“Jill Leilani? I’m Catherine Willows with the Las Vegas Crime Lab. When was the last time you talked to Hal Kanamu?”

Leilani’s eyes roamed everywhere but Catherine’s line of sight. “I don’t know. Couple weeks ago, maybe longer. I don’t remember.”

“You two have a falling out or something?”

“No, I-I just don’t hang with him, is all. He don’t have time for his old friends ever since he hit it rich.”

“You’ve known him a long time, though, right? Back on the Big Island?”

“Yeah, I guess. We used to be tight.” Even when she talked, she barely opened her mouth.

“And high, too. Drug buddies, right? You even got busted together.”

“That was a long time ago. I’m clean.”

“No, you’re not. Your teeth are ro tting out of your head, your skin’s bad, and you’ve got the shakes. Know what I think happened? I think that when your pal Hal got his lucky break he threw one hell of a party, and you were one of the first people he invited. All the ice you could smoke, right? For a while, anyway. And by the time he decided the party was over and maybe he had better things to do than support his friends’ habits, the monkey on your back had turned into a three-hundred-pound gorilla.”

Leilani didn’t even try to deny it; the bitterness in her voice told Catherine she’d been carrying her anger around for a long time: “He didn’t even see what he was doing to me. He came here to get clean, you know? Get away from all his druggy friends in Honolulu. I thought, If he can do it, so can I. But when he got all that money… money’s the worst thing, you know? Should be a law, you can’t buy a lottery ticket if you’re using.”

“But he didn’t win the lottery.”

“Didn’t he? Winning that crazy-ass bet… Everybody thought he must have cheated somehow, but he swore up and down he didn’t. Said he had this dream, told him what to bet on. Even found a casino to take it-they weren’t too happy when he won.”

“And that’s when the party started.”

“Yeah. It was great, at first. Didn’t have to worry abo ut tomorrow, so we could party every day. And how much I was using, it kind of just crept up on me.”

Catherine nodded. She’d seen case studies on drug use that showed that same pattern-that even with addictive drugs like heroin or cocaine, users didn’t generally get into trouble until they had access to a large amount of the drug all at once, either from dealing or a sudden windfall of cash. Their drug intake climbed along with their tolerance, until the money was gone and they abruptly became aware of just how heavy-and expensive-their habit had become.

“So what happened?” asked Catherine. “Did he run out of cash?”

“No. I saw what was happening, knew it was gonna kill both of us sooner or later. Tried to talk him into quitting, but he didn’t want to hear it. He thought-” She stopped, shook her head. “He was getting kind of crazy. Thought that winning the bet was some kind of sign, that he was supposed to do something special with the money.”

“Like spend it all on meth?”

“No, but-the drugs were part of it. He thought they were making his thoughts more… I don’t know, cosmic or something.”

“Cosmic. What was he going to do, build a spaceship?”

“No, he was more interested in old gods and stuff. He was always talking about Pele and Kamahua and Lono-Hawaiian gods, you know? I just used to tune him out. Sounded too much like my grandmother.”

“Anybody else listen?”

“Sure. Lester and him would talk about that stuff for hours.”

“Lester Akiliano?”

“Yeah. They’ve known each other forever, though I don’t think Lester really cared about any of that mystical stuff-he was just there to get high. He woulda talked about senior citizens getting kinky if it meant a free hit.”

“How’d Lester feel about you trying to convince Kanamu to quit?”

“What do you think? Went off on me. Told me to stop being such a buzzkill-I didn’t stick around long after that. Wasn’t healthy, in too many ways.”

Catherine sensed there was more to her words than what she was saying. “Did Lester threaten you?”

“Nah, I’ve known Lester a long time-longer than Hal, even. But the guys he was hanging around with? Bad news.”

“What guys?”

“Oh, no. I don’t wanna talk about them. Go talk to Lester, see for yourself. Just don’t say I pointed you his way, okay? He needs to get to rehab, but he doesn’t need to know I sent him there.”

“You look like you could use some time there yourself.”

Leilani gave her a wan smile. “Nah, kicking meth’s easy. I do it every day, you know? Sometimes more than once…”

Lester Akiliano liked to drink in a bar called the Cross-Eyed Jack, a place that might have been glamorous when mobsters ruled the Strip but was now a dusty mausoleum of peeling chrome, scarred tables, and torn carpet. Lester himself was at the bar, nursing a longneck beer and watching women’s basketball on the TV. The bartender squinted at Catherine warily when she came in, as if he were highly allergic to the natural light that spilled through the doorway behind her and was trying to remember where he put his epinephrine.

“Lester Akiliano?” she asked. “Catherine Willows, Las Vegas Crime Lab. I’d like to talk to you about Hal Kanamu.”

Lester was a bulky Hawaiian with shoulder-length, straight black hair and a scraggly black goatee that looked like it was trying to escape his face. He wore a shirt of bright yellow silk missing the top two buttons, with irregular stains spreading from the armpits. He took a long swallow of his beer before responding. “What you want from me, huh? I don’t know nothing except Hal’s dead.”

She took a seat next to him. “Well, that’s the thing, Lester. Kind of my job to find out how that happened.”

“Don’t look at me. I wasn’t there.”

“And where would that be?”

“Out in the desert. That’s wh ere you found him, right? That’s what I heard.” He took another drink. “No place for a kanaka to die, I’ll tell you that. Too far from the ocean. Too damn far from home.”

Catherine studied him for a second. “You knew him a long time, right?”

“Forever. He was a good friend. Maybe a little crazy, but he always had your back.”

“Liked to have a good time, right?”

“You better believe it. I can’t remember how many times we couldn’t remember.”

“Got to catch up with you sometime.”

“Maybe so. Maybe so.” He finished his beer, signaled for another. The bartender ignored him. “But that’s life, right? You have fun while you can.”

“When was the last time you saw Hal?”

“Oh, must have been three, four days ago. We used to hang out every day, but-”

“Hey, Les. Who’s your friend?”

Three men stalked out of the bar’s gloomy recesses, two of them holding pool cues. The speaker was a muscular man in a sleeveless shirt, every visible inch of his arms covered in tattoos. His head was shaved, his face wide but uneven; the right side of his jaw bulged like he was storing nuts for the winter. His friends were taller than he was but not as wide, and despite the dimness of the bar they both wore sunglasses.

“Hey, Boz. She’s no one,” Lester muttered.

“I’m Catherine Willows,” she said. “ Las Vegas Police. And you are?”

“Didn’t you hear Les? I’m Boz.” He grinned, exposing receding gums. “You here for the wake? We’re honoring our poor dead friend, Hal.”

“So am I-I’m investigating his death.” She eyed the three men coolly. “When was the last time you saw your good friend Hal?”

Boz shrugged. “I don’t know-couple days ago, maybe. Hal was always on the go, you know? Lot of energy.” He fished a cough drop out of his pocket and popped it into his mouth, wincing as he did so. His breath smelled like rotten fish in mint sauce.

“I’ll bet.”

“Anyway, we’re just gonna go back to our wake, okay? Respect for the dead and all that.”