Grissom considered the question carefully before answering. “In my job, I see death almost every night. I don’t just see pictures of those women-all too often, I see the women themselves. If you’re talking about the feeling you get when you see the consequences of death-not just the e nd of a life, but the end of all the potential of that life-then yes. I know exactly how that feels.”
Waltham finished his drink. “I’ll tell you who I sold the gun to,” he said. “What the hell. It’s a gamble either way, and I’ve been making bets my whole life. Little late to stop now.”
9
THE ADDRESS THAT Jill Leilani gave Catherine was for an old warehouse in a seedy industrial area west of the Strip. It was surrounded by chain-link fence with old newspapers and trash woven through it by the wind, illuminated by sodium-vapor lights that cast razor-edged shadows. The rolling steel doors at the loading dock were covered in graffiti, gang tags in neon-bright green and pink and yellow. A wheelless, overturned shopping cart guarded the front door like the skeleton of a robot turtle.
Catherine and Greg parked their Denali and got out. Music with heavy bass thumped from inside. “Sounds like someone’s home,” said Greg.
“Hope the door’s open,” said Catherine. “They’ll never hear us knocking over that.”
They tried anyway. After a moment of pounding, the music abruptly died. Footsteps slapped against concrete and the door swung open, revealing a chunky man with purple dreadlocks, dressed in p a i nt-spattered coveralls and plastic flip-flops. “Hey, about time-oh. You guys don’t have a pizza with you, do you?”
“Sorry,” said Catherine. “ Las Vegas Crime Lab. And you are?”
“Monkeyboy.”
Catherine’s eyebrows rose. “Try again.”
“Bill. Bill Wornow.”
“I’m Catherine Willows and this is Greg Sanders. Can we come in?”
“Sure, sure. What’s this all about?”
They stepped inside. “It’s about Hal Kanamu,” said Catherine. “We’re-”
She stopped. The warehouse was maybe half the size of a football field, and almost all of it was dominated by a single structure that rose from the middle of the floor to a good twenty feet high.
A volcano.
It was half-finished, its angled steel supports visible through a skin of heavy-gauge steel mesh, but the steam rising from the top and the red rivulets trickling over the edge of the cone left no doubt about what it would ultimately represent. About a third of the structure was covered in red and black roofing shingles, the kind w ith sediment embedded in tar.
“-investigating his death,” she finished.
“Oh, yeah, I heard about that,” said Wornow. “Tragic, really tragic. He was so pumped about Mount Pele, too.”
“ Mount Pele?” asked Greg. “That’s what we’re looking at, right?”
“Well, it will be when she’s finished,” said Wornow. He picked up a dirty rag from a table and started wiping his hands. “This was Hal’s dream. A fully functioning volcano out on the playa, complete with magma. Anybody can do fire and smoke; that’s easy. Getting the lava right, that’s the hard part.”
“Looks like you’re using wax,” said Greg.
“Yeah, that seems to work best. Adding paper ash to it to make it look more rock-like, but still tweaking the mix.”
One wall of the warehouse was lined with stacks and stacks of newspapers, tied in bundles with twine. “That’s a lot of dead trees,” said Catherine.
“Yeah, but I didn’t kill ’em. Just recycling the corpses, right? Hal was actually buying these from a recycler-I said we could probably dig up our own sources, get it for free, but he didn’t care about the cost. Just wanted to make sure we were up and running before August.”
“For Burning Man,” said Greg. “Yo u were actually going to take this whole thing out to Black Rock?”
Wornow tossed the rag back on the table. “Still am. Totally modular, you know? Heavy-duty pumps to move the wax, built-in subsurface generator to power the pumps and lighting system, propane jets for heat and flame-and the whole structure will come apart and go back together in a day. Mount Pele is going to kick ass. I’m just sorry Kahuna Man isn’t going to be there to see it.”
“You’re not worried about paying for all this?” asked Catherine. “August is still a long way away, and, well…”
“Hal’s dead? Don’t worry about it. Most of the stuff’s already paid for, and I’m seeing about getting a grant from the Black Rock Arts Council for the rest. We’ll get her there one way or another.”
A metal gantry stood beside the volcano, topped by a metal platform that extended out to the edge of the cone. The platform was large enough for a folding chair, a card table, and several pieces of equipment-a welding torch with tanks, a grinder, a mobile tool cabinet on wheels chained to the railing. There was no railing on the side next to the cone, presumably to give better access to the volcano itself.
“Quite the project,” said Catherine. “You build this yourself, or did Hal help?”
“Oh, he liked to be involved. It was his vision, after all. But he wasn’t an artist or an engineer, so he mainly stuck to helping out with grunt work.”
“Grunt worke r and financier,” said Greg. “Kind of a strange combination.”
Wornow walked over to a beat-up fridge against the wall and pulled it open. “I guess. You guys want a beer?”
“We’re working, thanks,” said Greg. “When was the last time you saw Hal?”
“Not for a couple days. I was out of town, picking up some supplies in Portland. Got back the day after Hal turned up dead.”
“Can you prove that?” asked Greg.
“I don’t know. Do I have to?”
“You might,” said Catherine. “What kind of vehicle do you drive?”
“I don’t. I borrowed an old friend’s truck.”
“Would that be a ’94 Ford F150?” asked Greg.
“I don’t know. It’s a Ford; I don’t know the year or model.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“I just know him by his Burner name-Cricket. He just left on a road trip- Seattle, I think, I’m not sure.”
“With his truck, of course,” said Greg. “You mind if we take a sample of this wax?”
Wornow didn’t say anything for a moment.
“We can get a search warrant if we have to,” said Catherine.
“No, that’s-I don’t understand. I mean, you don’t think I had anything to do with Hal’s death, right?”
“Should we?” asked Greg.
“No! Jesus, I just assumed he ODed. I mean, everyone knew he was using, that stuff’ll kill you sooner or later-”
“Didn’t stop you from hanging out with him,” said Greg.
“Hey, it wasn’t li ke he was dangerous or anything.”
“But he was rich,” said Catherine.
“Okay, yeah, he was paying for the volcano. Making art costs money, you know? He wants to spend his cash on supporting creativity, what’s wrong with that?”
Catherine put down her CSI kit on a table and opened it. “Nothing. But any time two or more people come together to build something, there are always creative differences. That happen here?”
Wornow shook his head vehemently. “No. I mean, yeah, we didn’t agree on everything, but that’s natural, right? It never turned into any kind of serious disagreement. We kicked around a bunch of different ideas before we came up with Mount Pele, and then we were totally committed. Same artistic vision, I’m telling you. Hal was always coming up with crazy ideas and stuff, trying to make it better, but I kept him reined in. He listened to me, he trusted my judgment.”
Catherine gazed up at the metal gantry. “I don’t know. Riding herd on a guy smoking ice all day long? Sounds pretty close to impossible to me.”
“Frustrating, too,” said Greg. “I mean, you’re the artist, right? You do this for a living. If Pele here is the star, you’re the director. Hal would have been more like a producer-he controlled the purse strings, which meant you had to spend half your time listening to every crazy, stoned idea he had and the other half explaining why they wouldn’t work. Doesn’t leave a lot of time to create.”