A t the same time Gil Grissom was meeting up with Jim Brass in the parking lot, Catherine Willows sat before a monitor at a work station in her office. The TV remote in hand seemed grafted there, as grainy images slipped by on the screen, rewinding, then playing again, rewinding….

Despite her glazed expression—Catherine had been at this three hours—she was alert, and the unmistakable aroma of popcorn penetrated Catherine’s concentration. Keenly tuned investigator that she was, she turned toward the doorway. There stood Sara Sidle, typically casual in jeans, blue vest, and cotton blouse, holding out an open bag of break-room microwave popcorn like an offering to a cranky god.

“If that smelled any better,” Catherine said to her colleague, “I’d fall to the floor, and die happy.”

Sara placed the steaming bag on the counter, away from the stack of tapes they’d been plowing through, and wheeled her own chair up beside Catherine’s. “Careful—don’t get burned.”

“In this job? When don’t you get burned…?” Taking a few kernels, Catherine blew on them, then popped the popcorn into her mouth. “You know, normally I have a rule against eating while I work—I don’t have your youthful metabolism.”

“Yeah, right…. Anyway, when was the last time you had a meal? Christmas?”

“Well…maybe New Year’s…. ”

Sara smirked triumphantly. “My point exactly. We’ve got to eat something sometime, don’t we?”

“We’ll take a break when we come to a break…. I just feel…I don’t know, guilty somehow, taking off before anything’s been accomplished.”

“Feeling guilty is one thing,” Sara said, shoving the bag at her again. “Feeling faint is another.”

Catherine glanced at Sara—when an obsessively dedicated coworker tells you to slow down, maybe you ought to listen. And yet Catherine kept at it, the grainy video images crawling across the screen. Right now she was viewing the angle behind the bar. In the frame, the guy in the hat, dark glasses, and Lipton Construction jacket, strolled through then disappeared. Rewind. Again.

“That might be Lipton,” Sara said, leaning in, eyes narrowed. “Then again, with this picture, it might be Siegfried or Roy.”

“Or their damn tiger.” Catherine sighed, shook her head. “We’ve got to get a better look. Where’s Warrick, anyway?”

Audio-visual analysis was Warrick Brown’s forensic specialty.

Sara shrugged. “Off with Grissom and Nick. They’re neck-deep in the Pierce woman’s murder.”

Catherine looked sharply at Sara. “That torso’s been identified positively?”

“Close enough for Grissom to call it science and not a hunch. And I think our likelihood of borrowing Warrick for this, in the foreseeable future, is—”

“Hey! You remember that one guy?”

Sara’s eyebrows went up. “I’m good, but I need a little more than that to go on.”

Then Catherine traded the remote for her cell phone and punched in Grissom’s number.

“Grissom,” the supervisor’s voice said, above the muted rumbling of motor engine and traffic sounds that told her he was on the road; he was, in fact, on his way with Brass to Owen Pierce’s residence.

“Gil, I’ve got a problem.”

“Jenna Patrick?”

“Yeah,” Catherine said. “The videotapes are so grainy, not even Lipton’s mother could ID our suspect. I’m assuming you can’t spare Warrick—”

“Normally when you assume you make an ass of u and me. This is one of the rare other occasions.”

Catherine rolled her eyes at Sara; a simple “That’s right” would have been sufficient. Into the phone, she asked, “Gil, who was that guy?”

Again Sara raised her eyebrows. Grissom, however, had no problem deciphering who Catherine meant, answering without hesitation: “Daniel Helpingstine.”

“Helpingstine,” Catherine echoed, nodding. “That’s right, that’s right.”

“Anything else?”

“Can I borrow Warrick?”

“No.”

“Then I have to spend a little money.”

“That’s what we have—a little money. But do it.”

At that, they both clicked off, no good-byes necessary. She rose and moved behind her desk. Sitting down, she quickly found the leather business-card folder in a drawer and riffled the plastic pages.

“Helpingstine?” Sara asked, still perplexed; she hated not knowing what was up.

“Yes.” Catherine was flipping pages. “I guess you must’ve been out in the field, when he stopped by—manufacturer’s rep from LA, who was here, oh…maybe six months ago…. Here you are!…He was pushing this new video enhancement device called Tektive—not computer software, a stand-alone unit.”

“What’s it do?”

Catherine started punching buttons on the cell phone again. “Just about everything short of showing the killer on the Zapruder film, if Helpingstine’s to be believed. He might be able to out-do even Warrick, where this security tape’s concerned.”

On the other end of the line, the phone rang once, twice, three times, then a recorded message in Helpingstine’s reedy tenor came on, identifying the West Coast office of Tektive Interactive.

Catherine waited for the tone, and said, “I don’t know if you’ll remember me, Mr. Helpingstine, this is Catherine Willows, Las Vegas Criminalistics. If you could call me, ASAP, at—”

She heard the phone pick up, and the same reedy tenor, in person, said, “Ms. Willows! Of course I remember you, pleasure to hear from you.”

“Well, you’re really burning the midnight oils, Mr. Helpingstine.”

“My office is in my home, Ms. Willows, and I just happened to hear your message coming in—you’re nightshift, if I recall.”

This guy was good. But she could practically hear him salivate at the prospect of a sale.

“That’s right,” Catherine said, “nightshift. Never dreamed I’d get a hold of you tonight—”

“It’s been what, Ms. Willows—six months? How may I help you? Are those budget concerns behind you, I hope?”

Maybe she could pull this off without spending even “a little money.” “Mr. Helpingstine, are you still willing to give us an on-the-job demonstration of the Tektive?”

He was breathing hard, now. “Happy to! As I told you when we met, as good as our prepared demonstration is, it’s far better for us to help you with something, and, uh…” She could hear pages turning quickly. “…how is Thursday?”

“I know it’s terribly short notice, but…could you possibly fly in here tomorrow?”

Silence indicated he was considering that. “This isn’t just… any demo, is it?”

“No,” Catherine confessed. “It’s a murder.”

“Let me check on flights and I’ll get back to you.”

“You have my number?”

“Oh yes. In my little book.”

She could almost hear his smile.

Catherine hung up, and with a wry smirk said to Sara, “He thinks he’s got my number.”

“That’s only fair, isn’t it?” Sara batted her eyes. “I mean, you’ve got his.”

They returned to the tapes and the popcorn, and less than a half hour later the desk phone rang.

She answered, and Helpingstine asked, “Can you have someone pick me up at McCarran?”

Catherine smiled; now this was service. “Tell me what gate and what time, Mr. Helpingstine. Someone will be there, possibly my associate Sara Sidle or myself.”

She could hear his pen scribbling Sara’s name, then he gave the information, finishing with, “And would you please call me Dan?”

“Happy to, Dan. And it’s Catherine. See you soon.”

Catherine hung up and Sara asked, “How soon?”

“Six-thirty.”

“Tomorrow evening?”

Catherine grinned. “No—this morning.”

Sara grinned, too. “He have a thing for you, or what?”

“I think he has a thing for money—this little item sells in mid five figures.” She sighed. “That means we can stop looking at these grainy videotapes until he gets here and concentrate on other things.”

“For instance?”

“We could grab some food, if you like.”

Sara half-smirked, lifted a shoulder. “Actually, I’m kinda stuffed.”

“Demon popcorn. There’s always searching Lipton’s house.”

Sara’s eyes brightened. “About time!”

Reaching for her desk phone, Catherine said, “I’ll call Conroy.”

An hour later they met Detective Erin Conroy—crisply professional in a gray pants suit—in the driveway of Ray Lipton’s house on Tinsley Court, not far off Hills Center Drive. A baby-blue split level built in the ’eighties, the house perched on a sloping lawn, looking well-taken care of in a neighborhood of other well-maintained homes, always a quiet area, particularly so at this hour of the night. The driveway ran alongside the house, a two-car garage around back.

The detective stood next to her Taurus, warrant in her hand, at her side, almost casually. “I’ve got it—let’s go in.”

“How are we getting inside?” Sara asked.

“Look what our buddy Ray gave me…” Conroy flashed a key. “The warrant’s just to dot the i’s. Lipton’s still cooperative—insists he’s innocent.”

Innocent men always do, Catherine thought; but then so do most guilty ones….

The three of them pulled on latex gloves, then the detective unlocked the door and they stepped inside.

“You want upstairs or downstairs?” Catherine asked her coworker.

“Cool stuff’s always in the basement,” Sara said, with a smile of gleeful anticipation. “I’ll take that.”

“Let’s clear it first,” Conroy said.

So the three of them walked through the basement, then Conroy and Catherine went up.

Stairs from the entryway opened onto the living room. Catherine noted the good-quality brown-and-tan carpet, and heavy brown brocade drapes hanging from ornamental rods, shut tight, the sunlight managing only a hairline or two of surreptitious entry. With everything shrouded in darkness like this, the house gave the impression it’d been closed up much longer than twenty-four hours. Only yesterday’s Las Vegas Sun, on the coffee table and open to the crossword puzzle, indicated ongoing life. Beyond the coffee table, the cream-color plaster wall was occupied by an oversized brown couch accented by a couple of tan throw pillows; a starving-artist’s-sale desert landscape hung straight above the couch. However neat the living room might be, one aspect seemed to indicate a male presence: the room had been turned into a formidable home entertainment center.

A thirty-six-inch Toshiba color TV ruled the room from a wheeled stand in a corner of the room, while a tan highback armchair sat to Catherine’s left, where she stood at the top of the entry stairs, the chair’s twin across the room next to the sofa. Both were placed at angles to the couch so they faced the TV. Speakers were mounted to the walls around the room and she noticed a black sub-woofer on the floor next to the TV stand. A DVD player and VCR were stacked on the lower shelf of the stand and through a smoked-glass door below that, she could make out a row of DVDs.

“Why go out to the movies?” Conroy asked.

“It does beg the issue,” Catherine said.

“So maybe he was home watching football.”

“We’ll see…. ”

Using her Maglite, Catherine took a quick look at the DVDs, then at the other shelves of the TV stand, one of which had a few prerecorded tapes and a lot of T-120 cassettes, some with notations: “Friends season closer”; “Sat Nite Live w/ John Goodman”; and so on.

She checked the VCR: no tape. Question was, had Lipton recorded the Colts/Chiefs game, watched it after committing Jenna’s murder, then hidden (or thrown away) the incriminating tape, just so he could have his TV ball game alibi?

Stranger things had happened, of course, but Catherine had a hard time buying that Lipton had strangled his girlfriend, come home, maybe had a beer while he watched the taped game, while at the same time getting his story ready for when the police came around. That seemed a reach to her.

Nonetheless, she gathered all the videotapes, including the prerecords, stacking them in front of the TV; she told Conroy to collect any video cassettes she might run across, and called the same instructions down to Sara. They would box them all up as evidence.

Catherine and Conroy checked the cushions of the furniture and behind the framed landscape over the sofa, finding nothing, not even loose change. They moved through the dining room, Conroy pausing briefly to riffle through the pile of mail on the table. She found nothing worth bagging.

The kitchen, a small galley-type affair, had a U-shaped counter at the far end, home to a double-basin sink with a couple of dirty plates and a glass in one side. The stove and refrigerator were a matching off-white, and Catherine found healthier food in the fridge than she would expect from a single guy. In the freezer and cupboards, she found nothing noteworthy.

The refrigerator had a piece of note paper held to the door by a Wallace and Gromit magnet: a list of names and phone numbers. Conroy put the list into an evidence bag and replaced the magnet on the refrigerator.

“Not much so far,” the detective said.

“Well, we know Jenna was living here,” Catherine said. “Or do you know a man who could keep a house this tidy?”

“Not many,” Conroy admitted.

They moved down the hallway to where two doors stood opposite each other. The one to the right was a spare bedroom, the one to the left the bathroom. Conroy took the bathroom, Catherine the bedroom. Sparsely furnished with only a tiny dark dresser and a single bed covered with a tan quilt, the room with its bare cream-color plaster walls looked like a nun’s cell.

A closet hid behind wooden, sliding double doors. Catherine opened one side and saw shoe- and other boxes stacked from the floor to the shelf, with more boxes occupying that space.

She heard Conroy pad in from the bathroom.

“Nothing in there,” the detective said. “I’m going to check out the master bedroom.”

“All right. I’ll be going through these boxes.”

The fourth box down in the back row, a flowered Mootsie’s Tootsies shoebox, presented Catherine with the prize. Opening the box— the only woman’s shoebox in the stack—she found a false beard, mustache, and a small brown bottle of spirit gum.

She felt her hopes that Lipton might be telling the truth start to fade, as this discovery seemed to confirm what she’d seen in the videotape…that he had, indeed, worn a fake beard and mustache to throw people off the track, and yet still had the bad sense to wear a coat with his company’s name on the back.

Lipton didn’t seem that thick, but plenty of other criminals had done dumber things in the commission of their crimes. She recalled one Don Dawson, who had worked at Castaways Bowling Center. Dawson had been smart enough to know the boss had a camera in the office, so when he’d gone in to crack the safe he’d worn a mask-style stocking cap. The cap had gone nicely with the satin jacket with Castaways Bowling Center embroidered on the back, and his name, “Don,” on the breast. Dawson had lasted through almost thirty seconds of interrogation before he’d copped to the robbery.

Such stories abounded in national CSI circles. Like the two star athletes who robbed a local Burger King where their pictures hung in honor on the wall; or the numerous bank robbers around the country who would write their robbery notes on their own deposit slips.

Over the years, Catherine had seen enough reasonably bright criminals do enough dim things to know that anything was possible. She carefully dropped the beard and mustache into an evidence bag, the spirit gum into another, and the shoebox itself into a third.

Sara appeared in the doorway. “Any luck?”

Holding up the bag with the fake beard, Catherine said, “Jackpot.”

Sara came over with “wow” in her eyes and had a look at the treasures Catherine had dug up.

Catherine asked, “How about you?”

“Well, I found a box in the basement with two Lipton Construction jackets in it. They look new, or anyway they’ve never been worn.”

“Anything else?”

Sara shrugged, a little frustrated. “There’s some stuff down there that doesn’t fit Ray. Most of it looks like Jenna’s—diet books, Men Are From Mars, Cosmo’s, and some other fashion magazines, buncha Vogue’s.”

Conroy came back in from the master bedroom. “Nothing in there. Clothes from both of them. Obviously, Jenna was living here. You want to take a quick look around?”

This was addressed to Catherine, but Sara said, “I’ll go, while you finish in here, ’kay?”

Catherine nodded. “ ’kay.”

She spent another hour going through boxes, but found nothing. When Sara and Conroy came back from the bedroom with a bag containing Ray Lipton’s work boots, Catherine looked at the evidence curiously.

Sara said, “You lifted boot prints, didn’t you, from the lap dance room?”

“Right,” Catherine said, smiling, “and Lipton was wearing tennies when Conroy hauled him in…Good catch, Sara!”

“Thanks.”

“That the only pair of boots in the house?”

“Didn’t see any others.”

“Well, Warrick says it always comes down to shoe prints…we’ll see.”

Back at HQ, the two CSIs and the detective logged in evidence for several hours. Catherine instructed Sara to line up some interns to go over the box of video cassettes, to check for a tape of that Colts game.

Shift was almost over, and the sun freshly up, by the time Catherine was back in one of the Tahoes, taking the 515 to 15 South, so she could get to the airport without having to fight morning traffic on the Strip.

Helpingstine was coming in on Southwest 826, which meant Gate C of Terminal One. A long hike, but after a cooped-up night of sitting in front of a monitor, then crouching in a closet at Lipton’s, and finally logging evidence at CSI, the walk would seem like an invigorating relief.

As she made her way through the concourse, Catherine struggled to put a face with the name of the man she was picking up. They had met only once, briefly, about six months ago. Her memory was finally jogged, when the tall, fortyish man—glasses riding a pug nose, straight dark hair parted on the left, graying at the temples, his light gray suit looking suitably slept in—recognized her instantly, and strode up to her with a wide smile and a hand outstretched.

“Ms. Willows,” he said, in a nasal but not unpleasant twang that indicated Chicago somewhere in his background, “good to see you again.”

“Mr. Helpingstine,” she said, smiling and allowing him to pump her hand, “you’re very kind to come at such short notice, and so quickly.”

He raised a gently scolding finger. “It’s Dan, remember?”

“And Catherine,” she said, falling in alongside him as he walked.

“Afraid we’ll have to go to baggage claim to pick up the Tektive. They’re understandably fussy about carry-ons.”

Helpingstine’s luggage consisted of a nylon gear bag with a Lakers insignia on it, and a square silver flight case on wheels that Catherine assumed contained the Tektive.

She led the way back to the Tahoe, with the salesman’s small talk running to how well the Tektive was going over with various major metro police departments. But when Catherine tried to turn the conversation to the Jenna Patrick case, the manufacturer’s rep waved a meaty hand. “Let’s wait till I’ve had a chance to look at the tape.”

“Fair enough, Dan. We’ll follow your lead.”

“I do have one other request.”

“Name it.”

“They didn’t feed us anything on the flight. Can we go through a drive-thru or something?”

Suddenly she remembered her popcorn snack with Sara, a hundred years ago; her stomach growled its opinion. “I think I can manage that request.”

They got McDonald’s breakfasts, went back to headquarters and ate in the break room.

Sara ducked her head in. “I smell something very nearly like real food…What’d you bring me?”

Catherine handed her a breakfast burrito—vegetarian, of course—and Sara pulled up a chair and soon was digging in like she hadn’t seen food since the Reagan administration.

“Dan, the dainty flower to your left is Sara Sidle.”

Sara nodded and kept chewing.

“Dan Helpingstine,” he said. “Tektive Interactive.”

“Heard all about you, Dan—can’t wait for you to work your magic.” Between burrito bites, Sara said to Catherine, “Lots of footprints in the lap-dance room, and in the hall.”

“Yeah, dozens,” Catherine said between bites of a bagel sandwich. “Lots and lots of high heels. I remember.”

“But just the one pair of work boots.”

“I remember that, too.”

Sara shook her head, shrugged, started a second burrito. “I haven’t compared them up close yet, nothing Grissom-scientific yet…but the eyeball test says the boots we brought in tonight, from Lipton’s, are larger than the prints we lifted at the strip club.”

Catherine said, “We’ll check that out more thoroughly, as soon as we’re finished with the video.”

Setting up in Catherine’s office, they got Helpingstine settled at a work station and lined up with the Dream Doll security tapes.

“First we’ll digitize them,” he said, working in his shirtsleeves, “then we shall see what we shall see.”

“How long’s the digitizing take?” Catherine asked.

“How long are the tapes?”

Catherine explained what they had, what they wanted, and why, for now, they were going to concentrate on just small segments representing two cameras: the one from behind the bar and the one from the end of the hallway.

Leaving the Tektive rep to his work, they went back to the footprints. Working in the layout room, they took prints from Lipton’s boots and compared them to the one they got from the strip club.

“This print,” Sara said, meaning what they’d just created, “is definitely shorter than the lap-dance boot.”

“Are we sure Lipton had the boots on that night?” Catherine asked. “Is it possible that it’s somebody else’s boot, and we missed Lipton’s print? Maybe he’s one of the running shoes we found.”

Sara shook her head. “The tennie he was arrested in’s been ruled out…and the boot print was the oddest we got at the strip club, as well as the freshest, I mean it was on top…so we assumed it had to be the killer’s.”

Catherine wasn’t sure whether to feel good or bad about this indication of Lipton’s innocence; Grissom would advise her not to “feel” anything.

So she calmly said, “We’ll check the videotape first, then if we get nothing, we head back to Lipton’s to bring in all his shoes.”

“It’s a plan.”

They returned to Catherine’s office to find Helpingstine hunkered over his black box with its keyboard and built-in monitor screen.

“You ready for us?” Catherine asked.

The tech nodded. “These tapes are for shit, of course. Not exactly broadcast quality.”

Catherine leaned in and patted his shoulder. “Which is why you’re here, Dan, right?”

He gave the two women a little sideways half-smile. “You came to the right man…. I’ve cleaned up the images some, already, and I can isolate your guy in a couple of them.”

“Any shots of his shoes?”

He returned his attention to his machine. “Let’s see.”

Catherine and Sara sat down on either side of him, facing the Tektive monitor, Helpingstine stationed at the keyboard. He punched some keys and the screen came to life, the angle on the tape playing from high behind the bar.

“That looks just the same to me,” Sara said. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Helpingstine said. “Just wait.” He tapped some more keys and the picture improved, sharpening, the video garbage clearing somewhat.

But it was still disappointing, and Catherine groaned, “Dan, I was hoping for better…”

“Hey hey hey,” the tech said, sounding mildly offended. “A mini-miracle I can do on the spot. You want an act of God, it’s gonna take some time.”

“Okay, show us a mini-miracle.”

With a few keystrokes, Helpingstine outlined Lipton in the frame. Then the screen went blackly blank, except for the figure of the killer center screen.

“Now that is interesting,” Sara said.

The murderer had no legs below the level of where the bar would have been, but was intact from the waist up except for a spot on his shoulder where a customer’s head had been between him and the lens. They could barely make out the Las Vegas Stars logo on the ball cap, and the large dark glasses gave him the appearance of an oversized insect.

“Can you give us better detail on his face?” Catherine asked.

More work on the keys and the picture became slightly less blurry. “Quick fix,” Helpingstine said, “that’s what you get.”

Catherine leaned forward in her chair. “That is a fake beard, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Sara said. She jabbed at the monitor screen. “And a mustache too…. Could be what you found at Lipton’s.”

Catherine asked the rep, “Any other quick tricks for us?”

Using a mouse, Helpingstine moved the killer’s image into a corner. Then, fingers flying over the keys, he brought up another still, this one showing the killer from behind as he towed Jenna Patrick down the hallway, toward the private dance room where she was killed. A few more clacks from the keyboard and everything in the bar disappeared except for Lipton and Jenna.

A few keystrokes later, the grainy image sharpened further, the Lipton Construction lettering on the back of the jacket springing into sharp relief. From this angle, just barely able to see one side of the killer’s partially turned head, they could clearly discern the fake beard.

“Is that a shoe?” Catherine asked, pointing at a dark spot at the end of the killer’s leg.

Helpingstine said, “It would appear to be the toe of some kind of boot.”

Catherine and Sara traded looks.

The killer stood practically upright, bent only slightly as he extended his hands back to Jenna’s. She seemed taller than he was, but then she was wearing those incredible spike heels.

“Did you monkey with the aspect ratio on this?” Sara asked. “Is the picture squeezed or stretched in any way?”

“Not at all,” the rep said. “That’s reality, as seen by a cheap VHS security camera.”

“And cleaned up by an expensive electronic broom,” Catherine pointed out.

Sara pressed: “What’s wrong with this picture?”

They all studied the frozen image for a long time.

Finally, Helpingstine said, “His head seems too big. Is that what you mean?”

The question was posed to Sara, but it was Catherine who said, “That could be part of it…but there’s something else.”

“What?” Sara asked. “It’s driving me crazy…it just looks… wrong to me.”

Catherine pointed. “Look at the shoulders—doesn’t Ray Lipton have broader shoulders than that?”

“You’re saying that’s not Ray Lipton,” Sara said.

“Call it a hunch,” Catherine said.

Sara gave her a wide-eyed look. “You know what Grissom would say. Leave the hunches to the detectives—we follow the evidence.”

“Let’s follow it, then,” Catherine said. To Helpingstine, she said, “Can you stay at this a while?”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Sometime today, call a cab, check yourself in to a hotel…there are a few in town…and save your receipts.”

“Hey, Catherine, I’m here to help—no charge.”

“You’re here to make a pitch for your product; but we’re not going to take advantage. You may have to stay over a night. We’ll cover it.”

He shrugged. “Fine.”

She explained that their shift started at eleven P.M., but gave him her phone and pager numbers, should he come up with something sooner.

“Are you clocking out now?” Helpingstine asked.

“No, Dan. I have a little more work to do, before I call it a night.”

“Or day,” Sara said, hands on hips. “What do you have in mind?”

“I’m going to check Ray Lipton’s alibi.”

Her eyes getting wider, Sara said, “But he doesn’t have one.”

Catherine shrugged, smiled. “Let’s follow the evidence, and see if you’re right.”