Donn Cortez - The Killing Jar

She went through their records carefully. Neither owned any property, at least not under his own name. Molinez had spent a lot of time incarcerated and still had to report to a parole officer on a regular basis.

The proof of Boz Melnyk’s exposure to a meth precursor was enough to get a search warrant for his residence, anyway. Maybe it would lead to something more incriminating.

Boz Melnyk lived in a run-down house in north Vegas. It clearly wasn’t where he cooked meth-no burn pits in the yard, no oxidation on the aluminum window frames-but it was still a sty. Catherine shook her head as she picked her way through the trash-strewn living room, the floor littered with fast food wrappers, old newspapers, stacks of porn magazines, and empty beer cans. The bedroom was just as bad and the kitchen was worse; roaches skittered away from the beam of her flashlight, hiding under overturned dirty dishes with a film of mold growing on them.

There was an attached garage but no car. Instead, she found plastic crates of two-liter soda bottles stacked three high along one wall, many with mismatched caps. Each was full of a yellow liquid, and she knew even before she opened one and took a whiff what she would find.

“Well, well,” she murmured to herself. “Mr. Melnyk’s a tinkle tweaker.”

Catherine was never amazed at just how far an addict was willing to go t o get a hit of their favorite drug. This particular method, while more high-tech, wasn’t new; desperate alcoholics sometimes saved their own urine and drank it the morning after, essentially running it through the same system twice to strain out any remaining alcohol. Tweakers did much the same thing, saving their own urine and then adding acetone, lye, or paint thinner to filter and separate out the chemicals they were after. A gallon of urine produced around half a gram of meth-of noticeably poorer quality, but still enough to get the user high.

She looked around but didn’t find any of the filtering agents. He must take it to the lab for that; this is just for collection and storage. Which means these crates have presumably been to the lab and back.

She replaced the bottle, then knelt down and examined the crates themselves. There were bits of brownish matter stuck to the underside of several; they had their own distinctive odor, one she recognized. That narrows it down, but I’m going to need more information than my nose can give me.

She scraped a sample into an evidence vial. The next step was up to Hodges.

Robbins blinked at Grissom blearily from his bed in the ICU unit of Vegas General. He was propped in a sitting position, a swiveling tray over his lap. His prosthetic legs had been removed, creating the disturbing illusion that he wasn’t so much lying in bed as part of it, a sort of mattress centaur.

“How are you , Al?” asked Grissom.

“I feel like I was thrown in an industrial washing machine with a dozen baseball bats. What the hell, Gil?”

“You were bitten by a poisonous spider indigenous to South America. They sometimes show up in shipments of bananas.”

“I hate to tell you this, Grissom, but if there were any bananas around this spider, they were in the process of being digested.” He winced and held up his hand, which was beet red and extremely swollen. “Little bastard got me good.”

“The venom contains a high degree of serotonin- that’s what makes it so painful. In fact, once the serotonin wears off you may experience a downturn in mood-like coming off antidepressants.”

“Oh, good, something to look forward to.”

“Don’t worry, I captured it.”

“Don’t suppose you’d leave me and it alone in a room with my crutch, would you?”

Grissom smiled. “A rematch? I think you need to get back in shape first.”

“I don’t know if I already said this, but- what the hell, Gil?”

“I think this is related to the Harribold case.”

“First millipedes, now a spider. Both used as weapons.”

“That’s how it appears, yes.”

“So we’ve got a psycho on our hands?”

Grissom raised his eyebrows. “I think that judgment’s a little premature. We have someone with a knowledge of entomology, that’s undeniable. What’s more troubling is his choice of victims.”

“I’d have to agree with you on that one.”

Grissom shook his head. “The first victim was stalked online, with a great deal of preparation. The second attack was an elaborate trap, but its target was one of circumstance-the spider could have bitten anyone who was present at the autopsy. It could have been me.”

“Maybe it’s just the drugs they gave me, but I’m not sure I follow. Are these random killings or carefully orchestrated?”

“Both. It isn’t the identity of the victim that’s important,” said Grissom. “It’s how they die.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not planning on dying just yet.”

“Good. I’d hate to have to train another coroner.”

“You’re going to keep the damn spider, aren’t you?”

“It’s evidence. But they only live a year or two, anyway.”

“That’s a real consolation.”

“Is there anything I can bring you? Reading material, something to eat?”

Robbins shook his head. “I don’t think so. I ache too much to concentrate, and I’m too nauseous to eat.”

“Let me get that tray out of the way, then.”

Robbins stopped him by grabbing the tray with his good hand. “You can leave that, actually.”

Grissom frowned-and then a look of understanding crossed his face. “Oh. I don’t know if you know this about the Ph oneutria species, but one of the side effects of the venom is priapism. It’s actually being studied as an anti-impotence drug.”

“I wondered. It’s temporary, right?”

Grissom smiled. “Let’s just say that when it comes time for you to testify, it won’t stand up in court.”

“You can go now.”

Hodges looked up from his microscope. “The sample you brought me,” he told Catherine, “was crap.”

Catherine refused to rise to the bait. “I know that. What I need from you is what kind of crap it is.”

“Oh. Bovine. But what may be of more interest is what said moo-cow was eating that became the crap.”

“Which would be?”

“ Eustoma exaltatum, or as it’s more commonly known, catchfly prairie gentian. A pretty purple flower, to be prosaic.”

“And what sort of distribution would the pretty purple flower have?”

“Sadly, widespread-at least in California. In Nevada, though, it’s made it onto the at-risk botanical list; there’s only one place it’s known to grow, out at Red Rock Springs.”

She nodded. “So I’m looking for a rural property near Red Rock. Thanks.”

“I live to please.”

“Okay,” said Greg. He and Catherine were in the layout room, comparing notes on the light table. “Here’s w hat I’ve got. Kanamu was hanging around the Burner community, but they weren’t comfortable with his drug use. He tried to convince an art collective that calls itself the Phyre Brigade to change gears on the art project they were already half-finished with to work on his, but they turned him down and turfed him because of the drugs.”

“What did he want them to build?”

Greg shrugged. “It changed depending on how high he was, but a volcano goddess was mentioned. And a fire-breathing shark.”

“What happened after they cut him loose?”

“Apparently he hooked up with another artist, but I haven’t been able to track him down. Still working on it.”

“All right. Lester Akiliano led me to three meth heads named Boz Melnyk, Aaron Tyford, and Diego Molinez. They didn’t have any problem with Kanamu’s using; in fact, I think they planned on going into business with him. According to them, he wasn’t interested.”