Donn Cortez - The Killing Jar

He did so, using a scalpel to sever the crude stitches and a forceps to pluck out the strands, placing them in an evidence bag. He’d seen bodies with these sorts of postmortem cuts before-usually on drug mules who had died when one of the heroin- or cocaine-stuffed balloons they’d swallowed had burst. Whoever had hired them to carry the drugs in the first place would simply extract their product from the body’s intestinal tract, slicing open layers of flesh like a bubble-wrapped FedEx package.

He had to admit, though, this was the first one he’d seen that had been resealed.

“It appears that a small white plastic cylinder, three to four inches in diameter and approximately six inches in length , has been inserted in the abdominal cavity. One end of the cylinder has a much thinner, transparent tube feeding into another incision in the esophagus. Opening the mouth-no sign of the tube’s end. It looks as if it’s been fed all the way into the sinus.

“The other end of the cylinder appears to be open. Taking a closer look…”

Doc Robbins was not a squeamish man. Years of experience in dealing with corpses in states that ranged from dismembered to liquefied had given him a strong stomach; nevertheless, there were still certain things that unnerved him.

In particular, he hated rats.

He dealt with their leavings often-he could spot rat predation on a body with a glance, even tell you how big a specimen had been gnawing on the remains from the size of the tooth marks. He’d found rat droppings on and in corpses many times. But all that was simply physical evidence-it didn’t affect him the way the sight of one of the filthy, evil rodents themselves did. Loathsome, disease-ridden, foul vermin, each and every one…

What leapt out of the cylinder and sank its fangs into Doc Robbins’s hand wasn’t a rat.

The Thunderbolt Lounge was old-school Vegas. Pictures on the wall behind the massive bar showed the celebrities who had frequented the bar in the past: the Rat Pack, Jerry Lewis, Rita Hayworth, Jimmy Durante. One framed picture hung in an odd spot, near the ceiling, and was no more than a clear pane of glass in a wooden frame; it was there to show off the two bullet holes in the wall behind it, put there during a dispute between Maximillian “Maxy” Fratoni and Joey “One Roll” Lido in 1956.

The dance floor was small and concrete, the lighting was dim, the fixtures old and badly in need of repair; but the place sprawled out over several rooms, built when land in Vegas was cheap, and featured three different stages. It was one of Greg’s favorite spots in Vegas, and he wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

Tonight the place was full of Burners. They dressed the same way they would out in the desert, in costumes that ranged from the practical to the bizarre: cargo shorts and mesh tops; leather chaps and chain-mail vests; Hawaiian shirts and grass skirts; Star Wars stormtrooper outfits; Santa suits. There were people dressed as winged fairies, as kung-fu monks, as zombie cheerleaders, as space pimps, robot gorillas, mad scientists, and evil clowns.

Greg paid the door fee to a large, hairy man wearing a torn wedding dress and foot-long glow-in-the-dark antennae. “Slow night, huh?”

The doorman shrugged. “What can you do?”

Greg strolled inside and glanced around. A DJ was spinning house music, something catchy and hypnotic with samples of an old M arx Brothers routine for lyrics. He grinned and looked around, then spotted a fire spinner he recognized as Glowbug.

He showed her the picture he’d brought along of Hal Kanamu. “Yeah, I know him,” Glowbug said. She wore a short silver wig, a silver Mylar corset, bright orange fishnets, and five-inch platform boots. “That’s Kahuna Man. Met him at the Burn last year.”

“Yeah? What was he like?”

“He seemed okay. He was a first-timer, so he was really into it. Didn’t see him that much at the festival, but that’s how it is-you can spend the entire week camping with the same group of people and be so busy you never see them twice.”

“How about since then?”

“Yeah, he came to the decompression party in October. He seemed a lot more intense then.”

Greg nodded. Decompression parties were usually thrown a month or two after the event itself, functioning as the sociological equivalent of a hyperbaric chamber that gradually introduced a diver to increasing levels of pressure so he wouldn’t suffer from the bends. The festival itself was such an intense and all-encompassing experience that the return to normal life-what some Burners called “the default world”-could be something of a shock. Decompression helped lessen that.

But Hal Kanamu had experienced another massive shock to his system by then-he was seve ral million dollars richer. “Intense how?”

She shrugged. “Hey, I don’t want to get the guy in trouble with the cops.”

“You can’t,” said Greg. “He’s dead. I’m trying to find out how it happened.”

Her eyes got wider. “Oh, wow. Was he… was it drugs?”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because the last time I saw him he was using. Hey, I try not to judge, but meth will kill you, man. There are other ways to have fun, you know?”

“Sure. Was he hanging around with anyone in particular?”

She hesitated. “Look, I’m just trying to retrace his movements,” he said. “I’m not here to bust anyone, I’m just collecting information.”

“No, yeah, sure. He was hanging out with Doozer and his crew a lot.”

“They’re the guys who built the Fire Truck, right?” The Fire Truck had been exactly that, an old hook-and-ladder that had been retrofitted into a vehicle covered in gas jets and flamethrowers; the ladder itself became a mobile fire sculpture extending sixty feet into the air.

“Yeah, that’s them. They’re not here tonight, though. I think they’re pretty busy working on next year’s project. Oh, look, there’s Neon Girl. I’ll, uh, see you later, huh?”

And then she was gone.

“Great,” Greg muttered. “Just great.”

The paparazzi caught Grissom by surprise.

They ambushed him coming out of the police station with Jim Brass, snapping flash pictures and yelling questions. “Grissom! Do you have any suspects in the killing of Paul Fairwick?”

“Captain Brass! Is it true Athena Jordanson has been receiving death threats?”

“Gil! Gil! Is it true Fairwick died of an overdose?”

Grissom stopped. “The Fairwick case is still in the preliminary stages,” he said. “I cannot comment on any details at this time.” He knew it wouldn’t stop the barrage, but it was like tossing a bone to a pack of wild dogs; it might slow them down enough to let him get away.

They followed him to the Artemis Hotel, of course. It was where Athena Jordanson was currently headlining and had been for the past four years. What Brass had discovered was that Paul Fairwick wasn’t just a guy with a backstage pass-he was Athena Jordanson’s personal assistant.

The billboard at the front of the hotel made sure everyone knew who their star was, too: ATHENA JORDANSON, QUEEN OF SOUL glittered in electroluminescent letters twenty feet high and flashing every color of the rainbow.

Grissom parked and went inside, Brass meeting him in the lobby. Hotel security met them and took them to the diva’s penthouse suite via private elevator, leaving the swarm of photojournalists behind.

“So if Athena’s the queen of soul,” asked Brass as they rode up, “what does that make Paul Fairwick? Earl? Duke? Baron-in-waiting?”

“Corpse,” said Grissom. “In morgue.”

The elevator doors opened onto a lobby that looked more like the entrance to a jungle. Palms, ferns, and tropical flowers reached from floor to ceiling, with springy green moss underfoot. Water trickled down the front of an abstract crystal sculpture and into a stone-lined pool. The two hotel security men who had ridden up with them rode back down again, leaving Grissom and Brass alone.