7th Heaven (Women's Murder Club 7)

It was the same as the printing we’d seen on the title pages of the books left at the houses of the arson victims.

“Requiescat in leguminibus,” I said, sounding out the syllables. “Rest in what?”

Rich wasn’t listening to me.

“This map on Atkinson’s computer,” he said. “He’s starred San Francisco, Palo Alto, Monterey. Unreal. Look at this! Photos of the houses they burned down. This is evidence, Lindsay. This is frickin’ evidence.”

It was.

I peered over Conklin’s shoulders as he opened Web pages, scanned research on each of the victim couples, including the names of their kids and the dates of the fires. Long minutes went by before I remembered the peculiar drawing pinned to the corkboard and was able to grab Rich’s attention.

“Requiescat in leguminibus,” I said again.

Rich came over to the wall and looked at the drawing of a couple who might be the Atkinsons. He read the caption.

“Leguminibus,” Rich said. “Means legumes, I think. Aren’t they a kind of vegetable? Like beans and peas?”

“Peas?” I yelled. “Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!”

“What?” Conklin asked me. “What is it?”

I hollered out to Jacobi, who was working the rest of the house with the sheriff’s department. With Conklin and Jacobi behind me, I found the stairs to the basement. The freezer was of the trunk variety, extra large.

I opened the lid and cool air puffed out.

“Requiescat in leguminibus,” I said. “Rest in peas.”

I started moving the bags of frozen vegetables aside until I saw a woman’s face.

“This freezer is deep enough for two,” Jacobi muttered.

I said, “Uh-huh,” and stopped digging.

From her approximate age, I was pretty sure I was looking at Moira Atkinson, dressed in her finest, frozen to death.

Chapter 122

I WAS WEARING my new blue uniform, and I’d washed my hair thirteen times and once more for good luck when I walked into the autopsy suite the next day. Claire was standing at the top of a six-foot ladder, her Minolta focused down on Mieke Vetter’s decapitated and naked body. Claire looked huge and wobbly up there.

“Can’t someone else do that?” I asked her.

“I’m done,” she said. She climbed down the ladder, one ponderous step at a time.

I gestured to the woman on the table. “I can save you some time,” I said to Claire. “I happen to know this victim’s cause and manner of death.”

“You know, Lindsay, I still have to do this for evidentiary purposes.”

“Okay, but just so you know. Yesterday, your patient sprayed me with blood, bone fragments, hair, not to mention brains. You have any idea what dripping brains feel like?”

“Warm gummy bears? Am I right?” Claire said, grinning at me.

“Uh. Yeah. Exactly.”

“One of my first cases was a suicide,” Claire said, getting on with her work, drawing a Y incision with her scalpel from each of Ms. Vetter’s clavicles to her pubis.

“This old soldier ends it all with a twelve-gauge shotgun under his chin. So I come into his RV, fresh out of training, ya know? And I’m leaning over his body in the La-Z-Boy, taking photos, and the cops are yukking it up.”

“Because?”