"Need a cab, young lady?" he asked.
Flashing a smile, and her ID, she said, "Yes, but a specific one."
When she'd explained the situation-and given the license number of the cab that had taken "Mabel Hinton" to Sunny Day on the morning of Vivian Elliot's murder-the dispatcher got on the radio.
Catherine knew by all rights she should have rounded up a detective for this; but things were moving quickly now, and Brass's people were spread just as thin as the CSIs. So she'd taken the initiative….
And in under two minutes, the dispatcher had given her the address of a café on Boulder Highway, where driver Gus Clein was taking a break, and would wait for her.
Soon Catherine was in a fifties-style diner, sitting in a booth across from a pudgy middle-aged man with graying hair, lumpy features, and a mouthful of burger. The cabbie wore a Wayne Newton T-shirt that might have been purchased at the entertainer's first Vegas engagement.
"Any chance you remember the fare I'm talking about?" Catherine asked.
Clein nodded and kept chewing; the burger he was working on was smaller than a hubcap-just. "Yeah, I do remember, 'cause that's the only fare I had out to that rest home in…forever."
"But the fare herself-do you remember her?"
He swallowed, nodded, taking a drink from a Lake Mead-size Coke and said, "Sure. Little old lady. I been doin' this a long time, and I'm one of them chatty cabbies…only way I keep sane. And usually, the older ones? They love the attention, they stick right with me…but her? She was so quiet I thought she passed away. I mean, I kept tryin' to talk to her, but she didn't show much interest."
"Where did you pick her up?"
He took another bite of the monster burger, chewed as he thought about it, then washed it down with more soda before answering. "In Spanish Hills somewhere."
Catherine felt a spike of excitement. "Where, precisely?"
Clein wiped his hands, picked up his clipboard from the seat next to him and paged through. Finally he said, "Here it is-Rustic Ridge Drive."
Catherine's notebook was in hand. "Got a house number?"
"Sure," he said, and gave it to her.
Hel-lo! Rene Fairmont's address.
Catherine smiled, said, "Thanks, Mr. Clein," and got out her cell phone.
"Hey, it's my pleasure. Are all the CSIs as cute as you?"
She gave him a wry grin. "You may not like me as much as you think you do, Mr. Clein."
"Why's that, cutie?"
"I'm impounding your cab…cutie."
"Aw, hell…."
"Sorry, but it's evidence in a murder investigation now."
"Damn it!"
"I really am sorry. You were a big help. Here…" She put two quarters on the tabletop. "You'll want to check in with your dispatcher and have somebody pick you up."
"I don't need your charity, lady! I got a radio in the cab."
"You would, if you still had a cab."
"Damn!" Clein said again. Then he heaved a sigh, accepted the coins, adjusted to his new lot in life, and returned his attention to the burger.
Catherine went outside to call for a tow truck, but when she clicked the phone, the battery was deader than most leads in this case. She changed batteries and called the LVPD garage. Her second call was for a uniform to sit on the cab until the tow truck arrived. Her next call was to Warrick.
"What corner of the earth did you drop off?" Warrick asked, mildly irritated.
"Sorry-didn't know my cell had gone dead." She told him where she was and what she'd been doing. "What's up on your end?"
"Well," Warrick said, "Greg served the court orders for the skull and the tissue samples."
She laughed. "Greg'll do anything to get out in the field."
Warrick said, "Well, I couldn't go-I was working the evidence from the Masters crime scene; then I couldn't find you, and Greg was free. With our budget, manpower is manpower."
"When it isn't woman power," she said. "Meet you at the DNA lab in fifteen."
"It's a date,"he said and clicked off.
Vega and Warrick were walking down the hall, on their way to DNA, when she got back. Catherine fell in between them.
"The taxi will be here soon," she told them, "and we can go over that. With all the fares in between the false 'Mabel Hinton' and now, I don't know what we can hope to find."
Vega half-smirked. "It's been a grasping-at-straws kind of case."
"Mind handling that solo?" Warrick asked Catherine, meaning processing the impounded cab. "I'll still be processing the Masters evidence."
"Fair enough," Catherine said. "But let's see what Greg's been up to."
They entered the lab and found Greg bent over several reports. On the counter next to the spiky-haired lab tech was a human skull, grinning in welcome.
Hearing them enter, Greg turned and bestowed one of his silliest smiles and gestured to the skull in tah-dah fashion. "If I may, I'd like to present the head of the UWN drama department."
"Stop the presses," Warrick said. "Greg Sanders gets head."
"Spare me the puns, children," Catherine said, bending down to look Derek Fairmont in what had once been his face. "These are human remains."
"Question is," Warrick said, "is this a murder victim?"
Greg raised a hand. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves…. Sorry. That one was accidental."
Catherine, hands on hips, asked, "What luck have you had with the skull, Greg?"
"Well, you were both right-Warrick saying that it was unlikely any poison could be absorbed into bone before madness set in. But I am looking at the teeth, Catherine, which are indeed more porous than bone."
Catherine's eyes tightened. "Do they show traces of-"
"Haven't got that far yet."
"How far have you gotten, Greg?"
He gave a smug pixie smile. "Oh-just enough to say that Derek Fairmont was, in fact, poisoned."
The two CSIs and the detectives traded expectant expressions, allowing the lab tech to savor his dramatic pause.
"I tested the tissue samples from the University Medical Center," Greg said, "and found traces of prussic acid."
Warrick grunted. "Cyanide."
Vega asked, "If these organs were donated, wouldn't that have turned up before now?"
"No," Greg said. "These are traces. Wouldn'ta got on the medical radar. And the organs that have been transplanted-which is all of 'em-would function just fine."
Catherine was frowning. "With just traces, could that be written off as an…accident of some kind? Some innocent exposure to prussic acid?"
"If Fairmont had been a cow, Catherine-yes. I might in that case think these traces were accidental. Prussic acid poisoning is a problem with grazing animals, since it occurs in the epidermal cells of sorghums, and other related species those animals eat. Since Fairmont was a human, I'm gonna go waaay out on the edge and say…this is poisoning."
"Probably," Catherine said wryly, "nobody forced sorghum on him."
"Not likely. My educated guess? Rat poison."
Warrick winced in thought. "Plain old-fashioned commercial rat poison?"
"Yes-not that hard to get, and several major brands still use prussic acid as their active ingredient. It inhibits oxygen utilization by the body's cells. For all intents and purposes…"
Greg gestured to the skull, and his expression was somber now; nothing funny about this.
"…Derek Fairmont suffocated. What's more, it's the same poison that killed Gary Masters."
"Good!" Catherine said, then realized her response sounded odd. She explained, saying to Greg, "I was hoping you'd run that right away."