Women's Murder Club [03] 3rd Degree Read online

  I started toward the knapsack. I didn’t know what I was going to do yet, but the area had to be cleared.

  “No way, LT.” Jacobi reached for my arm. “You don’t get to do this, Lindsay.”

  I pulled away from him. “Get everyone out of here, Warren.”

  “I may not outrank you, LT,” Jacobi said, more impassioned this time, “but I’ve got fourteen more years on the force. I’m telling you, don’t go near that bag.”

  The fire captain rushed up, shouting into his handheld, “Possible explosive device. Move everybody back. Get Magitakos from the Bomb Squad up here.”

  Less than a minute later, Niko Magitakos, head of the city’s bomb squad, and two professionals covered in heavy protective gear pushed past me, heading toward the red bag. Niko wheeled out a boxlike instrument, an X-ray scanner. A square armored truck, like a huge refrigerator, backed up ominously toward the spot.

  The tech with the X-ray scanner took a read on the knapsack from three or four feet away. I was sure the bag was hot—or at least a leave-behind. I was praying, Don’t let this blow.

  “Get the truck in here.” Niko turned with a frown. “It looks hot.”

  In the next minutes, reinforced steel curtains were pulled out of the truck and set up in a protective barrier. A tech wheeled in a claw and crept closer to the bag. If it was a bomb, it could go off any second.

  I found myself in no-man’s-land, not wanting to move. A bead of sweat trickled down my cheek.

  The man with the claw lifted the backpack to transport it to the truck.

  Nothing happened.

  “I don’t get any reading,” the tech holding the electro-sensor said. “We’re gonna go for a hand entry.”

  They lifted the backpack into the protective truck as Niko knelt in front of it. With practiced hands, he opened the zippered back.

  “There’s no charge,” Niko said. “It’s a fucking battery radio.”

  There was a collective sigh. I pulled out of the crowd and ran to the bag. There was an ID tag on the strap, one of those plastic labels. I lifted the strap and read.

  BOOM! FUCKERS.

  I was right. It was a goddamn leave-behind. Inside the backpack, next to the standard clock radio, was a photo in a frame. A computer photo, printed on paper, from a digital camera. The face of a good-looking man, maybe forty.

  One of the charred bodies inside, I was pretty sure.

  MORTON LIGHTOWER, read the inscription, AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.

  “LET THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE BE HEARD.”

  A name was printed at the bottom. AUGUST SPIES.

  Jesus, this was an execution!

  My stomach turned.

  Chapter 7

  WE GOT THE TOWN HOUSE ID’d pretty quickly. It did belong to the guy in the picture, Morton Lightower, and his family. The name rang a bell with Jacobi. “Isn’t that the guy who owned that X/L Systems?”

  “No idea.” I shook my head.

  “You know. The Internet honcho. Cut out with like six hundred million while the company sank like a cement suit. Stock used to sell for sixty bucks, now it’s something like sixty cents.”

  Suddenly, I remembered seeing it on the news. “The Creed of Greed guy.” He was trying to buy ball teams, gobbling up lavish homes, installing a $50,000 security gate on his place in Aspen, at the same time he was dumping his own stock and laying off half his staff.

  “I’ve heard of investor backlash,” Jacobi said, shaking his head, “but this is a little much.”

  Behind me, I heard a woman yelling to let her through the crowd. Inspector Paul Chin ushered her forward, through the web of news vans and camera crews. She stood in front of the bombed-out home.

  “Oh, my God,” she gasped, a hand clasped over her mouth.

  Chin led her my way. “Lightower’s sister,” he said.

  She had her hair pulled back tightly, a cashmere sweater over jeans, and a pair of Manolo Blahnik flats I had once mooned over for about ten minutes in the window of Neiman’s.

  “Please,” I said, leading the unsteady woman over to an open black-and-white. “I’m Lieutenant Boxer, Homicide.”

  “Dianne Aronoff,” she muttered vacantly. “I heard it on the news. Mort? Charlotte? The kids… Did anyone make it out?”

  “We pulled out a boy, about eleven.”

  “Eric,” she said. “He’s okay?”

  “He’s at the Burn Unit at Cal Pacific. I think he’s going to be all right.”

  “Thank God!” she exclaimed. Then she covered her face again. “How can this be happening?”

  I knelt down in front of Dianne Aronoff and took her hand. I squeezed it gently. “Ms. Aronoff, I have to ask you some questions. This was no accident. Do you have any idea who could’ve targeted your brother?”

  “No accident,” she repeated. “Mortie was saying, ‘The media treats me like bin Laden. No one understands. What I do is supposed to be about making money.’”

  Jacobi switched gears. “Ms. Aronoff, it looks like the explosion originated from the second floor. You have any idea who might’ve had access to the home?”

  “There was a housekeeper,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “Viola.”

  Jacobi exhaled. “Unfortunately, that’s probably the third body we found. Buried under the rubble.”

  “Oh…” Dianne Aronoff choked a sob.

  I pressed her hand. “Look, Ms. Aronoff, I saw the explosion. That bomb was planted from inside. Someone was either let in or had access. I need you to think.”

  “There was an au pair,” she muttered. “I think she sometimes spent the night.”

  “Lucky for her.” Jacobi rolled his eyes. “If she’d been in there with your nephew…”

  “Not for Eric.” Dianne Aronoff shook her head. “For Caitlin.”

  Jacobi and I looked at each other. “Who?”

  “Caitlin, Lieutenant. My niece.”

  When she saw our blank faces, she froze.

  “When you said Eric was the only one brought out, I just assumed…”

  We continued to stare at each other. No one else had been found in the house.

  “Oh, my God, Detectives, she is only six months old.”

  Chapter 8

  THIS WASN’T OVER.

  I ran up to Captain Noroski, the fire chief, who was barking commands to his men searching through the house. “Lightower’s sister says there was a six-month-old baby inside.”

  “No one’s inside, Lieutenant. My men are just finishing the upper floor. Unless you wanna go inside and look around again yourself.”

  Suddenly, the layout of the burning building came back to me. I could see it now. Down that same hallway where I’d found the boy. My heart jumped. “Not the upper floors, Captain, the first.” There could’ve been a nursery down there, too.

  Noroski radioed someone still inside the site. He directed him down the front hall.

  We stood in front of the smoking house, and a sickening feeling churned in my stomach. The idea of a baby still in there. Someone I could’ve saved. We waited while Captain Noroski’s men picked through the rubble.

  Finally, a fireman climbed out from the debris on the ground floor. “Nothing,” he called out. “We found the nursery. Crib and a bassinet buried under a lot of rubble. But no baby.”

  Dianne Aronoff uttered a cry of joy. Her niece wasn’t in there. Then a look of panic set in, her face registering a completely new horror. If Caitlin wasn’t there, where was she?

  Chapter 9

  CHARLES DANKO STOOD at the edge of the crowd, watching. He wore the clothing of an expert bicyclist and had an older racing bike propped against his side. If nothing else, the biking helmet and goggles covered his face in case the police were filming the crowd, as they sometimes did.

  This couldn’t have gone much better, Danko was thinking as he observed the homicide scene. The Lightowers were dead, blown to pieces. He hoped they had suffered greatly as they burned, even the children. This had been a dream of his, or perhaps a n
ightmare, but now it was reality—and this particular reality was going to terrify the good people of San Francisco. This fiery action had taken nerve on his part, but finally he’d done something. Look at the firemen, EMS, the local police. They were all here, in honor of his work, or rather, its humble beginnings.

  One of them had caught his eye, a blond woman, obviously a cop with some clout. She seemed to have some guts, too. He watched her and wondered if she would become his adversary, and would she be worthy?

  He inquired about her from a patrolman at the barricades. “The woman who went into the house, that’s Inspector Murphy, isn’t it? I think I know her.”

  The cop didn’t even bother to make eye contact, typical police insolence. “No,” he said, “that’s Lieutenant Boxer. She’s Homicide. A real bitch on wheels, I hear.”

  Chapter 10

  THE CRAMPED THIRD-FLOOR OFFICE that housed the Homicide detail was buzzing, unlike any Sunday morning I could remember.

  I got a clean bill of health at the hospital, then arrived at the office to find that the whole team had showed up. We had a couple of leads to follow, even before the results of the examination of the blast scene came back. Bombings usually don’t involve kidnappings. Find that baby, everything told me, and we’ll find whoever did this horrible thing.

  A TV was on. Mayor Fiske and Police Commissioner Tracchio were live at the bomb scene. “This is a horrible, vindictive tragedy,” the mayor was saying, having come straight off the first tee at Olympic. “Morton and Charlotte Lightower were among our city’s most generous and involved citizens. They were also friends.”

  “Don’t forget contributors,” Cappy Thomas, Jacobi’s partner, said.

  “I want everyone to know that our police department is already vigorously pursuing concrete leads,” the mayor continued. “I want to assure the people of this city that this is an isolated event.”

  “X/L…” Warren Jacobi scratched his head. “Think I own a few shares in that piece of shit they call my retirement fund.”

  “Me too,” said Cappy. “Which fund you in?”

  “I think it’s called Long-Term Growth, but whoever named it sure has a twisted sense of humor. Two years ago I had—”

  “If you moguls have a moment,” I called. “It’s Sunday and the markets are closed. We have three dead, a missing baby, and an entire town house burned to the ground in a possible bombing.”

  “Definite bombing,” Steve Fiori, the department’s press liaison, chimed in. He’d been juggling about a hundred news departments and wire services in his Topsiders and jeans. “Chief just got it confirmed from the Bomb Squad. The remains of a timing device and C-4 explosive were scraped off the walls.”

  The news didn’t exactly surprise us. But the realization that a bomb had gone off in our city, that we had murderers out there with C-4, that a six-month-old baby was still missing, sent a numb quiet around the room.

  “Shit,” Jacobi sighed theatrically, “there goes the afternoon.”

  Chapter 11

  “LIEUTENANT,” someone called from across the room, “Chief Tracchio on the phone.”

  “Told ya,” Cappy said, grinning.

  I picked up, waiting to be reamed out for leaving the crime scene early. Tracchio was a glorified bean counter. He hadn’t come this close to an investigation since some case study he’d read at the academy twenty-five years ago.

  “Lindsay, it’s Cindy.” I’d been expecting to hear the Chief; her voice surprised me. “Don’t get cranky. It was the only way I could get through.”

  “Not exactly a good time,” I said. “I thought you were that asshole Tracchio, about to nail me to the wall.”

  “Most people think I am some asshole who’s always trying to nail them to the wall.”

  “This one signs my checks,” I said, taking a semi-relaxed breath for the first time all day.

  Cindy Thomas was part of my inner circle, along with Claire and Jill. She also happened to work for the Chronicle and was one of the top crime reporters in the city.

  “Jesus, Linds, I just heard. I’m in an all-day yoga clinic. In the middle of a ‘downward dog’ when my phone rings. What, I sneak out for a couple of hours and you decide now’s the time to be a hero? You all right?”

  “Other than my lungs feeling like they’ve been lit with lighter fluid… No, I’m okay,” I said. “There’s not much I can tell you on this now.”

  “I’m not calling about the crime scene, Lindsay. I was calling about you.”

  “I’m okay,” I said again. I didn’t know if I was telling the truth. I noticed that my hands were still trembling. And my mouth tasted the bitter smoke of the blast.

  “You want me to meet you?”

  “You wouldn’t get within two blocks. Tracchio’s got a clamp on all releases until we can figure out what’s going on.”

  “Is that a challenge?” Cindy snickered.

  That made me laugh. When I first met her, Cindy had sneaked her way into a Grand Hyatt penthouse suite, the most guarded murder scene in memory. Her whole career sprang from that scoop.

  “No, it’s not a challenge, Cindy. But I’m okay. I swear.”

  “Okay, so if all this tender concern is being wasted, what about the crime scene? We are talking a crime scene, aren’t we, Lindsay?”

  “If you mean, did the backyard grill flare up at nine on a Sunday morning? Yeah, I guess you could quote me on that. I thought you were out of touch on this, Cindy.” It always amazed me how quickly she got herself up to speed.

  “I’m on it now,” she said. “And while I’m at it, word is that you saved a kid today. You should go home. You’ve done enough for one day.”

  “Can’t. We got a few leads. Wish I could talk about them, but I can’t.”

  “I heard there was a baby stolen out of the house. Some sort of twisted kidnapping?”

  “If it is,” I said with a shrug, “they have a new way of handling the potential ransom payers.”

  Cappy Thomas stuck his head in. “Lieutenant, M.E. wants to see you. In the morgue. Now.”

  Chapter 12

  LEAVE IT TO CLAIRE, San Francisco’s chief medical officer, my best friend of a dozen years, to say the one thing in the midst of this madness that would make me cry. “Charlotte Lightower was pregnant.”

  Claire was looking drawn and helpless in her orange surgical scrubs. “Two months. Poor woman probably didn’t even know herself.”

  I don’t know why I found that so sad, but I did. Maybe it made the Lightowers seem like more of a family to me, humanized them.

  “I was hoping to catch up with you sometime today.” Claire gave me a halfhearted smile. “Just didn’t envision it like this.”

  “Yeah.” I smiled and wiped a tear from the corner of my eye.

  “I heard what you did,” Claire said. She came over and gave me a hug. “That took a lot of guts, honey. Also, you are a dumb bunny, do you know that?”

  “There was a moment when I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out, Claire. There was all this smoke. It was everywhere. In my eyes, my lungs. I couldn’t see for shit. I just took hold of that little boy and prayed.”

  “You saw the light. It led you out?” Claire smiled. “No. Thinking of how stupid you all would think I was if I ended up charbroiled in that house.”

  “Woulda put a bit of a damper on our margarita nights,” she said, nodding.

  “Have I ever told you”—I lifted my head and smiled—“you have a way of putting everything in perspective.”

  The Lightowers’ remains were side by side on two gurneys. Even at Christmas the morgue is a lonely place, but on that Sunday afternoon, with the techs gone home, graphic autopsy photos and medical alerts pinned to the antiseptic walls, and a grisly smell in the air, it was as grim as I could remember.

  I moved over to the bodies.

  “So, you called me down here,” I said. “What did you want me to see?”

  “I called you down here,” she said, “ ’cause it occurr
ed to me that you needed a good hug.”

  “I did,” I said, “but a killer medical revelation wouldn’t hurt.”

  Claire moved over to a table and started to take off her surgical gloves. “Killer medical revelation?” She rolled her eyes. “What could I possibly have for you, Lindsay. These three people, they were blown up.”

  Chapter 13

  AN HOUR LATER Tracchio and I held a tense, very emotional news briefing on the steps of the Hall. Cindy was there, along with about half the city’s news force.

  Back in the office, Jacobi had run the name on the photo, August Spies, through the CCI database and the FBI. It came back zilch. No match on any name or group. Cappy was digging up whatever he could on the missing au pair. We had a description from Lightower’s sister, but no idea how to find her. She didn’t even know the girl’s last name.

  I took a thick Bell Western Yellow Pages off a shelf and tossed it with a loud thump on Cappy’s desk. “Here, start with N, for nannies.”

  It was almost six o’clock on Sunday. We had a team down at X/L’s offices, but the best we could get was a corporate public relations flack who said we could meet with them tomorrow at 8 A.M. Sundays were shit crime-solving days.

  Jacobi and Cappy knocked on my door. “Why don’t you go on home?” Cappy said. “We’ll handle it from here.”

  “I was just gonna buzz Charlie Clapper.” His CSU team was still picking through the scene.

  “I mean it, Lindsay. We got you covered. You look like shit, anyway,” Jacobi said.

  Suddenly, I realized just how exhausted I was. It had been nine hours since the town house had blown. I was still in a sweatshirt and running gear. The grime of the blast was all over me.

  “Hey, LT.” Cappy turned back. “Just one more thing. How did it go last night with Franklin Fratelli? Your big date?”