Perhaps two minutes later, Jason Dean called them over to the couch, where they stood before their host like defendants awaiting a jury's decision.
With his wife's face still buried in his shoulder, Jason Dean asked, "Where is she?"
"In the coroner's care," Brass said.
Sara could only admire the delicacy of the detective's phrase; how horrible it would have been for these parents to have to hear, At the morgue.
Pulling away a bit from her husband, her face slick with tears, Mrs. Dean asked, "Can we go to her?"
"Of course," Brass said. "But it would be helpful if we could talk now, here, first."
But both parents were shaking their heads.
Firmly, Dean said, "We want to see our daughter-right now. This ordeal has lasted over three months-anything else…everything else…can wait."
Brass glanced at Sara, who shrugged.
"Would you like us to drive you?" Brass asked.
In his office, Grissom sat at his computer going over Clark County records pertaining to Dustin Black and Desert Haven Mortuary. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he was reasonably certain that he would know it if he saw it. He would seek the business's financial records next. Evidence wasn't always a fingerprint on the murder weapon or a tire track on the shoulder of the road. Sometimes, Grissom knew, evidence could be far more subtle-it wasn't always tangible….
A knock at his open door alerted Grissom.
Sheriff Rory Atwater leaned there, with a casualness that was as studied as his mild smile.
"Hope I'm interrupting some real progress you're making," he said, his tone friendly, "on the Bennett case."
"Sheriff-actually, it's the Dean case."
"That's the young woman in the casket?"
"Right. Kathy Dean."
"Spare a second to talk?"
"No," Grissom said.
Atwater chuckled, as if Grissom had been kidding, and ambled in, the closing of the door behind him signaling just how un-casual this meeting was. Then he dropped himself into the chair opposite Grissom, leaning back, tenting his long fingers.
"Have you found Rita Bennett?"
"Not yet."
"Where are you with that?"
"She's not the priority, Sheriff."
"Her body is missing, and she's not a priority?"
"I didn't say she wasn't 'a' priority-I said she wasn't 'the' priority. The murdered teenager we found in her casket is."
Atwater nodded knowingly, then said, "Rebecca Bennett is quite distraught over this."
"Really. I didn't think she and her mother were close."
"How close would somebody have to be to their mother, Gil, to be upset about having her body go missing?"
"That would probably vary."
Atwater sighed. "Look, I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job-"
"Good."
"But I don't know how long we can keep this from Peter."
"Peter Thompson? Rita Bennett's husband?"
"Right."
Grissom never failed to be surprised by the behavior of the human animal. "You haven't told Mr. Thompson that his deceased wife is missing?"
Atwater sat for a long moment before shaking his head. "When Brass told me Rita was missing, I hoped you and your crew would solve this quickly, and we could avoid telling Peter…you know, until we'd recovered Rita's body. I mean, why cause him any needless aggravation or grief?"
"Because he's a contributor to your campaign, you mean?" Grissom blurted. Immediately, he wished he could withdraw the words.
Surprisingly, Atwater took no offense. The smile was gone, and he merely seemed weary. "Politics is a dirty word to you, Gil-I know that. You found my predecessor, Brian, far too political for your taste."
"We worked well enough together. You know our arrest and conviction record."
"I do. But your conflicts with Sheriff Mobley are frankly legendary. Let me explain something to you-in the kind of clinical, even scientific manner you should understand. Look around you-look at the technological wonders at your fingertips-look at a crime lab, a facility, that is among the finest in the nation."
"I don't take that for granted," Grissom said.
"With all due respect, Gil-I think you do. You disdain politics-but where do you think facilities like this come from, in a state where there's no damn income tax? Figure it out, man."
Faintly chagrined, Grissom said, "You have a point, Rory. Easy enough for me to criticize, while you're in the trenches, trying to get me my toys."
"Thank you. Now, you may not like it, but the outcome of this case has political ramifications."
"What are you asking me for, Rory?"
"Just your best."
"No problem," Grissom said.
Atwater nodded, then his eyes narrowed. "Do you think Peter Thompson could have killed Rita…and then somehow switched the bodies to keep us from exhuming Rita and doing a proper autopsy?"
"You mean, is he a suspect?"
"Yes."
"Everyone related to the case is a suspect. But I would say, doubtful."
The sheriff fidgeted and Grissom wondered how big a campaign contributor the Bennett-Thompson family had been.
"Talk me through it," Atwater said.
"Well…not to bore you with details about the funeral home and its layout and how they do things…Thompson would literally have had to smuggle his wife's dead body in and out while he was with the funeral party. Seems absurd on its face."
Atwater nodded. "I just want to make sure we're covering our-"
"Bases?"
"Right. Gil, could it have been a mistake? You know, a mix-up, either at the mortuary or cemetery?"
"On any given day there's, what? Maybe two dozen funerals in Vegas, spread over a dozen or more mortuaries? Then on top of that, we have two corpses in the exact same casket at the exact same time? The odds would seem astronomical."
"Who is this Kathy Dean?"
"A young woman someone killed-we're working on why and who. But someone intentionally put her where she was, so she wouldn't be found. What better place to hide a body?"
"But what about the damn body that had to be displaced? What good does it do to get rid of one body and have another on your hands?"
"That would seem to be the question. But the answer is wrapped in somebody hoping to get away with murder…who won't, if we have anything to say about it."
"And that someone isn't Peter Thompson."
"I don't think so. But if it is-and even if he's your biggest contributor, Sheriff…he will go down for it."
Atwater slapped his knees, then rose. "Wouldn't have it any other way."
And the sheriff was gone.
The four of them got into the Taurus, Brass driving, Sara in front, the Deans in the back. As they pulled away from the forlorn stucco house, Brass knew he would have to steer the conversation as much as the car. Sara would expect this and just sit quietly and follow his lead. They were less than a block when he started offhandedly in.
"What kind of student was Kathy?" he asked.
"Straight A's since junior high," Mrs. Dean said. "Never anything lower than a B before that."
"Involved in a lot of activities?"
"Band, chorus, drama club, Spanish club…in the spring she ran cross-country on the track team."
Looking in the rearview mirror, Brass could see that he was already doing well-Crystal Dean wasn't thinking about where they were going…the morgue…or what they would see when they got there…her daughter's body. She was, instead, answering his questions, keeping her daughter alive.
"She liked cross-country?"
In the rearview, Mrs. Dean actually smiled a little. "She said she loved the quiet of running alone."
Brass said, "Really into it, huh?"
The father finally spoke up. "She was, but she always kept her grades up. That was her number-one priority."
"What about college?"