Grave Matters

into custody.

Though the modus operandi was different in the poisonings of Derek Fairmont and Gary Masters, the poison itself had been the same. And prussic acid had turned up a third time when Rene held that syringe to the throat of the woman in the bank parking lot-the recurrence of the poison making circumstantial but compelling evidence. If Catherine could match the batches of prussic acid from Masters and the syringe she'd confiscated at Rene's arrest, the case would be practically airtight.

A canvassing of the other businesses at the strip mall where Masters kept his office had, thanks to Sergeant O'Riley, turned up three photo identifications of Rene Fairmont; in-person ID's would likely follow. The only dead- end had been computer expert Tomas Nunez's failure to tie Rene to any of the e-mails on Vivian's PC.

But with the prisoner's fingerprints, Catherine was able to make a match through AFIS, and the results were as satisfying as they were unsurprising and, frankly, tragic: Under various names, in several states, Rene Fairmont was wanted for murder. Her fifteen-year career in continuing care had been a ruse to help her bilk money out of the patients she was hired to help; once she had an estate earmarked for one of her 'charities,' she killed the victim.

A study of those cases revealed a very clear line of bogus charities and dead-drops stretching from Florida to Vegas. Rene had been planning to leave here and make her way back east. Though a sociopath, the angel of mercy had the ability to portray a compassionate, caring person who entered the lives of a succession of older, lonely, needy people; for fifteen years, she had fooled not only her victims, but law enforcement agencies and nursing homes and God only knew who else…

…and the arrest Catherine, Warrick, and Vega had made appeared to be the only time Rene had ever come close to getting caught.

Her fingerprints had ended up in AFIS only because she had been printed at several of the care centers she had worked in. Only after she had disappeared from a town, and what she'd been up to had been perceived after the fact, were her prints posted. And despite the short but impressive list of jurisdictions looking for Rene, Catherine could only wonder how many other victims had gone unrecognized as such.

To Rene's credit, she'd never gone for the big score. She had kept her cons relatively small, flying just under the radar of the authorities, making every murder look like a plausible death. At the first sign that she'd drawn any attention to herself, Rene would make tracks (but not leave any).

Catherine and Warrick compared notes and consolidated their evidence. Convinced that all the ducks were in a row, Catherine returned to the ER, where the transfer to the jail hospital was pending.

Rene Fairmont had a small private room in the ER now, with two uniforms on the outside and another inside, sharing space with Vega and Rene herself, who was in a hospital smock with both hands handcuffed to the bed rails.

Catherine entered, and Rene's blank stare gave no indication she had even noticed.

Vega met Catherine and they confabbed at the foot of the bed and spoke as if the angel of mercy weren't present.

'She's been a good girl,' Vega said. 'Hasn't taken anybody hostage since you left…and hasn't said a word, either.'

'Maybe that's because you're calling her by the wrong name, Sam. You're using Rene Fairmont.' Catherine turned toward the prisoner and gestured. 'Meet Rene Delillo.'

Rene's eyes tightened. Though the woman's face remained otherwise blank, the animal behind the mask somehow made its presence known to Catherine.

'Rene Delillo, huh?' Vega said matter of factly.

'That's the name she's wanted under in Las Cruces, New Mexico, anyway.'

The prisoner stared at Catherine and her lips parted slightly in an expression that was at once a smile and a sneer.

'Or,' Catherine said, 'you could call her Judith Rene-the name she's wanted under in Baton Rouge; and there's two or three more. Unless she tells us, we may never know her real name, or how she got started in this interesting line of work.'

Rene continued to fix her gaze on the CSI, but petulance had crept into her defiant glare.

'That is,' Catherine went on, 'if she even remembers her name anymore.'

That one must have struck a nerve, but the only reward for Catherine was a single trickle of tear down Rene's cheek.

Catherine moved alongside the bed. She looked at the prisoner but spoke to Vega. 'You know, Sam, I really didn't think Rene here was capable of feeling anything for anybody-a bad seed, born without compassion. But I was wrong.'

Rene's lip was trembling now; another tear rolled down a lovely cheek.

'She does feel something,' Catherine said, '…for herself.'

In the interview room at CSI HQ, tears were streaming down another killer's face.

Jimmy Doyle-seated across from Brass and Grissom, with Sara Sidle hovering in the background-hadn't been nearly as hard to crack as the detective's ribs. Once they got Doyle in the interview room, he'd started bawling like a kid who wanted his mommy.

'I…I didn't mean to,' Doyle said.

He'd been offered the opportunity to call an attorney, but hadn't acted upon it.

Right now Doyle was just a scared kid, but a kid of age, and Brass intended to keep him scared. 'Didn't mean to, Jimmy? What, did you accidentally shoot her in the back of the head?'

Doyle grasped at the tissues from the box that Sara had provided him; he struggled to gain control. 'I mean, I didn't…didn't want to.'

'She asked you to do it, then,' Brass said, mocking. 'It was a kind of suicide…a mercy killing.'

'Stop it! Stop it! It wasn't that way at all….'

'What way was it, Jimmy?'

'You didn't know her…how she could be…how she could wrap a guy around her little finger. If you knew, you'd get it-you'd know this was all her fault.'

The detective fought the urge to come out of the chair and…

Sara asked, quietly, almost gently, 'How was it her fault, Jimmy?'

He swallowed snot; his face glistened with tears. 'She was going to ruin everything. Everything I worked for.'

Calm again, Brass asked, 'Ruin it how?'

Though his hands were cuffed, Doyle's fingers tapped out a nervous rhythm on the table. 'I'm not a rich kid. I didn't have no…any silver spoon. But in high school, Mr. Black gave me a job. I lived with my mom, my dad's off in…somewhere. Mr. Black, he's been like a father to me.'

Brass thought, He was like a father to Kathy Dean, too.

The boy was saying: 'Not easy to get help at a funeral home. Not just any kid can take it, you know. I had the stomach for it. I had the talent. Mr. Black saw it in me, and I took the work, and he paid my way to school, and I'm his top assistant now. I went around a lot of guys, way older than me, landing that spot. You know how successful Desert Haven is? A few years, and I could be rich…respectable.'

'How did Kathy get in the way of that?'

'Kathy said she was pregnant. She…she wanted to know if I was willing to marry her.'

'What did you tell her?'

'I told her yes! Sure! Of course, I'd do the right thing.'

Sara asked, 'Why did you do the wrong thing instead, Jimmy?'

His head hung; tears dripped onto the table, tiny rain. 'You don't understand…Mr. Black, him and his wife… they're very, very straight. Very, very conservative. If they found out I had to get married, that I knocked some girl up…Mr. Black, he'd fire me! I'd lose everything! Including…including his respect.'

The words hung in the room. The two CSIs and the detective exchanged now-I've-heard-everything glances.

'I…I couldn't let that selfish little slut ruin everything. I told her to get an abortion. We could still get married and have kids down the road-just not now! She ruined her life, not me! She said she was using birth control! She was a liar!'