7th Heaven - James Patterson [43]
“It’s got to be one or the other, so that the two of us don’t fight. That wouldn’t be good. That would be cruel.”
Kara shifted her eyes to Hawk as he came back to the table with the smoothie. Kara thanked him, then said, “I was thinking, Hawk, maybe we could hang out sometime.”
Hawk smiled. “Oh, wow, Kara. And I was just thinking you’re much more Pidge’s type than mine. He’s famous at Gates. You’d never forgive yourself if you turned him down.”
Kara turned dubiously to Pidge. He rewarded her with a blinding smile. “You have to step up, Kara,” he said.
“Uh-huh. Kiss my ass,” she said, blushing, putting her eyes back on her laptop.
Pidge said, “I can’t do that, Kara. Hawk saw you first.” He laughed.
“Ba-rinnng,” Hawk said.
“Hal-lo?”
“Like either one of us would go out with a fat slob like her,” Hawk said, making sure he said it loud so that Kara and the students at the other picnic tables could hear him. The two boys laughed, made a big deal of holding their sides, falling off the benches to the ground.
Pidge recovered first. He stood and tousled Kara’s hair playfully. “Mea culpa, Kara mia,” he said. “Better luck next time.”
He took a bow as tears slid down her cheeks.
Chapter 56
CONKLIN PARKED OUR CAR on the narrow, tree-lined road in Monterey, a small coastal town two hours south of San Francisco. On my right, one wing of the three-story, wood-frame house remained untouched, while the center of the house had burned out to the framing timbers, the roof open to the blue sky like a silent scream.
Conklin and I pushed through the clumps of sidewalk gawkers, ducked under the barricade tape, and loped up the walk.
The arson investigator was waiting for us outside the front door. He was in his early thirties, over six feet tall, jangling the keys and change in his pocket. He introduced himself as Ramon Jimenez and gave me his card with his cell phone number printed on the back. Jimenez opened the fire department lock on the front door so we could enter the center of the house, and as the front door swung open we were hit with the smell of apples and cinnamon.
“Air freshener explosion,” Jimenez said. “The crispy critters were found in the den.”
As we followed Jimenez into the fire-ravaged shell, I thought about how some cops and firefighters use jargon to show that they’re tough — when in fact they’re horrified. Others do it because they get off on it. What kind of guy was Jimenez?
“Was the front door locked?” I asked him.
“No, and a neighbor called the fire in. Lots of people don’t bother to set their alarms around here.”
Broken glass crunched under my shoes and water lapped over the tops of them as I slogged through the open space, trying to get a sense of the victims’ lives from the remains and residue of their home. But my knack for fitting puzzle pieces together was blunted by the extent of the destruction. First the fire, then the water and the mop-up, left the worst kind of crime scene.
If there had been fingerprints, they were gone. Hair, fiber, blood spatter, footprints, receipts, notes — forget all of that. Unless a bomb trigger or trace of an accelerant was found, we couldn’t even be sure that this fire and the others we were investigating had been set by the same person.
The most conclusive evidence we had was the similarity of the circumstances surrounding this fire and those at the Malones’ and Meachams’ homes.
“The vics were a married couple, George and Nancy Chu,” Jimenez told us. “She was a middle school teacher. He was some kind of financial planner. They paid their taxes, were law-abiding, good neighbors, and so forth. No known connections with any bad guys. I can fax you the detectives’ notes from the canvass of the neighborhood.”
“What about the ME’s report?” I asked.
Conklin was splashing through the ruins