“Uh-huh. I’m going to need to see some ID, Boz.” She nodded at his two friends. “You too. Come on, guys, dig out those wallets.”

Catherine kept her own hand near her gun. She knew tweakers when she saw them, and anyone high on crank was a dangerous and unpredictable commodity. An armed meth head was one bad impulse away from murder.

Nobody produced a gun, though-just identification and dirty looks. She took them, jotted down their names, and gave them back. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll be in touch.”

Boz’s smile had been replaced by a look of wary confusion. “What for? Are you arresting us, or what?”

“Not yet, Boz.” She smiled. “But I’d really like to get to know you-and your friends-better. Thing is, I’d prefer to do it at my place…”

Bosley “Boz” Melnyk, Catherine discovered, was no stranger to the system. In fact, she was pretty sure Boz and the system were about ready to pick out drapes together.

His earliest arrests had been for shoplifting. He’d graduated from that to B and Es, with the occasional car theft thrown in. He’d been busted several times for possession of narcotics, been to rehab twice, and barely skated on a dealing charge the last time he’d been arrested. It was a pretty typical career arc for a petty criminal, one she’d seen too many times before; start small, work your way up, learn just enough from your mistakes to avoid serious jail time. The type of crime escalated, not from any sense of ambition but through the same kind of process that told a shark to keep moving or die. Boz was still moving.

His friends were another matter. Diego Molinez was an unrepentant thug, one who’d spent nearly half his thirty-six years in custody; he’d done time for aggravated assault, possession of an unregistered firearm, and narcotics trafficking. Aaron Tyford had been arrested on both narcotics possession and conspiracy to commit murder, but the charges had been dropped due to insuffici ent evidence.

The file on the Tyford case told an interesting story. Tyford had apparently been a dealer for a local gang and during the course of his business had learned the location of the drug lab used to manufacture product for sale. Deciding that wholesale prices just weren’t low enough, Tyford had tried to rob his own supplier; unfortunately for him, he’d learned the hard way that volatile chemicals and gunfire just don’t mix. While the resulting explosion had destroyed his reason for the robbery, it had also wiped out any evidence tying him to the lab itself.

She could see why a small-timer like Boz would attach himself to Hal Kanamu; he was more remora than shark, hanging around in the hopes of feeding off any scraps. But Tyford and Molinez were another breed entirely, more predator than scavenger. The only reason they’d spend time with someone like Boz would be because they saw an opportunity waiting to be exploited.

An opportunity like a newly rich, just-fallen-off-the-wagon ex-busboy.

Grissom performed the search on Khem Charong’s hotel room himself.

It wasn’t out of a sense of guilt or because he didn’t trust anyone else to do so. He was simply curious.

Charong’s room was as neat as his person. Four well-tailored suits hung in the closet, clean and pressed. Toiletries were lined up in the bathroom, as orderly as soldiers waiting for inspection.

He found no stashes of pornography, no sex toys, no indications that Charong was anything but what he seemed: a scientist visiting another country for a conference. Grissom even used a gas sniffer to scan the room for traces of hydrogen cyanide, but nothing showed up.

Everything seemed normal-except Grissom couldn’t find a laptop.

It was probably the most ubiquitous tool today’s scientist owned, and Charong didn’t seem to have one. After a moment, Grissom called down to the front desk, identified himself, and asked if Charong had left it with hotel staff for safekeeping. He had not.

He went over the room again. Nothing inside the mattress, the air vent, the back of the toilet. Grissom sat on the edge of the bed and thought.

After a moment, he called down to the front desk again. “Yes, I was wondering if you had a lost and found. You do? I’m looking for a laptop. Turned in within the last day, encrypted. There won’t be anything on it to identify the owner. You do? I’d appreciate it if you could send it up-I’ll be able to prove ownership when he shows it to me.”

He didn’t have long to wait. A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door; Grissom opened it to find a bellman standing there with a silver laptop under one arm.

“Please set it down on the desk,” said Grissom.

The bellman did so. “I’m, uh, under instructions to have you enter the password,” the bellman said. He looked like he was still in high school himself. He opened the laptop and hit the power button. “Just to, you know, confirm that it’s yours.”

“It’s not,” said Grissom. “But now that it’s in the room, it’s the property of the Las Vegas Police Department.” He pulled out the search warrant and handed it over.

The bellman took the form and studied it. “Okay,” he said. “Does this mean I don’t get a tip?”

Nick strode into the AV lab. “That the laptop Grissom brought in?” asked Nick.

“Yeah,” said Archie. “It’s encrypted, but I think I can get in. Might take me a while, though.”

“You hear how Charong hid it? Turned it in to the lost and found. All he had to do to get it back was prove it was his.”

“Easy to do when you know the password. But how do you explain turning in a laptop and then asking for it back?”

“Easy-you never deal with the same person twice. Turn it in to someone at the front desk, get a bellman to bring it up to your room when you want it back. It’s how Grissom recovered it.”

Archie grinned. “That’s pretty slick, actually. Long as nobody rips it off in the meantime, it’s in limbo-hidden in plain sight. How’d Gri ssom figure it out?”

Nick gave him a look. “He’s Grissom.”

“Yeah, sorry. Dumb question.”

“So, how long you think it’ll take?”

Archie frowned. “I don’t know-as long as it takes. Decrypting isn’t straightforward science, you know. Every box is different. Might get lucky with a password cracker, might have to look a lot deeper. Why? Is this guy gonna disappear or something?”

Nick shook his head. “Hard to say. We’ve got him locked up but… I guess I just really want to put this one away.”

“Not to worry, kemo sabe. I’m on it.”

Normally, that would have been enough for Nick; Archie was one of the best, and if it were possible to pull anything off the laptop Archie would. Nick was pretty sure what he’d find, too: the kind of pictures that would put Khem Charong away for a long, long time.

But that wouldn’t necessarily prove he’d killed Keenan Harribold.

It was a strange case, and not just because of the millipedes. While Nick could accept that someone would be twisted enough to kill a high school boy with bugs, Harribold’s body had shown no signs of sexual assault. Khem Charong, based on his past history, wouldn’t have left the boy untouched. And why go to the trouble of implicating a rival school after killing s omeone in a distinctive way that practically screamed Arrest me! I’m an entomologist!

It didn’t make any sense.

“Hey, Boz,” said Catherine. “Nice to see you again.”

Boz didn’t seem quite as happy. He slouched in his chair on the other side of the interview table like a sullen adolescent in the principal’s office. Catherine tried not to take it personally; maybe his sore tooth was just making him moody.

“So,” she said. “Hal Kanamu. Tell me about you and him.”

“I don’t have to be here, you know. I came in as a favor.”