building's original design, and had not been here during Catherine's tenure-strictly contrived out of sheetrock, cheap trim and black paint, to accomplish a specific purpose.
Looking through the first door on the left, Catherine saw a room the size of a good-sized closet with a metal frame chair facing the door. The walls back here were black, too, and the carpeting looked like some cheap junk maybe picked up at a yard sale. Each cubicle had a mounted speaker to feed in the DJ's tunes.
'Private dance rooms,' Conroy said. 'Lap dances, they call 'em.'
Table dances-where a dancer, between sets, would work the room, squeezing dollars out of patrons for up- close-and-slightly-more-personal glimpses at a girl-were as far as things had ever gone, in Catherine's day. Nothing to compare with the likes of 'lap' dances and the stuff that went on in these private rooms, on the current scene.
'There are doors on the rooms,' Conroy pointed out, 'but no locks.'
'If a customer gets out of line,' Sara said, thinking it through aloud, 'a bouncer can respond to a shout or a scream, and put a stop to it.'
'In theory,' Catherine said. 'But that doesn't seem to have helped, here….'
Peeking over Sara's shoulder, Catherine got her first look at the body. Nude except for a lavender thong, Jenna Patrick lay in a fetal position, her long blonde hair splayed away from her face and bare back, something thin and black tight around her throat. Her head faced left, one sightless brown orb staring at the place where the wall and floor met. Full dark lips were frozen in a parody of a kiss and a tiny mole punctuated the corner of her mouth. She had full, heavy breasts and the strong, muscular legs of a dancer. She wore black patent-leather spike heels that would have been a bitch to walk, let alone dance, in.
'That looks like an electrical tie,' Catherine said.
'Looks like it,' Conroy said.
The women remained in the hallway, huddled around the doorway, maneuvering around each other for a better view.
Sara said, 'Cut off the carotids-she was out in seconds…and dead in under a minute.'
Catherine said to Conroy, 'How many men was she in here with tonight?'
The detective shook her head, ponytail swinging. 'Kapelos said they never settled up till the end of the night-he and the dancers split the take, back here…twenty-five dollars a dance.'
'Plus tips,' Catherine said, 'which the girls wouldn't share, even if they were supposed to.'
Conroy went on: 'Jenna came in at five and was scheduled until twelve-only a couple of bathroom, cigarette breaks. No lunch break.'
Catherine nodded; she knew the drill.
'That normal?' Sara asked, wincing.
'Yeah,' Catherine said. 'Most of the girls don't eat much anyway, gotta stay in shape. If they want a meal, they brown-bag it in the dressing room…. Jenna here would've worked straight through till midnight, getting out before the crowd got too out of hand…. Those last hours of the night are the worst.'
Sara was doing a lousy job of hiding how fascinated she was, hearing Catherine's inside scoop on the skin business.
'Or,' Catherine went on, 'if there were some high-rollers and she thought she could make some real bucks, maybe she'd stick around another hour or so. That's pretty typical.'
Sara asked, 'When did you quit doing this…yesterday?'
Conroy piped in: 'Am I catching the drift of this, correctly? You used to dance for Kapelos?
'About a hundred years ago, I did. Got my degree, and got out-any other questions?'
'No,' Conroy said. 'None. Glad to have your, uh, insights.'
The two CSIs unpacked their tools in the tiny hallway and went to work. First, Catherine used an electrostatic print lifter to get footprints off the floor of the room, and then the hallway. She'd have to take shoe prints from the cops, Sara and herself, to eliminate them, but she still had hope of getting something. They photographed everything, dusted the chair and the door knobs for prints; then Catherine bent close to the victim's neck for a better look at the weapon that had taken Jenna Patrick's life.
'About three-eighths of an inch in diameter,' Catherine reported. 'Standard black electrical tie, available in every hardware store in the free world.'
Picking a spot that looked clean, she used a small pair of wire cutters to snip the tie, which she then bagged. It wasn't very wide, but even if they snagged a partial print, that'd be useful.
Over the course of the next two hours, they lifted hairs, samples of stains, fibers, dirt, anything that might help them identify who had killed Jenna Patrick in that room. Using the RUVIS-a sort of pistol-gripped telephoto lens-they turned up occasional white splotches on the carpet, indicating probable semen spills from happy customers.
'Greg's going to love us,' Sara said sarcastically, referring to their resident lab rat, Greg Sanders, whose job it would be to wade nose deep in the DNA cesspool they uncovered tonight.
'This cubicle could be a career for him,' Catherine said with a smile. 'But oddly…there's not as much as I thought there would be. Place like this should be wall-to-wall DNA.'
Sara nodded, shrugged. 'Yeah. What's up, y'suppose?'
Catherine thought Sara's question over for a few seconds, then said, 'I'll be back.'
Walking across the club-the lights on now, exposing Dream Dolls as the dingy nightmare it was-she saw that the place had emptied out except for cops and employees. She nodded to Detectives O'Riley and Vega, who were interviewing a waitress and the red-bow-tied bouncer. The dancers were in the dressing room in back where Conroy would be questioning them; the DJ in his corner was covering his equipment under tarps. Catherine moved to the bar, behind which Tyler Kapelos moped with a cup of coffee.
'How long am I gonna be closed down, Cath?' he asked as he poured her a cup, too.
'You can probably reopen tomorrow if you want. We'll be done soon.'
'That's a relief, anyway.' He nodded and sipped from his cup.
'Pretty ugly in there.'
'Shame. She was a nice kid.'
Catherine knew that whichever one of his dancers had died, Kapelos would likely have said the same thing.
'But, y'know, funny thing,' she said casually, 'it's not as bad as it could have been.' She sipped her coffee, hot, bitter, but better than the break room swill. 'You got a cleaning woman coming in daily or something?'
He smiled a little, shrugged. 'Spent some money, fixed stuff up, some. How d'you like the new sign?'
'Class,' she said, only half-sarcastic. 'What did you do in the back? And when?'
'Fresh paint, new carpet.' He rubbed a palm over his forehead, then back over his balding scalp, distributing the sweat. 'Maybe a month ago, two, no more'n that.'
'I should thank you. You're making our job a little easier.'
'Yeah? How so?'
Now she shrugged. 'Normally, a place like this-we'd be sifting through DNA until we all retired.'
A defensive frown formed on his Greek Lou Grant face. 'I told ya, Cath, this is no hooker haven. With these lap dances, guy makes a mess, it's in his pants.'
'Even so-there'd be some of that on the floor, and hairs and sweat and…well, the general residue that follows a good time being had by all.'
'That wicked sense of humor.' His smile was feeble but sincere. 'Almost wish you was still here, kid.'
'That makes one of us, Ty.'
'Seriously. You still got the looks, and Lord knows you got style.'
Interrogation was Conroy's job, but the detective was busy, and Catherine knew her familiarity with Kapelos might make him more open with her. 'Any idea who would do this to her, Ty?'
He sucked in a breath. 'Probably that son of a bitch Ray Lipton…. I guess I should a thought to tell that female detective about that prick. Nice looking woman, that detective.' He glanced back toward the hallway. 'And you know that kid you come in with, what's her name? Siddon?'
'Sidle.'
'She could make a few bucks here, too. What's the PD policy on a little innocent moonlighting?'
