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Revival, the wind whipping smoke into a vortex at an inside corner of the house. Dazed bystanders clustered across the street, watching the firefighters douse the charred remains of what had once been a beautiful home in this upscale neighborhood. I pulled my canvas jacket closed, ducked under the water spouting from a fire hose just as the generators on the front lawn fired up. Conklin was ahead of me as we mounted the front steps. He badged the cop at the door and we entered the scorched carcass of the house. “Two victims, Sarge,” said Officer Pat Noonan. “First doorway on your right. DRT.” Dead right there. I asked, “Has the ME been called?” “She’s on her way.” It was darker inside the house than out. The room Noonan indicated had been a large den or family room. I flicked my flashlight beam over piles of furniture, bookshelves, a large TV. Then my light caught a pair of legs on the floor. They weren’t attached to a body. I screamed, “Noonan! Noonan! What the hell is this?” I waved my torchlight around, catching a second body a few feet from the torso of the first, just inside the doorway. Noonan came into the den with a firefighter behind him, a young guy with the name Mackey stenciled on his turnouts. “Sarge,” Mackey said, “it was me. I was trying to reel in my line, but it caught. That’s how I discovered the DB.” “So you dragged the body?” “I, um, didn’t know that if I picked up the body by the legs, it would fall apart,” Mackey said, his voice cracking from smoke inhalation and probably fear. “Did you move the entire victim, Mackey, or just the legs? Where was the body lying?” “He, she, or it was in the doorway, Sarge. Sorry.” Mackey backed out of the room, and he was right to get away from me. What the fire hadn’t destroyed, the water and the firefighters had. I doubted we’d ever know what had happened here. I heard someone call my name, and I recognized his voice as the glare of a handheld lantern came toward me. Chuck Hanni was an arson investigator, one of the best. I’d met him for the first time a few years ago when he’d come to a fire directly from a Rotary Club dinner. He’d been wearing pale khakis at the time, and he’d walked through a smoking house from the least burned rooms to the fire’s point of origin. He’d taught me a lot about crime detection at a fire scene that night, but I still didn’t know how he’d kept those khakis clean. “Hey, Lindsay,” Hanni said now. He was wearing a jacket and tie. There were comb marks in his fine black hair and burn scars running from his right thumb up into his sleeve. “I’ve got a working ID on this couple.” My partner stood up from where he’d been crouched beside one of the victims. “Their names are Patty and Bert Malone,” Conklin said, something in his voice I couldn’t read. The corpses were so burned, they were featureless. He saw the question in my eyes. “I’ve been in this house before,” Conklin told us. “I used to know these people.”
    Chapter 18

    I STARED AT MY PARTNER as embers fell from the ceiling of the den and the crackle of water against smoking wood competed with the radio static and the shouts of the firefighters. “I was close to their daughter when I was in high school,” Conklin said. “Kelly Malone. Her parents were great to me.” “I’m so sorry, Rich.” “I haven’t seen them since Kelly went off to the University of Colorado,” Conklin said. “This is going to kill her.” I put my hand on his shoulder, knowing that we were going to treat the Malones’ deaths as homicides unless it was proven otherwise. Upstairs, the fire crew was doing mop-up and overhaul, dismantling the second-story ceiling, putting out hot spots under the eaves. “The security system was off,” Hanni said, joining us. “The fire department got the call from a neighbor. The fire started in this room,” he said, pointing out the furniture that had been burned low to the