James Patterson: 7th Heaven

Who had committed these brutal murders – and why?

JACOBI AND I would have cared about the Malones’ deaths even if Conklin hadn’t known them. The fact that he had been close to them once made us feel as if we’d known them, too.

Jacobi was my partner today, standing in for Conklin, who was picking up Kelly Malone at the airport. We stood on the doorstep of a Cape Cod in Laurel Heights only a dozen blocks from where the Malone house waited for the bulldozer. I rang the bell and the door was opened by a man in his early forties wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, looking at me like he already knew why we were there.

Jacobi introduced us, said, “Is Ronald Grayson at home?”

“I’ll get him,” said the man at the door.

“Mind if we come in?”

Grayson’s father said, “Sure. It’s about the fire, right?” He opened the door to a well-kept living room with comfy furniture and a large plasma-screen TV over the fireplace. He called out, “Ronnie. The police are here.”

I heard the back door slam hard, as if it were pulled closed by a strong spring.

I said, “ Shit . Call for backup.”

I left Jacobi in the living room, ran through the kitchen and out the back door. I was on my own. Jacobi couldn’t run anymore, not with his bad lungs and the twenty pounds he’d put on since his promotion to lieutenant.

I followed the kid in front of me, watched him leap the low hedge between his house and the one next door. Ronald Grayson wasn’t an athlete, but he had long legs and he knew the neighborhood. I was losing ground as he took a hard right behind a detached garage.

I yelled out, “ Stop where you are. Put your hands in the air ,” but he kept running.

I was in a jam. I didn’t want to shoot at him, but clearly the teenager had a reason for running. Had he set that fire?

Was this boy a killer?

I called in my location and kept running, clearing the garage in time to see Grayson Jr. cross Arguello Boulevard and slam into the hood of a patrol car. He slid down to the pavement. A second cruiser pulled up as two uniforms got out of the first. One officer grabbed the kid by the back of his shirt and threw him over the hood, while another kicked the boy’s legs apart and frisked him.

That’s when I noticed that Ronald Grayson’s face had turned blue.

“Oh, Christ!” I yelled.

I pulled Grayson off the car and bent him over. I grabbed the kid from behind, wrapped my right hand around my left fist, found the spot under his rib cage, and gave him three hard abdominal thrusts. He coughed, and three small bags fell from his mouth to the asphalt. The bags were filled with rock cocaine.

I was heaving, too. And I was furious. I cuffed the kid roughly, arrested him for possession with intent to sell. And I read him his rights.

“You idiot ,” I panted. “I have a gun . Get it? I could have shot you.”

“Fuck you .”

“You mean ‘thank you,’ don’t you, asshole?” said one of the uniforms. “The sergeant here just saved your worthless life.”

JACOBI AND I already knew two things about Ronald Grayson: that he’d had crack in his possession when we arrested him, and that this kid had called in the Malone fire.

Had he also set that fire?

Sitting in the interrogation room across from Ronald Grayson, I thought about another teenager, Scott Dyleski. Dyleski was sixteen when he’d broken into a woman’s home in Lafayette, stabbed her dozens of times, and mutilated her body because in his twisted mind, he imagined that she’d taken delivery of his drug paraphernalia and was keeping it from him. Dyleski was wrong, psychotic, and the murder should never have happened.

But it had.

And so, as I looked at fifteen-year-old Ronald Grayson with his clear skin and dark hair, drumming his fingers on the tabletop as though we were wasting his time, I wondered if he had doomed Pat and Bert Malone to horrific deaths so he could steal their stuff in order to buy drugs. I used my most patient and friendly tone of voice.

“Ron, why don’t you tell us what happened?”

“I have nothing to say.”

“That’s your right,” Jacobi grumbled menacingly.

Jacobi is five eleven, over two hundred pounds of well-marbled muscle, with lumpy features, hard gray eyes, gray hair, and a shiny gold badge. I would have expected the kid to show either fear or deference, but he seemed unfazed by our bad lieutenant.

“I don’t want to talk to you about the cocaine, you little shit,” Jacobi said, breathing into Grayson’s face. “But, man-to-man, tell us about the fire and we’ll help you with the coke charge. Do you understand me? I’m trying to help you.”

“Leave me alone, you fat fuck,” Grayson said.

Before Jacobi could smack the back of the kid’s head, his father, Vincent Grayson, and his lawyer blew through the door. Grayson was livid. “Ronnie, don’t say anything.”

“I didn’t, Dad.”

Grayson turned his fury on Jacobi. “You can’t talk to my son unless I’m with him. I know the law.”

“Save it, Mr. Grayson,” Jacobi growled. “Your imbecile son is under arrest for using and dealing, and I haven’t talked to him about the drugs at all.”

The lawyer’s name was Sam Farber, and from his business card I gathered that he had a one-man practice doing wills and real estate closings.

“I’m telling you and you and you ,” Jacobi said, pointing his finger at the kid, his father, and the lawyer in turn. “I’ll lobby the DA on Ronald’s behalf if he helps us with the fire. That’s our only interest in him right now.”

“My client is a good Samaritan,” Farber said, dragging up a chair, squaring his leather briefcase with the edge of the table before opening it. “His father was with him when he made the call to 911. That’s all he had to do with it, end of story.”

“Mr. Farber, we all know that the person who calls in the fire has to be cleared of setting it,” I said. “But Ronald hasn’t convinced us that he had nothing to do with it.”

“Go ahead, Ron,” said Farber.

Ron Grayson’s eyes slid across mine and up to the camera in the corner of the room. He mumbled, “I was in the car with my dad. I smelled smoke. I told Dad which way to drive. Then I saw the fire coming out of that house. I dialed 911 on my cell and reported it. That’s all.”

“What time was this?”

“It was ten thirty.”

“Mr. Grayson, I asked your son.”

“Look. My son was sitting next to me in the car! The guy at the gas station can vouch for Ronnie. They cleaned the windshields together.”

“Ronnie, did you know the Malones?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The people who lived in the house.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Did you see anyone leaving the house?”

“No.”

“Ever been to Palo Alto?”

“I’ve never been anywhere in Mexico.”

“Do you have enough, Inspectors?” Farber said. “My client has cooperated fully.”

“I want to take a look at his room,” I said.

SHRINKS SAY THAT ARSON is a masculine sexual metaphor; that setting the fire is the arousal phase, the blaze itself is the consummation, and the hoses putting out the blaze are the release. It may be true, because almost all arsonists are male, and half of them are teenage boys.

Jacobi and I left young Ronnie Grayson in lockup and returned to the Grayson house with Ron’s father. We parked again in the driveway of the small house, wiped our feet on the welcome mat, and said hello to Grayson’s mother, who looked frightened and eager to please. We turned down an offer of coffee, then excused ourselves so that we could thoroughly search Ronald Grayson’s bedroom.