James Patterson - 7th Heaven

I said, “I love you so much. I’m going to do a better job of showing you, Joe, I swear, I will.”

RICH WAS ALREADY at the computer when I got to my desk. He looked like he was in fifth gear, his index fingers tapping a fast two-step over the keys. I thanked him for the Krispy Kreme he’d parked on a napkin next to my phone.

“It was my turn,” Rich said, not looking up as I dragged out my chair and sat down. “Dr. Roach called,” Rich continued. “Said there were fifty-five ccs of gasoline in Alan Beam’s stomach.”

“What’s that? Three ounces? Geez. Is she saying he drank gasoline?”

“Yeah. Probably directly out of the can. Beam really wanted to make sure he got it right this time. Doctor says the gas would’ve killed him if the fire hadn’t. She’s calling it a suicide. But look here, Lindsay.”

“Whatcha got?” I said.

“Come over here and see this.”

I walked around our two desks and peered over Conklin’s shoulder. There was a Web site on his screen called Crime Web. Conklin pressed the enter key and an animation began. A spider dropped a line from the top of the page, made a web around the blood-red headline over the feature story, then skittered back to its corner of the page. I read the headline.

Five Fatal Shootings This Week Alone

When are the cops and the DA going to get it together?

The text below was a sickening indictment of San Francisco ’s justice system – and it was all true. Homicides were up, prosecutions were down, the result of not enough people or money or time.

Rich moved the cursor to the column listing the pages on the site.

“This one – here,” Rich said, clicking on a link called Current Unsolved Murders.

Thumbnail photos came up.

There was a family portrait of the Malones. Another of the Meachams. Rich clicked on the thumbnail of the Malones and said, “Listen to this.”

And then he read the page to me:

“ ‘Were the murders of Patricia and Bertram Malone committed by the same killers of Sandy and Steven Meacham?

“ ‘We say yes.

“ ‘And there have been other killings just as heinous with the same signature. The Jablonskys of Palo Alto and George and Nancy Chu of Monterey were also killed in horrific house fires.

“ ‘Why can’t SFPD solve these crimes?

“ ‘If you have any information, write to us at CrimeWeb.com. Diem dulcem habes.’ ”

My God, it was Latin!

“We never told the press about the Latin,” I said. “What does it mean?”

“Diem dulcem habes means ‘Have a nice day.’ ”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Let’s hope it’s going to be even better than that.”

I called the DA’s office, asked for Yuki, got Nick Gaines, told him we needed a warrant to get an Internet provider to give us the name of the Web site holder.

“I’ll buck it up the line,” Gaines said. “Just asking, Sergeant: You’ve got probable cause?”

“We’re working on it,” I said. I hung up, said, “Now what?” as Rich clicked on a box labeled Contact Us.

He typed with two fingers: “Must speak with you about the Malone and the Meacham fires. Please contact me.” Conklin’s e-mail address showed that he was with the SFPD. If the Webmaster was Pidge, we could be scaring him off.

On the other hand – there was no other hand.

I needn’t have worried. Only a couple of minutes after firing off his e-mail, Rich had a response in his inbox.

“How can I help you?” the e-mail read.

It was signed Linc Weber, and it contained his phone number.

THE MEETING WITH WEBER was set for four that afternoon. Conklin and I briefed Jacobi, assigned our team, and set out at two o’clock for a bookstore in Noe Valley called Damned Spot. Inspectors Chi and McNeil were in the van parked on Twenty-fourth Street, and I was wired for sound. Inspectors Lemke and Samuels were undercover, loitering in front of and behind the store.

My palms were damp as I waited with Conklin in the patrol car. The Kevlar vest I was wearing was hot, but it was my racing mind that was causing the heat.

Could this be it? Was Linc Weber also known as Pidge?

At three thirty Conklin and I got out of the car and walked around the corner to the bookstore.

Damned Spot was an old-fashioned bookstore, dark, filled with mystery books, secondhand paperbacks, a two-books-for-one section. It bore no resemblance to the air-conditioned chain stores with latte bars and smooth jazz coming over the speakers.

The cashier was an androgynous twenty-something in black clothes, hair buzzed to a bristle, and multiple face piercings. I asked for Linc Weber, and the cashier told me in a sweet feminine voice that Linc worked upstairs.

I could almost hear the scratching sound of mice nesting in the stacks as we crept along the narrow aisles and edged past customers who looked psychologically borderline. In the back of the store was a plain wooden staircase with a sign on a chain across the handrails reading NO ENTRY.

Conklin unlatched the chain, and we started up the stairs, which opened into an attic room. The ceiling was cathedral-style, but low, only eight feet high under the peak, tapering to about three feet high at the side walls. In the back of the room was a desk where high piles of magazines, papers, and books surrounded a computer with two large screens.

And behind the desk was a black kid, maybe fifteen, reed-thin, with black-rimmed glasses, no visible tattoos, and no jewelry, unless you counted the braces on his teeth, which I saw when he looked up and smiled.

My high hopes fell.

This wasn’t Pidge. The governor’s description of Pidge was of a stocky white kid, long brown hair.

“I’m Linc,” the boy said. “Welcome to CrimeWeb dot com.”

LINC WEBER SAID he was “honored” to meet us. He indicated two soft plastic-covered cubes as chairs, and he offered us bottled water from the cooler behind his desk.

We sat on his cubes, turned down the water.

“We read your commentary on the Web site,” said Conklin, casually. “We were wondering about your take on whoever set the Malone and Meacham fires.”

The kid said, “Why don’t I start at the beginning?”

Normally that was a good idea, but today my nerves were so close to the snapping point, I just wanted two questions answered, and as succinctly as possible: Why did you use a Latin phrase on your Web site? Do you know someone who goes by the name of Pidge ?

But Weber said he’d never had a visit from cops before, and meeting in his office had legitimized his purpose and his Web site beyond his expectations. In fifteen minutes, he told us that his father owned Damned Spot, that he’d been a crime-story aficionado since he was old enough to read. He said that he wanted to publish crime fiction and true-crime books as soon as he got out of school.

“Linc, you said ‘Have a nice day’ in Latin on your Web site. Why did you do that?” I said, breaking into his life’s story.

“Oh. The Latin. I got the idea from this .”

Linc shuffled the piles on his desk, at last finding a soft-cover book, about 8½ by 11, with an elegant font spelling out the words 7th Heaven . He handed the book to me. I held my breath as I flipped through the pages. Although it resembled a big, fat comic book, it was a graphic novel.

“It was published first as a blog,” Weber told us. “Then my dad staked the first edition.”

“And the Latin?” I asked again, my throat tightening from the strain and the possibilities I could almost see.

“It’s all in there,” Weber told me. “The characters in this novel use Latin catchphrases. Listen, can I say on my Web site that you used me as a consultant? You have no idea what that would mean to me.”