'What's that, Jerry?'
'You never point your finger at me.'
'And Jerry,' Brass said, 'I never will.'
The attending physician reluctantly granted Grissom and Catherine access to his patient. Despite a considerable loss of blood, Brower could talk without endangering himself. The doctor did limit the visitors to two, so Nick remained in the hall with the uniformed officer stationed outside the private room.
As the two CSIs entered this typical hospital room-the white walls, white ceiling, and single fluorescent tube behind plastic just above the bed-it oddly recalled to Grissom the living environs of the real CASt.
The copycat CASt lay under a white blanket, on top of which his heavily bandaged left hand lay, like a giant gauze club. Other than that, Brower seemed physically unaffected from his visit to CASt's castle.
As they'd entered, Brower had turned toward the window, the blinds slightly open to give him a third-floor view south, toward the Strip.
Catherine said, 'Really think looking the other way is going to do the trick, Mark?'
The patient said nothing, staring out the window in stony silence.
Catherine walked around the bed and across his field of vision, and closed the blinds.
Brower glared at her, then turned away only to be confronted by Grissom, standing with arms folded and a placid smile.
Then the patient looked straight ahead and raised his right hand, in which the television remote resided, and turned the high-riding TV on, volume way up.
Grissom plucked the remote from the killer's hand and switched the set off. Brower's eyes never left the black screen.
'You don't have to look at us, Mark,' Grissom said. 'In fact, I'm fine with that. But you do have to talk about this.'
'Nothing to say.'
Catherine leaned in. 'Well, we have things to say.'
'I don't have to listen. I'm the victim here, and you people are treating me like I did something wrong.'
'You're the CASt copycat, Mark,' Catherine said. 'That's very wrong.'
'I was investigating the original case,' he said. 'You should give me a reward for helping you nab the real CASt.'
'Thanks,' Grissom said, his inflection light. 'But I'm afraid the understudy doesn't get to go back on stage and become a star. You see, Mark, we've been to your house. We found the tinsmith clippers-which test positive for blood-that you used to cut off the fingers of your victims; we've got the rope you used, lipstick, the entire makings of the road company CASt.'
Brower's face fell, but then he managed to summon indignation. 'What the hell good will that do without a warrant?'
'That's why we're here, Mark,' Grissom said pleasantly, and lifted a hand that held the very document; he handed it toward Brower, who looked at the small sheaf of papers as if it were on fire.
'On what grounds?' he demanded.
Grissom tossed the warrant on the bed, while Catherine provided the patient with a soothing smile. 'We matched your fingerprints to the door bells of Marvin Sandred and Enrique Diaz.'
Brower said, 'They…they must have been planted. I'm a crime beat reporter! I wouldn't do anything, so… so…'
'Dumb?' Grissom asked. 'Want to tell us about it?'
'No.'
'All right. Then I'll tell you…. Paquette wouldn't fire Bell and he wouldn't promote you while Perry was still there. If Mark Brower was ever going to get his own column, make a real name for himself, Perry Bell had to go. But why not just kill Bell?'
Brower said nothing.
So Catherine answered, 'What, and make him a martyr? You needed to discredit him, Mark, and at the same time provide yourself the ringside seat for a major crime story, and do your own CASt book.'
Suddenly Brower spoke, softly, very softly. 'I was carrying that fat drunken bastard for the last five years. It was my turn to be someone…my turn to be the star reporter.'
'Maybe you still can be,' Grissom said brightly.
Brower clearly didn't know what Grissom was talking about.
Catherine patted the patient's bandaged hand, ever so gently, and explained: 'Prison newspaper, Mark. You can be the Death Row correspondent…for a while.'
How long he'd been driving around, Brass had no idea; darkness had settled over the city, and he still hadn't found his way home.
Things had sorted themselves out and Grissom had assembled the evidence in a manner that gave them a pretty good handle on the facts.
Mark Brower would likely receive a lethal injection, though he had cooperated, giving Grissom and Catherine a complete confession-which actually might buy the reporter a lifetime lease on a maximum security cell out in Ely. Might.
Jerry Dayton would likely not face the ultimate punishment, at least not the one this world provided. At least six men were dead, but Dayton would spend the rest of his life in a mental hospital, the kind that didn't hand out weekend passes like free samples at a supermarket.
Though he could hardly believe it himself, Jim Brass felt sorry for Dayton, and hoped within the walls where he would live out his troubled life, the man would get some real help, a measure of peace.
Not every day that a cop took two serial killers off the streets, but what should have been an evening for celebration had found the detective driving aimlessly around Henderson, avoiding the address he'd come to town seeking. Finally, he gave up and pulled in at the guard shack at Sunny Day Continuing Care Facility.
The guard rang ahead, and when Brass got to the building at the far end, his old partner was sitting on the front step of the building in a dark bathrobe and slippers, smoking a cigarette.
'Want one?' he asked Brass.
The detective shook his head. 'I quit.'
'I got a drink for you inside…?'
'Quit that, too.'
'What a damn bore you've become, Jim.'
Brass looked through the darkness at Vince Champlain. In the meager light seeping from neighboring apartments, Vince seemed very old, almost frail. Funny to have it come this-Champlain had always seemed so strong to Brass, back when they were partners, almost a father figure; but the man who had covered his back for years now seemed weak.
Brass sat next to his old friend.
Vince took a long drag; let it out; chuckled, coughed. 'Margie won't let me smoke in the apartment. Makes me come out here. Treats me like a little kid.'
'We put Dayton away today.'
'I heard. All over the tube. And Mark Brower? Who'da thunk it?'
'Who'da thunk it.'
With a sideways glance, Champlain said, 'So I suppose you talked to that lunatic Dayton yourself?'
'I did.'
'Never know what those crackpots are gonna claim, do you?'
'Is that your way of denying it?'
The retired cop shrugged. 'If you think you know, you think you know. What can I do about it?'
'Until just now, I figured maybe I was wrong. We weren't the only ones on the case.'
'Damn near. Well.' Champlain took another deep drag. Let it slowly out. Did not look at Brass. 'What are you going to do about it?'
Brass looked up at the stars. 'Not sure yet.'
'You could forget about it. Write it off as the ravings of a loon.'
