'What happened to your fabled 'twenty-four-hour service'?' Catherine kidded her.
'Don't break my balls,' Jenny said. 'I got choir practice.'
Catherine guided the wide-eyed Nick out of the office, and, as they drove back down the Strip, Nicky behind the wheel, Catherine punched a speed-dial number on her cell phone. It only rang once.
'O'Riley,' came the gruff voice.
'Is Marge Kostichek still with you?'
'Yep.'
'No change in her story?'
'Nope.'
'You gonna cut her loose?'
'Yep.'
'She's in the room with you right now, isn't she?'
'Yep.'
'. . . Okay, we're going to get you a court order for nontestimonial identification.'
'Say what?'
'A writing sample and fingerprints.'
'Oh! All right.'
Catherine heard Marge Kostichek's voice in the background. 'Aren't you the gabby one?'
Catherine said, 'I'll call Grissom-you should have the paper you need in less than an hour.'
'I like the sound of this.' He disconnected.
So did she; then she called Grissom, who said he'd take care of the court order and get it to O'Riley.
'Have either of you slept?' he asked.
'Earlier this year,' she said, with a sigh. 'Haven't eaten in recent memory, either.'
'Well, stop and eat, at least. We're going to get sloppy if we don't watch ourselves. . . . I'll handle things here for a while.'
'Thanks. We'll be back soon.'
She hit END, leaned back in the seat; she wished Grissom hadn't reminded her how tired she was.
'What did he say?' Nick asked.
'That we should eat.'
'Good. I haven't eaten since I got a bear claw out of the vending machine about twelve hours ago.'
The Harley-Davidson Cafe looked like a cross between a fifties style diner, a pub, and a high-end heavy metal club. Though she'd been past it many times, Catherine had never eaten here before-she seldom stopped at tourist places like this. She made a decent living, but not enough to regularly afford eight-dollar hamburgers, and still raise a daughter.
An American flag made out of three-inch anchor chain filled one wall, all the way up to the thirty-foot ceiling, well above the open second-floor game-room. A conveyer running through the restaurant, the bar, the gift shop out front and up to the second floor, carried twenty antique Harleys in a constant parade.
While waiting for Nick's lemonade and Catherine's iced tea, they talked the case.
'All right,' Catherine said, 'if the mob didn't kill Fortunato, who did?'
He thought about that. 'How about the wife? Always the first place to look. And he was fooling around on her, after all.'
'I don't know,' Catherine said. 'She seems pretty genuinely distraught, finally finding out he's dead . . . but her anger for Joy sure hasn't ebbed, over the passage of time.'
'What about her boyfriend?'
The waitress set their drinks in front of them, took their order, and Catherine suffered through the requisite flirting ('Aikake' was a 'beautiful name,' according to Nick, and 'Hawaiian,' according to the waitress).
'You ready now?' Catherine asked as the waitress hip-swayed away.
'Sorry. The boyfriend?'
'Gerry Hoskins. Annie Fortunato claims he wasn't even in the picture when Malachy disappeared, but no one's checked the story.'
'Someone should.'
'That's why God made the likes of Jim Brass.'
'I was wondering. Any other ideas?'
'How about Marge Kostichek?'
He shrugged. 'She lied about knowing Joy, yeah-but what the hell motive could she have?'
Catherine sighed. 'I don't know. How's that for an answer?'
Nick talked up over Steppenwolf. 'What about Joy herself? She disappeared the same day-and until we found that letter we had no idea she was alive.'
'But the letter from fifteen years ago probably isn't from Joy-why hire somebody killed, and then plant a forged letter that would've been more convincing had you written it yourself?'
'My head is starting to hurt.'
Catherine was thinking. 'I wonder if Grissom had any luck with the California DMV.'
'Later,' Nick said, gazing up hungrily.
Their food had arrived-whether it was the waitress or the cheeseburger that put that look on his face, Catherine didn't really care to know.
In less than a day they had gone from identifying the killer back to square-one as they tried to figure out who paid for the Deuce to whack Malachy Fortunato. Perhaps, Nick did have the right idea. For now, maybe she should just eat her chicken sandwich and try to forget about the sudden multitude of suspects they had.
After lunch, Catherine dropped Nick off at HQ, so he could begin going through the evidence again. Such a reappraisal was always a necessary aspect of scientific criminal investigation, because new information and perspectives continually put the evidence in a different light. But if they were going to catch the person who hired the killer, that would likely depend upon matching the fingerprints on the documents, and Jenny Northam matching the handwriting.
Catherine wasn't far from Annie Fortunato's residence when her cell phone rang.
'Hey, it's Nick. Grissom had Joy Petty's driver's license photo waiting for me here when I got back.'
'And?'
'It's her, all right. Older, not so cute, but it's her-Monica Petty or Joy Starr or Joy Petty or-'
'A rose by any name.' Catherine's hand tightened on the wheel of the Tahoe. 'Tell O'Riley or Brass-maybe one of them can go out to L.A. and interview her.'
'Speaking of O'Riley,' Nick said, 'he got the fingerprints and writing sample from Marge Kostichek.'
'Good-just pulling up in front of the Fortunato house,' she said. 'Be back in an hour.'
'Later,' he said, and disconnected.
Catherine parked the car and walked up to the door, the smaller version of her field kit in one hand. A single dim light shone through the living room curtains. Catherine knocked on the door.
After a moment, Annie Fortunato opened the door slowly. Though she was completely dressed, in a blue T- shirt and darker blue shorts, she looked a little disheveled; as usual, a glowing cigarette was affixed to thin white lips. 'Hi, Miz Willows-come on in, come on in.'
Catherine stepped inside.
Smiling, Mrs. Fortunato asked, 'What can I do for you?'
A smell Catherine instantly recognized-Kraft macaroni and cheese-wafted through from the front room; it wasn't long after lunch.
'I apologize for not calling first . . .'
'Hey, no problem.' She took a drag off the cigarette. 'I know you're trying to help.'
'I'm glad you understand that. I need to get a set of fingerprints from you.'
Her eyes wide, Mrs. Fortunato said, 'Pardon?'
'I need a set of your prints-I need them from Gerry, too.'
'Why?' The warmth was gone from the woman's voice now.
'We found fingerprints on the Joy Starr note. In your husband's effects?'
'Why on earth . . .'
