Donn Cortez - The Killing Jar

An opportunity like a newly rich, just-fallen-off-the-wagon ex-busboy.

Grissom performed the search on Khem Charong’s hotel room himself.

It wasn’t out of a sense of guilt or because he didn’t trust anyone else to do so. He was simply curious.

Charong’s room was as neat as his person. Four well-tailored suits hung in the closet, clean and pressed. Toiletries were lined up in the bathroom, as orderly as soldiers waiting for inspection.

He found no stashes of pornography, no sex toys, no indications that Charong was anything but what he seemed: a scientist visiting another country for a conference. Grissom even used a gas sniffer to scan the room for traces of hydrogen cyanide, but nothing showed up.

Everything seemed normal-except Grissom couldn’t find a laptop.

It was probably the most ubiquitous tool today’s scientist owned, and Charong didn’t seem to have one. After a moment, Grissom called down to the front desk, identified himself, and asked if Charong had left it with hotel staff for safekeeping. He had not.

He went over the room again. Nothing inside the mattress, the air vent, the back of the toilet. Grissom sat on the edge of the bed and thought.

After a moment, he called down to the front desk again. “Yes, I was wondering if you had a lost and found. You do? I’m looking for a laptop. Turned in within the last day, encrypted. There won’t be anything on it to identify the owner. You do? I’d appreciate it if you could send it up-I’ll be able to prove ownership when he shows it to me.”

He didn’t have long to wait. A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door; Grissom opened it to find a bellman standing there with a silver laptop under one arm.

“Please set it down on the desk,” said Grissom.

The bellman did so. “I’m, uh, under instructions to have you enter the password,” the bellman said. He looked like he was still in high school himself. He opened the laptop and hit the power button. “Just to, you know, confirm that it’s yours.”

“It’s not,” said Grissom. “But now that it’s in the room, it’s the property of the Las Vegas Police Department.” He pulled out the search warrant and handed it over.

The bellman took the form and studied it. “Okay,” he said. “Does this mean I don’t get a tip?”

Nick strode into the AV lab. “That the laptop Grissom brought in?” asked Nick.

“Yeah,” said Archie. “It’s encrypted, but I think I can get in. Might take me a while, though.”

“You hear how Charong hid it? Turned it in to the lost and found. All he had to do to get it back was prove it was his.”

“Easy to do when you know the password. But how do you explain turning in a laptop and then asking for it back?”

“Easy-you never deal with the same person twice. Turn it in to someone at the front desk, get a bellman to bring it up to your room when you want it back. It’s how Grissom recovered it.”

Archie grinned. “That’s pretty slick, actually. Long as nobody rips it off in the meantime, it’s in limbo-hidden in plain sight. How’d Gri ssom figure it out?”

Nick gave him a look. “He’s Grissom. ”

“Yeah, sorry. Dumb question.”

“So, how long you think it’ll take?”

Archie frowned. “I don’t know-as long as it takes. Decrypting isn’t straightforward science, you know. Every box is different. Might get lucky with a password cracker, might have to look a lot deeper. Why? Is this guy gonna disappear or something?”

Nick shook his head. “Hard to say. We’ve got him locked up but… I guess I just really want to put this one away.”

“Not to worry, kemo sabe. I’m on it.”

Normally, that would have been enough for Nick; Archie was one of the best, and if it were possible to pull anything off the laptop Archie would. Nick was pretty sure what he’d find, too: the kind of pictures that would put Khem Charong away for a long, long time.

But that wouldn’t necessarily prove he’d killed Keenan Harribold.

It was a strange case, and not just because of the millipedes. While Nick could accept that someone would be twisted enough to kill a high school boy with bugs, Harribold’s body had shown no signs of sexual assault. Khem Charong, based on his past history, wouldn’t have left the boy untouched. And why go to the trouble of implicating a rival school after killing s omeone in a distinctive way that practically screamed Arrest me! I’m an entomologist!

It didn’t make any sense.

“Hey, Boz,” said Catherine. “Nice to see you again.”

Boz didn’t seem quite as happy. He slouched in his chair on the other side of the interview table like a sullen adolescent in the principal’s office. Catherine tried not to take it personally; maybe his sore tooth was just making him moody.

“So,” she said. “Hal Kanamu. Tell me about you and him.”

“I don’t have to be here, you know. I came in as a favor.”

“And we appreciate it. Of course, your friends Aaron and Diego might not.”

“They’re not friends. I was just shooting some pool with them.”

“They were friends of Hal’s, though, weren’t they? That’s what you told me.”

He looked away. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess they were.”

“And you were the one who introduced them, right? Hal was handing out the party favors and you couldn’t keep your mouth shut. Bad move, Boz. Guys like that aren’t satisfied with a little free fun. They always want more.”

“Is that what this is about? Look, those guys are into their own thing. I don’t-I’m not down with that. If they had anything to do with Hal getting killed, I don’t know anything about it.”

And even if you did you wouldn’t talk, right? she thought. I mean, you may not be the brightest bulb on the tree, but you’re not that stupid. One body dumped in the desert may be murder, but a second is just cleaning up loose ends.

“Looks like you’ve got an infected tooth,” said Catherine. “Must be painful.”

“Taking antibiotics for it. Doc says I’ve got an abscess.”

“That’s not all you’ve got, Boz. You own a leaky pen or just eat a lot of blueberries?”

“What?”

“Your fingertips are stained blue. I noticed the last time I talked to you.”

“So what? It was a leaky pen, like you said.”

“I don’t think so, Boz. Hey, you want to see something really cool?”

He watched her warily as she dug out a pocket mirror and handed it to him. “Here.”

“What’s this for?”

She got up from the table and walked over to the door. “I asked to use this room just for this,” she said. She turned out the lights.

“What-what am I supposed to do now?”

“Just wait a second, let your eyes adjust.”

Catherine could hear him breathing in the darkness. He sounded nervous.

“Okay,” she said. “Now hold the mirror up to your mouth. And smile.”

Catherine knew when he did so-because she could see the faint, greenish-white glow that came from his open mouth.

“Oh my God,” s aid Boz. He sounded sick-but then, he was.

She turned the lights back on. He looked as bad as he sounded. “What’s wrong with me? Do I… do I have radiation poisoning?”

“Nope. You have a condition known as phossy jaw. Pretty rare these days, but it used to be an occupational hazard for match makers. I don’t mean people who play Cupid-I mean actual, honest-to-God people who made matches.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Let me explain it to you. Those stains on your fingers are from iodine. The abscess in your mouth is from exposure to white phosphorous-it gets in the maxillary bone and basically causes it to rot, which is why your breath smells so bad. White phosphorous used to be used in the production of matches, until it was replaced by red phosphorous-it’s a lot less toxic. Unfortunately, red phosphorous is a lot harder to obtain these days, isn’t it? You found a source of iodine but had to settle for white phosphorous instead of red.”