“How about his coworkers? You guys seem pretty close.”

“We are. Matter of fact, I’d say we’re a family. But there’s a world of difference between family and friends; family’s where you go when you need to feel safe, feel protected. Friends-well, friends are who you go to when you need to cut loose.”

“I have a hard time imagining Grissom cutting loose.”

“Maybe so, but it’s a basic human need. Hell, it’s the only reason Vegas exists in the first place. And Jake-I don’t know him that well, but he’s a bout the only person in the world I’ve ever seen convince Grissom to drink something stronger than beer.” Nick paused. “It’s been a hard year for him. For all of us. I think he needs all the friends he can get right now, and that includes loud, booze-guzzling Australians.”

Riley shrugged. “Okay, I get it. Anybody that tightly wrapped is probably in need of a little loosening. I just hope it doesn’t affect our investigation.”

“It won’t. If there’s one thing Grissom never loses sight of, it’s the case he’s working on.”

“I need to go back to the Embassy Gold,” said Grissom.

Conrad Ecklie stared at him, lines of frustration on his face. “Gil, we’ve been through this. Quadros is dead. It’s great that your people located that greenhouse, but four dead junkies and a bunch of dirt do not add up to an imminent terrorist attack.”

Grissom hadn’t bothered to take a seat when he entered Ecklie’s office, and now he tossed a photo down on the undersheriff’s desk. Ecklie picked it up with a frown. “What’s this?”

“That’s a picture from Togo. Four people killed at a soccer game when a power outage panicked the spectators and sent them racing for the exits.” Grissom tossed another photo down. “This one’s from Harare, Zimbabwe. Thirteen dead after police used tear gas on an unruly crowd.” He added a third. “ Kathmandu. Ni nety-three people killed in a stadium while trying to flee a hailstorm.” Another photo. “ Accra, Ghana. A hundred and twenty-three fatalities after police set off a stampede by firing tear gas when fans threw bottles and chairs onto the field.”

Ecklie stopped him with a raised hand before he could add a fifth. “What’s your point, Gil? If there’s a connection between soccer riots in Third World countries and a dead serial killer, I’m not seeing it.”

“Panic. In every case, LW has used bugs themselves to provoke specific reactions in the public at large. He believes that in large groups, people and insects basically react the same way. And so far, he’s been right.”

“Even if that were the case, it’s irrelevent. He’s dead-”

“That may not matter. All a bomb needs to go off is a timer.”

Ecklie paused. “A bomb?”

“Yes. And if I’m right about the effect he’s trying to cause, I know where it has to be. We don’t need to shut down the hotel for this; all I need is access.”

Ecklie looked skeptical. “To what?”

“The ventilation system.”

They started with the intake vents at ground level, massive chrome-louvered panels designed to suck in the dry Vegas air, figuring that they were the most accessible. When that proved fruitless, they moved to the roof and the huge air-cycling plant that pumped cool air into hundreds of hotel rooms as well as the restaurants, the bars, and the casino. After that, the only thing left to search would be the immense length of the duct system itself, literally miles of air-circulation piping that ran through the entire hotel like the capillary system of a living organism.

That turned out not to be necessary. They found what they were looking for on the roof.

The bomb disposal unit brought Grissom the parts when they were done. The BDU commander, Lieutenant Coombs, was a wiry, soft-spoken man with a bristly gray mustache. “It’s all yours, Grissom,” he said as his men carried the pieces into the lab. “Pretty simple mechanism, really. He just adapted an industrial-grade mister to aerosolize the liquid-probably got it from a greenhouse.”

“Thanks,” said Grissom. “We’ll take it from here.”

“Sure,” said Coombs, a chuckle in his voice. “Now that there’s no danger of anything blowing up, you show us the door.”

Grissom eyed the tank now sitting on a lab table. “Don’t go too far. Things aren’t quite stable yet…”

Hodges found Riley, Grissom, and Nick in the conference room, staring at the large monitor on the wall. “Got the results you were waiting on,” said Hodges. “Anisomorphal-highly concentrated , too. I also found traces of a second chemical, dimethyl sulfoxide.”

“DMSO?” said Nick. “That’s a topical solvent-absorbs right through the skin and into the bloodstream.”

Grissom studied the report Hodges had handed to him. “And it can carry other chemicals with it, making it an efficient way to deliver a drug through skin contact alone.”

“Combined with an irritant,” said Riley, “that could produce an intensely painful reaction.”

“It could,” said Grissom, “but not in these amounts. I think we’re looking at cross-contamination, not something that was deliberately added.”

“I’d have to agree,” said Hodges. “The amount was minuscule. If, however, dimethyl sulfoxide was added to a powerful toxin like homobatrachotoxin-”

“You’d have a compound you could use to kill someone by applying a single drop to their skin,” said Grissom.

“Not great news, I know. Just don’t kill the messenger,” said Hodges.

After Hodges had left, the team turned back to what they’d been studying: a graphic of the Embassy Gold’s ventilation system on the flat screen on the wall.

“Up here,” said Grissom, tapping the screen, “is where we found the anisomorphal. As you can see, this area of the system directs air to the Canyon Amphitheatre.”

Riley leaned back in her chair. “The same place Athen a Jordanson is giving her debut performance.”

“Yes. The timer on the device was set to go off at the beginning of the concert. In the ensuing panic, people certainly would have died.”

“Sure,” said Nick. “But he would have killed even more if he’d just used the HBTX, especially if it were mixed with DMSO. Why didn’t he?”

“It wouldn’t fit his pattern,” said Grissom. “Just as sex is secondary to many serial killers, death is secondary to LW. For him, primary satisfaction is gained by manipulating people as if they were insects. It feeds not only his sense of power but his sense of superiority.”

Riley nodded. “So he wants them to react with blind panic.”

“Yes. But for the first time, we’re one step ahead; we’ve deactivated his device without his knowledge-and Athena Jordanson’s performance is tonight.”

A slow smile appeared on Nick’s face. “You think he’ll be on hand to watch the bugs scatter?”

“I do. But he won’t be foolish enough to be inside; he’ll be somewhere in the vicinity, probably in the crowd on the Strip. Brass will have plain-clothes officers posted, but one of LW’s demonstrated strengths is mimicry; I doubt we’ll be able to catch him from surveillance alone.”

“And if we d on’t,” said Riley, “he still has the HBTX.”

“He’s been careful so far,” said Grissom. “But his workers have made mistakes. The cross-contamination was probably due to an error on their part, not his. We need to take another look at the greenhouse and anything they might have come into contact with.”

“You really think we’ll find anything?” said Nick. “They may not have been prisoners, but he obviously kept them isolated.”

“Believe it or not, social insects have social problems,” said Grissom. “Parasitic species that invade the nest and pose as residents, even slave revolts. LW may consider human beings no more than glorified bugs-but even bugs can surprise you.”

Grissom went to see Doc Robbins.

Robbins was in the middle of performing the autopsy on the fourth and final vic from the greenhouse. Big Johnny had been identified as John Christopher Farsten, an unemployed laborer with a string of arrests for petty theft. He’d been a large, burly man with a full beard and a large bald spot on the top of his head.