7th Heaven - James Patterson [77]
“Sorry, kiddo. The only other match I got was to Connor Campion.”
I sighed, said, “Thanks anyway, Charlie,” and stabbed the blinking button of my second line.
Chuck Hanni’s voice sounded wound-up, excited.
“Glad I got you,” Hanni said. “There’s been a fire.”
I pressed the speaker button so Conklin could hear.
“It just happened a few hours ago in Santa Rosa,” Chuck said. “Two fatalities. I’m on the way out there now.”
“It’s arson? You think it’s related to our case?”
“The sheriff told me that one of the vics was found with a book in his lap.”
I stared at Conklin, knowing he was thinking the same thing: that SOB Pidge hadn’t wasted any time.
“We’ll meet you there,” I said to Hanni.
I wrote down the address and hung up the phone.
Chapter 106
THE HOUSE WAS TUDOR-STYLE, surrounded by tall firs and located in a development of million-dollar-and-up homes bordering on a golf course in Santa Rosa. We edged our car into the pack of sheriff’s cruisers and fire rigs, all of which had been on the scene for hours. The firefighters were wrapping up as the ME and arson investigators came and went, ducking under the barrier tape that had been looped around the premises.
I was furious that Pidge had killed again, and once again, he’d taken his hellacious arson spree to a county where Rich, Chuck, and I had no official standing.
Chuck called out to us, and we walked toward the house.
“The fire was contained in the garage,” he said, massaging the old burn scar on his hand.
Hanni held the garage door open, and Conklin and I stepped inside. It was a three-car garage, tools and lawn equipment against the walls, and in the center of the floor was a late-model minivan that had been seared by flames, the exterior scorched black, blue, and a powdery gray. Hanni introduced us around to Sheriff Paul Arcario, to the ME, Dr. Cecilia Roach, and to the arson investigator, Matt Hartnett, who said he was a friend of Chuck’s.
“The homeowner is a Mr. Alan Beam,” Hartnett told us. “He’s still inside his vehicle. And there’s a second victim, a female. She was found on the floor next to the van. She’s in a body bag for safekeeping. Otherwise, everything is just as we found it.”
Hanni shined his light into the carcass of the van so that Conklin and I could get a better look at the victim’s incinerated body in the driver’s seat. The seat was tilted back. A heavy chain lay across the victim’s legs, and a small book rested on his lap, right above the pink and protruding coils of his large intestine.
I went weak at the knees.
The smells of burned flesh and gasoline were overpowering. I could almost hear the screaming, the pleading, the soft whick of a match, and the boom of the consuming fire. Rich asked me if I was okay, and I said that I was. But what I was thinking was that what had happened here in the small hours of the morning had been the ultimate in terror and agony.
That it had been nothing less than the horror of hell.
Chapter 107
DR. ROACH ZIPPED the body bag closed and asked her assistants to carry the female victim out to the van. Roach was petite, in her forties, wore her thick graying hair in a ponytail and her glasses on a beaded chain.
“There was no ID on her,” Dr. Roach told me. “All I can say is that she looks to be a juvenile, maybe a teenager.”
“Not Beam’s wife?”
“The ex–Mrs. Beam lives in Oakland,” said the sheriff, closing his cell phone. “She’ll be here in a few.”
Hanni began a run-through of the fire for our benefit.
“The fire started inside the passenger compartment,” he said. “Paper and wood were piled up in the backseat directly behind the driver. And this is a tow chain,” he said of the heavy links lying across the victim’s lap.
He pointed to a metal bar down in the driver-side foot well, explained that it was a steering wheel lock, like The Club, and that it had been passed through the chain and locked around the steering column. Hanni theorized that first the chains and The Club were locked, then the newspapers and wood were doused with