"Definite possibility."
Nick sighed. "Know anything else about her?"
"Not much. She worked at Swingers-that dive out on Paradise Road. When she was dancing, it would have been a little nicer than now."
"And?"
"And what?"
"She worked in a strip club before disappearing fifteen years ago? That's it?"
"That's it. Maybe you can round up one of Brass's people and go out there-though this many years later . . . Check the newspaper websites first. Check missing-persons records-she apparently dropped out of sight when Fortunato did."
He shot her one of his dazzlers. "Hey, if you want me to hang out at a strip club, I guess I can make the sacrifice."
"First, check the records. That club, at this late date, is a real long shot."
"Okay. What about you?"
Catherine was on the move already. "I'm going back to the house. Back when Malachy wasn't a mummy yet, this was a missing persons case. Now it's the scene of a murder."
"A crime scene," Nick said, understanding.
Catherine wheeled the Tahoe out of the lot and pointed it toward the Fortunato home. She was considering calling in O'Riley, but decided against it. This was an evidential fishing expedition, and didn't involve interrogation; not a lot of point in him wasting time, too.
On her way, on her cell phone, she called the Fortunato home, got Gerry Hoskins, and asked if it would be all right to come around at this time of evening.
When she arrived, Catherine told Mr. Hoskins what she would be doing and got his okay. Annie was lying down, he said, and he wanted her to try and rest, after the stress of today's news.
Understandable.
While Catherine prepared, Hoskins moved their two cars out of the driveway and onto the street. The scene had been done once, fifteen years ago, and now she hoped to turn up something those guys had missed. Although massive changes had occurred in the science of investigation since then, sometimes you just had to fall back on the old stuff.
Hauling the metal detector from the back of the Tahoe, Catherine pulled the headphones on, cranked the machine up, and started at the end of the driveway nearest the street. Moving slowly back and forth, Catherine combed the driveway. In the original Fortunato file, there had been nothing about shell casings; of course, blood on the gravel drive or not, the detectives hadn't known they were searching a murder scene.
And the file said nothing about the discovery of shell casings.
Even though the sun had long since started its descent, the fiery orange ball seemed in no hurry to drop behind the mountains, the heat still hunkered down on the city, settling in for the long haul. If she weren't at a crime scene, she wouldn't have minded one of those refeshing if rare summer rains, though that would bring the danger of flash flooding.
She made it all the way to the far end of the carport and nothing had registered on the metal detector. Her shoulders ached, her eyes burned, and she seemed to be sweating from every pore in her body. She'd been working crazy hours, even for her. Taking the headphones off, she ran a hand through her matted hair and pulled a paper towel out of her pocket to mop her forehead.
"Brutal, huh?"
Mildly startled, Catherine turned to see Annie Fortunato standing there, holding two large glasses of lemonade, a smoke draped from her lip. The woman of the house handed one of the moisture-beaded glasses to Catherine.
"Why, thank you, Mrs. Fortunato."
"Would you stop that? Call me Annie."
"Sure. Thanks, Annie." Catherine took a long gulp from the icy glass. "You're saving my life."
The woman shrugged. "It's just powdered . . . but this hot, even that junk'll hit the spot."
Smiling, Catherine nodded and pressed the cool glass against her forehead.
Mrs. Fortunato removed her cigarette long enough to gesture with it toward the metal detector. "What're you lookin' for out here, with that thing?"
"Frankly," Catherine said, seeing no reason to withhold the information, "I was hoping to find the shell casings from the bullets that killed your husband."
She frowned in alarm. "You think he was shot . . . here?"
"Blood was found."
"Yes, but . . . I didn't hear any shots, and I was a light sleeper. Hell, I still am."
"The killer could have used a noise suppresser-a silencer. . . . Are you okay with me being so blunt?"
"Hell yes. I had my cry. Go on."
"Anyway, the gun barrel we found with your husband's body belonged to an automatic. That means shell casings, which had to go somewhere."
Mrs. Fortunato nodded, apparently seeing the logic of that. "Well-you havin' any luck?"
Catherine sighed. "No, not really-and it would have been a lucky break if we had." She took another big drink of the lemonade. "I'm going over it one more time, before I hang it up."
Mrs. Fortunato was studying Catherine. "You know, I want to thank you for what you've done."
Catherine didn't know how to react. "You're welcome, Mrs. Fortunato . . . but I haven't really done anything yet."
The woman sipped at her lemonade, then puffed on her ever-present cigarette, and a tear trickled down her cheek. "Yes, you did. I know Malachy wasn't perfect, but he was . . ." The tears overtook her. She stubbed out the cigarette on the ground.
Catherine put her arm around the woman.
"Shit, I had my cry."
"It's all right," Catherine said, "it's all right."
"Don't get me wrong-I love Gerry!"
"I know. It shows."
Something wistful, even youthful touched the woman's well-grooved face. "But, Mal, he was the love of my life. You only have one-and sometimes they're even sonuvabitches . . . you know what I mean?"
Catherine smiled a little. "I'm afraid so."
"When you brought me his ring out here today, well, I finally knew what happened to him. No more wondering, weaving possibilities in the middle of the night . . . that's why I say, 'thank you.' "
Squeezing the woman to her, Catherine said, "In that case, Annie, you're very welcome."
Catherine walked her over to the stoop and they sat on the cement, where they finished their lemonade in silence, the sun finally touching the horizon, the sky turning shades of violet and orange and red.
Finally Mrs. Fortunato said, "I better get back inside. I need a cigarette. You want to join me?"
"No, thanks." Catherine rose. "I better get going, if I'm going to get this done before it's too dark to see."
"I'll turn on the outside lights." Picking up the empty glasses, the woman said, "If you want some more lemonade, holler."
"I will," Catherine answered, and returned to the metal detector as Mrs. Fortunato disappeared back into the house. Again Catherine slipped on the headphones.
"High tech," she said to herself wryly.
Starting at the back end of the carport, Catherine swept back and forth holding the three-foot handle, the disk-shaped detector barely two inches off the black asphalt. The machine always made her back hurt from the slightly stooped posture she assumed working it. Halfway back through the carport, on the side nearest the house, she got a tiny hit.
It was so small, at first she thought her ears were playing tricks on her. Over and back, over and back, the same spot, each time-the small sound echoing in her head.
Might be a shell casing, might be a screw, could be anything. One thing for sure, though: it was definitely something, something metallic. She pulled out her cell phone and punched Grissom's number on speed dial.
"Grissom."
"I think I've got something here," Catherine said.
"What?"
She explained the situation. "Any ideas?"
"Maybe. Give me half an hour. How's your relationship with the homeowners?"
"They love me."
"Good. Get permission to dig a hole."
". . . In their asphalt driveway?"
"Not in their flower bed."
"Oh-kay, Gil, I'll be waitin
g." She pressed END, slipped the phone away as she walked to the front door, where she knocked.
Gerry Hoskins, still in T-shirt and jeans, opened the screen.
"I think I may have found something," Catherine said.
Mrs. Fortunato had apparently filled him in already, as he did not hesitate. "I'll get Annie."
By the time Grissom showed up, the three of them stood in the yard, waiting. Catherine met Grissom at the Tahoe. "Are you going to do what I think you're going to do?"
"No-we are. And it's going to be slow and it's probably going to be messy."
He and Catherine put on coveralls and carried the equipment to the spot she'd marked on the asphalt. She handed him the headphones so he could hear the faint tone.
"All right," he said. "Let's get started."
Catherine watched as he picked up a small propane torch and lit it. She asked him, "Is this going to work?"
"It's the only way I could think of that would give us a decent chance of preserving the evidence. If that's what it is."
The torch glowed orange-blue in the darkness.
"I hope so," she said, worried. "This is a lot of trouble to go through if I just located some kid's lunch money."
Grissom smiled. "Then we'll turn the treasure over to these good citizens, with our thanks."
On their hands and knees, with only the porch light to aid them, they hovered over the area as Grissom held the torch to the spot she had marked. As the asphalt softened from the heat, Catherine carefully dug the material out with a garden trowel. The closer they got to the bottom, the slower they went. Grissom held the torch further away, heating smaller and smaller sections of the carport at a more measured pace. Catherine now used a table spoon to scrape away the heated asphalt, and a miniflash to light the area as she scoured it for the bit of metal that had pinged her detector.
Finally, after nearly two hours of this tedious labor, her knees killing her from kneeling, and with bits of the old gravel visible at the bottom of their short trench, Catherine saw something that looked out of place.
"Hold it," she said.
Grissom pulled back even further. "You see something?"
She said, "I think so," and moved forward, shining the light down at the hole. Setting the spoon aside, she pulled on a pair of latex gloves and carefully picked at the edge of the hole. Her gloves were no match for the hot asphalt and she had to be careful. She poked and prodded at the spot until finally the thing popped loose.
Grissom turned off the torch and took her flashlight, so she could use both hands.
Scooping up the small dark object, she juggled it from palm to palm, blowing on it as it cooled. He shone the light on the thing in her hand. Small, about the size of a fingertip and about a third the diameter, the object was obviously metal but covered with the sticky black mess.
"When we get back to the lab and clean all this goop off," she said, holding the object up to the light, "I think we'll find we have a twenty-five-caliber shell casing."
Grissom said nothing, but his eyes were as bright as the torch, right before he shut it off.
9
FOR NEARLY TWO HOURS SARA IMMERSED HERSELF IN THE files Brass had provided, learning several significant facts the rumpled homicide detective had failed to mention.
While the killer's career covered nearly twenty years, only a handful of thumb prints from shell casings linked a single suspect to any of the murders. The two vertical bullet holes approximately one inch apart, his signature, had shown up in forty-two murders (prior to this week's discoveries) in twenty-one states. Interestingly, the signature seemed to have dropped off the planet just under five years ago. Their very new murder-the dead mob attorney in the Beachcomber hallway-was the only known exception.
Nick popped in. "Any luck?"
"Predicatably, Brass missed a few things," Sara said.
File folder in hand, he took a seat beside her.
She filled him in quickly, concluding, "I'm not sure any of this is stop-the-presses stuff. How about you?"
"Tests are going to take a while," Nick said.
Her chin rested in her palm, elbow propped against the desk. "There is one other little item Brass overlooked."
"Yeah?"
"None of the investigators seem to have made it an issue, but . . ."
"Give."
"The bodies of victims are found . . . although who knows how many other vics, like your mummy, remain hidden away . . . but their cars? Never."
"I'm not sure I'm following you."
"Okay, I'll give you the large print version. Take Malachy Fortunato-did the police ever find his car? Both he and his wheels were missing from that driveway, remember."
Nick, thinking that over, said, "I'd have to check the file for sure, but you know . . . I think you're right."
"Of course I'm right." She leaned toward him. "Hey, trust me-nobody's seen that car since it pulled outa the driveway that morning . . . with Mr. Fortunato most likely riding in the trunk."
"And a pretty darn docile passenger, I'd bet," Nick said. "But what about Dingelmann?"
"That, I grant you, doesn't fit the pattern," she said. "But then, Dingelmann didn't have a car. Took the shuttle from the airport."
"No rental?"
"No rental. Doorman saw Dingelmann taking cabs a couple of times."
Nick was interested. "All the victims' cars disappeared?"
"If they had cars, yeah. Also, victims tended to disappear from home, from work, or some other familiar haunt-and the bodies turned up elsewhere."
Nick was nodding. "Dumped, here and there."
"That would seem a reasonable assumption . . . of course you know how Grissom feels about assumptions."
Nick gestured to the stack of file folders. "Anything else in there we can use?"
"Well," she said, shrugging, "there is one thing I can't quite get a handle on."
"Which is?"
Sara went back into full analytical mode. "For some reason this prolific, professional assassin disappears almost five years ago. Why does he show up now? Especially if Grissom's on to something, and Dingelmann wasn't a mob hit . . . in which case, what the hell is this guy doing in Vegas, getting proactive again, all of a sudden?"
With a shrug, Nick said, "Maybe he was hired by somebody else."
"Like who?"
"Dingelmann's ex-wife, a disgruntled business partner, who knows? Just because no bodies have turned up with that distinctive 'Deuce' signature doesn't mean our man hasn't been active."
"Yeah, yeah, possible, possible-and we know at least one instance when he hid a body. So what do you think?"
Nick threw his hands palms up.
"You suppose Grissom wants to hear . . ." She mimicked his gesture.
"Okay," he said, rising, throwing a grin off to the sidelines, "I get it-more digging."
Sara gave him a mock sweet smile. "Well, don't go away mad-what have you dug up, thus far? I showed you mine, you show me yours."
His smile in return was almost embarrassed, and he laughed, and leaned against the doorjamb and said, "I went to the website for the Las Vegas Sun, and plowed through all the old newspaper coverage on Fortunato and his disappearance, him and this dancer he was involved with . . . as well as going over the original file for the dancer's disappearance. She was also officially a missing person, it turns out."
Sara frowned in interest. "Dancer?"
"Exotic type. A stripper. Innocent child like you wouldn't know about such things."
"Catherine would."
Nick grinned. "Yeah-that's where I heard about 'Joy Starr'-stripper having an affair with casino employee Fortunato . . . a stripper who disappeared on the same day as casino employee Fortunato."
Sara was grinning; she made a yummy sound. "This is getting good."
"Seems 'Joy Starr' was a stage name for a Monica Petty. I'm going to turn the name over to Brass, see what he can do with it."
"But you might just ride along to the strip club with him."<
br />
"I might. . . . She was a doll, in her day."
"Joy whatever?"
"Starr." Nick pulled a photo from the file folder, handed it to Sara. "Next on the bill, ladies and germs-the exotic dance stylings of Joy Starr."
"Cue the ZZ Top," Sara said, looking at an 8-inch by 10-inch head shot of a pretty, dark-eyed, dark-haired woman of maybe twenty-one, with that overteased '80s-style hair. "That's some mall hair."
"What?"
She laughed a little. "That's what we used to call it, my girlfriends and me-mall hair."
"You ever have hair like that?" he asked, puckishly. "Middle school maybe?"
"I was a heartbreaker then," she said, "and I'm a heartbreaker now. Run before you get hurt, Nicky."
"Ouch," he said, glanced again at the photo, then tucked it back in the folder, and went back to his work.
Once she and Grissom had returned, Catherine went directly into the lab and spent the next hour painstakingly cleaning the asphalt off the casing, dabbing it with acetone, doing everything within her power to make sure she did not damage it. Preserving fingerprints was a hopeless cause, but the casing itself could have other tales to tell.
She found the firearms examiner, a friendly twenty-eight-year veteran named Bill Harper, already examining the bullets that Nick had brought in earlier.
Harper's longish curly gray hair looked typically uncombed and he apparently hadn't missed a meal at least since the Nixon administration; but Catherine knew there was no better firearms examiner in the state.
"Anything?" she asked him.
"Not much," he replied.
"Nothing?"
"Something, but . . ." He shrugged and stepped away from the microscope, gesturing for her to look. She stepped up and looked down at two different shells. Obviously they had not come from the same barrel.
"Rifling's completely different," he said. "Of the four shells, each pair matches, but the two pairs don't match. The pair from the mummy matches the barrel found with the body. These other two slugs are strangers. The only commonality between pairs is they're all the same caliber."
Nodding, Catherine pulled back from the microscope and held up three evidence bags. "You want to take a crack at the shell casings?"
Harper's brow creased in interest. "What have you got?"
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