5

"Did you figure out how my husband died?" Madeline Tisdale asked the officers. Her friends called her Trish; her husband had called her Lynn. The police called her Madeline. She was garbed in a form-fitting black sweater with a long blue skirt and high-heeled pumps. Her hand stroked her long blonde hair back and turned one of her long legs over the other.

"Mrs. Tisdale…" Brass began the interview. "Did your husband talk to you about his work?"

"Of course, he talked about it often." Madeline turned her head up. "If he was excited about his progress, he talked about it, but if he was having problems with it, I couldn't get him to talk at all about it. It's as if…. He was working the problem mentally while I was around."

"It had to be problematic in your marriage…." Grissom mentioned. "Did you feel he placed his work before you?"

"We had a very good marriage." Madeline lightly tilted her head to her left. "We both worked hard, but we both had planned a trip to Florida."

"That would have been expensive on your bank accounts." Brass pulled out subpoenaed bank statements. "From what we have, you could not have afforded much, even with the mortgage on your house."

"We've had some hard times." Madeline tilted her head to the other direction. "We finagled it."

"How much do you owe in the casinos?" Grissom asked. Madeline didn't respond too fast. She leaned backward curiously. Grissom continued. "Friends of your husband said he was trying to cover your debts, but you kept developing more tabs as fast as he paid them off."

Madeline was trying to think of a response.

"Your husband worked for USI…" Brass started revealing the facts. "It's a large government think-tank with several of its own patents, projects and subsidiaries as well as its own businesses, including it's own movie-making division. Their research employees all had contracts that paid royally in case their employees died in the progress of their work." Brass paused. "If he died at work, you'd be paid off very well."

"Yeah…" Madeline started looking guilty. "I think he said something like that." She looked over at the police officer in the room.

"Have you ever accompanied your husband to his work?" Grissom asked.

"No, he never allowed that."

"When we printed his console, we found five sets of prints…" Grissom was leading to his point. "We identified all of them… including yours off your employee card at the Sands."

"He carried that detached console to program it at home several times." Madeline turned her head up again and shifted in her seat. "I sometimes helped him to carry it."

"You also carry a 35-Colt revolver." Brass produced a copy of her permit for her weapon. "Like the weapon that killed your husband."

"Yeah…" Madeline sighed a bit. "He bought it for me to protect myself on the Strip, but I lost it somewhere."

"That's convenient…" Grissom collected their evidence against her and closed her file. "But he was killed by a person who had a basic understanding of his work. That only leaves one person who could have been there when he was murdered." He stood and palmed the case file under his arm to process for the arraignment. Madeline was quickly becoming repentant. She leaned forward and covered her face with her hands; what did she do? It was a very good marriage! If only Jason had not threatened to stop paying off her tabs. Her life was about to get very confused and messy.

Grissom turned out onto the hall past the break room. He made only a few steps and heard the TV on in the break room. The newscaster on the TV was featuring a story about the alleged female superhero in town. Greg was sitting and eating his dinner, a salad, sandwich and bottle of juice. Nick stood a few feet from him sipping a bottle of water as they looked at the TV.

"Supergirl is back…." The newscaster reported. "Earlier today as technicians ascended the neon lights above the Caesar, a gust of wind knocked maintenance man Gene Stirbak off to what might have been his death except he was rescued by a girl who caught him and left him safe on the roof. This is the eighteenth sighting of this alleged superhero in the last three days…"

Grissom just tossed the account out of his head. Rumors out of the general public were that the police was covering up the sightings, but the truth was that the police just didn't care about them. There was just nothing case worthy about a supposed costumed female going around saving people. No one really believed she could fly, flip over cars and repel bullets. She'd probably vanish in another week or two anyway. Grissom reached his office and sat at his desk with the Moseby warehouse file. He sighed tiredly about ready to pull off his glasses to clean them. He felt a shadow entering the room.

"Grissom…" Sara was feeling good about herself as she entered Gil's office. "I was talking to a social worker over Lainey, and she said…"

"Sara…" Gil looked up forlornly from perusing his murder case on Moseby Street. "I'm sorry, but I got a call from the case worker overseeing Lainey's file." He paused unsure how to proceed further. "But she found a better home for Lainey. Kevin Hawes from the governor's office adopted her as a favor for his wife. Apparently, she allowed herself to get emotionally attached to the case and… wanted to make a home for her."

"Oh…" Sara reacted disconnected as if she were trying to shrug off the hurt emotions. "Uh, but… What about my…"

"Sara, I wrote you the letter, but I'm afraid it didn't matter." Grissom hadn't risen from his seat; he just leaned back in his seat trying to be as sympathetic as possible. "They just felt that the Hawes could provide her more the home she needed than a single woman as yourself could."

"But…" Sarah stepped forward, a few tears coming down her face. "I was a foster kid too. I would have understood what she needed. I could have…"

"I know you would have given her all the best attention she needed, but…" Gil continued. "They were more interested in what was best for Lainey."

"Lainey…" Sara was crying much more as her heart broke. "She won't even recall who I was. I was there when she was found. I rode with her into the hospital holding her hand. I was the one who named her that…."

"If it's any solace…" Grissom had stood and come around his desk to lend his support. "They're keeping the name you gave her." Sara held on to him for support as her heart broke upon realizing how close she came to having Lainey in her life. Elsewhere in the building, another supposed adult was crying for other reasons.

"….But that's not the worst I did…" Clark Danvers blubbered over the interrogation table. "After I stole the doughnuts, I tossed them off the overpass and a car slid through them and caused a twelve car pile-up!" He stopped crying and wheezing to wipe his nose. "I know I should have stayed there, but I got scared and didn't want to be arrested. I also put my mom's dog in her car, but it released the brake and the vehicle rolled back through traffic and through the McDonald's living room, out the other side and into the swimming pool….. They wanted to sue!!!" He continued crying to Brass who just stood across from him trying to keep from laughing. Katherine had entered the room to this sight. Danvers was six-foot-two and three hundred and forty-two pounds in size. Crying like a giant baby, he had confessed to eleven acts of mischief and vandalism as a teenager and another thirteen cases of bad lucks and stupid decisions. Brass turned his amused face over to Katherine.

"And all I asked him was his name…" He bit his lip to keep from laughing.

"Mr. Danvers… Mr. Danvers…" Katherine took a seat across from Danvers but next to Brass. "Mr. Danvers, we don't care about any of that…"

"What…" The giant baby stopped wheezing.

"Mr. Danvers, do you recognize this?" She pulled a photo of the closed trunk from her file. "According to Sarah Witherspoon, the woman who had bought it, she reports having purchased it from you at a house at 1327 Old Post Road near Henderson. Do you recall selling it?"

"I didn't steal it…" Danvers once again started fearing the worst. "My mom recently got married and moved to Colorado. She asked me to get rid of all the old stuff in the old house before she sold it, but I decided to sell it in a yard sale instead. I dumped what didn't sell at the landfill."

"Did you look in the old trunk before you sold it?"

"Was I supposed to?" Danvers started getting scared of jail time again. "I didn't have a key, I sold it as is."

"Well," Katherine sighed again. "When it was jimmied open there was a body found inside it." She showed the photo with the photographed remains.

"What?" Danvers saw the photo of the desiccated corpse in the trunk. "Oh my god, I carried that thing on my back!!!!"

"Okay, let's cut to the chase…" Brass did not want a chance to let this guy start blubbering over and describing another history of misdemeanors and stupid decisions. "You are not being arrested. We just want to identify the woman in the trunk. Do you have any idea who the woman was? From what we can tell, she's possibly been in the trunk since the Late Seventies or Early Eighties. Have any idea who she could be?"

Danvers's round face started thinking. His jaw dropped a bit as his mind started working. He sat there for a full minute without a word.

"Would it help if we contacted your mother instead?" Katherine asked.

"Uh," Danvers finally blinked his eyes. "My mom said she had an aunt who vanished from her wedding in 1976." He paused taking a deep breath. "I know because she talked about it a lot. Everyone thought she jilted my Uncle Mike…. He married my Aunt Carol a year after that. Grandpa tried hiring a detective to find her."

"Do you have a name for this aunt?"

"Melissa… Millicent… Melanie… something like that."

"Okay, well, that's a start…" Katherine made a face of confused satisfaction to be getting somewhere on this thirty year old disappearance case. She wasn't sure if it was going to turn into a murder case or not, but at least she saw an end to it. That was something she barely saw in most cases. Danvers had his mother's Colorado phone number in his wallet, and barring possible another conversation with Uncle Mike, Katherine could hopefully put this case to bed. After dismissing the wimpy and unfortunate Clark Danvers as a possible suspect, she found she had to move on to other cases. All she had to do was slip by Grissom without being seen…

"Katherine…" He noticed her.

"So close…" She told herself and stepped back to see her colleague. "Yes?" She responded in good humor.

"The body on Malcolm Street, how's that going?"

"Fairly routine…" She pretended to be distracted by his irradiated pig on the shelf and other specimen jars. "It's thirty years old, we're tracing next of kin, it's turning out like that urban legend with the bride in the trunk, but… that's impossible, right?" She wanted his opinion.

"All legends start out with a basis in truth." He looked up at her with a stoic look and leaned back. "The only reason to have urban legends is to pass on the stories of the past…" Grissom once again turned reflective. "It's not our fault that some tales become so popular that they get repeated throughout history. Stories are stories because they are shared to entertain; each culture or generation adding their own details to the story over time until it barely resembles the original version."

"But Gil…" Katherine started revealing her doubts in this case. "It's identical to the urban legend. It couldn't really happen, right?"

"Katherine," Grissom sighed and looked away briefly before looking back to her. "Why don't you try having this discussion with Greg. He was in the bank when a young lady in costume crashed into it, survived getting shot at point blank range and tossed two men across the room before departing the scene. We know that's impossible, but yet, the security camera confirms what Greg said he saw."

"But that's just far-fetched."

"Have you seen the security tape?"

"Gil," Katherine scoffed at the notion of a costumed young girl whose body deflected bullets and looked just like a certain pop star. "Do you believe that a girl who looks like Britney Spears is patrolling our skies in a Supergirl costume?"

"I'm trying not to."

Over on the Strip, a packed sports car of deluded and stoned teenagers stuffed their shoplifted clothes, shoes and designer jeans to the floor of their vehicle. Their driver eyed the patrol car racing for them then the second one coming to chase them after running the red light. Weaving around traffic, in and out of on-coming cars and the more rational thinking denizens of the city, he looked where he was speeding, pressed his accelerator to the floor and looked in his rear-view again. There was a third police car coming after him this time. If they were caught, it'd be jail time for the stolen clothes and more for the illegal weed in the car. He looked to freedom again and saw something else coming at him… a blonde female presence with long blonde hair and a red cape coming down out of the sky and shooting toward him. He didn't believe it. He didn't want to believe it. A moment later, his vehicle would lurch violently and then flip forward end over front, and he would be dangling from his seatbelt in an upside down car with his idiot friends and stolen merchandise. The shapely caped figure shot from the scene of the crash and rapidly ascended the sky to keep from being seen. Her clenched right hand extended upward to guide her path, her left hand palmed down against her bosom to streamline her flight, her golden blonde hair waved and lashed against her flapping cape. Her long legs were drawn together to reduce the wind resistance as the ley lines of the planet once again pull her to sub-orbital levels. Once the lights of Las Vegas were twinkling beneath her, she danced a pirouette within the heavens, all of creation spread out before her. She had gifts, she had powers, she was a goddess now, she… had classes in the morning. Her brown eyes looked down to earth, narrowing and focusing on the world beneath her. She'd have to return to return to her dorm room soon. Just because she was now immortal did not mean she could avoid sleep, but first, she had to deal with the gunshots she heard. A deep breath caused her breasts to spread wider the symbol on her chest. Her brown eyes pierced the city looking for the degenerates willing to ruin the lives of others along with their own. She dived to Earth ready to make them suffer for their sins…. She was an angel of vengeance, the protective spirit of the city, a defender of the innocent, she was… humanity's last hope.

END