“I didn’t know him,” Molly said. “I could have been dreaming,” she said, finally fixing her eyes on me. “But in my dream, whoever he was, I know he was an angel.”
She closed her eyes, and tears spilled from under those lashless crescents and rolled silently down her cheeks.
Chapter 61
“HANNI IS IN THE CLEAR,” Jacobi said, standing over us, casting a shadow across our desks. “He was working the scene of a meth lab explosion the night of the Meacham fire. He said he told you.”
I remembered.
He’d told us that the Meacham fire had been his second job that night.
“I’ve spoken to five people who were at that meth scene who swear Chuck was there until he got the call about the Meachams,” said Jacobi. “And I’ve confirmed that Matt Waters is doing life for the deaths of the Christiansens.”
Conklin sighed.
“Both of you,” said Jacobi. “Move on. Find out what the victims have in common. Boxer – McNeil and Chi are reporting to you. So make use of them. Concentrate on the Malones and the Meachams. Those are ours. Here’s the name of the primary working the Chus’ case in Monterey. Conklin, you might want to smooth things over with Hanni. He’s still working these cases.”
I was looking at Rich as Jacobi stumped back to his office.
Conklin said, “What? I have to buy Hanni flowers?”
“That’ll confuse him,” I said.
“Look, it made sense, didn’t it, Lindsay? The book was about an arsonist who was an arson investigator and Hanni missed it.”
“You made a courageous call, Richie. Your reasoning was sound and you didn’t attack him. You brought it into the open with our immediate superior. Perfectly proper. I’m just glad you were wrong.”
“So… look. You know him. Should I expect to find my tires slashed?” Conklin asked.
I grinned at the idea of it.
“You know what, Rich. I think Chuck feels so bad about missing that book, he’s going to slash his own tires. Just tell him, ‘Sorry, hope there are no hard feelings.’ Do the manly handshake thing, okay?”
My phone rang.
I held Richie’s glum gaze for a moment, knowing how bad he felt, feeling bad for him, then I answered the phone.
Claire said, “Sugar, you and Conklin got a minute to come down here? I’ve got a few things to show you.”
Chapter 62
CLAIRE LOOKED UP when Rich and I banged open the ambulance bay doors to the autopsy suite. She wore a flower-printed paper cap and an apron, the ties straining across her girth. She said, “Hey, you guys. Check this out.”
Instead of a corpse, there was a bisected tube of what looked like muscle, about seven inches long. The thing was clamped open on the autopsy table.
“What is that?” I asked her.
“This here’s a trachea,” Claire told us. “Belonged to a schnauzer Hanni found in the bushes outside the Chu house. See how pink it is? No soot in the pooch’s windpipe and his carbon monoxide is negative, so I’m saying he wasn’t in the house during the fire. Most likely he was in the yard, raised the alarm, and someone put him down with a blow to the head.
“See this fracture here?”
So much for the APB on Graybeard. Whose sad task would it be to tell Molly that her dog was dead? Claire went on to tell us she’d spent the day getting George and Nancy Chu’s bodies from the funeral home.
“It’s not our jurisdiction, not our case, but I finally got permission from the Chus’ son, Ruben. Told him that if I have to testify against the killer and I haven’t examined all the victims’ bodies, I’ll get diced into pieces by the attorney for the defense.”
I murmured an encouraging “uh-huh” and Claire went on.
“Ruben Chu was a mess. Didn’t want his parents to ‘suffer any more indignities,’ but anyway… I got the release. Both bodies are at X-ray now,” Claire added.
“What was your take?” I asked.
“They were burned pretty bad, a few extremities fell off during their travels, but one of George Chu’s ankles still had several wraps of intact monofilament fibers on it. So that, my friends, is evidence that they were absolutely, positively tied up.”
“Great job, Claire.”
“And I got enough blood for the tox screens.”
“You gonna keep us guessing, girlfriend?”
“You’re saying I live to frustrate you? I’m talking as fast as I can.” Claire laughed. She squeezed my shoulder affectionately, then removed a sheet of paper from a manila envelope, put it down on the table next to the dog’s trachea.
She ran her finger down the column of data. “High alcohol content in their blood,” she said. “Either the Chus had been drinking a lot, or else they’d been drinking high-octane stuff.”
“Same as Sandy Meacham?”
“Very much the same,” said Claire.
I flashed on the inscription in the book. Sobria inebrietas. Sober intoxication. I autodialed Chuck Hanni on my cell phone. If I was right, it would explain why he didn’t detect the odor of ignitable liquids at either of our fire scenes.
“Chuck? It’s Lindsay. Could those fires have been set with booze?”
Chapter 63
THE SUN WENT DOWN and someone in the night crew snapped on the bright overhead lights. Rich and I were still wandering around in the dark. Somewhere, a very smug killer was having his dinner, toasting himself on his success, maybe planning another fire – and we didn’t know who he was or when he would strike again.
While Chi and McNeil reinterviewed the Malones’ and the Meachams’ friends and neighbors, Conklin and I sat at our desks, going over the murder book together. We reviewed Claire’s findings, the photos of rubberneckers at the fire scenes, the handwriting expert’s comparison of the inscriptions in each of the books left at the fire scenes, and the expert’s opinion: “I can’t say one hundred percent because it’s block lettering, but looks like all the samples were written by the same hand.”
We reviewed our own eyeball tours of the crime scenes, trying to reduce all of it to a few illuminating truths, speaking in the kind of shorthand that you use with a partner. And I felt that other connection, too, the one I wouldn’t let Rich mention but sometimes just arced across our desks. Like it was doing now.
I got up, went to the bathroom, washed my face, got a cup of coffee for me and one for Conklin, black, no sugar. Sat back down, said, “Now, where were we?”
As the night tour walked and talked around us, Rich ticked off on his fingers what we had: “The couples were all in their forties and well-to-do. The doors to all the houses were unlocked, and the alarms weren’t set. No sign of gunfire. The couples all had a child of college age. They were all robbed, but the killer took only jewelry and cash.”
“Okay, and here are a few suppositions,” I said. “The killer is smart enough and unthreatening enough to talk his way into the houses. And I’m going to also say that it seems probable that there were two assailants; one to tie up the victims, one to hold a gun.”
Rich nodded, said, “He or they used fishing line as ligatures because they’d burn off quickly in the fire. And they used an untraceable accelerant. That’s careful. They don’t leave evidence, and that’s smart.
“But I don’t think Molly Chu was in the plan,” Rich added. “This is the first time another person was in the house with the victims. I’m thinking Molly had already passed out from smoke inhalation when her ‘angel’ found her and subsequently carried her out. Kind of heroic, wouldn’t you say?”
“So maybe the killer thought she didn’t see him,” I said. “And so he felt safe carrying her out of the house. Yeah, I don’t think he wanted the little girl to die, hon.”
Rich looked up, grinned at me.
“I, uh. Didn’t mean – shit.”
“Forget it, babe,” said Conklin. “Means nothin’.” He grinned wider.
I said, “Shut up,” and threw a paper clip at his head. He snatched it out of the air and went on.
“So,” he said, “let’s say Molly saw one of the killers, okay? And let’s say he’s a college-age kid as Molly suggested. The Malones, the Meachams, the Chus, and that couple in Palo Alto, the Jablonskys – they all had kids in college. But their kids all went to different schools.”
“True,” I said. “But a kid, any kid, comes to the door and looks presentable, Mom and Dad might open it.
“Rich, maybe that’s the con. When I was in school, I was always bringing people home that my mom didn’t know. So, what if a couple of kids come to the door and say they’re friends with your kid?”
“That would be easy to fake,” Rich said. “Local newspapers do stories on kids at school. So-and-so’s daughter or son, attending such-and-such school won this-or-that award.”
Rich drummed his fingers on the desk, and I rested my chin in my hand. Instead of feeling on the brink of a breakthrough, it seemed that we’d just opened the field of potential suspects to every male college-age kid in California who knew high school Latin – and, by the way, was into robbery, torture, arson, and murder.
I thought about the puzzle pieces. Providence favoring the killers’ actions, and money being the root of all evil. There was the sci-fi book Fahrenheit 451, and now a book about a high-placed fire official who’d set fires. When John Orr was caught, he’d said, “I was stupid, and I did what stupid people do.”
These killers weren’t making Orr’s mistakes.
They were going out of their way to show just how smart they were. Was saving Molly Chu their one miscalculation?
Rich’s phone rang and he swiveled his chair toward the wall. He lowered his voice and said, “We’re working on it, Kelly, right now. It’s all we’re doing. I promise, when we know something, I’ll call you. We won’t let you down.”
Chapter 64
YUKI WAS AT the Whole Foods Market six blocks from her apartment, looking over the produce, thinking about a quick stir-fry for dinner, when she thought she glimpsed a familiar figure down the aisle. When she looked again, he was gone. She was hallucinating, she thought, so tired she could conjure up bogeymen anywhere. She dropped a head of broccoli into her cart and moved on toward the meat section.
There she selected a shrink-wrapped tray of tiger prawns -and got the feeling again that Jason Twilly was only yards away.
She looked up.
And there he was, dressed in navy blue pinstripes, pink shirt, wearing a full smirk and standing near the pile of frozen free-range turkeys. Twilly waggled his fingers but made no move toward her, though he didn’t turn away. He had no cart, no basket.
The bastard wasn’t shopping.
He was stalking her.
Yuki’s sudden fury gathered power and momentum, so that she saw only one possible course of action. She shoved her cart to the side of the aisle and marched toward Twilly, stopping a few feet from his sturdy English shoes.
“What are you doing here, Jason?” she said, stretching her neck to look up at his crazy-handsome face with the eight-hundred-dollar eyeglass frames and lopsided smile.
“Leave the groceries, Yuki,” he said. “Let me take you out to dinner. I promise I’ll behave. I just want to make up to you for our misunderstanding the last time -”
“I want to be very clear about this,” Yuki said, cutting him off, using her clipped, rapid-fire style. “Mistakes happen. Maybe the misunderstanding was my fault, and I’ve apologized. Again, I’m sorry it happened. But you have to understand. I’m not interested, Jason – in anyone. It’s all work, all the time, for me. I’m not available, okay? So please don’t follow me again.”
Jason’s odd, twisted smile blossomed into a full-blown laugh. “Nice speech,” he said, clapping his hands, an exaggerated round of mock applause.
Yuki felt a little shock of fear as she backed away. What was wrong with this guy? What was he capable of doing? She remembered Cindy’s warning to her to be careful of what she said around Twilly. Would he dirty her reputation when he wrote about the Junie Moon trial?
Whatever.
“Good-bye, Jason. Leave me alone. I mean it.”
“Hey, I’m writing a book, remember?” Twilly called out to her as she turned her back on him. She heard his voice as she pushed her cart down the aisle.
She wanted to hide. She wanted to disappear.
“You’re a key player, Yuki. Sorry if you don’t like it, but you’re the star of my whole freakin’ show.”
Chapter 65
WE WERE GATHERED on the deck of Rose Cottage, outside of Point Reyes, feeling the blessed night breeze on our cheeks. Yuki flipped on the heater for the hot tub, while Claire tossed a giant salad and made burgers for the grill.
This impromptu getaway was Cindy’s idea. She had corralled us in a conference call only hours before, saying, “Since our first attempt at a Women’s Murder Club Annual Getaway Weekend was canceled due to someone answering a call to return to work, we should grab this opportunity to drop everything and go now.”
Cindy added that she’d booked the cottage and that she would drive.
There was no saying no to Cindy, and for once I was glad to turn the wheel over to her.
Yuki and Claire had both slept in the backseat during the drive, and I’d ridden shotgun with Martha in my lap, her ears flapping in the wind. I listened to Cindy talk over the car’s CD player, my mind floating blissfully as we neared the ocean.
Once we’d arrived at the rose-covered hobbit house with its two snug bedrooms plus picnic table and grill in the clearing at the edge of a forest, we’d slapped each other high fives and dropped our bags on our beds. Yuki had left her box of files in her room and come with Martha and me as we took a short run up a moonlit trail to the top of a wooded ridge and back again.
And now I was ready for a meal, a margarita, and a great night’s sleep. But when we got back to Rose Cottage, my cell phone was ringing. Claire groused, “That damned thing’s been ringin’ its buttons off, girlfriend. Either turn it off or give it to me and I’ll stomp it to death.”
I grinned at my best friend, pulled the phone from my handbag, saw the number on the caller ID.
It was Jacobi.
I stabbed the send button, said hello, and heard traffic noise mixed in with the wail of fire engine sirens.
I shouted, “Jacobi. Jacobi, what’s up?”
“Didn’t you get my messages?”
“No, I just caught this ring on the fly.”
The sirens in the background, the fact that Jacobi was calling at all, caused me to imagine a new fire and another couple of charred bodies killed by a psycho looking for kicks. I pressed my ear hard to the phone, strained to hear Jacobi over the street noise.
“I’m on Missouri Street,” he told me.
That was my street. What was he doing on my street? Had something happened to Joe?
“There’s been a fire, Boxer. Look, there’s no good way to say this. You have to come home right now.”
Chapter 66
JACOBI DISCONNECTED the phone call, leaving static in my ear and a god-awful gap between what he’d said and what he’d left out.
“There’s been a fire on Missouri Street,” I announced to the girls. “Jacobi told me to come home!”
Cindy gave me the keys and we piled into her car. I floored the accelerator and we bumped down the twisting roads of the backwoods of Olema and out to the highway. I called Joe as I drove, ringing his apartment and mine, and I rang his cell, pressed redial again and again, never getting an answer.
Where was he? Where was Joe?
I don’t ask God for much, but as we neared Potrero Hill, I was praying that Joe was safe. When we reached Missouri at Twentieth, I saw that my street was roped off. I parked in the first empty spot, gripped Martha’s leash, and dashed up the steep residential block, leaving the girls to follow behind.
I was winded when I caught sight of my house, saw that it was fenced in by fire rigs, patrol cars, and bystanders filling the narrow street. I frantically scoured the
faces in the crowd, saw the two female students who lived on the second floor and the building manager, Sonya Marron, who lived on the ground floor.
Sonya reached through the crowd and gripped my arm, saying, “Thank God, thank God.” There were tears in her eyes.
“Was anyone hurt?”
“No,” she said. “No one was home.”
I hugged her then, relieved at last that Joe had not fallen asleep in my bed. But I still had questions, a ton of them. “What happened?” I asked Sonya.
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
I looked for Jacobi, but I found Claire shouting at the fire captain, “I under-stand it may be a crime scene, but she’s a cop. With the SFPD!”
I knew the fire department captain, Don Walker, a thin man with a prominent nose, weary eyes peering out from the soot on his face. He threw up his hands, and then he opened the front door. Claire gathered me under her wing, and along with Yuki, Cindy, and Martha, we entered the three-story apartment house that had been my home for ten years.
Chapter 67
I WAS WEAK-KNEED as we mounted the stairs, but my mind was sharp. The stairs hadn’t burned, and the doors to the two lower apartments stood open. The apartments looked untouched by fire. This made no sense.
But it all became clear at the top of the stairs.
The door to my apartment was in shards. I stepped through the shattered door frame and saw the stars and the moon where my ceiling used to be. I lowered my eyes from the night sky, finding it hard to take in the grotesque condition of my little nest. The walls were black, curtains gone, the glass in my kitchen cabinets blown out. My crockery and the food in my pantry had exploded, making the place smell crazily like popcorn and Clorox.
My cozy living room furniture had melted down into hunks of sodden foam and wire springs. And then I knew – the fire had taken everything. Martha whined and I bent to her, buried my face in her fur.
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