“So did I,” said Grissom. He got to his feet. “Enjoy the rest of your stay, Nathan. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

Jake Soames was harder to find. He wasn’t at the conference, and he wasn’t at his hotel; Grissom had his cell phone number, but Soames wasn’t answering. Grissom left a message for Soames to call him back.

He did, no more than twenty minutes later. “What’s up, Gilly?”

“Jake. I was wondering if we could get together and talk.”

There was a brief pause. Grissom heard coughing in the background. “Uh, yeah, that’d be fine. Look, I just got out of a show-why don’t we meet in the hotel bar for a drink? It’s called-let’s see-Glimmer.”

“I know where that is. Half an hour?”

“I’ll be waiting.”

As he drove, Grissom reflected on his friendship with Jake Soames. It seemed to prov e the adage that opposites attract; where Grissom was quiet and thoughtful, Jake was brash and impulsive. Where Grissom took most of his pleasure from the cerebral, Jake was more interested in the visceral-though they had found common ground in an appreciation of roller coasters.

But that was how some relationships worked. Traits Grissom might have found irritating in others he tolerated, even appreciated, in Jake; his friend, in return, seemed to enjoy the counterbalance of Grissom’s calm.

But he really didn’t know Jake Soames at all.

He’d never been to his house or even his hometown. He’d never met any of his other friends, other than professional colleagues they both shared. They had probably exchanged more words via e-mail than they ever had in person. His overall view of the person named Jake Soames, if he were to try to quantify it, was based largely on less than a hundred hours of face-to-face time and a great deal of written correspondence. And if there was one thing Grissom knew, it was that people-unlike evidence-were always capable of lying.

Face-to-face or in writing.

Glimmer was one of the trendy nightspots where there was always a line at the door, the only white light was in the bathroom, and the constant pulse of music made it almost impossible to talk. He used his CSI ID to bypass the line, then found Soames in a back booth. Miraculously, the music was slightly less obtrusive there.

The booth was circular, with a high padded back. Grissom slid in, close enough to Soames so they could talk without shouting. Soames had a beer in front of him, but he’d hardly touched it.

“Good to see you, Gilly. One of the main reasons I came on this junket was so’s we could catch each other up.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Jake. Sorry I’ve been so busy.”

“No worries. Though I’m a little surprised you didn’t interrogate me yourself.”

Grissom started to reply, then stopped himself.

“I mean, if you go to all the trouble of hauling an old friend off the street, the least you could do was show up for the grilling-my feelings were a bit hurt.”

“We questioned everyone,” said Grissom.

“I told you, mate-no worries. You’ve got a killer who seems to know all about bugs, one who blows into town the same time we do-I’d do the same in your boots. But things are a little different now, eh? Charong’s in the clink and Quadros is dead. Guess that means me and Vanderhoff are up for the silver and gold.”

“You were already cleared for the Harribold killing, Jake.”

“And then there was one. You’ve g ot Nathan all locked away, then?”

“No. Things aren’t as clear-cut as that.”

Soames picked up his beer and took a drink-just a sip, not his usual enthusiastic gulp. “Course not. That’s why you’re here, right?”

“I suppose it is. How well did you know Quadros?”

“Laid eyes on him for the first time at the conference. Swapped a few files over the interwebs; he hung out in some of the same discussion groups you and I do. I thought you and him were the best of e-buddies.”

“We did correspond, yes. But I was meeting him for the first time at the conference, too.”

“Beginning to sound like I might have to settle for the bronze. You think Quadros was the Bug Killer all along?”

“I can’t say. The investigation is still ongoing.”

“And despite the dime-store badge you pretended to give me, I’m not really part of that. Never was, was I?”

“I’m sorry, Jake. I did… I did what I thought was necessary.”

Jake stared at him. “We all do, mate. We all do… You probably wonder what I’ve been up to while I wasn’t at the conference.”

“I assumed you were enjoying Vegas.”

“And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Haven’t been going quite as wild as you might think, though-can’t knock back the pints the way I used to. I’ve b een seeing a lot of shows.”

“Which ones?”

“Well, a number of the ones that feature beautiful women in various states of undress-what a surprise, eh? But I’ve caught a few others, too-like this bloke who did impressions of damn near everybody from Elvis to the Pope. He was very entertaining. And the show I just got out of had a cross-dressing magician.” Jake laughed. “Nothing’s ever as it seems in Vegas, is it? Everybody spends all their time trying to convince people they’re somebody else, or that something that isn’t so really is. No place for a serious scientist.”

“I’d say just the opposite. I can’t think of a place that needs a serious scientist more.”

Jake shrugged. “Fair enough. And maybe an entomologist is the perfect fit for Vegas, anyway. After all, who’s better at pretending to be something else than our little many-legged meal tickets… they’re the illusionists of the natural world, or maybe the impressionists. Hide in plain sight, right under your nose…”

13

GRISSOM MET WITH Nick and Riley in his office. The tox report had come back on the sample of Roberto Quadros’s hair, and the first thing he did was hand copies of the report to both of them.

Riley responded first. “According to thi s, Quadros had the homobatrachotoxin in his system as far back as six weeks ago.”

Grissom nodded. “And in levels high enough to induce paralysis.”

Nick frowned. “But… we had Quadros in here, walking and talking. He wasn’t paralyzed then.”

Riley gave her report back to Grissom. “Snake handlers will dose themselves with small amounts of venom over a long period of time in order to build up a tolerance. Maybe he did the same thing.”

“In that case,” said Grissom, “we would have seen a gradual buildup. That didn’t happen-a fairly high level simply appears at around the six-week mark and stays consistent until death. That suggests something else entirely.”

“Captivity,” said Nick. “Someone was using it to keep him immobile for the past month and a half.”

Riley shook her head. “So if Roberto Quadros was a prisoner, unable to move-who was it we interviewed?”

“The motel room the body was found in was registered to Larry Wheeler,” said G r i ssom. “LW-the same initials he used online to lure Keenan Harribold.”

“So Quadros isn’t our killer,” said Nick. “LW is still out there.”

“Yes,” said Grissom. “Presumably with a large amount of HBTX that he still intends to use. And we have no idea where or when.”

Riley and Nick surveyed the various items spread out over the surface of the light table. They included a tent, a sleeping bag, and several heaps of unwashed clothes, everything they’d confiscated from the last-known location of Robert Ermine, aka Buffet Bob.

“Okay,” said Nick. “We didn’t find anything obvious on the first go-round, so it’s time to look a little closer. I’m thinking we concentrate on clothing; doesn’t look-or smell-like he’s washed any of it for a while, so it’s possible something he wore while working for LW picked up some trace.”

“Unless the killer decided he didn’t want his drones wandering away from the hive. Could be that once Bob started working he wasn’t allowed to leave-which is why no one’s seen him for weeks.”