3rd Degree - James Patterson [5]
“Oh, my God,” she gasped, a hand clasped over her mouth.
Chin led her my way. “Lightower’s sister,” he said.
She had her hair pulled back tightly, a cashmere sweater over jeans, and a pair of Manolo Blahnik flats I had once mooned over for about ten minutes in the window of Neiman’s.
“Please,” I said, leading the unsteady woman over to an open black-and-white. “I’m Lieutenant Boxer, Homicide.”
“Dianne Aronoff,” she muttered vacantly. “I heard it on the news. Mort? Charlotte? The kids… Did anyone make it out?”
“We pulled out a boy, about eleven.”
“Eric,” she said. “He’s okay?”
“He’s at the Burn Unit at Cal Pacific. I think he’s going to be all right.”
“Thank God!” she exclaimed. Then she covered her face again. “How can this be happening?”
I knelt down in front of Dianne Aronoff and took her hand. I squeezed it gently. “Ms. Aronoff, I have to ask you some questions. This was no accident. Do you have any idea who could’ve targeted your brother?”
“No accident,” she repeated. “Mortie was saying, ‘The media treats me like bin Laden. No one understands. What I do is supposed to be about making money.’”
Jacobi switched gears. “Ms. Aronoff, it looks like the explosion originated from the second floor. You have any idea who might’ve had access to the home?”
“There was a housekeeper,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “Viola.”
Jacobi exhaled. “Unfortunately, that’s probably the third body we found. Buried under the rubble.”
“Oh…” Dianne Aronoff choked a sob.
I pressed her hand. “Look, Ms. Aronoff, I saw the explosion. That bomb was planted from inside. Someone was either let in or had access. I need you to think.”
“There was an au pair,” she muttered. “I think she sometimes spent the night.”
“Lucky for her.” Jacobi rolled his eyes. “If she’d been in there with your nephew…”
“Not for Eric.” Dianne Aronoff shook her head. “For Caitlin.”
Jacobi and I looked at each other. “Who?”
“Caitlin, Lieutenant. My niece.”
When she saw our blank faces, she froze.
“When you said Eric was the only one brought out, I just assumed…”
We continued to stare at each other. No one else had been found in the house.
“Oh, my God, Detectives, she is only six months old.”
Chapter 8
THIS WASN’T OVER.
I ran up to Captain Noroski, the fire chief, who was barking commands to his men searching through the house. “Lightower’s sister says there was a six-month-old baby inside.”
“No one’s inside, Lieutenant. My men are just finishing the upper floor. Unless you wanna go inside and look around again yourself.”
Suddenly, the layout of the burning building came back to me. I could see it now. Down that same hallway where I’d found the boy. My heart jumped. “Not the upper floors, Captain, the first.” There could’ve been a nursery down there, too.
Noroski radioed someone still inside the site. He directed him down the front hall.
We stood in front of the smoking house, and a sickening feeling churned in my stomach. The idea of a baby still in there. Someone I could’ve saved. We waited while Captain Noroski’s men picked through the rubble.
Finally, a fireman climbed out from the debris on the ground floor. “Nothing,” he called out. “We found the nursery. Crib and a bassinet buried under a lot of rubble. But no baby.”
Dianne Aronoff uttered a cry of joy. Her niece wasn’t in there. Then a look of panic set in, her face registering a completely new horror. If Caitlin wasn’t there, where was she?
Chapter 9
CHARLES DANKO STOOD at the edge of the crowd, watching. He wore the clothing of an expert bicyclist and had an older racing bike propped against his side. If nothing else, the biking helmet and goggles covered his face in case the police were filming the crowd, as they sometimes did.
This couldn’t have gone much better, Danko was thinking as he observed the homicide scene. The Lightowers were dead, blown to pieces. He hoped they had suffered greatly as they burned, even the children. This had been a dream of his, or perhaps a nightmare, but now it was reality—and this particular reality was going