out with a garden trowel. The closer they got to the bottom, the slower they went. Grissom held the torch further away, heating smaller and smaller sections of the carport at a more measured pace. Catherine now used a table spoon to scrape away the heated asphalt, and a miniflash to light the area as she scoured it for the bit of metal that had pinged her detector.
Finally, after nearly two hours of this tedious labor, her knees killing her from kneeling, and with bits of the old gravel visible at the bottom of their short trench, Catherine saw something that looked out of place.
'Hold it,' she said.
Grissom pulled back even further. 'You see something?'
She said, 'I think so,' and moved forward, shining the light down at the hole. Setting the spoon aside, she pulled on a pair of latex gloves and carefully picked at the edge of the hole. Her gloves were no match for the hot asphalt and she had to be careful. She poked and prodded at the spot until finally the thing popped loose.
Grissom turned off the torch and took her flashlight, so she could use both hands.
Scooping up the small dark object, she juggled it from palm to palm, blowing on it as it cooled. He shone the light on the thing in her hand. Small, about the size of a fingertip and about a third the diameter, the object was obviously metal but covered with the sticky black mess.
'When we get back to the lab and clean all this goop off,' she said, holding the object up to the light, 'I think we'll find we have a twenty-five-caliber shell casing.'
Grissom said nothing, but his eyes were as bright as the torch, right before he shut it off.
9
FOR NEARLY TWO HOURS SARA IMMERSED HERSELF IN THE files Brass had provided, learning several significant facts the rumpled homicide detective had failed to mention.
While the killer's career covered nearly twenty years, only a handful of thumb prints from shell casings linked a single suspect to any of the murders. The two vertical bullet holes approximately one inch apart, his signature, had shown up in forty-two murders (prior to this week's discoveries) in twenty-one states. Interestingly, the signature seemed to have dropped off the planet just under five years ago. Their very new murder-the dead mob attorney in the Beachcomber hallway-was the only known exception.
Nick popped in. 'Any luck?'
'Predicatably, Brass missed a few things,' Sara said.
File folder in hand, he took a seat beside her.
She filled him in quickly, concluding, 'I'm not sure any of this is stop-the-presses stuff. How about you?'
'Tests are going to take a while,' Nick said.
Her chin rested in her palm, elbow propped against the desk. 'There is one other little item Brass overlooked.'
'Yeah?'
'None of the investigators seem to have made it an issue, but . . .'
'Give.'
'The bodies of victims are found . . . although who knows how many other vics, like your mummy, remain hidden away . . . but their cars? Never.'
'I'm not sure I'm following you.'
'Okay, I'll give you the large print version. Take Malachy Fortunato-did the police ever find his car? Both he and his wheels were missing from that driveway, remember.'
Nick, thinking that over, said, 'I'd have to check the file for sure, but you know . . . I think you're right.'
'Of course I'm right.' She leaned toward him. 'Hey, trust me-nobody's seen that car since it pulled outa the driveway that morning . . . with Mr. Fortunato most likely riding in the trunk.'
'And a pretty darn docile passenger, I'd bet,' Nick said. 'But what about Dingelmann?'
'That, I grant you, doesn't fit the pattern,' she said. 'But then, Dingelmann didn't have a car. Took the shuttle from the airport.'
'No rental?'
'No rental. Doorman saw Dingelmann taking cabs a couple of times.'
Nick was interested. 'All the victims' cars disappeared?'
'If they had cars, yeah. Also, victims tended to disappear from home, from work, or some other familiar haunt-and the bodies turned up elsewhere.'
Nick was nodding. 'Dumped, here and there.'
'That would seem a reasonable assumption . . . of course you know how Grissom feels about assumptions.'
Nick gestured to the stack of file folders. 'Anything else in there we can use?'
'Well,' she said, shrugging, 'there is one thing I can't quite get a handle on.'
'Which is?'
Sara went back into full analytical mode. 'For some reason this prolific, professional assassin disappears almost five years ago. Why does he show up now? Especially if Grissom's on to something, and Dingelmann wasn't a mob hit . . . in which case, what the hell is this guy doing in Vegas, getting proactive again, all of a sudden?'
With a shrug, Nick said, 'Maybe he was hired by somebody else.'
'Like who?'
'Dingelmann's ex-wife, a disgruntled business partner, who knows? Just because no bodies have turned up with that distinctive 'Deuce' signature doesn't mean our man hasn't been active.'
'Yeah, yeah, possible, possible-and we know at least one instance when he hid a body. So what do you think?'
Nick threw his hands palms up.
'You suppose Grissom wants to hear . . .' She mimicked his gesture.
'Okay,' he said, rising, throwing a grin off to the sidelines, 'I get it-more digging.'
Sara gave him a mock sweet smile. 'Well, don't go away mad-what have you dug up, thus far? I showed you mine, you show me yours.'
His smile in return was almost embarrassed, and he laughed, and leaned against the doorjamb and said, 'I went to the website for the
Sara frowned in interest. 'Dancer?'
'Exotic type. A stripper. Innocent child like you wouldn't know about such things.'
'Catherine would.'
Nick grinned. 'Yeah-that's where I heard about 'Joy Starr'-stripper having an affair with casino employee Fortunato . . . a stripper who disappeared on the same
Sara was grinning; she made a yummy sound. 'This is getting good.'
'Seems 'Joy Starr' was a stage name for a Monica Petty. I'm going to turn the name over to Brass, see what he can do with it.'
'But you might just ride along to the strip club with him.'
'I might. . . . She was a doll, in her day.'
'Joy whatever?'
'Starr.' Nick pulled a photo from the file folder, handed it to Sara. 'Next on the bill, ladies and germs-the exotic dance stylings of Joy Starr.'
'Cue the ZZ Top,' Sara said, looking at an 8-inch by 10-inch head shot of a pretty, dark-eyed, dark-haired woman of maybe twenty-one, with that overteased '80s-style hair. 'That's some mall hair.'
'What?'
She laughed a little. 'That's what we used to call it, my girlfriends and me-mall hair.'
'You ever have hair like that?' he asked, puckishly. 'Middle school maybe?'
'I was a heartbreaker then,' she said, 'and I'm a heartbreaker now. Run before you get hurt, Nicky.'
'Ouch,' he said, glanced again at the photo, then tucked it back in the folder, and went back to his work.
