Setting the Crime Scene…
CSI Graveyard Shift Supervisor Gil Grissom glanced over at the speaker. It was field investigator Nick Stokes. Hearing such a frank statement of the obvious piqued his curiosity. As did the fact that Stokes was staring intently at the ceiling.
“Well . . . yes,” Grissom said. “It’s definitely a crime. That’s why we’re all here.”
The two other people in the room, Las Vegas Police Department captain Jim Brass and assistant coroner David Phillips, nodded. Stokes kept looking up.
“I was talking about that,” he said, pointing toward a corner. “See where the crown molding joins? It’s slightly uneven. Uneven. In a house this expensive, that’s a crime.”
Grissom glanced at the living room’s woodwork. “Good eye,” he said. “But let’s focus on the crime on the floor rather than the one on the ceiling. I think it’s the bigger deal.”
He looked down at the fifth member of their group: Melvin R. Bledsoe, until recently a well-known developer of high-end Las Vegas-area residential communities. Now Bledsoe lay on the floor, slowly cooling to room temperature. Yet even in death he was still every inch a VIP. Were it not for him, the bulk of the LVPD’s CSI team wouldn’t be combing his house at 1:00 on a Monday morning. And Gil Grissom and his associates wouldn’t be puzzling over what-or, more accurately, who-put him in such straits.
The case began at 11:08 p.m. when the Las Vegas Police Department received a terse 911 call. It came from a private security guard named Mitch Harding who was patrolling the neighborhood.
“Shots fired at 1021 Mountain Air Court,” he shouted. “The guy’s still in the house. Get out here now.”
Despite the timely warning, the police arrived too late to do anything but secure the area and wait for the CSIs.
“Tell me what we know so far,” Grissom said. Phillips knelt beside the body. It lay face-down on what had formerly been a very expensive antique Indo-Persian rug.
Nearby, ID tents marked the locations of a broken glass and a fireplace poker. “He grabbed the poker from the fireplace in his bedroom,” Stokes said. “A weapon of opportunity. Not very helpful in a gunfight.”
“He’s been dead about two hours,” Phillips offered. “That jibes pretty well with the 911 call.”
The assistant coroner had left the body in place while he photographed it from every conceivable angle. “Ready to roll him over?” Stokes asked.
“Yeah,” Phillips said. “Please grab his legs.”
Grissom watched as Phillips and Stokes turned the corpse face-up. It took a moment to rock it free of the viscous, red-black blood adhering it to the rug’s dense pile.
Stokes let out a low whistle. “Anybody got any theories about the cause of death?”
It was a joke. The cause was obvious-a trio of blue-black holes perforating the front of Bledsoe’s expensive dress shirt.
“Pretty good shooting,” Brass said.
“Or just luck,” Grissom said. “The killer surprised Bledsoe and fired at nearly point-blank range. Where did he enter the house?”
“First-floor utility room just off the kitchen,” Brass said.
“He left that way, too. Busted the window to unlock it.”
“Where did he go after that?”
“We figure he got in and out by scaling the wall surrounding the development. It’s quite a piece of work-ten feet tall, with a network of motion sensors on the interior side. In theory, anyone who got over the thing would be instantly detected.”
“In theory,” Grissom said. “So why wasn’t our intruder?”
“We’re checking. I’ll get back to you when I have an answer.”
Grissom stared down at the corpse. “What’s in his pants pocket?” It looked like a small pamphlet. Phillips photographed the discovery in situ before carefully extracting it.
“It’s some kind of booklet,” he said. “Got some blood spatter on the cover, but I can make out the title. Gardens of Serenity: An Anthology of Classic Japanese Haiku.”
