Greg placed the clear evidence bag containing the shears on the table. Wornow stopped talking.
“A good craftsman always takes care of his tools,” said Greg. “But even a good craftsman drops one now and then. Especially if he’s doing something as nerve-wracking as cutting off his partner’s fingers.”
Bill swallowed. “That’s-that could belong to anybody-”
“Maybe so,” said Catherine. “But it’s got Hal Kanamu’s blood on it and your fingerprints. Plus, tool marks on the finger bones are a match to exemplars made with this particular pair of shears. So-whether it’s yours or not-you were the one who used it to de-digitize the body.”
Wornow stared dully at the bag. “I didn’t kill him. I swear. I got back from Portland really early, and I went to the warehouse to drop off some stuff I bought. I found Hal in the wax. The heaters were shut down, so it had cooled of f and semi-hardened. I… I didn’t know what to do.” Wornow put his head in his hands. “We worked so hard on that thing. We’d stay up all night, coming up with new ideas, trying all kinds of stuff… Yeah, Hal could be a pain, but he was committed, you know? He wasn’t going to give up on this, he was going to make it happen. And then we got into an argument over whether or not we should add color to the flames, and I took off. I should have known better…”
“We know you didn’t kill him,” said Greg. “But you did move the body.”
“What else could I do? If the cops found a dead drug addict inside the actual cone, I knew they’d confiscate it and take it apart. And without Hal’s money, how was I supposed to rebuild? I can’t even pay the rent on the damn warehouse.”
Catherine nodded. “So why remove the fingers of one hand?”
“I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t even notice until after I’d dropped the tin snips that the other hand was totally encased. I could have dug it out, but that would have made a huge mess… I just wrapped the whole thing in a tarp, dumped it in the back of my truck, and ran. Then when I went to look for the snips later, I couldn’t find them. It’s not like I do this every day, you know?”
“Well, you’re not going to be doing it again soon,” said Catherine. “Tampering with a body-while not as serious as murder-is still a crime. I don’ t think you or Mount Pele are making a pilgrimage to the desert this year.”
12
EDVIN BONIFAK HAD RUN the Valentino Motel for twenty-seven years. He had seen a lot of people come and go; newlywed couples, newly divorced singles, prostitutes, alcoholics, salesmen, wiseguys, drug dealers, professional poker players, amateur magicians, lounge singers, tourists from everywhere from Japan to Jamaica. The only question he was ever interested in asking any of them was how they were going to pay, and sometimes when. Other than that, he didn’t care what they did in the privacy of their own rooms-more than once, he’d wished someone would be careless enough to burn the place down. So far, nobody had.
But hey, it was a new day. Maybe he’d get lucky.
The man in room 217 was no odder or stranger than the rest. He’d paid for a week in advance, and that week was now up. Edvin, who at sixty-four was getting around with the help of a cane, was on his way to remind Mr. Lance Wheeler that it was now after two P.M., and if he planned on staying any longer he was going to have to pony up for another day.
It was hot, and most o f the air conditioners in the rooms he passed were cranked up and running, heated metallic breath on his skin as he hobbled past, like caged dragons imploring their keeper for their freedom. He noted that the unit in 215 was drooling far too much water again and resolved to take a closer look at it later.
The door to room 217 was locked, the curtains drawn. Maybe Mr. Wheeler had simply left without checking out; that was hardly unusual at the Valentino. Edvin knocked. “Hello? Mr. Wheeler?”
No answer-but now there was a loud buzzing from the AC unit. When one of them kicked up like that, it was usually about to die. Edvin passed his hand over the vent and was disgusted to discover no air was blowing out at all. The damn thing must be in really bad shape.
He knocked again. Strangely, the buzzing got louder, as if the air conditioner was trying to get his attention-maybe it wanted him to summon emergency assistance, call the appliance paramedics to swoop in and save its failing life.
Fat chance. If Edvin couldn’t fix it himself, it was going on the junk heap.
He pulled out his passkey. Wheeler was either gone, unconscious, or dead-none of which would surprise Edvin terribly much. He unlocked the door and opened it.
And was greeted by hell.
The buzzing became a chainsaw roaring. His vision swirled with black dots, but they weren’t the precursor to a fainting spell; they were alive, they filled the air of the room, and they were angry.
The first sting was just below his left eye. It was followed within seconds by dozens more, on his face, his arms, his neck and hands. By that time he had bolted, stumbling along as fast as he could, but only as far as the next room. He fumbled for the passkey, trying to ignore the burning jabs of pain on every inch of his exposed flesh, and got the door open. He leapt inside and slammed it shut behind him.
“Wha?” said a sleepy voice from the bed. A fat, hairy man sat up in bed, blinking in confusion. “What’s-ow!”
And then he joined Edvin in what the motel manager later called the bee-slapping dance-swinging your arms wildly, trying to swat away or kill as many as you could, either against your own body or in midair. It didn’t last long, Edvin would say when telling the story, but it sure was energetic.
The fiftee n-year-old boy in the parking lot wasn’t as lucky.
“Grissom, glad you’re here.” Nick had just arrived at the motel and was talking to one of the uniforms on-site when his boss walked up.
“Are the bees still active?”
“Honestly, we haven’t gotten close enough to check. Everybody in the motel is locked down in their rooms. We’ve-” Nick stopped and shook his head. “We’ve got a body in the swimming pool, looks like a teenage boy. Haven’t been able to retrieve it yet. Looks like he jumped in there to get away and either drowned or had an allergic reaction to being stung.”
Grissom was already opening the rear of his Denali. He pulled out two hazmat suits, complete with respirators. “We’ll use these-they’re thick enough to prevent stings. I’ve called a beekeeper I know in Henderson -he’ll capture and remove the swarm. We should try to keep them contained in the room, though; they may abscond otherwise.”
“Abscond?”
“It’s what happens when a bee colony feels threatened.” Grissom stepped into the hazmat suit, then shrugged on the sleeves. “Essentially, they flee the hive and relocate.”
“And the last thing we want is a swarm of killer bees descending on the Strip. You think this is the big attack the Bug Killer was planning?”
Grissom secured the hood before replying. “I don’t know. It could even be a natural event; Africanized honeybees have been present in Nevada for almost a decade. We need to see what’s in that room.”
Nick started to pull on his own suit. “You’re the boss.”
Grissom stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Nick-it’s okay if you sit this one out.”
“Thanks, but I’m more of a get-back-on-the-horse kind of guy. Can’t avoid bugs in this line of work, right?”
Grissom smiled. “No, I suppose you can’t.”
They ducked under the yellow tape sealing off the motel grounds and headed for the pool first. Immediately, the white of their suits was crawling with black bodies trying to sting them.
Grissom plucked one carefully from his arm and held it up to the transparent plastic of his face mask. “Africanized bees have five times as many defensive guards around their hives as European species. They’re no more poisonous but much more aggressive-up to half the entire colony will respond to an intrusion, and they’ll deliver eight to ten times as many stings as a normal hive. They’ve been known to chase intruders up to a mile and to remain agitated for as long as several days afterward.”