7th Heaven

by 7th Heaven (com v4. 0) (lit)

  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 Ja
cobi 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.

  “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.