Women's Murder Club [07] 7th Heaven

by James Patterson

  “Have you ever seen this young man?” I asked, showing her a Polaroid of Ronald Grayson.

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Have you seen anyone hanging around or driving by who may have seemed out of place in the neighborhood?” asked Jacobi.

  “Darwin! Shut up! I don’t think so, no.”

  “Any kids or cars that don’t belong here? Anyone ring your bell who seemed out of place? Any suspicious phone calls or deliveries?”

  No. No. No.

  And now she was asking questions. What about the fire at the Malones’? Was it an accident as she had assumed? Were we suggesting that it was deliberately set?

  Had the Malones been murdered?

  Jacobi said, “We’re just doing an investigation, Ms. Savino. No need to get your bowels in an —”

  I cut him off. “What about your dogs?” I asked. “Did they set up any kind of an uproar last night at around ten thirty?”

  “The fire trucks made them crazy, but not before.”

  “Do you find it unusual that the Malones didn’t arm their security system?” I asked.

  “I don’t think they even locked their doors,” she said. And that was her final word. She opened her door, let in the pack, then closed it firmly behind her, locks and bolts clicking into place.

  Over four hours and a dozen interviews later, Jacobi and I had learned that the Malones were churchgoing, well liked, generous, friendly, and got along well together, and not one soul knew of anyone who hated them. They were the perfect couple. So who had killed them, and why?

  Jacobi was grousing about his aching feet when my cell phone rang. Conklin, calling from the car.

  “I looked up that pyramid symbol on the dollar bill,” he said. “It has to do with the Masons, a secret society that goes back to the 1700s. George Washington was a Mason. So was Benjamin Franklin. Most of the Founding Fathers.”

  “Yeah, okay. How about Bert Malone? Was he a Mason?”

  “Kelly says no way. She’s with me now, Lindsay. We’re heading over to her parents’ house.”

  Chapter 26

  WE PULLED UP to the curb at the same time Conklin’s car arrived. His passenger-side door swung open before he’d come to a full halt and a young woman sprang out, dashed across the lawn toward the remains of the Malone house.

  Conklin called out to her, but she didn’t stop. For a second she turned her face into our headlights and I saw her clearly. She was a whip-slim thirty-year-old in tights, a tiny skirt, a brown leather jacket. Her hair was copper-red, worn in a braid down her back long enough to sit on. Wisps of hair had escaped the braid, haloing her face in our headlights. Halo was the right word.

  Kelly Malone had the face of a Madonna.

  Conklin ran to catch up to her, and by the time Jacobi and I reached them, Conklin had opened the fire department lock on the front door. With dusky light filtering in through the caved-in roof, we walked Kelly Malone through the skeleton of her parents’ house. It was a wrenching tour, Conklin staying close to Kelly’s side as she cried out, “Oh, God, oh, God. Richie, no one could have hated them this much. I just don’t believe it.”

  Kelly avoided the library where her parents had died. Instead she walked upstairs into a smoky cone of light. Conklin was beside Kelly when she crossed the threshold into what remained of the master suite. The ceiling had been punched out with pike poles. Soot and water had destroyed the furnishings, the carpeting, and the photos on the walls.

  Kelly lifted a wedding portrait of her parents from the floor, wiped it with her sleeve. The glass hadn’t broken, but water had seeped in along the edges.

  “I think this can be restored,” she said, tears cracking her voice.

  “Sure. Sure, that can be done,” Conklin said.

  He showed Kelly the open safe in the closet, asked her if she knew what her parents had kept there.

  “My mom had some antique pieces that my grandmother left her. I guess the insurance company will have a list.”

  Jacobi asked, “Miss Malone. Anyone you can think of who might have had a grudge against your parents?”

  “I haven’t lived here since I was eighteen,” she said. “My dad could throw his weight around at the dealership, but if there’d been any serious threats, my mom would’ve told me.

  “Are you sure this wasn’t an accident?” she asked, turning pleading eyes on my partner.

  Conklin said, “I’m sorry, Kelly. This was no accident.”

  He put his arms around her and Kelly sobbed against his chest. Her pain was breaking my own heart. Still, I had to ask. “Kelly, who stands to benefit the most from your parents’ death?”

  The young woman recoiled as if I’d struck her.

  “Me,” she shouted. “I do. And my brother. You got us. We hired a hit man to kill our parents and torch the house so that we could inherit our parents’ money.”

  I said, “Kelly, I’m sorry. I wasn’t implying that you had anything to do with this.” But she talked only to Conklin after that.

  As I stood downstairs with Jacobi, I overheard Rich tell Kelly about the note in Latin written on the flyleaf of a book.

  “Latin? I don’t know anything about that. If Mom or Dad wrote anything in Latin, it would have been the first and only time,” said Kelly Malone.

  Chapter 27

  HAWK HAD TRAPPED the roach under an eight-ounce drinking glass upended on top of the worktable he used as a desk in his room at home. The roach was a Blatta orientalis, the oriental cockroach, about an inch long and shiny black, commonly found in all the swank houses of Palo Alto.

  But although this bug was common, he was special to Hawk.

  “You’re doing very well, Macho,” Hawk said to the roach. “It’s not much of a bug’s life, I have to admit, but you’re worthy of the challenge.”

  Behind Hawk, Pidge lay on Hawk’s bed reading background material on an upcoming class project: a three-dimensional fax, something that had probably been inspired by the “beam me up, Scotty” technology from Star Trek and was now becoming manifest in the real world.

  How it worked was, a machine scanned an object at point A, and an identical object was created by a laser carving out a replica from another material at point Z. But Pidge knew all of this. He’d seen the demo. So what he was doing was busywork while he waited for Hawk to get his lazy ass in gear.

  “You’re behind on the dialogue,” Pidge grumbled. “Instead of talking to that bug, you should do the dialogue before your stupid parents come home.”

  “Why don’t you like Macho?” Hawk asked. “He’s been living on air and whatever body oil might have been on the desk for, um, sixteen days. Haven’t you, Macho? It’s damned admirable, Pidge. Seriously.”

  “Seriously, bro, you’re an asshole.”

  “You’re missing the nobility of the experiment,” Hawk continued, unfazed. “A creature descended from insects that’ve been around since the first ass crack of time. Macho is living on air. And if he lives for four more days, I’m going to release him. That’s the deal I made with him. I’m thinking up his reward right now.

  “Macho,” Hawk said, bending over to examine his captive. He tapped on the glass. The roach’s antennae waved at him. “I’m thinking chocolate brownie, dude.”

  Pidge got up off the bed, strode to the desk, reached over Hawk’s shoulder, and removed the glass. He made a fist, pounded it down on the bug, squashing it on the Formica table. One of Macho’s legs moved in a postterminal reflex.

  “Hey! Why’d you do that, man? Why’d you —”

  “Ars longa, vita brevis. Art is long, dude. Life is short. Write the dialogue for the freaking chapter, bug man, or I’m outta here.”

  Chapter 28

  CONKLIN AND I had been working pawnshops all day, hoping one of Patricia Malone’s pieces of jewelry would turn up — and if it did, maybe we’d have a lead we could work with. The last shop on our list was a hole between two bars on Mission, the Treasure Coop.

  I’m not sure the ow
ner heard the bell ring over the door when Conklin and I came in, but he picked up our reflection from one of the dozens of mirrors hanging on the walls and came out from the back of the store. His name was Ernie Cooper. He was a slablike man from the Vietnam era and seemed to fill up his store. Cooper had a gray ponytail and an iPod in his shirt pocket, cords dangling from his ears. There was the bulge of a gun under his jacket.

  While Conklin showed Cooper the insurance company’s photos of Patricia Malone’s Victorian jewelry, I looked around at the innumerable trophies, guitars, and out-of-date computers, and at the stuffed monkey with a lamp coming out of its back perched on a plant stand. A collection of fetal pigs was lined up on one of the four counters, which were filled with wedding bands, watches, military medals, and junk gold chains.

  Ernie Cooper whistled when he saw the photos.

  “What’s all this worth, a couple hundred thou?”

  “Something like that,” Conklin said.

  “Nobody brings this kind of stuff to me, but who am I looking for, anyway?”

  “Maybe him,” Conklin said, slapping down a photocopy of the Polaroid of Ronald Grayson.

  “I can keep this?” Cooper asked.

  “Sure, and here’s my card,” Rich said.

  “Homicide.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So, this was what? Armed robbery?”

  Conklin smiled. “If this kid comes in, if anyone comes in with this stuff, we want to know.”

  I noticed a small black-and-white snapshot stuck to the cash register. It was a photo of Ernie Cooper coming down the steps of the Civic Center Courthouse, and he was wearing the uniform of the SFPD. Cooper saw me looking at the photo, said, “I notice your shield says Boxer on it. I used to work with a guy by that name.”

  “Marty Boxer?”

  “That’s the guy.”

  “He’s my father.”

  “No kidding? I couldn’t stand him, no offense.”

  “No offense taken,” I said.

  Cooper nodded, rang up a “no sale,” and put the photocopies of Grayson’s picture and the Malone jewelry along with Conklin’s card inside the cash register, under the tray.

  “I’ve still got the instincts, maybe even better than when I was on the Job. I’ll put out the word. If I hear anything,” Ernie Cooper said, shoving the cash drawer shut, “I’ll be in touch. That’s a promise.”

  Chapter 29

  THE SKY HAD TURNED GRAY while Conklin and I were inside Ernie Cooper’s pawnshop. Muted thunder grumbled as we walked to Twenty-first Street, and by the time we got into the squad car, the first fat drops of rain splattered against the windshield. I cranked up the window, pinching the web between my thumb and forefinger. I shouted, “Damn,” with more vehemence than was absolutely necessary.

  I was frustrated. So was Rich. The long workday had netted us exactly nothing. Rich fumbled with the keys, his brow wrinkled, exhaustion weighing him down like a heavy coat.

  “You want me to drive?”

  My partner turned off the ignition and sighed, threw himself back into the seat.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Give me the keys.”

  “I can drive. That’s not the problem.”

  “What is?”

  “It’s you.”

  Me? Was he mad at me for questioning Kelly?

  “What did I do?”

  “You just are, you know?”

  Aw, no. I tried to ward off this conversation by imploring him with my eyes and thinking, Please don’t go there, Richie. But the pictures flashed into my mind, a strobe-lit sequence of images of a late work night in LA that had turned into a reckless, heated clinch on a hotel bed. My body had been screaming yes, yes, yes, but my clearer mind slammed on the brakes — and I’d told Richie no.

  Six months later, the memory was still with us inside the musty Crown Victoria, crackling like lightning as the rain came down. Richie saw the alarm on my face.

  “I’m not going to do anything,” he insisted. “I would never do anything — I’m just not good at keeping what I feel to myself, Lindsay. I know you’re with Joe. I get it. I just want you to know that I’ve got this arrow through my heart. And I would do anything for you.”

  “Rich, I can’t,” I said, looking into his eyes, seeing the pain there and not knowing how to make it right.

  “Aw, jeez,” he said. He covered his face with his hands, screamed, “Aaaaaargh.” Then he pounded the steering wheel a couple of times before reaching for the keys and starting up the car again.

  I put my hand on his wrist. “Rich, do you want another partner?”

  He laughed, said, “Delete the last forty-two seconds, okay, Lindsay? I’m an idiot, and I’m sorry.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Forget it. Don’t even think about it.”

  Rich checked the rearview mirror and turned the car into the stream of traffic. “I just want to remind you,” he said, cracking a strained smile, “when I worked with Jacobi, nothing like this ever happened.”

  Chapter 30

  THE POPULATION OF COLMA, California, is heavily skewed toward the dead. The ratio of those below the ground to those breathing air is about twelve to one. My mom is buried at Cypress Lawn in Colma, and so is Yuki’s mom, and now Kelly Malone and her brother, Eric, were burying their parents here, too.

  It would appear to the casual observer that I was alone.

  I’d put flowers at the base of a pink granite stone engraved with “Benjamin and Heidi Robson,” two people I didn’t know. Then I sat on a bench a hundred feet from where the grass-scented breeze puffed out the tent flaps where the Malones’ funeral was in progress.

  My Glock was holstered under my blue jacket, and the microphone inside my shirt connected me to the patrol cars at the entrance to the cemetery. I was watching for a gangly kid named Ronald Grayson, or someone else who looked out of place, a stranger with a penchant for torture and murder. It didn’t happen every time, but some killers just had to see the end of the show, give themselves a psychic round of applause.

  I hoped we’d get lucky.

  As I watched, Kelly Malone stood in front of the group of fifty, her back to the pair of coffins. And I saw Richie, his eyes on Kelly as she gave her eulogy. I couldn’t hear any of the words, just the sound of a lawn mower in the distance and soon enough, the squeal of the winch lowering the coffins into the ground. Kelly and her brother each tossed a handful of earth into their parents’ graves and turned away.

  Kelly went into Rich’s arms and he held her.

  There was something touching and familiar about the way they fit together, as if they were still a couple. I felt a painful pull in my gut and tried to shut it down. When Kelly and Rich left the tent and walked with the priest in my direction, I turned before they came close enough to see my eyes.

  I spoke into the collar of my shirt, said, “This is Boxer. I’m coming in.”

  Chapter 31

  LOCATED TWO BLOCKS AWAY and across the street from the Hall of Justice, MacBain’s Beers O’ the World Pub is the eatery of choice for lawyers and cops, anyone who doesn’t mind sitting at a table the size of a dinner napkin and shouting over the noise.

  Cindy and Yuki had a table by the window, Yuki with her back against the doorjamb, Cindy’s chair rocking whenever the man sitting behind her moved his rump. Cindy was mesmerized by the perpetual motion of Yuki’s hands as she talked. Yuki had twenty minutes to eat and run, and she’d stepped up her usual warp-speed conversational style to fit the time allowed.

  “I begged for this case,” Yuki said, folding one of Cindy’s french fries into her mouth, telling Cindy what she’d told her many, many times before. “Three people were in line ahead of me, and Red Dog is letting me run with it because of Brinkley.”

  Red Dog was Yuki’s boss, Leonard Parisi, the red-haired and legendary bulldog deputy DA, and Brinkley was Alfred Brinkley, “the Ferry Shooter,” and Yuki’s first big case for the DA’s office. The Brinkley trial had been heat
ed, the public enraged that a mentally disabled man with a gun had mowed down five citizens who’d been enjoying a Saturday afternoon ferry ride out on the bay.

  “It’s so ironic,” Yuki said to Cindy. “I mean, with Brinkley, I had nothing but evidence. The gun, the confession, two hundred eyewitnesses, the fricking videotape of the shootings. With Junie Moon it’s just the opposite.” She stopped talking long enough to slurp her diet cola through a straw down to the bottom of the glass.

  “We’ve got no murder weapon, no body, no witnesses — just a recanted confession from a girl who is so dim it’s hard to believe she’s bright enough to boil eggs. I don’t dare lose, Cindy.”

  “Take it easy, hon. You’re not going to —”

  “I could. I could. But I’m not going to do it. And now, Junie’s got a new lawyer.”

  “Who?”

  “L. Diana Davis.”

  “Oh man, oh man, oh man.”

  “Yep. Cherry on top. I’m up against a big-time feminist bone crusher. Oh! I forgot. This writer is doing a book on Michael Campion. He’s been following me around all week. His name is Jason Twilly, and he wants to talk to you.”

  “Jason Twilly? The author of those true-crime blockbusters?”

  “Yep. That’s the one.”

  “Yuki. Jason Twilly is a giant. He’s a star!”

  “That’s what he says.” Yuki laughed. “I gave him your number. He just wants some background on me. I don’t care what you tell him as long as you don’t tell him that I’m freaking out.”

  “You’re a piece a’ work, ya know?”

  Yuki laughed. “Oops. Gotta go,” she said, putting a twenty under a corner of the bread basket.

  “Got a meeting with Red Dog,” Yuki said. “There were three people in line in front of me, Cindy. You know, if he’d assigned this case to anyone but me, I would’ve offed myself. So I only have one option. I have to win.”