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“But the blood is bovine,” I said.
“It’s a steak knife. He ate a steak.”
“Yep. It gets worse.”
“Hang on.” Rich dumped a couple of sugars into his coffee, stirred, slugged it down. “Okay. Hit me.”
“There’s no blood or tissue in the bathtub, and the hair we sent out came back with no match. Furthermore, there’s no sign that anyone tried to cover up the blood. No bleach.”
“Great,” my partner said, scowling. “What is this? The perfect crime?”
“There’s more and worse. There’s no trace of blood in or on Malcolm’s vehicle, no hairs consistent with Michael’s.”
“So I was wrong about the truck. You should have bet me, Lindsay. We’d be having dinner tonight — on me.”
I grinned and said, “You would have showered first, I suppose.”
But my mood could hardly be lower. I was going to have to call the Campions and tell them that we still had no physical evidence, and that Junie Moon had recanted her confession and we’d had to kick Ricky Malcolm.
“You want to call Malcolm and tell him he can have his truck back?”
Rich picked up his phone, called Malcolm, got no answer.
We took a drive out to the crime lab at Hunter’s Point Naval Yard, opened all the car windows on the way, and let the wind air out my partner’s clothes. At the lab, I signed a release for the truck, and after three more unanswered calls to Ricky Malcolm, we drove to his apartment.
Rich yelled, “Police,” and knocked loudly on Malcolm’s door until a small Chinese man came out from the restaurant downstairs.
He shouted up to us, “Mr. Malcolm gone. He paid his rent and leave on motorcycle. You want to see mess upstairs?”
“We’ve seen it, thanks.”
“He’s gone, all right,” I muttered to Conklin as we got into the squad car. “Ricky Malcolm. Sleaze. Slob. Easy rider. Criminal freakin’ mastermind. Coming soon to a town near you.”
Chapter 17
I WAS RIPPED out of a dream and my lover’s arms by Jacobi’s voice on the phone saying, “Get dressed, Boxer. Conklin is five blocks away. He’s picking you up at your door.”
Jacobi clicked off before giving me details, but this much I knew: someone had died.
It was just after midnight when Conklin nosed our squad car onto the lawn of a smoldering house in the 3800 block of Clay Street in Presidio Heights. Four fire rigs and an equal number of patrol cars were already parked in front of the Greek Revival, the wind whipping smoke into a vortex at an inside corner of the house. Dazed bystanders clustered across the street, watching the firefighters douse the charred remains of what had once been a beautiful home in this upscale neighborhood.
I pulled my canvas jacket closed, ducked under the water spouting from a fire hose just as the generators on the front lawn fired up. Conklin was ahead of me as we mounted the front steps. He badged the cop at the door and we entered the scorched carcass of the house.
“Two victims, Sarge,” said Officer Pat Noonan. “First doorway on your right. DRT.”
Dead right there.
I asked, “Has the ME been called?”
“She’s on her way.”
It was darker inside the house than out. The room Noonan indicated had been a large den or family room. I flicked my flashlight beam over piles of furniture, bookshelves, a large TV. Then my light caught a pair of legs on the floor.
They weren’t attached to a body.
I screamed, “Noonan! Noonan! What the hell is this?” I waved my torchlight around, catching a second body a few feet from the torso of the first, just inside the doorway.
Noonan came into the den with a firefighter behind him, a young guy with the name Mackey stenciled on his turnouts.
