Roach was petite, in her forties, wore her thick graying hair in a ponytail and her glasses on a beaded chain.
“There was no ID on her,” Dr. Roach told me. “All I can say is that she looks to be a juvenile, maybe a teenager.”
“Not Beam’s wife?”
“The ex-Mrs. Beam lives in Oakland,” said the sheriff, closing his cell phone. “She’ll be here in a few.”
Hanni began a run-through of the fire for our benefit.
“The fire started inside the passenger compartment,” he said. “Paper and wood were piled up in the backseat directly behind the driver. And this is a tow chain,” he said of the heavy links lying across the victim’s lap.
He pointed to a metal bar down in the driver-side foot well, explained that it was a steering wheel lock, like The Club, and that it had been passed through the chain and locked around the steering column. Hanni theorized that first the chains and The Club were locked, then the newspapers and wood were doused with gasoline.
“Then, probably, the gas was poured over the victims and the can was wedged behind the seats -”
“Sorry, folks, but I’ve got to start processing this scene,” Hartnett said, opening his kit. “I’m getting shit from the chief.”
“Hang on just a minute, will you please?” I asked the arson investigator. I borrowed a pen from Hanni, reached into the van, and as Hanni aimed his light over my shoulder, I used the pen to open the book resting on Alan Beam’s lap.
The usual fortune cookie nonsense?
Or was he mad now? Would he slip up and give us something that made sense? I stared at the title page, but all I saw were the printed words
I went back in for a second look and this time saw a bit of fire-blackened ribbon trailing out from the pages. Using the pen again, I opened the Bible to the bookmark. Matthew 3:11.
A few lines of text had been underlined in ink.
My cheek was nearly resting on the victim’s parched and naked bones as I read the underlined words out loud.
Chapter 108
CONKLIN GRUNTED, said, “Purification by fire. It’s a major biblical theme.”
Just then the garage door opened behind us and I turned to see a chic forty-something woman wearing a business suit limned in the sunlight behind her. Her face was stretched in anger and fear.
“I’m Alicia Beam. Who’s in charge here?”
“I’m Paul Arcario,” the sheriff said to her, stretching out his hand. “We spoke earlier. Why don’t we go outside and talk?”
Mrs. Beam pushed past him to the van, and although Conklin put an arm out to stop her, it was too late. The woman stared, then shrank away, screaming, “
Then she snapped her head around and locked her eyes on
“Where’s Valerie?
I introduced myself, told Mrs. Beam that she had to leave the garage, and that I would come with her. She became compliant as soon as I put my hand on the small of her back, and we walked together out of the garage to the front of the house.
“It’s my daughter’s weekend with her father,” she said.
She opened the front door, and as she stepped over the threshold, she broke away from me, running through the rooms, calling her daughter’s name.
“Valerie!
I followed behind her, and when she stopped she said to me, “Maybe Val spent the night with a friend.”
The look of sheer hope on her face pulled at my heart and my conscience. Was that her daughter in the body bag? I didn’t know, and if it was, it was not my job to tell her. Right now I had to learn whatever I could about Alan Beam.
“Let’s just talk for a few minutes,” I said.
We took seats at a pine farm table in the kitchen, and Alicia Beam told me that her marriage of twenty years to Alan had been dissolved a year before.
“Alan has been depressed for years,” Alicia told me. “He felt that his whole life had been about money. That he’d neglected his family and God. He became very religious, very repentant, and he said that there wasn’t enough time…”
Alicia Beam stopped in midsentence. I followed her eyes to the counter, where an unfolded sheet of blue paper was lying beside an envelope.
“Maybe that’s a note from Val.”
She stood and walked to the counter, picked up the letter, began to read.
“Dear Val, my dearest girl. Please forgive me. I just couldn’t take it any longer…”
She looked up, said to me, “This is from
I turned as Hanni leaned through the doorway and asked me to step outside.
“Lindsay,” he said. “A neighbor found a message from Alan Beam on her answering machine saying he was sorry and good-bye.”
It was all coming clear, why there were no Latin come-ons. No fishing-line ligatures. And the victims were not a married couple.
Pidge had nothing to do with these deaths. Any hope I had of tripping him up, finding a clue to his whereabouts, was dead – as dead as the man in the car.
“Alan Beam committed suicide,” I said.
Hanni nodded. “We’ll treat it as a homicide until we’re sure, but according to this neighbor, Beam had attempted suicide before. She said he was terminal. Lung cancer.”
“And so he chained himself to the steering wheel and set himself on
“I guess he wanted to make sure he didn’t change his mind this time. But whatever his reason,” said Hanni, “it looks to me now like his daughter tried to save him – but she never had a chance.
“The poisonous gas and the superheated air brought her down.”
Chapter 109
BY THE TIME I got home that evening, I had too much to tell Joe and hoped I could stay awake long enough to tell him. He was in the kitchen, wearing running shorts and a T-shirt, what he wore when he went for a run with Martha. He was holding a wineglass, and from the scrumptious smell of garlic and oregano, it seemed he’d cooked dinner, too.
But the look on Joe’s face stopped me before I could reach him.
“Joe, I was at the hospital all night -”
“Jacobi told me. If I hadn’t found wet footsteps on the bathmat this morning, I wouldn’t have even known you’d been home.”
“You were sleeping, Joe, and I only had a few minutes. And is this a house rule? That I have to check in?” I said.
“You call it checking in. I call it being thoughtful. Thinking of
