Jacobi asked, “Miss Malone. Anyone you can think of who might have had a grudge against your parents?”

“I haven’t lived here since I was eighteen,” she said. “My dad could throw his weight around at the dealership, but if there’d been any serious threats, my mom would’ve told me.

“Are you sure this wasn’t an accident?” she asked, turning pleading eyes on my partner.

Conklin said, “I’m sorry, Kelly. This was no accident.”

He put his arms around her and Kelly sobbed against his chest. Her pain was breaking my own heart. Still, I had to ask. “Kelly, who stands to benefit the most from your parents’ death?”

The young woman recoiled as if I’d struck her.

“Me,” she shouted. “I do. And my brother. You got us. We hired a hit man to kill our parents and torch the house so that we could inherit our parents’ money.”

I said, “Kelly, I’m sorry. I wasn’t implying that you had anything to do with this.” But she talked only to Conklin after that.

As I stood downstairs with Jacobi, I overheard Rich tell Kelly about the note in Latin written on the flyleaf of a book.

“Latin? I don’t know anything about that. If Mom or Dad wrote anything in Latin, it would have been the first and only time,” said Kelly Malone.

Chapter 27

HAWK HAD TRAPPED the roach under an eight-ounce drinking glass upended on top of the worktable he used as a desk in his room at home. The roach was a Blatta orientalis, the oriental cockroach, about an inch long and shiny black, commonly found in all the swank houses of Palo Alto.

But although this bug was common, he was special to Hawk.

“You’re doing very well, Macho,” Hawk said to the roach. “It’s not much of a bug’s life, I have to admit, but you’re worthy of the challenge.”

Behind Hawk, Pidge lay on Hawk’s bed reading background material on an upcoming class project: a three-dimensional fax, something that had probably been inspired by the “beam me up, Scotty” technology from Star Trek and was now becoming manifest in the real world.

How it worked was, a machine scanned an object at point A, and an identical object was created by a laser carving out a replica from another material at point Z. But Pidge knew all of this. He’d seen the demo. So what he was doing was busywork while he waited for Hawk to get his lazy ass in gear.

“You’re behind on the dialogue,” Pidge grumbled. “Instead of talking to that bug, you should do the dialogue before your stupid parents come home.”

“Why don’t you like Macho?” Hawk asked. “He’s been living on air and whatever body oil might have been on the desk for, um, sixteen days. Haven’t you, Macho? It’s damned admirable, Pidge. Seriously.”

“Seriously, bro, you’re an asshole.”

“You’re missing the nobility of the experiment,” Hawk continued, unfazed. “A creature descended from insects that’ve been around since the first ass crack of time. Macho is living on air. And if he lives for four more days, I’m going to release him. That’s the deal I made with him. I’m thinking up his reward right now.

“Macho,” Hawk said, bending over to examine his captive. He tapped on the glass. The roach’s antennae waved at him. “I’m thinking chocolate brownie, dude.”

Pidge got up off the bed, strode to the desk, reached over Hawk’s shoulder, and removed the glass. He made a fist, pounded it down on the bug, squashing it on the Formica table. One of Macho’s legs moved in a postterminal reflex.

“Hey! Why’d you do that, man? Why’d you -”

“Ars longa, vita brevis. Art is long, dude. Life is short. Write the dialogue for the freaking chapter, bug man, or I’m outta here.”

Chapter 28

CONKLIN AND I had been working pawnshops all day, hoping one of Patricia Malone’s pieces of jewelry would turn up – and if it did, maybe we’d have a lead we could work with. The last shop on our list was a hole between two bars on Mission, the Treasure Coop.

I’m not sure the owner heard the bell ring over the door when Conklin and I came in, but he picked up our reflection from one of the dozens of mirrors hanging on the walls and came out from the back of the store. His name was Ernie Cooper. He was a slablike man from the Vietnam era and seemed to fill up his store. Cooper had a gray ponytail and an iPod in his shirt pocket, cords dangling from his ears. There was the bulge of a gun under his jacket.

While Conklin showed Cooper the insurance company’s photos of Patricia Malone’s Victorian jewelry, I looked around at the innumerable trophies, guitars, and out-of-date computers, and at the stuffed monkey with a lamp coming out of its back perched on a plant stand. A collection of fetal pigs was lined up on one of the four counters, which were filled with wedding bands, watches, military medals, and junk gold chains.

Ernie Cooper whistled when he saw the photos.

“What’s all this worth, a couple hundred thou?”

“Something like that,” Conklin said.

“Nobody brings this kind of stuff to me, but who am I looking for, anyway?”

“Maybe him,” Conklin said, slapping down a photocopy of the Polaroid of Ronald Grayson.

“I can keep this?” Cooper asked.

“Sure, and here’s my card,” Rich said.

“Homicide.”

“That’s right.”

“So, this was what? Armed robbery?”

Conklin smiled. “If this kid comes in, if anyone comes in with this stuff, we want to know.”

I noticed a small black-and-white snapshot stuck to the cash register. It was a photo of Ernie Cooper coming down the steps of the Civic Center Courthouse, and he was wearing the uniform of the SFPD. Cooper saw me looking at the photo, said, “I notice your shield says Boxer on it. I used to work with a guy by that name.”

“Marty Boxer?”

“That’s the guy.”

“He’s my father.”

“No kidding? I couldn’t stand him, no offense.”

“No offense taken,” I said.

Cooper nodded, rang up a “no sale,” and put the photocopies of Grayson’s picture and the Malone jewelry along with Conklin’s card inside the cash register, under the tray.

“I’ve still got the instincts, maybe even better than when I was on the Job. I’ll put out the word. If I hear anything,” Ernie Cooper said, shoving the cash drawer shut, “I’ll be in touch. That’s a promise.”

Chapter 29

THE SKY HAD TURNED GRAY while Conklin and I were inside Ernie Cooper’s pawnshop. Muted thunder grumbled as we walked to Twenty-first Street, and by the time we got into the squad car, the first fat drops of rain splattered against the windshield. I cranked up the window, pinching the web between my thumb and forefinger. I shouted, “Damn,” with more vehemence than was absolutely necessary.

I was frustrated. So was Rich. The long workday had netted us exactly nothing. Rich fumbled with the keys, his brow wrinkled, exhaustion weighing him down like a heavy coat.

“You want me to drive?”

My partner turned off the ignition and sighed, threw himself back into the seat.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Give me the keys.”

“I can drive. That’s not the problem.”

“What is?”

“It’s you.”

Me? Was he mad at me for questioning Kelly?

“What did I do?”

“You just are, you know?”

Aw, no. I tried to ward off this conversation by imploring him with my eyes and thinking, Please don’t go there, Richie. But the pictures flashed into my mind, a strobe-lit sequence of images of a late work night in LA that had turned into a reckless, heated clinch on a hotel bed. My body had been screaming yes, yes, yes, but my clearer mind slammed on the brakes – and I’d told Richie no.

Six months later, the memory was still with us inside the musty Crown Victoria, crackling like lightning as the rain came down. Richie saw the alarm on my face.