7th Heaven

“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.”