Cold Burn

by Max Allan Collins

  “Why did you do all this, Regan? Why did you kill a woman who was supposedly your best friend?”

  “Is that Old Spice, Captain Brass? Tell me you don’t wear Old Spice.”

  “Why Sharon Pope?”

  “Have you ever seen a performance artist?”

  “Why did you freeze Missy Sherman’s body?”

  “How do you like my responses so far?”

  Brass looked toward Catherine, who shrugged. Mortenson, at his wife’s side, continued to hold her hand; but he was looking at her oddly now, as if this were a person he’d never seen before, as if perhaps his wife had been replaced in the night by a pod person.

  “Brian!”

  Everyone looked at the man who’d just appeared in the doorway: Alex Sherman.

  The late Missy Sherman’s husband—unshaven, in slept-in-looking dark-green sweater and brown slacks—looked distraught. “Brian, I got here as soon as I could.” He went to his friend, seated at Regan’s bedside, and put a consoling hand on the man’s shoulder.

  “Thanks,” Mortenson managed, but didn’t look at his friend.

  Regan, however, was staring at Alex Sherman. “You…you came.”

  “Of course I came,” he said, and smiled, reassuringly. “Worried about you two.”

  Catherine went to Sherman and drew him away from Mortenson. She whispered harshly, “What in the hell are you doing here?”

  Confused, perhaps even a little hurt by her question, Sherman said, “Well…Brian called and told me that Regan had overdosed on sleeping pills…. So of course I came right away.”

  Catherine’s eyes flicked to Mortenson, then back to Sherman. “Well, that’s sweet all around…. Did Brian tell you why Regan took those pills?”

  “No…It’s not like her—she’s always so ‘up.’ I didn’t even know she was depressed. What is going on?”

  Catherine arched an eyebrow and gave it to him straight. “Regan OD’d because she knew we had evidence proving she killed your wife…as well as that woman, the performance artist—Sharon Pope?”

  Sherman looked as if the switch on his brain had been shut off—nothing was processing, eyes open, mouth open, but no movement. Finally, the gears started to work again, and he looked toward Regan, searchingly, then accusingly…and she looked away.

  “She did this?” Sherman asked. “Really did this?”

  Catherine said, “We have her cold.”

  “But…why?” Sherman asked.

  “She won’t tell us.”

  “I’ll tell you,” a voice said.

  Regan’s voice.

  Her eyes were on Alex Sherman.

  “I didn’t do it for myself,” she said. “I did it for you…Alex.”

  Dumbfound, Sherman staggered to the bedside opposite the seated husband, who wore a similarly poleaxed expression. With the tension in the air, Warrick moved into position, nearby.

  Sherman said, “What…what do you mean…? For…you killed Missy for…"

  “You. That’s how much I care.”

  “You care? About me?”

  Regan shook her head and looked lovingly up at him. “She wasn’t good enough for you, Alex. She was never good enough for you. Not smart enough, not funny enough, not sexy enough, not pretty enough. Don’t you know who you should have been with, all along?…Me, of course. Because I love you, Alex—I’ve always loved you.”

  Brian Mortenson dropped his wife’s hand.

  Regan glanced at him. The loving expression she’d shown Sherman fell away. And she laughed.

  Her husband’s face reddened and he drew back a big fist.

  Brass shouted, “No!”

  Warrick threw himself over the woman as Mortenson’s fist arced down, but at the last moment, the big man caught himself, punch glancing off Warrick’s shoulder as Nick sprang around and grabbed Mortenson from behind, in weight-lifter’s arms. The big man struggled for only a second, then settled down—all the air, all the fight, all the life, out of him—as Nick dragged him out of the room. Regan’s husband didn’t start crying till he got out in the hall, but it echoed in.

  Regan was still laughing, lightly, but laughing.

  Warrick pushed up off Regan, and she looked and blew him a kiss. “My hero.”

  Warrick twisted away from her and stood, appalled. “Been at this a long time, lady…and you win the prize.”

  Brass asked Warrick, “You all right, Brown?”

  The CSI nodded, glared at the woman and walked out of the room, to join Nick and Mortenson in the hall.

  Sherman staggered around into the chair Regan’s husband had vacated. He didn’t seem angry, exactly; more stunned, confused, just trying to understand.

  “For me?” Sherman said. “You did this for me? But you knew I loved Missy. There was never a damn thing between us, Regan!”

  “But there could have been, and there should have been.” Regan shook her head again, her eyes wild. “You stupid, sad son of a bitch! I am the great missed opportunity of your life! Why do you think I came to Vegas—to be near my ‘friend’? Missy was all right. But nothing special. I came out to Vegas to be near you. To be where you were. I wanted to be with you.”

  “But…Brian?”

  A tiny shrug from a tiny woman. “To make ends meet…till you came to your senses.”

  Catherine knew she would never forget the look of horror on Alex’s face. But he did not cry. Something inside of him kept him alert—he’d said he wanted to help them find his wife’s killer.

  And now he helped.

  “Why did you hide her body away like that?” he asked.

  Catherine glanced at Brass; they both knew the man would have liked to either strangle the woman, or run from the room in tears. But Sherman had the presence of mind to keep her talking.

  “I kept the body as a sort of…back-up. A prop.”

  “A…prop?”

  “I thought when Missy ‘ran off,’ you’d finally see, Alex…see that I was the one who really cared about you. And wasn’t I there for you?”

  “Oh yes,” he said. “You came over all the time.”

  “Yes—trying to help you get past this…terrible tragedy…but you’re such an idiot. All those times, me sitting next to you, alone in that house, you could have had me…. Instead, you just went softer and softer over that dumb dead little bitch. For a year I throw myself at you, and all I hear is Missy, Missy, Missy…and that’s why it was so smart of me to hold onto her body.

  “You see, I anticipated that you might need closure…that the disappearance might not be enough. That you might be holding out hope, longing for the missing Missy.”

  “Closure…"

  “I had hoped that her disappearance would make you think she’d left you—that you’d fall into my arms, desolate, needing the solace only someone who really loved you could provide…but no. You needed further convincing. So Missy had to come out of cold storage.”

  Alex Sherman stood. He looked down at the beautiful young woman, who smiled up at him, adoringly, with ice-blue eyes that to Catherine, frighteningly, did not appear at all crazed.

  Regan said, “Do you see now, Alex? Do you see who has really loved you, all these years?”

  Alex nodded. He walked slowly to the door, paused and looked back—not at Regan, but at Brass.

  “It’s lethal injection in this state, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Brass said. “And family members of victims can attend.”

  Again Alex nodded. “…See you later, Regan.”

  He slipped out.

  She frowned, staring at the empty space where he’d been.

  Now that Regan was talking, Brass tossed in his own question. “Where does Sharon Pope fit in?”

  She brought those cold eyes around and they landed on Brass like a pair of bugs. “Are you still here?”

  Catherine stepped up beside Brass. “Figuring the Pope woman’s part, Jim…it’s not that hard.”

  A starving performance artist hits up the new Arts coun
cil fund-raiser, and offers to make kickbacks, if grants come her way. Regan now knows that Sharon can be bought, can be used, and when she needs someone to rent an apartment for her, Regan finds the starving artist is the perfect front.

  But when Missy Sherman’s body brings the case back to life, Sharon becomes a loose end. Possibly “Lavien Rose” discovered what that apartment she’s been renting has been used for—and has begun blackmailing the patron of the Las Vegas Arts, who in turn embezzles to pay off the performance artist…deciding, finally, to tie off the loose end as well as stop the extortion, all with one plastic bag over one spiky-haired head….

  “By the end of our next shift, Jim,” Catherine assured the cop, “Warrick’ll have matched the tracks from Charleston Boulevard with the casts from Lake Mead.”

  A jury might see the evidence as circumstantial, but they had a mountain of it. The actual murder weapons—two cinch-top plastic bags—were long gone; but the CSIs had everything else—the tire tracks, the fingerprints, the DNA, the motive and now Regan’s own lovestruck confession.

  Back at HQ, with the shift winding down, Catherine sat in the break room with Nick. She’d had only occasional sleep over the past forty-eight hours, and there wasn’t much left to do now except go home, get some rest and come back tonight to start over.

  Monday nights were sometimes slow, or as slow as Vegas ever got; so she hoped next shift she’d be able to take it easy. She gulped the last of her coffee and pushed her chair back, but before she could rise, Sara Sidle straggled in, also looking less than fresh.

  “Didn’t you used to work here?” Nick said, leaning back on two legs of his chair.

  Before Sara could reply, Catherine tossed in her own question. “You’re not due in till next shift—miss us that much?”

  Sara staggered over to the counter where a mixture suspected to be coffee awaited. “Wanted to get rid of the equipment we took, so we didn’t have to drag it all home and back again, tonight.”

  “So?” Nick said. “Give!”

  “Yeah,” Catherine said. “How was the vacation with pay?”

  “Don’t ask,” Sara sighed, pouring herself a cup of coffee and dropping into a chair. “Murder and a suicide.”

  Nick looked skeptical. “You mean, one of the workshops was on murder, and another was on suicide.”

  “No,” she said, “I mean, we were snowbound, no cops, and had a murder and a suicide to work.”

  Sara’s story seemed to reenergize Catherine, who sat up. “That phone call—when we got cut off, that was about a homicide, there?”

  Sara nodded, smirked humorlessly, and in a monotone rattled off the following: “In the woods behind the hotel. Waitress killed a waiter for having a gay affair. Then waiter number two, who was having the affair with waiter number one, killed himself, and it looked like the waitress had done him, too. Only it came up suicide. A Canadian CSI helped us—eh?”

  Grissom stuck his head in the door. “I see the place didn’t burn down while I was gone.”

  Catherine simply nodded. “Sheer boredom without you.”

  Grissom—leaning against the jamb—nodded back, as if that sounded like the most reasonable response.

  “So, Gris,” Nick said, grinning his boyish grin, “did you teach the yokels all about big-city high-tech crime scene investigation in the twenty-first century?”

  Grissom lifted his eyebrows. “More like nineteenth century. Right, Sara?”

  With a weary smile, she revealed, “Grissom is an Ulster County Deputy Sheriff now.”

  Their boss smirked. “And for that singular honor, I get to go back to New York, one of these days, and testify at the trial of a woman who you would not wish on your worst enemy.”

  “I know the kind,” Catherine said.

  “Did they give you a bullet to keep in your breast pocket, Deputy?” Nick asked.

  Grissom frowned. “Is that a movie reference? Books, Nick. Stick with books.”

  Their supervisor gave them a little grin, then was gone.

  “So the trip turned into one big crime scene?” Catherine asked. Struggling to keep the glee out of her voice, she added, “That’s just terrible.”

  Sara shrugged and rose. “Most of it was pretty hard, actually. Snowed in for two days. Froze our butts off guarding, then working the crime scene, had gallons of blood at the suicide, had to find the killer and watch her till the local cops showed and then catch a redeye to get back, so we could be home to work tonight.”

  Catherine said, “Tough,” but couldn’t repress the smile any longer. And Nick, arms folded, rocking back, was grinning openly.

  Sara paused at the door. “Last day—Sunday? That was nice and cozy, though. We spent the day reading by the fire.”

  She slipped out, leaving behind two co-workers who were looking at each other with wide eyes and open mouths.

  “No,” Catherine said.

  “No way,” Nick said.

  In the hallway, Sara was smiling to herself. Nick and Cath didn’t know that she and Grissom had separate fireplaces in their separate rooms.

  And they didn’t need to know.

  Let them wonder.

  Author’s Note

  I would again like to acknowledge the contribution of Matthew V. Clemens.

  Matt—who has collaborated with me on numerous published short stories—is an accomplished true-crime writer, as well as a knowledgeable fan of CSI. He helped me develop the plot of this novel, and worked up a lengthy story treatment, which included all of his considerable forensic research, for me to expand my novel upon.

  Criminalist Sergeant Chris Kaufman CLPE—the Gil Grissom of the Bettendorf Iowa Police Department—provided comments, insights and information that were invaluable to this project, including material from his own forthcoming book on winter crime scenes. Thank you also to Jaimie Vitek of the Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center for sharing her expertise.

  Books consulted include two works by Vernon J. Gerberth: Practical Homicide Investigation Checklist and Field Guide (1997) and Practical Homicide Investigation: Tactics, Procedures and Forensic Investigation (1996). Also helpful was Scene of the Crime: A Writer’s Guide to Crime-Scene Investigations (1992), Anne Wingate, Ph.D. Any inaccuracies, however, are my own.

  Again, Jessica McGivney at Pocket Books provided support, suggestions and guidance. The producers of CSI were gracious in providing scripts, background material and episode tapes, without which this novel would have been impossible.

  Finally, the inventive Anthony E. Zuiker must be singled out as creator of this concept and these characters. Thank you to him and other CSI writers, whose lively and well-documented scripts inspired this novel and have done much toward making the series such a success both commercially and artistically.