It was hot, and most o f the air conditioners in the rooms he passed were cranked up and running, heated metallic breath on his skin as he hobbled past, like caged dragons imploring their keeper for their freedom. He noted that the unit in 215 was drooling far too much water again and resolved to take a closer look at it later.

The door to room 217 was locked, the curtains drawn. Maybe Mr. Wheeler had simply left without checking out; that was hardly unusual at the Valentino. Edvin knocked. “Hello? Mr. Wheeler?”

No answer-but now there was a loud buzzing from the AC unit. When one of them kicked up like that, it was usually about to die. Edvin passed his hand over the vent and was disgusted to discover no air was blowing out at all. The damn thing must be in really bad shape.

He knocked again. Strangely, the buzzing got louder, as if the air conditioner was trying to get his attention-maybe it wanted him to summon emergency assistance, call the appliance paramedics to swoop in and save its failing life.

Fat chance. If Edvin couldn’t fix it himself, it was going on the junk heap.

He pulled out his passkey. Wheeler was either gone, unconscious, or dead-none of which would surprise Edvin terribly much. He unlocked the door and opened it.

And was greeted by hell.

The buzzing became a chainsaw roaring. His vision swirled with black dots, but they weren’t the precursor to a fainting spell; they were alive, they filled the air of the room, and they were angry.

The first sting was just below his left eye. It was followed within seconds by dozens more, on his face, his arms, his neck and hands. By that time he had bolted, stumbling along as fast as he could, but only as far as the next room. He fumbled for the passkey, trying to ignore the burning jabs of pain on every inch of his exposed flesh, and got the door open. He leapt inside and slammed it shut behind him.

“Wha?” said a sleepy voice from the bed. A fat, hairy man sat up in bed, blinking in confusion. “What’s-ow!”

And then he joined Edvin in what the motel manager later called the bee-slapping dance-swinging your arms wildly, trying to swat away or kill as many as you could, either against your own body or in midair. It didn’t last long, Edvin would say when telling the story, but it sure was energetic.

The fiftee n-year-old boy in the parking lot wasn’t as lucky.

“Grissom, glad you’re here.” Nick had just arrived at the motel and was talking to one of the uniforms on-site when his boss walked up.

“Are the bees still active?”

“Honestly, we haven’t gotten close enough to check. Everybody in the motel is locked down in their rooms. We’ve-” Nick stopped and shook his head. “We’ve got a body in the swimming pool, looks like a teenage boy. Haven’t been able to retrieve it yet. Looks like he jumped in there to get away and either drowned or had an allergic reaction to being stung.”

Grissom was already opening the rear of his Denali. He pulled out two hazmat suits, complete with respirators. “We’ll use these-they’re thick enough to prevent stings. I’ve called a beekeeper I know in Henderson -he’ll capture and remove the swarm. We should try to keep them contained in the room, though; they may abscond otherwise.”

“Abscond?”

“It’s what happens when a bee colony feels threatened.” Grissom stepped into the hazmat suit, then shrugged on the sleeves. “Essentially, they flee the hive and relocate.”

“And the last thing we want is a swarm of killer bees descending on the Strip. You think this is the big attack the Bug Killer was planning?”

Grissom secured the hood before replying. “I don’t know. It could even be a natural event; Africanized honeybees have been present in Nevada for almost a decade. We need to see what’s in that room.”

Nick started to pull on his own suit. “You’re the boss.”

Grissom stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Nick-it’s okay if you sit this one out.”

“Thanks, but I’m more of a get-back-on-the-horse kind of guy. Can’t avoid bugs in this line of work, right?”

Grissom smiled. “No, I suppose you can’t.”

They ducked under the yellow tape sealing off the motel grounds and headed for the pool first. Immediately, the white of their suits was crawling with black bodies trying to sting them.

Grissom plucked one carefully from his arm and held it up to the transparent plastic of his face mask. “Africanized bees have five times as many defensive guards around their hives as European species. They’re no more poisonous but much more aggressive-up to half the entire colony will respond to an intrusion, and they’ll deliver eight to ten times as many stings as a normal hive. They’ve been known to chase intruders up to a mile and to remain agitated for as long as several days afterward.”

The body was floating near the edge, facedown, the exposed skin puffy and red. Small black bodies circled above it, buzzi ng angrily. Nick knelt and pulled the body out of the water and onto the concrete. “Poor kid. Looks like he was stung hundreds of times.”

“Africanized bees are much more tenacious. They would have circled above the water and attacked every time he surfaced… Nick, this isn’t a natural incursion.”

“How do you know?”

“Because this isn’t Apis mellifera scutellata, which is actually a hybrid of African and European bees. It’s Apis mellifera intermissa, a distinct species from North Africa. They’re entirely black in color.”

“But just as dangerous?”

“Oh, yes.”

They climbed the stairs to the second floor. Bees flew in and out of the doorway of room 217. As they walked toward it, there was a loud tapping at the window of the adjoining room; two men, faces bumpy with stings, waved at them. One of them asked, “How long are we going to be stuck here?”

“Not long,” Grissom said, speaking loudly to be heard. “We have an expert coming to remove them soon.”

Grissom pushed the door to 217 open a little wider and stepped inside.

The first thing he noticed was the body. It lay sprawled at the foot of the bed, a man dressed only in a pair of boxers. His face was so swollen it was almost unrecognizable, but the distinctive white beard was enough for Grissom.

Nick was right behind Grissom. “Is that-”

“Yes. It’s Roberto Quadros.”

Grissom knelt and checked for vital signs but found none. “It looks as though he died from envenomation-he was stung thousands of times, more than enough to kill him.” Nick was already taking pictures. “Looks like this is what the bees were transported in.” A large wooden crate stood on the room’s single dresser, its top open. A lamp lay on its side beside the bed.

Grissom stood and moved to the bathroom, where the bees covered the shower curtain like a heavy tapestry, threatening to tear it off its rings. Grissom quickly shut the door. “I think I have the majority trapped,” he said. “Bees need moisture to survive-they’ve congregated in the dampest area available.”

“Well, that should make cleanup easier.” Nick shook his head. “What are we looking at, Grissom? This doesn’t seem like the others.”

“No. There’re no signs of restraint-in fact, it looks as if he knocked the lamp over when he was attacked.”

“Yeah. And why was he in his underwear?”

“He was an experienced entomologist-presumably he knew what was in the case and didn’t feel threatened by it. Maybe he was napping and the bees got loose while he was asleep.”

“And he gets woken up by being stung and panics?”

“An attack could have happened regardless of his reaction. Bees release an alarm pheromone when one of them is agitated; it’s sort of the equivalent of a carny yelling, ‘Hey, rube!’ And African bees not only produce more of this pheromone, they respond more aggressively to it, too-three times as many bees will take flight to defend the hive.”