“Elvis Presley,” said Nick.
She nodded at him, her smile fading into sadness. “Yeah. People get sick, or die, or break your heart-all the money in the world doesn’t change that. And sometimes what you think is your strength turns out to be your greatest weakness. See, I counted on Paul for so many things. All the little necessary things, the food and the getting from place to place, getting stuff from the drugstore or going to the bank or-just the day-to-day things everyone does and takes for granted. And I haven’t done any of them for over twenty years… I was thinking about grilled cheese sandwiches today. I hardly eat them anymore, but I used to love them when I was a teenager. You know, I couldn’t remember how to make one. Isn’t that stupid? Simplest thing in the world, but I couldn’t remember it. If I lost all my money tomorrow, I’d probably starve to death.”
“I doubt that,” said Riley.
Jordanson leaned back, resting the base of her skull against the padded rim of the tub. “I know, I know. Someone who has as much as I do has no right to complain. One of the things money buys is f reedom, freedom from all those little jobs-poor me, now I’ll have to hire someone else to do them.” She closed her eyes. Tears leaked through them, sliding down her face to join the water she was immersed in. “But I’ll never be able to replace Paul. Losing him doesn’t feel like losing someone I loved-it feels like an amputation.”
Nick nodded. “I understand. He can’t be replaced-but we can bring the person who did this to justice. If you depended on Paul that much, I’m sure you would have noticed anything out of the ordinary.”
Jordanson took a long swig from the bottle of wine without opening her eyes. “I’ve always gotten threats; it’s just part of the business. But after your colleagues Captain Brass and Mr. Grissom came to see me, I talked to the hotel’s head of security, Stancroft, myself.” Her tone got angrier. “He told me that the number of crank letters I’d been getting had jumped in the last couple of weeks. I demanded to see them and he told me he’d given them to the police. I asked if Paul knew about them and he told me that wasn’t Paul’s job, it was his.”
“We’re studying those letters now,” said Riley. “While they do mention you, they seem more directed against the hotel itself. They also make a reference to ‘scurrying insects.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
Jordanson opened her eyes and glared at Riley. “Scurrying insects? No. Th at’s crazy.” She shook her head. “But it doesn’t matter. I’ve just about had it with this place. Stancroft should have done a better job; he should have told me what was going on. The Embassy Gold has been trying to lure me over there for years, and I’m seriously thinking about going. And if I do, I’ll make damn sure their security is better than this place’s.”
Riley frowned. “Forgive me for asking, but-how exactly are you going to do that?”
Jordanson sighed. “The only way I know how, honey. With lawyers, and lots and lots of money.”
“Okay,” said Brass. “So we bring in Vanderhoff and Quadros and sweat them. It’s got to be one or the other, right?”
Grissom shook his head. They were in Brass’s office, discussing the case and their next move. “It’s not that simple, Jim. Both of them are only here for the next few days; we can’t hold them long unless we charge them, and we simply don’t have the evidence to do that yet.”
“And if we don’t charge them soon, they’ll just go back to their respective countries.”
“Where the guilty party could simply disappear into the jungle, South Africa, or South America. Both men have years of field experience.”
Brass sighed. “So we’ve got what, seventy-two hours? To either come up with better cards or fold.”
“More or less.”
“Wonderful. Anything else?”
“I’m afraid so. It’s fairly likely that the killer has more attacks planned. The murders seemed to be planned to showcase his ingenuity-but the more complex t he scheme, the greater the chance he’ll make a mistake.”
“Any idea who he’ll go after next? So far, his victims haven’t had anything in common.”
Grissom rubbed his temples. “The victims are linked by the conceptual nature of the attacks, especially the secondary results. The Harribold case caused a riot, mimicking one anthill waging war against another. I believe Paul Fairwick was targeted because of his promixity to Athena Jordanson, the ‘queen’ of soul.”
“Why? What’s his death supposed to accomplish?”
“Athena Jordanson’s contract is almost up, and she’s been considering moving to another hotel; one of the reasons she’s cited has been lax security at her current venue. When the queen of a termite colony is threatened, her workers move her to another site.”
“Or in this case, another penthouse suite. You think our killer’s trying to accelerate the process?”
“It’s possible. But I don’t know why.” Grissom paused. “You said the victims didn’t have anything in common. But-conceptual link aside-there is one element both cases share.”
“What?”
Grissom got to his feet. “Me.”
“Is this a confession?”
“The killer is clearly trying to impress someone. I don’t think it’s any accident that he chose Vegas to stage his crimes.”
“You think he’ll come after you?”
Grissom shrugged as he headed out the door. “ I’ll be careful.”
As soon as he’d left, Brass picked up the phone. “Dispatch. Yeah, I’m gonna need a couple of uniforms to set up on Grissom’s place. Twenty-four-hour surveillance. I’ll authorize the overtime.”
With Doc Robbins in the hospital, the day-shift coroner had to finish the autopsy. He sent the spider cylinder and tube to the lab, along with the bullet he retrieved from the vic’s skull and the thread Robbins had collected.
Nick examined the thread, Riley the bullet. Grissom took the cylinder.
There were no fingerprints on the cylinder or the tube, outside or in. Grissom examined the edges of the cylinder on the open end. They were rough, the cylinder itself being nothing more than a narrow plastic bottle sawed in half. The tubing was surgical grade, inserted into a small hole punched in the lid of the bottle at one end. He took high-resolution pictures of the tool marks on both.
Nick found that the thread used to sew shut the wound was a thirty-braided filament with a diameter of 0.3 millimeters. He took pictures of the cut ends, then checked the fiber database.
The bullet was.22 caliber Remington ammo, fired from a gun with six grooves, or “lands,” in a right-hand twist of 1:14; that meant the bulle t had to travel one turn in fourteen inches. Riley thought the gun was most likely a Ruger revolver.
“Okay,” said Grissom. “What do we have?”
“The thread’s surgical grade,” said Nick. “Looked a little funky under the microscope, so I had Hodges run a chemical analysis. It’s a homopolymer of N-acetyl-D-glucosamine.”
“Chitin,” said Grissom. “Used in self-dissolving sutures because of its antimicrobial properties- that and the fact that it’s the second-most common carbon compound on the planet.”
“Cellulose being first,” said Riley. “Chitin’s derived from the outer shells of crustaceans, right?”
“And insects,” said Grissom. “He’s showing off. Common thread would have worked just as well.”
“Good,” said Riley. “Arrogance works for us in the long run. Got an IBIS hit on the bullet-matches one recovered at the scene of a liquor store robbery, though the gun was never found. The clerk identified a suspect later in a lineup, but without the gun the county prosecutor decided not to go to trial and the charges were dropped. Suspect’s name was Richard Waltham.”
“Any firearms registered in his name?” asked Grissom.