“I…I still don’t see how…”
“The visitation is usually the night before the service—was that the case with Rita Bennett’s funeral?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure.”
“Positive.”
“That means her body spent the night in here…with no one watching over it.”
Black shrugged dismissively. “That’s a question of semantics—yes, no one was in the building; but Home Sure Security was on the job every second. Besides, in Rita’s case, a second, shorter visitation took place an hour before the service.”
Grissom frowned in thought. “The coffin was open?”
“Yes.”
“Do you close the coffin before or after the service?”
“Generally, before.”
“Specifically,” Grissom said, “in Rita’s case…before or after?”
Obviously struggling to control his temper, Black said, “Before.”
“Good. All right—what happens after you close the coffin?”
“I need to back up a step….”
“Please.”
The mortician folded his hands in a dignified manner over his slight paunch. “Behind the curtain, the family has one last opportunity to privately say goodbye to their loved one before the coffin is closed. The family is escorted to their seats and we then shut and lock the coffin, and open the curtain to begin the service.”
Brass asked, “You were personally with Rita’s body during that entire time?”
Impatience edging his voice, the mortician asked, “Why don’t you follow me to the chapel? I can show you in detail.”
“Please.”
The trio walked across the preparation room and out the double doors, which took them to a short, dark corridor. A few steps more led them to another set of double doors, one of which Black opened, and bid Grissom and Brass to pass through, which they did.
Brass found himself facing the pews of the chapel, as if he were officiating the service. He was standing near where the coffin would have been.
Grissom and Black flanked the detective.
“That,” the mortician said, gesturing, “is my station during most services…and I was here for Rita’s.”
Brass said, “But you could see Rita the whole time until the coffin was closed.”
“Yes.”
“How did it proceed from there?”
“The family left after the service to gather in a receiving line. While that took place, we wheeled the casket out the back, through the doors we just entered…to the hearse.”
The detective frowned. “Who’s we?”
“Myself, Jimmy Doyle…you met him…and the new guy, Mark Grunick.”
Brass jotted down the names. “And the three of you loaded the coffin into the hearse?”
“Yes, then Jimmy drove the hearse and I chauffeured the limousine, conveying the family to the cemetery.”
“No stops along the way?”
Black shook his head. “Short of a flat tire or some other emergency, that’s just not done. One does not make a detour from a funeral procession into a 7-11 for a package of gum.”
“Everything, as you remember it, went off without a hitch?”
“Yes.”
“And yet, somehow, some way…Rita Bennett’s body was not in that casket.”
Black held out his hands, palms up. “There’s always the cemetery, you know. All I can say is, I spent the whole day with Rita—she was in the casket from the time we got her into it.”
Brass turned to Grissom. “Any thoughts?”
After considering for a moment, Grissom said, “Not now. We just keep gathering information, which will lead us to more evidence and eventually we’ll find Rita Bennett.”
Black said, “She deserves a proper burial. To rest in peace.”
“Mr. Black,” Grissom said, “we also have a murdered woman who took Rita Bennett’s place in your casket—and she deserves to rest in peace, too…with her killer tracked down, and punished.”
Any sign of anger or irritation banished behind his calm facade, Black said, “I wish you gentlemen nothing but good luck in your endeavors. I only wish I could be of more help.”
Grissom smiled. “Oh, Mr. Black—you will be.”
As Brass and Grissom found their way out, the detective could almost feel the mortician’s uneasy eyes on them.
Sara and Nick were in the breakroom, huddling over a file folder, when Brass and Grissom strode glumly in.
The usual exchange of “hey’s” was foregone as Brass poured himself some coffee and Grissom went to the refrigerator for a bottle of water.
“I’m not feeling a good vibe,” Sara said. “No lucky streak in Vegas this morning?”
Grissom was in the middle of a long pull on the bottle and Brass, stirring in creamer, answered her question. “Nothing at the cemetery—less at the mortuary.”
“Come on,” Nick said. “Somebody has to know something.”
Brass offered up half a smirk. “They knew all kinds of things, both places—just nothing useful.”
Grissom said, “We don’t know enough yet to make that call—something important might be right in front of us, and we don’t have the context yet to make sense of it.”
Brass said, “It would be nice to at least know who our girl in the box is.”
“I can brighten your day, then,” Sara said. She showed them a photograph. “Meet Kathy Dean—before she stowed away in Rita Bennett’s coffin.”
Grissom and Brass came over to view the snapshot of a smiling, pretty teenage girl.
“Came in just a few minutes ago,” Sara said.
“Fingerprints do it?” Grissom asked.
Nick said, “Naw—AFIS was no help. Missing Persons matched our morgue photo of her with this one.”
“So who is Kathy Dean, exactly?” Brass asked, the young woman’s photograph in one hand.
“A nineteen-year-old, just out of high school, getting ready for college.”
“And never made it.”
“No. Disappeared about three months ago.”
Grissom’s eyes widened. “Around the time of Rita Bennett’s funeral?”
Sara smiled without humor. “Actually? Within twenty-four hours of Rita Bennett’s funeral.”
Grissom asked, “Disappeared from where?”
Sara glanced down at the report before answering. “She came home from a babysitting job, talked to her parents for a few minutes…they both said she seemed fine, normal, so on…then she went up to bed. Her parents woke up the next morning, her bed was empty, what she’d been wearing in her hamper, and her nightgown on her bed…and no Kathy.”
“When we found her,” Grissom said, “she was fully clothed…. Did she change clothes and sneak out, or was she forced to get dressed, and abducted?”
Sara lifted an eyebrow. “The parents say they didn’t hear anything unusual during the night.”
“And what does the evidence say?”
“We’ve just started going over the reports in detail, but what it looks like? She sneaked out. Bedroom window showed no signs of forced entry…and the only sign that anyone other than the family was in that house was a semen stain in her bed.”
Grissom found that interesting. “Fresh?”
“No. Predating the disappearance.”
Brass asked, “So there was a boyfriend?”
Nick shrugged. “Hard to say.”
Brass’s eyebrows rose. “There was semen in her bed but it’s hard to say if she had a boyfriend?”
“The parents don’t think she had a regular boyfriend. Matter of fact, they thought their daughter was still a virgin.”
Sara picked it up. “According to these reports? Mom and Dad had no idea who Baby Bunting was seeing, or for how long.”
Nick was nodding sagely. “These are parents who kept their daughter on a pretty tight leash.”
“She was nineteen,” Grissom said.
“And just out of high school,
and an only child, still living at home. Gris, parents of a girl that age don’t always know what their ‘little girl’ is up to.”
“Tell me about it,” Brass said.
“It gets worse,” Sara said. “During the autopsy, Doctor Robbins discovered a pregnancy—just over two months.”
“Let me get this straight,” Brass said. “She disappeared, when…around Memorial Day?”
Nick nodded. “May twenty-ninth.”
“And was buried on…?”
“Same day…at least that’s when Rita Bennett was buried.”
“But she’d been pregnant since…?”
Sara said, “Sometime around the end of March.”
Brass shook his head. “And her parents didn’t know she was seeing anyone?”
Nick gave up half a wry smile. “You know how it is.”
“Yeah,” Brass said gloomily. “Little too well.”
Sara said, “A nineteen-year-old girl who’s been sheltered like that? Out in the world but living at home? Sometimes, she can lead a double life. She could have multiple boyfriends…guys…She could be breaking loose, and throwing caution…and birth control…to the wind.”
Grissom said, “Let’s lay off on the speculation. Back to the facts—what are the parents’ names?”
Sara checked the report. “Jason and Crystal Dean. He owns and manages half a dozen strip malls. Pretty well off, but not rich. They live on Serene Avenue in Enterprise.”
Brass said, “Anybody tell them about their daughter yet?”
Nick said, “Not yet. We just identified her right before you two showed up. We decided we better read the report first, familiarize ourselves with the Missing Persons case.”
“Good call,” Grissom said.
“All right,” Brass sighed. “Hell…. I better go tell them.” He turned to Grissom. “You want to come along?”
“I’m going to pass,” Grissom said. “Everybody says my people skills are weak, so I’ll leave it to the master.”
“Gee thanks.”
“Anyway, I need to see what I can find out about Desert Haven Mortuary.”
Sara said to the detective, “Hey, I’ll go…if you want someone to tag along.”
“Wouldn’t mind,” Brass admitted.
Hair ponytailed back under a CSI ball cap, Sara followed Brass out into the parking lot where another scorcher of a day awaited. She wasn’t looking forward to the long drive out to Enterprise, but the CSIs were the ones who had found Kathy Dean and Sara felt a responsibility to be there when the news was delivered to the victim’s parents.
The Taurus’s air conditioning fought valiantly, but with the sun beating down, the car interior remained barely bearable. At least it was a straight shot down Rainbow Boulevard from the CSI lab on Charleston to Serene Avenue, if they could survive the stoplights and traffic.
By the time they made the turn onto Serene, despite the air conditioner’s best efforts, Sara could feel sweat trickling down. Vegas had a lot to offer those who came here for more than a few days vacation; but today would not make a good argument for it.
The Dean home was an impressive two-story white stucco with a tile roof and many windows, shades down all round; a two-car garage to the right of the house seemed buttoned up tight, and the yard was dirt with scrub brush, similar to the xeriscaping so prevalent these days in Vegas, but rather more barren-looking. Though the house said its owners had money, the place possessed a forlorn, even vacant look.
Sara hoped that someone was home, or she and Brass would have to sit in the car waiting and roasting.
As the detective and CSI strode up the driveway, Sara wondered if the desolate look of the house was a response to Kathy’s disappearance; or perhaps the Deans had always liked their privacy. Brass rang the bell more than once, but no one answered.
“Check the back?” Sara asked.
Brass shook his head glumly, and pointed. “Fenced-in yard.”
“Talk to the neighbors?” Sara hoped Brass would say yes just so they could step inside an air-conditioned home.
Before Brass could answer her question, though, a white SUV pulled into the driveway. They watched as two people got out—the driver a tall, big-shouldered man in a green Izod shirt and jeans, his wispy blond hair combed straight back, making no attempt to disguise a high forehead; his female passenger wore khaki cotton shorts and a v-necked peach-colored T-shirt. She came around to join him, a good seven inches shorter than his six-three, probably about a hundred pounds shy of his two-twenty, with long curly hair whose auburn color was at once remindful of Kathy Dean’s.
There could be little doubt that this was Kathy’s mother, Crystal, whose big, dark eyes mirrored her daughter’s as well (though Sara had only seen Kathy Dean’s eyes open in the Missing Persons report). Not surprisingly, the couple stared openly at Sara and Brass, but with the seasoned look of parents whose shared tragedy had put them in enough contact with police to know that this was an official visit.
Showing his badge in its wallet, Brass approached them, saying, “Captain Jim Brass—CSI Sara Sidle. You’re the Deans?”
“I’m Jason Dean,” the man said, crisply solemn. He shook hands with Brass. “This my wife—Crystal. Kathy’s mother…. That’s why you’re here? Kathy?”
“Yes. Yes it is.”
Crystal Dean was staring at them with unblinking eyes, understated but unmistakable fear in her expression.
“Do you think we could go inside and talk?” Brass asked.
Before anyone could take a step, tears began to trickle down Crystal Dean’s cheeks. Her husband slipped an arm around her, and she said, her voice trembling, “We’ve been waiting for over three months. Can’t you just…tell us? Tell us now?”
“Darling,” Jason Dean said, “let’s go inside and talk to these nice people.”
He was gently trying to steer her toward the house, but she was having none of it.
Her unblinking eyes were frozen in something near rage. “Tell us what you know—please!”
“We have found your daughter…” Brass began.
Sara edged closer to Mrs. Dean, without the woman noticing (she hoped).
“If Kathy was all right,” the mother said, “you’d say so, wouldn’t you? You’d be smiling! You wouldn’t look like…like you were going to cry.”
“Your daughter is gone,” Sara said. “I’m so sorry.”
“What…what right do you have to be sorry? You think we didn’t know she was dead? After all this time? You think…you think…”
Crystal Dean started to fold in on herself, but both her husband and Sara were ready. They each caught her under an arm, then guided her toward and onto the front walk. Mr. Dean tossed his keys to Brass, who caught them with one hand. The detective moved out in front of the procession and somehow managed to pick out the right key on the first try; he flung the door open and stepped out of the way as Sara and the husband drunk-walked the distraught Crystal Dean inside the house.
The front door opened on the living room and Sara helped Dean get his wife to the couch, where he plopped down next to her.
He said to Sara, “Thank you,” and seemed terribly composed as he slipped his arm around his wife’s shoulder and drew the crying woman to him. Then he shattered into tears and Sara, though she had just met these people, felt her own eyes well up and she turned away.
She and Brass moved to the far side of the spacious living room, which was furnished in white leather, the tables and entertainment center a dark, polished cherry. Family pictures adorned the walls and end tables, like an audience for a prominent high school prom-dress portrait of Kathy that presided over the fireplace. To Sara, the room told the story of a fortunate family, successful, even affluent, blessed with closeness and everything an American household could hope for—except a happy ending.
Sara whispered, “Are they up to this?”
Brass whispered, “Give it a few seconds. We’ll follow their lead.”
Perhaps two minutes later, J
ason Dean called them over to the couch, where they stood before their host like defendants awaiting a jury’s decision.
With his wife’s face still buried in his shoulder, Jason Dean asked, “Where is she?”
“In the coroner’s care,” Brass said.
Sara could only admire the delicacy of the detective’s phrase; how horrible it would have been for these parents to have to hear, At the morgue.
Pulling away a bit from her husband, her face slick with tears, Mrs. Dean asked, “Can we go to her?”
“Of course,” Brass said. “But it would be helpful if we could talk now, here, first.”
But both parents were shaking their heads.
Firmly, Dean said, “We want to see our daughter—right now. This ordeal has lasted over three months—anything else…everything else…can wait.”
Brass glanced at Sara, who shrugged.
“Would you like us to drive you?” Brass asked.
In his office, Grissom sat at his computer going over Clark County records pertaining to Dustin Black and Desert Haven Mortuary. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he was reasonably certain that he would know it if he saw it. He would seek the business’s financial records next. Evidence wasn’t always a fingerprint on the murder weapon or a tire track on the shoulder of the road. Sometimes, Grissom knew, evidence could be far more subtle—it wasn’t always tangible….
A knock at his open door alerted Grissom.
Sheriff Rory Atwater leaned there, with a casualness that was as studied as his mild smile.
“Hope I’m interrupting some real progress you’re making,” he said, his tone friendly, “on the Bennett case.”
“Sheriff—actually, it’s the Dean case.”
“That’s the young woman in the casket?”
“Right. Kathy Dean.”
“Spare a second to talk?”
“No,” Grissom said.
Atwater chuckled, as if Grissom had been kidding, and ambled in, the closing of the door behind him signaling just how un-casual this meeting was. Then he dropped himself into the chair opposite Grissom, leaning back, tenting his long fingers.
“Have you found Rita Bennett?”
“Not yet.”
Grave Matters Page 10