“Lester Akiliano?” she asked. “Catherine Willows, Las Vegas Crime Lab. I’d like to talk to you about Hal Kanamu.”
Lester was a bulky Hawaiian with shoulder-length, straight black hair and a scraggly black goatee that looked like it was trying to escape his face. He wore a shirt of bright yellow silk missing the top two buttons, with irregular stains spreading from the armpits. He took a long swallow of his beer before responding. “What you want from me, huh? I don’t know nothing except Hal’s dead.”
She took a seat next to him. “Well, that’s the thing, Lester. Kind of my job to find out how that happened.”
“Don’t look at me. I wasn’t there.”
“And where would that be?”
“Out in the desert. That’s wh ere you found him, right? That’s what I heard.” He took another drink. “No place for a kanaka to die, I’ll tell you that. Too far from the ocean. Too damn far from home.”
Catherine studied him for a second. “You knew him a long time, right?”
“Forever. He was a good friend. Maybe a little crazy, but he always had your back.”
“Liked to have a good time, right?”
“You better believe it. I can’t remember how many times we couldn’t remember.”
“Got to catch up with you sometime.”
“Maybe so. Maybe so.” He finished his beer, signaled for another. The bartender ignored him. “But that’s life, right? You have fun while you can.”
“When was the last time you saw Hal?”
“Oh, must have been three, four days ago. We used to hang out every day, but-”
“Hey, Les. Who’s your friend?”
Three men stalked out of the bar’s gloomy recesses, two of them holding pool cues. The speaker was a muscular man in a sleeveless shirt, every visible inch of his arms covered in tattoos. His head was shaved, his face wide but uneven; the right side of his jaw bulged like he was storing nuts for the winter. His friends were taller than he was but not as wide, and despite the dimness of the bar they both wore sunglasses.
“Hey, Boz. She’s no one,” Lester muttered.
“I’m Catherine Willows,” she said. “ Las Vegas Police. And you are?”
“Didn’t you hear Les? I’m Boz.” He grinned, exposing receding gums. “You here for the wake? We’re honoring our poor dead friend, Hal.”
“So am I-I’m investigating his death.” She eyed the three men coolly. “When was the last time you saw your good friend Hal?”
Boz shrugged. “I don’t know-couple days ago, maybe. Hal was always on the go, you know? Lot of energy.” He fished a cough drop out of his pocket and popped it into his mouth, wincing as he did so. His breath smelled like rotten fish in mint sauce.
“I’ll bet.”
“Anyway, we’re just gonna go back to our wake, okay? Respect for the dead and all that.”
“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.”