3rd Degree (Women's Murder Club 3)

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 to terrify the good people of San Francisco. This fie

ry action had taken nerve on his part, but finally he’d done something. Look at the firemen, EMS, the local police. They were all here, in honor of his work, or rather, its humble beginnings.

One of them had caught his eye, a blond woman, obviously a cop with some clout. She seemed to have some guts, too. He watched her and wondered if she would become his adversary, and would she be worthy?

He inquired about her from a patrolman at the barricades. “The woman who went into the house, that’s Inspector Murphy, isn’t it? I think I know her.”

The cop didn’t even bother to make eye contact, typical police insolence. “No,” he said, “that’s Lieutenant Boxer. She’s Homicide. A real bitch on wheels, I hear.”

Chapter 10

THE CRAMPED THIRD-FLOOR OFFICE that housed the Homicide detail was buzzing, unlike any Sunday morning I could remember.

I got a clean bill of health at the hospital, then arrived at the office to find that the whole team had showed up. We had a couple of leads to follow, even before the results of the examination of the blast scene came back. Bombings usually don’t involve kidnappings. Find that baby, everything told me, and we’ll find whoever did this horrible thing.

A TV was on. Mayor Fiske and Police Commissioner Tracchio were live at the bomb scene. “This is a horrible, vindictive tragedy,” the mayor was saying, having come straight off the first tee at Olympic. “Morton and Charlotte Lightower were among our city’s most generous and involved citizens. They were also friends.”

“Don’t forget contributors,” Cappy Thomas, Jacobi’s partner, said.

“I want everyone to know that our police department is already vigorously pursuing concrete leads,” the mayor continued. “I want to assure the people of this city that this is an isolated event.”

“X/L…” Warren Jacobi scratched his head. “Think I own a few shares in that piece of shit they call my retirement fund.”

“Me too,” said Cappy. “Which fund you in?”

“I think it’s called Long-Term Growth, but whoever named it sure has a twisted sense of humor. Two years ago I had—”

“If you moguls have a moment,” I called. “It’s Sunday and the markets are closed. We have three dead, a missing baby, and an entire town house burned to the ground in a possible bombing.”

“Definite bombing,” Steve Fiori, the department’s press liaison, chimed in. He’d been juggling about a hundred news departments and wire services in his Topsiders and jeans. “Chief just got it confirmed from the Bomb Squad. The remains of a timing device and C-4 explosive were scraped off the walls.”

The news didn’t exactly surprise us. But the realization that a bomb had gone off in our city, that we had murderers out there with C-4, that a six-month-old baby was still missing, sent a numb quiet around the room.