The fire still raged in the back of the house and on the upper stories. The two manned fire hoses at the front door snaked across the floor of the foyer and disappeared out the right-hand doorway somewhere back into the inferno. Becker, now suited up in his turnout coat and night helmet, his Scotts down over his face, also held a wide-beam flashlight that he trained on the bodies. He squatted like a baseball catcher, having learned that to put a knee on the floor was an invitation to pain and suffering.
The clothing had been burned off where they had been exposed, but even though both figures were lying on their backs, he couldn’t tell what sex either had been. One was larger, and one smaller, so they were possibly a man and a woman, but he wouldn’t be sure until the coroner was finished with them. The hair and any distinguishing characteristics on the faces, likewise, were burned away.
Something in the resting attitudes struck him, though. He had seen many dead people before, the victims of fire, as well as victims of murder and/or suicide, who were at fire scenes but dead before they burned. In his experience, the bodies of people who died from fire or smoke inhalation as the blaze grew around them tended to curl protectively into a fetal position. Victims of murder or suicide most often lay as they fell, and these two bodies fit that profile. There was still the characteristic drawing up of the extremities as the flesh cooked, but it did not strongly resemble the curled-up bodies he’d seen of victims who’d died by fire and fire alone.
Suspicious by nature and now by circumstance, Becker reached for a flashlight-like device he wore on his belt— the multi-gas-detecting AIM-32/50. Turning it on, he waved it down the sides of the smaller victim—the one nearest to the front door—and wasn’t exactly stunned to see that it registered the presence of gasoline.
So, Becker thought, this was probably arson. And from the attitudes of the bodies, it was quite possibly a murder, or a murder/suicide, as well.
Becker tucked in his gas detector, then trained his flashlight again on the smaller body in front of him. Directly over his head, a deafening crash shook the building and rained charcoal down over him, but he barely heard or noted it. The small and perfectly round hole high in the back of the head, above and behind where the ear should have been located—it had burned away—commanded all of his attention. Stepping over the smaller torso, Becker moved over the still-squishy rug, squatted and shone his light on the other victim. Tucked under the side of the torso, a glint of metal shone up when his beam hit it. Becker wasn’t going to touch anything at this point, but he lowered his light’s trajectory and saw enough to realize that he was looking at the barrel of a gun.
At a little after eleven p.m., Inspector Sergeant Dan Cuneo of San Francisco’s homicide detail parked his unmarked car on the opposite side of Alamo Square and began to make his way through the large, awestruck, worried crowd. His immediate sense was that this fire was nowhere near to being controlled. Three houses on the block now appeared to be burning, and in the crowd he overheard snatches of panicked conversations, some from what must have been residents. People staring mesmerized, some crying, some talking in hushed tones. As he came closer, he noticed a cordoned-off command area on the steps up the street that led into the park.
Cuneo knew where he needed to go, and he made a beeline toward the white helmet that seemed to hover above the crowd. The white helmet belonged to the incident commander. Every fire scene had an IC, and his power within that setting was absolute. The president of the United States could show up at a fire, wanting to get a better look, and the IC could order him to chill for a while and that would be the end of the discussion.
Cuneo got close enough to make out some of the faces that had gathered around this IC—the name tag over his left pocket said “Shaklee.” He was taller than Cuneo’s own six feet. Cuneo pushed his way through the crowd, excused himself and presented his badge. Shaklee nodded distractedly, said something into his walkie-talkie, came back to Cuneo. “You need to see Becker.” He pointed toward the steps. “The guy talking to the woman in the leather jacket.”
Cuneo nodded his thanks and started walking over. He was an edgy man in his early forties, unable to keep still or quiet—he could not eat or listen to a witness or a colleague without humming—and this trait had kept him from retaining a regular partner in homicide. For the past year or more, he’d been working strictly solo. His fellow inspectors considered him a character, but not quite a weirdo. It was a critical distinction.
Handsome in an unusual way, Cuneo’s face had an oddly misshapen character as well, almost as though it had once been broken down to its integral pieces and then imperfectly reassembled. His nose initially protruded to a ridge, then hooked left and went flat as though someone had pushed it in like a thumbtack. At times he appeared cross-eyed. He’d obviously survived a serious bout with teenage acne, but instead of scarring, the skin over his cheeks had taken on a stretched, almost shiny look—maybe too many skin peels. An inventory of the individual parts wouldn’t indicate it, but somehow the mishmash came together in a way that pleased his girlfriends.
Now he was at the steps. Even here across the street and back into the shelter of the park, the fire was making it uncomfortably warm. Cuneo grabbed a Styrofoam cup of water from a table someone had set up and got himself close enough to listen to Becker and the woman in the leather coat. She wasn’t a kid—maybe, Cuneo figured, about his age—but she was still very attractive. Cuneo’s antennae for women were always up—he couldn’t help himself and saw no reason to change. Close up, he noticed that the woman’s jacket hung open, partially revealing an all-grown-up but tight-looking body in a blue silk blouse, and below a thin waist tucked into designer jeans. The woman’s stylish medium-length hair picked up highlights from the flames. One of the ageless babes, he thought, as he automatically checked for a wedding ring—not that it always mattered. She wore one.
He moved a step closer, started flicking the side of his cup with his fingers.
“. . . as soon as I saw it on the television,” the woman was saying. “I was just over here with Paul this afternoon, so I knew exactly . . .”
Becker held up a finger, stopping her, directed a flat gaze to Cuneo. “Can I help you?”
Cuneo quickly brought his cup to his mouth and flicked free the last of the ice. Flashing his badge, he mumbled around the small cubes. “Sorry. Dan Cuneo. Homicide.”
Becker stuck a hand out. “Becker. Arson. And that’s what this is.”
The woman turned to face Cuneo. “You’re with homicide? Is somebody dead in there then?” Back to Becker. “You know that? God, it’s got to be Paul.”
Cuneo: “Paul who?”
“Paul Hanover. It’s his house.” She turned all the way around and stared back at what was left of the place. By this time, the fire had collapsed much of the structure.
The front doorway still stood, and most of the second floor, but the third and fourth stories were all but gone. “He’s in there? You’ve got to get him out before . . .”
Becker cut her off. “There’s no reason to get him out, ma’am. He was dead a half hour ago. If you knew him, I’m sorry.” Pointing toward the house, Becker said to Cuneo, “They’re directing the master streams—that’s those major hoses—to try and preserve as much of your crime scene as they can. But there’s no telling.”
Cuneo nodded. “The call said there were two of them.”
“Yep.”
“Oh my God,” the woman said again. “That’s got to be Missy, too.”
Cuneo turned from the house to the woman, introduced himself again, flashed his badge. “And who are you, please?”
“Catherine Hanover. I’m Paul’s daughter-in-law. Paul Hanover. He lives—lived here.”
“Excuse me,” Cuneo said, “are you talking about the Paul Hanover?”
“If you mean the lawyer, yes.” She looked back to the house. “I can’t believe he’s in there.”
“Somebody’s in there,” Becker said, “but we don’t know it’s Mr. Hanov
er. Or Missy.”
“Who’s Missy?” Cuneo asked.
“Michelle D’Amiens, Paul’s girlfriend. Fiancée. Everybody called her Missy. They were getting married in the fall.” Suddenly, a bolt of panic shot through her.
“Can’t you do anything? You can’t just let them stay in there. There won’t be anything left of them.”
Becker’s mouth was set as he shared a look with Cuneo. Both knew the awful truth, that the bodies were already unrecognizable, charred beyond any hope of recognition. Identification and forensic evidence, if any, would mostly come from a lab now. Neither they nor anyone else could do anything to change that.
“Mrs. Hanover,” Becker said, “maybe you want to find a place to sit. Or go on home. Whatever happens here is going to take a long while. We can get your address and phone number and contact you in the morning.”
But Cuneo wasn’t quite ready to dismiss her. “Did I hear you say that you were over here at this house earlier today?”
“Yes.”
“Why was that?”
“I wanted to talk to Paul about something, just some family stuff.”
“Did you see him?”
She nodded. “Yes. We had some coffee.” Her eyes were drawn back to the inferno. Bringing her hand up, she rubbed her forehead. “He can’t be in there right now. That’s just not possible. And Missy.”
“Was Missy there when you talked to Paul today?” Cuneo asked.
“No. I don’t know. I didn’t see her, anyway.”
“So what was the family stuff?”
The question stopped her and she frowned. “Why? What difference would that make?”
Cuneo looked to Becker, who shrugged. He came back to Catherine Hanover. “I don’t know. If the man’s dead, everything he did in his last hours is going to come under scrutiny. If this was arson, and Inspector Becker here says it is, somebody might have started the fire to kill somebody in the house. I’m going to want to know everything about his last day.”
Becker butted in. “Could you please excuse us for a minute, ma’am?” Without waiting for her reply, he stepped in front of her and hooked an arm into Cuneo’s to turn him. When they’d moved off half a dozen steps, he said, “Before you go too far with her, maybe you should know that there was a gun under the larger torso, probably the man, maybe this Hanover. Also what looks like a bullet hole in one of the heads. Hers. Maybe in his, too, but I didn’t want to touch and turn him to find out.”
“So murder/suicide?”
Again, Becker shrugged. “Maybe. That’s one thing that fits, anyway. The gun was under his body.”
“He did himself and fell on the gun?”
“Maybe. Could be. That works. If the whole place goes up, I’ve got a roll of pictures I took you can look at tomorrow, then decide. Otherwise, if they can save the foyer, we might pull a break and be able to get in again by sunrise.” He glanced at the fire. “Not much before, I wouldn’t think.”
Cuneo nodded, found his eyes drawn back across the street, where most of the firefighting activity had now come to be centered on the houses to either side of Hanover’s. Becker could be right. It looked to Cuneo as though part of the crime scene might be salvaged after all. “So where’d this woman come from?”
“She said she was home watching TV and saw it on the news and recognized the place.”
“Where’s the rest of her family?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Maybe there isn’t any rest of it. I had just started talking to her when you got here.”
“All right.” Cuneo cast a glance over to Mrs. Hanover, who was also staring at the blaze, hypnotized by it. He came back to Becker. “But it’s definitely arson?”
“There was definitely gasoline residue under the smaller body.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s not enough?”
“No, I didn’t mean that.”
They had moved out in front of Mrs. Hanover, and now both men looked back to where she stood. Her coloring was high, unwitting excitement on her face, in the look in her eyes. With the heat from the fire, she’d removed her jacket and held it by a finger over her shoulder, a posture that emphasized her already generous bosom. “That’s a damn fine-looking woman,” Cuneo said.
“You going to let her go home?” Becker asked.
Cuneo kept his eyes on her. “Couple more minutes,” he said.
2
Fifty-five-year-old Abraham Glitsky had worked his way up through the ranks of the San Francisco Police Department and was now its deputy chief of inspectors. In his days as a homicide inspector, and then later as lieutenant in charge of the homicide detail, he was a slacks-and-flight jacket kind of cop, but since assuming his latest rank—the only step up was chief—he wore his blues every day. And though he wasn’t aware of it, he cut quite a figure in them. A former tight end at San Jose State, Glitsky stood six feet two and went about 220, none of it padding. Jewish on his father’s side and black on his mother’s, his blue eyes were set off against light mocha skin. But a deep scar that ran between both his lips kept him from ever considering himself even remotely good-looking. If he thought about it at all, and he didn’t, he’d admit that he probably looked a little scary, especially when he wasn’t smiling, which was most of the time. And he wasn’t all wrong.
At twelve minutes after seven on this fog-bound May morning, when Glitsky pulled his city-issued car to the curb at Alamo Square, he couldn’t have dredged up a smile on a bet. He’d routinely called his office from home for messages soon after he woke up and had learned about the double homicide and the five-alarm arson. The scene wasn’t much of a detour from his duplex above Lake on his route to work at the Hall of Justice, and he felt he needed to see it with his own eyes.
Getting out of his car, he stood for a moment surveying the still-smoking disaster that had occurred here last night. Before most of the city’s firefighters had finally stopped the spread of flames at around 3:00 a.m., all but two of the Painted Ladies had been affected to some degree or another. The one in the center was destroyed except for its steps and a circular area on the first floor behind the front door. On either side of that structure, the adjacent homes would have to be completely rebuilt. The one on Glitsky’s left as he faced the wreckage, which must have been slightly windward last night, was nothing but a burned-out skeleton. The former gingerbread house on the right was a gutted shell of broken-out windows and charred, peeling timbers. On either side of those houses, the adjacent homes yawned vacant and bereft—more broken windows, open front doors, obvious water and fire damage. Cleanup crews were spraying and sweeping all over the area. Teams of ax-wielding firemen jabbed and poked through the various wreckages, locating hidden hot spots for the hose crews.
Glitsky finally moved away from his car. Muted activity hummed all around him as he crossed down to the IC’s car. Hoses still snaked to fire hydrants. Two engines remained parked back to back in front of the middle home. Three trucks lined the near curb. The coroner’s van was double-parked by the engines near the middle of the street. Most of the onlookers had dispersed.
On the bumper of a car, a man in a white helmet sat holding a steaming cup in both hands. Glitsky, introducing himself, thought the man looked like he’d just come from a battlefield—and in a sense he supposed he had. Slack with fatigue, the IC’s face was blackened everywhere with soot, his eyes shot with red.
After they shook hands, Shaklee said, “My arson guys are still in there with Strout.” John Strout was the city’s medical examiner. “And your guy. Cuneo?” he added.
“Dan Cuneo, yeah.” Glitsky lifted his chin toward the houses. “All I got word of was fatality fire.”
“You don’t know who lived here?”
“No.”
“You know Paul Hanover?”
“No kidding?” Glitsky looked at the house. “Was he inside?”
“Somebody was. Two people, actually. From the sizes, a man and a woman, but we won’t know for sure who they we
re for a while.” Shaklee sipped at his drink. “They’re not identifiable.” He paused. “You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
“They were dead when the fire started. Shot.”
Glitsky’s eyes went back to the house.
“The gun’s still in there,” Shaklee said. “Under the bigger torso.”
“Paul Hanover.”
“Probably.”
“And his girlfriend?”
“That’s the rumor. You can go in.”
Glitsky blew a vapor trail, hesitating. Finally, he shook his head. “That’s all right. I’ve seen enough bodies to last me. Better if I didn’t step on Cuneo’s toes. It’s his case.”
Shaklee shrugged. “Your call.”
“Yeah.” Another pause, a last look toward the house. If anyone else from homicide besides Cuneo had drawn the case, Glitsky would have gone inside. “I’ll catch him and Strout downtown after they know a little more what they’ve got.” After a last glance at the destruction, he met Shaklee’s eye and shook his head at the waste and loss.
Crunching over broken glass and charred debris, he started walking back to his car.
The only time Abe and Treya Glitsky had ever seriously disagreed was before they got married. The issue was whether they would have children together.
Both of them had survived the deaths of their first spouses, and had raised their respective children as single parents. Treya had a teenage girl, Raney, and Abe already had two sons, Isaac and Jacob, out of the house, and Orel at the time he met Treya with only a couple of years to go. Abe, fifty-two then, figured he had already done the family thing and done it well. He didn’t suppose, and really wasn’t too keen about finding out, whether he’d have the energy or interest necessary to be an active and involved father again. To Treya, in her midthirties, this was a deal breaker, and the two broke up over it. The split had endured for eleven days before Abe changed his mind. Their baby, Rachel, was now nearly two and a half years old.
The Motive Page 2