Hawk reached out, touched the girl’s forearm. “Ow, that really hurts. You’ve got us wrong,” Hawk said. “I saw you in the library, don’t you remember? I’m not that good at meeting a girl by myself.”

“That’s the truth,” Pidge said. “Hawk’s shy. I’m just helping out as his wingman. But when I saw you just now, I thought – and this is the truth now – you’re more my type than his.”

“What kind of type is that?” the girl asked, warming now to the attention. Herds of bikes whizzed by. The smell of bread baking at Subway floated over the plaza. The sun warmed the top of her head. It was a beautiful day, and now it had gotten better.

“You’re creative, right? I have a feeling that you must be creative. You’re a writer, I’ll bet.”

“I’m in hum bio.”

“Human biology? Cool,” said Hawk. “Actually, I’m a writer. What’s your name?”

“Kara. Kara Lynch.”

“I’m Hawk, Kara Lynch. This is my friend Pidge.”

“What do you write?” she asked Hawk.

“Pidge and I are working together on a novel,” said Hawk. “May I get you another one of those?” he asked. “Strawberry Whirl?”

“Yes. Thanks, Hawk,” Kara said, smiling.

When Hawk left, Pidge leaned across the table, said to the girl, “Seriously, Kara. He’s not your type. Sure, he’s a fuzzy, but I’m a computer genius. Top of my class. If I told you my real name, you’d recognize it. But look, when Hawk gets back, you’ve got to be ready to choose. Either you’ve got to step up and ask Hawk out. Or you’ve got to ask me.

“It’s got to be one or the other, so that the two of us don’t fight. That wouldn’t be good. That would be cruel.”

Kara shifted her eyes to Hawk as he came back to the table with the smoothie. Kara thanked him, then said, “I was thinking, Hawk, maybe we could hang out sometime.”

Hawk smiled. “Oh, wow, Kara. And I was just thinking you’re much more Pidge’s type than mine. He’s famous at Gates. You’d never forgive yourself if you turned him down.”

Kara turned dubiously to Pidge. He rewarded her with a blinding smile. “You have to step up, Kara,” he said.

“Uh-huh. Kiss my ass,” she said, blushing, putting her eyes back on her laptop.

Pidge said, “I can’t do that, Kara. Hawk saw you first.” He laughed.

“Ba-rinnng,” Hawk said.

“Hal-lo?”

“Like either one of us would go out with a fat slob like her,” Hawk said, making sure he said it loud so that Kara and the students at the other picnic tables could hear him. The two boys laughed, made a big deal of holding their sides, falling off the benches to the ground.

Pidge recovered first. He stood and tousled Kara’s hair playfully. “Mea culpa, Kara mia,” he said. “Better luck next time.”

He took a bow as tears slid down her cheeks.

Chapter 56

CONKLIN PARKED OUR CAR on the narrow, tree-lined road in Monterey, a small coastal town two hours south of San Francisco. On my right, one wing of the three-story, wood-frame house remained untouched, while the center of the house had burned out to the framing timbers, the roof open to the blue sky like a silent scream.

Conklin and I pushed through the clumps of sidewalk gawkers, ducked under the barricade tape, and loped up the walk.

The arson investigator was waiting for us outside the front door. He was in his early thirties, over six feet tall, jangling the keys and change in his pocket. He introduced himself as Ramon Jimenez and gave me his card with his cell phone number printed on the back. Jimenez opened the fire department lock on the front door so we could enter the center of the house, and as the front door swung open we were hit with the smell of apples and cinnamon.

“Air freshener explosion,” Jimenez said. “The crispy critters were found in the den.”

As we followed Jimenez into the fire-ravaged shell, I thought about how some cops and firefighters use jargon to show that they’re tough – when in fact they’re horrified. Others do it because they get off on it. What kind of guy was Jimenez?

“Was the front door locked?” I asked him.

“No, and a neighbor called the fire in. Lots of people don’t bother to set their alarms around here.”

Broken glass crunched under my shoes and water lapped over the tops of them as I slogged through the open space, trying to get a sense of the victims’ lives from the remains and residue of their home. But my knack for fitting puzzle pieces together was blunted by the extent of the destruction. First the fire, then the water and the mop-up, left the worst kind of crime scene.

If there had been fingerprints, they were gone. Hair, fiber, blood spatter, footprints, receipts, notes – forget all of that. Unless a bomb trigger or trace of an accelerant was found, we couldn’t even be sure that this fire and the others we were investigating had been set by the same person.

The most conclusive evidence we had was the similarity of the circumstances surrounding this fire and those at the Malones’ and Meachams’ homes.

“The vics were a married couple, George and Nancy Chu,” Jimenez told us. “She was a middle school teacher. He was some kind of financial planner. They paid their taxes, were law-abiding, good neighbors, and so forth. No known connections with any bad guys. I can fax you the detectives’ notes from the canvass of the neighborhood.”

“What about the ME’s report?” I asked.

Conklin was splashing through the ruins behind me. He started up the skeletal staircase that still clung to the rear wall.

“The ME wasn’t called. Uh, the chief ruled the fire accidental. Nancy Chu’s sister had the funeral home pick up the bodies, ASAP.”

“The chief didn’t see cause to call the ME?” I shouted. “We’re looking at a string of fire-related, probable homicides in San Francisco.”

“Like I told you,” Jimenez said, staring me down with his dark eyes. “I wasn’t called either. By the time I got here, the bodies were gone and the house was boarded up. Now everyone’s yelling at me.”

“Who else is yelling?”

“You know him. Chuck Hanni.”

“Chuck was here?”

“This morning. We called him in to consult. He said you were working a couple of similar cases. And before you say I didn’t tell you, we might have a witness.”

Had I heard Jimenez right? There was a witness? I stared up at Jimenez and pinned some hope on the thought of a break in the case.

“Firefighters found the Chus’ daughter unconscious out on the lawn. She’s at St. Anne’s Children’s Hospital with an admitting carbon monoxide of seventeen percent.”

“She’s going to make it?”

Jimenez nodded, said, “She’s conscious now, but pretty traumatized. So far she hasn’t said a word.”

Chapter 57

A TELEPHONE RANG repeatedly in some corner of the second floor of George and Nancy Chu’s house. I waited out the sad, echoing bell tones before asking Jimenez the name and age of the Chus’ daughter.

“Molly Chu. She’s ten.”

I scribbled in my notebook, stepped around a mound of water-soaked rubble, and headed for the stairs. I called out to Rich, who was already starting down. Before I could tell him about Molly Chu, he showed me a paperback book that he held by the charred edges.

Enough of the book cover remained so that I could read the title: Fire Lover, by Joseph Wambaugh.

I knew the book.

This was a nonfiction account of a serial arsonist who’d terrorized the state of California in the 1980s and ’90s. The blurb on the back cover recounted a scene of horror, a fire that had demolished a huge home improvement center, killing four people, including a little boy of two. While the fire burned, a man sat in his car, videotaping the images in his rearview mirror – the rigs pulling up, the firefighters boiling out, trying to do the dangerous and impossible, to knock down the inferno even as two other suspicious fires burned only blocks away.