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THE VIEW FROM the Panhandle Casino’s penthouse suite was impressive, but to truly appreciate it you had to use the rooftop pool; one wall was clear glass, letting the swimmer enjoy the glittering lights of Vegas twenty floors below while floating weightless in heated water. The suite’s owner, Andolph Dell, provided swimming goggles for his guests for this precise reason, and during one of his parties there was always at least one person contemplating the vista while holding their breath.
But not at this party—because on this particular Sunday night, there was a zeppelin.
A more accurate description was dirigible, for it was only twenty or so feet long and less than a third that in diameter. It was black, cigar-shaped, and piloted by a grinning clown wearing black coveralls.
No one was sure which direction the dirigible had come from, if it had risen from the ground or descended from the skies. It had simply appeared, circus music blaring tinnily from tiny speakers, floating at the penthouse level and circling slowly like a bird looking for a spot to land.
The clown wasn’t so much piloting the craft as riding it; a large propellor at the rear provided thrust, powered by the clown’s furiously pedaling legs. He gripped the handlebars tightly, leaning back in his seat, never pausing to wave at the crowd on the roof who were cheering him on, or even to glance at them—despite his wide, maniacal grin, he seemed to be a clown who took his zeppelin flying very seriously.
And then the zeppelin burst into flames.
The theme of the Panhandle Casino was the Gold Rush. There were plenty of pickaxes and gold pans on the walls, while women dressed as dancehall girls dealt blackjack and spun roulette wheels. But Andolph Dell had decided old mining equipment and a few corsets weren’t a big enough draw; these days, in order to compete, a place needed something unique.
Dell had gone with bears.
Specifically, he’d built a large, glass-walled environment in the middle of the casino floor. Sensitive to modern attitudes toward animal exploitation, he’d ensured that the environment was completely soundproofed and that the bears spent only a few hours a day on display, in a daily rotation shared among sixteen animals. The rest of the time they lived on a ranch outside the city, where they were cared for by an experienced professional staff. The animals themselves were all rescued specimens, obtained largely from zoos or circuses that could no longer take care of them; they lived a pampered life on the ranch, punctuated with brief interludes riding in the back of a specially designed tractor-trailer, followed by a few hours staring at hordes of goggle-eyed tourists while snarfing back treats.
A flaming dirigible crashing to earth in the parking lot was not on their usual agenda—and the event occurred at the worst possible time, during the bears’ transfer from truck to casino.
Jordan Tanner worked the midnight-to-eight-A.M. shift at the Panhandle as senior security officer. He had overseen hundreds of bear transfers and probably as many parties, and the bears had always provided much less trouble than the partiers. . . until now.
There were two other officers in the monitoring room with him, watching the sequence of events unfold. Kyra Bourne was to his left, Kevin Priest to his right. None of them could quite believe what they were seeing on the bank of screens in front of them.
“Oh my God,” Kyra said. She was a twenty-two-year-old from Alabama working her way through a criminal-law degree. “It just hit the ground. It’s still burning. No way he could have survived that.”
“Fire department’s on its way,” said Kevin. “What is this? Is this a terrorist attack?”
Tanner shook his head. “A guy in a clown outfit? That doesn’t—”
“The bears!” said Kevin. “The bears are loose in the casino!”
Security monitors showed two bears lumbering between slot machines as panicked tourists screamed and ran.
“How many?” Tanner demanded. “Where’s the third one—”
“There!” said Kyra. “It’s moving a lot faster than the other two—”
The third bear wasn’t lumbering. It was running. And someone was trying to outrun it.
“It’s chasing a guard!” said Tanner. “Who is that?”
“I don’t know, I can’t see his face—”
“Is it Hernandez? I think it’s Hernandez—”
A high-pitched bell started to ring. Someone had triggered the fire alarm, adding to the panic as guests scrambled for the exits. All of the elevators headed for the ground floor, where they shut down after disgorging their passengers. The penthouse had its own private elevator—but when the car arrived, it was empty.
“Oh, no,” said Tanner. “The alcove for the penthouse elevator. It’s got him cornered.”
“Tell him to shoot the damn thing!”
“I can’t raise him—wait, that’s not him—”
“He’s trying to open the elevator—why isn’t it opening?”
“It’s locked down and he’s too rattled to remember the security code,” said Tanner. He leaned forward and started tapping keys. “I’m opening it remotely—if he can get inside I can shut them and he’ll be safe—”
“No!” Kyra shouted. “It’s rushing him! It’s in the—”
Bright arterial blood sprayed the lens of the elevator’s camera. All they could see was red.
“What a mess,” said Nick Stokes, surveying the smoking wreckage. “Took out an SUV, a pickup, and two subcompacts.”
“If Grissom were here,” said Greg Sanders, “he’d probably say something like ‘Oh, the zoo-manity.’ ”
“Probably. But his would be better.”
Greg shrugged. “Hey, you try working in a pun involving a flaming zeppelin and three rampaging bears.” He paused. “Maybe I should have gone with the Goldilocks thing . . .”
“I’d prefer if you didn’t,” said Sara Sidle. “Blondes have to deal with enough jokes as it is.” She glanced from the parking lot to the entrance. “How are we doing this?”
“The bear’s handlers have recaptured the three escapees,” said Nick. “Two came right back, while they had to use a tranquilizer dart on the third. Crime scene’s been cleared, but it’s gonna be messy—I’d like both of you on it. I’ll take the Hindenburg out here.”
“Let’s do it,” said Greg.
He and Sara headed into the casino. It was deserted now, the entire building ringed with yellow crime-scene tape.
“Weird to see the place empty,” said Greg. “Kinda postapocalyptic.”
“Post-ursine-alyptic, you mean. Nothing clears a room like a four-hundred-pound carnivore times three.”
A large, frowning man with a shaved head and muscular arms crossed against a massive chest was waiting for them at the private elevator alcove.
“Jordan Tanner,” he said. “I’m in charge of security at this time of night.”
“CSIs Greg Sanders and Sara Sidle,” said Greg. “So this is where the attack took place?”
Tanner nodded. “It’s where it started, yeah. The guard was trapped against the doors, so I opened them remotely. The bear rushed him.”
Sara glanced at the keypad beside the elevator doors. “So the body’s inside?”
“I’m not sure.”
Greg frowned. “What do you mean, you’re not sure?”
“The elevator camera was. . . splashed. We can’t see what’s inside. It’s not on this floor, anyway—the car went down after the doors closed. He must have hit a button before . . .”
“So the elevator’s in the basement?” asked Sara. “Why aren’t we?”
“Regular staff elevator is still in lockdown. And as for the stairs—well, I’ll show you.”
Tanner led them around a corner to the fire stairs. The door there was propped open, while four firemen struggled to get a makeshift stretcher of chain-link fence through the doorway. Sprawled across the mesh was an unmoving mass of black fur, its long pink tongue lolling out of the side of its bloodstained muzzle.
A man with a short gray beard and a baseball cap that read “Bruin Rescue Ranch” was supervising. “Careful!” he snapped. “Don’t drop him! Keep his head supported!”
“That’s his handler,” said Tanner. “He’s the one who tranqued him. Nobody else has been down there since the staff bolted.”
“What’s down there?” asked Sara.
“Offices, mostly. When the bear came out of the elevator, it started wandering around. Staff elevator was frozen, so everybody ran for the fire exit and got out.”
The firemen finally succeeded in negotiating the unconscious animal out of the stairwell. They lugged it toward the exit, the handler barking orders every step of the way.
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” said Sara.
“There’s no body,” Doc Robbins said. He stood beside Nick, leaning on his arm crutch and gesturing with his other hand. “Either this guy walked away from the crash, or the fire vaporized him completely—which is impossible.”
“Not completely,” said Nick. He used a stick to lift a partially melted rubber clown mask. “See? Part of his face survived.”
“That’s great. Call me when you have something that isn’t made out of rubber—I’m going to examine the victim of the be...
