'Which'll lead,' Nick said, arching an eyebrow, 'to finding out who wanted her dead.'
'Which'll lead,' Warrick said, with finality, 'to putting the bastard on ice.'
3
INITIALLY, THE IDEA OF A GETAWAY WEEKEND WITH HER BOSS had appealed to Sara Sidle, for all kinds of reasons. But somehow in the thirteen hours between when she'd left her apartment and fallen gratefully onto this cloud of a bed in a posh hotel, she had gotten lost in some newly discovered circle of Hell.
Grissom had picked her up just after 10 P.M., the time they normally would have been heading into the lab. Instead, they drove to long-term parking at McCarran and schlepped into the airport with their carry-ons as well as two suitcases of equipment for their presentation; the attendees would mostly be East Coast CSIs with the instructors flown in from around the country. Typically, the boyishly handsome, forty-something Grissom wore black slacks, a black three-button shirt, and a CSI windbreaker.
'That's the coat you're taking?' she had asked. Sara had a Gortex-lined parka on over her blue jeans and a plain dark tee shirt.
He looked at her as though a lamp had talked. 'I've got a heavier one in my bag.'
She glanced at his two canvas duffels, both barely larger than gym bags, and wondered how he got a heavy coat into either of them. Deciding not to think about it, she got into the check-in line right behind her boss. Both were using their carry-ons for clothing, and checking their suitcases of equipment on through. No need to freak out the security staff, who would not be prepared for X-ray views of the sort of tools, instruments, chemistry sets, and other dubious implements that the CSIs were traveling with.
Sara spent the flight from McCarran to O'Hare squashed in the middle seat in coach-Grissom took the window seat, not because he was rude, she knew, but because it was his assigned seat, and Grissom never argued with numbers.
Sara dug into an Agatha Christie mystery-the CSI could only read cozy mysteries, anything 'realistic' just distracted and annoyed her with constant inaccuracies-and Grissom was engrossed in an entomology text like a teenager reading the new Stephen King.
The whole trip went like that-the two of them reading their respective books (Sara actually went through two) with little conversation, including an O'Hare breakfast that killed some of their four-hour layover in Chicago. Then it was two hours to Dulles in D.C., another forty-five minutes on the ground, and a ninety-minute flight to Gordon International, in Newburgh, New York. Grissom was better company on the trip than a potted plant- barely.
They were met by a landscape covered with four or five inches of snow that, judging by its grayish tint, appeared to have fallen at least a week ago. The cold air felt like the inside of a freezer compared to what they'd left behind in Vegas, and as the pair stood outside the airport waiting for the bus that would haul them and their gear the twenty miles from Newburgh to New Paltz, Grissom glanced around curiously, as though winter in upstate New York was one big crime scene he'd stumbled onto.
Sara, on the other hand, felt at home-spiritually at home, anyway. The temperature here, just above thirty, took Sara back to her days at Harvard; the frigid air of winter in the east had a different scent than the desert cold of Vegas.
At the curb in front of the New Paltz bus station, an old man in a flap-ear cap, chocolate-colored Mackinaw, jeans and dark work boots, waited next to a purring woody-style station wagon, the side door of which was stenciled: MUMFORD MOUNTAIN HOTEL.
Carry-ons draped over them like military gear, Grissom and Sara made their cumbersome way toward their down-home chauffeur. As soon as the codger figured out they were headed his way, he rushed over and pried one of the suitcases from Sara's hand.
'Help you with that, Miss?'
But he'd already taken it.
'Thanks,' she said, breath pluming.
The Mumford man was tall, reedy, with wispy gray hair; his hook nose had an 'S' curve in the middle where it had been broken more than once.
After slinging Sara's bag in the back, he turned and took one from Grissom and tossed it in. The man's smile was wide and came fast, revealing two rows of small, even teeth.
'Herm Cormier,' he said, shaking first Grissom's hand, then Sara's. 'I've managed the hotel since Jesus was a baby.'
'Gil Grissom. Honor to be picked up by the top man himself.'
'Sara Sidle. We're here for the forensics conference…?'
'Course you are. You're the folks from Vegas.'
Grissom smiled. 'Is it that easy to spot us?'
Cormier nodded. 'Your coat's not heavy enough,' he said, with a glance toward Grissom's CSI windbreaker. 'And you both got a healthy tan. We got nobody comin' in from Florida or California for this thing, and I knew two of you were coming from Vegas…. Plus which, all but a handful of you folks won't be in till tomorrow.'
Grissom nodded.
'You, though, Miss,' Cormier said, turning his attention to Sara, 'you've been around this part of the country before.'
Though anxious to get into that warm station wagon, Sara couldn't resist asking: 'And how did you reach that conclusion?'
The old man looked her up and down, but there was nothing improper about it. 'Good coat, good boots, heavy gloves-where you from, before you lit in Vegas?'
'San Francisco.'
'No, that ain't it.' His eyes narrowed. 'Where'd you go to college?'
She grinned. 'Boston.'
Cormier returned the grin. 'Thought so. Knew you had to've spent some time in this part of the country.'
The driver opened the rear door of the wagon and they were about to climb in, when another man sauntered up. A husky blonde six-footer in his late thirties, the new arrival had dark little eyes in a pale, bland fleshy face, like raisins punched into cookie dough. He wore a red-and-black plaid coat that looked warm, aided and abetted by a black woolen muffler. In one black gloved hand was a silver flight case-this was another CSI, Sara thought, and that was his field kit-and in the other a green plaid bag that jarred against the competing plaid coat.
'Gordon Maher,' he said to all of them.
Cormier stepped forward, shook the man's hand and made the introductions, then said to the new arrival, 'You must be the forensics fella from Saskatchewan.'
They piled into the station wagon, Grissom and Maher in the back, Sara and Cormier in the front. Despite the snow blanketing the area, the roads were clean. As the station wagon wended its way through the countryside toward Lake Mumford, Sara allowed herself to enjoy the ride, relishing the wave of nostalgia she felt, watching the snow-touched skeletal trees they glided past.
Harvard had been where Sara first took wing, first got out from the shadow of her parents. She sought out kindred spirits, overachievers like herself, and soon she was no longer seen as too smart, too driven, too tense.
The very air in this part of the country smelled different to her now-like freedom, and success. She didn't know when she fell asleep, exactly, but suddenly Cormier was nudging her gently. The car was parked on the shoulder and, when she looked around, Sara realized that Grissom and Maher had gotten out.
'Thought you might like to catch the hotel and lake,' Cormier said, 'from their best side.'
Slowly, Sara got out of the car, the chill air helping her wake up; she stretched. Grissom and Maher stood in front of the car, staring at something off to the right. Going to join them, she looked in that direction as well, shading her brow with her hand as she gazed down the hill through the leafless branches at an ice-covered lake surrounded mostly by woods.
In preparing for this trip, Sara had understandably assumed Mumford Mountain Hotel would perch atop a mountain. Instead, the lodge hunkered in a valley between two mountains, overlooking the lake-and from this distance, situated as it was on the far side of the frozen expanse, the sprawling structure brought nothing so much
