Grissom turned his head. Eight eyes gleamed from behind the open laptop, on the same level as his own-and no more than two feet away.

The spider leapt at his face-but Grissom was quicker.

He brought the open jar up just in time and the arachnid landed inside. He slapped the lid on a split second later, the spider already frantically trying to get out.

He examined it critically as it tried to strike at him through the transparent plastic. “Lovely,” he murmured.

“Grissom?” David called from the other side of the door. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, David. You can come in now.”

The door cracked open. “I just got off the phone with the hospital. Doc’s in a lot of pain, but they think he’s going to be all right.”

“Where did this come from?” asked Grissom.

“I have no idea.”

Grissom put the jar down and approached the body on the autopsy table. He noticed the cylinder with the tube attached to it immediately. “I don’t believe it…”

“It came from in there?”

“It appears so. This tube was inserted up and into the sinus cavity to provide air, while the body itself would have kept the spider warm. Once discovered, its natural inclination would be to attack.”

David blinked. “That’s in sane.”

“No, it makes perfect sense.” Grissom paused. “To an entomologist…”

Neither Aaron Tyford nor Diego Molinez would admit to any involvement in Hal Kanamu’s death, dealing methamphetamine, or manufacturing it-and Catherine hadn’t expected them to. The evidence seemed to point to some kind of drug deal gone wrong, and she thought if she could locate the drugs she’d be one step closer to solving the riddle of Kanamu’s death.

They had to be making the meth somewhere. The problem was that there was no shortage of places to do so in and around Vegas. Trailers or rural properties were often used because of their isolation, but meth labs had also been found in upscale condos and suburban homes. Even hotel and motel rooms were being used, the “cooks” leaving behind all sorts of toxic chemicals once they were done. One of the biggest tip-offs of a meth lab was the foul smell it tended to exude, but Catherine hadn’t noticed any such odor on Tyford or Molinez; that suggested they had extremely good ventilation, but maybe they’d just been careful about showering and changing their clothes.

She went through their records carefully. Neither owned any property, at least not under his own name. Molinez had spent a lot of time incarcerated and still had to report to a parole officer on a regular basis.

The proof of Boz Melnyk’s exposure to a meth precursor was enough to get a search warrant for his residence, anyway. Maybe it would lead to something more incriminating.

Boz Melnyk lived in a run-down house in north Vegas. It clearly wasn’t where he cooked meth-no burn pits in the yard, no oxidation on the aluminum window frames-but it was still a sty. Catherine shook her head as she picked her way through the trash-strewn living room, the floor littered with fast food wrappers, old newspapers, stacks of porn magazines, and empty beer cans. The bedroom was just as bad and the kitchen was worse; roaches skittered away from the beam of her flashlight, hiding under overturned dirty dishes with a film of mold growing on them.

There was an attached garage but no car. Instead, she found plastic crates of two-liter soda bottles stacked three high along one wall, many with mismatched caps. Each was full of a yellow liquid, and she knew even before she opened one and took a whiff what she would find.

“Well, well,” she murmured to herself. “Mr. Melnyk’s a tinkle tweaker.”

Catherine was never amazed at just how far an addict was willing to go t o get a hit of their favorite drug. This particular method, while more high-tech, wasn’t new; desperate alcoholics sometimes saved their own urine and drank it the morning after, essentially running it through the same system twice to strain out any remaining alcohol. Tweakers did much the same thing, saving their own urine and then adding acetone, lye, or paint thinner to filter and separate out the chemicals they were after. A gallon of urine produced around half a gram of meth-of noticeably poorer quality, but still enough to get the user high.

She looked around but didn’t find any of the filtering agents. He must take it to the lab for that; this is just for collection and storage. Which means these crates have presumably been to the lab and back.

She replaced the bottle, then knelt down and examined the crates themselves. There were bits of brownish matter stuck to the underside of several; they had their own distinctive odor, one she recognized. That narrows it down, but I’m going to need more information than my nose can give me.

She scraped a sample into an evidence vial. The next step was up to Hodges.

Robbins blinked at Grissom blearily from his bed in the ICU unit of Vegas General. He was propped in a sitting position, a swiveling tray over his lap. His prosthetic legs had been removed, creating the disturbing illusion that he wasn’t so much lying in bed as part of it, a sort of mattress centaur.

“How are you , Al?” asked Grissom.

“I feel like I was thrown in an industrial washing machine with a dozen baseball bats. What the hell, Gil?”

“You were bitten by a poisonous spider indigenous to South America. They sometimes show up in shipments of bananas.”

“I hate to tell you this, Grissom, but if there were any bananas around this spider, they were in the process of being digested.” He winced and held up his hand, which was beet red and extremely swollen. “Little bastard got me good.”

“The venom contains a high degree of serotonin- that’s what makes it so painful. In fact, once the serotonin wears off you may experience a downturn in mood-like coming off antidepressants.”

“Oh, good, something to look forward to.”

“Don’t worry, I captured it.”

“Don’t suppose you’d leave me and it alone in a room with my crutch, would you?”

Grissom smiled. “A rematch? I think you need to get back in shape first.”

“I don’t know if I already said this, but-what the hell, Gil?”

“I think this is related to the Harribold case.”

“First millipedes, now a spider. Both used as weapons.”

“That’s how it appears, yes.”

“So we’ve got a psycho on our hands?”

Grissom raised his eyebrows. “I think that judgment’s a little premature. We have someone with a knowledge of entomology, that’s undeniable. What’s more troubling is his choice of victims.”

“I’d have to agree with you on that one.”

Grissom shook his head. “The first victim was stalked online, with a great deal of preparation. The second attack was an elaborate trap, but its target was one of circumstance-the spider could have bitten anyone who was present at the autopsy. It could have been me.”

“Maybe it’s just the drugs they gave me, but I’m not sure I follow. Are these random killings or carefully orchestrated?”

“Both. It isn’t the identity of the victim that’s important,” said Grissom. “It’s how they die.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not planning on dying just yet.”

“Good. I’d hate to have to train another coroner.”

“You’re going to keep the damn spider, aren’t you?”

“It’s evidence. But they only live a year or two, anyway.”

“That’s a real consolation.”

“Is there anything I can bring you? Reading material, something to eat?”

Robbins shook his head. “I don’t think so. I ache too much to concentrate, and I’m too nauseous to eat.”

“Let me get that tray out of the way, then.”

Robbins stopped him by grabbing the tray with his good hand. “You can leave that, actually.”

Grissom frowned-and then a look of understanding crossed his face. “Oh. I don’t know if you know this about the Ph oneutria species, but one of the side effects of the venom is priapism. It’s actually being studied as an anti-impotence drug.”