Graveyard shift supervisor Grissom and another CSI, Sara Sidle, would be leaving early this morning for a forensics conference at a mountain lodge in upstate New York, where they would be teaching. Though forty degrees might be cold in Vegas, Catherine knew that where Grissom and Sara were headed, a minus sign would likely be in front of the temperature before the weekend was over. She really didn't envy the pair a bit.
Warrick made a clicking sound in his cheek and said, 'Explain to me again why we're not there?'
'I didn't go because I declined the opportunity.'
'You declined? A paid vacation?'
'Yes. Unlike some people, I have a life, and I didn't want to leave my daughter with a babysitter for that long.'
'I have a life.'
'Let's say you do. Even so, you hate the cold.'
Warrick sighed. 'Yeah, well. That cushy hotel, it's got heat, doesn't it?'
Catherine allowed that it probably did.
'And the classes are indoors, right?'
'Grissom's will be,' she admitted. 'There may be some outdoor crime scene stuff, but you don't bring people in from Vegas to teach criminalistics in the snow.'
'Thank you. You make my point-I'm tellin' you, Cath…that could've been us on that trip.'
She nodded. 'If I hadn't declined…and you weren't such a baby.'
'Hey-that's cold.'
'See? Bellyachin' about the weather already.'
Finished with her examination of the corpse, Catherine rose and faced her partner. 'Time to go to work, before I start thinking you don't love your job.'
He shook his head. 'You can love your job, and still need a little R&R.'
'Well,' she said, as they headed back to the Tahoe, 'how about, for fun, you find us a usable tire track on the shoulder of the road, before all these people tromping around turn Lake Mead into a dust bowl.'
Catherine snapped off photos as fast as the flash would recharge, little pops of daylight in the night, two photos of each angle, for safety, covering the body five ways: from the right; the left; top of the head down; bottom of the feet up; and overhead.
Warrick poked around the side of the road, occasionally bending, now and then taking his own photos. Finally, satisfied he'd found all the pertinent, usable tire tracks, he spritzed them with hair spray to hold them together, then got his field kit and mixed up some goo-casting powder and dental stone-so he could cast some of the different tracks he'd marked.
Catherine didn't think about it, but nobody spoke to them while they processed the scene-and this was not unusual. Crime scene investigators, working their scientific wonders, created in those around them a quiet reverence, as if all the kneeling she and Warrick were doing was praying, not detecting.
Or maybe it was the dead woman, in the midst of the CSI rituals, who inspired the silence.
Over on the blacktop, Brass interviewed the ranger who'd found the body, while the uniformed men stood around and did their best to look official. Truth was, once the CSIs had shown up, a uniformed cop at a crime scene usually had just about the most boring job in the law enforcement book.
Under the bright light of some portable halogens, Catherine went over the corpse as carefully as she could- nothing seemed wrong, other than a few nibble marks on the arms and legs where the coyotes had begun. No signs of struggle, no skin under her fingernails, no black eyes or bruises-nothing to say this woman wasn't just sleeping, except for the absence of breath.
An indentation showed the curve of the victim's panty line, but Catherine could find not so much as a thread for evidence. It was as if the sky had given birth to Jane Doe and let her fall gently to the sandy ground-stillborn. Finally, as night surrendered the desert back to the sun, Brass approached with cups of coffee for the two criminalists.
'Life's blood,' Catherine said as Brass handed her the steaming Styrofoam cup.
Warrick saluted with his and took a sip. 'Here's to crime-without it, where would we be?'
Brass raised both eyebrows and suggested, 'In bed, asleep?'
They watched as the ranger climbed into her Bronco-she paused to nod at them, professionally, and they returned the gesture-and then she slowly pulled away.
Using her coffee cup to indicate the departing vehicle, Catherine asked, 'She seemed competent.'
'Yeah,' Brass said with a nod. 'We got lucky, having her find our girl.'
'She see anything?'
'Nearly hit a coyote with her Bronco.' Brass shrugged one noncommittal shoulder. 'About all she saw was coyotes, gathered around the corpse.'
'Singing Kum-bayah,' Warrick said dryly.
'Did those little doggies mess up your crime scene much?'
Catherine shook her head. 'Hardly any marks on the body.'
Eyes tightening, Brass asked, 'What's that tell us?'
'Our vic probably did not just wander out here and die,' Warrick said.
Brass looked at him.
'She's barefoot,' Warrick continued, 'and there's no bare footprints anywhere. You don't have to be an Eagle Scout to figure, if she was wandering dazed and nude, coyotes woulda got to her before she made it this far into the middle of the park. Somebody dropped her off.'
Brass returned his gaze to Catherine. 'That how you see it?'
'Makes sense to me,' she said. 'Lady Godiva's probably a dump, all right…but if the coyotes were around her and the ranger scared them off, she couldn't have been on the ground for very long, or else there wouldn't have been much left after the coyotes chowed down.'
Frowning, Warrick asked the detective, 'Ranger didn't see or hear a car?'
'Nope,' Brass said. 'She did mention that five bucks buys a car a five-day pass to the Lake Mead recreation area. Tourists can come and go as they please, whenever they please.'
Warrick said, 'Ever wonder what it's like to do this job in a town not crawling with tourists?'
'Oh but that would be too easy,' Brass said. His sigh started in his belly and dragon-breathed out his nose. 'Could be any car and it could be anywhere by now. You said there were no bare footprints-how 'bout shoeprints?'
'No,' Catherine said, 'whoever brought her in must've blotted them out, when they were leaving.'
Almost to himself, Warrick said, 'Ten million tourists a year visit this place.'
'Yeah,' Brass said grumpily. 'Fish and Wildlife guy told us so, last time we had a dead naked woman out here.'
Last autumn a woman's torso had been dredged from Lake Mead.
'We caught that guy,' Warrick reminded Brass.
'How about cars?' Catherine asked. 'How many in the park now?'
Brass offered up a two-shouldered shrug. 'No records. It's a vacation spot-casual. Your guess is as good as mine.'
Catherine frowned. 'So they never know who's in the park?'
'Just happy campers-happy
'So,' Warrick said. 'We have a dead naked woman…no ID, nothing around the body, and the only evidence we have is a track off a tire that could belong to just about any vehicle.'
A grin put another crease in the rumpled detective's face. 'And that's why you guys make the medium-sized bucks.'
They exchanged tired smiles, which faded quickly as the trio watched two EMTs struggling to maneuver the gurney bearing the black-bagged body down to the road. The EMTs loaded the black bag-the woman finally clothed, in a way-into the back of the ambulance, closed the doors with two slams that made Catherine start a bit, then climbed in around front. The flashing lights had been on when the vehicle barreled in, and now came on again, automatically; but the driver shut them off, and the vehicle rolled away.
No hurry, not now.
'What's next?' Warrick asked.
