Mrs. Dean studied Brass for a moment, then she touched his cheek, very gently, and allowed her husband to steer her away from the viewing room door.
They were still trudging toward the exit when Sara came out of the morgue and rejoined the somber parade.
They all got into the Taurus for the long ride back to the Dean home. More traffic made this ride slower than their initial trip to the house on Serene Avenue. Brass watched in the rearview mirror as the Deans huddled in the backseat. Now, though, Dean seemed to have gone inside himself while his wife stared out the window, seeing nothing.
Finally, Mrs. Dean turned to look at Brass in the mirror. "I don't know what we can tell you that we haven't already told the other officers. When Kathy was a missing person."
Brass smiled mildly. "Well, let's go over it again and see what we can see."
Mrs. Dean nodded slightly. "What do you want to know?"
"How about her job at Habinero's Cantina? How did she get to work?"
"She had her own car."
Dean said, "2003 Corolla. Your crime scene people impounded it after she disappeared."
Sara caught Brass's eyes and mouthed: Dayshift.
Dean was saying, "They found Kathy's Corolla abandoned in a parking lot on Maryland Parkway. We still haven't gotten it back."
Brass ignored the small jab and asked, "How'd Kathy like her job? Been there long?"
Mrs. Dean gave that some consideration, then said, "She worked there for two years or so-started right before her seventeenth birthday."
"Did she enjoy it there?"
"Most of the time."
"Not all of the time?"
In the mirror, Brass saw Mrs. Dean wipe her nose with a tissue. "She did have some trouble…with a boy she dated there for a while?"
"What kind of trouble?"
"I said it was a boy."
Dean piped in to say, "He couldn't take the hint that she had other, more important priorities in her life than dating."
Definitely not the day to tell the Deans that they had almost been grandparents….
Brass said, "What kind of trouble exactly?"
"He wouldn't stop calling her," Mrs. Dean said, "but that was right after she started at the restaurant. She'd only been there a month or so when they began dating. It must have been over in, oh…two months?"
"Did you tell the Missing Persons detectives about this?"
Mrs. Dean thought for a moment. "I may have mentioned it, but maybe not-it was such old news."
Brass stopped for a red light and turned to look at Mrs. Dean. "Do you know if the detectives looked into it?"
"They never said."
"The boy's name?"
The light turned green and Brass got them moving again.
"Gerardo Ortiz."
"Did the trouble with this boy come to any kind of a head?"
Dean harumphed. "Kid must have finally taken the hint. He stopped calling. I was just about ready to track him down and beat the ever-living crap out of him."
Brass glanced in the mirror and saw the anger reddening Dean's face. "But you're over that now…right?"
Rubbing his forehead and obviously forcing himself to calm down, Dean said, "Yeah…yeah, I'm over it. Anyway…that kid quit the restaurant, disappeared, far as I know."
"No idea where he is?"
"No! And good riddance, too."
Brass pulled into the Deans' driveway and they all got out.
As they walked up the sidewalk, Brass fell in alongside Dean, whose arm was around his wife. "Do you think the Ortiz boy was capable of harming your daughter?"
Dean paused and looked hard at Brass, eyes glittering. "For his sake?…I hope to God not."
They went inside the house and sat in the living room, the Deans on the sofa again, Brass and Sara in two wing chairs angled next to the couch. The grouping was great for facing the entertainment center, but not wonderful for eye contact during conversation, much less a police interview.
"We'll look into Gerardo Ortiz," Brass assured them. "But now I'd like to hear more about her other jobs. She have any problems at the blood bank?"
Both parents shook their heads.
Mrs. Dean said, "She handed out cookies and drinks to the people who gave blood. Everyone loved her."
Someone didn't love her,Brass thought; or maybe somebody had loved her too much….
Sara asked, "What about the babysitting jobs? Isn't that more a job for junior high, middle-school girls…?"
"Maybe so," the father said. "That's when Kathy started, and she held on to some of her 'clients'…mostly people who were friends of ours, who Kathy knew and got along with well. She loved kids, so she was a natural at babysitting."
Sara asked, "Would you mind if I took a look around her room?"
Nonconfrontationally, Dean said, "The other officers did that, already…when she first disappeared?"
"I understand, but fresh eyes might turn up something."
"Be our guest," Mrs. Dean said. "Her room is upstairs-last on the left."
"Thank you. Jim, could I have the keys? I need to get my kit."
Brass passed her the car keys.
"Kit?" Dean asked.
"Crime scene kit," Brass said. "Sara doesn't want to contaminate any evidence, should she find something."
"I see. But her bedroom isn't a crime scene, surely."
Brass thought, If she was abducted, it could be, but said instead, "Just routine."
Sara went out the front door.
"Let's get back to her babysitting," Brass said.
Mrs. Dean said, "Well, as I say, she didn't have that many regulars anymore-she was down to, oh, one or two nights a week? Usually, just helping out so a couple could go to dinner and a movie away from the kids. She was hardly ever out past midnight."
Sara came in carrying her silver crime scene kit and headed up the stairs.
"Didn't she have a sitting job," Brass asked, "the night she disappeared?"
"Yes," Dean said, "but she was home around twelve and in her room by twelve-thirty. She said everything went great. She really liked David and Diana."
"David and Diana," Mrs. Dean said, "kids she sat for that night."
"But she was home after that and everything seemed fine?"
"Yes, she closed her door, like my husband said, before twelve-thirty. She'd had a long day and was really tired. Jason had gone to bed about eleven, but I stayed up until Kathy got home-one of us always did. Anyway, she went to bed and, about ten minutes later, I went up."
"And that was the last time you saw her?"
Mrs. Dean swallowed; her eyes were very red. "Until today…yes. Kathy told me she was tired and that it had been a long day…those were the last words she ever said to me."
She stared into her lap; no tears-she was, for the moment at least, past that. Her husband's arm remained a comforting presence around her shoulder.
"Well, we'll start in her room and with that last day," Brass said, checking his notebook. "Uh, one more thing-what was the name of the family she sat for that night?"
"The Blacks," Dean said.
Brass's gut tightened. "Excuse me…? The Blacks?"
"Why, yes."
"Dustin Black?"
"Dustin Black," Jason said, nodding. "Do you know Dustin? He and his wife, Cassie, own Desert Haven Mortuary…. In fact, I'll be calling Dustin soon, about Kathy."
Me too,Brass thought. Me too….
6
THE HEAT WAVE HADN'T BROKEN YET, but at least Catherine Willows had gotten some time in with her daughter Lindsey yesterday; and the CSI felt more rested than she had in weeks.
Grissom had given both Catherine and Warrick the graveyard shift off to enable them to catch up on sleep and work the Vivian Elliot case in the daylight it called for.