Grave Matters

The ward seemed a hive of activity, nurses bustling about in and out of rooms, the kitchen staff hustling along with trays of breakfast for those patients still able to feed themselves, and the odd visitor here and there coming to check on a loved one.

Vega took a left up a hallway and stopped in front of a closed room. The detective waited to knock until his little search party had caught up.

A vaguely startled voice said: 'Who is it?'

Catherine and Warrick traded tiny smiles-she sensed her partner had also had the same mental image of David Phillips, jumping a little as he spoke. David was an assistant coroner assigned to Dr. Albert Robbins, with whom the nightshift CSIs frequently worked.

'It's Vega,' the detective said, a little irritated. 'Unlock the door, David.'

The detective glanced sideways and gave Catherine a quick wide-eyed look that said, Jeeesh, this guy.

Soon a click announced cooperation and the door cracked open, David's bespectacled face filling the gap.

'Come in,' David said.

Warrick whispered to Catherine, 'What is this, a speakeasy?'

David, summery in a brown-and-white-striped short-sleeve shirt and light tan chinos, stepped aside and Vega entered with the others behind. With a touch of ceremony, David closed the door and turned to face them. Generally David had an easy if sometimes nervous smile, but right now there was no sign of it. His dark hair, getting wispy in front, seemed barely under control, as if wishing to abandon ship; and the sharp, wide eyes below the high forehead darted back and forth behind wire-frame glasses.

This was, Catherine noted, a fairly typical hospital room, though with just one bed. Under the sheet lay a body. Soft lighting emerged from behind a sconce at the headboard.

'Meet the late Vivian Elliot,' David said as he drew back the sheet.

The woman's appearance confirmed the assistant coroner's opinion: She was dead, all right; her gray hair, though cut short, was splayed against the pillow, her eyes closed, her skin slack and gray, her features at rest, her torso lifeless.

'And?' Warrick asked.

'And…I don't know,' David said, his voice solemn. He shrugged elaborate. 'Everything looks fine.'

'For a dead woman,' Catherine said.

'For a dead woman, right.' Dr. Whiting stepped forward with stiff, strained dignity. 'Sir-you indicated a problem. We called in a detective and crime scene investigators. What problem do you see here?'

David smiled weakly. Catherine knew that David had sought out his singularly solitary job among the dead in part because of the stress he could occasionally feel around the living. Though the hospital room was cold-any colder, their breaths would have been visible-Catherine could see beads of sweat popping out on the young assistant coroner's forehead.

'I said I thought there was something wrong here.'

'You don't know?' Whiting asked, eyes and nostrils flaring.

'No! That's why we need, you know…an expert's read.'

Catherine stepped forward and put a hand on Whiting's sleeve. 'A second opinion never hurts, does it, Doctor?…If you'll excuse me, I'd like a private word with my colleague.'

Now she took David by the arm and, in the corner of the room, spoke to him quietly. Even gently. 'What's the matter, David?'

He moved his head side to side. 'Catherine, I've been doing this job for a while now.'

'Yes, you have. And you're very good at it.'

'Thank you…. And you know, a person gets used to a certain routine. Mine is really like a lot of other jobs-life and death or not, it can be monotonous…and usually is.'

Patiently she asked, 'Point being?'

'I come to Sunny Day to make a pickup, once, twice a month.'

'Yeah?'

A humorless half-smile tweaked his face. 'This month? This is the fourth time.'

Catherine called Warrick over and repeated what David had told her, still leaving Vega and Whiting out of the confab.

Warrick shook his head. 'Whoa, dude-that's why you called the crime lab?'

Catherine gave Warrick a take it easy look.

David looked embarrassed. 'That may not seem like such a variation from the norm to you, Warrick-but it struck me. I mean, I've never been here four times in one month.'

Warrick's expression was skeptical, but something tugged at Catherine's gut. She asked, 'How about three times?'

'Only twice-in four years on the job.'

Warrick was considering that as he said, 'David, four people dying in one of these places, in a single month…hardly unheard of.'

David said, 'Maybe not unheard of…I'd be lying if I said I knew what the statistical probabilities are…but it strikes me as strange, far beyond the norm as I know it.'

'Better safe than silly,' Catherine said, nodding.

David was getting in gear now.

'Then,' he was saying, 'you factor in Mrs. Elliot's relatively good health-at least compared to the other residents here-and you're running into odds worse than the casinos!'

Turning to Vega, Catherine asked, 'You've heard all this?'

Vega's half-smile was uncharacteristically meek. 'David's been like this since I got here. Frankly, that's why I agreed to call you guys in-I thought maybe you could talk him down off his ledge.'

Catherine turned back to the assistant coroner. 'What you have, David, is what we call around CSI a hunch- but we don't have them out loud. You know how Grissom would react, if we did.'

David's eyes widened. 'Oooh yeah.'

She smiled sweetly and supportively at David, the way she did her daughter Lindsey, when the child had hit a homework brick wall. 'Pretend I'm Grissom.'

'That good an imagination,' David said, 'I don't have.'

'I mean-convince me like you would him. If he were standing here, not me-tell me, what do you think we've got?'

David rubbed his chin as if it were a genie's lamp that might grant his wish for a good answer. Finally he let out a long breath and said, 'Too many deaths spaced too close together.'

'That doesn't suggest a crime,' Catherine said. 'Not inherently.'

'Right…right….'

'Think out loud if you have to, David.'

'Well…I never considered it before today, but the four DOAs we picked up here this month?'

'Yeah?'

He smiled a little, raised one eyebrow, like a novice gambler laying down a winning ace. 'All widows.'

Ace or not, Catherine was not impressed, and said so: 'Women generally outlive men, David. No big surprise there.'

David's face screwed up in thought. Finally he said, 'We always mark the next of kin on the report…so we know who to call?'

'Riiight.'

'Well, I was just thinking…I don't remember seeing that any of these four women had any family.'

Catherine and Warrick traded a look. Warrick's eyes had taken on a harder cast, that steady unblinking look