Chapter XXV

Breakfast Theatre

Sofia walked down the familiar main corridor of the Crime Lab with a cup of coffee in one hand and the printed results of the VICAP search that she'd yet to look over tucked under the other. In the uproar of the survivor coming forward, she had never gotten a chance to even glance at the results. It was good that all the PD computers printed off VICAP findings automatically. She sipped and gulped the rapidly cooling coffee as she walked because she desperately needed the caffeine boost to ensure she didn't collapse halfway to the garage. Exactly why Greg Sanders had asked her to come to the garage at eight thirty in the morning was beyond her. Whatever it was, when it was over and done with she was going home to spend eight hours horizontal in a dark room with her phone off.

Luckily for her, Sofia's feet knew exactly where they were going so she didn't have to pay attention to where they were taking her. Some of the CSIs and techs she had worked with on the day shift raised a hand or greeting or even tried to talk to her. Funny, they had avoided her like the plague when she had pissed Ecklie off. She was too tired to deal with office politics this morning. She was not too tired to miss the thumping music coming from the garage. She wasn't positive, but she was pretty sure it was Nine Inch Nails coming out from the contraband stereo sitting on the garage's work table.

The garage itself was set up for something other than tearing a car apart. She could distinguish two distinct areas, but her fatigue fuzzed brain was having trouble locking down on the purpose of the whole thing. It was slightly strange, even for the CSIs, and that was saying something.

Greg had set out a long rectangle table and a smaller round table with chairs between the two, one side of the garage. The other held several of the foam pads that the lab used for various simulations. Sofia had fallen, tumbled and been thrown onto them more than once. The bagged and tagged candlestick from the room was sitting by the pads and the concept of what Sanders was doing finally settled in on her brain. The CSI in question was currently spreading empty beer bottles around the bar half of the room. Since she was tired, a little grumpy and slightly intrigued by what he was doing, she switched the stereo off.

Greg's head swivelled around when the music abruptly stopped. He had been squatted down, fiddling with the bottles and had to put a hand on the smooth concrete floor to steady himself. "Hey, you made it!"

She nodded, "Yeah. Okay, I get the bar scene and even the motel set up, but you've lost me on the music."

Greg bounced up and rubbed his hands together in what she could only describe as glee. "That's mood music, I finally get to nail Wendy."

Sofia blinked once, "That was way too much information, Sanders."

She turned to leave, but Wendy was already on her way in, carrying one of the dummy heads the lab used for blood spatter tests in one hand and one of the lightweight foam pillow bodies used for space taking purposes awkwardly thrown over the other arm.

"Well, technically, I'll be nailing Greg." The DNA expert put the heavy head down. "He's the same height and weight as Preston Abernathy and I volunteered to be the killer."

Sofia finished off her coffee, "Okay, Wendy, you disturb me." She turned to Greg, "And you're just as bad. Whatever, while she's setting you up on the bed, would you like to bring me up to speed on what we have on the real killer?"

The spiky haired CSI nodded, "Sure. Griss sent me with Brass to Jackpot to flash pictures and ask questions. While I was there, I got the tapes for the last weeks worth of footage from their bar cams."

That perked Sofia up. "God bless Bar Cams."

Bar cams had become something of an unwritten bar requirement in Sin City. A simple closed system camera system that had one camera, usually mounted on the back wall behind the bartenders to catch the faces of the patrons picking up their drinks at the bar. The other camera was mounted in the ceiling or bar overhand and it focused on the hands, timestamps matched up the two synchronized shots for quick identification of anyone who tampered with drinks. A bar the size of Jackpot usually had two to three pairs of cameras.

Greg sighed, "The system only works if both cameras are working. The station our killer used only had their hand cam working that night. So all we have are hands."

On the one hand, Sofia wanted to scream. They had come so close, only to miss their killer by a inch. On the other, this was more than what they had before.

"Tell me about her hands, then."

Greg flashed a grin. "I thought you might ask."

He led her over to the far side of the garage where he had a lab laptop up and running. "Archie played with the footage, we have three-second snaps of her, and turned up a couple of interesting things." He tapped the keys and brought up a picture. "I just grabbed the finished products, I figured you would rather see these than get walked through the whole process."

Sofia nodded and leaned over to get a better look. The first picture Greg brought up had been focused, zoomed and cropped around the glass and the package in the woman's hands, the roofies she had dropped in Preston Abernathy's drink. Sofia squinted, "I can't quite make out if there's a dealer's mark on the package."

Greg sighed, "Either the dealers are getting smart or the killer took the time to make sure she removed all identifying marks."

Sofia absently drummed her fingers on the counter top. "But how many women buy date rape drugs? Surely the dealers would get wise."

Greg shrugged, "She could be cooking her own. It's not like you need a degree in chemistry to pull it off."

Sofia mentally filed that idea away, "Okay, next."

The next shot was of the woman's hands. Sofia stared at them for a minute, the hands of a vicious killer didn't look that much different from her own. "Caucasian. Short unpainted nails. No scars or tats, nothing identifying. The only jewellery is a discount store watch on the left wrist, which means she's a righty and a ring on the left."

Before she could ask for a close up on the ring, Greg brought it up. "We couldn't get that much detail off of the ring." He shrugged, "Bar lighting, cheap camera and all that, but what does it look like to you?"

Sofia tilted her head to the left. "Class ring." She blinked and felt a grin start to glide over her face, "It's a class ring." He handed her a glossy print of the ring. "The stone is a garnet, which could mean our killer was born in January. It's gold and look at the stone."

Sofia squinted, "There's a horse head underneath or inside of the stone."

Greg was positively bouncing now. "A mustang. There is only one company that does inlaid gold engraving under the stone on class rings, and I bet you ordered your class ring from them just like I did."

There was only one company that jumped to mind. They did class and championship rings, and she had ordered both hers, one marking her as a graduate of the George Washington High School class of 1980, and one for her Basketball Conference Championship in College. Balfour was the company to go to for rings and to her knowledge they had a database of rings they made and the customers who bought them.

"Can you lift a school name and graduation year to go along with the mascot?"

Greg stopped bouncing. "All we have is a two-thousand something year and the school name definitely starts with an M. Archie worked three hours trying for more. We just couldn't get anything else, it's too shadowed and if we try to zoom anymore, the image pixelates too badly."

She thought for a moment and the speed of her drumming increased, then she suddenly stopped. "Get in touch with Balfour. We won't be able to get a warrant for their sales records, but ask them for a list of all M named high schools in the country that have Mustangs, or any variant of Mustangs, as their mascot."

Greg shrugged, "Okay, but that doesn't get us that far."

Sofia slid the glossy into her case folder. "No, but when I take it to UNLV, we'll be able to do a search and use the high schools as parameters."

Greg started bouncing again, "Are we looking at the university hard?"

Sofia nodded, "Too many connections to campus to be a coincidence. If we run only women faculty, staff and student body against the schools, we'll be able to zero in on our killer."

She opened the file again, to look at her checklist. "How is Mandi coming with the print reconstruction?"

Wendy, from across the room, began to fill her in. While the two women were talking, Greg looked over Sofia's file. He was a science kind of guy, but could appreciate the good solid police work it took to back science up and build a case from it. His eyebrow lifted as he flicked through the numerous pages in Sofia's file.

"Sofia did you read the VICAP report yet?"

Halfway across the garage, talking to Wendy in hushed tones, the Detective looked up. "No, not yet, why?"

Greg held up one of the printed sheets. "We have a problem."

Both women abandoned whatever topic they had been discussing and joined Greg. He moved aside so they could see.

Wendy spoke first, "Three reported deaths in San Francisco."

Sofia, mouth dry, continued, "Four deaths and three reported survivors in Boston."

Greg picked up from there, "Two deaths in Chicago, one in New York, two in Los Angeles and a survivor in Atlanta."

The three of them stood in a semi circle around the files, stunned into silence.

Author's Note: Dun Dun Duuuuum!