Donn Cortez - The Killing Jar

Riley frowned. “Maybe.”

She sat and thought about it after Wendy left. Somehow, she couldn’t see the Bug Killer cozying up to a purring tabby-it didn’t fit his modus operandi at all. So what was the connection?

She turned back to the file she’d been reading. It was the arrest record of Robert Ermine, who it seemed hadn’t been entirely successful in his career as Buffet Bob. In fact, he’d been arrested five times and barred from at least a dozen places.

She wondered how the Bug Killer had chosen him. Had he trolled the homeless corridor, looking for subjects who fit a particular profile, or had he viewed his workers as interchangeable drones? Had all of his choices worked out, or had there been rejects? If there had been, some of them might still have valuable information.

Riley had always had good instincts as a street cop. Right now, t hey were telling her that someone out there had talked to the mysterious LW and could be persuaded to talk to her.

She printed out a picture of Roberto Quadros and headed downtown.

Riley talked to half a dozen homeless men and women before she found one who seemed to recognize the photo of Quadros.

“Do I know him?” the man with the blanket wrapped around his shoulders said. He was somewhere in his thirties, missing one of his front teeth, and very dirty; his beard was gathered into a kind of chin ponytail, bound by what seemed like dozens of rubber bands. “I don’t know. Who knows anyone? I don’t know you. You don’t know you. I don’t know me. ”

“Okay, you don’t know him,” said Riley. “But have you seen him?”

Rubber Band Man thought about it. “Yes. I have seen him. Not that picture-no, I’ve never seen that picture before-but I have seen that man, the one in the picture. Yes.”

“Uh-huh. When?” Riley’s hopes stayed firmly in the basement; she doubted she’d get anything approaching reality from this particular subject.

“Fifty-one days ago. It was a Tuesday. I like Tuesdays and sometimes give them their own name. That was Humphrey Tuesday, and it was very friendly.”

She did some quick calculation in her head. Fifty-one days ago had, in fact, been a Tuesday-Humphrey or not. Maybe R ubber Band Man was more credible than she’d thought. “Did you talk to him?”

“Yes.” The man stared at her without blinking.

“What about?”

“He wanted me to work for him. He noticed me counting the bottles I’d collected and said I was very focused. He liked that.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I already had a job. I pointed at the bottles. He said he understood.”

“Did he say anything else?”

The man tugged the blanket tighter around his shoulders. “He said he’d give me food. Place to stay, too. That was when I knew there was something wrong with him.”

A chill went through Riley. “What was wrong with him?”

“Eyes. Cold, cold eyes. Didn’t see me, no, didn’t see me at all. Like he was looking at a bug.”

“Did he tell you anything about the job? Where it was, what you’d be doing?”

“Farming. Said we’d be farming. Making plants happy. Making happy plants. I told him no thank you, I have my bottles, and today’s name is Humphrey. Other people went with him. Buffet Bob went. He never came back.”

“No. No, he didn’t.”

“I liked Bob. He gave me food. More people used to give me food, but now they don’t. Or water. Water is life, but you can’t give it to people like me, because we’re dying. I’m thi rsty. All the time.”

Riley hadn’t quite acclimated to the dry air of Nevada, either; she always tried to keep some water handy. She took the bottle she had with her out of her bag and handed it to the man. “Here.”

“You can’t do that,” the man said. “You’re the law. You’re breaking your self. ”

“Wouldn’t be the first time. Take it, please. You won’t get in trouble.”

The man did. “This is not a Tuesday, but it is a happy day anyway. I think I will call it Hortense.”

“Works for me,” said Riley.

“Cat thyme?” Grissom asked.

“That’s what we found,” said Nick. He tapped a few keys, calling up a picture on the monitor. “Don’t know what it means, though. It’s not indigenous, it’s not a commercial crop-you can get it easily enough from nurseries, but it’s not so rare that a purchase would stand out. I’ve made some phone calls to local greenhouses and importers, but no one seems to have ordered any in large quantities.”

“If he’s growing it himself, it’s to hide his trail. It also suggests a fairly large facility.”

“Yeah, but why? Is he planning on getting every cat in the city stoned? I just don’t get it.”

Grissom stared at the picture of the plant on the screen. “Have Hodges run a chemical an alysis of the plant sample. There’s something we’re missing.”

“Will do.”

“Where’s Riley?”

“She said something about conducting a few more interviews in the homeless corridor, showing a picture of Quadros around. Thinks someone may have seen or overheard him recruiting his workforce.”

“That’s good thinking.”

Nick grinned. “I’ll tell her you said that.”

Riley ended up talking to the Rubber Band Man-who eventually volunteered that his name was Orson-for quite a while. His mind, while fractured, still housed a pretty good memory-a memory that worked mainly on whatever Orson considered important, but one that worked nonetheless.

Orson had considered the man with the cold eyes important.

The place the fake Quadros wanted to take Orson to didn’t seem to be in the city limits, but it wasn’t far outside them-less than half an hour’s drive, anyway. Nobody would bother them there, meaning it had to be fairly isolated. And perhaps most important of all, they wouldn’t be working outside-which meant a greenhouse, barn, or warehouse.

Riley hadn’t gone back to the lab. Instead, she’d parked her Denali somewhere she could get a decent wireless connection, turned on her laptop, and called up Google Earth.

She still found the application a mazing. It wasn’t real-time observation, but it let you zoom in on almost any patch of real estate in the world, giving you an instant feel for the layout of the area: buildings, roads, geographical features like rivers, lakes, and valleys. You had to be careful how you used it, but it was still a very, very useful tool. And what she was looking for should be fairly distinctive: a large outbuilding of some kind, probably on a farm or a ranch, one that appeared deserted.

Sadly, those criteria were a little too easy to meet. Las Vegas bore the distinction of holding the number one spot in the country when it came to abandoned property; people here found it easier to simply walk away from a bad mortgage or loan, leaving everything from private homes to places of business empty. The rural sector didn’t seem to be any exception.

After half an hour she had four possibilities. All were within range, title searches indicated all were in foreclosure, and none had shown any livestock, people, or vehicles when the satellite shots were taken. It was entirely possible LW had set up shop in a place that had been abandoned after these pictures were taken, but Riley figured he had to have been there for at least two months; his laborers had disappeared off the streets six weeks ago, and he would have needed a few more to get properly set up. The chances he was in one of the properties she’d narrowed it down to were good.

But was it good enough to tell Grissom?

She stared at the screen, tapping her finger on the edge of the case. Then she started up the Denali and headed for the highway.