“COD?” asked Grissom.

“Still waiting for the tox screen, but I’m going to go with HBTX poisoning. Signs of excessive salivation and cardiac failure consistent with poisoning by homobatrachotoxin, plus all the bodies were found in contorted positions suggestive of convulsions.”

“The syringes we found tested positive for a combination of heroin and HBTX. Looks like he gave them a going-away present.”

“Too bad they didn’t know they were the ones going away. I also found something a little unusual in this one’s bloodwork: an elevated level of O2.”

“Hyperoxygenation? What could cause that?”

“In someone in this condition? Almost certainly direct exposure-I’d say he was getting it from a tank.”

“We didn’t find any oxygen tanks at the site. Were there signs of respiratory illness?”

“No-his liver was in pretty bad shape, but he wasn’t a smoker.”

“Maybe not,” said Grissom. “But he was definitely inhaling something…”

Riley and Nick went back to the greenhouse. They’d already gone through it once; the only thing they’d found had been half a pack of cigarettes stashed under one of the mattresses. Now they expanded their search to include the surrounding area as well.

“Grissom said it himself,” said Nick as they walked an ever-increasing outward spiral that centered on the building. “They weren’t prisoners. And guys like that would get cabin fever quicker than most.”

Riley knelt and peered at the ground, then straightened up again. “So they must have spent some of their free time outdo ors. Makes sense.”

“Yeah. No matter how good the drugs your boss is giving you are, there are always going to be times you want to get away from him.” Nick gave her a wide grin. “Not that I speak from personal experience, you understand.”

“Right. You can’t get enough Grissom drugs.”

Nick laughed. “Whoa, that sounded a little bitter. You having a problem with our fearless leader?”

“I have no problem with fearless. I just wonder what other exemplars the ‘-less’ applies to.”

“Well, ‘brain’ and ‘heart’ definitely aren’t on the list. I know, he can take some getting used to-half the time he seems vaguely irritated and the other half he’s barely aware you’re alive. But you have to understand, Grissom lives in his head. And that’s a big, big place.” Nick stopped and stared at the water tower that occupied one corner of the property. “And after all the years he’s put in on this job, a pretty scary one. You can’t really hold it against him if he gets a little lost in there sometimes…”

“I’ve got cigarette butts,” said Riley. “They look fairly recent, too.”

Nick stopped and crouched down. “Same brand as the half-empty pack we found. Guess this is where one of them came out for the occasional smoke break.”

“There’s something else.” She pointed. “Wheel tracks, fairly close together.”

“Some kind of dolly or cart-and pretty heavy, too. They lead toward the water tower.”

They followed the tracks, which ended at the foot of a wooden ladder that ran up the side of the tower. “Interesting,” said Nick. “I can see a hatch from here.” He started climbing the ladder.

“Aren’t you worried it’ll be full of poisonous water bugs or something?” she asked.

“If it is,” he said, “tell Grissom I blame him.”

They’d both been to the diner enough times to not need a menu; Catherine ordered a salad, while Greg had the breakfast special. Both had coffee.

“You have to admit,” said Greg, “that this was a weird one.”

Catherine glanced around the almost empty diner. “You think? Meth addict does something stupid and winds up dead. Seems pretty straightforward to me.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. An artificial volcano? A cursed piece of obsidian? A string of events so unlikely that no one would believe they could actually happen…”

An old woman tottered in the front door and sank into a booth. Her hair was a wild white mane, and she wore an old sundress covered in bright red flowers. She carried a white shopping bag with the letters ABC on it.

“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” said Catherine.

“No? Then let me re-create it for you, via the magic of storytelling- because, let’s face it, there is no way we could ever actually duplicate the events that transpired.

“Okay, first of all there’s Kanamu’s injury. Happens as a result of taking a piece of obsidian from Hualalai, which he isn’t supposed to do. Despite this, he turns the rock into a necklace and brings it with him to Vegas-where he correctly predicts something so unlikely that the odds against it make him rich. And it involves a virgin.”

“So? Statistically, she was going to lose her virginity someday-and she’s a celebrity. The only real surprise is that she didn’t announce it on Twitter.”

Greg shrugged. “Well, maybe. But look at the accident itself. You saw how all the individual items were arranged; the necklace and the torch both had to be in just the right position for the link to soften and break; the rock had to fall just right to not drop off the edge of the gantry. Kanamu’s syringomyelia was caused by the fall at Hualalai, and if Kanamu hadn’t had syringomyelia, he never would have hesitated the few seconds it took to get just the right distance away from the exposed flywheel-and then he had to pitch the rock at exactly the right angle for it to hit the flywheel and kick back at him, nailing him right in the forehead and knocking him out. A chunk of rock from a volcano killed him, and did it using the only artificial volcano within a thousand miles.”

“One of two, actually,” said Catherine.

“Even so. Would you agree the entire sequence is so unlikely we couldn’t re-create it if we tried?”

“If I do, will you stop using the word virgin?”

“Yes.”

“Then I agree.”

Greg’s smile got wider. “And would you also agree that one of the basic principles of science is the repeatability of phenomena?”

“I could argue the point, but sure.”

“Then, by that definition, what happened to Hal Kanamu wasn’t scientific in nature.”

Catherine sighed. “No, it wasn’t. It was sheer bad luck. None of it was impossible, just improbable. So if you’re trying to ascribe some sort of magic explanation to all this-”

“Hold on there, Scully. I didn’t say it was magic. I just said it was nonscientific.”

“What’s your point? Assuming you actually have one.”

Greg leaned back, blowing on his coffee and looking pleased with himself. “I’m not sure I do. I just get a kick out of the fact that even with all our reliance on rational thought and deductive reasoning, there’s still room in the universe for the mysterious.”

She gave him a reluctant smile in return. “Yeah, well, just remember that it’s rational thought and deductive reasoning that provide us with a paycheck. What happened to Kahuna Man was unusual and bizarre, but it didn’t break any natural laws-it was just very, very unlikely.”

Greg nodded. “I guess in a way that makes him a Vegas success story.”

“How so?”

“Well, isn’t that why people come here? To beat the odds?”

The woman in the booth by the door turned around to look at them. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot. She met Catherine’s gaze and chuckled at some secret internal joke, her laughter a low, raspy rumble; a smoker’s laugh.

Their food arrived. The next time Catherine looked over, the woman was gone.