14

CATHERINE AND GREG STARED up at Mount Pele. Impassive, it ignored them, burbling away to itself softly.

They went back to work.

They were still searching for obsidian. They scoured the floor, the interior and exterior of the artificial mountain, the gantry. When nothing turned up, they disconnected the pumps and hoses that the wax flowed through and checked them.

They came up empty.

“Let’s rethink this,” said Catherine as they took a break. They sat on the couch in the lounging area, eating cold pizza that Greg had brought along and drinking coffee from a thermos. “We know Kanamu was here; we know he was high. We know that the chunk of obsidian that knocked him out was hot, but we don’t know why.”

Greg chewed and swallowed. “Right. And none of our suspects has burns on his hands, so the killer used gloves or something else to pick up the obsidian.”

“We’ve found work gloves, but nothing charred or singed.” She finished her piece of pizza and washed it down with some coffee. “Maybe gloves weren’t necessary. What if the obsidian was in some kind of clamp or vise-something to let the person handle it without getting burned?”

“Like tongs or vise grips?”

“Yeah. The killer grabs the tool and smacks Kanamu in the head with it, and the impact drives the shard into his skull.”

Greg nodded. “ T hat could work. Then Kanamu either topples over into the volcano and asphyxiates, or he gets dumped in by someone trying to make it look like an accident.”

“We can take a closer look at all the tools we found on-site.”

They finished their lunch and went back to work. Vise grips, tongs, monkey wrenches-anything that might have been used to grip the obsidian was collected. Some showed indications of having been exposed to intense heat, some didn’t. They tested all of them for blood, hoping there might have been some spatter, but didn’t find any.

“Back to the lab,” Catherine sighed. “We’re going to have to examine these a little closer-maybe one of them has some trace at a microscopic level.”

They found no trace of obsidian on any of the tools.

Catherine looked up from the microscope. “So no murder weapon-except for the volcano itself.”

“Maybe that’s who we should be considering,” said Greg. He leaned back against a stainless steel counter and crossed his arms. “Pele, the volcano goddess. She got angry at Kanamu for creating a mockery of her natural glory and decided to punish him for it.”

Catherine arched an eyebrow. “Uh-huh. And I suppose she magically transported a shard of obsidian all the way from Hawaii to do it, too.”

Greg shrugged. “I’m just saying that a red-hot shard of volcanic rock isn’t fake lava-it’s pretty close to the real thing.”

“And I think you’ve seen that special episode of The Brady Bunch too many times.”

He grinned. “Okay, okay, I’m not serious. But if there is a bigger chunk of obsidian involved, I don’t think it’s in that warehouse-we’ve been over the whole thing. Which means the killer took it with him and got rid of it someplace else.”

“Thereby getting rid of our best chance of discovering his identity.” She frowned. “You know, that’s not the only thing missing from this puzzle. There’s also Kanamu’s fingers.”

“Well, at least we know who to ask about that…”

“Mr. Wornow,” said Catherine, taking her seat on the other side of the interview table, “how are they treating you at County?”

Wornow, dressed in a standard-issue orange jumpsuit, shrugged. “Okay, I guess. My lawyer tells me he’ll have me out on bail soon, and I can probably plea-bargain down to community service.”

“Maybe you’ll get to go to Burning Man this year after all,” said Greg. “Of course, any recommendation we make to the judge will be part of your sentencing. You might get house arrest, which would severely limit your traveling options.”

Wornow looked glum. “Great.”

“But that doesn’t have to happen,” said Catherine. “Cooperate with us, and we’ll put in a good word for you.”

“What do you mean, cooperate? I already told you everything.”

“Not quite,” said Greg. “You admitted to cutting off Kanamu’s fingers, but you didn’t tell us what you did with them afterward.”

Wornow looked uncomfortable. “Oh. Is that, you know, really important?”

“It might be,” said Catherine.

“Well, I, um, kind of got rid of them.”

“How?” asked Greg.

“I stuck them in a container full of acid. Then I buried the container.”

“Belt and suspenders, huh?” said Catherine. “Where did you bury the container?”

“Out in the desert. I can give you directions, though.”

“All right,” said Greg. “Now, here’s the really important question: what kind of acid?”

“Hydrochloric. I think. I mean, it wasn’t mine, I borrowed it from a Burner friend-”

“Was it i n a glass bottle or a plastic one?” asked Greg.

“Plastic.”

“You’re sure?” asked Catherine.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Is it possible it was a different kind of acid?” asked Greg.

“I don’t know. Maybe. It had one of those warning labels on it, you know? With the symbol of the fingers being eaten away. So I figured-”

“That whatever the chemical formula, it was exactly what you needed,” said Catherine.

Catherine drove while Greg consulted the directions Wornow had given them.

“Hydrochloric acid can be stored in glass or plastic,” said Greg. “It’s a relatively weak acid, but it will dissolve flesh in high enough concentrations.”

“So will a lot of other things. Let’s face it, most likely what we’ll find is a bottle of very acidic soup.”

“Maybe, maybe not…”

Another ten minutes of driving brought them to their destination, a fork in the road marked by a large, reddish boulder on one side. Catherine pulled over and they both got out.

“Lucky for us he decided to memorize the spot,” said Greg. “If he’d just picked some random area off the road, we’d never find it.”

“Well, he was nervous. He planned to come back when he figure d the fingers were fully dissolved and then dump the whole thing somewhere else.”

They took spades from the back of the Denali, then started digging carefully at the base of the boulder. It didn’t take long for Greg to hit pay dirt.

“Got something,” he said, putting his spade aside and kneeling. He used his hands to clear away the rest of the sandy soil. “One large plastic jug of…”

“Well, what do you know,” said Catherine. “We just got lucky again.”

Back at the lab, Catherine and Greg estimated the amount of liquid in the jug, then very carefully cut the top third of the jug away. What they hoped to collect would be delicate, and they didn’t want to risk breaking it up by simply pouring the jug out.

What they found, floating on top of the acid, were four perfectly shaped finger casts made out of wax. The wax on the thumb hadn’t detached from the corroding flesh yet and had settled on the bottom.

“Hydrofluoric acid,” said Catherine. “Which will eat through glass just fine but leaves paraffin alone.”

“It got rid of the fingers-well, mostly-but left us with something else,” said Greg. He picked the ca sts out one by one with a pair of forceps, laying them on a plastic sheet on the worktable. “A record of the condition of Hal Kanamu’s fingers just before he died.”

“The tips of the forefinger and thumb were deformed. There was a single large, irregular bump on both of them.”

“Could be a bubble caused by impurities in the wax. It’s a real mixture, after all.”

“I don’t think so. Look, although both are irregular, they match-like two sides of a symmetrical object.”

“You’re right. Which means those aren’t bubbles in the wax.”