3rd Degree

Chapter 3

I gulped air and headed deeper into the collapsing house. “Where are you?” I called. I stumbled over flaming rubble. I was scared now, not only for whoever had cried but for myself.

I heard it again. A low whimpering from somewhere in the back of the house. I made straight for it. “I’m coming!” I shouted. To my left, a wooden beam crashed. The farther I went, the more trouble I was in. I spotted a hallway where I thought the sounds came from, the ceiling teetering where the second story used to be.

“Police!” I yelled. “Where are you?”

Nothing.

Then I heard the crying again. Closer this time. I stumbled down the hallway, blanketing my face. C’mon, Lindsay… Just a few more feet.

I pushed through a smoking doorway. Jesus, it’s a kid’s bedroom. What was left of it.

A bed was overturned on its side up against a wall. It was smothered in thick dust. I shouted, then heard the noise again. A muffled, coughing sound.

The frame of the bed was hot to the touch, but I managed to budge it a little bit from the wall. Oh, my God… I saw the shadowy outline of a child’s face.

It was a small boy. Maybe ten years old.

The child was coughing and crying. He could barely speak. His room was buried under an avalanche of debris. I couldn’t wait. Any longer and the fumes alone would kill us.

“I’m go

I stumbled through the flames, carrying the boy. Smoke was everywhere, searing and noxious. I saw a light where I thought I had come in, but I didn’t know for sure.

I was coughing, the boy clinging to me with his petrified grip. “Mommy, mommy,” he was crying. I squeezed him back, to let him know I wasn’t going to let him die.

I screamed ahead, praying that someone would answer. “Please, is anyone there?”

“Here,” I heard a voice through the blackness.

I stumbled over debris, avoiding new hot spots flaming up. Now I saw the entrance. Sirens, voices. The shape of a man. A fireman. He gently took the boy out of my arms. Another fireman wrapped his arms around me. We headed outside.

Then I was out, dropping to my knees, sucking in mouthfuls of precious air. An EMT carefully put a blanket around me. Everyone was being so good, so professional. I collapsed against a fire truck up on the sidewalk. I almost threw up, then I did.

Someone put an oxygen mask over my mouth and I took several deep gulps. A fireman bent over me. “Were you inside when it went?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I went in to help.” I could barely talk, or think. I opened my fa

Chapter 4

“I’m all right,” I said, forcing myself out of the EMT’s grasp. I made my way over to the boy, who was already strapped onto a gurney. He was being wheeled into a van. The only motion in his face was a slight flickering in his eyes. But he was alive. My God, I had saved his life.

Out on the street, onlookers were being ringed back by the police. I saw the redheaded kid who’d been riding his Razor. Other horrified faces crowded around.

All of a sudden I became aware of barking. Jesus, it was Martha, still tied to the post. I ran over to her and hugged her tightly as she licked my face.

A fireman made his way to me, a division captain’s crest on his helmet. “I’m Captain Ed Noroski. You okay?”

“I think so,” I said, not sure.

“You guys in the Hall can’t be heroes enough on your own shift, Lieutenant?” Captain Noroski said.

“I was jogging by. I saw it blow. Looked like a gas explosion. I just did what I thought was right.”

“Well, you did good, Lieutenant.” The fire captain looked at the wreckage. “But this was no gas explosion.”

“I saw two bodies inside.”

“Yeah,” Noroski said, nodding. “Man and a woman. Another adult in a back room on the first floor. That kid’s lucky you got him out.”

“Yeah,” I said. My chest was filling with dread. If this was no gas explosion …

Then I spotted Warren Jacobi, my number one inspector, coming out of the crowd, badging his way over to me. Warren had the “front nine,” what we call the Sunday morning shift when the weather gets warm.

Jacobi had a paunchy ham hock of a face that never seemed to smile even when he told a joke, and deep, hooded eyes impossible to light up with surprise. But when he fixed on the hole where 210 Alhambra used to be and saw me, sooty, smeared, and sitting down, trying to catch my breath—Jacobi did a double take.

“Lieutenant? You okay?”

“I think so.” I tried to pull myself up.

He looked at the house, then at me again. “Seems a bit run-down, even for your normal fixer-upper, Lieutenant. I’m sure you’ll do wonders with it.” He held in his grin. “We have a Palestinian delegation in town I know nothing about?”

I told him what I had seen. No smoke or fire, the second floor suddenly blowing out.

“My twenty-seven years on the job gives me the premonition we’re not talking busted boiler here,” said Jacobi.

“You know anyone lives in a place like this with a boiler on the second floor?”

“No one I know lives in a place like this. You sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” Jacobi bent down over me. Ever since I’d taken a shot in the Coombs case, Jacobi’d become like a protective uncle with me. He had even cut down on his stupid sexist jokes.

“No, Warren, I’m all right.”

I don’t even know what made me notice it. It was just sitting there on the sidewalk, leaning up against a parked car, and I thought, Shit, Lindsay, that shouldn’t be there.

Not with everything that had just gone on.

A red school knapsack. A million students carry them. Just sitting there.

I started to panic again.

I’d heard of secondary explosions in the Middle East. If it was a bomb that had gone off in the house, who the hell knew? My eyes went wide. My gaze was fixed on the red bag.

I grabbed Jacobi. “Warren, I want everyone moved back away from here, now. Move everybody back, now!”

Chapter 5

From the back of a basement closet, Claire Washburn pulled out an old, familiar case she hadn’t seen in years. “Oh, my God …”

She had woken up early that morning, and after a cup of coffee on the deck, hearing the jays back for the first time that season, she threw on a denim shirt and jeans and set out on the dreaded task of cleaning out the basement closet.

First to go were the stacks of old board games they hadn’t played in years. Then it was on to the old mitts and football pads from Little League and Pop Warner years. A quilt folded up that was now just a dust convention.

Then she came upon the old aluminum case buried under a musty blanket. My God.

Her old cello. Claire smiled at the memory. Good Lord, it had been ten years since she’d held it in her hands.

She yanked it from the bottom of the closet. Just seeing it brought back a swell of memories: hours and hours of learning the scales, practicing. “A house without music,” her mother used to say, “is a house without life.” Her husband Edmund’s fortieth birthday, when she had struggled through the first movement of Haydn’s Concerto in D—the last time she had played.

Claire unsnapped the clips and stared at the wood grain on the cello. It was still beautiful, a scholarship gift from the music department at Hampton. Before she realized she would never be a Yo-Yo Ma and headed to med school, it had been her most cherished possession.

A melody popped into her head. That same, difficult passage that had always eluded her. The first movement of Haydn’s Concerto in D. Claire looked around, as if embarrassed. What the hell, Edmund was still sleeping. No one would hear.