The doctor, relief not yet washing away his alarm, backed away. Vega, hearing the commotion, swam through the curtains and now stood with his own weapon trained on the again catatonic Rene Fairmont.
'Take over for a moment, Sam,' Catherine said. 'This just became a crime scene-and I need to take a couple pictures and bag those scissors.'
Vega, usually unflappable, seemed very much flapped at the moment; but he said, 'No problem, Catherine.'
Catherine slipped on latex gloves and collected the scissors, then walked the shell-shocked doctor outside the cubicle.
She spoke reassuringly to the physician-with her own best bedside manner-explaining they'd need a statement from him. In moments, he seemed all right, and they were able to discuss the transfer of the prisoner to the high-security ward of the Clark County jail-a move the doctor would be all too happy to help facilitate.
Half an hour later, Catherine left the hospital thinking about the over-a-dozen people (at least) who had died at this pretty monster's hands; but the hell of it was, despite two hostage takings, Catherine still didn't know if she had enough evidence to prosecute Rene Fairmont for even one of the murders.
Oh, they could keep the angel of mercy off the streets, and out of the nursing-home wards, all right; but a lot of people, alive and dead, deserved to see Rene Fairmont's spree of murder resolved, every evil act cleared up.
Catherine would go back to HQ and start sifting through everything again. What had already been a very long shift promised to get much, much longer. Still-stopping a serial killer would make being tired at the end of a long day really, really worth it….
Nick Stokes was not anywhere he would ever have hoped to find himself.
Grissom and Brass had returned to HQ with Jimmy Doyle; Sara was back in the lab working with Tomas Nunez, matching the iPod files to Kathy Dean's computer; and Nick had been left to deal with the evidence at Desert Haven.
So here Nick was, alone in a mortuary in the middle of the night….
In the garage, he photographed the boxes Jimmy Doyle had been rummaging through. The photos, and Doyle's fingerprints, would provide a compelling circumstantial case that the young man had expected to find the .22 automatic he'd stowed away.
Then, in the hallway, Nick fingerprinted the concrete vault Doyle had used as an improvised weapon to attack Captain Brass. This, too, Nick photographed, then wheeled back inside the workroom, which was essentially a warehouse for coffins and vaults.
About the size of the garage at CSI, the chamber had metal shelving, five high, lining three of its four walls- the bottom two devoted to the large concrete and metal vaults, the top three home to numerous coffins of varied styles in metal or wood, the metal ones running to gray, blue, and even the occasional pink, the wood ones mostly oak.
In the center of the room, looming above and attached to metal rails, hung a crane very similar to the one in the CSI garage. A tall, wheeled staircase stood to one side of the crane, to help workers attach the device to the needed coffin. On the floor, in the middle of the room, was a row of three tables, each about the size of a human being.
An embalmed body would be put on the table while a particular casket was readied; then the body would be placed inside the coffin, the details arranged, after which the coffin would be wheeled to the appropriate viewing room for the service.
At Desert Haven, death was an assembly-line business-so much so, bodies moving in and out with such matter-of-fact haste, that two bodies…actually
Nick glanced back at the concrete vault he'd pushed into the room-the only one in the chamber on a wheeled cart; he wondered if this vault had already been out for some particular purpose of the funeral home…or could Doyle have been doing something with it, when the good guys interrupted?
After all, the kid wouldn't have had time to go get the vault, load it up, and roll it out to serve as a battering ram-the assistant mortician had been surprised by Brass's entrance, and simply responded with what was handy.
Nick's curiosity got the best of him, and he went to the trouble of attaching the crane on either side of the lip of the vault lid. When he pushed the button, the crane lifted not just the lid…but the entire vault!
Meaning: The vault was sealed.
This struck Nick as peculiar, and he got on his cell to Sara.
'It's me,' he told her. 'Are Grissom and Brass in interviewing Doyle?'
'Oh it's swell. If anybody comes up behind me and says 'boo,' I'll just shoot them is all…. Listen, Sara-I've run into what Grissom likes to call an anomaly.'
He told her about the sealed vault.
Sara said,
'Good idea. He still there?'
'That's no surprise. You got his home phone number?'
Nick broke the connection and made another call.
The machine came on, and a cheerful Cassie Black's greeting-from a day or so (or a lifetime) ago-was followed by the familiar beep.
'Mr. Black-it's Nick Stokes, from the crime lab. If you're still awake, please pick up-we need your help.'
A weary-sounding Black came on the line and said,
'Possibly because the future of your business hinges on us cleaning this matter up,' Nick said, 'and clearing you.'
'I really am sorry to disturb you, but I was wondering…why would there be a sealed vault at your mortuary?'
'That's what I thought. Wouldn't a sealed vault have gone directly to the cemetery?'
'I have had
An uncomfortable silence followed. Then:
'Well, could the lid be stuck on so tight that the entire vault could be craned up, without dislodging it?'
'Sir, right now your place of business is a crime scene. If you'd like to help make it just a
The line clicked dead.
Appropriately enough.
Just as Catherine had expected-had hoped-the evidence quickly began piling up against Rene Fairmont.
Handwriting expert Jenny Northam matched the forgery practice sheet from Rene's wastebasket to the signature on the Sunny Day sign-in sheet. Catherine had already confirmed that a cab had gone from Rene's house to pick up 'Mabel' and take her to Sunny Day; hair from the backseat of the taxi matched a wig Warrick had taken
