Riley glanced down at her notes. “No, it’s fine. You didn’t know him, after all…”
In Interview Room Two, Roberto Quadros was on his feet and pointing an accusing finger at Nick Stokes. “This is an outrage!” Quadros exclaimed. “I am a respected researcher! Dr. Grissom will have your job when I tell him about this!”
Nick put his hands up in a slow-down-and-let’s-talk-about-this gesture. “Dr. Quadros, I’m sorry if you feel singled out. But we’re not targeting you; we’re talking to everyone and gathering data. You’re a man of science; you understand the principle of exclusion-this isn’t an accusation. It’s part of the process to eliminate you as a suspect.”
Quadros simmered for a moment, then took a deep breath and retook his seat. “Very well. But at the very least Dr. Grissom could have talked to me himself.”
I’m beginning to understand why he didn’t, Nick thought. “Grissom’s busy at the moment. Now, Dr. Quadros-you’re not staying at the same hotel the others are, correct?”
“No. They charge absurd rates. I found a much more reasonable establishment a few blocks away.”
You mean a run-down dump with no security cameras. “Right. And you were there all evening.”
“Yes. There were some fascinating presentations at the conference the next day, and I wanted to be fresh.”
“You know, some visitors to Vegas would take the opportunity to enjoy themselves. Go see the sights, take in a show-”
“I didn’t come here for the hedonism, Mr. Stokes. There’s plenty of that in Brazil, believe me. I came for the intellectual stimulation provided by an exchange of ideas between men and women like myself. The last thing I wanted was to be drawn into some sort of sordid affair involving dead bodies in seedy motel rooms!”
Funny. You seemed a lot more eager when you thought you were going to help break a big case. “I understand that. So nobody saw you during the evening-the desk clerk, maybe?”
“No. I had dinner early and retired early. Would you like to know what I had for supper, as well?”
“No, that won’t be necessary-”
“Perhaps you’d like a detailed itinerary of my trips to the bathroom? Or a list of the television channels I watched before turning in? I know-a record of my dreams! Perhaps I can persuade a talking dog or flying pig to provide me with an alibi!”
Nick sighed.
Jill Leilani worked at the Shoremont Hotel as a maid. Her supervisor pointed Catherine at floors nineteen through twenty-two; she found Leilani in the hall on the twentieth, trundling a cart loaded with laundry and cleaning supplies between rooms.
Leilani was a thin, sallow-faced woman with nervous eyes. She wasn’t happy to see Catherine but didn’t seem surprised, either.
“Jill Leilani? I’m Catherine Willows with the Las Vegas Crime Lab. When was the last time you talked to Hal Kanamu?”
Leilani’s eyes roamed everywhere but Catherine’s line of sight. “I don’t know. Couple weeks ago, maybe longer. I don’t remember.”
“You two have a falling out or something?”
“No, I-I just don’t hang with him, is all. He don’t have time for his old friends ever since he hit it rich.”
“You’ve known him a long time, though, right? Back on the Big Island?”
“Yeah, I guess. We used to be tight.” Even when she talked, she barely opened her mouth.
“And high, too. Drug buddies, right? You even got busted together.”
“That was a long time ago. I’m clean.”
“No, you’re not. Your teeth are ro tting out of your head, your skin’s bad, and you’ve got the shakes. Know what I think happened? I think that when your pal Hal got his lucky break he threw one hell of a party, and you were one of the first people he invited. All the ice you could smoke, right? For a while, anyway. And by the time he decided the party was over and maybe he had better things to do than support his friends’ habits, the monkey on your back had turned into a three-hundred-pound gorilla.”
Leilani didn’t even try to deny it; the bitterness in her voice told Catherine she’d been carrying her anger around for a long time: “He didn’t even see what he was doing to me. He came here to get clean, you know? Get away from all his druggy friends in Honolulu. I thought, If he can do it, so can I. But when he got all that money… money’s the worst thing, you know? Should be a law, you can’t buy a lottery ticket if you’re using.”
“But he didn’t win the lottery.”
“Didn’t he? Winning that crazy-ass bet… Everybody thought he must have cheated somehow, but he swore up and down he didn’t. Said he had this dream, told him what to bet on. Even found a casino to take it-they weren’t too happy when he won.”
“And that’s when the party started.”
“Yeah. It was great, at first. Didn’t have to worry abo ut tomorrow, so we could party every day. And how much I was using, it kind of just crept up on me.”
Catherine nodded. She’d seen case studies on drug use that showed that same pattern-that even with addictive drugs like heroin or cocaine, users didn’t generally get into trouble until they had access to a large amount of the drug all at once, either from dealing or a sudden windfall of cash. Their drug intake climbed along with their tolerance, until the money was gone and they abruptly became aware of just how heavy-and expensive-their habit had become.
“So what happened?” asked Catherine. “Did he run out of cash?”
“No. I saw what was happening, knew it was gonna kill both of us sooner or later. Tried to talk him into quitting, but he didn’t want to hear it. He thought-” She stopped, shook her head. “He was getting kind of crazy. Thought that winning the bet was some kind of sign, that he was supposed to do something special with the money.”
“Like spend it all on meth?”
“No, but-the drugs were part of it. He thought they were making his thoughts more… I don’t know, cosmic or something.”
“Cosmic. What was he going to do, build a spaceship?”
“No, he was more interested in old gods and stuff. He was always talking about Pele and Kamahua and Lono-Hawaiian gods, you know? I just used to tune him out. Sounded too much like my grandmother.”
“Anybody else listen?”
“Sure. Lester and him would talk about that stuff for hours.”
“Lester Akiliano?”
“Yeah. They’ve known each other forever, though I don’t think Lester really cared about any of that mystical stuff-he was just there to get high. He woulda talked about senior citizens getting kinky if it meant a free hit.”
“How’d Lester feel about you trying to convince Kanamu to quit?”
“What do you think? Went off on me. Told me to stop being such a buzzkill-I didn’t stick around long after that. Wasn’t healthy, in too many ways.”
Catherine sensed there was more to her words than what she was saying. “Did Lester threaten you?”
“Nah, I’ve known Lester a long time-longer than Hal, even. But the guys he was hanging around with? Bad news.”
“What guys?”
“Oh, no. I don’t wanna talk about them. Go talk to Lester, see for yourself. Just don’t say I pointed you his way, okay? He needs to get to rehab, but he doesn’t need to know I sent him there.”
“You look like you could use some time there yourself.”
Leilani gave her a wan smile. “Nah, kicking meth’s easy. I do it every day, you know? Sometimes more than once…”
Lester Akiliano liked to drink in a bar called the Cross-Eyed Jack, a place that might have been glamorous when mobsters ruled the Strip but was now a dusty mausoleum of peeling chrome, scarred tables, and torn carpet. Lester himself was at the bar, nursing a longneck beer and watching women’s basketball on the TV. The bartender squinted at Catherine warily when she came in, as if he were highly allergic to the natural light that spilled through the doorway behind her and was trying to remember where he put his epinephrine.