Sin City (CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION) - Softcover

Collins, Max Allan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743444051 ISBN 13: 9780743444057

Publisher: Pocket Books, 2002

Synopsis

Meet the little known and even less understood heroes of police work in Las Vegas -- the forensic investigators. Led by veteran Gil Grissom, the remarkable team assigned to the Criminalistics Bureau's graveyard shift -- including Catherine Willows, Warrick Brown, Nick Stokes, and Sara Sidle -- must combine cutting-edge scientĩc methods and old-fashioned savvy as they work to untangle the evidence behind the yellow police tape.
SIN CITY
"If anything happens to me, get this cassette to the police," Lynn Pierce told her friends the night she disappeared without a trace. Pierce seemed to be a devout Christian, devoted wife and mother -- but she left behind a recording of her husband threatening to cut her into little pieces.
Jenna Patrick was a professional stripper who said she was trying to get out of the sex trade and into junior college. She wound up strangled to death in a locked room in the back of the club where she worked. What could these two women possibly have had in common -- aside from the fact that they are both victims of homicide?
Find out as Grissom, Willows, and the rest of the CSI team track down a sordid trail of secret lives and private dances, from the saintly to the seedier side of Sin City.

About this title

About the Author:

Max Allan Collins is a New York Times bestselling author of original mysteries, a Shamus award winner and an experienced author of movie adaptions and tie-in novels. His graphic novel Road to Perdition has been made into a major motion picture by Tom Hank’s production company. He is also the author of the tie-in novel series based on the original CSI.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter 2

Captain Jim Brass ambled down the hall toward the washed-out aqua warren of offices that served as headquarters for the Las Vegas Criminalistics Bureau, a coldly modern institutional setting for the number-two crime lab in the country. The sad-eyed detective was sharply attired -- gray sports coat over a blue shirt, darker blue tie with gray diagonal stripes, and navy slacks -- and his low-key demeanor masked a dogged professionalism.

A cellophane bag dangled from the detective's right hand, an audiotape within. Slowing to peer through various half-windowed walls, Brass passed several rooms before he found the CSI graveyard-shift supervisor, Gil Grissom, in the break room at a small table, hunkered over a cup of coffee and a pile of papers. Dressed in black and wearing his wire-framed reading glasses, the CSI chief looked like a cross between a gunfighter and a science geek, Brass thought, then realized that that was a pretty accurate mix.

Grissom -- one of the top forensic entomologists in the country, among other things -- was in his mid-forties, with his boyishly handsome features seemingly set in a state of perpetual preoccupation. Brass liked Gil, and felt that what some considered coldness in the man was really a self-imposed coolness, a detachment designed to keep the CSI chief's eye on facts and his emotions in check.

Brass pulled up a chair. "Latest issue of Cockroach Racing Monthly?"

Grissom shook his head, and responded as if the detective's question had been serious. "Staffing reports. Scuttlebutt is the County Board wants to cut the budget for next year."

"I heard that, too." Brass sighed. "Doesn't election time just bring out the best in people?"

Grissom gave him a pursed-lipped look that had nothing to do with blowing a kiss.

"Maybe you need something to put you in a better mood, Gil -- like threats of dismemberment."

Grissom offered Brass another look, this one piqued with interest.

Brass held up the plastic baggie and waved it like a hypnotist's watch, Grissom's eyes following accordingly. "Among your state-of-the-art, cutting-edge equipment...you got a cassette player?"

Nodding, rising, removing his glasses, Grissom said, "In my office. What have you got?" He gathered up the pile of papers, the cup of coffee, and led Brass out into the hall.

The detective fell in alongside Grissom as they moved down the corridor. "Interesting turn of events, just now, out at the front desk."

"Really?"

They moved into Grissom's office.

"Really."

Brass had only lately ceased to be creeped out by Grissom's inner sanctum, with its shelves of such jarred oddities as a pickled piglet and various embalmed animal and human organs, and assorted living, crawling creatures -- a tarantula, a two-headed scorpion -- in glassed-in homes. At least the batteries had finally worn down on the Big Mouth Billy Bass just above Grissom's office door.

A desk sat in the middle of the methodically cluttered office, canted at a forty-five-degree angle, two vinyl-covered metal frame chairs in front of it. Brass handed the bag over to Grissom, then plopped into a chair. Behind his desk, Grissom sat and placed the bag on his blotter like a jeweler mounting a stone. From the top righthand drawer, he withdrew a pair of latex gloves and placed them next to the bag.

"Is this all tease," Grissom said, hands folded, "or do you plan to put out?"

Brass sat back, crossed his legs, twitched a non-smile. "This couple comes in tonight, to the front desk. Nice people, late thirties, early forties -- straight as they come. He's in the finance department at UNLV."

Grissom nodded.

"Arthur and Millie Blair. They say their friend, woman named Lynn Pierce, has disappeared...and they think something 'bad' has happened to her."

Grissom's eyes tightened, just a little. "How long has Lynn Pierce been missing?"

Checking his watch, Brass said, "About seven hours."

Grissom's eyes relaxed. "That's not twenty-four. She may be gone, but she's not 'missing,' yet."

Brass shrugged. "Officer at the desk told 'em the same thing. That's when they pulled out this tape."

Grissom glanced at the bag. "Which is a tape of what?"

Brass had to smile -- Grissom was like a kid waiting to tear into a Christmas present. "Supposedly an argument between Lynn Pierce and her husband."

"Husband?"

Brass pulled a notebook from his jacket pocket and flipped it open, filling Grissom in on the particulars -- Owen Pierce, successful physical therapist, married eighteen years to the missing woman.

"Clinic -- 'Therapeutic Body Works' -- in a strip mall out on Hidden Well Road. East of the Callaway Golf Center."

One of Grissom's eyebrows arched in skeptical curiosity. "And the Blairs are in possession of this tape because...?"

"This is where it gets good," Brass said, shifting in the chair. "The Blairs say Mrs. Pierce showed up on their doorstep last night -- with this tape in her hot little hand. Mrs. Pierce told her friends the Blairs that she'd hidden a voice-activated tape player in the kitchen. Wanted to prove what kind of verbal abuse she'd been suffering, of late."

"I like a victim who provides evidence for us," Grissom said.

"Well, then you'll love Lynn Pierce. Her hidden microphone caught a doozy of an argument, it seems. Anyway, the Blairs said that Mrs. Pierce gave them the tape for safe keeping, then she sat with them and talked and talked about her marital problems, and trouble with their daughter, Lori..."

"Lori is whose daughter?"

"The Pierces. But most of all, Lynn was tired of the constant threats of violence her husband had been making."

"Let's hear the tape."

Brass held up a palm. "You still haven't heard the best part."

The detective told Grissom about the Blairs going to the Pierce home, where Owen Pierce claimed his wife had gone to visit a sick brother.

"Is that the best part?" Grissom asked, unimpressed.

"No -- the best part is, while the Blairs are talking to one officer at the front desk, the other officer is taking a phone call from guess who."

"Owen Pierce."

"Owen Pierce. Calling to report his wife missing. He now claims that she got pissed off after a 'misunderstanding,' and he figures she left him, and he doesn't know where the hell she went."

Grissom was sitting forward now. "Did the wife take anything with her?"

"A couple of uniforms went to the house," Brass said. "Pierce told them he didn't see her go. But she took her own car -- a '95 Avalon -- also a suitcase, some clothes."

"Let's listen to the tape."

Brass raised both eyebrows. "Why don't we?"

Slipping on the latex gloves, Grissom removed the tape from the bag. He rose, moved to a small boombox behind the desk, and slid the tape into the holder. After closing the door, he pushed play with a latexed fingertip -- Brass noted that Grissom brought the same anal-retentive precision to the simple procedure of playing an audiotape cassette as he would to one of his bizarre experiments involving blood-spatter spray patterns or insect eating patterns.

The sound was somewhat muffled; apparently the couple had been standing across the room from the secreted tape recorder. But the words soon became clear enough, as the Pierces raised their voices in anger.

"If you don't stop it, just stop it, I swear I'll do it! I'll divorce you!"

That had been the woman's voice.

Now the man's: "Stop it? Stop what? What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the cocaine, Owen -- and your slutty women! I've already talked to a lawyer -- "

"You bitch -- lousy rotten bitch...go ahead, go ahead and file for divorce. I'll make sure you don't get a goddamned thing -- including Lori!"

Brass glanced at Grissom, but the criminalist's face was blank, his focus complete.

"Owen..." The woman's voice had turned pleading. "I just want us to be a...family, again. Do you think what I really want is a divorce?"

The man's reply was mostly inaudible, but they heard three words clearly: "...give a fuck."

The woman spoke again, and she too was inaudible, but then her voice rose, not in anger, but as a conclusion to a speech: "I just want you and Lori to find the peace that I've found serving our Lord!"

"Oh, Christ! Not that Jesus crap again. I've told you a thousand fucking times, Lynn -- I believe what I believe."

"You don't believe in anything."

"That's my choice. That's America. That's what your forefathers died for, you dumb..."

At the next word, Grissom shot a look at Brass.

The man was saying, "You need to give Lori the same space, too, Lynn. She's a young adult. She deserves a little respect."

"She's a child."

"She's sixteen! Hell, in half the world she'd be married already! Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed!"

"Owen!"

"I'm just telling you what I do, what our grown daughter does, is none of your goddamned Bible-beating business."

"Maybe...maybe I should get a divorce then."

"Knock yourself out....But remember, you don't get one dime, not one fucking thing."

"Is that right? I hired the best divorce lawyer in town, Owen -- and when I get around to telling him about the drugs and the women and you screwing the IRS by skimming off the top of the 'Body Works'? Well, then we'll just see who gets custody of Lori!"

The woman sounded triumphant, Brass thought, and for a moment the husband had no response. The woman's time on top of the argument didn't last long.

"You do," Pierce said, "and I'll kill your holier-than-thou ass..."

"Owen! No! Don't say -- "

"And then I'll cut you up in little pieces, my darling bride. I will scatter your parts to the four winds, and they will never put Humpty Dumpty back together!"

The argument lasted only a couple of more minutes, none of it coherently audible -- the couple had apparently moved farther away from the hidden machine -- before the detective and the criminalist heard the sound of a door slam and then the tape clicked...

About this edition

• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0743444051
• ISBN 13: 9780743444057
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352