“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 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.”