'I'm afraid he has,' Laurie said. 'There's nothing in it-Mr. Randall emptied it when he closed his account.
'Shit.'
'I'm sorry,' Laurie said.
'You're just doing what I'm doing.'
'Huh?'
He smiled at her. 'Our jobs.' She smiled back, and the nose-stud girl rolled her eyes.
Five minutes later, Sara-accompanied by Detective Erin Conroy-turned up with the warrant; he filled them both in on the situation.
Sara smirked and shook her head. 'So, there's nothing?'
Warrick shrugged. 'We can print the mailbox door, but that's about it. Looks like a dead end.'
Conroy said, 'I'll question her . . . what's her name?'
'Laurie,' Warrick said.
'Last name?'
Embarrassed, he shrugged again. 'Never came up.'
Conroy just looked at him; then she went over to question the woman and put on the record the things that had been told to Warrick, off.
Sara sighed and said, 'I gave up running prints for this?'
'You were tired of doing that, anyway.'
She tried not to smile, but finally it broke through. 'Yeah, I was.'
'Well, you're gonna love it when I give you the dozens of prints I got off that slot machine.'
'More prints. You find anything good?'
'Yeah.' He leaned in conspiratorially, as Conroy's questioning echoed in the hollow storefront. 'A Dairy Queen, around the corner. Lunch. You buy.'
She clearly liked the sound of that; but as they were exiting, Sara nudged him in the ribs, saying, 'Buy your own damn lunch.'
Two hours later, back in the office, Warrick had already struck out with 'Peter Randall'-an alias, of course- and Sara had run the prints from the casino, which had also proved worthless. And the guy's mailbox door had failed to yield a single usable print.
Laurie Miller, the manager, had waited on ' Randall' both times he'd been in the store, and her description of him to Detective Conroy was painfully generic: dark glasses, dark baseball cap was all that got added to what the hotel tapes had already told them. A witness sketch would be worked up, but not much hope was held for it.
Backing up, Warrick decided to see what they could get on the footprints from the hallway.
Sara used a database that identified the running-shoe design as the probable product of a company called Racers; the match was not exact, due to the imperfect nature of the crime-scene footprint. So Warrick went online and found the number for the corporate office in Oregon.
'Racers Shoes and Athletic Apparel,' said a perky female voice. 'How may I direct your call?'
'My name is Warrick Brown. I'm with the Las Vegas Criminalistics Bureau. I need to talk to someone about sales of different product lines of your shoes.'
There was a silence at the other end.
Finally, Warrick said, 'Hello?'
'I'm sorry, sir,' the voice said. 'I had to ask my supervisor how to route your call. I'm going to transfer you to Ms. Kotsay in sales.'
'Thank you.'
He heard a phone ring twice, then another female voice-somewhat older, more professional-said, 'Sondra Kotsay-how may I help you?'
Warrick explained the situation.
'This is a most unusual request, Mr. Brown. We manufacture many lines of shoes.'
'I know. And we have a tentative match from a database, already. But I could really use your expert confirmation.'
'Am I going to have to testify?'
He smiled to himself. 'Probably not. I'd just like to fax you a footprint.'
'Oh,' she said, 'well, that would be fine,' and gave him the number.
He chose not to send her the bloody print he'd highlighted with the Leuco Crystal Violet and instead sent her one from the landing that Grissom had obtained with the electrostatic print lifter.
A few minutes later, he was asking the woman, 'Did you get that?'
There was a moment of silence on the line, then Sondra came back on the phone. 'Came through fine,' she announced. 'Give me a little time. I'll call you back when I've got something.'
How tired he was just dawning on him, Warrick wandered down to the break room and got himself some pineapple juice out of the fridge. He went to see Sara, at her computer, but she wasn't there. He tracked her down- in all places, at the morgue, standing over Dinglemann's corpse.
'You okay?' he asked.
'Yes,' she said. 'No . . . I don't know.'
'What?'
'Why are we working so hard to find out who killed this guy? Why am I busting my butt to find his killer?' She pointed at the body. 'I mean, mob lawyer, getting the scum of the earth off, scot free . . .'
'Better not let Gris hear you talking like that.'
She threw her gaze at him, and it was almost a glare. 'I'm not talking to Grissom. I'm talking to you.'
'You know it's not for us to decide.' Warrick moved a little closer, so that Dinglemann lay between them. 'This guy, he's past all that now. Good, evil-doesn't matter. He's been murdered. That puts him in the next world, if there is one-but his body's in our world.'
She thought about that, then she shrugged. 'Maybe it is that simple. I don't know. It's just . . . hard for me.'
'Well, if you can't divorce yourself from the good and bad, think of the guy who did this. Somebody who takes money to take lives. That bad enough for you?'
She smiled, just a little. 'Yeah. Yeah, that'll do it.'
His cell phone rang and they both jumped. He almost dropped it in his haste to answer. 'Warrick Brown.'
'Sondra Kotsay, Mr. Brown. I think I can help you.'
Waving at Sara that he had to take this call, Warrick went back down the hall to his office, grabbed a pad and plopped into his chair.
The professional voice said, 'The print that you faxed us is for our X-15 running shoe.'
'Okay.'
'It's a line that, I'm sorry to say, has not done very well for us.'
Warrick knew that the smaller the production run, the better his chances. 'How many have been produced?'
'Before production stopped, just under one million pair.'
His heart dropping to his stomach, his head drooping, he said, 'A million?'
'I know that sounds daunting, Mr. Brown. But it's not that bad-at least not for you.'
'Uh huh.'
'Over half were never sold.'
That helped-sort of. As she gave him her report, he scribbled the information on the pad.
'And of the remaining half-million,' she said, 'only about one hundred pair were sold in the greater Las Vegas area.'
He was liking the sound of this more and more.
'The particular size that you gave us, men's size eleven, sold less than two dozen pair in the Vegas area.'
The smile split his face nearly in half. 'Thank you, Ms. Kotsay. Great work.'
'Would you like the names and addresses of the retailers that sold them?'
