J im Brass was in no hurry.

The Taurus was in a late-morning line of residential traffic consisting of churchgoers bound for home or maybe brunch, as opposed to salvation. Getting a judge to sign a warrant for DNA on a Sunday was never an easy assignment, and he’d delegated O’Riley to track down a magistrate who owed Brass a favor.

But cell phone reports from the crew-cut detective indicated the judge was proving elusive, and Brass had no intention of sitting outside the Mortenson home, waiting for a warrant. If Regan Mortenson proved to be guilty—which with the evidence the crime lab had amassed seemed a dead certainty—she was a cold-blooded murderer, possibly psychotic and capable of God knew what; so the homicide captain preferred not to announce his presence in advance by sitting in an unmarked car on Goldhill Road, about as inconspicuous as a Good Humor truck.

Next to him as he slogged through Sunday morning traffic, Catherine sat back, her eyes closed, her breath not heavy—not asleep, just relaxing. Brass felt fairly alert, though he, like Catherine, had been up forever. They both knew that Sheriff Mobley would be apoplectic over the OT, but graveyard was so close to breaking the Missy Sherman case, they couldn’t bear to pass the ball to Ecklie’s day-shift crew, who had screwed it up in the first place. The eventual media attention would salve any wounds the overtime created, anyway.

A cell phone ring gave him a rush—Brass was surprised by how eager he was for that warrant—but he settled back behind the wheel when he realized it was Catherine’s phone. Her eyes opened slowly and she answered it on the third ring.

She identified herself, then listened for a long moment. “So they were already looking into it?…But they hadn’t gone to the authorities yet?”

Brass took an exit ramp off 215, easing down to a stoplight. He took a quick right and pulled into a gas station. He’d worked up a thirst, waiting for O’Riley’s call.

“Water?” he mouthed to her, as Catherine continued on the phone, and she nodded.

About five minutes later, when Brass returned with two bottles of Evian, Catherine was still on the phone. He got in, handed her a bottle, removed the cap from his, and took a long pull.

“All right, then,” Catherine said, finally. “Keep me posted, Nick, will you?…Thanks.” She clicked off.

“What did Nick have?”

“Plenty,” she said, and unscrewed the cap on her water. “He got hold of Gloria Holcomb, the accountant for Las Vegas Arts. She agreed to meet with him in her office.”

“On Sunday morning?”

She lifted both eyebrows and gave him a wry look—nobody did wry looks better, or prettier, than Catherine Willows. “Seems Ms. Holcomb needs the LVMPD as much as the LVMPD needs her. She has strong suspicions that the Arts council has an embezzler in its midst…more than suspicions, really.”

“Why hasn’t she gone to her boss?”

“She reports to the suspected embezzler—Regan Mortenson.”

Brass grunted a laugh. “Versatile girl, our Regan. But I thought she was just a volunteer worker.”

“Seems Regan started out that way. Made such a strong impression, she was offered more responsibility. But the council could only provide her a nominal salary, which she said was fine with her—she just wanted to help out.”

“Or help herself.”

“I should say—about six figures worth.”

“Which, end of the day—not that nominal,” Brass said. “Is that our murder motive?”

“You mean, friend Missy found out Regan was embezzling? Probably not—Regan only moved from volunteer status to ‘nominal’ salary maybe a month prior to Missy’s disappearance.”

“It’s possible, then,” Brass said. “It does predate Missy camping out in that Kenmore.”

“But not by much—Regan would have to be knee-deep in pilfering during her first month on the job, and Missy would somehow have to stumble onto it. And I never heard that the Sherman woman was even active with the Arts council.”

Soon they were headed back for the interstate. They were barely back on the expressway when another phone ring got Brass’s hopes up—his own cell, this time.

And it was O’Riley, beautiful O’Riley, saying, “Signed, sealed, and ’bout to be delivered…on my way.”

“What’s the deal? Stop at Denny’s for a couple Grand Slams?”

“Hey, I deserve better—Judge Hewitt was playing golf. I had to rent a cart.”

“What the hell’s he playing golf for?”

“I know, it’s a dumb sport.”

“No, I mean it’s like forty-five degrees out.”

“Temperature does not seem to be an issue for his honor. But getting interrupted when he’s playing golf…that is. An issue, I mean.”

“You did good. How long?”

“Ten minutes.”

Brass thanked O’Riley and clicked off.

He hit the lights, but not the siren. They whizzed along 215 toward Eastern Avenue.

“I take it we’ve got the warrant,” Catherine said.

“A calligraphy class couldn’t’ve taken longer coming up with one.” Then he laughed abruptly.

“What?” Catherine said, Brass’s laughter infectious enough to put a smile on her face.

“Just thinkin’ about the sight of O’Riley riding the golf course in a cart, chasin’ that judge.”

Less than five minutes later, they drew up in front of the Mortensons’ mission-style house. As a precaution, Brass parked his Taurus at an angle blocking the driveway.

“Wait for O’Riley?” Catherine asked.

“No. He’ll be here.”

They strolled to the front door, keeping their manner as low-key as possible—Brass in front, Catherine a step behind and to his left, both conscious that in a matter like this, a detective never knew when he might have to draw his gun, the CSI knowing better than to be in the way. His badge was pinned to his sport-coat breast pocket; this would be all the credentials he’d need. He rang the doorbell.

Regan Mortenson, her blonde hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, peeked out the window next to the door, forehead crinkled, as she studied her callers.

Brass tapped his badge. He stopped short of yelling, but tried to make sure his voice would be heard through the glass: “We need to talk to you, Mrs. Mortenson!”

She nodded, and seemed about to leave her lookout to let them in, when a screeching sound froze her, and she—and Brass and Catherine, turning—watched as O’Riley’s Taurus jerked to a stop in front of the house. Then the big detective jumped out and charged the house, warrant in hand, like a pro football tackle bearing down on a quarterback.

Brass and Catherine looked back at the window and Regan was gone.

Huffing, O’Riley was next to Brass now, proffering the warrant. “Got it!”

“You forgot the bullhorn,” Brass said to him, and O’Riley just looked at him.

They gave it a few seconds, until it became obvious Regan Mortenson had not left the window to answer the door.

“She’s ducked back inside,” Brass said.

O’Riley said, “I’ve got the rear,” and went hustling around the garage.

Catherine was shaking her head. “What does she think she’s accomplishing with this?”

“Either she’s making a break for it,” Brass said, “or getting ready to hole up.”

He tugged the nine millimeter from its hip holster, held it with barrel pointed down, per safety regs. With his left hand, he checked the door—double-locked…lock in the knob and a dead bolt. No kicking this sucker in; no shooting the lock, either—why risk a ricochet?

“Catherine,” he said, his voice tranquil, eyes on the door, “battering ram in the trunk—go get it. Cover you.”

She huffed out a little anxious breath. “Keys?”

Pistol still pointed downward, Brass—feeling that strange calm that came over him, in such potentially violent situations—reached into his sportcoat pocket, withdrew the Taurus keys, and tossed them toward the sound of her voice, eyes never leaving the door.

He could hear Catherine’s low heels click on the concrete for a couple of steps, then she must have cut across the lawn. Standing staring at the door, he was wondering which way to play it when Catherine returned. The manual said he should call in SWAT, but hell with that—this wasn’t a bunch of holed-up gangbangers or some heist crew, this was a suburban housewife with ice water in her homicidal veins, and moreover this was an important bust. His bust.

His immediate concerns were more concrete. Was Catherine strong enough to bust the lock with the ram? The Thor’s Hammer battering ram resembled a giant croquet mallet, a nonsparking and nonconductive ram, perfect for entering, say, the meth labs that seemed to be springing up everywhere. But it was a heavy mother, and not equipment a CSI often handled.

If Catherine wasn’t up to it, Brass would have to trust her to cover him while he broke the door. Not really a problem, though. Of the night-shift CSIs, Catherine was the most skilled with her weapon and had, in recent years, taken two perps down in clean kills that passed the Shooting Board with flying colors. She might be a scientist, but at heart she was all cop and there wasn’t a man or woman on the LVMPD who wouldn’t trust Catherine Willows with their lives.

Catherine appeared beside him, hefting the big, black hammer like a lumberjack, despite her fashion-model looks. She gazed at him with an admirably flinty-eyed expression—she was ready. He was about to give her the go-ahead, when the latch suddenly clicked.

The nine millimeter swung up automatically and, as the door opened, Brass pushed through, moving inside, pistol in the lead.

Regan Mortenson stood before him in the stucco entryway—small, blonde, and very pale. She looked like a teenage girl in a Dali-print black T-shirt and blood-red sweatpants, her feet bare, toenails painted red, fingernails, too.

“Las Vegas Police,” Brass barked. “Show me your hands.”

But her hands were empty, and so were her eyes, staring at the black hole of the barrel without fear or apparent interest. Behind Brass, Catherine had set down the battering ram and filled her right hand with her automatic. She followed Brass in, as Regan backed up, her hands high, palms open, head bowed, the stairway to the second floor at her back.

Clipping the words, Brass said, “Hands behind your head—now.”

She was doing that when a shattering noise shook them all—from the rear of the house!—the brittle music of breaking glass.

Regan flinched, her raised hands covering herself, as if that glass might be raining down on her.

“Easy,” Brass told her, as he kept his pistol trained on the young woman. “Catherine, check that out.”

But Brass had the sinking feeling he knew what it was already. And indeed, before Catherine could respond to Brass’s request, O’Riley came barreling into the hallway.

“Police!” he shouted, as he leveled his pistol at Regan.

“Sliding glass doors?” Brass asked.

“Yeah,” O’Riley said, breathing hard.

Brass was just thinking the city could afford the price of a little glass, considering, when another noise shook the house.

Brian Mortenson came tromping down the stairs, his eyes wide and indignant, the close-trimmed goatee looking smudgy on his chin, like he’d been eating chocolate cake by sticking his face in it.

About halfway down, he yelled, “What the hell is going on…”

His voice trailed off as he saw Catherine—in shooting stance at the bottom of the stairs—aiming her pistol up at him.

“Las Vegas Metro Police,” she said, not yelling, but there was no mistaking the no-nonsense meaning.

He stopped with one foot on one step, the other on another, hands shooting skyward, a pose that vaguely recalled his college basketball background.

Brass said, “Walk slowly down the rest of the stairs, sir, and please keep your hands where we can see them.”

Mortenson obeyed the command, and Catherine gave him a quick frisk. Then she told him he could lower his hands. The tableau consisted of Brass holding his nine millimeter on the woman of the house, just beyond the entryway, and Catherine training her automatic on the man of the house, at the bottom of the stairs. O’Riley stood in the archway of the living room as if on guard, his weapon in hand.

It only took Brian Mortenson a few moments to regain his composure. “What is going on here?” he demanded. “You better have a warrant or I’ll build a parking lot where the police station used to be.”

“We’re here to serve a warrant,” Catherine said. “Specifically, to serve your wife with a warrant for DNA and fingerprints…but she decided not to cooperate.”

Mortenson frowned. “So you people decided to dismantle our house?”

“Your wife resisted,” Brass said.

The childlike Regan finally found her voice. She turned on Brass with indignation: “You scared me! I was going to let you in until…” She turned toward O’Riley, who was standing on the periphery like an oversize garden gnome with a gun. “That big brute came running across our lawn, and I thought…I thought…I don’t know what I thought! I was just scared.”

“Mrs. Mortenson,” Brass said, “we properly identified ourselves—and I’m sure you recognized me.”

“How could I forget you?” she asked.

Mortenson gestured to Catherine’s weapon, still trained on him. “Do you mind?…You searched me. Could I go to my wife?”

Catherine nodded; and she holstered her weapon.

Before she allowed the husband to stand at his wife’s side, she quickly but thoroughly frisked the young woman, too.

She glanced at Brass—clean.

Mortenson slipped an arm around his wife and brought her to him; somehow, she didn’t seem terribly interested.

He asked, “Regan, honey…are you all right?”

She nodded.

But Brass wasn’t so sure—something didn’t look quite right about the petite blonde, and he could tell Catherine was concerned, too, flicking little glances Regan’s way. Missy Sherman’s “best friend” had claimed to be scared, and maybe she was; but did that explain why she was sweating so profusely, and why her skin had lost its color?

One arm still looped around his wife’s shoulders, Mortenson said, “Let’s see your warrant. What’s it all about, anyway?”

Finally Brass holstered his weapon, and nodded to O’Riley to do the same. Then the burly detective came over and handed the warrant to Brass, who, in turn, passed it on to Mortenson.

“This warrant,” Brass said, “gives us the right to fingerprint your wife and for CSI Willows, here, to swab Mrs. Mortenson’s mouth for DNA.”

Mortenson, forehead taut as he quickly scanned the document, said, “That still doesn’t tell me what this is about.” He drew the blank-faced Regan even closer. “Now explain yourself, or I call my attorney, right now.”

“That’s your prerogative, Mr. Mortenson,” Brass said. “But the purpose of our visit? Your wife is the primary suspect in the murder of Missy Sherman.”

“…What?” Mortenson was astounded; they might have told him Martians were on the rooftop. “What kinda ridiculous bullshit…”

Regan’s eyes were huge; she seemed to be in shock, kind of weaving there, Stevie Wonder-style, under his wing.

Meanwhile, her husband was going strong. “Is that what my tax dollars go for? So you can come up with some wild-ass asinine theory that Regan killed her own best friend? Jesus!”

“Mr. Mortenson,” Catherine said, “it’s best you just comply.”

He stepped forward, and Regan slipped out from his shielding grasp. “It’s not enough she’s lost her best friend…now you have to go and say she killed her? Shit!”

“Mr. Mortenson…,” Brass began.

But the husband was off and away on his rant. “This is how you treated Alex, isn’t it? He cooperates, and then you accuse him! You put him through this same shit, I heard all about it. What, are you just going door to door, accusing people? Maybe it’s a conspiracy! Maybe we all did it!”

Finally Mortenson paused to take a breath—Brass had decided to let him blow off some steam—but now the homicide captain waded in.

“Sir,” Brass said, “let me explain why your wife is our primary suspect.”

“Please! Enlighten me!”

“A blonde hair was found inside the freezer where Missy’s body was hidden away; it matched a blonde hair we got from Missy’s Lexus.”

Mortenson’s mouth was open, but no words came out; and confusion tightened his eyes.

Brass continued: “We also believe that fingerprints from the freezer and the SUV will match your wife’s.”

Mortenson turned to his wife. “You don’t know anything about this, do you, baby?…They’re fuckin’ crazy. Tell them they’re fucking crazy, baby.”

She stared at him. He slipped his big arm around her again, drew her to him. “This’ll go away, baby. We’ll make it go away. This is just circumstantial bullshit they’re misinterpreting. Don’t you worry one little—”

“Let me go!” She wrenched away from him. Then she looked at Brass, her icy eyes huge, wild. “You have to protect me!”

Her husband winced, as if he were trying to see her through a haze. “Baby…honey?”

She pointed at him, shaking. “I won’t lie for him any more!…He admitted it, months ago, and I’ve had to live with it! He did it!”

Mortenson’s mouth hung open.

“Don’t deny it, Brian. You did it, you know you did it!” She turned pleadingly toward Brass. “You have to believe me…. He and Missy were having an affair, and he tried to break it off—”

“What?” Mortenson said, apparently bewildered.

“And when Missy threatened to tell Alex, he killed her! That’s his blonde hair!”

Her husband looked like an actor who’d walked into the wrong scene in some strange play. “My…? What…?”

Regan moved from Brass to O’Riley to Catherine, searching their eyes for support, coming up empty.

Finally, standing before Catherine, she said, “You have to protect me—he said if I ever told anybody, he’d kill me, too! Put a plastic bag over my head and suffocate me!”

“Regan,” Mortenson said, “what are you saying? What is wrong with you?…She’s sick, Officers. Something’s wrong with her…. ”

“She’s sick, all right,” Brass said.

Looking at the pretty blonde, blue eyes to blue eyes, Catherine said, “I’d call your husband’s hair more a light brown, Mrs. Mortenson. And, anyway, the hairs we got from Missy’s Lexus and the freezer belong to a blonde…woman. A long-haired blonde woman.”

“No…it’s not true!” Regan screamed. “He’ll kill me if you don’t—”

“Regan,” Brian Mortenson said. He stared at his wife as though he didn’t know whether to embrace her or slap her. This seemed to be moving way too fast for him. Finally he managed, “You’re trying to blame me…for your friend’s death?”

“She can try to blame you,” Catherine said, “she can try to blame the Boston Strangler…it’s not going to help. You see, your wife doesn’t think we know about Sharon Pope.” Catherine turned toward Regan with a tiny smile. “Lavien Rose?”

Regan’s lovely features seemed to wilt. “No…I…” The woman teetered for a moment, losing her balance, as if the room had begun to spin…

…and then dropped to the floor.

“Regan!” Mortenson shrieked, and he dove to her side, and held her, tenderly, as if she had not, moments before, tried to fit him in a frame for murder.

Brass knelt. “What’s wrong with her? Has she been ill? Does she have a medical problem, a condition?”

“Nothing…nothing serious…. What have you people done to her?…You saw her, she had some kind of mental breakdown…. ”

Catherine ducked into the first-floor bathroom, then called, “Jim!”

Brass said to O’Riley, “Watch them,” and joined Catherine in the bathroom, where she had found the answer on the counter: a small white bottle.

“Ambien,” Catherine said, reading the label. “Dosage, ten milligrams. If Regan had a full month’s supply, that means three hundred milligrams.”

“She killed herself?”

“Maybe. But people’ve been brought back after taking as much as four hundred milligrams. Ambien’s engineered to make it difficult to use for suicide.” Catherine tucked the bottle in her slacks pocket, and they rushed back to the hallway.

“Overdose,” she said, mostly for O’Riley’s benefit, dropping to her knees and pushing the husband out of the way. “Sleeping pills.”

“Oh my God,” Mortenson moaned. “She has sinus headaches…can’t sleep.”

She was having no trouble sleeping now.

Catherine began CPR. “Let’s take her in your car, Jim. Label says it was refilled yesterday, and if she took the whole thing, we don’t want to wait for an ambulance—she could be gone.”

But Brass was already halfway out the door.

O’Riley and Mortenson carried Regan, racing to the Taurus. Brass cranked the key as the men loaded the blonde in the back with Catherine. Mortenson tried to climb in back with them, but Catherine pushed him away.

“Hey, I’m her damn husband! I’m going with her.”

“Ride in front, then!”

“I have a right—”

Catherine snapped, “Do you want to waste time?”

Mortenson climbed in front.

O’Riley gunned his Taurus and pulled up next to Brass. “I’ll lead,” he said. “That new hospital, St. Rose Dominican, Siena Campus? That’s closest.”

Before Brass could answer, O’Riley hit the lights and was off. Brass hit his lights and siren as well and tore off after O’Riley.

Mortenson leaned over the passenger seat, his eyes moist and focused on Regan. Catherine kept up with the compressions, but things did not look good. She gave Regan mouth-to-mouth—once, twice, three times. Then she resumed CPR.

The woman’s skin was the color of an overcast sky. She was limp and lifeless, and when Catherine checked, Regan’s pulse was weak. Though the young woman still took the occasional breath on her own, those seemed to be coming more and more infrequently.

O’Riley served as lead blocker as Brass twisted the Taurus through traffic. He sawed the wheel and turned onto St. Rose Parkway—former Lake Mead Boulevard—and slammed down the gas again.

The Siena Campus, the second St. Rose Dominican facility, was mission-style—like the Sherman and Mortenson homes—white stucco with a red tile roof. O’Riley slid to a stop in front of the emergency room entrance and was out of the car and through the doors before Brass even had his car stopped.

A crew dressed in scrubs came running out with a gurney, and Catherine handed Regan over into their care; they wheeled the woman inside, with Brass, O’Riley, and Brian Mortenson in hot pursuit. Catherine remained behind, sitting in the backseat for several long moments, letting the adrenaline rush subside.

She was quite sure Regan Mortenson had killed Missy Sherman and Sharon Pope—cold-bloodedly, for reasons as yet undetermined. There could be little doubt that Regan was a sociopathic monster. And yet Catherine had just tried her best to save the woman’s life.

If a cop asked her why, she might have said, to make sure that bitch didn’t have an easy out, so that a murderer would live to face justice. But Catherine knew it was something else that had driven her. Let the sociopaths take life lightly. She would choose to save a life, if she could.

And if Regan Mortenson lived today, to die via lethal injection tomorrow, that would be another’s judgment, not Catherine’s.

She went inside to join her colleagues.

Better than an hour went by before a young doctor came out to tell Catherine and Mortenson that “it had been touch and go,” but Regan would be fine. While the woman was still unconscious, Catherine got her DNA swab and she already had Regan’s fingerprints on the Ambien bottle.

Catherine Willows went home to spend some of what remained of her Sunday with her daughter, and to sleep a few hours, before going in to CSI HQ to process her new evidence. And toward the end of shift, not long before sunup, Catherine found herself back at the hospital with Brass, Nick, and Warrick.

 

They stood at the foot of the bed where Regan Mortenson lay like a tiny broken doll; tubes ran in and out of her, and she looked frail, and had as yet said nothing. But she was not in a coma. The doctor assured them of that.

Brian Mortenson stood next to his wife, two hands holding her limp one. No explaining love, Catherine thought. This woman had killed two people, tried to frame her husband for the crimes, and still, several times he had mentioned that he was convinced his wife was suffering from a mental condition; that these things, if she did them, Regan could only have done if she were not in her right mind.

Brass said, “Mr. Mortenson, we’ve matched Regan’s fingerprints to the freezer and Missy’s Lexus. Her DNA was inside the freezer, in the car and on Missy’s clothes.”

“No way,” Mortenson said.

The detective shrugged. “Believe what you like, but the facts tell us your wife killed her best friend.”

“It’s a lie,” Regan said.

Her voice was small and cold. Her eyes, finally open, were big and cold.

Her husband beamed at her. “Baby…darling…you’re going to be fine.”

“Welcome back to the world, Mrs. Mortenson,” Brass said, and read her her rights.

Regan stared at the ceiling, the icy blues unreadable; her husband, grasping her hand, might well have not been there, for all she seemed to care.

“Do you understand these rights, Mrs. Mortenson?”

“I understand.”

“Would you like to tell us anything?”

She turned toward Brass. “I’d like you to tell me something, Detective.”

“What?”

“When are visiting hours over?”

“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 council 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.