NICK OPENED THE hatch of the water tower.
The smell that drifted out of the dark interior was cool and damp, refreshing in the heat of the day. Nothing buzzed or chittered at him. He pulled the Maglite from his belt and clicked it on, then shone it inside. The tank was about half-full; the water fractured the flashlight’s beam, throwing it up on the walls in wavery shimmers. Enough penetrated the surface that Nick had a pretty good view of what was beneath it.
Nothing.
“Doesn’t look promising,” he called down to Riley. “I’m going to take a sample for testing, though.”
“Be careful,” she called back. “If Grissom’s right about L W combining those two chemicals-”
“I know, I know. Any exposure to bare skin would be fatal. But I highly doubt this is where the Bug Killer decided to stash his cache of poison-the hatch didn’t even have a lock on it.”
“Who needs a lock,” she pointed out, “when touching a single drop will make an intruder drop dead?”
Nick hesitated. “Good point.”
It wasn’t until after he’d taken the sample, closed the hatch, and started back down the ladder that Nick noticed it. He stopped, put a hand over his eyes, and squinted. “Hey, Riley? I think I just spotted something weird. Take a look on the ground, just on the other side of that sage. No, to the left, about five feet away.”
She found what he was pointing at and crouched to get a closer view. “That’s… not the kind of track you expect to see in the middle of a desert,” she said.
Nick jumped the last few feet and trotted over. “Maybe not. But I think it explains the dolly trac k s leading up to the ladder.” He pulled out his cell phone. “Grissom is gonna want to hear about this.”
When Nick told Grissom what they’d found and where, he understood the significance of his mental image of ants building a bridge across water-and knew what the Bug Killer’s plan had to be. He talked to Nick very briefly, then hung up and made another call.
“Brass.”
“Nick just found a flipper print outside a water tower at the greenhouse site.”
“A flipper? As in snorkel-and-skin-diving, scuba-gear-type flipper?”
“Yes. I think LW was using the water tower to test his gear-and I know what he needed it for.”
“Well, Lake Mead is the nearest large body of water-”
“His target is still the Embassy Gold. Specifically, the fountains right outside.”
Brass understood immediately. “The pumps-they’re all located under the water itself, just like the Bellagio’s . They have to use scuba equipment any time they do maintenance.”
“Extremely powerful pumps,” said Grissom. “Capable of expelling a thick stream of water a hundred feet straight up. But if someone were to change the orientation of one so it was aimed at the crowd instead-”
“You’ve got the world’s largest squirt gun. Except this one’s going to be loaded with more than just water, isn’t it?”
“Jim, the emergency doors for the Canyon Amphitheatre empty directly onto the plaza facing those fountains. And on a Friday night-even without a panicked group of Athena Jordanson fans pouring from the exits-it’ll be full of tourists.”
“I’ll call the Grand right away. They only do fountain shows in the evenings-in fact, I think they time them to entertain people leaving the theater. We can get a diver down there to disconnect whatever he’s set up-”
“Don’t send a diver yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’ll tip him off. There’s still an hour before Athena Jordanson’s concert starts, and if he isn’t in place to watch the chaos, he will be soon.”
“Grissom, where are you?”
“In the field,” said Grissom, staring up at the sinuous bulk of the Embassy Gold.
He won’t be in the crowd after all, Grissom thought. He won’t risk exposure to the toxin. But he will be nearby. Behind glass, where he’ll be safe. Studying the results of his experiment like a child with an ant farm.
There were numerous hotels with views of the plaza, but Grissom didn’t think LW would be in any of them. Too far away, too removed. He wouldn’t want to be any farther than the other side of the street.
Grissom used the pedway to cross over. He thought again about water, how it was the dominant metaphor in Vegas for wealth. He thought about the bombardier beetle and how it combined two different chemicals into a spraying attack so hot it actually boiled. He thought about Argyroneta aquatica, a spider that spent its entire life underwater, emerging only to replenish its air supply and feed. Waiting patiently in a webbed diving bell for prey to brush up against it…
He thought he knew why the body of one of the greenhouse vics had such a high oxygen level. LW had used the water tower to practice with the scuba equipment, but one of his workers hadn’t been satisfied with his daily allotment of nectar; he’d supplemented the drugs LW had fed him with stolen hits of pure oxygen from one of the tanks, adding an O2 high to the one he was already experiencing.
Grissom stopped at the end of the pedway before descending the stairs. He was almost certain LW would already be in place, and he didn’t want to alert the killer to his presence. The high walls of the pedway shielded Grissom from casual view, but once he reached street level he’d be much more exposed.
LW himself wouldn’t be at street level, though. Grissom could already tell that the constant traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard would block too much of the view. LW would want to be at least one floor up.
There was a restaurant on the second floor of the hotel directly across from the Grand. Instead of taking the stairs down, Grissom continued straight ahead-the pedway connected directly to the casino. Once inside, he made his way through the blink and chime of the slots and to the restaurant itself. It was called Bugsy’s.
The man staring intently through the plate glass at the street outside hardly seemed to notice when Grissom sat down at his table. It took him a second to realize he wasn’t alone, and when he turned to stare at his visitor, Grissom saw that he was sweating profusely and seemed to be having trouble focusing.
“Hello, LW,” said Grissom.
The man Grissom had known as Roberto Quadros smiled. He’d shaved off his white beard and gotten rid of t he heavy-framed glasses; his hair was now a glossy black. He wore shorts and a T-shirt with the name of a casino on it. “Excuse me?” he said. His Brazilian accent was completely gone. “I think you have me confused with-”
“Stop. It’s over,” said Grissom. “The anisomorphal has been removed from the ventilation ducts. The fountain has been deactivated. No one else is going to die.”
LW met Grissom’s eyes. “Are you so sure?” he asked softly. “This isn’t like you, Grissom. Confronting the accused in a noncontrolled situation… Aren’t you afraid I might pull out a gun and shoot you?”
“I considered that,” Grissom admitted. “But I thought it highly unlikely; it just doesn’t fit your profile. Also, I didn’t come alone-there are police stationed at the exits.”
“And a sniper, no doubt. In case I make any sudden movements.”
Grissom shrugged. “I asked to be able to talk to you first.”
LW chuckled, which turned into a wheeze. “Why?”
“Because no matter how careful a scientist is, there’s always a difference between observing a specimen in captivity and one in the wild.”
LW nodded and took a sip of his glass of water, his hand trembling. “Ah. Very good, Dr. Grissom, very good. I can respect that. You think you can get answers now that later will be unavailable. Perhaps so. You may try, in any case. The longer our conversation, th e greater the delay in my incarceration, after all.”
“You don’t seem well.”
“A touch of food poisoning, I suspect. This damn town and its unsanitary troughs… I despise this place, Dr. Grissom. Bread and circuses covered in sparkles and doused with alcohol. The masses herded from one glittering spectacle to another, all of it as devoid of meaning or substance as a swarm of locusts mindlessly devouring a field of wheat. Ants who play at being grasshoppers for a weekend, then return to their little cubicles in their concrete anthills.”
“And that’s all we’re capable of?”
“We? You and I are not the same as them, Dr. Grissom. We see the patterns their behavior always defaults to. We see how they react when offered sex or drugs or food. Have I not demonstrated this? Have my subjects not reacted with utter predictability at every stimulus?”
Grissom studied the man for a second before replying. “No, they haven’t. We found your greenhouse because of trace left behind on one of your workers’ belongings-possessions guarded for two months by people who owned less than him, people who didn’t even know his last name. Insects don’t do that.”
The Bug Killer stared at him. His pupils were tiny. “Do you know why I chose the initials LW? I wondered if you’d figure it out. If anyone could, it would be you-Soames is an idiot and Vanderhoff’s far more impressed with himself than he should be.”
“I didn’t-not until you killed the real Quadros. It stands for lacewing, doesn’t it?”
The killer smiled. He seemed to be having trouble breathing. “Yes. I remember how impressed I was as a child when I learned that some ants actually keep livestock-herds of aphids that they milk for honeydew. But not all aphids are cows, not at all. Some are sheep.”
“The woolly aphid.”
“Yes! It grows a waxy white coat of protective fibers…” He stroked his chin, seemed surprised to feel it bare. “But that adaptation pales beside the ingenuity shown by lacewing larvae. They will pick up discarded tufts of fiber and disguise themselves with it, literally becoming wolves in sheep’s clothing in order to slip past the ants guarding the aphid flock and prey upon their charges…”
He trailed off, his eyes unfocusing. He began to shake, spittle flying from his mouth as he collapsed to the floor.
“So this is the guy who sicced a spider on me?” asked Robbins. “Can’t say I’m sorry he’s dead.”
Grissom stared down at the body on the autopsy table. “We still haven’t been able to identify him. His prints aren’t in the system, and he wasn’t carrying any ID.”
“He just collapsed in front of you?”
“He presented a number of symptoms first-shaking hands, difficulty with his vision and breathing, profuse sweating. He went into convulsions, then vomited and became incontinent.”
Robbins frowned. “Those don’t sound like the symptoms of homobatrachotoxin poisoning.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Well, the tox screen will be back soon. In the meantime, let’s see what we can find out otherwise.” He picked up a scalpel and began to cut.
Grissom sighed and took off his glasses. He put them down on top of the postmortem report, which he’d read and reread a dozen times.
HBTX fatalities were usually caused by cardiac arrest, the poison paralyzing the heart. LW, however, had died as a result of respiratory failure. The tox screen told Grissom why: while LW had been poisoned, he hadn’t been killed by HBTX. He’d been killed by an organophosphate-specifically, parathion.
An insecticide.
Grissom reached for the phone.
Nathan Vanderhoff regarded Grissom quizzically from across the table. “I’m not really sure why I’m here, Gil.”
“I need to ask you a few questions, Nathan. It won’t take long.”
“I hope not. My flight’s this evening.”
“Yes, I know.” Grissom consulted the notes he had in his hand. “You and Quadros corresponded, correct?”
“Yes, of course. Only on a professiona l basis, though.”
“What about Jake Soames?”
“I hardly know the man.”
“But you’ve spent some time with him in Vegas?”
“Well, yes. He seems to thrive on the party atmosphere, though I’m beginning to find it a bit wearing. Perhaps he is, as well; the last time I saw him he seemed somewhat exhausted.”
“Did you ever notice Jake and Quadros together?”
Vanderhoff frowned. “I saw very little of either of them at the conference, but all four of us-including Charong-sat down together after our visit to the lab. Charong left first and I followed about twenty minutes later; I don’t know how long Jake and Roberto stayed after that.”
Grissom nodded. “Did Jake ever say anything to you about Quadros?”
“What do you mean?”
“Anything about him personally.”
Vanderhoff thought about it. “There was one thing that was a little strange,” he admitted. “The last time I talked to Jake, he referred to an ongoing project. From the way he talked, it sounded as if he and Quadros were working on it together-but when I asked him about it, he just laughed and said I’d misunderstood.”
“I see,” said Grissom.
Jake Soames met Grissom’s gaze without flinching. He seemed just as relaxed in an interview room as he did on a bar stool, the kind of easy acceptance of his surroundings that Grissom had never mastered.
“We caught the Bug Killer,” said Grissom.
Jake smiled. “Is that right? Congratulations all around. Too bad Nevada doesn’t use the electric chair-serve the bastard right to meet his end in a zapper, wouldn’t it?”
“He’s already dead, Jake. Poisoned by an organophosphate insecticide-not as flashy as being electrocuted, but just as ironic.”
“Parathion.”
Grissom studied Jake’s face. The smile had faded, leaving only a look of weary admission.
“You killed him,” said Grissom. It wasn’t a question; Grissom had known before he called Jake in.
“I won’t deny it. I snuck into his hotel room, the one he was staying in after he killed the real Quadros, and put it in a water bottle.”
Grissom wasn’t surprised. Nick and Riley were executing a search warrant on Soames’s hotel room as they spoke, looking for the parathion. Grissom had no doubt they’d find it, too.
“How did you know?” asked Grissom. “He had everyone else fooled.”
“I did some investigating on my own, Gilly. I we nt out drinking with the man.” He paused, then leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “You know, there’s some things you just can’t quantify, mate. Human nature’s one of them. Charong’s a pervert and Vanderhoff can be an arrogant prick, but neither of them’s a killer. Quadros-well, the psycho dressed up as him-was different. Get a few drinks in him and you could see that under all that bluster was nothing but contempt-contempt for the whole human race. If it was any of us, it was him.”
“So you decided to kill him?” Grissom shook his head. “That’s…”
“Cold? Inhuman?”
“I was going to say impetuous.”
“Ha!” Jake grinned. “That’s what I love about you, Grissom-I’ll bet you have a heart tattooed on your bum with science on the banner. But give old Jake credit for a little intelligence; I didn’t act without testing my hypothesis first.”
“You had proof he was the killer? Why didn’t you come to me?”
“Because the way I got it might have run into a few difficulties in court. It was enough to convince me, but a jury is another matter.”
“Would it be enough to convince me?”
“Judge for yourself.”
After they had taken Jake Soames away to be formally charged with the murder of the m an known as LW, Grissom joined his colleagues in the break room. They had all finished eating but hadn’t gotten up to leave yet; they were waiting for their boss.
Grissom sat down at the head of the table.
“Well?” asked Catherine.
“Braconid wasps,” said Grissom.
“Sorry?” said Greg.
“It’s how Jake Soames determined LW’s guilt.”
Nick leaned forward. “How?”
“Soames suspected that Quadros was the Bug Killer. He’d been working with braconid wasps in his own research and decided to see how effective they were. He surreptitiously sprayed one of the training chemicals on Quadros, then waited to see if there was another attack.”
“That’s why he showed up at the greenhouse,” said Riley. “The wasps. He wasn’t using them to sniff out explosives-he was seeing if Quadros had been there.”
“Yes,” said Grissom. “And the wasps told him that he had.”
“I get it,” said Nick. “Not really that much different than planting an explosive dye pack in a bag of stolen money-except the dye’s invisible, it works by smell instead of sight, and it leaves traces behind detectable only to wasps… Okay, maybe it’s not that similar. But I understand the concept.”
Greg shook his head. “So at that point he knew the killer had been posing as Quadros-something we’d already figured out. But how did he find him?”
“The same way. He knew that the killer would have changed his appearance-including his clothing-but had noticed earlier that his shoes were rather expensive. That’s what he sprayed with the training chemical-he gambled that the killer would keep them.”
“Undone by comfortable footwear,” said Nick. “Warrick would have been proud.”
“The rest was persistence and luck. He took the wasps up and down every hallway of every hotel on the Strip until he got a hit. That told him where LW was staying-he convinced a maid to let him into the room while it was unoccupied.”
Greg nodded. “Which is when he slipped LW the insecticide. But why didn’t he come to you instead of going the vigilante route? I thought you two were buds.”
“We are. I asked him the same question.”
“And?” prompted Riley.
“He didn’t want his interference to screw up our case. The braconid method is still very new and has never been tested in court. He worried that his data would be misunderstood or distorted if we went to trial-damaging not only our case, but the credibility of the method. Especially since he wouldn’t be around to defend it.”
“Why not?” asked Greg. “I’m sure the LVPD would spring for airfare from Australia if the case called for it-”
“He’s dying,” said Grissom.
There was a moment of silence.
“Pancreatic cancer,” said Grissom. “His oncologist tells him he has a few months left, at most.”
“Wow,” Catherine said quietly. “And now he’s going to spend it in a prison hospital.”
“He was repulsed by what LW did,” said Grissom. “Jake has always been… a little larger than life. When he encountered someone who had nothing but contempt for everything he reveled in-everything he was about to lose-he felt it was appropriate to take action.”
“So he took the law into his own hands,” said Riley.
Grissom paused. “I can’t say I agree with what he did. But he didn’t try to hide it; he told me everything. I’m sure he could have covered his tracks well enough to at least return to Australia and die at home.”
“Why didn’t he?” asked Greg.
“Because,” said Grissom, “a scientist uncovers information; he doesn’t hide it. He wanted the last investigation he ever performed to be part of the public record, not a deception motivated by self-interest.” Grissom got to his feet. “Or as Jake put it: the Bug Killer was wrong. Humans may act like insects some of the time, but we understand that our actions have consequences, good or bad. We get to choose accordingly.”
Grissom paused. “And that’s exactly what he did.”
Nick shook his head. “No offense, boss, but-what is it with you and serial killers? I’m starting to think you attract them the way honey attracts flies.”
“Honey isn’t the only thing that attracts flies,” said Grissom. “So do corpses.”
“Speaking of which,” said Greg, “Do we have an ID on LW yet?”
“No,” said Grissom. “His prints and DNA aren’t in the system. He didn’t leave anything behind that might indicate his true identity. Even though he claimed to be superior to the mass of humanity, in death he’s become as faceless and anonymous as any member of a beehive or ant colony. His history, his true motivations, will likely remain unknowable, as frustrating as that sounds.” He paused. “I suppose that, in the end, it’s what we leave behind that defines us.”
He nodded once, as if to himself, and then got up and left the room.