Grave Matters

dominated by a long plastic-covered, backlit table. Sweeping around this workstation on a wheeled desk chair, Jenny Northam-formerly an independent contractor, now full time with the department-rolled away from a job she was doing for Sara Sidle to come around to where materials for the Vivian Elliot case awaited.

Catherine Willows stepped farther into the room, not comforted at all by being directly in Jenny's path.

'Vega said they look like a match,' Catherine said.

'That's why they pay me the medium-size bucks, Cath,' Jenny said. 'No frickin' way.'

Jenny had tamed her notorious longshoreman's vocabulary after coming onto the city's payroll; but hints remained. She held up Mabel Hinton's exemplar in one hand and the Sunny Day sign-in sheet in the other for Catherine to form her own opinion.

The CSI shook her head. 'To me, they're dead on.'

'A wax grape and a real grape look alike, too, y'know…. Somebody tried to copy Mabel's signature, but while it may look hunky-dory at first glance, a close look…reveals the sign-in sheet as an obvious forgery…. Go on, Cath, take a closer look.'

Catherine studied them for a few moments. 'Is it the loops?'

'What about the loops?'

'Too small?'

Jenny smiled. 'Good, Cath…. Anything else?'

'Something…something about the slant?'

'Bingo,' the handwriting expert said. 'On the sign-in sheet, the slant is forced-you can tell the writer's natural slant is in the opposite direction. Pressure points are in the wrong places.'

Catherine nodded. 'So-there's no way the same person wrote both of these?'

'No way in heck.'

Catherine laughed. 'You have cleaned up your language.'

'Frickin' A,' Jenny said.

Again Catherine's eyes affixed themselves to that sign-in sheet. If Vivian's friend Mabel Hinton hadn't signed it, then who had? Catherine's gaze traveled to the column to the right of the forged signature, where in a box had been scrawled what appeared to be a car license number.

'Jen-did Vega say anything about this?'

Frowning at the number Catherine pointed to, Jenny said, 'No…no, just the signature…. What are you smiling about?'

'Leads have been a little scarce in this case. Always nice to find one…. Thanks, Jen.'

'Any time, Cath.'

Back in her office, Catherine ran the number through DMV to quick result. She grabbed the print-out, headed for the door, and-in less than ten minutes-pulled the Tahoe to a stop in front of the rundown, one-story concrete bunker housing Valley Taxi Company. Inside, she approached the dispatcher, a bald man in his sixties with Coke- bottle glasses, a dangling half-smoked cigarette, and a short-sleeve plaid shirt with evidence of breakfast on it.

'Need a cab, young lady?' he asked.

Flashing a smile, and her ID, she said, 'Yes, but a specific one.'

When she'd explained the situation-and given the license number of the cab that had taken 'Mabel Hinton' to Sunny Day on the morning of Vivian Elliot's murder-the dispatcher got on the radio.

Catherine knew by all rights she should have rounded up a detective for this; but things were moving quickly now, and Brass's people were spread just as thin as the CSIs. So she'd taken the initiative….

And in under two minutes, the dispatcher had given her the address of a cafe on Boulder Highway, where driver Gus Clein was taking a break, and would wait for her.

Soon Catherine was in a fifties-style diner, sitting in a booth across from a pudgy middle-aged man with graying hair, lumpy features, and a mouthful of burger. The cabbie wore a Wayne Newton T-shirt that might have been purchased at the entertainer's first Vegas engagement.

'Any chance you remember the fare I'm talking about?' Catherine asked.

Clein nodded and kept chewing; the burger he was working on was smaller than a hubcap-just. 'Yeah, I do remember, 'cause that's the only fare I had out to that rest home in…forever.'

'But the fare herself-do you remember her?'

He swallowed, nodded, taking a drink from a Lake Mead-size Coke and said, 'Sure. Little old lady. I been doin' this a long time, and I'm one of them chatty cabbies…only way I keep sane. And usually, the older ones? They love the attention, they stick right with me…but her? She was so quiet I thought she passed away. I mean, I kept tryin' to talk to her, but she didn't show much interest.'

'Where did you pick her up?'

He took another bite of the monster burger, chewed as he thought about it, then washed it down with more soda before answering. 'In Spanish Hills somewhere.'

Catherine felt a spike of excitement. 'Where, precisely?'

Clein wiped his hands, picked up his clipboard from the seat next to him and paged through. Finally he said, 'Here it is-Rustic Ridge Drive.'

Catherine's notebook was in hand. 'Got a house number?'

'Sure,' he said, and gave it to her.

Hel-lo! Rene Fairmont's address.

Catherine smiled, said, 'Thanks, Mr. Clein,' and got out her cell phone.

'Hey, it's my pleasure. Are all the CSIs as cute as you?'

She gave him a wry grin. 'You may not like me as much as you think you do, Mr. Clein.'

'Why's that, cutie?'

'I'm impounding your cab…cutie.'

'Aw, hell….'

'Sorry, but it's evidence in a murder investigation now.'

'Damn it!'

'I really am sorry. You were a big help. Here…' She put two quarters on the tabletop. 'You'll want to check in with your dispatcher and have somebody pick you up.'

'I don't need your charity, lady! I got a radio in the cab.'

'You would, if you still had a cab.'

'Damn!' Clein said again. Then he heaved a sigh, accepted the coins, adjusted to his new lot in life, and returned his attention to the burger.

Catherine went outside to call for a tow truck, but when she clicked the phone, the battery was deader than most leads in this case. She changed batteries and called the LVPD garage. Her second call was for a uniform to sit on the cab until the tow truck arrived. Her next call was to Warrick.

'What corner of the earth did you drop off?' Warrick asked, mildly irritated.

'Sorry-didn't know my cell had gone dead.' She told him where she was and what she'd been doing. 'What's up on your end?'

'Well,' Warrick said, 'Greg served the court orders for the skull and the tissue samples.'

She laughed. 'Greg'll do anything to get out in the field.'

Warrick said, 'Well, I couldn't go-I was working the evidence from the Masters crime scene; then I couldn't find you, and Greg was free. With our budget, manpower is manpower.'

'When it isn't woman power,' she said. 'Meet you at the DNA lab in fifteen.'

'It's a date,'he said and clicked off.

Vega and Warrick were walking down the hall, on their way to DNA, when she got back. Catherine fell in between them.

'The taxi will be here soon,' she told them, 'and we can go over that. With all the fares in between the false 'Mabel Hinton' and now, I don't know what we can hope to find.'

Vega half-smirked. 'It's been a grasping-at-straws kind of case.'

'Mind handling that solo?' Warrick asked Catherine, meaning processing the impounded cab. 'I'll still be processing the Masters evidence.'