7th Heaven Page 5

  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.

  “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 owner 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.