John Lescroart - The Motive

Now he was at the steps. Even here across the street and back into the shelter of the park, the fire was making it uncomfortably warm. Cuneo grabbed a Styro-foam cup of water from a table someone had set up and got himself close enough to listen to Becker and the woman in the leather coat. She wasn't a kid-maybe, Cuneo figured, about his age-but she was still very attractive. Cuneo's antennae for women were always up-he couldn't help himself and saw no reason to change. Close up, he noticed that the woman's jacket hung open, partially revealing an all-grown-up but tight-looking body in a blue silk blouse, and below a thin waist tucked into designer jeans. The woman's stylish medium-length hair picked up highlights from the flames. One of the ageless babes, he thought, as he automatically checked for a wedding ring-not that it always mattered. She wore one.

He moved a step closer, started flicking the side of his cup with his fingers.

"… as soon as I saw it on the television," the woman was saying. "I was just over here with Paul this afternoon, so I knew exactly…"

Becker held up a finger, stopping her, directed a flat gaze to Cuneo. "Can I help you?"

Cuneo quickly brought his cup to his mouth and flicked free the last of the ice. Flashing his badge, he mumbled around the small cubes. "Sorry. Dan Cuneo. Homicide."

Becker stuck a hand out. "Becker. Arson. And that's what this is."

The woman turned to face Cuneo. "You're with homicide? Is somebody dead in there then?" Back to Becker. "You know that? God, it's got to be Paul."

Cuneo: "Paul who?"

"Paul Hanover. It's his house." She turned all the way around and stared back at what was left of the place. By this time, the fire had collapsed much of the structure.

The front doorway still stood, and most of the second floor, but the third and fourth stories were all but gone. "He's in there? You've got to get him out before…"

Becker cut her off. "There's no reason to get him out, ma'am. He was dead a half hour ago. If you knew him, I'm sorry." Pointing toward the house, Becker said to Cuneo, "They're directing the master streams-that's those major hoses-to try and preserve as much of your crime scene as they can. But there's no telling."

Cuneo nodded. "The call said there were two of them."

"Yep."

"Oh my God," the woman said again. "That's got to be Missy, too."

Cuneo turned from the house to the woman, introduced himself again, flashed his badge. "And who are you, please?"

"Catherine Hanover. I'm Paul's daughter-in-law. Paul Hanover. He lives-lived here."

"Excuse me," Cuneo said, "are you talking about the Paul Hanover?"

"If you mean the lawyer, yes." She looked back to the house. "I can't believe he's in there."

"Somebody's in there," Becker said, "but we don't know it's Mr. Hanover. Or Missy."

"Who's Missy?" Cuneo asked.

"Michelle D'Amiens, Paul's girlfriend. Fiancee. Everybody called her Missy. They were getting married in the fall." Suddenly, a bolt of panic shot through her.

"Can't you do anything? You can't just let them stay in there. There won't be anything left of them."

Becker's mouth was set as he shared a look with Cuneo. Both knew the awful truth, that the bodies were already unrecognizable, charred beyond any hope of recognition. Identification and forensic evidence, if any, would mostly come from a lab now. Neither they nor anyone else could do anything to change that.

"Mrs. Hanover," Becker said, "maybe you want to find a place to sit. Or go on home. Whatever happens here is going to take a long while. We can get your address and phone number and contact you in the morning."

But Cuneo wasn't quite ready to dismiss her. "Did I hear you say that you were over here at this house earlier today?"

"Yes."

"Why was that?"

"I wanted to talk to Paul about something, just some family stuff."

"Did you see him?"

She nodded. "Yes. We had some coffee." Her eyes were drawn back to the inferno. Bringing her hand up, she rubbed her forehead. "He can't be in there right now. That's just not possible. And Missy."

"Was Missy there when you talked to Paul today?" Cuneo asked.

"No. I don't know. I didn't see her, anyway."

"So what was the family stuff?"

The question stopped her and she frowned. "Why? What difference would that make?"

Cuneo looked to Becker, who shrugged. He came back to Catherine Hanover. "I don't know. If the man's dead, everything he did in his last hours is going to come under scrutiny. If this was arson, and Inspector Becker here says it is, somebody might have started the fire to kill somebody in the house. I'm going to want to know everything about his last day."

Becker butted in. "Could you please excuse us for a minute, ma'am?" Without waiting for her reply, he stepped in front of her and hooked an arm into Cuneo's to turn him. When they'd moved off half a dozen steps, he said, "Before you go too far with her, maybe you should know that there was a gun under the larger torso, probably the man, maybe this Hanover. Also what looks like a bullet hole in one of the heads. Hers. Maybe in his, too, but I didn't want to touch and turn him to find out."

"So murder/suicide?"

Again, Becker shrugged. "Maybe. That's one thing that fits, anyway. The gun was under his body."

"He did himself and fell on the gun?"

"Maybe. Could be. That works. If the whole place goes up, I've got a roll of pictures I took you can look at tomorrow, then decide. Otherwise, if they can save the foyer, we might pull a break and be able to get in again by sunrise." He glanced at the fire. "Not much before, I wouldn't think."

Cuneo nodded, found his eyes drawn back across the street, where most of the firefighting activity had now come to be centered on the houses to either side of Hanover's. Becker could be right. It looked to Cuneo as though part of the crime scene might be salvaged after all. "So where'd this woman come from?"

"She said she was home watching TV and saw it on the news and recognized the place."

"Where's the rest of her family?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask. Maybe there isn't any rest of it. I had just started talking to her when you got here."

"All right." Cuneo cast a glance over to Mrs. Hanover, who was also staring at the blaze, hypnotized by it. He came back to Becker. "But it's definitely arson?"

"There was definitely gasoline residue under the smaller body."

"Anything else?"

"That's not enough?"

"No, I didn't mean that."

They had moved out in front of Mrs. Hanover, and now both men looked back to where she stood. Her coloring was high, unwitting excitement on her face, in the look in her eyes. With the heat from the fire, she'd removed her jacket and held it by a finger over her shoulder, a posture that emphasized her already generous bosom. "That's a damn fine-looking woman," Cuneo said.

"You going to let her go home?" Becker asked.

Cuneo kept his eyes on her. "Couple more minutes," he said.

Fifty-five-year-old Abraham Glitsky had worked his way up through the ranks of the San Francisco Police Department and was now its deputy chief of inspectors. In his days as a homicide inspector, and then later as lieutenant in charge of the homicide detail, he was a slacks-and-flight jacket kind of cop, but since assuming his latest rank-the only step up was chief-he wore his blues every day. And though he wasn't aware ofit, he cut quite a figure in them. A former tight end at San Jose State, Glitsky stood six feet two and went about 220, none of it padding. Jewish on his father's side and black on his mother's, his blue eyes were set off against light mocha skin. But a deep scar that ran between both his lips kept him from ever considering himself even remotely good-looking. If he thought about it at all, and he didn't, he'd admit that he probably looked a little scary, especially when he wasn't smiling, which was most of the time. And he wasn't all wrong.