Donn Cortez - The Killing Jar

The man staring intently through the plate glass at the street outside hardly seemed to notice when Grissom sat down at his table. It took him a second to realize he wasn’t alone, and when he turned to stare at his visitor, Grissom saw that he was sweating profusely and seemed to be having trouble focusing.

“Hello, LW,” said Grissom.

The man Grissom had known as Roberto Quadros smiled. He’d shaved off his white beard and gotten rid of t he heavy-framed glasses; his hair was now a glossy black. He wore shorts and a T-shirt with the name of a casino on it. “Excuse me?” he said. His Brazilian accent was completely gone. “I think you have me confused with-”

“Stop. It’s over,” said Grissom. “The anisomorphal has been removed from the ventilation ducts. The fountain has been deactivated. No one else is going to die.”

LW met Grissom’s eyes. “Are you so sure?” he asked softly. “This isn’t like you, Grissom. Confronting the accused in a noncontrolled situation… Aren’t you afraid I might pull out a gun and shoot you?”

“I considered that,” Grissom admitted. “But I thought it highly unlikely; it just doesn’t fit your profile. Also, I didn’t come alone-there are police stationed at the exits.”

“And a sniper, no doubt. In case I make any sudden movements.”

Grissom shrugged. “I asked to be able to talk to you first.”

LW chuckled, which turned into a wheeze. “Why?”

“Because no matter how careful a scientist is, there’s always a difference between observing a specimen in captivity and one in the wild.”

LW nodded and took a sip of his glass of water, his hand trembling. “Ah. Very good, Dr. Grissom, very good. I can respect that. You think you can get answers now that later will be unavailable. Perhaps so. You may try, in any case. The longer our conversation, th e greater the delay in my incarceration, after all.”

“You don’t seem well.”

“A touch of food poisoning, I suspect. This damn town and its unsanitary troughs… I despise this place, Dr. Grissom. Bread and circuses covered in sparkles and doused with alcohol. The masses herded from one glittering spectacle to another, all of it as devoid of meaning or substance as a swarm of locusts mindlessly devouring a field of wheat. Ants who play at being grasshoppers for a weekend, then return to their little cubicles in their concrete anthills.”

“And that’s all we’re capable of?”

“We? You and I are not the same as them, Dr. Grissom. We see the patterns their behavior always defaults to. We see how they react when offered sex or drugs or food. Have I not demonstrated this? Have my subjects not reacted with utter predictability at every stimulus?”

Grissom studied the man for a second before replying. “No, they haven’t. We found your greenhouse because of trace left behind on one of your workers’ belongings-possessions guarded for two months by people who owned less than him, people who didn’t even know his last name. Insects don’t do that.”

The Bug Killer stared at him. His pupils were tiny. “Do you know why I chose the initials LW? I wondered if you’d figure it out. If anyone could, it would be you-Soames is an idiot and Vanderhoff’s far more impressed with himself than he should be.”

“I didn’t-not until you killed the real Quadros. It stands for lacewing, doesn’t it?”

The killer smiled. He seemed to be having trouble breathing. “Yes. I remember how impressed I was as a child when I learned that some ants actually keep livestock-herds of aphids that they milk for honeydew. But not all aphids are cows, not at all. Some are sheep.”

“The woolly aphid.”

“Yes! It grows a waxy white coat of protective fibers…” He stroked his chin, seemed surprised to feel it bare. “But that adaptation pales beside the ingenuity shown by lacewing larvae. They will pick up discarded tufts of fiber and disguise themselves with it, literally becoming wolves in sheep’s clothing in order to slip past the ants guarding the aphid flock and prey upon their charges…”

He trailed off, his eyes unfocusing. He began to shake, spittle flying from his mouth as he collapsed to the floor.

“So this is the guy who sicced a spider on me?” asked Robbins. “Can’t say I’m sorry he’s dead.”

Grissom stared down at the body on the autopsy table. “We still haven’t been able to identify him. His prints aren’t in the system, and he wasn’t carrying any ID.”

“He just collapsed in front of you?”

“He presented a number of symptoms first-shaking hands, difficulty with his vision and breathing, profuse sweating. He went into convulsions, then vomited and became incontinent.”

Robbins frowned. “Those don’t sound like the symptoms of homobatrachotoxin poisoning.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Well, the tox screen will be back soon. In the meantime, let’s see what we can find out otherwise.” He picked up a scalpel and began to cut.

Grissom sighed and took off his glasses. He put them down on top of the postmortem report, which he’d read and reread a dozen times.

HBTX fatalities were usually caused by cardiac arrest, the poison paralyzing the heart. LW, however, had died as a result of respiratory failure. The tox screen told Grissom why: while LW had been poisoned, he hadn’t been killed by HBTX. He’d been killed by an organophosphate-specifically, parathion.

An insecticide.

Grissom reached for the phone.

Nathan Vanderhoff regarded Grissom quizzically from across the table. “I’m not really sure why I’m here, Gil.”

“I need to ask you a few questions, Nathan. It won’t take long.”

“I hope not. My flight’s this evening.”

“Yes, I know.” Grissom consulted the notes he had in his hand. “You and Quadros corresponded, correct?”

“Yes, of course. Only on a professiona l basis, though.”

“What about Jake Soames?”

“I hardly know the man.”

“But you’ve spent some time with him in Vegas?”

“Well, yes. He seems to thrive on the party atmosphere, though I’m beginning to find it a bit wearing. Perhaps he is, as well; the last time I saw him he seemed somewhat exhausted.”

“Did you ever notice Jake and Quadros together?”

Vanderhoff frowned. “I saw very little of either of them at the conference, but all four of us-including Charong-sat down together after our visit to the lab. Charong left first and I followed about twenty minutes later; I don’t know how long Jake and Roberto stayed after that.”

Grissom nodded. “Did Jake ever say anything to you about Quadros?”

“What do you mean?”

“Anything about him personally.”

Vanderhoff thought about it. “There was one thing that was a little strange,” he admitted. “The last time I talked to Jake, he referred to an ongoing project. From the way he talked, it sounded as if he and Quadros were working on it together-but when I asked him about it, he just laughed and said I’d misunderstood.”

“I see,” said Grissom.

Jake Soames met Grissom’s gaze without flinching. He seemed just as relaxed in an interview room as he did on a bar stool, the kind of easy acceptance of his surroundings that Grissom had never mastered.

“We caught the Bug Killer,” said Grissom.

Jake smiled. “Is that right? Congratulations all around. Too bad Nevada doesn’t use the electric chair-serve the bastard right to meet his end in a zapper, wouldn’t it?”

“He’s already dead, Jake. Poisoned by an organophosphate insecticide-not as flashy as being electrocuted, but just as ironic.”

“Parathion.”

Grissom studied Jake’s face. The smile had faded, leaving only a look of weary admission.