Donn Cortez - The Killing Jar

“After you, Bwana,” said Brass.

They made their way along a mossy path that led to a huge living room, just as filled with greenery but with one curving glass wall that looked out over the Strip. It had been widely reported that Ms. Jordanson had asked for-and received-the penthouse suite, built to her specifications, as part of her contract.

The queen of soul herself was reclining on a moss-green couch that looked like it had grown out of the floor. She wore a bright pink tracksuit, her brown feet were bare, and her famous Afro looked like she’d been sleeping on her left side. She had a box of Kleenex in her lap, and used tissue littered the floor like crumpled white flowers.

“Ms. Jordanson?” said Brass. “I’m Captain Jim Brass, and this is Gil Grissom with the Las Vegas Crime Lab. We have a few questions for you, if you don’t mind.”

She shook her head. “No, I-of course. Please sit down.”

Brass chose the other end of the couch, while Grissom settled into an armchair. Its legs seemed to branch out into polished roots.

“When was the last time you talked to Paul?” asked Brass.

“Last night, just before my ten o’clock performance. We talked backstage, I told him what I wanted to eat afterward-that was the last thing I said to him, you know? ‘Make sure my steak is medium-rare.’ I can’t believe it.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “What a stupid thing to say to my best friend. To be the last thing I said to him.”

“Did Paul have any enemies?”

“It’s my fault,” she sobbed. “All my fault.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I’m always getting threats. Nobody wanted to hurt Paul-he was a sweetheart, a saint. He put up with me and all my bullshit, and that’s saying a lot. No, the only reason someone would hurt Paul would be to get at me.”

Brass and Grissom had dealt with celebrities before. They tended to live in worlds that centered around them, and any significant event-like a death-was naturally assumed to be about them, not the actual victim. Sometimes they were even right.

“Do you have copies of these threats?” asked Grissom.

“You’d have to ask Paul-oh, God! ” She started weeping again. “How am I going to cope without him? He handled that kind of thing…”

They waited until she got herself under control. “Do you have a chief of security?” Grissom asked gently.

“Yes. He’s with the hotel. I don’t remember the name, though.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll find out and I’ll talk to him,” said Brass. “If his staff has intercepted notes or calls, there may be something we can use.”

Grissom’s phone vibrated. “Excuse me,” he said. He rose from his seat, took a few steps away, and answered. “Grissom.”

He listened intently, then frowned. “David, calm down. Where is he now? All right, good. I want you to meet me outside the morgue, all right? Don’t let anyone else in.”

He snapped the phone shut and headed for the elevator. “I have to go, Jim.”

Brass had been a cop for a long time, and he recognized the tone in Grissom’s voice instantly. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Al,” said Grissom. “He’s in the hospital.”

GROUPS THAT CAME TO Black Rock City organized themselves as theme camps. A theme camp could be as small as one person operating out of the back of their vehicle or number a hundred people or more and involve a structure the size of a circus t ent. Theme camps could be based on literally anything, though in recent years the festival had announced an overall art theme to lend some direction; people were free to embrace or ignore the theme as they chose. There were camps that gave away food, massages, costumes, alcohol, haircuts; camps that offered dating services, minigolf, tea, floggings, live music, swing dancing, trapeze lessons, or meditati o n circles. There were hundreds. Each had its own identity, was run entirely by volunteers, and was responsible for packing out every single scrap of material it brought in.

Doozer’s crew was an art collective who called themselves the Phyre Brigade. They were hard-core pyromaniacs, building vehicles and sculptures that played with flame the way a fountain played with water. The group’s base of operations was an old garage on the outskirts of town, its use donated by a fellow Burner who had no current plans for the property.

Greg pulled up next to the rusting spots where the gas pumps had once stood. He could see sparks and the ultraviolet glare of a welding rig inside, through the narrow glass panes of the rolling panel doors. It was late, but Glowbug had told him Doozer preferred working late.

The front entrance was unlocked; a stuffed deer head gazed at the ceiling from the spot on the counter where the cash register had once stood. A door beside that sto od open, leading to the garage; Greg stood in the doorway and called out, “Hello?”

A man in blue coveralls turned off his welding torch and turned around, flipping up the smoked glass visor. His face was as greasy as his clothes, and a cinder smoldered in his heavy black beard.

“Hi,” said Greg. “You’re, uh, on fire.” He pointed.

The man reached up and snuffed out the cinder by pinching it with two fingers. He didn’t say thanks, and he didn’t flinch. “Yeah?”

“I’m Greg Sanders, Las Vegas Crime Lab. Doozer, right? I’d like to talk to you about Hal Kanamu-Kahuna Man. ”

Doozer snorted. “Let me guess. He ODed.”

“Not a surprise, huh?”

“No. He was headed there in a hurry-only a matter of time.”

“You don’t seem real upset by that.”

Doozer glared at him. “Hey, it pisses me off, okay? Every time some sponge brain with no sense of judgment and a death wish kills himself through sheer stupidity, it makes everyone else look bad. And by everyone else, I mean anyone who might like to indulge in a little chemical recreation now and then.”

“Okay, I get it. He was irresponsible. But if so, why let him be part of your camp?”

Doozer studied him for a second before responding. “That’s just it-we didn’t. Turfed him a few weeks ago. He’d show up to planning meetings so wired you could have hook ed him up to a klieg light. Rambling on and on about all this Hawaiian stuff he was into. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good rolling tiki bar as much as the next guy, but he was trying to convince us to change our plans for next year. We’re already halfway done-no way we’re gonna suddenly shift to some half-baked tweaker idea.”

Greg had to admit the vehicle Doozer had been working on was impressive: a gigantic metal scorpion on wheels, the articulated tail ending in a flamethrower. It looked skeletal at the moment, the metal segments that would make up its armor leaning against the wall like a knight’s inventory of shields.

“So this is it, huh? Pretty damn cool.”

“Thanks. Gonna outline the whole thing in electroluminescent wire-either blue or red, not sure. Thing’ll kick some serious ass after nightfall.”

“So what did Kanamu want to build instead?”

“Ah, he kept changing it. Some kind of giant volcano goddess one week, then a fire-breathing shark the next. He was all over the place.”

“You hear about his gambling win?”

“Yeah, everybody knew about it. Only reason we didn’t tell him to take a hike sooner-kept saying he’d finance the whole trip, you know? But there was just no way. Black Rock’s not about money, anyway-it’s about self-suffiency. Find yourself relying on a junkie, that’s a recipe for disaster.”

“ Anyone try to get him to straighten out?”

Doozer shook his head. “Yeah, a couple people talked to him. But he was just as high on the money as the meth, you know? Didn’t want to come down.”