Double Dealer

About the Author

MAX ALLAN COLLINS, a Mystery Writers of America "Edgar" nominee in both fiction and nonfiction categories, was hailed in 2004 by Publishers Weekly as "a new breed of writer." He has earned an unprecedented fourteen Private Eye Writers of America "Shamus" nominations for his historical thrillers, winning twice for his Nathan Heller novels, True Detective (1983) and Stolen Away (1991).

His other credits include film criticism, short fiction, songwriting, trading-card sets, and movie/TV tie-in novels, including Air Force One, In the Line of Fire, and the New York Times-bestselling Saving Private Ryan.

His graphic novel Road to Perdition is the basis of the Academy Award-winning DreamWorks 2002 feature film starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, and Jude Law, directed by Sam Mendes. His many comics credits include the Dick Tracy syndicated strip; his own Ms. Tree; Batman; and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, based on the hit TV series for which he has also written three video games, two jigsaw puzzles, and a USA Today-bestselling series of novels.

An independent filmmaker in his native Iowa, he wrote and directed Mommy, premiering on Lifetime in 1996, as well as a 1997 sequel, Mommy's Day. The screenwriter of The Expert, a 1995 HBO World Premiere, he wrote and directed the innovative made-for-DVD feature, Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market (2000). His latest indie feature, Shades of Noir (2004), is an anthology of his short films, including his award-winning documentary, Mike Hammer's Mickey Spillane. He recently completed a documentary, CAVEMAN: V.T. Hamlin and Alley Oop, and a DVD boxed set of his films will appear next year.

Collins lives in Muscatine, Iowa, with his wife, writer Barbara Collins; their son Nathan is a recent graduate in computer science and Japanese at the University of Iowa in nearby Iowa City.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

--01 Double Dealer (05-2002)

In memory of our friend

David R. Collins

author, teacher, mentor

M.A.C. and M.V.C.

With a scientific third degree, the master criminalist makes the physical evidence talk, wringing confessions from blood, guns, narcotics, hair, fibers, metal slivers, tire marks, tool marks, and bullets.

-JACK WEBB

1

THE SIREN'S SQUEAL SPLIT THE MORNING, THE FLASHING BLUE-then-red-then-blue dashboard light reflecting off other cars as the black Chevy Tahoe weaved its way through rush-hour traffic on US 95. The sun was rising orange and bright, tinting the clouds pink, and the air conditioning within the SUV was already grappling with the July heat.

In the passenger seat sat Gil Grissom, graveyard-shift supervisor of the Las Vegas Criminalistics Bureau. In the driver's seat was Warrick Brown-rank CSI3, just one notch under Grissom-and in back was another member of their team, Sara Sidle, rank CSI2. Warrick sawed the steering wheel right and left as he dodged between cars, his expression impassive. He might have been watching paint dry.

Grissom's boyishly handsome features were slightly compromised by the gray encroaching on his brown hair, and crow's feet were sneaking up on the edges of his eyes, frown lines etching inroads at the corners of his mouth. The politics of this job had taken their toll on Grissom of late. As much as he loved the science of investigation, the constant jousting with dayshift supervisor Conrad Ecklie, the strain on his budget, and the pressures of management had started to age the perennially youthful Grissom. This reality was aided and abetted by the fact that, even though he had never needed much sleep, now he hardly got any at all.

The SUV hurtled toward a small Honda. Warrick slashed to the right, barely missed a FedEx truck, then bounced back left, coming within inches of a blue Lincoln stretch limo.

From the back, Sara yelled, "Geez, Warrick, he's not gonna get more dead. Slow down."

Warrick ignored her remark and jumped into the diamond lane to pass a cab, then hopped back into his own lane.

"Why didn't you let me drive?" Sara asked her boss as she bounced around, her seat belt straining. "Grissom, will you say something to him?"

Ignoring the exchange, Grissom turned his gaze toward the reddish sky. Quietly, without even realizing he was talking, Grissom said, "Red sky at night, sailor's delight-red sky at morning, sailor take warning."

Sara leaned forward. "What was that, Grissom?"

He shook his head as he studied the clouds. "Nothing."

"Please tell me that wasn't an aphorism," she said. "Please tell me you're not spouting quotes while this maniac is-"

"Sailors?" Warrick asked. "Gris, we're in the desert."

"Shut up," Sara snapped, "and keep your eyes on the road."

Warrick shot her a glance in the rearview mirror, twitched a half-smirk, and crossed all three lanes of traffic, jerking the wheel to the right as they turned onto Decatur Boulevard. Seconds later the SUV squealed to a halt in front of the Beachcomber Hotel and Casino.

"Six minutes, twenty-seven seconds," Warrick said as he threw open his door, bestowing on his boss a tiny self-satisfied smile. "How's that for response time?"

As the limber driver turned to jump out of the truck, Grissom gripped Warrick's shoulder, startling him a little. Grissom kept his voice quiet, even friendly, but firm. "From now on, unless I say otherwise, you obey the speed limit-okay, Mario?"

Warrick gave him a sheepish smile. "Yeah, Gris-sorry."

In the backseat, Sara shook her head in disgust, her ID necklace swinging as she muttered a string of curses. As she climbed out, dragging a small black suitcase of equipment with her, she said, "Gonna get us all killed, then who's going to investigate our scene? I mean, we'll all be dead."

Grissom turned and looked over his sunglasses at her, through the open back door. She got the message and piped down.

Warrick grabbed his own black suitcase from the back of the vehicle and fell in next to Sara. Climbing down, Grissom-carrying his silver flight-case-style field kit-led the way. This early, the sidewalk was nearly empty in front of the hotel, the doormen outnumbering the guests. The little group was almost to the front door when Captain Jim Brass materialized to fall in step with Grissom.

Brass said, "The hotel manager wants to know how soon we're going to be out of there."

"Why?"

Brass blinked his sad eyes. "Why? So he can let the guests move in and out of their rooms on that floor."

Shaking his head, Grissom asked, "What'd you tell him?"

Brass shrugged. "As soon as we possibly can."

A rotund doorman stepped forward and opened the big glass front door for them. Sunglasses came off as they moved through the gaudy lobby-Grissom tuning out the sounds of spinning slots, rolling roulette balls, dealers calling cards, the typical dinging and ringing casino cacophony-and Brass led them to the right, toward a gleaming bank of elevators.

"Where's the vic?" Warrick asked.

"Fourth floor," Brass said. "Right there in the hall, outside his hotel room door, shot twice in the head, small caliber, a .22 or a .25 maybe. Looks like a mob hit, might be a robbery got outa hand."

"We'll see," Grissom said, never interested in theories so early. "Is there videotape?"

Most of the resort hotels on the Strip had video cameras in every hall, but not all the ones off the Strip, like the Beachcomber, had caught up.

Brass nodded. "It's set up in the main security room-waiting for you, whenever you're ready."

When they were safely alone in the elevator, away from guests and staff, Grissom turned to Brass. "You tell the manager we'll be done when we're done. I don't care if he has to use a cherry picker to get these people out of their rooms, they're not going to disturb my crime scene. The hotel gets it back when my people have finished with it."

Brass held up his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay, I'll tell him. I just wanted to save the guy for you to alienate."

Taking a deep breath, Grissom let his head drop a little as he exhaled. "Tell him we'll work as fast as we can, but this is not fast work."

The elevator dinged, the door slid open, and it began. Stepping out, Grissom looked to his left where Detective Erin Conroy, stood interviewing a twenty-something young man who wore a white shirt, black bow tie and black slacks-a waiter.

The CSI group paused to snap on their latex gloves.

"Guy's a spitting image for David Copperfield," Warrick said softly, behind Grissom.

"The waiter," Sara said, amused. "Yeah-spot on."

Grissom turned to them. "Who?"

Sara's eyebrows climbed. "Grissom-you live in Vegas and you don't know who David Copperfield is?"

"A Dickens character," Grissom said. "Is this pertinent?"

Sara and Warrick, silenced, exchanged glances.

Moving forward, Brass on his left, Warrick and Sara behind him, Grissom stopped in front of a uniformed officer on watch at the near end of the crime scene. Beyond the officer, Grissom saw the body slumped in a doorway alcove; a large, circular, silver tray lay on the carpet across the hall; and spaghetti, meat sauce, and the components of a tossed green salad lay scattered everywhere. A white carnation, spilled out of its vase, lay at the corpse's feet like an impromptu funeral offering.

"Anyone been through here since you arrived?" Grissom asked.

Garcia shook his head. He pointed to a rangy officer at the other end of the hall. "My partner, Patterson, had the manager let him up the fire stairs down there."

"Good work."

"Thank you, sir." Turning to Brass, Grissom asked, "Any idea who our victim is?"

"Sure-'John Smith.' "

Grissom raised an eyebrow.

Brass shrugged elaborately. "That's how he registered. Paid for everything in cash too."

"Right. You check for a wallet?"

Brass shook his head. "Waiting for you to clear the scene. I used to have your job, remember?"

Brass had indeed been the CSI supervisor until not so long ago; he'd been something of a prick, in fact, but had mellowed since returning to Homicide.

Grissom asked, "Your people canvassing the guests?"

"They're on it now-they started at either end, so they don't disturb the scene."

"Good call. And?"

"Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything."

Stepping in carefully, Grissom bent over the body.

Lying on his stomach, head just slightly to one side, his brown eyes open, glazed, staring at nothing, John Smith looked surprised more than anything else. Cautiously, Grissom changed position to better see the wound. Clean, double tap, small caliber; Brass was probably right-a .25. The odd thing was the placement. Two small holes formed a colon in the center back of John Smith's skull, and-if Grissom didn't miss his bet-almost exactly one inch between them.

Grissom felt gingerly for a wallet, found nothing, gave up and rose; then he turned to his CSIs. "Footprints first, you know the drill. If this guy wasn't Peter Pan, he left his mark."

Warrick nodded, alertness in the seemingly sleepy eyes. "All comes down to shoe prints."

"Yep," Sara said.

Grissom stepped aside so Warrick and Sara and their field kits could pass. "Sara, you do the fingerprints. Warrick the photos."

"Good thing I skipped breakfast," Sara said.

"Least there's no bugs yet," Warrick said to her. Bugs and larva were about the only thing that threw the strong-spined Sidle.

"I wouldn't bet on that," Grissom said. "This hotel might not like it, but our little friends are here."

Sara and Warrick began by scouring the entire crime scene for footprints. This would take a while, so Grissom followed Brass over to where policewoman Conroy stood with the waiter.

Flicking the badge on his breast pocket, Brass said to the waiter, "I'm Captain Brass and this is CSI Supervisor Grissom."

The skinny dark-haired waiter nodded to them.

Conroy, her voice flat, said, "This is Robert La-Fay. . . ."

"Bobby," the man interjected.

She went on as if he hadn't spoken. ". . . a room-service waiter. He was taking an order to room . . ." She checked her notes. ". . . four-twenty, but he never made it. Ran into the killer."

Turning sharply to the waiter, Grissom asked, "Mr. LaFay . . . Bobby-you saw the killer?"

LaFay shrugged his narrow shoulders. "Sort of . . . not really. He was standing over the body, his back to me. Jesus, the guy was already down and he shot him again, right in the back of the head! Then he heard me and turned around, and blocked his face with his arm-you know, like Dracula with his cape?"

"Bobby, did you get any kind of look at his face?"

"No. Not really."

"Was he a big man, small man, average?"

"Mostly what I saw was the gun. It seemed so big and it was the second gun I'd seen tonight."

Grissom and Brass exchanged glances, and the former said, "Second gun?"

The waiter nodded. "Up in eight-thirteen. Big guy, had a cannon on his nightstand. He said he was FBI, but . . ."

"FBI?" Brass said, incredulously.

"You didn't believe him?" Grissom asked.

"Nope."

Grissom gave Brass another quick look, then returned his attention to LaFay. "So, you saw the killer here-and then?"

His eyes widened. "Then I took the hell off toward the elevator and I guess he went the other way."

"Down the hall?"

"Yeah. Anyway, he didn't shoot at me that I know of."

Brass said, "Bobby, wouldn't you know if you were shot at?"

"I'm not sure. That gun wasn't very loud."

Eyebrows up, Brass asked, "No?"

"No. Loud enough to scare the crap outa me, though."

Brass grunted a laugh, but Grissom was thinking he'd have to tell Warrick to dust that stairwell. "Can you tell us anything about the killer?"

"I didn't see him good at all."

"Think, Bobby. Close your eyes and visualize."

LaFay did as he was told, his brow furrowing. "White guy."

"Good. What else do you see, Bobby?"

"Older guy."

"Older?"

"Forty maybe, maybe even older."

Feeling suddenly ancient, Grissom nodded his encouragement. "Anything else? Scars? Tattoos?"

The waiter shook his head. "Nope."

"What was he wearing? Shut your eyes, Bobby. Visualize."

". . . Jacket-a suit coat." His eyes popped open and he grinned. "I remember that! 'cause afterward, when I had time to think about it, I wondered why anybody would wear a suit coat in Vegas in July."

"Good, good-anything else?"

"Nope. Mr. Grissom, I can close my eyes till tomorrow this time, and I won't see anything else."

Grissom granted the waiter a smile, touched his arm encouragingly. "Mr. LaFay, do you think you could identify the killer?"

The waiter thought for a moment, looked at Grissom and shook his head slowly. "No. . . . That good I can't visualize."

Grissom and Brass thanked him, then rejoined Warrick and Sara. They found Warrick kneeling over something on the floor as, nearby, Sara carefully bagged a piece of tomato.

"Got anything?" Grissom asked.

"I've got a footprint in the blood," Warrick said, "but it's smeared, like the guy slipped trying to take off."

Carefully stepping around Sara, Grissom moved in next to Warrick and followed Warrick's gaze.

Warrick was right: the footprint was useless. Turning on his haunches and lowering his head, Grissom carefully studied the hallway. "Look," he said pointing another three feet down the hall, behind Warrick. "Another one."

Warrick got to it, checked it, then turned back to Grissom. "Smeared too."

His head still bent down near the floor, Grissom said, "Go another yard."

"I don't see anything."

"Ever use Leuco Crystal Violet?"

Warrick shrugged. "Yeah, sure, but it's been a while."

Grissom grinned. "Now's your chance to get back in practice."

Brass walked up as Warrick withdrew a spray bottle from his black field-kit bag. "What's that?"

"See the spot on the carpeting?" Grissom asked.

The detective shrugged. "All I see is a dirty carpet."

"There's a bloody footprint there."

"Really."

"Yes-we just can't see it."

Brass frowned. "A bloody footprint we can't see?"

"The red cells have all been rubbed off the shoe, but the hemoglobin and white cells remain."

Warrick carefully sprayed an area of the rug and picked up the lecture. "This is Leuco Crystal Violet-a powder. But here today on the Home Shopping Network, we've added it to a solution of sulfosalicylic acid, sodium acetate, and hydrogen peroxide."

With a small chuckle, Brass asked, "If it's going to explode, you mind giving me a heads up?"

As the solution began to work, Grissom jumped back in. "It's going to work like a dye and bring out the footprint in that dirty carpet."

"No way."

"Way," Grissom said as the spot on the floor turned purple, showing the outline of a running shoe.

"About a size eleven, I'd say," Warrick said. "Now we photograph it."

Brass asked, "Can you match that to anything?"

Grissom nodded. "Once we get it back to the lab, we'll tell you exactly what kind of shoe that print belongs to. After the database tells us, that is. Then, when we get a suspect, we'll be able to compare this to a shoe of his and give you an exact match."

"Hey, Grissom," Sara called. "All I'm finding is pasta and a salad. And let me tell you, the buffet at Caesar's is better."

"Keep digging, anyway. And, Warrick?"

Warrick's head bobbed up. "Yeah, Gris?"

"Make sure you do the stairwell-that's the way Elvis left the building."

Warrick nodded.

"So-mob hit?" Brass asked.

Grissom led Brass back up the hall toward the elevators. "Too soon to tell."

"Robbery gone wrong?"

Grissom ignored the question. "Let's go see the videotape."

"Go ahead," Brass said. "I'll join you after I head upstairs and talk to that guy first."

Grissom's eyes tightened. "Our FBI man with the cannon?"

"Precisely."

"The tape can wait. I'll come with you."

"Fine. You interface so well with the FBI, after all."

Upstairs, Brass led the way out of the elevator. Grissom slid in next to him as they moved down the hall toward room 813. Pulling his service revolver from its holster, Brass signaled for Grissom to hang back out of the alcove.

Frowning, Grissom stopped short of the doorway as Brass moved into the alcove and knocked on the door with his left hand.

"Just a sec," said a muffled voice beyond the door.

His feet set, Brass leveled his .38 at the door, which thankfully had no peephole. Peeking around the corner, Grissom watched as the door cracked slowly open. He saw the big man in boxer shorts-and the monstrous automatic in his beefy hand.

And Grissom said, "Gun!"

Brass ducked out of the alcove, plastered himself to the wall, away from the door, and yelled, "Police! Put that gun down, and open the door, and put your hands up-high!"

Silence.

"Do it now!" Brass said.

The door opened and the big man-hands way up-stepped back. His expression was one of alarm, and he was nodding toward the nearby bed, on which the pistol had been tossed.

"I'm unarmed!" he said. "Unarmed . . ."

Brass forced the big man up against a wall.

"Spread 'em."

He did as he was told and Grissom eased into the room behind the pair as Brass frisked the man.

"Why the gun, sir?" Grissom asked, his voice cool.

Over his shoulder, the big man said, "I deliver jewelry. It's for protection."

Brass jumped in. "Did you know a murder was committed downstairs this morning?"

The man looked thunderstruck. "No! Hell no! You don't . . . you don't think I did it?"

Grissom moved forward. "Let's slow down for a moment. What's your name, sir?"

"Ron Orrie."

"ID?" Brass asked.

Orrie nodded toward the nightstand. "My wallet's right there."

"Do you have a permit for the pistol?"

"In the wallet, too."

Grissom studied the gun for a moment, a .45. "Is this your only handgun?"

Looking nervous, Orrie nodded. "Only one I have with me."

Glancing toward Brass, Grissom shook his head. "Wrong weapon. Too big. John Smith was killed with something smaller."

Brass didn't seem so eager to let Orrie off the hook. "Why did you tell the waiter you were with the FBI?"

Orrie shrugged. "I didn't want to explain my business. The more people that know what I do, the better chance I'll get knocked over. It was my own damn fault. Normally, I wouldn't have left the gun laying out. But I'd ordered breakfast from room service and he showed up before I was completely dressed and had it holstered."

The detective looked skeptical.

Grissom thumbed through the wallet, finding a New Jersey driver's license and concealed weapons permits from both Jersey and New York. "You are in fact Ronald Eugene Orrie," Grissom said as he compared the photo on the license to the man, "and you have up-to-date concealed weapons permits."

"I know."

"With your permission, I'd like to have your hands checked for residue."

"What . . . what kind of residue?"

"The kind a gun leaves when you fire it."

"I haven't fired a gun in months!"

"Good. Any objection?"

"No . . . no."

"Thank you. Someone from criminalistics will come to see you, within the hour."

The man winced. "But can you make me stay in this room? I don't mean to be uncooperative, but . . ."

A frown seemed to involve Brass's whole body, not just his mouth. His whole demeanor said, I knew it couldn't be this easy, and Grissom's eyes replied, They never are.

Brass said, "Mr. Orrie, do you have a concealed weapons permit from the state of Nevada?"

Orrie shook his head.

"Then you know you can't leave this room with that gun, correct?"

The man nodded.

"If I catch you on the street with it, I'm going to bust you."

"Yes, sir."

"And don't tell anyone else you're with the FBI."

"No, sir . . . I mean, yes, sir."

"And wait here until somebody from the crime lab comes to see you."

"Yes, sir."

"And if we decide to search your hotel room, will you require us to get a warrant?"

"No, sir."

"Are we done here?" Grissom asked.

Brass still seemed to want to hang on to the only suspect he had. Finally, he said, "Yeah, we're done."

Grissom said, "Let's go look at the tapes."

2

NICK STOKES, AT THE WHEEL OF THE CRIME LAB'S TWIN BLACK Chevy Tahoe, threw a smile and a glance out his window, as if someone on the sidelines of his life might be able to make sense of it-a ref, maybe. "Can you believe this shit?" Nick asked, as he drove up the Strip in medium traffic. "Only fifteen minutes before the end of shift!"

In the passenger seat, Catherine Willows's reddish-blonde hair bounced as she shushed him, her cell phone in hand. Catherine tapped numbers into the phone and punched SEND, then waited impatiently.

The phone was picked up on the third ring. "Hello."

"Mrs. Goodwin?" Catherine asked.

"Yes?"

"It's Catherine. We caught a case. Can you get Lindsey off to school?"

The woman's voice was warm, even through the cell phone. "Sure, no problem."

"How is she?"

"Sleeping like an angel."

Catherine felt a heaviness in her chest and a burning behind her eyes. "Thanks, Mrs. Goodwin. I owe you."

"Don't be silly," Mrs. Goodwin said, "we'll be fine," and hung up.

She'd no sooner pressed the END button on her phone than Nick started again on his litany of woe.

"Do you know who was going to meet me for breakfast after shift?"

"Surprise me."

"A cheerleader."

"Really."

"Yeah, a beautiful UNLV cheerleader."

"As opposed to one of those homely UNLV cheerleaders."

"Now I gotta miss breakfast. This girl was getting out of bed for me."

Despite her anxiety over Lindsey, Catherine couldn't help but laugh. "No comment."

A chagrined smile flickered across Nick's well-chiseled features.

Catherine liked the idea that Nick finally seemed to be coming out of his shell; though the demands of the job kept her-and Nick-from thinking about their own problems, giving them focus, she knew that crime scene investigation was also the kind of work from which you should have at least an occasional break. She'd finally learned as much, and she hoped that now Nick would too.

She asked him, "What do we know about this call?"

Shaking his head, Nick said, "Some construction workers got an early start today, trying to beat the heat. They found a body under a junky old trailer."

"New body, or junky old body?"

"That's all I know, Cath."

They passed the Mandalay Bay, crossed Russell Road, and turned into the construction site for the new Romanov Hotel and Casino. Supposedly the Strip's next great resort, Romanov would play thematically on the opulence of Czarist Russia, the main building modeled after Nicholas and Alexandra's palace in St. Petersburg, featuring rooms based on those of the actual palace. And if Catherine knew anything about Vegas, the joint would also have dancing Rasputins and Anastasias.

Right now, however, a construction crew had been engaged to clear away debris from the years the lot had stood vacant and become something of a dumping ground. The sun glinted off metallic garbage and presented a rocky, rubble-strewn landscape more suited for Mad Max than Russian royalty. A line of pickups on the far side told her that a pretty good-sized crew was working at the site.

She spotted a semicircle of construction workers standing around the remnants of an old mobile home trailer, staring at something on the ground. Behind them a few feet sat an idling hydraulic excavator, its bucket still hanging over the back of a dump truck where it had been left by its operator. Off to one side, maybe twenty yards away, sat two black-and-whites, the patrolmen leaning against them, sipping coffee, shooting the breeze. Beyond that squatted the unmarked Ford of an LVPD detective.

Nick braked the SUV to a stop near the yellow dump truck. Catherine threw open the door only to be met by a wall of heat that told her she'd be sorry for leaving the comfort of the air-conditioned truck. Nick piled out the other side, they grabbed their field kits, and Catherine led the way to the huddle of men.

Burly, crew-cut Sergeant O'Riley separated from the construction workers and met them halfway.

"Never seen anything like it," he said.

"What?" Nick asked.

"The guy's a damned mummy."

"A mummy," Catherine said.

O'Riley extended his arms, monster fashion. "You know. A mummy."

Nick shrugged at Catherine. "A mummy."

She smirked at him. "Come on, daddy-o. . . ."

The cluster of construction workers split and made room for them to pass.

The rusted hulk of the former trailer looked as though God had reached down and pulled out a fistful of its guts. Through the hole, beneath what was left of the floor, something vaguely human stared upward with dark eye sockets in what looked like a brown leather head.

"Anybody gone in there?" she asked.

The construction workers shook their heads; some stepped backward.

She set down her field kit and turned to O'Riley. Sweat ran down his face in long rivulets, his color starting to match that of his grotesque sports coat. "You wanna fill me in, Sergeant?"

"The crew came in at four-thirty. Trying to get ahead, work when it was cooler, so they could knock off at noon."

Catherine nodded. It was a common practice in a desert community where the afternoon heat index would probably top 130 degrees.

"They'd only been at it about an hour or so when they found the mummy," O'Riley said, waving toward the trailer.

"Okay, get a couple of uniforms to cordon off the area."

O'Riley nodded.

"We want to make sure that he's the only one."

Frowning, O'Riley said, "The only one?"

Pulling out her camera and checking it, Catherine said, "A lot of stuff's been dumped here over the years, Sarge. Let's make sure there's only been one body discarded."

Nick, at her side, said, "You think we got Gacy's backyard here?"

"Could be. Can't rule it out."

O'Riley called to the uniforms and they tossed their coffee cups into a barrel and plodded toward him.

"Oh," she said, lightly, "and you might as well send the construction workers home. We're going to be here most of the day."

Nodding, O'Riley spoke briefly to the uniforms, then talked to the foreman, and slowly the scene turned from a still life into a moving picture. The workers dispersed, their dusty pickups driving off in every direction as the patrolmen strung yellow crime-scene tape around the junk-infested lot.

"Times like this," Nick said, as the yellow-and-black boundary took form, "I wish I'd invested in the company that makes crime-scene tape."

"It's right in there with the smiley face," she agreed.

Catherine stepped into blue coveralls, from her suitcaselike field kit, and zipped them up; she was all for gathering evidence, just not on her clothes. She put on a yellow hard hat, the fitted band feeling cool around her head, for a few seconds anyway.

While Nick and the others searched the surrounding area, Catherine took photos of the trailer. She started with wide shots and slowly moved in closer and closer to the leathery corpse. By the time she was ready to move inside the wreck, with the body, Nick had returned and the cops were back to standing around.

"Anything?" she asked as she reloaded the camera and set it on the hood of the Tahoe.

"No," Nick said. "Our 'mummy' has the place to himself."

"Okay, I'm going in." She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and picked up her camera again.

"Careful."

Catherine tossed him a look.

"I'm just saying, Cath, it's rusty metal, unstable . . ."

"I've had my tetanus shot."

Entering through a huge bitelike hole in the trailer's skin, she picked her way through the rubble, slipped through the gash in the floor and slid down next to the body, half of it now exposed to the sunlight pouring in through the wide tear in the roof. The ground felt cooler in the pools of shadow beneath the trailer. She noticed hardly any smell from the cadaver and, judging from the condition of the skin, he'd been dead for quite a long time.

"White male," she said, snapping the first of half a dozen photos.

Outside, Nick repeated her words as he wrote them in his notebook.

Finishing the photos, she set the camera to one side. The body had been laid to rest on top of a piece of sheet metal, probably a slab of the trashed trailer's skin, and slid in under the dilapidated derelict. Though the killer had hidden the body well, he'd also managed to protect it so that instead of rotting, the corpse had mummified in the dry Nevada air.

They did indeed have a mummy of sorts.

Moving carefully, Catherine examined the body from skull to ox-blood loafers. The eyes and soft tissue were gone, leaving empty sockets, and the skin had contracted around the bone, resembling discolored beef jerky. Shocks of salt-and-pepper hair remained and the teeth were still intact. Good.

The clothes had held up surprisingly well, though the narrow-lapeled suit had probably faded from popularity well before this poor guy ended up buried in it. She checked the victim's coat pockets as best she could and found nothing. She could tell, even through the clothes, that some of the man's organs had survived. Shrunk, but survived. It wasn't that unusual in a case like this. Moving down, she went through the corpse's pants pockets.

"No wallet," she called.

Nick repeated her words.

In the front left pocket she found a handful of change and counted it quickly. "Two-fifteen in change, the newest coin a nineteen-eighty-four quarter." She put the coins in an evidence bag, sealed it, and set it to one side.

Again, Nick repeated what she had said.

She looked at the victim's hands and said, "He'll never play the piano again."

"What?"

Shaking her head, she said, "The killer hacked off the victim's fingertips at the first knuckle."

"Trying to make it harder to ID the guy if anybody ever found the body," Nick said.

"Yeah, looks like he used pruning shears or something. Pretty clean amputations, but there's a gold ring that got left behind."

Picking up the camera, she snapped off several quick shots of the mummy's hands showing the shrunken, blackened stubs of the fingers, and the gold ring. She set down the camera and, lifting the mummy's right hand carefully, she easily slid the band off the ring finger.

"Gold ring," she repeated, "with an 'F' inlaid in diamonds."

"Interesting," Nick said, then he repeated her description.

"It would not seem to be a robbery, yes," Catherine said, as she pulled an evidence bag from her pocket, put the ring inside and sealed it.

"Cause of death?" Nick called.

"Not sure-nothing visible in the front."

Gingerly, she eased the corpse onto its left side and looked at the sheet metal underneath the body, but saw no sign of bugs or any other scavengers. That would disappoint Grissom, who did love his creepy crawlies. The suit seemed to be stained darker on the back and, moving slowly toward the head, Catherine found what she was looking for.

"Two entry wounds," she announced. "Base of the skull, looks like a pro."

"Firearm?"

"Firearm is my call."

"Anything else?"

She didn't want there to be anything else. The heat now pressed down on her from above. Any relief brought on by the cooler soil down here had evaporated and sweat rolled down her back, her arms, and her face.

But she forced herself to stay focused on the job at hand. Then, just to the left of the mummy's head, something caught her attention, something black poking out of the dirt. She at first thought it was one of Grissom's little friends, a bug; but closer inspection proved it to be metallic: a gun barrel, almost completely buried! Almost. . . .

She picked up the camera and clicked off several more shots.

"What have you got?" Nick asked.

"At least the barrel of a gun, maybe more."

Maneuvering around the body, Catherine pulled herself closer. Carefully, she dug around the black cylinder and left it completely exposed. Though the pistol was gone, the killer had figured he'd fool the firearms examiners by leaving the barrel with the victim.

More than one way to skin a cat, she thought, as she shot three more photos, then bagged the evidence. Catherine Willows knew lots of other ways to catch a murderer besides matching bullets.

She glanced back into the hole from which she had extracted the barrel, and saw nothing . . . or was that something? Pulling out her mini-flash, Catherine turned it on and stroked its beam over the shallow hole. A small bump, slightly lighter in color than the rest of the dirt around it, showed at one end of the hole.

Excavating with care, she uncovered the remnants of an old cigarette filter. Part of this murder case, she wondered, or the detritus of a field used as a garbage dump for the last quarter century? Better safe than sorry, she told herself, and snapped some pictures before bagging it.

"One last thing," she said.

"Yeah?" Nick said.

"Cigarette filter. I've bagged it."

Climbing out of the wrecked trailer, she handed the evidence bags to Nick.

"Small caliber," he said, holding up the clear bag, peering in at the gun barrel. "A twenty-five?"

She nodded as O'Riley came up to them.

"Any ID?" the detective asked.

Catherine said, "I didn't find a wallet or anything and his fingertips are gone."

O'Riley frowned. "No fingertips?"

"Don't worry, Sarge. We can still print him."

"It's like Roscoe Pitts," Nick said.

O'Riley looked confused. "Roscoe Pitts? I thought you said . . ."

"No," Catherine said. "Roscoe Pitts was a bad guy back in the forties. Had a doctor remove his fingerprints, then had skin grafted to his fingers from under his arms."

Nick picked up the story. "He walked around like this for weeks." Nick crossed his arms, his hands flat against each armpit. "When he got them cut free," Nick said, wiggling his fingers, "smooth skin."

Getting it, O'Riley said, "No fingerprints."

Catherine grinned. "What Roscoe didn't understand was that, A, with smooth fingertips, he'd made himself stand out even more, and, B, you can get prints past the first knuckle."

"So he got busted?" O'Riley asked.

"Almost immediately."

"And that's how you're going to ID this guy?"

Nick nodded. "If our mummy's in the computer, we'll know who he is before the end of the day."

They turned when they heard one of the EMTs swearing.

"What's the matter?" Catherine asked.

The EMT, a big guy with a blond crewcut, held up one of the loafers with the foot still snugly inside. "I'm sorry. It just came off. It's like trying to pick up a potato chip."

Catherine said, "Nick, let's get the hands bagged first, then help these guys before they dismember the whole body."

With a grin, Nick said, "Sure-I always listen to my mummy."

Catherine tried not to smile, and failed.

Then, two small figures in the midst of a vast, crime-scene-taped lot, they got back to work.

3

THE SECURITY ROOM TOOK UP MUCH OF THE SECOND FLOOR of the hotel, an anonymous blue-gray chamber where banks of VCRs covered one full wall, a security guard checking off a list on a clipboard whenever he changed tapes. The adjacent wall, constructed of one-way glass, overlooked the casino floor, the frantic universe of gamblers on silent display.

The east wall and most of the middle of the room were taken up by security guards sitting in front of computer screens. Some seemed to be watching one camera feed or another, while several more seemed to be monitoring gauges. One gauge, Grissom noticed, was the temperature inside the casino. A huge console inset with nine video monitors filled the south wall. In front of it sat a young Asian man, in attire similar to a desk clerk, tapping on a keyboard.

"Let's see," the computer tech said. "The fourth floor hall, between when?"

Behind him, Brass checked his notes. "Five-thirty and six o'clock this morning."

Grissom watched as the center video screen went black, then flipped to a grainy black-and-white shot of a vacant corridor, a time code in the bottom right-hand corner, the date in the left. "Can we speed it up until someone comes into sight?"

The guard said, "Sure. Probably not much traffic at that hour." He tapped some more and nothing seemed to happen in the hallway, but the time code was racing ahead. A man appeared and, as suddenly as the numbers had sped up, it slowed to normal.

"Mr. Smith Goes to Vegas," Brass said.

Picking up the narrative, Grissom said, "Heading for his room-practically running. Does he know his killer is coming for him?"

Starring in the documentary of his death, Smith ducked into an alcove about halfway down the hall on the right-hand side. In less than twenty seconds, a second man entered the corridor at the far end. This man stayed near the center of the hallway, glancing from side to side as he went, careful to keep his head lowered so his face never appeared on the video.

"Camera shy," Grissom said. "Stalking his victim-here! He ducks in after John Smith."

The videotape had no sound, so they didn't hear either gunshot. But when the killer stepped back into the hall, they saw the muzzle flash of the second shot. Bobby LaFay entered the hallway, the killer spun to face him, and the tray of food fell to the floor soundlessly as LaFay ran back toward the elevator. The killer turned back this way, head still lowered, slipped in Smith's blood, then ran headlong toward the camera, throwing up an arm to cover his face. He passed the camera and disappeared, presumably down the fire stairs to the first floor.

"Run it again," Grissom said.

Now that he knew what happened, he would be free to hone in on the details.

Again Smith scrambled down the hall wearing a dark suit, a look of fear etched on his face as he fumbled with his keycard until he ducked out of sight into the alcove. Next came the killer, a light-colored sports jacket over a light-colored shirt, dark slacks, possibly jeans, and dark shoes, maybe running shoes of some kind, the small pistol already in his right hand, his left hand also up in front of him, doing something. What was that about? Grissom asked himself.

"Run it back ten seconds," Grissom told the tech, adding, "and can you slow it down?"

The tech tapped the keys, the time code reversed ten seconds, and the tape ran forward again, this time crawling along in slow motion. The killer entered the corridor, his two hands up in front of his chest, his right holding a gun, his left . . .

"He's screwing on a noise suppresser," Grissom said.

"Mob hit," Brass said automatically.

"Too soon to say," Grissom said just as automatically.

With the silencer in place, the killer ducked into the alcove out of sight. Then Smith's feet appeared as he fell.

Grissom said, "Impact forced him face first into the door. He hit it, then slid down, his feet coming out into the hall."

Stepping back, the killer pointed the pistol at his fallen victim and fired a second shot, the muzzle flash a bright white light. And at that precise moment came Bobby LaFay carrying his tray. Once again the killer turned, raising the pistol toward the waiter, the tray of food spilled all over the floor, this time not only silently but in slow motion, and both men took off running in opposite directions. The killer sprinted by one more time, his arm still up, his face still hidden, no distinguishing marks, no rings on his fingers, no bracelet on his wrist, nothing.

Turning to Brass, Grissom said, "You're bringing in all the tapes from this morning, right?"

"Yeah."

"Then I'm going back upstairs."

Brass made some quick arrangements with the tech, then accompanied Grissom back to the fourth floor, where Warrick approached them, a plastic evidence bag in hand.

"What have you got for me?" Grissom asked.

Holding the bag up for inspection, Warrick said, "Five large-money clip in his front left pants pocket."

"Well, the tape didn't look like a robbery anyway," Grissom said.

Warrick asked, "Anything else good on the tape?"

"Looks like a pretty typical mob hit," Brass said.

Giving Brass a sideways look, Grissom said, "Let the evidence tell us what it was. Don't be so quick to judge."

Brass rolled his eyes.

Sara ambled up to join the group. "Found a shell casing under the body, but there's no sign of the second one."

Grissom nodded and led them back to the murder scene.

"I've gone over every square inch of this hallway, Grissom," Sara said somewhat peevishly. "There isn't a shell casing here anywhere."

Warrick nodded his agreement. "We've been over it twice, Gris-there's nothing."

Grissom's eyes moved over the hallway, took in the spilled tomato sauce and the trail of water from the vase that had held the carnation. His eyes followed the trail of wet carpeting, his gaze finally settling on the door across the hall. "Can we get into that room?"

"Someone's in there," Brass said, pulling out a list from his pocket.

Careful where he placed his feet, Grissom moved into the opposite alcove and knocked on the door.

"Mr. and Mrs. Gary Curtis," Brass announced.

Grissom heard a shuffling of feet on the other side and the door slowly opened. He stood face to face with a fortyish man with a peppery goatee.

"Can I help you?" the man asked.

Looking down at the end of the trail of water in the corner of the doorjamb, Grissom saw the brass shell casing winking up at him. "You already have, Mr. Curtis, you already have."

Brass said to the guest, "We're conducting an investigation, Mr. Curtis."

"I know," Curtis said, mildly annoyed. "I was interviewed already. How much longer are my wife and I going to be confined to our room?"

Brass smiled meaninglessly. "Not long. Be a good citizen. Murder was committed on your doorstep."

Curtis frowned, shrugged.

Ignoring all this, Grissom had bent down to scoop the casing into a small plastic bag; now he was holding the bagged shell casing up to the light. "No such thing as a perfect crime."

Brass said, "That's all, Mr. Curtis," and the guest was shut back in his room.

Grissom pulled a keycard from his pocket. He glanced at Warrick and Sara. "Party in Mr. Smith's suite. Interested in going?"

Warrick asked, "Get that keycard from the manager?"

With a quick nod, Grissom said, "You bagged the victim's, right?"

"You know I did."

"Well, you can't use that one, 'cause it's evidence. But now you two can do the room."

Warrick accepted the keycard.

Sara asked her boss, "What about you?"

"I'll take the stairwell."

"We're on it," Warrick said, and they retreated across the hall.

The EMTs now loaded John Smith onto a gurney and wheeled him down the hall toward the elevator.

"You can let these people off this floor now," Grissom said to Brass. "Have them take all of their bags with them-the manager needs to get them new rooms."

"It's a busy time of year," Brass said. "Might not be rooms available. . . ."

"Then have 'em pitch tents in the lobby, I don't care. This is a crime scene, Jim."

"Yeah, I was just starting to gather that."

The sarcasm didn't register on Grissom. "Station some of your men in the hall, though, and keep them to this side." He pointed to his left. "We don't want them tromping through like a chorus line. Just get them on the elevator and get 'em out of here."

Brass nodded and got out his cell phone. Warrick and Sara disappeared into the victim's room while Brass and Grissom walked to the stairwell.

The first thing Grissom did was run a piece of duct tape across the door latch so they could get back into the fourth-floor corridor. The fire escape stairwell consisted of eight textured metal steps rising to a metal landing, then did a one-eighty down eight more stairs to the third floor. No point in working the textured stairs, but the landings made Grissom smile.

"Sit on these and you'll be okay," Grissom said, pointing to the flight up to the next floor.

"Swell," Brass said, and sat, and made his phone calls.

When the fourth-floor landing yielded nothing, Grissom moved down to the next one.

On his hands and knees, he used a rubber roller to flatten a Mylar sheet on the landing. Black on the downside and silver on the upside, the sheet would help him lift footprints out of the dust. With the sheet pressed flat, Grissom turned to the small gray box nearby. The box's front contained a switch, a red light, a voltmeter, and two electric leads, one ending in an alligator clip, the other ending in a stainless steel probe roughly a quarter-inch in diameter.

Brass, off the phone, asked, "How about footprints?"

"We'll know in a second."

Grissom fastened an alligator clip to one side of the Mylar sheet, then touched the probe to the other side of the sheet. When the meter on the front of the box spiked, he smiled and removed the probe. Turning off the box, he took off the alligator clip, then turned his attention to the Mylar sheet.

"Here we go," he said, rubbing his palms on his pants legs.

Carefully, he pulled back the Mylar sheet, revealing two distinct footprints, one going up, one going down.

"Wouldn't you know," Grissom said. "One of them stepped right on top of the killer's print."

"One of them?"

"Either your man Patterson or the manager. Judging from the print, probably the manager."

"What makes you think it's the killer's footprint?"

"Running shoe. Looks like the bloody one in the hall, but it might just be wishful thinking, and the manager is wearing something smooth with a rubber heel. Florsheim maybe."

Next, Grissom dusted the right-hand banister between the landing and the third floor. The railing on the same side between the fourth floor and the landing yielded dozens of prints. The odds of getting a useful one from the killer were maybe one in a thousand or so. Guests, hotel staff, both security and maintenance, fire marshals, and who knew who else had touched these railings since the last time they were cleaned.

Looking up through the railing at Brass, Grissom asked, "Can you find out who cleans this stairwell and how often?"

"No problem. Find anything?"

"Anything?" Grissom echoed, with a hollow laugh that made its own echo in the stairwell. "More like everything. It's a fingerprint convention."

Grissom spent the better part of an hour and a half, finishing in the stairwell. He gathered scores of prints, but had very little confidence that any would prove helpful. The downside of public places, even one as seldom used as this stairwell, was that crime scene investigators could get buried under the sheer volume of information, most of which had no bearing at all on their case.

The hotel room looked like any other one in Vegas, with only a few differences. The bedspread lay askew, puddling near the bottom of the bed. A champagne bottle sat on the dresser with two glasses next to it. Clothes hung in the small closet and the victim's shaving kit was laid out neatly in the bathroom. A briefcase, a pile of papers and a Palm Pilot lay arrayed on the round table in the corner.

"I'll take the table and the bathroom," Sara said to Warrick, "you get the dresser and the bed."

"I had the bed last time."

Shaking her head, she said, "It's all the same, Warrick."

He gave her a slow look. "Like hell it is."

She threw her hands up. "Okay, you take the bathroom. I'll take the bed."

Glad he didn't have to enter the DNA cesspool that he knew existed on those sheets, Warrick entered the bathroom. On the right, the sink was clean. Next to it, on the counter, the signs of an exceptionally neat man. A washcloth had been laid out, a razor, toothbrush, toothpaste, and a comb lay on top of it, each one approximately an inch apart. Behind them stood deodorant, shaving cream, mouthwash and aftershave, each with the label facing front, each item about one inch from its neighbor, soldiers at attention. Warrick took quick photos of the bathroom, then passed the camera to Sara, who did the other room.

Lifting the wastebasket onto the counter, Warrick peered inside, thinking how his job seemed at times two parts scientist, three parts janitor. All he found was the tamper-proof shrink wrap from the mouthwash bottle and some wadded-up tissues . . . but one of the tissues had a lipstick smear.

"He had a woman here," Sara called from the other room.

Warrick looked quizzically at the tissue, then into the mirror, finally out into the other room to make sure Sara wasn't just messing with him, but she was nowhere in sight. He said, "I've got a tissue with some lipstick in here, says the same thing."

"Lipstick on one of the glasses and a cigarette butt with a lipstick stain in the ashtray. I'm betting our victim didn't smoke Capris."

Exiting the bathroom, Warrick studied the skinny cigarette in the bag in Sara's hand. "Not exactly a macho cigarette, is it?"

"Unless John Smith wore lipstick, it's not his brand."

Warrick almost smiled, and Sara put the evidence bag inside her kit, then moved to another, smaller, black briefcase. Opening it, she pulled out what looked like a telephoto lens with a pistol grip on it.

"I see our friend RUVIS made the trip," Warrick said.

"Yep," Sara said, flipping the switch on the gadget-Reflective Ultra-Violet Imaging System. "If John Smith and his lady friend had sexual congress in this bed, RUVIS will show us."

"You make it sound so political."

The machine had been on for less than ten seconds when Sara let out a long sigh.

Warrick asked, "What's wrong? Didn't you find anything?"

Sara rolled her eyes. "What didn't I find? These sheets are covered with stains."

She handed the RUVIS to Warrick. He turned toward the bed and looked through the lens. With only the UV illumination, the bed looked like a giant camouflage blanket as the stains shown up like large white flowers in half a dozen different spots. "Busy guy if those are all his."

"You think they are?"

"Nope. Remember when Mike Tyson got busted?"

"Sure," Sara said. "Indianapolis."

"Right. The criminalist who investigated spoke at a seminar I went to. He said the suite went for eight bills a night. And the hotel was less than a year old."

"Yeah?"

Warrick turned off the RUVIS and set it back in its case. "How many semen stains do you suppose he found?"

Sara shrugged.

"One hundred fifty-three."

Her eyes widened. "A hundred and fifty-three?"

"Yep . . . and none of them were Tyson's."

Making a face, Sara said, "I may never stay in a hotel again."

"I heard that," Warrick said, and went back to work in the bathroom. He pulled some hairs from the shower drain, but found nothing else. Within minutes, he rejoined Sara in the other room. While she continued to take samples from the bed, he bagged the Palm Pilot, the papers, the champagne bottle and glasses.

"You know," Warrick said, in the bathroom doorway, "Grissom never once mentioned anything to me, about, you know . . . me working an investigation in a casino."

Still hard at it, Sara said, "Well, that's Grissom."

"Yeah. I just wasn't sure he would ever trust me again."

Studying him now, Sara asked, "Warrick?"

"Yeah."

"Is it tough for you?"

"What?"

"Being around it. A casino, I mean."

He looked at her for a very long time. "No harder than a recovering alcoholic working a crime scene in a liquor store."

Her gaze met his. "That hard?"

A slow nod. "That hard."

Awkwardly, she said, "Look, uh . . . if I can help . . ."

"If anybody could help," he said, "we wouldn't be having this conversation."

They continued working the scene, silently.

4

THE LAS VEGAS CRIMINALISTICS DEPARTMENT-HOUSED IN A modern, rambling one-story building tucked between lush pine trees-was a rabbit warren of offices, conference rooms, and especially labs, with a lounge and locker room thrown in for the hell of it. This washed-out world of vertical blinds, fingerprint analysis, glass-and-wood walls and evidence lockers was strangely soothing to Catherine Willows-her home away from home.

Catherine had managed to pick up her daughter Lindsey from school, have a quality-time dinner, and even catch a couple hours of sleep before coming into work a little after nine in the evening.

Now, a few minutes after ten, her eyes already burned from the strain of studying the computer monitor. Buried in the minutiae of an unsolved missing persons case-this one a fifty-two-year-old white man named Frank Mayfield who had disappeared thirteen years ago-she sensed someone standing in the doorway to her left.

She turned to see Grissom there, briefcase in one hand, the other holding a stack of file folders and a precariously balanced cup of coffee. In a black short-sleeve sportshirt and gray slacks, he managed to look casual and professional at once. He held the door open with a foot.

"You're in early," he said.

"Trying to figure out who our mummy is."

His eyes tightened. "And you are . . . ?"

"Going through missing persons cases, back ten to twenty years ago. The preliminary report says Imhotep died about fifteen years ago."

He was at her side now, the coffee cup set down on the desk. "How many cases?"

"No more than grains of sand in the desert," Catherine said, stretching to release the tension in her spine. "You know, there's been over thirty-two-hundred missing persons calls in the last two years alone."

Grissom shook his head. "Any luck?"

"Not yet."

"Is this kind of fishing expedition productive?"

She smirked, shrugged. "I've got to do something. Can't use DNA or dental until we at least have some idea who our guy is."

He sat on the edge of the desk. "Got anything at all?"

"A ring with an 'F' in diamonds inlaid in it."

Grissom's eyebrows rose; he liked that. "First name or last name?"

Catherine shrugged again. "Your guess is as good as mine."

"Any other engraving? To so-and-so, from so-and-so? With love?"

"No. Just an effin' 'F.' "

Grissom raised an eyebrow. "Do we know how the victim died?"

"Shot in the head."

". . . Funny."

"Ha-ha?"

"The other kind-our hallway corpse was shot in the head."

Another smirk. "Well, nothing separating the corpses except maybe fifteen years."

Grissom pressed. "Have you fingerprinted him yet?"

"I was waiting for Nick to come in. Our mummy's in pretty bad shape. One foot already fell off when they were hauling him out from under the trailer."

"I hate when that happens."

"I figured it would be easier processing the prints with two of us."

Nodding, Grissom said, "Good call. But you're here now, and Nick isn't-how about I lend a hand?"

"Or a foot?" Her sigh turned into a yawn. "I appreciate the offer-I can use a change of scene. It's like searching for a needle in a hundred haystacks."

Grissom nodded, hefting the stack of files. "Let me put this stuff in my office and we'll get right on it."

Turning off the computer, she rose; he was already back to the door, but had left his coffee behind. Detail work on a crime scene was Grissom's strength; but in daily life he had a hint of the absent-minded professor.

Joining him at the doorway, she said, "Hey, thanks for the coffee, Grissom."

He frowned at her, as she seemed about to drink it. She handed him the cup. "I'm kidding. Come on."

In the hallway, between sips of coffee, Grissom said, "Sometimes I can be a little thoughtless."

"I wouldn't say that. Not just any guy would walk a girl to the morgue."

And soon that was where they stood, blue scrubs over their street clothes, John Doe #17 outstretched on a silver metal table in front of them, his hands still bagged at his sides.

"I can't believe we already have seventeen John Does this year," she said.

Putting on a pair of glasses, Grissom moved forward; he didn't seem to have heard her. Catherine stood back a little as he studied the corpse. She knew he loved this part of the job-he was much better with dead people than live ones. There was something almost innocent about Grissom, something pure in his love for investigation and the search for truth.

But even more, Grissom loved to learn. Each new body presented the opportunity for him to gain more knowledge to help not only this person, but other people in the future. Wherever his people skills lagged, the criminalist made up for it in a passion for serving the victims of crime, and compassion for the grieving survivors.

At first, he took in the whole body. Catherine got the impression that Grissom wasn't so much seeing the body as absorbing it. Stay curious, he always said. He circled the metal table, observing the mummy from every angle.

"Your killer did us a big favor hiding the body the way he did," Grissom said.

"You didn't crawl under a rotting trailer to get at him."

His eyes flicked to her. "You know if we lived anywhere but the desert, there wouldn't have been anything left but a few bones."

She nodded. "Your bugs got cheated out of their buffet."

He stepped in next to the body and pressed gingerly on the abdomen. "Feels like the organs might still be intact."

Grissom with a body reminded her of how Lindsey had been when Catherine had given her that glass tea set last Christmas, the little girl examining each item, careful not to damage or crack the tiny pieces as she inspected each one. The criminalist did the same thing with the mummy, poking here, prodding there, bringing the work light down to more closely examine a section of the chest.

"Okay," he said finally.

"You through?"

He looked at her sheepishly. "Sorry. This is your deal-where do you want to start?"

Before they could move, Dr. Robbins, the coroner, walked through the swinging doors, a set of X rays in one hand. "Oh, sorry-didn't know anybody was in here."

"Bad place to be startled, Doc," Catherine said with a half-smile.

Around sixty, bald with a neatly trimmed gray beard, the avuncular Robbins-like them, he was in scrubs-slid his arm out of the metal cuff of his crutch and leaned it against the wall.

"What have you got, Doc?" Grissom said.

"Cause of death." Robbins stuck the first X ray under a clip on the viewer and turned on the light. The fluorescent bulbs came to life, illuminating a side view of the skull of John Doe #17 with several dark spots readily apparent. The second X ray the coroner put up showed the back of the skull with only two dark spots. He pointed to that picture first. "These two dark spots are your entry wounds."

"Are you sure?" Grissom asked, eyes tight.

Robbins looked at Grissom the way a parent does a backward child. "Why wouldn't I be sure?"

"Have you got the right X rays?" Grissom was having a closer look-much closer. "Is this John Smith or John Doe #17?"

"The mummy, of course, John Doe #17," Robbins said, more confused than offended, now. "I don't even know who John Smith is."

"Victim from the Beachcomber," Grissom said. "Two entry wounds vertically placed almost precisely one inch apart. Just like this. . . ."

Catherine frowned, shook her head, arcs of reddish-blonde hair swinging. "The same pattern? You're kidding."

Grissom twitched half a frown back at her. "When do I kid?"

"Well," Robbins said, "there's no mistake, I haven't even seen the other corpse yet. Hell of a coincidence."

"I don't believe in coincidences," Catherine said. "There's always a way to explain them away."

Grissom shook his head slowly. "I don't deny the existence of coincidence-particularly when our corpses are separated by so many years."

Mind whirling, Catherine said, "Do we have two cases, or one case?"

Grissom's eyes almost closed; his mouth pursed. Then he said, "We have two victims. We work them as two cases. If the evidence turns them into one case, so be it. Until then . . . we live with this coincidence."

"But we keep our eyes open."

Grissom's eyes popped wide. "Always a good practice."

Pointing to the other X ray, Robbins indicated a dark spot on the right side of the forehead. "Here's a good place to start looking-there's one of your bullets. Embedded itself in the skull."

Grissom asked, "And the second one?"

"EMTs found it on the gurney when they brought him in. Little devil just rolled out."

"Where's the slug now?" Catherine asked.

"With the other evidence," Robbins said, picking up his crutch again. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I better go make the acquaintance of Mr. John Smith."

After the coroner left, Catherine and Grissom got down to work. They carefully unbagged the hands.

Grissom said, "Killer took the fingertips. Thinks he stole the victim's prints."

"I love it when we're smarter than the bad guys."

He raised a lecturing finger. "Not smarter-better informed."

"You think we should rehydrate the fingers?"

Studying the desiccated fingers, he finally said, "It might help raise the prints."

Catherine set out two large beakers, each a little more than half full of Formalin; behind her, Grissom was rustling in a drawer. When she turned back, Grissom stood next to the body with a huge pair of pruning shears.

Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly through her mouth, Catherine moved into position next to the mummy.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah." No matter how many times they did this, she never learned to accept it easily. At least this would probably be better than the times he had made her wear the skin stripped from dead hands as gloves, to provide fingerprinting pressure.

She held the leathery right hand still as Grissom stepped in and lopped it off. Catherine flinched a little, the sound echoing in her ears like the snapping of a pencil. She took the hand, slipped it into one of the beakers and they moved to the other side of the body and repeated the process with the left hand.

Setting the shears aside, Grissom said, "I can't get over the similarity of those wounds."

Slowly, Catherine turned the mummy's head so Grissom could see the bullet holes.

He stared at the wound. "You know what Elizabeth Kubler-Ross said?"

"About what?"

"Coincidence."

"Why don't you tell me."

He gave her an unblinking gaze, as innocent as a newborn babe, as wise as the ages. " 'There are no mistakes, no coincidences-all events are blessings given to us to learn from.' "

"I thought you didn't deny the existence of coincidence."

"I don't accept it, either."

"Identical wounds, over a decade apart. And from this we learn . . . ?"

He shook his head. "Just keep digging. It's two separate cases. We treat it as two separate cases."

Was he trying to convince her, she wondered, or himself?

Catherine examined the wounds. "It is funny."

Nodding, Grissom said, "But not ha-ha. Sooner you find out who this guy is, the sooner we can lay the coincidence issue to rest."

"Nick and I will be all over this."

Grissom granted her a tiny smile. "Keep me in the loop, Catherine."

She nodded and watched him leave. Something in his manner didn't seem right, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it; he seemed vaguely distracted, even for Grissom. She told herself to keep an eye on her boss.

In the meantime, she'd hunt up Nick and if he didn't have any ideas, she'd go back to digging in the computerized records. The hands would take about an hour to rehydrate.

Nick sat in the break room, sipping coffee, a forensics journal open in front of him.

"Hey," he said to her.

"Hey," she said.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat across the table from him. "Where have you been?"

He turned to the clock on the wall. "You mean since the shift started three minutes ago?"

Following his gaze, she looked at the clock. She grinned and shook her head. "Sorry. I came in early. Tired, I guess."

"I thought we were going to do the mummy's prints."

"Been there, done that. Grissom helped."

Nick frowned. "I wanted to lend a hand."

"So to speak." Catherine shrugged. "Grissom offered."

Nick was already over his disappointment. "Well, he's the best. Learn anything?"

"I've got the mummy's hands in the Formalin now-we can look at them later."

He grinned at her. "Isn't that an old movie?"

"What?"

"The Mummy's Hands?"

"His hands are only part of the show. We found one of the bullets in his skull. Popped up in the X ray."

"Just one?"

She nodded. "The other fell out on the gurney. We'll wait for Robbins to dig the one out of the skull, then take them both to the firearms examiner."

He sipped his coffee. "What do we do in the meantime?"

"Back to the computer for me. I've been going through missing persons cases that somehow involve the initial 'F.' "

"Seems worth doing. I think I'll go through the guy's effects-maybe I can find something."

They finished their coffee, sharing a little small talk, and exited the break room, moving off in opposite directions.

Nick went into the morgue to study John Doe #17's clothes more thoroughly. Though the suit had survived fairly well, it had now become part of the mummy, in essence, his second skin. Head wounds bleed a great deal, which was the reason for the dark stain on the back of the jacket.

The clothes gave the mummy a musty smell, not exactly the aroma Nick would have expected to find coming from a dead body. He took scrapings from the bottom of the mummy's shoes in hopes that Greg Sanders, their resident lab rat, could tell him something about where the man had been walking before his death. He picked lint out of the mummy's pockets and bagged that. Anything that might give them some kind of hint to who this long-dead murder victim was.

Next, he studied the two dollars and fifteen cents in change: six quarters, five dimes, two nickels and five pennies. The newest was a 1984 quarter, the oldest a 1957 nickel. The coins, except for the '57 nickel, were all pretty clean and Nick dusted them but lifted only two usable partials.

The ring yielded no prints, but did have a set of tiny initials carved into it-not an inscription. He knew enough about jewelry to recognize they probably belonged to the jeweler that crafted the piece and not the victim. Well, at least that gave him something to go on. It would still be a few hours before he'd be able to find any jewelers in their stores.

Finally, he looked at the bag with the cigarette filter remains. Not much left after fifteen years, but more than he would have expected. Filters never biodegraded-an environmentalist's nightmare, a CSI's dream. Taking the bag, he wandered back toward the lab to find Greg Sanders.

Nick found the skinny, spiky-haired guy, as usual, poring over his microscope. Though well into his twenties, Sanders always had the cheerfully gleeful expression of a kid with a new chemistry set.

"Studying the DNA of another prospective soul-mate?" Nick asked.

Sanders looked up, eyes bright. "Dude-science can be used for better things than putting people in jail."

"Marriage and jail-I sense a connection there."

Sanders batted the air with a hand. "Some guys are boob men-some're leg men. Me, I'm an epithelial sort of guy."

Nick held out the bagged cigarette. "Swell-'cause I need DNA on this."

Picking it up, holding it to the light, Sanders said, "Ugh-grotty! How long has this baby been part of the ecosystem?"

With a shrug, Nick said, "I don't know. You tell me."

"Take a number. Got a backlog. Gonna be a while."

"What else isn't new?"

Sanders shot him a look. "Hey, I'm only one guy."

"I know, Greg, but who else is ready to loan you Gran Turismo Three on PlayStation Two?"

All business now, Sanders said, "You just hit the top of my list."

The files rolled by one after one, blurring into each other, the coffee growing more bitter with each cup, and still Catherine couldn't seem to find a lead.

Nick came through the door and plopped down on a plastic chair just inside her office. "Anything?"

"Well, I think I've eliminated about forty missing persons with either a first initial or a middle initial of 'F.' "

"And now?"

"Starting on the 'F' last names."

"How many are there?"

"From ten to twenty years ago, only another hundred or so that are still open."

"If our mummy's from Vegas."

A look came across Catherine's face. "Got a better idea?"

Nick checked his watch. "Time to try the prints."

Returning to the morgue, they lifted the hands out of the Formalin, and set them on an autopsy table to dry.

"Give them a while, then we'll print them," she said. "Let's get something to eat, then come back."

He nodded. "Sounds good."

She smirked, shook her head. "You think there's anything gross enough to spoil a CSI's appetite?"

"When something comes up," Nick said slyly, "I'll let you know."

Forty-five minutes later, after their deli sandwiches, they returned and printed both the palms and the second flange of the fingers below the amputations. They fed the prints into AFIS, got fifteen possible matches. It took the rest of the shift to go through them and, when they finished, they still had nothing.

Catherine stretched her aching muscles, looked at her watch and said, "I've got to get home to get Lindsey off."

Nick nodded. "I'm going to catch some breakfast."

"Food again."

"Then I might log a little overtime, try to run down the jeweler's initials on the ring. You wanna join in, after you get Lindsey to school?"

She shook her head. "I need some sleep. I put my overtime in on the front end of my shift. . . . Call me later, tell me what you find."

"You got it," he said, picking up the evidence-bagged ring.

In the parking lot, Catherine headed left toward her car and the trip home to her daughter while Nick went right, climbed into his own ride and took off to find a bite to eat. When he had first moved from Dallas to Vegas, he frequently took advantage of the casinos' breakfast buffets. But now, after working off the pounds he had gained doing that, he was more careful about where and how much he ate.

He only knew one jeweler, personally, in the city-an older guy named Arnie Mattes, who a while back Nick had helped to prove innocent of robbing his own jewelry store in a suspected insurance scam. Mattes wouldn't be at his store for another hour at least; this gave Nick time for a leisurely breakfast at Jerry's Diner, and a chance to actually read the morning paper, instead of just glancing through it.

Though the Las Vegas Sun carried a front-page story about the discovery of the mummy at the construction site, the murder at the Beachcomber found itself relegated to a small story on page two of the Metro section. The mummy story was unusual, just a hint of sensationalism for morning reading; but the dead man in the hallway might have alarmed tourists, so that was played down. The city fathers, Nick knew, were sensitive to any scandal that might ruin the wholesome, family environment they'd been working so hard to cultivate.

He moved on to the sports section. Nick was a dyed-in-the-wool baseball fan-the Las Vegas 51's had shutout the Nashville Sounds last night-but because of his work attended few games and was forced to follow the team's progress in the paper when he got the chance.

After finishing his meal, Nick drove the short distance from the small café to Mattes' jewelry store, just off Charleston Boulevard. The CLOSED sign still hung in the door when Nick pulled up, but he spotted Mattes placing a necklace in the window, and parked the car in front. Walking briskly to the door, Nick knocked.

Mattes recognized the young criminalist at once, waved, and moved to the door to unlock it. "Nick Stokes, as I live and breathe. Welcome, welcome-come in, get out of the heat."

Smiling, Nick entered. "How are you doing, Mr. Mattes?"

"Fine, Nick, fine, fine." Pushing seventy, the jeweler stood maybe five-six and seemed almost like a child playing dress up, his skinny arms practically swallowed up by the baggy short sleeves of his white shirt. Black-rimmed glasses slid halfway down his nose, with a small magnifying glass, looking like a little crystal flag, waving from the left corner of the frames. "What about you, son?"

"I'm good, but I've got a problem I thought you might be able to help me with."

"Anything."

Pulling the evidence bag from his pocket, Nick held it up so Mattes could see the ring inside. "Can you tell me who made this?"

Mattes took the bag from Nick, held it up to the light. "May I remove it from the bag?"

"Please."

Carefully, the jeweler set the plastic bag on the glass counter, separated the seal, and almost religiously lifted the ring out. "Kind of gaudy, for my taste. Of course, that's typical in this town."

A crooked smile played at the corners of Nick's mouth. "What else can you tell me?"

Pulling his magnifying glass down over the left lens of his glasses, Mattes studied the ring for a long moment, turning it this way and that. "These initials," he said, pointing inside the gold band.

"J-R-B."

"Yes. The manufacturer of this particular item. The initials of J.R. Bennett."

"You know him?"

Mattes nodded. "An acquaintance from many years in the business. He runs a shop in the mall attached to the Aladdin. . . . Oh, what is it called?"

"Desert Passage?"

"That's it, son, Desert Passage. His store is called . . . something a little too precious . . . uh, yes. Omar's."

"Omar's?"

"Silly theme they have, there, desert bazaar. When you visit Mr. Bennett, give him my regards."

"I will, Mr. Mattes, and thanks."

"Stop by any time, Nick. Remember what I said-you find a girl, we'll find a ring for her."

Nick glanced to one side and grinned, then looking back at the jeweler said, "I'll keep that in mind, sir."

Supposedly fashioned on a Casablanca marketplace, the Desert Passage mall was the only place in Vegas that could be counted on for regular rainfall. Every quarter hour, in fact, the mall's indoor thunderstorm broke loose for five minutes; positioned over the lagoon, the manmade storm managed to rain a great deal and yet never get anything wet. The tourists seemed to love it, stopping to take pictures of the water gushing from hidden sprinklers in the ceiling, amazed by the white flashes of strobe lightning.

Nick had walked about a quarter of the way around the mall-thinking about his late girlfriend, Kristi, for whom he'd bought bath and body oil at a little kiosk, here-when he spotted Omar's.

The jewelry store was small, but Nick could tell the good stuff when he saw it-and this was the good stuff. Only one U-shaped glass counter showed the various wares of the store, designed for lucky winners with new money to burn; but for the most part, this wasn't the place to buy off the rack: this was where the wealthy had jewelry designed for them.

Behind the counter stood a fiftyish man who had to be six-seven, at least. The tall man had short hair thinning on top, an angular face that gave away very little, and large brown eyes that revealed even less. He gave Nick what might have been a smile. "May I help you, sir?"

Showing the man his credentials, Nick asked, "Are you J.R. Bennett?"

"Yes."

Nick withdrew the evidence bag from his pocket, showed the jeweler the gold ring with the diamond "F." "Have you seen this ring before?"

"Most certainly," Bennett said. "I designed and crafted it."

"Can you tell me for who?"

"Whom," Bennett corrected.

Sighing, Nick turned back to the jeweler and said, patiently, "Can you tell me for whom you made this ring?"

"Malachy Fortunato."

That was a mouthful.

Nick frowned. "You don't have to check your records or . . ."

"Malachy Fortunato. I designed and crafted this ring exactly eighteen years ago at the order of Mr. Fortunato himself."

"One glance, and-"

"Look at it yourself. The ring has no elegance, no style. I remember most of the pieces I have created fondly. Not this one-but it was what the customer wanted."

"So," Nick said, "you're sure about the ring-but the timing? Eighteen years ago . . . ?"

"Yes, three years before he disappeared."

"Disappeared?"

The jeweler sighed; this apparently was an imposition. "Yes, I don't recall the details. It did make the newspapers, though. Does this ring mean that you've found him?"

"I don't know, Mr. Bennett. But you've been a big help. Thanks for your time, sir."

"My pleasure," he said, though it clearly hadn't been.

Nick was barely out of the shop before he was punching Catherine's number into his cell phone. He had a strong suspicion she would want to log some overtime on this one, too.

5

IN THE CHEM LAB, WARRICK CHECKED THE INSTRUCTION sheet on the counter for the fourth time, then slowly stirred the fluid in the beaker. Sara appeared in the doorway just as he was finishing up. Her jeans and dark blue blouse looked crisp enough, but Sara herself looked about as tired as he felt.

"What witch's brew is that?" she asked.

Tapping the beaker with his glass stirring rod, Warrick said, "Smith's Solution."

"Whose solution?"

"Smith's."

She drifted in, leaned against the counter. "New to me."

"New to everybody. Just got printed up in the journals, couple months ago. I found the recipe in The Journal of Forensic Identification."

"Always a handy cookbook." Sara nodded toward the beaker. "What wonders does it work?"

"Fingerprints on shell casings come up nice and clean. . . . Intern named Karie Smith, working in Bettendorf, Iowa, came up with it."

"God bless the heartland," she said, flashing her distinctive gap-toothed smile. Her interest was clearly piqued. "No kidding-no more smears?"

"Thing of the past-buggy whips and Celluloid collars." Using a forceps, Warrick picked up one of the hotel shell casings by the rim and dipped it into the solution. He left it there for only a few seconds, then pulled it out and ran some tap water over the casing. Holding it up to the light, he let out a slow chuckle. "Got it."

"Show me."

He turned the casing so Sara could eyeball the partial print near the base. Her smile turned wicked as she said, "Let's shoot this sucker, and get it into AFIS."

They both knew there was no way to successfully lift the print off the casing. All they could do was photograph it. But that would get the job done just fine. While Sara got the camera, Warrick set up the shot on the countertop. He placed the casing carefully on top of a black velvet pad, with the print facing up. She snapped off four quick shots.

"Where you been all night?" he asked.

"Running the prints from the room."

"Yeah? Come up with anything?"

She moved to a different angle and shot the shell casing four more times. "Not much-just the victim."

"Give!"

"A Chicago attorney-one Philip Dinglemann."

Warrick frowned at her. "Why do I know that name?"

"I don't know. Why do you?"

"Don't know . . . but I do. . . ." He sighed, frustrated at the rusty gears of his own thinking; long night. "What about the woman's prints?"

"A hooker."

"What a shock."

"Working girl's been busted three or four times in town, but mostly she works outside Clark County at the Stallion Ranch. You'll love this-her name's Connie Ho."

Warrick's sleepy expression woke up a little. "Ho?"

Sara lifted her hands palms up. "What're you going to do? She's from Hong Kong; is it her fault her name's a pun? Been in the States almost ten years. Became a citizen year before last."

"Long enough to know Ho is a bad idea for a hooker's last name."

"Maybe she considers it advertising."

Warrick smiled a little. "I can't wait for you to tell Grissom we need to go to the Stallion Ranch to interview a Connie Ho."

Sara gave him a wide smile; even Warrick had to admit that gap was cute. "We only work the evidence, remember? Isn't that what you always say?"

It was-but Warrick, like the rest of the CSIs, sometimes questioned suspects relative to evidence because, frankly, the detectives just didn't have the familiarity with crime scene findings to pull it off properly.

"Anyway," she was saying, "I already filled Grissom in. He called Brass and got him to go out to the ranch, so we could work the evidence."

"Great," Warrick said. "Much rather spend my time with prints and shell casings than go out to the Stallion Ranch."

Her grin turned mischievous. "I knew you wouldn't want to be bothered interviewing a bunch of silly half-naked women."

Actually, she was right, but he wouldn't give her the satisfaction.

"So," she said, their photography session completed, "what's next?"

"First, we put these prints into AFIS," he said, nodding to the camera, "then we go downstairs and see how Sadler did with that Palm Pilot. I asked him to rush it."

Before long they were in the minuscule basement cubicle of computer technician Terry Sadler. In his late twenties, with short brown hair and long narrow sideburns, Sadler had skin with the pale glow of someone who saw the sun far too infrequently.

"What's up, Terry," Warrick said. "Find anything on our Palm Pilot?"

Like a manic ferret on a double cappucino, Sadler sat hunkered over his work station with his fingers flying and his keyboard rattling. "Just the usual stuff," he said, his words as rapid as his actions. "A list of phone numbers, his schedule, couple of pieces of e-mail. I printed it all off for you."

"Where is it?"

Rooting around his desk with one hand, other hand hunt-and-pecking, Sadler finally held up a thin manila folder. "Here you go."

Sara was watching this with wide eyes.

"Thanks, Terry," Warrick said, as low-key as Sadler wasn't. "I owe you."

"That's right." The computer tech threw a glance at the criminalist. "The usual."

"Usual. . . . How's tomorrow night?"

"Just fine, Warrick. Just fine."

They headed back up the stairs, Warrick leafing through the papers in the file as they went.

"What's 'the usual'?" Sara asked.

"Once a week, I spring Chinese delivery for him and two of his cellmates down there."

"Jeez-that's gotta run fifty bucks."

He gave her a slow smile. "Sometimes the wheels of justice need a little grease."

Shaking her head, she asked, "So, what's in the file?"

Putting the e-mail file on top, he handed it to her.

Aloud, she read, " 'Phil, this is no time to get lost. Less than a week till showtime. We should be getting prepped. Where the fuck are you?' Touching missive-unsigned."

They moved into the break room; Sara sat while Warrick poured cups of coffee.

"We can trace the address of the sender, easy enough," Warrick said. "It's got to lead to somebody."

" 'Showtime,' " Sara said, re-reading the e-mail. "Was this guy an entertainment lawyer?"

Driving out to the Stallion Ranch was not how Homicide Detective Jim Brass really wanted to spend a July morning. The news radio voice had reported the temperature at 105 ° and he'd shut off the radio before any more good news could ruin his day further. The brothel was outside his jurisdiction, so Brass had taken the liberty of trading in his unmarked brown Ford Taurus for his personal vehicle, a blue Ford Taurus. Such small distinctions-brown car for blue-were the stuff of his life of late.

When he had been demoted to Homicide from heading up the Criminalistics Bureau, he'd been angry, then frustrated and of course bitter. But time-and not that much of it-had smoothed things out. Strangely, working as an equal with Gil Grissom and the quirky group that made up the crime lab unit was proving much easier-and more rewarding-than supervising them.

A desk was no place for Jim Brass. Now he was back in the field, doing what he did best-doggedly pursuing murderers, and the suspects, witnesses and evidence that bagged them.

When Grissom had called him toward the end of night shift, Brass had been only a little surprised to learn that his victim had been a lawyer and not at all surprised to find the woman was a prostitute. But the hooker's name-Connie Ho-just had to be a put on.

The Stallion Ranch sat all alone in the scrubby desert landscape, just south of Enterprise, on the other side of the county line. The only other sign of life out here was a truck stop half-mile down the road. The neon sign of a horse rearing was hard to miss even shut off in the morning sun. He swung into the short drive that led to the actual "ranch house," which was what they called it in the brochures, anyway. The structure looked more like a T-shaped concrete bunker with the top of the "T" facing the road. Only a few other cars, and two eighteen-wheelers parked off to one side, dotted the nearly deserted dirt parking lot.

A teasing breeze kicked up some dust around the car as he got out and ambled toward the building. On the trip out here, he had considered several ways to play this. Several scenarios had been rehearsed in the theater of his mind. Now, none seemed right, so he would play it straight.

Jim Brass always did.

He opened the door, the rush of cold air like a soothing slap. A tall, impressive redhead stepped forward to meet him in a reception room running to dark paneling, indoor-outdoor carpeting and gold-framed paintings of voluptuous nudes, none more voluptuous than the hostess approaching him. and her voice carried a soft southern lilt. "Hello, Handsome. I'm Madam Charlene-and how may we help you, today?"

She was probably fifty and looked forty-albeit a hard forty. She had been gorgeous once, and the memory lingered.

He flipped open the leather wallet and showed her his badge.

"Oh, shit," she said, the southern lilt absent now from a Jersey-tinged voice. "Now what the fuck?"

He said nothing, let her take another, closer look at the badge to see that he was from town.

She frowned. "You're not even in the right county, Sugar."

He twitched a nonsmile. "I'm looking for one of your girls."

Her hands went to her hips and her mood turned dark. "A lot of fellas are. For anything in particular?"

"For information. She was with a trick at the Beachcomber. That is my county."

The frown deepened, crinkling the makeup. "And you're going to bust her for that? What two adults do in the privacy of their own, uh, privacy?"

Brass shook his head. "This isn't a vice matter. The trick ended up dead-shot twice in the head."

Alarm widened the green eyes. "And you think one of my girls did it?"

He kept shaking his head. "I know she didn't. I just need to ask her a few questions. She was with the guy some time before he died-probably the last to see him alive, other than his killer."

She studied Brass. ". . . Just some questions and nothing more?"

"That's right. I don't want to be under foot any longer than necessary."

"Considerate of you. . . . Which girl?"

He gave her half a smile. "Uh, Connie Ho. That's not her real name, is it?"

Madam Charlene gave him the other half of the smile. "Sad, ain't it? I think she's come to wear that name as badge of honor."

"If you say so."

"Anyway, she's one of our best girls. Popular, personable. Trim little figure-but legal."

"Thanks for sharing."

"You can go on back." She pointed the way. "Room one twenty-four. Down the hall and to the right."

"Thank you, Charlene. We'll do our best not to make each other's lives miserable."

She gave him a smile that didn't seem at all professional. "For a cop, you have possibilities."

Brass made the turn, walked down more indoor-outdoor carpeting and finally came to room 124 almost near the bottom of the "T." He knocked, waited, knocked again.

"Coming," said a female voice through the door.

Very little accent, he noticed. "Ms. Ho?"

She opened the door. Connie Ho was Asian, yet very blonde-platinum, in fact. Maybe five-four and 110, she wore a tissue-thin lavender negligee and black pumps and nothing else.

"What can I do for you, Handsome?"

Brass had been called "Handsome" maybe four times in recent memory-two of them, this afternoon. He flashed the badge and her eyes and nostrils flared, as she tried to shut the door in his face. Wedging his foot inside, door-to-door-salesmen style, and bracing the door with both hands, he forced his way in.

She backed to the far wall and wrapped her arms around herself, as if she'd suddenly realized how nearly naked she was.

The room was small, just big enough for a double bed and a mirrored makeup table with a chair in front of it. The walls were pink brocade wallpaper, and the bedsheets were a matching pink, no blankets or spread. An overhead light made the room seem harsh, and the smell of cigarette smoke hung like a curtain.

"Who the hell do you think you are," she snarled, "barging into my room without a warrant!"

"The proprietor invited me in, Ms. Ho-I don't need a warrant."

"You know we work within the law out here. I'm a professional."

He held up a single hand of peace. "Ms. Ho, I just want to ask you a few questions."

"I've got nothing to say."

"How do you know, when I haven't raised a subject?"

"That was a Las Vegas badge. I don't have to talk to you."

"It's about the other night-at the Beachcomber?"

"Never heard of the place-never been there." She stalked over to the makeup table, where she plucked a cigarette out of a pack and lit it up. Suddenly she seemed much older.

"Maybe we got off on the wrong foot, Ms. Ho. Shall we make a fresh start?"

"Go to hell."

He just smiled at her. "I've got your fingerprints and lip prints on a wineglass, and I just bet if we check the stains on the bedspread, your DNA is going to turn up. And you're telling me you've never heard of the Beachcomber?"

"Never. I don't work Vegas. I work the ranch."

"Then it won't be much of an incentive to you, if I make it my life's work to bust you every time you come into the city to turn a trick?"

Her upper lip curling back over tiny white teeth, she gave him the finger. "Sit and spin."

Exasperated, he started for the door. Turning around, he said, "That john, at the hotel? Here's how serious this is: he got murdered, shortly after you left him."

Her face changed but she said nothing. She took a few little drags on the cigarette, like she was trying to make it last.

Brass said, "Hey, I know you didn't kill him. I just want to ask you about the time you spent with him."

"I don't know anything."

He started to turn away again, but her voice stopped him.

"Listen-he was nice to me. Seemed like a nice enough guy."

Brass went over to her-not rushing. He got out a small notebook and a pen. "Did you know him? Was he a regular?"

She shook her shimmering blonde head and plopped onto the chair in front of the mirror. "Charlene sent me. I'd never seen the guy before."

"What can you tell me about him?"

She shrugged. "He was clean and that's about as nice as tricks get."

"Anything else? Did he talk about his business or anything?"

She shook her head.

"Did he seem nervous or overwrought?"

Another head shake.

"Walk me through the night."

She sighed, thought back. "I went up about eight. We had some champagne. I gave him a blowjob, he came real fast. He'd paid for a full evening, so I helped him get it up again and we did it again. You're not gonna find any DNA, though."

"Oh?"

"We used rubbers both times."

How little they knew. "Go on," he said.

"He showered, got dressed, and said he was going out. He said I could stay in the room for a while, order room service, take a shower or a nap. He didn't care. He just said that I had to be out before he got back and he said that would be around five in the morning."

Brass jotted notes, then asked, "Can you think of anything else?"

"That's it. I kind of liked him. It's too bad."

"Yeah."

"Well, I gave him a good time before he went."

"Twice," Brass said, nodded at her, thanked her, and went out into the hall.

He found Madam Charlene inside a small wood-paneled office off the lobby. She sat at a metal desk with a telephone and several small piles of what looked like bills; Post-it's were all over the place. A computer on the desk symbolized how far prostitution had come.

Knocking on the doorjamb, still being polite, Brass asked, "Charlene-could I talk to you? Won't take long."

She stopped in the middle of writing a check and looked up at him with large green eyes. "Anything else I can do for you, Sugar?" she asked, the southern lilt back in her voice.

He mimicked the drawl back at her. "Why didn't you tell me you set up Connie's date at the Beachcomber-Sugar?"

Again the Southern lilt wilted. "I provide rides out here, for guys who wanna get laid."

"You don't provide an . . . out-reach service?"

"I don't risk it-I leave that to the escort services in Vegas. Not my gig."

"So Ms. Ho is lying-she booked this client herself, against your wishes."

She sighed, leaned forward. "Look-I just didn't think it was important. You said you wanted to talk to her. Have I cooperated?"

He nodded. "Yeah-and I do appreciate it. Now I'm asking you to cooperate a little more-what about setting up that date? You did set it up?"

"I did, but . . ." Madam Charlene gave him an elaborate shrug. "It was just another date."

Shaking his head, he said, "I don't think so. If it was a normal date, you would have told the guy to come out here. Let him find his way, or send your limo service. So why'd you send Connie into the city? You said it yourself: it's a risk; not your gig."

She shrugged again.

"Look, Charlene, I don't want to sit at the county line and bust any of your girls that enter Clark County, but I will."

". . . Close the door."

He did.

"If I tell you what I know, you'll leave me and my girls outa this?"

"If I possibly can."

"You promise?"

"Boy Scout oath."

She sighed heavily, found a pack of Camels on her desk, and lit up a cigarette.

Everybody in this joint must smoke, Brass thought. For about the millionth time, he wished he hadn't quit.

She took a long drag, then blew it out. "You know who the guy is?"

"Lawyer named Philip Dingelmann."

Her forehead frowned; her mouth smiled. "And that doesn't mean anything to you?"

Brass shrugged. "Such as?"

"Dingelmann is the lawyer for, among other illustrious clients, a fine citizen name of Charlie Stark."

That hit Brass like a punch. "As in Charlie 'The Tuna' Stark?"

Stark was high up in the Chicago outfit-a mobster with a rap sheet going back to the days of Giancana and Accardo. Sinatra had sung at Stark's daughter's prom.

"Maybe it's some other Charlie Stark," she said dryly. "And maybe I did this favor for Dingelmann 'cause he represents little old ladies in whiplash cases."

"A mobbed-up lawyer," Brass said to himself.

"You will keep me out of it?"

"Do my best," Brass said, "do my best."

And he stumbled out of the brothel into the sunshine, at first shellshocked, and then a smile began to form.

He had said, from first whiff, that this was a mob hit; and Grissom had, typically, pooh-poohed it. Evidence was Grissom's religion; but Brass had known that his twenty-two years in the field, as an investigator, counted for something.

Jim Brass headed back to Vegas.

6

AFTER THREE-AND-A-HALF HOURS' SLEEP, A SHOWER, AND some fresh clothes, Catherine found herself back in the office again. She grabbed a cup of the coffee from the break room and forced herself to drink some of it. Not so bad-a little like motor oil laced with rat poison. She found Nick in her office, camped in front of the computer monitor.

"I don't get out of bed in the middle of the day for just any man," she told him.

"Glad to hear it." He cast one of those dazzling smiles her way, and pointed to the screen. "Check this one out."

Catherine peered over his shoulder. "Fortunato, Malachy? How 'fortunate' was Malachy?"

"Not very," Nick said, referring to the file on screen. "Disappeared from his home fifteen years ago, leaving a bloodstain in the carport, on the gravel driveway-no sign of Malachy since. The original investigators let the case drop-a bloodstain does not a crime scene make."

"True."

"Plus, the detectives were convinced the married Mr. Fortunato ran off with his girlfriend, and that the blood stain was a dodge to throw the mob off the track."

"The mob?"

"Gamblers, anyway. The variety that breaks limbs when markers go unpaid."

"If Malachy's the mummy, I'd say his dodge didn't work." Looking over Nick's shoulder, she slowly scanned the file. "Small-time casino worker, big gambling debts, suspected of embezzling at work. Ouch-that might have gotten a contract put out on him."

"He worked at the Sandmound," Nick said, referring to a long-since demolished casino, which had dated back to the days when Vegas had been a syndicate stronghold. "Two bullets in the back of the head, that's a fairly typical expression of mob displeasure."

"Okay," Catherine said. "I'm liking this . . . but why do you think Malachy's our mummy?"

Nick's tight smile reflected pride. "I traced the ring you found on the body. Jeweler who made the bauble recognized it. Bada-bing."

"Please. . . . Okay, you did good. Let's print out this report so we can look at it a little closer."

Nick printed the file.

"There's a sample of the bloodstain from that carport and a cigarette butt from the backyard in Evidence," Catherine said, sitting, reading the hard copy. "We can pull them, and try to get a DNA match, to make sure this is our guy."

Nick flinched. "Damn-that's gonna take forever."

"Good things come to those who wait . . . and while we're waiting . . ." Her voice trailed off as she noted Fortunato's address, and reached for a phone book. "Says he lived with his wife Annie." Thumbing the white pages, Catherine found the FOR's, ran a finger down the column, and said, "And she still lives there."

Neither was too surprised; the real residents of Vegas put down roots, like anyone anywhere else.

Nick squinted in thought. "Does that mean we have a fifteen-year-old crime scene?"