There were numerous hotels with views of the plaza, but Grissom didn’t think LW would be in any of them. Too far away, too removed. He wouldn’t want to be any farther than the other side of the street.
Grissom used the pedway to cross over. He thought again about water, how it was the dominant metaphor in Vegas for wealth. He thought about the bombardier beetle and how it combined two different chemicals into a spraying attack so hot it actually boiled. He thought about Argyroneta aquatica, a spider that spent its entire life underwater, emerging only to replenish its air supply and feed. Waiting patiently in a webbed diving bell for prey to brush up against it…
He thought he knew why the body of one of the greenhouse vics had such a high oxygen level. LW had used the water tower to practice with the scuba equipment, but one of his workers hadn’t been satisfied with his daily allotment of nectar; he’d supplemented the drugs LW had fed him with stolen hits of pure oxygen from one of the tanks, adding an O2 high to the one he was already experiencing.
Grissom stopped at the end of the pedway before descending the stairs. He was almost certain LW would already be in place, and he didn’t want to alert the killer to his presence. The high walls of the pedway shielded Grissom from casual view, but once he reached street level he’d be much more exposed.
LW himself wouldn’t be at street level, though. Grissom could already tell that the constant traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard would block too much of the view. LW would want to be at least one floor up.
There was a restaurant on the second floor of the hotel directly across from the Grand. Instead of taking the stairs down, Grissom continued straight ahead-the pedway connected directly to the casino. Once inside, he made his way through the blink and chime of the slots and to the restaurant itself. It was called Bugsy’s.
The man staring intently through the plate glass at the street outside hardly seemed to notice when Grissom sat down at his table. It took him a second to realize he wasn’t alone, and when he turned to stare at his visitor, Grissom saw that he was sweating profusely and seemed to be having trouble focusing.
“Hello, LW,” said Grissom.
The man Grissom had known as Roberto Quadros smiled. He’d shaved off his white beard and gotten rid of t he heavy-framed glasses; his hair was now a glossy black. He wore shorts and a T-shirt with the name of a casino on it. “Excuse me?” he said. His Brazilian accent was completely gone. “I think you have me confused with-”
“Stop. It’s over,” said Grissom. “The anisomorphal has been removed from the ventilation ducts. The fountain has been deactivated. No one else is going to die.”
LW met Grissom’s eyes. “Are you so sure?” he asked softly. “This isn’t like you, Grissom. Confronting the accused in a noncontrolled situation… Aren’t you afraid I might pull out a gun and shoot you?”
“I considered that,” Grissom admitted. “But I thought it highly unlikely; it just doesn’t fit your profile. Also, I didn’t come alone-there are police stationed at the exits.”
“And a sniper, no doubt. In case I make any sudden movements.”
Grissom shrugged. “I asked to be able to talk to you first.”
LW chuckled, which turned into a wheeze. “Why?”
“Because no matter how careful a scientist is, there’s always a difference between observing a specimen in captivity and one in the wild.”
LW nodded and took a sip of his glass of water, his hand trembling. “Ah. Very good, Dr. Grissom, very good. I can respect that. You think you can get answers now that later will be unavailable. Perhaps so. You may try, in any case. The longer our conversation, th e greater the delay in my incarceration, after all.”
“You don’t seem well.”
“A touch of food poisoning, I suspect. This damn town and its unsanitary troughs… I despise this place, Dr. Grissom. Bread and circuses covered in sparkles and doused with alcohol. The masses herded from one glittering spectacle to another, all of it as devoid of meaning or substance as a swarm of locusts mindlessly devouring a field of wheat. Ants who play at being grasshoppers for a weekend, then return to their little cubicles in their concrete anthills.”
“And that’s all we’re capable of?”
“We? You and I are not the same as them, Dr. Grissom. We see the patterns their behavior always defaults to. We see how they react when offered sex or drugs or food. Have I not demonstrated this? Have my subjects not reacted with utter predictability at every stimulus?”
Grissom studied the man for a second before replying. “No, they haven’t. We found your greenhouse because of trace left behind on one of your workers’ belongings-possessions guarded for two months by people who owned less than him, people who didn’t even know his last name. Insects don’t do that.”
The Bug Killer stared at him. His pupils were tiny. “Do you know why I chose the initials LW? I wondered if you’d figure it out. If anyone could, it would be you-Soames is an idiot and Vanderhoff’s far more impressed with himself than he should be.”
“I didn’t-not until you killed the real Quadros. It stands for lacewing, doesn’t it?”
The killer smiled. He seemed to be having trouble breathing. “Yes. I remember how impressed I was as a child when I learned that some ants actually keep livestock-herds of aphids that they milk for honeydew. But not all aphids are cows, not at all. Some are sheep.”
“The woolly aphid.”
“Yes! It grows a waxy white coat of protective fibers…” He stroked his chin, seemed surprised to feel it bare. “But that adaptation pales beside the ingenuity shown by lacewing larvae. They will pick up discarded tufts of fiber and disguise themselves with it, literally becoming wolves in sheep’s clothing in order to slip past the ants guarding the aphid flock and prey upon their charges…”
He trailed off, his eyes unfocusing. He began to shake, spittle flying from his mouth as he collapsed to the floor.
“So this is the guy who sicced a spider on me?” asked Robbins. “Can’t say I’m sorry he’s dead.”
Grissom stared down at the body on the autopsy table. “We still haven’t been able to identify him. His prints aren’t in the system, and he wasn’t carrying any ID.”
“He just collapsed in front of you?”
“He presented a number of symptoms first-shaking hands, difficulty with his vision and breathing, profuse sweating. He went into convulsions, then vomited and became incontinent.”
Robbins frowned. “Those don’t sound like the symptoms of homobatrachotoxin poisoning.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Well, the tox screen will be back soon. In the meantime, let’s see what we can find out otherwise.” He picked up a scalpel and began to cut.
Grissom sighed and took off his glasses. He put them down on top of the postmortem report, which he’d read and reread a dozen times.
HBTX fatalities were usually caused by cardiac arrest, the poison paralyzing the heart. LW, however, had died as a result of respiratory failure. The tox screen told Grissom why: while LW had been poisoned, he hadn’t been killed by HBTX. He’d been killed by an organophosphate-specifically, parathion.
An insecticide.
Grissom reached for the phone.
Nathan Vanderhoff regarded Grissom quizzically from across the table. “I’m not really sure why I’m here, Gil.”
“I need to ask you a few questions, Nathan. It won’t take long.”
“I hope not. My flight’s this evening.”
“Yes, I know.” Grissom consulted the notes he had in his hand. “You and Quadros corresponded, correct?”