“Yeah, I know. Law passed in 2006. Some people thought it was ‘encouraging’ the homeless as opposed to helping them.”

“Wow. Pretty hard-line.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a hard town.”

11

GRISSOM KEPT WALKING. The thing about colony insects, he thought, was that their behavior mimicked intelligence.

Ants, for instance, displayed behaviors that were truly astonishing. They grew food, they kept “herds” of aphids that they milked for nectar, they formed symbiotic partnerships with other species. But a single colony ant was no more intelligent than a single cell in a complex organism; it was just following a set of simple behaviors that, when viewed in the context of the entire anthill, suggested the operation of a single mind.

But that was an illusion.

He’d wandered past the big theme hotels, the 5/8 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower, the artificial volcano, the pirate ships. He’d reached the part of the Strip that was still being developed-though that was true, in a way, of the whole thing all the time-and to his left he could see a huge lot with the angular structure of a half-built hotel sitting far back on the property. Next to the sidewalk, fully grown trees sprouted from huge wooden crates like the world’s b i ggest bonsai, waiting to be artistically placed. They might have to wait a long time; Grissom had read that the development was stalled, victim of the economic downturn. No laborers scaled the iron girders, no dirt-encrusted yellow vehicles powered their way around the lot.

Mimicry was one of the things insects excelled at. There were bugs that looked like twigs, bugs that looked like leaves, bugs that looked like other bugs. Sometimes mimicry was employed to hide in plain sight, providing cover for a predator or potential prey; sometimes it was used to imitate a creature who occupied a much more successful biological niche.

A double-decker bus drove past, an Elvis impersonator on the open upper level belting out “Viva Las Vegas” for the passengers and passersby. Grissom thought he was pretty good.

After the hotels came the chapels, several blocks offering various flavors of fast-food matrimony. You could pay a flat fee any time before midnight and get married within minutes-at a church, at a hotel, even at a golf course. For those in a real hurry, there was always the drive-through option-or, if you wanted something a little more elaborate, you could choose from almost as many themes as there were casinos themselves: Star Trek, gothic, fairy tale, pirate. Those who still worshipped Elvis could have their union blessed by an imitation of the real thing.

Industry, illusion, imitation; common threads that ran through the world of insects and that of Vegas. But were they ideals the Bug Killer aspired to or elements he despised?

After the chapels came the pawnshops and then downtown. Grissom had thought, more than once, that the progression said more about human nature than anything else Vegas had to offer. And while downtown was gritty-especially the homeless corridor around Main Street and Owens Avenue -downtown was also home to the Fremont Street Experience, five blocks of older casinos and hotels that had reinvented themselves by roofing over the entire stretch and using it as a screen for a high-tech projection system. To Grissom, it seemed like an example of the possibility of rebirth and renewal in the midst of decay.

But then, the same could be said for fly larvae in a corpse.

A person’s possessions always told a story. Nick had read his share; the first page was usually a search warrant. But if combing the contents of a house was like leafing through a novel, looking through Buffet Bob’s meager possessions was more like a short, disjointed poem about loss and failure. There was an old driver’s license, now long expired, that showed a grinning man in his twenties with the name Robert Ermine; an empty bottle of painkillers with the name ripped off the label; an application for social assistance from Albuquerque, New Mexico, that hadn’t been filled in.

A few tattered paperbacks seem to indicate an interest in science fiction, while a battered miniature chess set with three pieces made of cardboard showed a mind that had once been sharp. Nick didn’t know what to make of the mug, wrapped carefully in several layers of socks, that bore the motto ROOFERS DO IT ON TOP; it was immaculately clean, no coffee stains on the interior or exterior. There were no pictures of family or a partner, only a single photo of a black-and-white cat, once ripped in half and then carefully mended with Scotch tape.

They sorted through everything, but there was nothing to indicate where Robert Ermine had disappeared to. In the end, Nick agreed that the best thing to do was to confiscate it all; maybe a closer examination in the lab could tell them more.

Grissom stopped to rest on a public bench. There was a newspaper lying ther e, folded open to the crossword puzzle. Someone had abandoned it halfway done…

“An eleven-letter word for openhearted.”

“Mmm.” Sara paused, spreading jam on her last piece of toast. “Ventricular?”

“Ah. How about a nine-letter word for cosmically isolated, fifth letter’s a P?”

“Solipsist. Give me a hard one.” He put down the newspaper and raised his eyebrows. She grinned at him. “You know-one you couldn’t get on your own.”

“Are you suggesting I’m only asking you the easy ones?”

“I’m suggesting you don’t really need my help.”

“It depends,” he said, “on your definition of need.”

A car drove by, its windows down, bass-heavy music thumping out like the heartbeat of a Godzilloid monster. It jarred Grissom out of his reverie but not his mood; in fact, it reminded him of something else. Warrick had loved to listen to his music that loud.

Grissom wondered what either Warrick or Sara would have made of the current case. They would have worried about him, probably.

He sat for another few minutes, thinking. Then he got up and walked away.

He took the crossword with him.

The prints that Catherine lifted from the spatters of wax in the warehouse all came back a match to one person: Hal Kanamu, the vic. The hairs from the couch were a mix, but none of them were a match for Diego Molinez, Aaron Tyford, or Boz Melnyk.

“ Okay,” said Catherine. She and Greg stood on top of the metal gantry next to the volcano. “Coroner puts TOD at around three A.M. We know Kanamu was a night owl and that he liked to tinker with his pet project.”

Greg nodded. “So he’s here, he’s high, he’s messing around with the volcano. His partner-the guy who’s actually building the thing-isn’t here to stop him, so he can do whatever he wants.”

“Right. Now, though it was immersion in the wax that killed him, he was knocked unconscious first.”

“By a chunk of rock that came from Hawaii. Weapon of opportunity?”

Catherine frowned. “It’s possible they were planning on introducing obsidian to the exhibit to add to the realism-but why use obsidian from Hawaii when there’s a whole desert full of it practically next door?”

“I know. And if they were going to use obsidian, where is it? We’ve been all over this warehouse and haven’t found any.”

“Not in any large amounts, no. Maybe we need to focus on something smaller.”

“I see where you’re going. Obsidian’s basically a glass-you’re thinking maybe we can find a shard that broke off.”

She shrugged. “Worth a try. This is a big space with a lot of nooks and crannies-plenty of space for a piece of black glass to hide.”

“A piece of hot black glass, accordi ng to the doc. Which means whoever smacked Kanamu in the forehead was wearing gloves or has some nasty burns on his hands.”