Read Womens Murder Club - 07 - 7th Heaven for Free Online Page B

ground. He looked around the room at the mounds of plaster and debris. “After we sift through all this, I’ll let you know if I find anything, but I think you can pretty much kiss off any notes or fingerprints.” “But you’ll try anyway, right?” Conklin said. “I said I would, Rich.” Last thing we needed was for Conklin to get into a fight. I asked him what the Malones were like. “Kelly said her dad could be a prick,” Rich said, “but when you’re eighteen, that could’ve meant he wouldn’t let her stay out with me past eleven.” “Tell me whatever else you remember.” “Bert sold luxury cars. Patty was a homemaker. They had money, obviously. They entertained a lot. Their friends seemed nice - regular parents, you know.” “Wouldn’t be the first time regular people turned out to be twisted,” Hanni muttered. A sweep of headlights drew my eyes toward the broken plate glass window. The coroner’s van joined the fleet of law enforcement and fire department vehicles on the street. Noonan called out to me. “I checked out the bedroom on the second floor, Sarge. There’s a safe in the closet. The lock and the safe are intact, but the door is open - and the safe is empty.”
    Chapter 19

    “ROBBERY WAS THE MOTIVE for this?” Conklin shouted as Claire stepped into the den with her assistant in tow. Before Claire could say, “Who died?” I reached out to her for a hug, said into her ear, “Conklin knew the victims.” “Gotcha,” she said. As Claire unpacked her scene kit, I told her about the manhandled corpse. Then I stepped out of her way as she took pictures of both bodies with her old Minolta, two shots from every angle. “There are two doors to this room,” she said as her camera flashed. “Chuck, you say that this room was the point of origin. But the victims stayed in here. Why was that?” “They could’ve been caught by surprise,” Hanni said. He was cutting samples from the carpet, putting fibers into K-packs. “If they were drinking and fell asleep, maybe a cigarette dropped down into the couch cushions.” Hanni explained what was still so hard to believe - that a fire could fill a room this size with smoke in less than a minute, that sleeping people could wake up coughing, be unable to see, get disoriented. Chuck said, “Someone says, ‘Let’s go this way.’ Other person says, ‘No, it’s this way.’ Maybe someone falls. Smoke inhalation gets them. Boom, they’re down, and they’re unconscious. These two people were dead inside a couple of minutes.” Conklin came back into the room holding a book in his gloved hand. “I found this on the staircase.” He handed the book to me. “Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame. Charles Bukowski. Is this poetry?” I opened the book to the title page, saw an inscription written there in ballpoint pen. “This is Latin,” I said to my partner, sounding out the words. “Annuit Cœptis.” “That’s pronounced chep-tus,” Conklin said. “It’s a motto inscribed on the dollar bill right above that symbol of the pyramid thing with the eye. Annuit Cœptis. ‘Providence favors our undertaking.’ ” “You know Latin?” He shrugged. “I went to Catholic school.” I said, “So, what do you think, Rich? Is the firebug leaving us a message? That God’s okay with this?” Conklin looked around at the destruction, said, “Not the God I believe in.”
    Chapter 20

    AT THREE THAT MORNING, Hanni, Conklin, and I watched the fire department board up the Malones’ windows and put a lock on the front door. The onlookers were back in their beds, and as the sounds of hammering cracked through the otherwise silent neighborhood, Hanni said, “There was a fire four months ago in Palo Alto, reminds me of this one.” “How so?” “Big, expensive house. The alarm was turned off. Two people died in the living room, and I had the same question in my mind: Why didn’t they leave?” “Panic, disorientation, like you were saying.”