Chapter 26

I made my way through the halls with the stride of a man who had business on the brain, business of the urgent kind. I had left Hodges with the cork and the syringe, but Henry was the toxicology tech and I wanted him to test the evidence Catherine had left with him against Hodges's nose for poison, after the expanded tox panel.

Henry's plate was full with all the stuff we'd been piling on for him and he looked as though he was feeling a little overwhelmed. He spun around in the lab, his mouth moving quickly as he yammered on about not having any results for us yet. When I told him I wasn't after results, but wanted him to run an expanded tox panel and check for cyanide, he stopped in his tracks. "Forget everything else for now," I said, "this is priority."

Henry jerked a slow nod, his eyes watching me. "What about Catherine…"

He looked a little afraid as he said Catherine's name. I could understand it. Between her beauty and her brains and the way she could let a guy know how things stood, Catherine could be a little intimidating. She almost always got her results before anyone else, except for Grissom. Henry was already a bit of a nervous gee. I smirked. "She'll want this first. Check everything she just brought in right after and test it for cyanide as well as any opiates."

Henry jerked another nod, looking a little unsure. "On the square," I said, "Catherine will want this first." Henry's next nod had a little more gumption.

After giving Henry the rumble, I decided to search out Sara and see if she was getting anywhere on the wine. I strolled through the halls, until I spotted her, hunkered down in front of a computer. She was singing under her breath in her funny, husky little lilt. I decided to stop, watch and listen for awhile, smiling as Sara, so focused on the computer, continued on without notice. After minutes of just watching, I began to whistle, joining in. Sara's head shot up to mine. A faint blush painted her cheeks. She gave me the eye. "Don't say anything."

"Don't stop on my account."

"Too late," she said, "I've already stopped."

I took a step inside, smiled and gave her a wink. "You can sing for me anytime."

Sara smirked. "That was not for you." She paused and the smirk melted from her face. "It's…something I tend to do when I get really focused. I don't even notice."

"I sure did."

Sara let out a soft snort. I moved to her side, standing over her. "Get anything on the wine yet?"

She sighed and shook her head. Her fingers lifted to rub at her eyes. "Not yet. There have been a few mentions of it, but nothing that gives up anything about it. How are things coming on your end?"

I looked down at Sara and smirked. "I've asked Henry to do an expanded tox panel."

Sara's brow wrinkled inward. Her hand stilled over the mouse. She looked up at me. "An expanded tox panel? What are you looking for?"

"Cyanide."

Sara's eyes grew wide. "Cyanide? What made you decide to look for that?"

"Hodges's nose," I said, "apparently it's gifted."

Sara shook her head and laughed. I looked down at her, watching her expression. "You knew," I said.

She nodded. "Yeah. Didn't you? I found that out last year when we were working that double homicide in the College Dorm. When we were looking for what may have caused the bodies to turn pink, Doc Robbins had Hodges come into the morgue to take a sniff of the stomach contents."

"You didn't tell me?"

"I think you were busy with the exploding toilet and tox confirmed that there was no presence of cyanide in either victim. Telling you about Hodges sniffing the stomach contents must have slipped my mind."

I shook my head. "It had to be Hodges."

Sara laughed. "I had the exact same thought." She swiveled in her chair, facing me. "Still, if it gets us closer to finding the truth, we might as well make use of it."

"You sound like Grissom," I said.

Sara smirked. "So what was Hodges sniffing when he detected the cyanide?"

"The cork."

Sara arched a brow. I pulled up a chair and sat down beside her. "I have a theory," I said.

Sara angled her head sideways. She was watching me, waiting.

"We know that whoever killed Vanasse was trying to make it look like an overdose, right?" Sara nodded. "Well, I think that whoever did it wasn't sure if he or she was giving Vanasse enough H to pop the pump. I think our killer used the syringe to inject the heroin into the bottle instead of slipping it in her drink. That diluted the amount of heroin Vanasse could get in a drink. Vanasse was given a Mickey Finn, but it was the whole bottle and not just a glass."

I paused. Sara's eyes were focused on me. "Keep going," she said.

"Our killer doesn't know how much is needed to knock off Vanasse, so he or she decides on a little insurance – cyanide. It's fast, it's lethal, and it had the added insurance of being combined with an excess of heroin. Our killer injects it into Vanasse's favorite bottle, maybe because he or she doesn't think Vanasse would trust taking an already poured glass or maybe because Vanasse is French and likes to see the wine uncorked herself, who knows. Vanasse takes the drink and winds up in a sleeper car, headed back to France in a Chicago overcoat."

Sara's mouth twisted up into a little smirk. She shook her head. "It was the bottle and not the glass."

I jerked a nod. "You were thinking the same thing when you held up the cork against the syringe," I said.

"I wondered about it, but I wasn't sure the theory would work. I didn't know if the killer could have injected enough heroin into a full bottle of wine to cause an addict to overdose."

"The killer was probably thinking the same thing. Enter the cyanide. The levels in Vanasse's blood weren't way over the top. We'd figured they could potentially be high enough to kill her. The killer probably didn't want to take that chance."

"So we just have to confirm it."

I smiled. "Henry and Hodges are doing that as we speak."

Sara's mouth grew into a wide grin. "Great work, Greg."

"It gets even better," I said. Sara arched a brow and looked over at me. I looked back at her, letting my eyes wander over her face, the slight freckling on her cheeks from the hot summer days and the waiting look in her coffee colored eyes. "Catherine several prints off of the bottle of wine. She also lifted a nice, clean little print from off the syringe. It's only a partial, but it's a good one and it should be enough to get a match."

Sara nodded. "We have several prints for comparison."

I jerked a nod. "If Mandy matches the print, we'll know who sang our canary her last lullaby."