'Is this kind of fishing expedition productive?'
She smirked, shrugged. 'I've got to do something. Can't use DNA or dental until we at least have some idea who our guy is.'
He sat on the edge of the desk. 'Got anything at all?'
'A ring with an 'F' in diamonds inlaid in it.'
Grissom's eyebrows rose; he liked that. 'First name or last name?'
Catherine shrugged again. 'Your guess is as good as mine.'
'Any other engraving? To so-and-so, from so-and-so? With love?'
'No. Just an effin' 'F.' '
Grissom raised an eyebrow. 'Do we know how the victim died?'
'Shot in the head.'
'. . . Funny.'
'Ha-ha?'
'The other kind-our hallway corpse was shot in the head.'
Another smirk. 'Well, nothing separating the corpses except maybe fifteen years.'
Grissom pressed. 'Have you fingerprinted him yet?'
'I was waiting for Nick to come in. Our mummy's in pretty bad shape. One foot already fell off when they were hauling him out from under the trailer.'
'I hate when that happens.'
'I figured it would be easier processing the prints with two of us.'
Nodding, Grissom said, 'Good call. But you're here now, and Nick isn't-how about I lend a hand?'
'Or a foot?' Her sigh turned into a yawn. 'I appreciate the offer-I can use a change of scene. It's like searching for a needle in a hundred haystacks.'
Grissom nodded, hefting the stack of files. 'Let me put this stuff in my office and we'll get right on it.'
Turning off the computer, she rose; he was already back to the door, but had left his coffee behind. Detail work on a crime scene was Grissom's strength; but in daily life he had a hint of the absent-minded professor.
Joining him at the doorway, she said, 'Hey, thanks for the coffee, Grissom.'
He frowned at her, as she seemed about to drink it. She handed him the cup. 'I'm kidding. Come on.'
In the hallway, between sips of coffee, Grissom said, 'Sometimes I can be a little thoughtless.'
'I wouldn't say that. Not just any guy would walk a girl to the morgue.'
And soon that was where they stood, blue scrubs over their street clothes, John Doe #17 outstretched on a silver metal table in front of them, his hands still bagged at his sides.
'I can't believe we already have seventeen John Does this year,' she said.
Putting on a pair of glasses, Grissom moved forward; he didn't seem to have heard her. Catherine stood back a little as he studied the corpse. She knew he loved this part of the job-he was much better with dead people than live ones. There was something almost innocent about Grissom, something pure in his love for investigation and the search for truth.
But even more, Grissom loved to learn. Each new body presented the opportunity for him to gain more knowledge to help not only this person, but other people in the future. Wherever his people skills lagged, the criminalist made up for it in a passion for serving the victims of crime, and compassion for the grieving survivors.
At first, he took in the whole body. Catherine got the impression that Grissom wasn't so much seeing the body as absorbing it.
'Your killer did us a big favor hiding the body the way he did,' Grissom said.
'You didn't crawl under a rotting trailer to get at him.'
His eyes flicked to her. 'You know if we lived anywhere but the desert, there wouldn't have been anything left but a few bones.'
She nodded. 'Your bugs got cheated out of their buffet.'
He stepped in next to the body and pressed gingerly on the abdomen. 'Feels like the organs might still be intact.'
Grissom with a body reminded her of how Lindsey had been when Catherine had given her that glass tea set last Christmas, the little girl examining each item, careful not to damage or crack the tiny pieces as she inspected each one. The criminalist did the same thing with the mummy, poking here, prodding there, bringing the work light down to more closely examine a section of the chest.
'Okay,' he said finally.
'You through?'
He looked at her sheepishly. 'Sorry. This is your deal-where do you want to start?'
Before they could move, Dr. Robbins, the coroner, walked through the swinging doors, a set of X rays in one hand. 'Oh, sorry-didn't know anybody was in here.'
'Bad place to be startled, Doc,' Catherine said with a half-smile.
Around sixty, bald with a neatly trimmed gray beard, the avuncular Robbins-like them, he was in scrubs-slid his arm out of the metal cuff of his crutch and leaned it against the wall.
'What have you got, Doc?' Grissom said.
'Cause of death.' Robbins stuck the first X ray under a clip on the viewer and turned on the light. The fluorescent bulbs came to life, illuminating a side view of the skull of John Doe #17 with several dark spots readily apparent. The second X ray the coroner put up showed the back of the skull with only two dark spots. He pointed to that picture first. 'These two dark spots are your entry wounds.'
'Are you
Robbins looked at Grissom the way a parent does a backward child. 'Why wouldn't I be sure?'
'Have you got the right X rays?' Grissom was having a closer look-much closer. 'Is this John Smith or John Doe #17?'
'The mummy, of course, John Doe #17,' Robbins said, more confused than offended, now. 'I don't even know who John Smith is.'
'Victim from the Beachcomber,' Grissom said. 'Two entry wounds vertically placed almost precisely one inch apart. Just like this. . . .'
Catherine frowned, shook her head, arcs of reddish-blonde hair swinging. 'The same pattern? You're kidding.'
Grissom twitched half a frown back at her. 'When do I kid?'
'Well,' Robbins said, 'there's no mistake, I haven't even seen the other corpse yet. Hell of a coincidence.'
'I don't believe in coincidences,' Catherine said. 'There's always a way to explain them away.'
Grissom shook his head slowly. 'I don't deny the existence of coincidence-particularly when our corpses are separated by so many years.'
Mind whirling, Catherine said, 'Do we have two cases, or one case?'
Grissom's eyes almost closed; his mouth pursed. Then he said, 'We have two victims. We work them as two cases. If the evidence turns them into one case, so be it. Until then . . . we live with this coincidence.'
'But we keep our eyes open.'
Grissom's eyes popped wide. 'Always a good practice.'
Pointing to the other X ray, Robbins indicated a dark spot on the right side of the forehead. 'Here's a good place to start looking-there's one of your bullets. Embedded itself in the skull.'
Grissom asked, 'And the second one?'
'EMTs found it on the gurney when they brought him in. Little devil just rolled out.'
'Where's the slug now?' Catherine asked.
'With the other evidence,' Robbins said, picking up his crutch again. 'Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I better go make the acquaintance of Mr. John Smith.'
After the coroner left, Catherine and Grissom got down to work. They carefully unbagged the hands.
Grissom said, 'Killer took the fingertips. Thinks he stole the victim's prints.'
'I love it when we're smarter than the bad guys.'
