“ROBBERY WAS THE MOTIVE for this?” Conklin shouted as Claire stepped into the den with her assistant in tow.
Before Claire could say, “Who died?” I reached out to her for a hug, said into her ear, “Conklin knew the victims.”
“Gotcha,” she said.
As Claire unpacked her scene kit, I told her about the manhandled corpse. Then I stepped out of her way as she took pictures of both bodies with her old Minolta, two shots from every angle.
“There are two doors to this room,” she said as her camera flashed. “Chuck, you say that this room was the point of origin. But the victims stayed in here. Why was that?”
“They could’ve been caught by surprise,” Hanni said. He was cutting samples from the carpet, putting fibers into K-packs.
“If they were drinking and fell asleep, maybe a cigarette dropped down into the couch cushions.”
Hanni explained what was still so hard to believe — that a fire could fill a room this size with smoke in less than a minute, that sleeping people could wake up coughing, be unable to see, get disoriented.
Chuck said, “Someone says, ‘Let’s go this way.’ Other person says, ‘No, it’s this way.’ Maybe someone falls. Smoke inhalation gets them. Boom, they’re down, and they’re unconscious. These two people were dead inside a couple of minutes.”
Conklin came back into the room holding a book in his gloved hand. “I found this on the staircase.”
He handed the book to me. “Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame. Charles Bukowski. Is this poetry?”
I opened the book to the title page, saw an inscription written there in ballpoint pen.
“This is Latin,” I said to my partner, sounding out the words. “Annuit Cœptis.”
“That’s pronounced chep-tus,” Conklin said. “It’s a motto inscribed on the dollar bill right above that symbol of the pyramid thing with the eye. Annuit Cœptis. ‘Providence favors our undertaking.’ ”
“You know Latin?”
He shrugged. “I went to Catholic school.”
I said, “So, what do you think, Rich? Is the firebug leaving us a message? That God’s okay with this?”
Conklin looked around at the destruction, said, “Not the God I believe in.”
Chapter 20
AT THREE THAT MORNING, Hanni, Conklin, and I watched the fire department board up the Malones’ windows and put a lock on the front door. The onlookers were back in their beds, and as the sounds of hammering cracked through the otherwise silent neighborhood, Hanni said, “There was a fire four months ago in Palo Alto, reminds me of this one.”
“How so?”
“Big, expensive house. The alarm was turned off. Two people died in the living room, and I had the same question in my mind: Why didn’t they leave?”
“Panic, disorientation, like you were saying.”
“Yeah, it happens. But since I wasn’t called in until a couple of days after the fire, I couldn’t know for sure. Drives me crazy when the fire department decides the fire’s accidental without an arson investigator present. Anyway, the bodies were cremated at the funeral home by the time I was called.”
“You thought the fire was suspicious?” Conklin asked.
Hanni nodded. “I still think so. The victims were good people, and they had money. But no one could come up with a motive for anyone to kill Henry and Peggy Jablonsky — not revenge, not insurance fraud, not even ‘I hate your face.’ So I was left with a bad feeling and no way to tell if the fire was arson or a spark flew out of the fireplace and lit up the Christmas tree.”
“I guess you didn’t find a book with Latin written inside,” I said.
“By the time I got there, the ‘evidence eradication unit’ had tossed a mountain of soaked household goods into the front yard. I guess I wasn’t looking for a book.”
Hanni took his car keys out of his pocket. “Okay, guys, I’m done. See you in a few hours.”
Rich and I stood back from his van as the arson investigator drove off.
“Were you able to reach Kelly?” I asked my partner.
“Got her answering machine. I didn’t know what to say.” He shook his head. “I finally said, ‘It’s Rich. Conklin. I know it’s been a long time, Kelly. But. Um. Could you call me right away?’ ”
“That’s good. That’s fine.”
“I don’t know. She’ll either think I’m a psycho for calling her at one in the morning to say hello after twelve years. Or, if she knows that I’m a cop, I just scared the hell out of her.”
Chapter 21
THE ME’S OFFICE is in a building connected to the Hall of Justice by a breezeway out the back door of the lobby. Claire was already working in the chilly gray heart of the autopsy suite when I got there at 9:30 that morning. She said, “Hey, darlin’,” barely looking up as she drew her scalpel from Patty Malone’s sternum to her pelvic bone. The dead woman’s hands were clenched and her legless body was carbonized.
“She hardly looks like a person,” I said.
“Bodies burn like candles, you know,” Claire said. “They become part of the fuel.” She clamped back the burned tissue.
“Did the blood tests come back from the lab?”
“About ten minutes ago. Mrs. Malone had had a couple of drinks. Mr. Malone had antihistamine in his blood. That could have made him sleepy.”
“And what about carbon monoxide?” I was asking as Chuck Hanni came through reception and back to where we stood over the table.
“I picked up the Malones’ dental records, Claire,” he said. “I’ll put them in your office.”
Claire nodded, said, “I was about to tell Lindsay that the Malones lived long enough to get a carbon monoxide in the high seventies. The total body X-rays are negative for projectiles or obvious broken bones. But I did find something you’re going to want to see.”
Claire adjusted her plastic apron, which just barely spanned her ever-thickening girth, and turned to the table behind her. She pulled back the sheet exposing Patricia Malone’s legs and touched a gloved finger to a thin, barely discernible pink line around one of the woman’s ankles.
“This unburned skin right here?” said Claire. “Same thing on Mr. Malone’s wrists. The skin was protected during the blaze.”
“Like from a ligature?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am. If it was just the ankles, I’d say maybe Mrs. Malone was wearing socks, but on her husband’s wrists, too? I’m saying these are from ligatures that burned away in the fire. And I’m calling the cause of death asphyxia from smoke inhalation,” Claire said. “Manner of death, homicide.”
I stared at the fire-ravaged body of Patty Malone.
Yesterday morning she’d kissed her husband, brushed her hair, made breakfast, maybe laughed with a friend on the telephone. That night she and her husband of thirty-two years had been tied up and left to die in the fire. For some period of time, maybe hours, the Malones had known they were going to die. It’s called psychic horror. Their killers had wanted them to feel fear before their horrible deaths.
Who had committed these brutal murders — and why?
Chapter 22
JACOBI AND I would have cared about the Malones’ deaths even if Conklin hadn’t known them. The fact that he had been close to them once made us feel as if we’d known them, too.
Jacobi was my partner today, standing in for Conklin, who was picking up Kelly Malone at the airport. We stood on the doorstep of a Cape Cod in Laurel Heights only a dozen blocks from where the Malone house waited for the bulldozer. I rang the bell and the door was opened by a man in his early forties wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, looking at me like he already knew why we were there.
Jacobi introduced us, said, “Is Ronald Grayson at home?”
“I’ll get him,” said the man at the door.
“Mind if we come in?”
Grayson’s father said, “Sure. It’s about the fire, right?” He opened the door to a well-kept living room with comfy furniture and a large plasma-screen TV
over the fireplace. He called out, “Ronnie. The police are here.”
I heard the back door slam hard, as if it were pulled closed by a strong spring.
I said, “Shit. Call for backup.”
I left Jacobi in the living room, ran through the kitchen and out the back door. I was on my own. Jacobi couldn’t run anymore, not with his bad lungs and the twenty pounds he’d put on since his promotion to lieutenant.
I followed the kid in front of me, watched him leap the low hedge between his house and the one next door. Ronald Grayson wasn’t an athlete, but he had long legs and he knew the neighborhood. I was losing ground as he took a hard right behind a detached garage.
I yelled out, “Stop where you are. Put your hands in the air,” but he kept running.
I was in a jam. I didn’t want to shoot at him, but clearly the teenager had a reason for running. Had he set that fire?
Was this boy a killer?
I called in my location and kept running, clearing the garage in time to see Grayson Jr. cross Arguello Boulevard and slam into the hood of a patrol car. He slid down to the pavement. A second cruiser pulled up as two uniforms got out of the first. One officer grabbed the kid by the back of his shirt and threw him over the hood, while another kicked the boy’s legs apart and frisked him.
That’s when I noticed that Ronald Grayson’s face had turned blue.
“Oh, Christ!” I yelled.
I pulled Grayson off the car and bent him over. I grabbed the kid from behind, wrapped my right hand around my left fist, found the spot under his rib cage, and gave him three hard abdominal thrusts. He coughed, and three small bags fell from his mouth to the asphalt. The bags were filled with rock cocaine.
I was heaving, too. And I was furious. I cuffed the kid roughly, arrested him for possession with intent to sell. And I read him his rights.
“You idiot,” I panted. “I have a gun. Get it? I could have shot you.”
“Fuck you.”
“You mean ‘thank you,’ don’t you, asshole?” said one of the uniforms. “The sergeant here just saved your worthless life.”
Chapter 23
JACOBI AND I already knew two things about Ronald Grayson: that he’d had crack in his possession when we arrested him, and that this kid had called in the Malone fire.
Had he also set that fire?
Sitting in the interrogation room across from Ronald Grayson, I thought about another teenager, Scott Dyleski. Dyleski was sixteen when he’d broken into a woman’s home in Lafayette, stabbed her dozens of times, and mutilated her body because in his twisted mind, he imagined that she’d taken delivery of his drug paraphernalia and was keeping it from him. Dyleski was wrong, psychotic, and the murder should never have happened.
But it had.
And so, as I looked at fifteen-year-old Ronald Grayson with his clear skin and dark hair, drumming his fingers on the tabletop as though we were wasting his time, I wondered if he had doomed Pat and Bert Malone to horrific deaths so he could steal their stuff in order to buy drugs. I used my most patient and friendly tone of voice.
“Ron, why don’t you tell us what happened?”
“I have nothing to say.”
“That’s your right,” Jacobi grumbled menacingly.
Jacobi is five eleven, over two hundred pounds of well-marbled muscle, with lumpy features, hard gray eyes, gray hair, and a shiny gold badge. I would have expected the kid to show either fear or deference, but he seemed unfazed by our bad lieutenant.
“I don’t want to talk to you about the cocaine, you little shit,” Jacobi said, breathing into Grayson’s face. “But, man-to-man, tell us about the fire and we’ll help you with the coke charge. Do you understand me? I’m trying to help you.”
“Leave me alone, you fat fuck,” Grayson said.
Before Jacobi could smack the back of the kid’s head, his father, Vincent Grayson, and his lawyer blew through the door. Grayson was livid. “Ronnie, don’t say anything.”
“I didn’t, Dad.”
Grayson turned his fury on Jacobi. “You can’t talk to my son unless I’m with him. I know the law.”
“Save it, Mr. Grayson,” Jacobi growled. “Your imbecile son is under arrest for using and dealing, and I haven’t talked to him about the drugs at all.”
The lawyer’s name was Sam Farber, and from his business card I gathered that he had a one-man practice doing wills and real estate closings.
“I’m telling you and you and you,” Jacobi said, pointing his finger at the kid, his father, and the lawyer in turn. “I’ll lobby the DA on Ronald’s behalf if he helps us with the fire. That’s our only interest in him right now.”
“My client is a good Samaritan,” Farber said, dragging up a chair, squaring his leather briefcase with the edge of the table before opening it. “His father was with him when he made the call to 911. That’s all he had to do with it, end of story.”
“Mr. Farber, we all know that the person who calls in the fire has to be cleared of setting it,” I said. “But Ronald hasn’t convinced us that he had nothing to do with it.”
“Go ahead, Ron,” said Farber.
Ron Grayson’s eyes slid across mine and up to the camera in the corner of the room. He mumbled, “I was in the car with my dad. I smelled smoke. I told Dad which way to drive. Then I saw the fire coming out of that house. I dialed 911 on my cell and reported it. That’s all.”
“What time was this?”
“It was ten thirty.”
“Mr. Grayson, I asked your son.”
“Look. My son was sitting next to me in the car! The guy at the gas station can vouch for Ronnie. They cleaned the windshields together.”
“Ronnie, did you know the Malones?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The people who lived in the house.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Did you see anyone leaving the house?”
“No.”
“Ever been to Palo Alto?”
“I’ve never been anywhere in Mexico.”
“Do you have enough, Inspectors?” Farber said. “My client has cooperated fully.”
“I want to take a look at his room,” I said.
Chapter 24
SHRINKS SAY THAT ARSON is a masculine sexual metaphor; that setting the fire is the arousal phase, the blaze itself is the consummation, and the hoses putting out the blaze are the release. It may be true, because almost all arsonists are male, and half of them are teenage boys.
Jacobi and I left young Ronnie Grayson in lockup and returned to the Grayson house with Ron’s father. We parked again in the driveway of the small house, wiped our feet on the welcome mat, and said hello to Grayson’s mother, who looked frightened and eager to please. We turned down an offer of coffee, then excused ourselves so that we could thoroughly search Ronald Grayson’s bedroom.
I had a few objects in mind, specifically a reel of fishing line, fire accelerant, and anything that looked like it had belonged to the Malones.
Ronnie’s dresser was of the hand-me-down Salvation Army kind: chipped wood, four big drawers and two small ones. There was a lamp on the top surface, some peanut jars full of coins, a pile of scratched-off lottery tickets, a car magazine, and a red plastic box holding the kid’s orthodontic retainer. There was a night-light in the socket near the door.
Jacobi grunted as he tipped the mattress over, then took the drawers from the dresser and systematically dumped them onto the box springs of Ronnie’s bed. The search resulted in a half-dozen girlie magazines, a small bag of pot, and a crusty pipe. Then we opened his closet and upended his hamper of dirty laundry.
We examined it all, the tighty-whiteys, the jeans, and the dirty socks, all smelling of sweat and youth, but not of gasoline or smoke. I looked up to see that Vincent Grayson was now watching from the doorway.
“We’re almost done here, Mr. Grayson,” I said, smiling. “We just need a sample of Ronnie’s handwriting.”
“Here,” Grayson said, picking
up a spiral notebook from the stack of books on the night table.
I opened the notebook and could see without having to turn it over for handwriting analysis that Ron Grayson’s elaborate, artsy lettering was not a match for the Latin inscription I’d seen on the flyleaf of the book of poetry left on the Malones’ stairs. Ron Grayson had a solid alibi, and I had to reluctantly accept that he’d told us the truth. But what bothered me about this boy, more than his being a smart-ass punk with a drug habit, was that he hadn’t asked about the Malones.
Was it because he’d lied about knowing them?
Or because he just didn’t care?
“What about my son?”
“He’s all yours,” said Jacobi over his shoulder just before he slammed the screen door on his march out of the house.
I said to Grayson, “Ron will be in your custody until he’s arraigned on the coke charge, and we’ll speak to the DA on his behalf like we said we’d do.
“But I’d ground Ronnie, if I were you, Mr. Grayson. He’s breaking the law and doing business with criminals. If he were my son, I wouldn’t let him out of my sight for a minute.”
Chapter 25
FOR THE NEXT FOUR HOURS, Jacobi and I rang doorbells in the Malones’ neighborhood, badging the rich and richer, scaring them brainless with the questions we asked. Rachel Savino, for instance, lived next door to the Malones in a sprawling Mediterranean-style house. She was an attractive brunette of about forty, wearing tight slacks, a tighter blouse, the break in the tan line on her ring finger telling me she was a recent divorcée.
She wouldn’t let us inside her door.
Savino eyed my dusty blue trousers, man-tailored shirt, and blazer, and did a double take when she noticed my shoulder holster. She barely acknowledged Jacobi. I guess we didn’t look like residents of Presidio Heights. So Jacobi and I stood on her terra-cotta steps while her pack of corgis jumped and yelped around us.