'Is that possible on night shift?…What's she look like?'
'You must know, I'm playing my new guitar I haven't bought yet.'
'Oh boy-the Lenny Kravitz fantasy again?'
Warrick opened one eye and looked up at Nick, who stood over him with a smile on half of his face. 'Now, Nick, don't be dissin' Lenny.'
'I wasn't dissin' Lenny. I would never diss Lenny…. You, maybe. But not Lenny.'
Warrick opened the other eye and couldn't stop from smiling. 'You're gettin' an early start…. Seen Catherine yet?'
Nick shook his head, going to his own locker. 'I came straight in here.' He quickly changed shirts, then the two of them went off in search of Catherine Willows, currently their acting boss.
They spotted her moving briskly down the corridor just outside the layout room. Warrick took one look at her and thought,
'Where we headed?' Warrick asked.
'Where is it always lively around here?' Catherine asked rhetorically.
'The morgue,' Nick said.
'Right you are, Nick,' Catherine said. 'Our vic is still the only body of evidence we have…though that's about to change.'
'I like change,' Warrick said. 'I'm in favor of change.'
She brandished a file thicker than a Russian novel. 'We've ID'ed our vic,' she said, flashing a triumphant smile. 'And you're never going to guess who she is.'
'Gris doesn't let me guess,' Nick said.
Warrick said, 'Amelia Earhart?'
'Not that big a media star,' Catherine admitted, as they walked along. 'Does the name Missy Sherman ring any bells?'
'One or two,' Nick said. 'Missing housewife, right?'
'Had her fifteen minutes of infamy, a year or so ago,' Warrick added. 'She our ice queen?'
'She is indeed,' Catherine said. 'Missing Persons database coughed up her prints, this afternoon.'
They stopped and she showed them a photo of the Sherman woman-it was their frozen victim, all right, and she was warmly beautiful, dark bright eyes flashing, pert-nosed, with a vivacious smile. Warrick had the sick feeling he often had, toward the start of a murder investigation, as he registered the reality of the human life, lost.
'So, then, day shift told the husband?' Nick asked.
'No,' Catherine said, and put the picture away. She started walking again and Warrick and Nick fell in like nerds in a high school hallway tagging after the prom queen. 'They're under the same OT restrictions we are-if it's night shift's case, it can wait till night shift.'
'Jesus,' Warrick breathed. 'Guy's sitting at home, his wife's dead and nobody tells him 'cause of budget cuts?'
'We have to specifically request day shift help-in triplicate,' Catherine said, with a humorless smile.
'I don't want to tell the husband,' Nick said. 'It's not CSIs' job to tell the husband.'
Catherine nodded and her reddish-blonde hair shimmered. 'I have a call in to Brass-we want to be there for that, though. Anyway, I want to go through the file one more time, before we have a look at Mr. Sherman.'
They stepped into the anteroom of the morgue, the area where the CSIs would wash up and get into their scrubs, if an autopsy were going on. Warrick said, 'You know the case, Cath? All I remember is, housewife evaporates, details at eleven.'
'You're fuzzy on it,' Catherine said, ''cause Ecklie's people worked that one-Melissa 'Missy' Sherman, married, white female, thirty-three, no children. She and her husband, Alex, lived in one of those new housing developments south of the airport.'
'Which one?' Nick asked.
'Silverado Development.' She thumbed quickly to a page in the file. 'Nine six one three Sky Hollow Drive.'
'I lived in Vegas all my life,' Warrick said, 'and I have no idea where that is.'
'Across from Charles Silvestri Junior High,' Catherine said.
'Home of the Sharks,' Nick put in.
Warrick and Catherine just looked at him.
'Football,' Nick said, as if that explained it all.
'That's twisted, man,' Warrick said, then asked Catherine, 'was hubby ever a serious suspect in her disappearance?'
'Well, you know he was a suspect,' Catherine said.
The spouse always was.
'But,' she continued, 'serious? Let's just say Ecklie and the day shift detectives didn't find anything.'
Warrick smirked humorlessly. 'Ecklie couldn't find the hole in the doughnut he's eating.'
'No argument,' Catherine said, 'but apparently this was a fairly mysterious missing persons case. That was part of why the media was attracted to the story-June Cleaver vanishes.'
Warrick frowned. 'And nothing at all on Ward?'
'They were college sweethearts at Michigan State, got married and moved out here when Alex Sherman graduated from college. Missy finished her finance degree at UNLV.'
'Maybe they're not Ward and June,' Nick said. 'Maybe they're Barbie and Ken.'
Catherine shrugged. 'Looks like a perfect life, till the day she and her girlfriend went out shopping and for lunch, after which Missy was expected to drive straight home.'
'Instead, she drove into the Bermuda Triangle,' Warrick said.
Nick asked, 'Wasn't the car found?'
Catherine nodded. 'In the parking lot at Mandalay Bay, a 2000 Lexus RX300. That's an SUV. She and her friend ate at the China Grill…then poof.'
Nick's eyes narrowed. 'You mean, she never even made it to the car?'
'Oh she got that far. Ecklie's people found a doggy bag in the Lexus. But after that…' Catherine held her hands up in a who-knows gesture.
The trio found Dr. Robbins behind his desk, where he was jotting some notes; he looked up as they neared.
'Hey Doc,' Catherine said. 'Got ya an ID on Jane Doe.'
Robbins gave her a satisfied smile. 'Melissa Sherman. We've met.'
Catherine frowned. 'Did somebody call you with the missing persons info?'
The coroner's smile expanded. 'No. Some of us are just good detectives.'
'You figured out this was Missy Sherman?' Warrick asked. 'Where do you keep the Ouija board?'
'In her stomach,' Robbins said. 'That is, the clue was in her stomach. And what's interesting is, it gives us a more reasonable window for time of death. Freezing or no freezing.'
Catherine was nodding, half-smiling, as she said, 'Let me guess-Chinese food.'
Robbins tapped the tip of his nose with his index finger. 'Undigested beef and rice in her stomach. When she was killed, the body stopped working and the freezing kept the contents from decomposing.'
'And the Chinese food led you to Missy Sherman how?' asked Warrick, not sure whether he was annoyed or impressed.
'It reminded me of the doggy bag they found in her car when the Sherman woman went missing. I checked the original evidence report and it stated Missy Sherman's doggy bag contained Mongolian beef and rice. That, in turn, prompted me to recall we'd gotten a copy of her dental records when she first disappeared…just in case, you know, a body turned up, as it too often does in these cases…and I just finished matching those dental records to the body you brought in yesterday.'
'Wow,' Nick said. 'Good catch, Doc.'
'You are the man,' Warrick admitted. 'And now nobody can say we don't have a homicide.'
Catherine already had her cell phone in her hand. She punched the speed dial and waited. After a few
