuscule lab cubicle, which happened to be three or four steps down the hall from where she was standing when her cell phone rang.

  The two men turned to look out its glass partition into the corridor, watching as she and Langston swept past them.

  “Somebody’s in a big hurry to get somewhere,” Archie said.

  “Always, around here,” Nick said with a yawn, looking tired and distracted.

  Archie shrugged and brought his attention back to the disc in Nick’s hand. “Now, what was it you were asking me again?”

  “About a map,” Nick said. “Whether you can put one together. I’d want a three-dimensional, panoramic, street-level view.”

  Archie thought a second. “Of…”

  “That’s the thing,” Nick said. “Could be Fremont. Or the Strip. Probably both. And maybe some other areas. I’m not sure. But I should know soon.”

  Archie regarded Nick with open puzzlement. “Great that you’re being unequivocal,” he said under his breath.

  “Huh?”

  “Forget it,” Archie said. “If you don’t mind, I have a question of my own.”

  Nick nodded, stifling another yawn.

  “What’s wrong with the navigable street maps you can find on the Internet? The kind that use pictures taken by guys riding vans and tricycles with funny-looking cameras on top?”

  “They wouldn’t do any good,” Nick said. “Way too current.”

  “So you want an outdated street-level view?”

  “You got it,” Nick said. “Well, not to split hairs, a view of a particular date and time that happens to go back a ways.”

  Archie frowned. “Exactly how far back are we talking?”

  “Ten years.” Nick wobbled the disc between them. “Think you can put one together for me?”

  Archie mulled that over. “Are the photo captures I’d need on your disc?”

  “Some.”

  “Meaning… ?”

  “A dozen, maybe two.”

  Archie looked at him. “Do you know how many images are compiled and integrated for mapping a single street? I think the ratio’s something like one for every three feet.”

  “Right,” Nick said. “That’s why I told you I’ve only got some of ’em on disc.”

  Archie took a deep breath. For him, a major distinction between criminalists and humble techs like himself was that the former’s thought processes lacked specificity. Were all over the map, pun intended. Of course, one could make allowances because the nature of their work required taking a broad perspective, whereas he was all about bringing things into full focus. Which in this case was literally the problem.

  “Just so I’m not in a complete state of confusion,” he said after a moment, “where would we get the several thousand odd images that aren’t coming off the disc?”

  “I was figuring security cameras. They’ve got installations over the entrances to every hotel and casino in town.”

  “Nick, that’s all very well in theory. But you’re talking Y2K. That’s a long time ago.”

  “And… ?”

  “And you have to think about how much CCTV systems have changed since then,” Archie said. “I’d guess most places still had videotape surveillance. Digital recording was an option, but system upgrades are expensive, and it takes a while for users to catch up with the available technology. Even assuming a given casino or resort was ahead of the curve and had switched from an analog to a digital network, the images probably would have been kept on disc. I doubt any of them were stored in the virtual archives everyone uses nowadays. High-capacity databases weren’t common—”

  “Archie, now I’m the one who’s missing something,” Nick interrupted. “What’s wrong with us using old videotapes and disc
s?”

  “Nothing. Again, theoretically. The issue is what we can get our hands on. We’re talking about three conversions in less than a decade. Analog to digital media to mass virtual storage. Do you have any idea how many places transferred their recordings from one to the other or how far back they would have gone with it chronologically?”

  Nick shook his head.

  “Me, neither,” Archie said. “But when you consider the cost, it’s a safe assumption not all of the recordings were saved.”

  Nick gave him a wearily impatient look. “Listen, man, I always say you don’t have to know every star in a constellation to draw in the lines.”

  “And I wouldn’t argue it,” Archie said. “My point, though, is you usually need to see more than a couple of dozen.”

  Nick started to reply, hesitated, rubbed the back of his neck. “This could be important, Arch.”

  Archie was thinking he hadn’t needed to be reminded. Everything was important when you dealt with crimes like murder. He didn’t take the remark personally—the dark circles under Nick’s eyes were pretty good indicators that he’d been doing a double shift. But the lab was understaffed and overtaxed, and that went for the techs as well as the criminalists. When one of them walked out after making a request, you could start ticking off the minutes until another walked in.

  Archie produced a long sigh. “I’ll have a better sense of what we can do once I know the area that has to be mapped out. Then we can start checking in to who saved what and going back to when.”

  Nick looked at him. “Meaning you’re down with me on this.”

  “Yeah.” Archie nodded slowly. “I’m down.”

  Nick grunted and slapped his shoulder. “You’re my man,” he said, and rotated toward the entrance.

  Archie watched him step out into the hall, then sat at his computer screen and got to work, the lab rat’s familiar countdown starting in the back of his mind, hoping to make some progress on the job he was doing before the next one came blowing through his door.

  Catherine and Langston arrived at the park to find Brass grunting orders at the uniforms busily securing the crime scene. They ducked under the yellow tape and went straight over to him for the lowdown.

  The detective gave it in a hurry, starting with what he knew about the man who’d called the police. “His name’s Linus Tyrone. Comes here to do bird watching, brings his dog sometimes,” he said. “He was out for a stroll with the dog when it found the DBs.”

  Catherine glanced in Tyrone’s direction. Wearing jeans, a heavy knit sweater, and running shoes, with a binocular camera hanging from his neck, he stood within earshot behind the line of tape, where a uni had moved him and the dog. A black Labrador retriever, it was heeled obediently at his side, its leash wrapped around his hand.

  “He’s on his way to the pond over on the north side of the park when Edgar—his dog—takes off in that direction,” Brass said, nodding toward a thick growth of cottonwoods and shrubs over to his right. “It isn’t on a leash, obviously, so he chases after it and then sees what got its attention.”

  “I wish I’d walked him in my yard and brought him back upstairs,” Tyrone said, overhearing him. “Especially this morning.”

  Catherine turned to him. “Why?” she asked, thinking he was probably referring to its having led him to the bodies.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said you especially wished you’d come without your dog,” Catherine said.

  “Yes.”

  “And I was wondering why that would be. As opposed to other days.”

  “Oh, I see,” Tyrone said, looking flustered. “It’s because of the rusty blackbird. They’re quite rare in Nevada. Excuse me for being scatterbrained.”

  “Is the blackbird what you meant to photograph over by the pond?”

  “Actually, no,” Tyrone said, shaking his head. “I was heading there for the waterfowl. We have a great many species in the winter. But then I heard a red-breasted nuthatch in the trees… they’re native songbirds with a very distinctive warble. Common but a pretty sight when they’re all fluffed out. So I thought I would take a picture.”

  Catherine looked at him, bunching the collar of her jacket against the morning chill. She wasn’t eager to waste another minute here. Not with Langston already having gone over to snap pictures of the dead man and woman on the ground several yards away. But she realized she had to go easier on Tyrone. Besides being scatterbrained, he was clearly shaken up.

  “Mr. Tyrone, can you describe exactly how your dog found the bodies? If you can recall. And try keeping it brief, please.”

  He nodded. “I spotted the rusty while scanning for the nuthatch through my binoculars. It was a thrill—my club only has three verified sightings this year. But before I could snap a picture, Edgar launched at the trees and startled it away. I hope you won’t summons me for taking off the leash, by the way. He’s normally very obedient and stays right at my side.”

  “I’m not an animal control officer, Mr. Tyrone.”

  “I just want to avoid problems, being that I’m trying to cooperate,” he said. “Anyway, it was really unusual.”

  “What was?”

  “Edgar getting so excited. He was whimpering, running in circles… I’ve never seen him so agitated. And no wonder, given the condition of those two people.” Tyrone paused, fanned his face with his hand. “I’m sweating, can you believe it? In this cold weather. It must be my nerves. My God, that poor man and woman. I feel flushed—”

  Brass cleared his throat. “Mr. Tyrone went chasing after Edgar and then saw the ladder and the bodies,” he broke in. “Retrievers are sight hounds. I figure it must’ve scoped the vics on the ground and gotten curious.”

  Catherine was looking at Tyrone. “You didn’t notice them at all before that? Or see anyone else in the park? A person loitering around, a conspicuous vehicle?”

  Tyrone shook his head. “Eyes up,” he said.

  She gave him a questioning look.

  “That’s our club’s motto. Mine were on the treetops.”

  “Lucky for us Edgar’s weren’t,” Catherine said with a sideways glance at Brass. Then she hurried to join Langston, who was taking pictures of the victims under the bare, sprawling limbs of a nearby cottonwood.

  “Anything interesting out of him?” He nodded back at Tyrone without lowering the camera lens from his eye.

  “Not much besides what we already know.” Catherine stood over the bodies, getting her first good look at them, bunching the collar of her jacket in her fist as a gust of wind rattled the branches above. She had seen Laurel Whitsen’s remains in the library less than twenty-four hours ago. And while making hasty assumptions was a cardinal sin for forensic examiners, this morning’s double homicide undeniably resembled the work of her killer. “I’m getting a bad sense of déjà vu, Ray.”

  Langston nodded again and snapped more photos. The dead man was a black-haired, dark-complected Asian of about thirty-five. He lay with one cheek to the ground, his head turned sideways. A fair-skinned blonde, the woman, also in her mid-thirties, was facedown beside him in the dewy winter grass. Both of them had been shot in the head and then clearly moved to where they were now under the cottonwood, shoulder to shoulder, their arms at their sides. Both were nude from the waist up—there were no jackets, no shirt or blouse, no bra on the woman. They had on jeans, shoes, and nothing else, although the male vic still wore a pair of work gloves.

  Finally, both of them had the skin peeled away from their bare backs and shoulders to expose the layers of muscle, adipose tissue, and white bone underneath.

  Catherine noticed an electric pole saw on the ground beside the three-legged stepladder, then another smaller curved blade in a strap harness around the man’s calf. She got onto her haunches to examine the second tool.

  “A pruning saw,” she said, slipping the latex over her fingers.

  “They say late winter’s a good time for it,” Langston said.

  She loo
ked at him, her eyes distant with concentration.

  “Cutting back the branches,” he said.

  “Oh, right.” Catherine returned her gaze to the bodies. “We have IDs on these two?”

  “A name, address, and DOB for the male,” Brass said. He’d come up behind her. “You’re looking at Diachi Sato, thirty-one. Or what’s left of him. He parked his vehicle in a little turnaround back of these trees… a Volvo wagon.”

  She looked around at him. He held a wallet in his own white-gloved hand.

  “I took it from his pocket,” he explained, nodding down at the body. “It’s got a driver’s license, credit cards, employment identification. Sato was an arborist with the Nevada Division of State Parks.”

  “Explains the ladder and the cutting tools,” she said. “Nothing for his lady friend?”

  “Not yet.”

  Catherine nodded. She saw that the leg of the woman’s jeans was hitched up above her right ankle and carefully raised it a little more, baring the flesh above her athletic sock. Her calf was discolored—the purplish stain of developing livor mortis as blood settled to the lower limbs.

  She applied gentle pressure to the area with her thumb, and the bruisiness dissipated, the skin turning milky white. The pale splotch remained there after she’d removed her finger.

  “Her blood isn’t fixed,” she said. “This woman’s been dead a couple of hours, max.”

  Brass seemed about to comment when his cell phone jingled in his sport jacket. He answered it and drifted away from the CSIs, the phone to his ear.

  Crouched over Sato, meanwhile, Langston was manipulating his jaw and eyelids. “I would guess his TOD is the same as the woman’s—his body is still prerigor,” he told Catherine. Then he got out his voice recorder and opened a file for his verbal observations. “Decedent shows slight lividity consistent with prone position. Musculature appears relaxed.” Raising the dead man’s head slightly off the ground, he examined the gunshot’s entry wound and then looked over his face, inserting his pointer and index fingers into the mouth. Loose, broken teeth slipped around their knuckles and tips. “There’s no external scorching, no visible grease or metallic residue. The victim appears to have been shot from a distance of a yard or beyond. It appears the bullet penetrated his right temporal bone, leaving extensive collateral damage to the upper jaw…”