Killing Game by Max Allan Collins

Author:Max Allan Collins [Collins, Max Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

6

Tuesday, January 25, 9:30 P.M.

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS REMOVED FROM THE Angela Dearborn murder, Catherine Willows sat at the large table in the layout room, which tonight seemed as icy as the blue-tinged lighting and aqua-glass walls that gave CSI HQ such a high-tech fishbowl feel. Her black short-sleeve top and black leather pants gave her the look of a stylish mourner, and she was indeed grieving, in a way…still feeling a keen sense of loss over this woman she had never met.

Who could say whether the poet’s notion that one man’s death diminished each of us—involved as we all are in mankind—was lofty nonsense or insightful truth? But Catherine certainly felt diminished by the brutal murder of Angela Dearborn. After investigating scores upon scores of homicides in well over a decade, how much capacity to absorb tragedy did Catherine have left in her?

The balance of this business was to maintain human compassion without giving in to despair while simultaneously avoiding any hardening toward violence and death that might naturally build up. A CSI could be neither optimist nor pessimist, and cynicism had no place…or sentimentality, either.

Still, early on, Grissom had told her, “Distance is necessary in this discipline—but don’t stand so far back that you can’t discern the human tragedy before you.”

With this in mind, she contemplated the personal effects all but covering the mammoth worktable. Almost against her will, Catherine felt energy rising within her. No matter how tired, no matter how melancholy, the CSI knew she was the victim’s only hope for redress, and this gave her a jolt of combined pride and responsibility that was like an adrenaline rush.

She took a slow walk around the table, looking over the possessions of the deceased, like a prospective bidder arriving before an estate auction: a green jewelry box, three purses (which included the one Angela been carrying most recently), cell phone, checkbook, and laptop computer, among other seemingly routine belongings.

A lot to go through, somewhat imposing; but not impossible. After all, Angie Dearborn hadn’t exactly been rolling in green. The laptop, in fact, rather surprised Catherine—certainly a lot of people these days had portable computers, but this was a fairly high-end model.

On her cell phone she punched in the number of freelance computer guru Tomas Nuñez, with whom she’d worked several times. Tomas should easily be able to tell her everything that was on Angie Dearborn’s hard drive.

“Querida,” Nuñez’s baritone said with warmth and humor—his cell phone had obviously showed him her number; either that, or he now answered his phone by calling everyone “darling.”

He was saying, “I suppose you’re going to break my heart and say this is business.”

“I certainly am…querida,” she said lightly, and then soberly explained the situation.

“Strange, isn’t it?” he said. “How in this technological age, we leave behind traces of ourselves, memories in a way, on the machines we use?”

“Well, from a CSI standpoint, it’s certainly helpful. Thirty, even twenty years ago, crime-scene analysts would find stacks of correspondence to go through…. Then times changed and letter-writing fell off, and made an investigator’s job harder.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.