Glancing back at the detective, she asked, "Is that a high figure for a place like this?"
"Almost double last year's total for the whole year."
"Ooooh…and you think someone's 'helping' these people to get out of Sunny Day?"
Vega shrugged. "I was hoping you'd find out for me."
"Well, let's start with Vivian Elliot first. You'll check with that guard, to see if our visitor's name got written down?"
"Sure. On my way out, I will."
Catherine loaded the last of the evidence into the Tahoe. Warrick was still inside, getting the last of his gear.
She turned to hold the detective's gaze with her own. "What do you make of David's hunch now?"
Vega rubbed his forehead like he was trying rub all thought away. "He did the right thing-but I still hope he was wrong. The number of deaths this could make suspicious?…Guess what that'll do to the homicide stats that the sheriff is loving so much right now?"
Catherine decided to take that as a rhetorical question; even if it wasn't, answering would be too painful.
After Vega had disappeared into his own vehicle, Catherine sensed Warrick at her side.
"You think we have a murder, Cath? Give me your best guess-I won't tell Grissom."
"Well, Warrick, if it is a murder, we could be looking at a serial killer, and possibly, oh…two dozen victims? Most of whom have been cremated…."
Warrick's eyes glazed over. "I'm sorry I asked…. Keep your damn guesses to yourself, Cath."
She chuckled and got into the Tahoe, rider's side. But the chuckle caught a bit.
Something very evil might be turning Sunny Day cloudy indeed, in which case Catherine Willows doubted in the foreseeable future that she'd be taking a "normal" call again.
3
THE COFFIN HAD BEEN PLACED on a trio of sawhorses in the CSI garage to provide Nick Stokes and Sara Sidle with easier access. As if at a bizarre funeral, Nick leaned over the coffin and gazed down at the woman who lay peacefully within.
No way this youthful corpse could ever have been mistaken for fifty-something Rita Bennett. Nick had never met Rita Bennett, but-like most Vegas residents-he'd seen her hawking cars in commercials often enough to recognize the woman; with her aging showgirl glamour, Rita had been a local celebrity with even a certain national fame, considering how many people came to Vegas and at some point switched on a TV.
This woman-girl, really-was barely in her twenties, if that. Even after three months in a casket, pretty features presented themselves, the airtight vault having allowed the exposed flesh to gain just the barest patina of white mold, as if a spiderweb draped the girl's face. For a moment Nick had an odd, even haunting sensation-it was as though the woman's features were coming to him in a dream, through a translucent veil.
Though the desert air didn't cause human remains to break down in the manner common to more humid climes, moisture left in the body sometimes would be enough to give the deceased that distinctive sheen of white. Slim and auburn-haired, the woman revealed no visible wounds, the small trail of blood droplets on the pillow the only evidence, thus far, suggestive of violence.
Jane Doe had a straight, well-formed nose, bangs that nearly covered large eyes closed over high, slightly rouged cheeks. Nick grunted and twitched a non-smile. Even in death, Ms. Doe seemed to glow a little, the desert conditions not having yet begun the mummification that occurred to so many bodies in the Southwest.
Nick started with his 35mm camera, recording the casket and body from more angles than a fashion photographer at a Vogue shoot. When he was done, Sara stepped up to check under the woman's scarlet-painted fingernails, looking for any evidence that this possible victim might have gotten a piece of an attacker.
When finished, Sara shrugged and said, "Nothing."
"Fingerprints next?"
"Fingerprints next."
While Sara inked the woman's right hand, Nick used his Maglite to carefully search the area around the woman's head. The blood droplets were small, even, and dried to a dark maroon.
"Looks like she dripped," Nick said, "while the killer loaded her into the casket."
"We don't know there's a killer yet," Sara reminded Nick, though there was something unconvinced and perfunctory about her tone. "Anything under her head?"
"Can't see for sure…. Doesn't look like it."
"Anything else on the pillow?"
Nick eased the light around to get a better angle. "No…no…yeah! Yeah, right here-a short black hair." He snapped a photo of the strand, then used a pair of tweezers to pick it up.
"Not our vic's," Sara said.
"Let's hope it's the killer's."
"If there is a killer."
"If there is a killer. You have that feeling, too, huh?"
Sara frowned. "What feeling?"
Nick grinned. "That Gris is always looking over your shoulder."
She half-smirked, then said, "If there is a killer, that hair could still belong to somebody other than the killer…."
"Always a possibility. And I don't know enough about funeral homes and cemeteries to guess how many people might handle a casket."
Sara-after carefully cleaning ink off dead fingertips-slipped the corpse's hand back into the coffin. "I oughta load these prints into AFIS."
"Go ahead-I'll stay busy, and by the time you get back, we should be ready to pull her out."
Sara nodded. "Back in a flash-don't you two run off."
Nick gave her half a smile. "We'll wait for you."
* * *
With Brass behind the wheel of the Taurus, headed for the cemetery, CSI supervisor Gil Grissom sat quietly in the rider's seat, oblivious to anything but his thoughts, sunglasses keeping out much more than just glaring morning sunlight.
Barring the possibility that they'd exhumed the wrong corpse, the body in the casket could only have been exchanged for Rita Bennett's in a small and very finite number of places: inside the hearse, during transport, which seemed improbable at best; at the funeral home; or the cemetery.
"Soooo," Brass said, voice a little loud. "Do I take it, then, that you think the switch went down at the funeral home?"
"Huh?" Grissom asked, blinking over at Brass, who glanced at him, shook his head, then turned back to the road.
"I asked," Brass said, just a wee bit testy, "if you thought the bodies were switched at the cemetery. When you didn't answer, I figured-"
"Sorry, Jim. Thinking."
"And what brilliant insight do you have for me?"
Now Grissom shook his head. "None. Too early."
Brass's tight eyes indicated he'd been mulling the same possibilities. "Wouldn't it be hard as hell to trade bodies at the cemetery, if there was a graveside service?"
"Graves aren't filled in till after the mourners are long gone."
Brass considered that. "But the casket's already been lowered…."
"What goes down," Grissom said, with a tilt of the head, "can come up."
The detective turned the Taurus through the gates and took a right into the gravel parking lot fronting the tiny office of Desert Palm Memorial Cemetery, which looked like a homespun stone cottage…which just happened to have had a cemetery spring up around it. Brass parked, then Grissom and the detective exited the vehicle and the blast of hot air was immediately withering. A little bell clinked when Brass opened the door and the two men entered into more blessed air conditioning.
The room was small and square with one window next to the door and another on the far facing wall, the green of the cemetery visible through both. A battered gray battleship of a metal desk lurked to their right, a woman of about sixty seated behind it in a short-sleeve rust-colored white-floral-print dress.