7th Heaven - James Patterson [47]
I was looking at Rich as Jacobi stumped back to his office.
Conklin said, “What? I have to buy Hanni flowers?”
“That’ll confuse him,” I said.
“Look, it made sense, didn’t it, Lindsay? The book was about an arsonist who was an arson investigator and Hanni missed it.”
“You made a courageous call, Richie. Your reasoning was sound and you didn’t attack him. You brought it into the open with our immediate superior. Perfectly proper. I’m just glad you were wrong.”
“So . . . look. You know him. Should I expect to find my tires slashed?” Conklin asked.
I grinned at the idea of it.
“You know what, Rich. I think Chuck feels so bad about missing that book, he’s going to slash his own tires. Just tell him, ‘Sorry, hope there are no hard feelings.’ Do the manly handshake thing, okay?”
My phone rang.
I held Richie’s glum gaze for a moment, knowing how bad he felt, feeling bad for him, then I answered the phone.
Claire said, “Sugar, you and Conklin got a minute to come down here? I’ve got a few things to show you.”
Chapter 62
CLAIRE LOOKED UP when Rich and I banged open the ambulance bay doors to the autopsy suite. She wore a flower-printed paper cap and an apron, the ties straining across her girth. She said, “Hey, you guys. Check this out.”
Instead of a corpse, there was a bisected tube of what looked like muscle, about seven inches long. The thing was clamped open on the autopsy table.
“What is that?” I asked her.
“This here’s a trachea,” Claire told us. “Belonged to a schnauzer Hanni found in the bushes outside the Chu house. See how pink it is? No soot in the pooch’s windpipe and his carbon monoxide is negative, so I’m saying he wasn’t in the house during the fire. Most likely he was in the yard, raised the alarm, and someone put him down with a blow to the head.
“See this fracture here?”
So much for the APB on Graybeard. Whose sad task would it be to tell Molly that her dog was dead? Claire went on to tell us she’d spent the day getting George and Nancy Chu’s bodies from the funeral home.
“It’s not our jurisdiction, not our case, but I finally got permission from the Chus’ son, Ruben. Told him that if I have to testify against the killer and I haven’t examined all the victims’ bodies, I’ll get diced into pieces by the attorney for the defense.”
I murmured an encouraging “uh-huh” and Claire went on.
“Ruben Chu was a mess. Didn’t want his parents to ‘suffer any more indignities,’ but anyway . . . I got the release. Both bodies are at X-ray now,” Claire added.
“What was your take?” I asked.
“They were burned pretty bad, a few extremities fell off during their travels, but one of George Chu’s ankles still had several wraps of intact monofilament fibers on it. So that, my friends, is evidence that they were absolutely, positively tied up.”
“Great job, Claire.”
“And I got enough blood for the tox screens.”
“You gonna keep us guessing, girlfriend?”
“You’re saying I live to frustrate you? I’m talking as fast as I can.” Claire laughed. She squeezed my shoulder affectionately, then removed a sheet of paper from a manila envelope, put it down on the table next to the dog’s trachea.
She ran her finger down the column of data. “High alcohol content in their blood,” she said. “Either the Chus had been drinking a lot, or else they’d been drinking high-octane stuff.”
“Same as Sandy Meacham?”
“Very much the same,” said Claire.
I flashed on the inscription in the book. Sobria inebrietas. Sober intoxication. I autodialed Chuck Hanni on my cell phone. If I was right, it would explain why he didn’t detect the odor of ignitable liquids at either of our fire scenes.
“Chuck? It’s Lindsay. Could those fires have been set with booze?”
Chapter 63
THE SUN WENT DOWN and someone in the night crew snapped on the bright overhead lights. Rich and I were still wandering around in the dark. Somewhere, a very smug killer was having his dinner, toasting