Binding Ties by Max Allan Collins

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

Gil Grissom was still at his desk when his cell phone rang. Picking it up, he pressed the talk button. “Grissom.”

“It’s me,” Brass said.

“Where?”

“Headed back to the city.”

Grissom could hear the car’s engine. No siren, but Brass was clearly not taking his time. “Learn anything?”

“Good chance Perry Bell’s our copycat.”

“Tell me why.”

Brass outlined his theory, including a recap of the Orloff interview; it took a while.

“That all sounds good,” Grissom said. “But where’s the evidence?”

Testily, Brass said, “I thought it was your job to find the evidence.”

“No—that would be your job. I process evidence.”

“…Sorry.”

“No problem. I located Bell’s daughter.”

“Good! See, you do find evidence!”

“In a way. I certainly got information.”

Grissom filled Brass in on what Patty Lang had told him.

Brass asked, “Do we have enough for a search warrant?”

“Borderline. But I’ll work on tracking down Bell before you get back.”

“Bless your little evidence-processing heart.”

“I’ll see where everybody else is, right now. I’ve got Warrick and Sara working that Banner package, Catherine and Nick out in the field, chasing the original suspects. By the time you get here, we might be at warrant stage.”

Grissom spent the next two hours searching for Perry Bell.

He called the reporter’s friends and coworkers, put out an APB for the man’s car, and sent a squad car to Bell’s home. A uniformed officer went to Bell’s house, got no answer at the front or back door, found curtains drawn on windows, looked in a garage window to see Bell’s vehicle gone, and—on reporting back to Grissom—got posted out front till further notice.

No probable cause to break in. If Bell was inside, they would have to catch him when he came out. Anyway, if he was indeed the copycat, the threat of him having a potential victim in there was minimal—the copycat had struck twice so far, but (staying to the original CASt) always in the victim’s home.

If Bell was outside the house, that was a different problem entirely. The reporter could be anywhere, doing anything, and unless they caught a break, Grissom and his crew wouldn’t have any idea of what Bell had been up to until…well, possibly until the CSIs were summoned to the next crime scene.

A third troubling possibility occurred to Grissom: Bell might be innocent. The crime-beat columnist could, as the man had told his daughter, be out working on a big story; and that story wasn’t even necessarily the CASt one. But if so, where was the reporter? Why couldn’t anyone find him?

Deciding he’d done all the detective work possible from his desk, Grissom got out of there, and his first stop was the morgue, where Dr. Robbins was finishing up the autopsy on Enrique Diaz.

With a mildly puzzled frown, Grissom asked, “Two days to get to Diaz?”

Robbins shot a barely patient look toward Grissom, then continued his work. “I know you’re focused on this serial killer, but in those two days, besides the late Mr. Diaz, nearly two dozen people have died under questionable circumstances in this city.”

Grissom hadn’t meant to

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