Grave Matters

by Max Allan Collins

  “We’ll look into Gerardo Ortiz,” Brass assured them. “But now I’d like to hear more about her other jobs. She have any problems at the blood bank?”

  Both parents shook their heads.

  Mrs. Dean said, “She handed out cookies and drinks to the people who gave blood. Everyone loved her.”

  Someone didn’t love her, Brass thought; or maybe somebody had loved her too much….

  Sara asked, “What about the babysitting jobs? Isn’t that more a job for junior high, middle-school girls…?”

  “Maybe so,” the father said. “That’s when Kathy started, and she held on to some of her ‘clients’…mostly people who were friends of ours, who Kathy knew and got along with well. She loved kids, so she was a natural at babysitting.”

  Sara asked, “Would you mind if I took a look around her room?”

  Nonconfrontationally, Dean said, “The other officers did that, already…when she first disappeared?”

  “I understand, but fresh eyes might turn up something.”

  “Be our guest,” Mrs. Dean said. “Her room is upstairs—last on the left.”

  “Thank you. Jim, could I have the keys? I need to get my kit.”

  Brass passed her the car keys.

  “Kit?” Dean asked.

  “Crime scene kit,” Brass said. “Sara doesn’t want to contaminate any evidence, should she find something.”

  “I see. But her bedroom isn’t a crime scene, surely.”

  Brass thought, If she was abducted, it could be, but said instead, “Just routine.”

  Sara went out the front door.

  “Let’s get back to her babysitting,” Brass said.

  Mrs. Dean said, “Well, as I say, she didn’t have that many regulars anymore—she was down to, oh, one or two nights a week? Usually, just helping out so a couple could go to dinner and a movie away from the kids. She was hardly ever out past midnight.”

  Sara came in carrying her silver crime scene kit and headed up the stairs.

  “Didn’t she have a sitting job,” Brass asked, “the night she disappeared?”

  “Yes,” Dean said, “but she was home around twelve and in her room by twelve-thirty. She said everything went great. She really liked David and Diana.”

  “David and Diana,” Mrs. Dean said, “kids she sat for that night.”

  “But she was home after that and everything seemed fine?”

  “Yes, she closed her door, like my husband said, before twelve-thirty. She’d had a long day and was really tired. Jason had gone to bed about eleven, but I stayed up until Kathy got home—one of us always did. Anyway, she went to bed and, about ten minutes later, I went up.”

  “And that was the last time you saw her?”

  Mrs. Dean swallowed; her eyes were very red. “Until today…yes. Kathy told me she was tired and that it had been a long day…those were the last words she ever said to me.”

  She stared into her lap; no tears—she was, for the moment at least, past that. Her husband’s arm remained a comforting presence around her shoulder.

  “Well, we’ll start in her room and with that last day,” Brass said, checking his notebook. “Uh, one more thing—what was the name of the family she sat for that night?”

  “The Blacks,” Dean said.

  Brass’s gut tightened. “Excuse me…? The Blacks?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “Dustin Black?”

  “Dustin Black,” Jason said, nodding. “Do you know Dustin? He and his wife, Cassie, own Desert Haven Mortuary…. In fact, I’ll be calling Dustin soon, about Kathy.”

  Me too, Brass thought. Me too….

  6

  THE HEAT WAVE HADN’T BROKEN YET, but at least Catherine Willows had gotten some time in with her daughter Lindsey yesterday; and the CSI felt more rested than she had in weeks.

  Grissom had given both Catherine and Warrick the graveyard shift off to enable them to catch up on sleep and work the Vivian Elliot case in the daylight it called for.

  Catherine was comfortable enough in her ponytail, sleeveless dark brown T-shirt, and pinstriped brown slacks; and Warrick, at the wheel of the Tahoe, in his light green T-shirt and blue jeans, looked cool in several senses of the word.

  But it was early—they’d walked from the air conditioning of the police station to the air conditioning of the SUV. The hot day hadn’t really had at them, yet…

  They pulled up to the gate of the Sunny Day Continuing Care Facility. Detective Sam Vega had tagged along and was in the backseat, leaning up like a kid wondering how-many-more-miles-Daddy. The same silver-haired guard from yesterday was on duty, and Warrick had barely come to a stop when the guy waved them through.

  “Hold up, Warrick,” Vega said, hand on the CSI’s shoulder. “We still need to talk to him. First chance I’ve had…”

  The guard came out of his air-conditioned shack, frowning and clearly worried; this was apparently the biggest commotion he’d had to handle in some time.

  “Hey!” he said to Warrick, who’d powered down the window. “Didn’t you see me wave you through?”

  Warrick nodded. “Yeah—we’re Crime Lab, remember?”

  The guard peered into the vehicle, his eyes finding Vega. “Yeah, I remember you people…. How are you doing, Detective? You need some backup?”

  Catherine couldn’t hold back the grin, but Vega remained stony as he unhitched his seat belt to lean even farther up, talking to the guard past the back of Warrick’s headrest.

  “We do need to ask you a few questions, sir. Starting with, what’s your name?”

  “Fred Mason. I’m an ex-deputy from Summerlin. Retired ten years ago.”

  “Meant to check with you yesterday, Fred, but you’d gone off shift. The other gentleman said that you each lock up your own clipboard. That right?”

  “We each have our own responsibilities, yes.”

  “Could you check yesterday’s sheet, and tell me if anybody signed in to see Mrs. Elliot?”

  “Mrs. Elliot died yesterday morning. You know that.”

  “Before she died, Fred. Could you check?”

  “Sure.”

  The retired deputy—did he have a single bullet in his pocket, Catherine wondered, like Barney Fife?—went back to his shack, got his clipboard and returned, flipping sheets. “Yeah, yeah, here she is…Martha Hinton.”

  Warrick and Catherine exchanged looks, Catherine mouthing: the neighbor.

  “Fred,” Vega was saying, “I’ll need that sheet.”

  “Well—I’ll have to get it photocopied before I hand ’er over.”

  “No problem, Fred. But if you go off shift, leave the original in an envelope with the guard who comes on after you. I’ll give him a receipt for it.”

  The guard nodded.

  Behind them a car honked.

  “Anything else?” the guard said. “They’re really starting to pile up.”

  One car was waiting.

  Vega said, “Thank you, Fred. Appreciate your professionalism.”

  Fred liked hearing that.

  Warrick pulled ahead. “Martha Hinton, huh? That’s the best friend, right? But she said she didn’t visit Vivian, right?”

  “Said she hadn’t been to see Vivian,” Vega said, “for a day or so.”

  “Could she have been confused?” Warrick asked.

  “Possible.” Vega shrugged. “She was upset, hearing about her friend’s death. Could have rattled her a little.”

  Catherine said, “In any case, you’ll be talking to the good neighbor again, then.”

  “Yes…” Vega’s eyes narrowed in thought. “…but we’re here. Let’s deal with what’s in front of us.”

  “Agreed,” Warrick said.

  Catherine nodded, ponytail swinging.

  Within five minutes the detective and the CSIs were again seated in Dr. Larry Whiting’s office.

  The doctor did not look thrilled to see them, but he remained professional and polite. Again, he wore a lab coat, his tie brown-and-white
striped and neatly knotted. Vega and Catherine sat in the chairs opposite Whiting while Warrick opted not to sit on the couch this time and leaned against the door.

  The detective wasted no time. “Our crime lab has conducted an autopsy. The evidence indicates that Vivian Elliot was murdered.”

  “That’s terrible,” Whiting said, obviously surprised.

  Catherine wondered if the doctor considered it “terrible” for Vivian that she’d been murdered, or for the Sunny Day facility?

  Sitting forward, the doctor asked, “Do we know how it happened yet?”

  Catherine noted the doctor’s editorial “we”—as in, a doctor on rounds greeting a patient with, How are we feeling today?

  “I’m not at liberty to say at this point, Doctor,” Vega said. “But the CSIs and I will be looking into the backgrounds and records of all the employees here.”

  Whiting sighed, but said, “I understand.”

  Getting out his notebook, Vega asked, “I’ll need the names of Vivian’s caregivers.”

  “I would have to pull the records to know for sure. When do you need that?”

  Catherine said, “Now would be good.”

  Whiting reached for a file on his desktop; he had vaguely implied it would take some doing finding the file, and here it was, at his fingertips—clearly he’d anticipated needing it.

  He read, “Kenisha Jones…Rene Fairmont…and Meredith Scott.” He lay down the file. “Those were the main ones. Various nurses might enter for assorted small tasks.”

  Vega was writing down the names. “What shifts did these three work?”

  “Kenisha works days, Rene is second shift, and Meredith works overnight.”

  “What can you tell us about them?”

  “Nothing beyond that they’re professionals,” Whiting said, gesturing with open palms. “Frankly, I don’t know what kind of information you’re looking for. Do I think any of them killed Vivian or any of the others? No. Of course not.”

  “Can you be specific about their individual performance?”

  “I don’t work with Meredith that much, as you might imagine—I’m seldom here overnight. As for the other two, Kenisha is a first-rate nurse; I’ve worked with her for as long as I’ve been here. Rene, the second shift nurse, strikes me as a dedicated caregiver as well. Never had a bit of problem with either of them.”

  Looking up from his notebook, Vega asked, “And how long have you been here, Doctor?”

  “Two years last April.”

  “Any particular reason you’re at Sunny Day, and not at a bigger hospital?”

  Catherine added, “Or in private practice?”

  Whiting closed the file on his desk and shunted it aside. “I view medicine as my calling,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “But, temperamentally, I crave a slower pace than a bigger hospital or a private practice would grant me. I prefer the tempo of Sunny Day or, I should say, I preferred it before the last eight months.”

  “How so?”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?…Things have been getting further and further out of hand, and until your assistant coroner noticed certain suspicious trends, I think we were all simply writing these deaths off as a streak of bad luck.”

  Catherine asked, “People dying? Streak of bad luck?”

  “I don’t mean to sound flippant,” Whiting said. “I’m anything but.…It’s just that this isn’t the first assisted care facility I’ve worked in, and over the years you notice that sometimes deaths seem to come in…yes, streaks.”

  “Life and death,” Catherine said, “just another game in Vegas?”

  “I told you I didn’t mean it in any kind of flip way. It’s just…sometimes you’ll go months without a death…then suddenly…” He snapped his fingers, once, twice, three times. “…three people go in a single month. Then we’ll go a month with nothing, and get one or two in a row again. You have to understand—over five hundred people reside in the various wings of Sunny Day. Twenty-two seems like a lot of deaths but, truth is, there are extenuating circumstances.”

  Catherine arched an eyebrow. “Such as?”

  “Sunny Day doesn’t have an overnight physician, understand. There’s a four-hour gap in service, with what you might call a skeleton crew on hand. Any crisis after midnight, the nurses call nine-one-one—just as you might at home. Myself, along with Doctors Todd Barclay, Claire Dayton, and John Miller…we’re the only doctors on staff full time.”

  Warrick asked, “How are the shifts split up?”

  Whiting said, “We split the two shifts, seven days a week. Claire and I are a team, as are Todd and John. We do three ten-hour shifts, then we’re off two days. A few of these patients are visited by their own personal physicians…but not many.”

  Vega frowned. “You work fifty hours a week?”

  “Plus overtime,” Whiting said. “And there’s plenty of that to go round, too.”

  “Sounds brutal,” Warrick said.

  “It is,” Whiting said.

  Catherine said, “What about that slower pace you say you crave?”

  A grin blossomed—the first sign of spontaneity from this controlled interview subject. “Compared to having a private practice, and seeing thirty to forty patients every day, six to seven hundred a week? I prefer to see fifty patients today, the same fifty I saw yesterday, and the same fifty or so I’ll see tomorrow. Where a physician in private practice will have a roster of over a thousand patients, mine is fifty and I get to spend considerably more time with each one of them.”

  “More personal,” Warrick said.

  “Much,” Whiting confirmed. “The pace is a lot different than private practice. The vast majority of these patients never walk out of Sunny Day, remember. Those of us who work here do our best to provide them care and comfort before they are, frankly, rolled out.”

  Flipping his notebook closed, Vega said, “We’ll likely be in touch again, Doctor.”

  “Let me know how I can help,” Whiting said.

  The trio marched from the administrative wing and back down one of the hallways lined with patient rooms. An attractive African-American woman in white slacks and a floral smock came out of a room, head lowered, studying a chart as she walked right into Warrick, the chart popping out of her hands.

  Warrick caught it.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” she said, a hand shooting to her mouth. “Didn’t see you there.” The hand came away and revealed an attractive smile. “Nice catch.”

  Catherine read the woman’s nametag: Kenisha Jones. Since Warrick was closer to the nurse, Catherine waited for him to say something. He didn’t—he was looking at the woman with the glazed, dazed expression of a hypnotist’s volunteer on stage in a casino lounge.

  The power of a beautiful woman over a man had always amused Catherine, and for a number of years, she’d made a good living taking advantage of that male trait. And this was a handsome woman so Warrick could hardly be blamed.

  The woman’s long neck—a stethoscope her necklace—rose gracefully to a heart-shaped face dominated by full lovely lips, a straight nose, and wide brown eyes with dark, narrow brows. Tight banana curls erupted out of the nurse’s upswept black hair—she was a lovely Medusa who had turned Warrick Brown to stone.

  Finally, Warrick managed, “Hey, no problem,” and handed back the chart, as if presenting her with an award.

  Cutting this mating dance short, Vega stepped forward and flashed his badge. “Kenisha Jones?”

  Her head reared back. She gestured to the nametag, saying, “Uh…yes.” The “duh” implied….

  “I’m Detective Vega and this is Catherine Willows from the crime lab. You’ve already met Warrick Brown—he’s also from the crime lab.”

  The nurse nodded sagely. “Ah—you must be here about Vivian.”

  “That’s right,” Warrick said.

  They smiled at each other, and Vega—who appeared to have no romance in his soul, at least right now—said, “Somewhere we could talk?”

  �
��Look,” she said, her eyes finding Vega’s past Warrick, “I’m fine with answering questions about Vivian; but this is not a good time. I’m the only dayshift nurse for this wing.”

  “If you get called away,” Warrick said, “we’ll wait for you.”

  “Well…” She smiled, shrugged. At Warrick. “All right…”

  She led them into a small breakroom with just room enough for three round tables, a counter (with a microwave and a coffeepot), a refrigerator, and the four of them.

  “Help yourselves to coffee,” the nurse said. “Water and soda in the fridge.”

  No one took her up on it, but Kenisha got herself a bottle of water. “Gotta stay hydrated,” she said.

  “I hear that,” Warrick said, rather nonsensically, since he hadn’t bothered to get anything to drink.

  They sat around a table.

  The nurse asked, “What can I tell you about Vivian?”

  The detective said, “First, you need to know—Vivian Elliot’s death was a murder.”

  Kenisha Jones shrugged. “And?”

  Warrick and Catherine traded raised eyebrows; Vega just stared at the woman in his cold unblinking way.

  “You don’t seem terribly surprised,” Catherine said.

  “Figured as much.”

  The woman had known from jump that they were here to talk about Vivian; since the CSIs and Vega had been here yesterday looking into the death that assumption made sense. But knowing that it was murder…?

  Vega said, “You…figured as much?”

  “Do I sound cold?”

  Warrick said, “A little.”

  “Don’t mean to be. But this wing is not home to a lot of happy endings, right?…People come here to take their time dying, to not suffer while they’re doin’ it…but nobody’s making big plans, post–Extended Care wing.”

  “Granted,” Warrick said. “But you don’t get murders every day.”

  “Not every day…. Hey, she was a healthy woman—plus, she was gettin’ better. Suddenly, she has a heart attack and dies? There was not a damn thing wrong with Mrs. Elliot—hell, she was in better shape than me. Up and died? I didn’t buy it. I don’t buy it. And if you’re here saying she was murdered, you don’t, either.”