Sin City

'Here's a thought-why don't we go home?'

Sara's eyebrows lifted and she nodded. 'It's an idea.'

'You up for coming in a hour or two early? Maybe by then the elves will have polished all our boots for us.' Catherine was reaching for her purse.

'Elves like Greg Sanders,' Sara said, as they walked down the hall toward the locker room, 'and Dan Helpingstine?'

'Great big elves like that, yeah.'

And the women went home, like Vegas headliners, to sleep away the day.

The city wore the blue patina of dusk, the sky streaked a faded orange along a horizon made irregular by the lumpy spine of the slumbering beast of the dark blue mountain range; dark gray clouds, like factory smoke, encouraged the night.

In her stylish black leather jacket, a turquoise top and new black jeans and black pointed-toe boots, Catherine Willows walked briskly across the parking lot, feeling fresh, well-rested, and ready to get back to solving Jenna Patrick's murder. She had not yet admitted to herself that this case was special, that her emotions had been touched by the thought of a young woman, about to leave that life, having hers ended prematurely.

She collected Sara in the break room, where the brunette criminalist was giving the day shift's coffee a down-the-drain mercy killing.

'Hey,' Sara said.

'Hey,' Catherine said. 'Let's see what the elves have come up with.'

'Greg first?'

Catherine nodded. 'Greg first.'

Greg Sanders was hovering over one of his state-of-the-art machines. God, he was young, Catherine thought; with his spiky hair and mischievous smile, he looked more like a kid than a gifted scientist-still, there was no doubting his ability.

Catherine stood across from the slender blue-smocked figure, Sara leaning on the counter, not yet awake. This was morning to them, after all.

'What do you have for us?' Catherine asked.

Sanders shuffled some papers, and smiled-a smile that might mean disaster or triumph, one never knew. 'Last things first, I guess. The fake beard and mustache you found in Lipton's house? Human hair.'

'Human scalp hair,' Catherine said.

Sara was frowning, not quite following.

Sanders picked up on Catherine's thought. 'Human scalp hair's what they use to make really high-quality wigs.' He brought out two plastic bags with the beard in one and the mustache in the other.

'Okay,' Catherine said, with Sanders and yet not with him. 'So what does that tell us?'

He turned his palms up. 'Well, the hair in the beard and mustache, that you took from Lipton's closet, doesn't match any hairs you collected in Dream Dolls.'

'No?'

He held up a tiny bag with a single straight brown hair in it. 'No-for example, this is from the club, and I identified it as wig hair, but the cheap variety…not human hair: rayon.'

'Okay,' Sara said, not ready to process this information just yet, 'what else?'

Sanders showed them two more evidence bags. 'The spirit gum bottle, and the shoebox you got all this stuff from? The only fingerprints belong to the victim, Jenna Patrick.'

Sara shrugged. 'So Ray Lipton wore gloves, or wiped off the bottle and box.'

Sanders was already shaking his head. 'Not likely.'

'Why?' Catherine asked.

'No wipe marks, but plenty of clear prints-the Patrick woman's prints would've been smeared, if the box'd been wiped. Near as I can tell, only Jenna Patrick ever touched this stuff.'

'Okay,' Catherine said, 'so Ray Lipton didn't touch any of it. Maybe this is some other fake mustache and beard, hard as that might be to buy…. What about the back room at the strip club?'

'Yeah,' Sara said, eager, 'any sign of our man back there?'

Sanders sighed, took a swig of coffee, shook his head. 'You brought in a ton of stuff; I'll still be going through this evidence when I reach retirement. Y'know, I never knew female pubic hair could be such a bore.'

Sara made a face. 'Thanks for sharing, Greg.'

'Anyway, none of the fingerprints belong to Ray Lipton. His hair wasn't back there, either.'

Sara suddenly seemed animated-finally awake. 'Wait, Greg-what are you telling us…Lipton didn't do it?'

'I'm not saying that. Anyway, you've still got the videotape, don't you?'

Catherine said, 'That's starting to look a little iffy, its own self.'

After another sip of coffee, Sanders raised his eyebrows, shrugged and said, 'It's not that Lipton couldn't have done the deed-it's just that there's no real evidence from the strip club that he did, other than the security videotape. And if you think that's not him on the video…well…where does that leave you?'

Sara turned to Catherine. 'Where does that leave us?'

'Where else?' Catherine said. 'Back to square one: find evidence that Lipton did it…or evidence that exonerates him.'

'And, hopefully, points to someone else,' Sara said. 'Greg, you got anything else for us?'

'Fingerprints, lots of them. Hair, fibers, and DNA. We just don't know who they go with. I need samples from the dancers and the customers.'

Catherine shook her head. 'We've got the customers who were there when the murder was discovered- O'Riley and Vega have been interviewing them, collecting fingerprints; maybe day shift can help us out and gather those samples for you.'

'That'll help,' Sanders said.

'As for customers who might've been there earlier that day or night,' she went on, 'or more crucially, any who slipped out before Jenna's body was found…there's no way to track them down.'

'Unless they were regulars,' Sara said, 'and that Kapa-what's-it guy'll give us their names.'

'Kapelos,' Catherine said. 'He might help.' She used her cell phone and caught Detective Erin Conroy, telling her, 'We need another visit to Dream Dolls.'

'Got a lead?'

'We may have, after you've done some questioning…. Meet Sara and me there, and I'll fill you in when I see you.'

Fifteen minutes later, they met the detective in the mostly empty parking lot of the strip club, the fancy DREAM DOLLS sign doing its neon dance for no one in particular.

'Why so dead?' Sara wondered aloud.

Catherine surveyed the vacant spaces. 'Early evening…weeknight.'

Still, strip clubs in Vegas rarely had empty parking lots, no matter what hour it was.

'You mind telling me,' Conroy said, her mouth a tight line, 'why we've returned to this delightful scene of the crime?'

'Ray Lipton,' Catherine said quietly, 'may not be our guy.'

A convertible Mustang rolled by, a male passenger cat calling at the three women standing in the parking lot, possibly mistaking them for strippers on their way into the club. A low-rider BMW drove by, its bass speaker rattling windows in the surrounding older buildings.

'Lipton not our man?' Conroy asked, numbly.

Catherine shook her head.

Conroy was frowning. 'What the hell? We have him cold, on videotape.'

'That might not be him,' Sara admitted. 'If it was, he somehow managed not to leave any prints.'

'You CSIs ever hear about gloves?' Conroy asked.

'It's not that easy,' Catherine said.

She filled Conroy in on Greg's reading of the evidence, and Helpingstine's preliminary enhancement of the video, which seemed to bring out a figure that didn't entirely resemble Lipton's build.

Rather glumly, Conroy asked, 'Suggestions?'