That appeared to mollify her. “You have a picture?”
Riley handed her the composites. “We understand these two go by the names Buffet Bob and Zippo.”
The woman nodded as soon as she saw the picture. “Mmm-hmm. That’s Bob, all right. I’ve seen this other one hanging around with him, but I don’t know him by name. Some of them, they’re leery about giving you any personal information at all, even when you’re trying to help them.” Her glare returned. “I can’t imagine why.”
Riley nodded. “We’re also looking for Paintcan and Big Johnny.”
“There’re a couple Big Johnnys. Paintcan was a regular. Haven’t seen him around in over a month-same for Bob and his friend.”
“Did any of them camp here?” asked Nick.
“Bob did. That’s his tent, the blue one second from the end. Or it used to be, anyway; someone else might be living there now.”
They thanked her and moved on. The tent she’d pointed out was zipped up, but a young man sat in front of it on the remains of a torn sofa cushion. A brindled pit bull lazed beside him, tongue lolling in the heat.
“Hi,” said Nick. “I’m Nick Stokes, Vegas Crime Lab. You staying in this tent?”
The young man looked up, h is eyes hidden by cheap plastic sunglasses. A tattooed skull wept inky tears down his right cheek. “No, man. This is Buffet Bob’s crib. I’m just looking after it, you know?”
“That a full-time job?” asked Riley.
“Nah, we take turns. Figure he’ll turn up sooner or later, you know?”
“I’m sure he’ll appreciate it,” said Nick.
“Hey, Bob’s a good guy. Any time he had food, he’d share. Long as you’re not picky-this one time, he had a plastic bag full of hot shrimp stuffed in his pants. Sure were tasty, though.”
“I’ll bet,” said Riley. “Look, nobody’s seen Bob in over a month. We’re trying to find him-not because he’s in trouble, but because we think something may have happened to him. So we’re going to have to look through his things.”
“I don’t know. Don’t you, like, need a warrant or something?”
“This is a sidewalk, not an apartment building,” said Riley. “Public property.”
The pit bull seemed to notice them for the first time. It raised its blocky, muscular head and growled.
“Take it easy,” said Nick. “I understand you’re just looking out for Bob’s best interests. I get that. But like I said, we’re not here to bust him for anything-we’re just trying to find out what happened to him. Whatever’s in that tent could help. What do you think is more important-guarding Bob’s stuff or making sure he’s okay?”
The tattooed man thought about it, stroking the pit bull’s head. “I guess,” he said at last. “But if you find anything illegal, it’s not mine, right?”
“How could it be?” asked Riley. “You’re going to be sitting way over there.” She pointed at the opposite end of the row of tents.
After the man and his dog had left, Nick crouched down and unzipped the tent. The smell that wafted out was musty and unclean, but the aroma of a little dirty laundry ranked way below decomp on a CSI scale of stink.
The tent held a sleeping bag, an overturned cardboard box used as a makeshift table, and several bulging garbage bags stuffed with clothes and personal items.
“What do you think?” said Riley. “Take it all back to the lab, sort through it there?”
“If we have to. I’d rather take a quick look now, see what we come up with. This place may not be much, but it’s where someone lives; how would you feel if the police stopped by and confiscated your home and everything in it?”
Riley shook her head. “Like my life was broken and I’d better fix it. What was that about it being illegal to give food or water to the homeless?”
“Yeah, I know. Law passed in 2006. Some people thought it was ‘encouraging’ the homeless as opposed to helping them.”
“Wow. Pretty hard-line.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a hard town.”
11
GRISSOM KEPT WALKING. The thing about colony insects, he thought, was that their behavior mimicked intelligence.
Ants, for instance, displayed behaviors that were truly astonishing. They grew food, they kept “herds” of aphids that they milked for nectar, they formed symbiotic partnerships with other species. But a single colony ant was no more intelligent than a single cell in a complex organism; it was just following a set of simple behaviors that, when viewed in the context of the entire anthill, suggested the operation of a single mind.
But that was an illusion.
He’d wandered past the big theme hotels, the 5/8 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower, the artificial volcano, the pirate ships. He’d reached the part of the Strip that was still being developed-though that was true, in a way, of the whole thing all the time-and to his left he could see a huge lot with the angular structure of a half-built hotel sitting far back on the property. Next to the sidewalk, fully grown trees sprouted from huge wooden crates like the world’s b i ggest bonsai, waiting to be artistically placed. They might have to wait a long time; Grissom had read that the development was stalled, victim of the economic downturn. No laborers scaled the iron girders, no dirt-encrusted yellow vehicles powered their way around the lot.
Mimicry was one of the things insects excelled at. There were bugs that looked like twigs, bugs that looked like leaves, bugs that looked like other bugs. Sometimes mimicry was employed to hide in plain sight, providing cover for a predator or potential prey; sometimes it was used to imitate a creature who occupied a much more successful biological niche.
A double-decker bus drove past, an Elvis impersonator on the open upper level belting out “Viva Las Vegas” for the passengers and passersby. Grissom thought he was pretty good.
After the hotels came the chapels, several blocks offering various flavors of fast-food matrimony. You could pay a flat fee any time before midnight and get married within minutes-at a church, at a hotel, even at a golf course. For those in a real hurry, there was always the drive-through option-or, if you wanted something a little more elaborate, you could choose from almost as many themes as there were casinos themselves: Star Trek, gothic, fairy tale, pirate. Those who still worshipped Elvis could have their union blessed by an imitation of the real thing.
Industry, illusion, imitation; common threads that ran through the world of insects and that of Vegas. But were they ideals the Bug Killer aspired to or elements he despised?
After the chapels came the pawnshops and then downtown. Grissom had thought, more than once, that the progression said more about human nature than anything else Vegas had to offer. And while downtown was gritty-especially the homeless corridor around Main Street and Owens Avenue -downtown was also home to the Fremont Street Experience, five blocks of older casinos and hotels that had reinvented themselves by roofing over the entire stretch and using it as a screen for a high-tech projection system. To Grissom, it seemed like an example of the possibility of rebirth and renewal in the midst of decay.
But then, the same could be said for fly larvae in a corpse.
A person’s possessions always told a story. Nick had read his share; the first page was usually a search warrant. But if combing the contents of a house was like leafing through a novel, looking through Buffet Bob’s meager possessions was more like a short, disjointed poem about loss and failure. There was an old driver’s license, now long expired, that showed a grinning man in his twenties with the name Robert Ermine; an empty bottle of painkillers with the name ripped off the label; an application for social assistance from Albuquerque, New Mexico, that hadn’t been filled in.
A few tattered paperbacks seem to indicate an interest in science fiction, while a battered miniature chess set with three pieces made of cardboard showed a mind that had once been sharp. Nick didn’t know what to make of the mug, wrapped carefully in several layers of socks, that bore the motto ROOFERS DO IT ON TOP; it was immaculately clean, no coffee stains on the interior or exterior. There were no pictures of family or a partner, only a single photo of a black-and-white cat, once ripped in half and then carefully mended with Scotch tape.