“NONE OF THEM went for it?” asked Brass.
Nick and Grissom glanced at each other on the other side of the desk. “No,” said Grissom.
“We gave ’em every opportunity,” said Nick. “We paraded them around the lab, put crucial evidence in plain sight, then made sure each of them was alone with it at least once. Hidden camera showed that none of them so much as glanced at it.”
“They all seemed genuinely interested in the millipedes,” said Grissom. “A fistfight almost broke out over a disagreement about the species.”
“Qua d r os?” said Brass.
“And Jake Soames. Though to be fair, I don’t think Jake would have swung first.”
Brass leaned back and sighed. “So much for the direct approach. How about the subtle? Did any of them ask inappropriate questions?”
Grissom frowned. “They’re scientists. There’s no such thing as an inappropriate question.”
“Then I guess we’re back to square one,” said Brass.
“Maybe not,” said Nick. “None of these guys are local, but the U.S. has pretty good relations with Australia, Thailand, Brazil, and South Africa. I might be able to dig up some background with a few phone calls and e-mails.”
Brass raised his eyebrows. “You’ve got connections I don’t know about, Nick?”
Nick laughed. “Everybody comes to Vegas sooner or later. I’ve made a few friends.”
“Then start running up that phone bill,” said Brass.
Riley found Grissom in his offi ce. “Got a minute?”
Grissom peered at her over the top of his glasses. “Yes?”
She leaned against the doorframe, her arms crossed. “I just talked to a possible suspect in the Harribold case.”
“And?”
“He’s a minor. But he could be who we’re looking for.”
Grissom frowned. “Did you speak with him with a legal guardian present?”
“No, but his mother gave me permission. He didn’t say anything incriminating.”
“But you feel he could be responsible.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. He’s only sixteen, but he has motive and possibly the means. I thought I’d talk to you first before bringing him in for a formal interview.”
Grissom thought for a moment, then pointed to a jar on a shelf to his right. “You see that?”
Riley took a step into the room and tilted her head. “Is that a brain?”
“Yes. Specifically, the brain of an Oryctolagus cuniculus-a domestic rabbit. I dissected and preserved it myself-when I was fifteen.”
“Uh-huh. So you’re saying you’d like me to bring him in?”
“I’m saying I’d like to be present when you talk to him.”
Nick Stokes was a friendly g uy, and he knew the value of networking. While many people these days relied on e-mail, Nick had found that a phone call was more likely to get results than a line of text on a screen. He put out feelers to various agencies in various countries, talking to people when he could and leaving messages on voice mail when he couldn’t. He’d been at it for over an hour when he finally got a call back from Mongkol Sukaphat, an officer with the Royal Thai Police. One of the oddities of Thai culture was the use of a nickname, usually bestowed in childhood, that then followed the person throughout their adult life. Even though these names were often absurd, Thais were so used to them that even the most ridiculous were never remarked upon.
“Yes, I’m returning a call from Nick Stokes?”
“Beer! Thanks for getting back to me…”
Nick gave him a quick rundown on what he needed: the arrest record, if any, of Khem Charong.
“Let me check,” Sukaphat said. “Ah, here we go. Yes, he has been arrested before. Shall I send you his file? It’s in Thai, of course.”
“Can you just give me the highlights over the phone?”
Nick jotted them down as Sukaphat talked. By the time he thanked Sukaphat and hung up, his smile was gone.
Grissom closed the interview room door gently, t hen turned and smiled before taking his seat. “Hello, Lucas. My name’s Gil Grissom. I understand you’re interested in entomology.”
Lucas swallowed, looked from Grissom to Riley and then to his mother beside him. She had her own gaze fixed on Grissom, as if she could control what questions he asked through sheer force of will.
“Uh, yeah,” he said.
“So am I. In fact, I’ve studied insects for many years. Do you have a favorite?”
“I don’t know. I like spiders, I guess. And scorpions. They’re not insects, though, they’re arachnids.”
“That’s true. I own a baboon spider, myself.”
“Yeah? Those are pretty cool.”
“I think so.” Grissom smiled. “Don’t be nervous. We just need to ask you a few questions. All right?”
“I guess.”
Grissom glanced over at Riley, who took the cue.
“Where were you on the night Keenan Harribold died?”
“Uh-at home, I guess.”
“I can confirm that,” his mother said. “He spent the evening upstairs doing homework. If he’d gone out, I’d know about it.”
Riley nodded. “Have you or your family traveled to the Pacific Northwest any time in the last year? Vacation, field trip, anything?”
“No.”
“Vacation?” his mother said. “In this economy? Not for a while.”
“Do you ever get insects by mail-order?” asked Grissom. “It can be hard to obtain certain specimens locally.”
“No, I go to the Pet Cave for all my stuff. They know me down there.”
Grissom made a note on the pad in front of him. “I’m familiar with the place myself. They have a nice selection, don’t they?”
“I guess.”
“Mrs. Yannick, do you or your husband keep any firearms in the house?”
“What? No. No, we don’t.”
“Thank you, Lucas, and thank you, Mrs. Yannick. I think we have all we need.”
Riley looked less than satisfied but didn’t say anything until after Mrs. Yannick and her son had left. “That was kind of brief, wasn’t it? You didn’t even ask about his relationship to Keenan Harribold.”
“I didn’t have to. While it’s conceivable Lucas could have snuck out of the house without his parents being aware of it, he would still have had to obtain a gun to control Harribold and rent the motel room. Difficult for a teenager, even in Vegas.”
“He could have an accomplice.”
“Conceivable, but unlikely. If Lucas Ya nnick killed Keenan Harribold, he did it because he was an unpopular loner being bullied by a more popular athlete. Those kinds of kids rarely have accomplices.”
“Maybe not in your day. In mine, they wear black trench coats and carry automatic weapons.”
Grissom got up from the table. “Nobody wants to see a repeat of Columbine, Riley. But the circumstances in this case are very different. I suggest you concentrate on finding the man who rented that room rather than a fifteen-year-old who’s interested in bugs.” He left the room, closing the door behind him.
“Sixteen,” said Riley to the empty room. “He’s sixteen.”
Khem Charong glanced nervously around the interview room. “I don’t understand. Where is Dr. Grissom? Why have I been kept waiting for so long?”
Brass smiled. “Patience, Doctor. It isn’t Grissom who wants to talk to you-it’s me. You don’t have a problem with talking to a lowly police captain, do you?”
“No. No, of course not.”
“Really? You seem a little jumpy.”
Khem made a visible effort to control himself. “How may I be of assistance?”
“Let’s see… I guess you can start with telling me where you were on the evening of the murder.”
“I-I was in my hotel room.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. The second thing you can help me with is, let’s see… oh, I know. You can stop lying to me.”
“What?”
“This is Vegas, Doctor, not the middle of the jungle. You sneak out of camp in the dead of night here, you get caught by security cameras. You left your room at around seven and didn’t come back until midnight. Where’d you go?”
“I… I went for a walk.”
“Sure. This is Vegas, after all. Things to do, places to go, twenty-four/seven. Get the urge to do a little gambling, maybe?”
“Yes. Yes, I did.”
“Where?”
“I… I don’t remember.”
“What a shame. Convenient, too, what with all the casinos having round-the-clock video surveillance. How’d you do?”
“I broke even.”
“Of course you did.” Brass shook his head. “Well, you’re about to lose big, Doctor. You may have managed to avoid a criminal record in Thailand, but that doesn’t mean you’re not in the system. This isn’t the first time you’ve gone out for a little stroll, is it?”
Charong’s face paled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. When you hit the big city after being in-country, Bangkok is your destination of choice. Certain neighborhoods in Bangkok. In fact, very specific clubs in certain neighborhoods.”
“You have the wrong man. Charong is a very common name-”
“I know exactly who I have, Doctor. You were arrested but not charged. Connections, or just a really good lawyer?” Brass held up a hand. “You know, don’t bother answering that-I don’t really care.”
Charong was visibly sweating now. You didn’t see that often in Vegas; it was too dry.
“Okay, you’ve told me your story,” said Brass. “Now it’s my turn to entertain you. Hope you don’t mind if I switch styles on you, but I’m more of a nonfiction guy.
“It started online. Maybe you were trolling on high school sites when a picture of a star quarterback caught your eye. Unfortunately, his Facebook page didn’t list middle-aged, male entomologists as one of his turn-ons, so you created a fake persona. You set up a rendezvous in a Vegas motel room to coincide with your visit-after all, what’s a convention without a little illicit sex? Knowing that you’d be something of a disappointment in person, you came prepared for your own creepy-crawly party.”
Charong swallowed. “Th at’s crazy. I didn’t bring any millipedes with me-ask the airline.”
“Oh, you didn’t bring them with you from Thailand -you got them here in the States. Wouldn’t have been that hard for someone with your background; you probably had a colleague in the Northwest mail them.”
“I didn’t! I didn’t do anything of the sort, and you can’t prove that I did!”
“Maybe I can’t,” said Brass. “But I’m not the one you should be worried about…”
“Well, the cat’s out of the bag now,” Nick said to Grissom.
They were watching Brass question Charong through a two-way mirror. “This is the next logical step,” said Grissom. “We had to treat them as suspects sooner or later. I’m just glad you found a viable reason to do so.”
Nick looked uncomfortable. “Yeah,” he said. “So… you think Charong’s our guy?”
“We’ll know more once we search his room. We’re just waiting for the judge to sign off on a warrant.”
“Right. Maybe we can close this one without putting your other colleagues through this.”
Grissom frowned. “Actually, Nick, I was hoping you and Riley could conduct the interviews with Soames, Quadros, and Vanderhoff. I’m having them brought in now.”
“Really? I mean, it might not even be necessary-”
“It’s necessary, Nick. Just because I know them doesn’t mean we treat them any differently. Brass suggested he conduct the interview with Doctor Charong because Charong seemed nervous around authority figures and Brass thought he could use that; I agreed.”
“So that’s why you want me and Riley to question the others? We’re scarier than you are?”
Grissom smiled. “‘There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt.’ ”
“Sherlock Holmes?”
“Charles de Gaulle.”
Nick sighed. “Okay, mon generale. We’ll be your mystery men…”
“So, Nick,” Jake Soames said, “what do you say we hit the town after this? As a local, you must know the best places.”
Nick grinned despite himself. “Look, Mr. Soames-it really wouldn’t be appropriate for us to socialize. We’re both part of this investigation, but I’m afraid at the moment we’re on opposite sides of it.”
Soames chuckled. “I was wondering how long it would take… Guess you’ve got a few questions for me, eh? Want to know where I was and what I was doing on the night of, right?”
“You don’t seem terribly surprised.”
“Only thing I’m surprised at is how long it’s taken you to ask. The others might be a little naïve, but I lik e to think I’m a man of the world-of course we’re suspects! A boy gets killed with bugs while there’s a bloody swarm of insectophiles in town? Come on!”
“So can you account for your whereabouts?”
“Well, let’s see… I was in the hotel casino until half past eight; then I went to a club off the Strip called Bubble Bath. Amazing show they’ve got there… Feeling a bit peckish after that, got a steak dinner at this absolutely great diner, lots of chrome and neon-can’t remember the name, but I think I have a receipt somewhere, the waitress’ll remember me for sure… Met Grissom and Nathan for drinks, and then I felt the urge to play a little poker…”
The list went on for a while. Nick tried to keep a straight face, but it was fairly obvious Jake Soames not only had an alibi, it was one he was damned proud of.
Vegas, Nick thought. It was made for some people…
“So these photos are from Kanamu’s place?” Greg asked. He had them spread out over the surface of the layout table and was scrutinizing one in particular.
“Yeah,” said Catherine. “I’ve got Archie trying to decrypt his laptop right now. Didn’t find a cell phone. His place was pretty bare, actually-I got the feeling he didn’t spend a lot of time there.”
“Except for these,” said Greg, tapping a photo. It was a shot of the robot giraffe picture. “Clearly not part of the standard décor.”
“No. I’ve been trying to figure out where they were taken-I thought at first they might be part of a Cirque du Soleil performance, but they all look like outdoor shots.”
“That’s because they were taken in the middle of a desert. This shot of the temple, here? That’s not mist, it’s dust.”
“You recognize these?”
“Not these specifically, but the location? Absolutely. It’s the Black Rock Desert, about four hundred miles north of here. Black Rock City to the locals.”
“ Black Rock City? Greg, there’s nothing in that part of Nevada but alkali flats. It’s where people go to break land-speed records-there’s nothing to run into. It’s like the surface of the moon, minus the craters.”
“For most of the year, yes. But for one week, there’s a city of fifty thousand people, complete with streets, businesses-well, kind of-and lots and lots of this.” He tapped the photo again.
“Robot giraffes?”
“Fire-breathing robot giraffes. Also fire-breathing dragons, aliens, tanks, and naked people. Okay, not all the naked people are fire breathing, but a lot more than you’d expect.”
“Greg-”
He held up his hands, grinning. “I’m being straight with you, I swear. It’s just that any accurate description of Burning Man very quickly turns surreal. It’s a surreal place.”
“Burning Man. Okay, I’ve heard of that. It’s some kind of big party, right?”
Greg sighed. “That’s like saying Woodstock was a fe w people listening to music. No, that’s not right, either-Burners hate comparisons to Woodstock. Woodstock is to Burning Man like kindergarten is to college. That’s a little closer.”
“Burners?”
“It’s what attendees call themselves. Okay, I’m going to try to distill this down to a short and reasonably rational description, but bear with me, all right? Constant interjections of “Yeah, right,” and looks of disbelief won’t make this go any faster.” Greg stopped. His brow furrowed. He rubbed his chin.
“Greg?”
He held up one finger. “Hang on. I’m trying to find the right approach… okay. Burning Man is about a lot of things, but first and foremost it’s about art. It was started by an artist, it’s run by artists, and it actively encourages every single attendee to create art.”
“All fifty thousand?”
“Yes. Some people spend a year creating huge pieces and haul them out to the site. Some people create things on-site or drive around in bizarre vehicles they’ve built themselves-like fire-breathing giraffes. People wear costumes, or body paint, or nothing at all. And a lot of the art is based around fire.”
“Is there an actual burning man, or is that just artistic license?”
“There is. The city is built in a semicircle, with a gigantic plaza in the middle. The plaza is where the large-scale art is, and at the very center they build a wooden figure on a base, outlined in neon. That’s the man. He gets a little bigger every year-I think they actually hit a hundred feet last time.”
“That’s a pretty big structure to put up and take down in a week.”
Greg chuckled. “Oh, it comes down pretty quick. They burn it on Saturday night.”
“Must make one hell of a mess.”
“It does-and it’s all gone within a week or two. Burning Man’s environmental record with the Bureau of Land Management is one of the best-volunteers stay on-site and go over every square inch afterward.”
“I’m sensing a less-than-objective perspective, here.”
Greg looked a little sheepish. “Sorry. I’ve never been, but I have a friend who goes every year and she’s pretty evangelical about the place-especially when people seem to focus on nothing but the nudity and the drugs.”
“My mistake. Now, let’s focus on our vic-our dead, drug-using vic.”
“Right. Well, I think it’s pretty obvious he was a Burner. He probably took those pictures himself, though they might have been gifted to him.”
“Gifted. You mean given?”
“Sorry. That’s Burner-speak. There’s no commerce allowed at the festival beyond a centr al café that sells coffee and a place to get ice. Everything works on a gift economy-people compete to see who can give away better stuff. Booze, art, food, services-whatever.”
“Like a potlatch,” said Catherine. “Native American tribes in the Northwest practice it. Whoever gives the most impressive gift attains the highest status.”
“Pretty much. Done on a city-wide scale for a week, it’s pretty amazing. You’d think there would be more people taking out than putting in, trying to take advantage of the system, but that’s generally not what happens.” Greg paused. “A good way to think of it is a bunch of people playing ‘city’ for a week. All the bars, the restaurants, the hair salons-don’t ask-everybody’s trying to have fun instead of turn a buck. After Vegas, it’s… refreshing.”
“Maybe so, but our vic still had to live in the real world the rest of the year. And he’d recently come into a lot of money.”
Greg nodded. “And was spending some of it, at least, on drugs. There is a definite party element to the festival-drugs are pretty common, though it’s mostly softer stuff. Could be that one of his Burner friends is also his dealer.”
“So how do we investigate people from a city that only exists for a week a year?”
“Vegas has its own Burner community. I’ll show Kana mu’s picture around, see what I can find out.”
“All right. Kanamu doesn’t have a record in Nevada, but he may have one in Hawaii. I’m going to follow that up.”
In the computer lab, Archie Johnson looked up from his workstation as Catherine walked in. “Catherine, great timing. I just cracked that laptop you gave me.”
“Yeah? Find anything interesting?”
“Not as much as you might think. The usual gack-some games, music, downloaded movies. The oddest thing was probably all the files on vul-canology.”
“You’re talking about the study of volcanoes and not Mr. Spock, right?”
Archie grinned. “This guy had a serious jones for the subject. Not just the geological stuff, but the mythological, too. All kinds of Hawaiian folklore, especially about Pele-and no, I don’t mean the soccer player. She’s the Hawaiian volcano goddess.”
“Let’s skip the fairy tales, Archie. How about an address book?”
He handed her a flash drive. “Figured you’d ask. Dumped everything that looked interesting in there.”
“Thanks.” Catharine hesitated. “So, you read some of those files on the volcano goddess?”
“I skimmed them, yeah. Pretty interesting, actually.”
“Anything in there a bout… virgin sacrifices?”
Archie studied her for a second before answering. “Not that I can recall. Why?”
Catherine shook her head. “Never mind. I should know better than to take everything Greg says seriously…”
Back at her own desk, Catherine checked through the data on the flash drive. Many of the names in the contacts list were just e-mail addys, but a few had brick-and-mortar addresses or phone numbers. She cross-referenced them with the information the Hawaiian PD had sent her, coming up with two names that matched both known associates and Kanamu’s contact list: Lester Akiliano and Jill Leilani. Both had addresses in Vegas, and Akiliano had been arrested for possession of narcotics only two weeks ago, though he’d made bail and was out awaiting trial.
She made the necessary arrangements to see him, then found herself looking over the files on Hawaiian mythology. Archie was right; it was interesting.
The goddess Pele didn’t seem to be interested in virgins. In fact, she seemed to go out of her way to seduce any young chief or god around. Most of her lovers met an unhappy end, though, one eerily reminiscent of Kanamu’s fate; they were sealed inside the pillars of hardened lava that sprouted on a volcano’s slopes. Hawaiian women used to tease their hair until it stood out, redden their eyes, then extort goods or services from fellow villagers by claiming to be Pele’s kahu, or living incarnation. Anyone who didn’t comply was threatened with fiery retribution.
“One hot-tempered mama,” Catherine murmured.
Unlike that of many mythological figures, Pele’s influence had survived to the present day; drivers on the islands told stories of picking up an old woman in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, all dressed in white and accompanied by a small dog, both of whom vanished from the back seat. Catherine had heard that particular tale before, though she knew it as the Vanishing Hitchhiker-an urban legend almost as old as that of the escaped lunatic with a hook for a hand.
Interesting angle with the little dog, though, she thought. Wonder what his name is-Lava? Rocky? Volcanine?
She powered down her computer, then went out to find Jill Leilani.