Sin City

house: the beard, mustache, spirit gum and shoebox.

Lipton looked in at them without touching anything. He shrugged. 'That's Jenna's stuff.'

'A beard and a mustache?'

'Yeah-it's from her act.'

'Her act?'

Lipton nodded matter of factly. 'She had this routine where she'd put this stuff on, dance around the bar dressed as an old man. She didn't make a stage entrance, you know? And another girl would still be dancing. Jenna'd just sort of show up out in the club, kinda sneak out there.' He grinned, shaking his head, remembering. 'She'd have 'em all fooled.'

'Did she?'

'Oh, yeah, she was really good. She'd rub against these guys as she moved through the bar, drove 'em batty-they thought she was an old gay guy tryin' to get lucky or somethin'! Eventually, she'd work her way to the stage and got up there with the girl that was dancing at the time, and rub all over her.'

'Uh huh.'

'It's just about the only bit I ever liked about her dancing. See, the other dancer would pretend to be grossed out by the old man and'd leave the stage…then this 'old man' would start stripping. When the stiffs finally figured out they had pushed her away, they went ballistic. She had them all in the palm of her hand.'

'That must have got under your skin,' Catherine said.

'Naw,' Lipton said, shaking his head. 'Just the opposite. That act wasn't about cheap sex, her act was… social commentary. Jenna liked making that point; she was smart, you know, and sensitive. Don't turn someone away until you get to know 'em. It was subtle, but it was about a hell of a lot more than just Jenna taking off her clothes. Like I said, it was the only bit of hers I liked.'

'Why hasn't anyone mentioned this act before?'

'Well, she hadn't done in quite a while. After she, you know…had her augmentation surgery, it wasn't so easy for her to pretend to be a man…. Does this clear me?'

'No.'

His face fell.

She continued: 'I need to confirm that this act really existed.'

'That Kapelos character'll tell you.'

'I'll call him right now and find out,' she said. 'You see, it's like I told you when this started, Mr. Lipton.'

The suspect's eyes were poised between hope and despair, now.

'If you are innocent,' she said, 'we'll find that out, and we will catch the killer.'

'Not for my sake,' he said.

She wasn't following him; her expression said, What?

'For Jenna's,' he said.

11

AT THE SAME TIME GREG SANDERS WAS GIVING CATH-erine Willows and Sara Sidle the skinny on wig hair, Gil Grissom-in a loose long-sleeve dark gray shirt and black slacks-was striding down the hall, a file folder in one hand, his heels clicking softly on the tile floor. Finally arriving at his destination, he knocked on a door with raised white letters spelling: CAPTAIN JAMES BRASS.

'It's open,' came the muffled voice from the other side.

Grissom walked in and granted Brass a boyish grin; the detective was sitting in a large gray chair behind a government-issue gray metal desk.

The office was a glorified cubicle, the wall to the left filled with file cabinets, a chalkboard all but obscuring the wall at right, with a table covered with stacks of papers camped beneath it. Brass's desk, however, was tidy, bearing only the open file before him, a telephone, and a photo of his daughter, Ellie.

'Chic,' Grissom said.

'You came by for a reason, or just to brighten my evening?'

Standing opposite Brass, ignoring a waiting chair, Grissom deposited his own file on top of the one Brass had been perusing. 'Results of the tox screen on our torso-no drugs, no alcohol.'

'Sounds like a good Christian corpse,' Brass said, cocking an eyebrow over the file. 'But is it Lynn Pierce?'

'Still waiting on DNA confirmation. Replicating the DNA, heating it and cooling it, over and over, takes time.'

Brass nodded, put down the file, locked eyes with the CSI. 'Tell me we've got something to hold us over till then.'

'Doc Robbins defleshed the torso, and used the bones to run some numbers, which reveals significant information, through wear.'

Though Brass had once supervised CSI himself, he still considered much of Grissom's information to sound like gibberish. 'Which in English means what?'

Nick Stokes-in a long-sleeve tan T-shirt and dark tan chinos-appeared in the open door, but didn't interrupt. Brass waved him in, and Nick moved to the side and leaned against the corner file cabinet.

'It means,' Grissom said, 'that the torso belonged to a white woman between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five, weight approximately one-ten, height about five-four…and she was definitely dismembered with a chain saw.'

With an amazed shake of his head, Brass asked, 'Robbins got all that from the pelvic bones?'

'Yeah, that and that she was in a heavy exercise program…did a lot of sit-ups.'

'You can tell me all this, including her dismemberment by Black and Decker…'

'We don't know the brand name. Yet.'

'But you can't confirm who she is or how she died.'

'That's true to a point. But we have the husband's identification of the birthmark, and now, a lot more.'

'Such as?'

'Female between thirty-five and forty-five, weighing one-ten and standing five-four…who does that remind you of?'

Brass shrugged one shoulder. 'Sure, those figures fit Lynn Pierce…but how many other missing women?'

Slowly, Grissom said, 'Factoring in the birthmark, and the episiotomy scar?…Not another in Nevada.'

Silence stretched in the little office.

'Well…' Brass sighed. 'We already knew it was Lynn Pierce, didn't we?…And yet we still don't have a thing to hang on that bastard husband of hers.'

Grissom held Brass's eyes, and then slowly moved both of their gazes over to Nick, standing on the sidelines, leaning against that file cabinet.

Wearing a tiny enigmatic smile, Nick straightened. 'We may have him…. You tell me.'

'I will,' Brass said. 'Go on.'

'I've been working on the Lynn Pierce computer and credit card records.'

'Any movement since her disappearance?' Brass asked.

'Nothing on the e-mail front. She's still getting them, a few friends, church announcements, spam; but she hasn't answered any of 'em, since the day before she went missing. And nothing new on the credit cards or ATM.'

'What woman does not use her charge card?' Grissom asked.

'A dead one,' Brass admitted.

Nick said, 'Hey, I got more-something really interesting. Going through the old credit card receipts, I found this.' He stepped forward holding out a slip of paper.

Brass took the slip and studied it. 'A receipt for a box of forty-four caliber shells…' His head went sideways. 'Didn't Pierce say…'