The Legend Of Don Jose
Catherine spreads six photographs across the workbench in the lab. The subject is a young woman, obviously dead. Her eyes are open and lifeless but it's the bullet hole in the forehead that tells the complete story. In the corner of each photograph is the name and birth-date of the victim: Madeleine Anne Press, 5-24 -1984.
Sara steps up to the bench, tucking hair behind her ears, and giving the pictures a once over. "Nice underwear," she says, without a hint of levity.
"Cacheral," Catherine says, returning the tone.
Grissom finds them like that, silently contemplating the scene.
He says, "She's here," and Catherine nods.
"We'll be right out," she says.
"Really nice underwear," Sara says.
They line up in front of the two-way to watch Brass question the victim's best friend and colleague. Their victim is a showgirl and Catherine finds herself counting the number of showgirl homicides she's attended since she swapped her spangles for a lab coat. She gets to five before she's distracted by the interview.
The girl looks younger than the victim, younger than a showgirl should be. She's already crying and Catherine thinks she may have been crying since she arrived. One hand clenches and unclenches a Kleenex and there's a box on the table at her elbow.
On Catherine's right Sara is chewing her lip, arms folded, affecting a look of absorption in the scene before her. Catherine knows it's an act. Sara's been prickly around Grissom all week. Catherine doesn't know what it's about but suspects something to do with the geek bond Grissom and Sara have and its conflict with Grissom's (many) ethical boundaries.
Grissom is oblivious of course, probably wondering whether the DNA results will be back from the lab by the time the interview is over. Grissom is perfectly capable of intuiting subtle cues but he chooses to be single minded for convenience.
Brass asks the girl about the victim's boyfriend, about her lovers, about whether any customers paid special attention to the victim such as buying her jewellery or lingerie. He asks whether she thought Madeleine had an income on the side.
The girl stops crying, looks up at Brass with big, round eyes, puffy from the constant tears. Realisation crosses her face slowly the way clouds roll in across a bay. "You think Madeleine took money for sex? That's crazy! She had a wonderful boyfriend, she had all the major shows after her. She didn't need to screw for money."
Madeleine's body was draped in $2000 worth of $100 bills. She was found flat on her back on her bed, wearing expensive lingerie. The autopsy revealed she'd recently had sex but there was no trauma to the cervix or bruising on any other part of her body so the sex was probably consensual. It was the money that had them speculating on what Madeleine did in her down time.
"Everyone has their price," Catherine says, and she turns around to leave Sara and Grissom to watch the end of the interview. She resolves to come back when they interview the boyfriend.
The way Catherine remembered it, taking off her clothes was easy. Trying to look like she was enjoying herself on her bad days was harder. There was nothing like faking flirtatiousness when you'd just had a fight with your boyfriend, and there was nothing like smiling until your face ached when you were behind on the rent on a slow night for tips. She supposed then, and her position on it hasn't really changed, that every job has its bad days. There are moments in every career where you pretend the world is a lot prettier than it looks through your dark glasses.
It was never about feeling bad about herself or thinking she deserved to be there because she deserved nothing better, she was told she could make a killing taking her clothes off and she liked the idea that it could be so easy.
It followed, then, that there were other easy things she could do for money if she wanted to and when she was offered the right price she did. It wasn't hard and it wasn't awful like everyone said it would be.
It didn't happen often and when Eddie came along it didn't happen at all but it surprised her sometimes, how it could be so easy.
Greg is dancing to music only he can hear. He performs a point, point with his hands and then spins on the spot, finishing the routine with a double point. His shoulders lift and fall to a private rhythm and he nods his head in similar time.
Catherine watches from the doorway. On the bench in front of Greg are samples from Madeleine Press's underwear and Greg appears to be making notes on a pad in between dance moves. She wonders how long she can stand there amusing herself at Greg's expense before he spins again and catches her watching.
The question is moot when Grissom arrives. He takes one look at Greg and pulls the headphones out of his ears.
"Hey!" Greg says, reaching for his ears. He stops mid-reach when he notices Grissom. "Not who I expected..."
"'Whom'," Grissom says. He nods at the samples. "What have you got?"
Greg indicates his notes. "Along with DNA contributions from both parties we have potassium nitrate and sulphur - which matches samples taken from the bed spread and carpet." He catches sight of Catherine. "How long have you been there?"
"Long enough." She eyes the samples in front of Greg. "That's it? Gunpowder and bodily fluids?"
"I'm afraid so." Greg gives her an apologetic look. "The killer was probably about three feet away from her when he pulled the trigger - but you probably knew that already..."
"What about the DNA?" Grissom says. He sounds short. He always sounds short around Greg. She wonders if Grissom was ever young and if he was, was he more than a little like Greg?
Greg searches the paper on his desk, frantically. He pulls a piece of paper from underneath a pencil holder and holds it up triumphantly for Grissom. "No matches. Unless you have something for me to compare it to?"
Grissom takes the paper and walks out of the room.
Catherine smiles at Greg and shrugs before turning and following Grissom out.
She had friends who called Eddie the jealous type but he was only jealous when it suited him. He made a big show of taking out an over enthusiastic customer who was hanging outside the girl's dressing room and demanding to speak to Catherine. He grabbed him by the hair at the top of his neck and slammed his face into the wall, breaking his nose.
The cops were called and they must have recognised the name of the establishment because they were there in minutes rather than the usual hours. It took her ages to form a good impression of the LVPD and sometimes she wonders if she ever did.
Later she called him her "hero" as he threw her down on their bed, tangling his fingers in the loops of her jeans as he dragged them to her ankles. She laughed as his tickled her belly with his tongue.
She remembers this was a good time.
The victim's boyfriend presents himself for questioning. She and Grissom watch through the two-way while Brass and Sara conduct the interview. The boyfriend sits on the opposite side of the table to them, leaning back in his chair, arms across his chest and staring at the floor. He's not much older than the victim and he tells Brass he's known Madeleine since they were children. His father owns a plastics company and he works in the factory learning the ropes of the family business he's destined to inherit. He's what Catherine's mother would have called a "good boy."
Brass tells Madeleine's boyfriend they found semen at the scene. "It's not mine," he answers. His voice cracks on the last word.
"Then you won't mind giving us a DNA sample?" Brass says.
He nods, needing no further persuasion. Catherine sees Brass and Sara exchange looks. She glances sideways at Grissom who remains unfazed. She doesn't attach any weight to his demeanour. Nothing fazes Grissom.
She goes home after the interview. She puts Lindsey to bed and pours herself into a bath, staying there until the water goes tepid. She reminds herself that by all comparisons, it was a very ordinary day.
Less than a day passes before Greg conclusively absolves the boyfriend of any connection to the semen found at the scene.
"Not even close," Greg says, showing them the DNA markers.
Sara delivered the news to the boyfriend. "It wasn't a surprise," Sara tells Catherine. They meet inside the lab to review the evidence. Sara lays the DNA break down on the table in front of Catherine, next to the ballistics reports and the photos from the crime-scene - a montage of murder. "He knew someone else was with her."
Catherine sighs and rubs her forehead. "Okay. Two scenarios," she says. "One: Madeleine finds herself an affluent lover who pays her for sex. After she shows him a good time he kills her. Possibly because he's married, possibly because she's blackmailing him..."
"Why does he leave the money?" Sara asks.
"It's a message." Grissom appears in the door. He's got his glasses in one hand and a file in the other.
"He's calling her a 'whore'." Catherine explains. She holds up her fingers in a 'V'. "Scenario two: Madeleine and the lover are in the throes of passion when the boyfriend shows up. He threatens the lover, tells him to leave and then shoots Madeleine in a fit of jealousy. He finds the money, throws it at her corpse - the message is the same."
Sara nods. "I like scenario two."
"So do I," Catherine says. "Don Jose - the jealous lover."
"Carmen." Grissom answers Sara's blank look. "So where's the evidence?" It's a challenge not a question.
"With the gun," Catherine says.
"No gun registered to Don Jose," Sara says. "Or his father."
"What about the victim?" Catherine says. She moves slowly to the other side of the table to better view the wound in the victim's forehead. One shot, close range, no signs of struggle. How did she let him get so close?
"It makes sense," Sara says. "Madeleine's boyfriend would know where she kept her gun." Her eyes follow Catherine as she circles the table. "I bet Madeleine's showgirl friend could tell us if Madeleine had a gun."
"I have a better idea," Catherine says.
Eddie bought her a gun. He gave it to her in a small, wooden case. It was a .22, and the handle featured a shell panel. All the showgirls carried .22s if they carried at all. It was a gun with a delicacy to it, a femininity. She didn't know what to say when she saw it. She pulled it out of its case and practiced aiming it in front of her, closing one eye like she'd seen it done in the movies. Eddie bought her bullets and showed her how to load it.
She was mugged less than two weeks later and she didn't even think of using the gun. She was getting into the driver's side of Eddie's car, with Eddie passed out drunk in the passenger seat. A mugger held a knife to her ribs and demanded she hand over her purse. He pushed her against the car and she banged her chin on the top of the door, her teeth breaking the skin of her lower lip. She gave him her purse and he ran away. She tried to wake up Eddie but eventually gave up and went inside the club to call the police.
Eddie promised to buy her another gun but never followed through. Years later she considers herself lucky her prints were never found on an unlicensed firearm found at the scene of a crime.
Catherine parks the car at the front of Madeleine Press's apartment block. It's a small set of eight - four up, four down. Madeleine's apartment is on the ground floor.
Catherine gets out of the car, pushing her sunglasses closer to her face. The glare is bouncing off the white washed apartment blocks on both sides of the street.
Sara gets out the passenger side, looks over at the apartment still sealed behind yellow tape and turns back to Catherine, eyebrows raised. "We going in?"
Catherine shakes her head. "We're looking for the gun."
Sara puts her hands on her hips. She looks serious in her black tank top and dark sunglasses. It's hot and Catherine is similarly wearing jeans and a dark tank top. They look like Charlie's Angels rather than science geeks.
"Catherine - we searched the area already," Sara says. "Whoever shot her took the gun with him. It could be on the other side of town or halfway to Texas by now."
"That's if he was thinking rationally. I don't think Don Jose planned anything he did after the shooting. I think we're trying to follow the movements of an automaton." She walks over to the car park at the side of the building. Sara follows close behind. They both turn around taking in the street scene. There are two cars in the car park, one is older than Sara and it looks like it never leaves. The other is a 90s model Honda Accord, parked in the covered bays.
"Looks like the people who live here do a lot of walking," Sara says. "Madeleine's boyfriend lives across town - he must have had a car."
"The couple in number 5 told us they heard someone unlock their car alarm and drive away. But this was before they heard the gun shot."
Sara nods. "And everything goes quiet after you hear a gun shot. If there was a second car pulling out of the car park they should have heard it." She raises her hands, palms up. "So he just walked away?"
"Maybe," Catherine says. She begins walking toward the street. To each side there are apartment blocks. She looks to the left and then the right. To the left in an Easterly direction is the Palms, to the right in a Westerly direction is the desert. It's a long walk either way but a decision had to have been made. Conscious or otherwise. Which way do you go when you are aimless?
She turns to her right and walks down the street. She is joined quickly by the sound of Sara's feet behind her.
"Where are we going?" Sara asks. "Just keep walking," Catherine says.
They walk for another two blocks until the street comes to an end in front of a Chinese restaurant and a bakery.
"Over there," Sara says. She nods toward a small park with swings, a seesaw and a merry-go-round. They search the park. There's a row of bushes and shrubs along the side fence and a fenced off area hiding where the city water treatment department has been digging. They decided on the bushes first, getting down on their hands and knees to sift through the underbrush.
"You know," Sara says. "You reminded me of Grissom back there."
Catherine thinks about that for a moment. She hopes it's a compliment. "I've known him for a long time. I guess he had to rub off eventually."
Sara gets up off her hands and knees and stands up. She brushes her hands against each other, and then wipes them on her jeans. "He was very supportive of you - when you first started. Wasn't he?"
Catherine crawls out from under the brush and gets to her feet beside Sara. "Yeah," she says. "He was."
"He's not like that with any of us," Sara says. "And I think we need a rake."
Catherine dusts herself off and pulls leaves from her hair. "You didn't need it as much." she says. "And I think we need a metal detector."
They stand silently for a while. Catherine contemplates the park. It really was a long shot - what if he walked in circles? A body keeps moving in a line until acted upon by an external force - the first law of physics. Don Jose would have walked into the desert if he hadn't encountered the end of the street first.
Her eyes land on the merry-go-round. A mental picture flashes into her head: one night, after she'd had a fight with Eddie, she'd found Lindsay in the park across the street, dangling her legs over the edge of the merry-go-round and slowly moving in circles.
She walks over to the merry-go-round and gets on her knees. She has a mag-light in her utility belt and she shines it underneath. When she sees nothing she crawls a little further along the ground and tries again.
Sara drops to her knees on the other side and shines her own torch underneath. "Wait a minute," she says. "I think I've got something."
Catherine joins her on the other side. Underneath the merry-go-round she can see the light from Sara's torch reflecting off the metal of a gun barrel.
"That's incredible," Sara says.
Catherine reaches underneath. Her hand falls well short of the weapon. "I think we're going to need that rake after all," she says.
The gun matches the bullet in Madeleine's body and there are fingerprints on the gun that match one of several lifted from the crime scene. Of course they never took the boyfriend's fingerprints, which leaves Brass contemplating strategies to trick Don Jose into giving up his fingerprints.
"I don't think it's going to be a problem," Catherine says. They are standing in the hall outside the ballistics lab. She and Sara are still covered in underbrush and dirt from the playground. Grissom is hovering, determined to observe the conclusion of the case. "I think he wants to talk."
"I hope you're right," Brass says. "It would sure make my job a lot easier." He leaves them in the hall.
"You seem pretty convinced," Sara says. "I got to hand it to you, Catherine, you've made all the right calls on this case so far. What makes you so sure?"
Catherine catches Grissom watching her. "I guess I'm the jealous type," she says.
Don Jose confesses when she isn't there to see it. Brass and Sara pay him a visit at his father's factory, hoping the abundance of plastic will make a stealth operation to retrieve his fingerprints likely to succeed.
It turns out to be an unnecessary concern. He asks to be taken to the police station and breaks down when they are barely out of the parking lot.
The father must have come to the same conclusion as Catherine because the family lawyer is waiting at the station when Brass and Sara return.
Sara tells Catherine the story later in the locker room. She tells her of the way he insisted he be locked up before he'd even told them what he'd done. She tells her he confessed in a whisper, as if it was too impossible to say out loud. He repeated, "Oh god, oh god, oh god..." the entire duration of the drive.
He told them he knew Madeleine's lover - a notorious designer of plastic kitchen-wares whom Madeleine had met while he was conducting business with her boyfriend's father. He left town the day after Madeleine's murder. It was possible he didn't even know Madeleine was dead.
"It's inconceivable - " Sara says. She leans her back against the locker next to Catherine's, her legs at an incline to the floor. "- Killing someone you love because they're sleeping with someone else. I can't imagine being that angry."
"That's good to know." Catherine hangs her lab-coat in her locker along with her utility belt. She takes her jacket out and slips it over her shoulders. "'Provocation' as a defence rarely works for women."
"I mean, even when I figured out Hank was cheating on me, I didn't want to hurt him, I just wanted..." Sara trails off, looking into the corner of the room for her lost words.
"You wanted to forget about it," Catherine says. "It's worse when you're harbouring suspicions. The truth is a relief. If I went for my gun every time I caught Eddie cheating on me he would have been dead long before Candeece got to him."
"I get jealous when there's someone smarter in the room, someone else who has all the answers," Sara says. "Some times I'm get jealous when he... when I don't get noticed."
Catherine notices the slip but choose to pretend she didn't. "Ever want to shoot someone over it?"
"No."
"Then you have nothing to worry about."
"Yeah," Sara smiles. She pushes herself off the lockers, moves awkwardly to the door. "Good job today, Catherine."
"Thanks," Catherine says. "Sara?"
Sara hovers in place. "Yeah?"
"Try not to worry about it."
"Yeah," Sara nods. "Yeah, okay." She leaves.
Catherine places a palm on her locker and leans a little of her weight into her hand. It feels cold and unfriendly. Like a corpse.
It seems she never goes home without saying goodbye. She finds him at his desk, staring at the computer monitor, one hand on the mouse, one hand holding his chin.
"Hey," she says.
He looks up with his eyes. "You were right."
"Yeah." She sits in the chair on the opposite side of the desk. She's done this so many times she think the chair's sole existence is dependent on her. Her chair. No one else sits comfortably in Gil's presence. "Remember that time you came over to check out my ant problem, and Eddie showed up and threatened to shoot you?"
"He didn't mean it."
"I wasn't so sure. He was pretty worked up."
"He wanted to scare you." Grissom's eyes are on the computer screen again. "Or me."
"You just stood there," she says. In her mind she replays the scene again: Eddie waving his gun from Gil to her to Gil again, screaming, "tell me the truth! Tell me you're screwing each other." Grissom was calm, his voice level as he politely asked Eddie to hand over the gun.
She was panic-stricken, waving her hands and saying, "please, Eddie, nothing is going on, just put the gun down, please..." She'd just started at the LVPD. She didn't carry in those days.
Eventually Gil talked him down and Eddie handed the gun over. She made Grissom promise not to report Eddie to the police and he'd reluctantly agreed. He didn't think Eddie would shoot her but he knew something she didn't know then, that Eddie was a coward who fed off other people's vulnerability. He would always end up hurting her somehow.
"He was confused," Gil says. "He wanted to be a stronger man than he was and yet he couldn't help being afraid."
"He thought we were sleeping together." She shakes her head. "You were the only man I knew who didn't want to sleep with me. You were more interested in my ants."
"That's not true."
She lifts an eyebrow.
"You had very common ants," he deadpans.
She smiles. "Eddie was no Don Jose, that's for sure."
"Did you want him to be?"
She laughs. "I didn't want him to hurt you. I just wish - " She looks away, waves a hand at Grissom's bookshelves. " - I wish it had been about me."
"That's not how it works."
"I know," she says. She plays with the edge of her seat. "Do you want to tell me what's going on with Sara?"
"No."
She throws up her hands. "Come on, Gil, it's like pre-90s Moscow around here."
"I have nothing to do with that."
"Did you sleep with her?"
He gives her a pointed look.
"Okay." She puts her hand to her chin and runs her finger in a line below her lip. "Did you want to?"
He clasps his hands on the desk in front of him and leans forward. "What do you want from me, Catherine?"
"I was thinking." She takes a long breath. "About you, me, the people around us. You never liked, Eddie. I never liked Teri. I like Sara - she's the closest thing I've got to a girlfriend and my last girlfriend screwed my husband, so you can understand how important that is to me. I guess I would just like to know..." She takes a moment to think about what it is she wants to say. "I'd like to know about us."
"Us?"
She puts her hand to her head. She wonders if Grissom was born obtuse or whether it's been cultivated with age. "For fuck's sake, Gil..."
He cuts her off. "Catherine --," He's using his scientist voice, the voice he uses when he's trying to explain the mating habits of grasshoppers and the forensic value of dung beetles. "- we're not adventurous creatures. We look for the image of ourselves in those around us, we fear and distrust difference. As we get older it becomes difficult to break these habits."
She looks at him, narrows her eyes tyring to bring him into focus - as if that's all it would take. "Is that how you tell it to yourself? I'm impressed, Gil - you must have worked pretty hard to come up with something profound enough to convince even your nihilistic world view." She's not angry. She's not even surprised. She is tired and she reminds herself she hasn't had a full night's sleep in the last four days.
Grissom lifts a hand to his glasses and slides them a little further up his nose. "You're asking for change, Catherine. I'm not comfortable with that. I don't think any of us are comfortable with that."
"You're speaking for yourself, Gil. We might not be comfortable with it but we're willing to give it a try if something might come out of it."
"I had -," He sounds cautious, thinking his words over as he says them. "I had a similar conversation with Sara."
She stares blankly for a moment. Sara made a move. She's impressed. She wasn't sure she had it in her.
Which makes her the third side to a triangle. Not that she wasn't aware of Sara's feelings and not that she wasn't aware that Sara had more than a curiosity with regard to Catherine's relationship with Grissom, it's just that now that it's all out in the open, the triangle is complete.
"That must have been difficult," she says, eventually.
"Yes, it was."
"But very flattering."
"Yes."
Line up Nick, Warwick, Greg and Grissom and pick the Lothario. This is one weird business they're in. "You should think about it."
He pauses. "What does this have to do with us?"
"Everything." She throws up her hands. "Nothing. It doesn't change anything does it? All this tension, all these things we don't say -- it's just going to go on like this forever isn't it?"
"Forever is a long time."
"Gil..."
"We're complicated people, Catherine. We rationalise rather than react." He pauses. "And we leave the theatrics for opera."
She gives a short laugh. "That's a good thing, right?"
"I like to think so."
"Yeah." She gets out of her chair and slings her bag over shoulder. "I'll see you tomorrow."
"Sure." His eyes return to the computer screen.
She's at the door when he calls out her name. She turns around and he's leaning across the desk retrieving her keys.
She goes back, takes her keys off him. "Thanks."
"Do you like opera?"
She blinks. "What?"
"There's an opera society in Vegas. They're doing 'Carmen' in November. We should go."
She threads her fingers through the rings holding her keys. Her hands feel strangely tense. "I'm not sure I like opera. I like the stories - I'm not sure about the music."
"Have you ever been to an opera?"
"I saw one on television."
"The live experience is substantially different."
"I don't think I'm an opera person, Gil."
"Maybe you should consider changing?"
She becomes aware of the keys in her hand, loosely hanging on between her fingers. A smile creeps across her face. "All right. You're on."
When she leaves she closes the door behind her. She stuffs her keys in her pocket and zips the front of her jacket closed. The hall outside Grissom's office is quiet and barely lit and it reminds her a little too much of cells. She always thought it suited him.