Eyes tight with thought, Grissom asked, "Is that why it took you two hours to take Kathy home that night, Mr. Black?"
"Yes…yes. We did make love. I won't deny it. In fact the memory of it is something I'll treasure to my dying day. But we also talked. I wish…I wish…"
"What did you wish, Mr. Black?"
"I wish I'd told the girl I would leave Cassie and marry her, like she wanted me to. I don't know why, but I…I have this feeling that if I had…she might be alive right now."
"Why do you feel that way?"
"Doctor Grissom, it's a feeling. 'Why' doesn't come into it."
Grissom wondered if he was sitting in the company of an innocent man or sharing a ride with a killer who was also a brilliant actor. In his extensive career he had seen both, and right now he wouldn't lay odds either way. Dustin Black was, after all, in the business of trying to make people feel comfortable at the most uncomfortable time of their lives, telling them what they needed to hear in a difficult time.
Were Grissom and the others in that same category right now?
If Black was guilty, though, the man was going to be great on the witness stand….
They arrived at the mortuary and piled out. After Black unlocked the door, the little group moved into the darkened lobby. They waited as the mortician got the alarm shut off and the lights turned on. Once this had been done, Black and Brass went back outside to wait in the parking lot. The tension between the two men had lessened considerably.
Grissom outlined the plan to Nick and Sara. "We're going to take our time-we'll start at the back, then move forward. We'll do one room at a time, beginning with the garage."
Once there, Nick used his Maglite to find the light switch, revealing a garage three doors wide, the first bay open, a workbench against the near wall. The limo sat in the middle bay, the hearse in the far bay.
Nick said, "Here's something I thought I'd never hear myself say…"
Grissom took the bait. "What, Nick?"
"…I'll take the hearse."
Grissom smiled. "And I'll take the bench and work area. Sara, that leaves you the limo."
"Got it."
The toolbench was an afterthought constructed of plywood and two-by-fours, with several cardboard boxes stacked on one end. Overlooking the area was a pegboard with the typical screwdrivers, pliers, hammers, and other hand tools, and a shelf below held a locked steel toolbox.
Grissom decided to start there.
He hit the power button on the overhead door and walked around the building, instead of back through. He found Brass and Black at the front corner of the building, the mortician puffing nervously on a cigarette.
Grissom gestured with a thumb. "There's a toolbox under your workbench. Could you unlock it for us?"
Black said, "That's for Jimmy-he works on the cars. Keeps the good tools in there, locked up."
"Do you have a key?"
"No."
"I'm going to open that toolbox, then."
"Do what you have to," the mortician said noncommittally.
Grissom returned to the Tahoe, got his bolt cutters out of the back, and in the garage, popped the lock on the toolbox, finding exactly what Dustin Black had said he would-tools, good tools.
Then Grissom went through the cardboard boxes on the workbench, three rows, three boxes each. Some contained clothes, others had chemicals, and the very middle box, the center square in the tic-tac-toe of cardboard, held several eight-ounce boxes of mortician's wax and, on the bottom, something else….
"Gun!" Grissom called over his shoulder.
In seconds, the other two were at his side.
Nick snapped pictures and Sara opened an evidence bag as Grissom carefully picked up the .22 Smith & Wesson automatic handgun and dropped it in.
"Shall we keep searching?" Nick asked.
"Not right now," Grissom said. "We'll be back, but…not now."
They packed up their gear, closed and locked the garage doors, then met Brass and Black out front.
"Mr. Black," Grissom said, "you need to lock up. And you may need to make arrangements-you're not going to be back for a while."
The mortician dropped his cigarette, his expression tinged with panic. "What? You didn't find anything. You couldn't find anything! There was nothing to-"
Grissom held up the evidence bag and Nick shone his flashlight on the pistol inside. The light glinted off the metal, winking at Black.
After Brass read Dustin Black his Miranda rights, the CSIs hung in the background as the captain accompanied Dustin Black to lock up the mortuary. The man was crying as Brass cuffed him and led him to the Tahoe.
"I didn't do this," he kept saying. "That's not my gun-I've never seen that thing before!"
"Not the first time I've heard that song," Brass said, and loaded him into the backseat.
Nick was studying his boss. "Gris-you don't believe him, do you?"
"I don't believe anybody, Nick. I believe evidence-and I've always been greedy."
"What do you mean?"
"To paraphrase Oliver Twist-I'd like some more."
And the three CSIs joined the detective and the suspect in the Tahoe.
10
THE SMALLEST OF THE CSI WORK AREAS, the Questioned Documents Lab was about twelve by fifteen feet, dominated by a long plastic-covered, backlit table. Sweeping around this workstation on a wheeled desk chair, Jenny Northam-formerly an independent contractor, now full time with the department-rolled away from a job she was doing for Sara Sidle to come around to where materials for the Vivian Elliot case awaited.
Catherine Willows stepped farther into the room, not comforted at all by being directly in Jenny's path.
"Vega said they look like a match," Catherine said.
"That's why they pay me the medium-size bucks, Cath," Jenny said. "No frickin' way."
Jenny had tamed her notorious longshoreman's vocabulary after coming onto the city's payroll; but hints remained. She held up Mabel Hinton's exemplar in one hand and the Sunny Day sign-in sheet in the other for Catherine to form her own opinion.
The CSI shook her head. "To me, they're dead on."
"A wax grape and a real grape look alike, too, y'know…. Somebody tried to copy Mabel's signature, but while it may look hunky-dory at first glance, a close look…reveals the sign-in sheet as an obvious forgery…. Go on, Cath, take a closer look."
Catherine studied them for a few moments. "Is it the loops?"
"What about the loops?"
"Too small?"
Jenny smiled. "Good, Cath…. Anything else?"
"Something…something about the slant?"
"Bingo," the handwriting expert said. "On the sign-in sheet, the slant is forced-you can tell the writer's natural slant is in the opposite direction. Pressure points are in the wrong places."
Catherine nodded. "So-there's no way the same person wrote both of these?"
"No way in heck."
Catherine laughed. "You have cleaned up your language."
"Frickin' A," Jenny said.
Again Catherine's eyes affixed themselves to that sign-in sheet. If Vivian's friend Mabel Hinton hadn't signed it, then who had? Catherine's gaze traveled to the column to the right of the forged signature, where in a box had been scrawled what appeared to be a car license number.
"Jen-did Vega say anything about this?"
Frowning at the number Catherine pointed to, Jenny said, "No…no, just the signature…. What are you smiling about?"
"Leads have been a little scarce in this case. Always nice to find one…. Thanks, Jen."
"Any time, Cath."
Back in her office, Catherine ran the number through DMV to quick result. She grabbed the print-out, headed for the door, and-in less than ten minutes-pulled the Tahoe to a stop in front of the rundown, one-story concrete bunker housing Valley Taxi Company. Inside, she approached the dispatcher, a bald man in his sixties with Coke-bottle glasses, a dangling half-smoked cigarette, and a short-sleeve plaid shirt with evidence of breakfast on it.