3rd Degree

Claire lifted her cello out of the felt mold. She took out the bow, held it in her hands. Wow…

A long minute of tuning, the old strings stretching back into their accustomed notes. A single pass, just ru

Then she noticed Edmund, still in his pajamas, watching her, standing at the bottom of the stairs. “I know I’m out of bed”—he scratched his head—“I remember putting on my glasses, even brushing my teeth. But it can’t be, ’cause I must be dreaming.”

Edmund hummed the opening bars that Claire had just played. “So, you think you can finish off the next passage? That’s the tricky part.”

“Is that a dare, Maestro Washburn?”

Edmund smiled mischievously. It was then that the phone rang. Edmund picked up a cordless on the handset. “Saved by the bell,” he groaned. “It’s the office. On Sunday, Claire. Can’t they ever give you a break?”

Claire took the phone. It was Freddie Rodriguez, a staffer at the ME’s office. Claire listened, then she set down the phone.

“My God, Edmund …there’s been an explosion downtown! Lindsay’s been hurt.”

Chapter 6

I don’t know what took hold of me. Maybe it was the thought of the three dead people in the house, or all the cops and firemen charging around the accident scene. I stared at that knapsack, and my brain was shouting out that it was wrong—dead wrong. “Everyone get back!” I yelled again.

I started toward the knapsack. I didn’t know what I was going to do yet, but the area had to be cleared.

“No way, LT.” Jacobi reached for my arm. “You don’t get to do this, Lindsay.”

I pulled away from him. “Get everyone out of here, Warren.”

“I may not outrank you, LT,” Jacobi said, more impassioned this time, “but I’ve got fourteen more years on the force. I’m telling you, don’t go near that bag.”

The fire captain rushed up, shouting into his handheld, “Possible explosive device. Move everybody back. Get Magitakos from the Bomb Squad up here.”

Less than a minute later, Niko Magitakos, head of the city’s bomb squad, and two professionals covered in heavy protective gear pushed past me, heading toward the red bag. Niko wheeled out a boxlike instrument, an X-ray sca

The tech with the X-ray sca

“Get the truck in here.” Niko turned with a frown. “It looks hot.”

In the next minutes, reinforced steel curtains were pulled out of the truck and set up in a protective barrier. A tech wheeled in a claw and crept closer to the bag. If it was a bomb, it could go off any second.

I found myself in no-man’s-land, not wanting to move. A bead of sweat trickled down my cheek.

The man with the claw lifted the backpack to transport it to the truck.

Nothing happened.

“I don’t get any reading,” the tech holding the electro-sensor said. “We’re go

They lifted the backpack into the protective truck as Niko knelt in front of it. With practiced hands, he opened the zippered back.

“There’s no charge,” Niko said. “It’s a fucking battery radio.”

There was a collective sigh. I pulled out of the crowd and ran to the bag. There was an ID tag on the strap, one of those plastic labels. I lifted the strap and read.

BOOM! FUCKERS.

I was right. It was a goddamn leave-behind. Inside the backpack, next to the standard clock radio, was a photo in a frame. A computer photo, printed on paper, from a digital camera. The face of a good-looking man, maybe forty.

One of the charred bodies inside, I was pretty sure.

MORTON LIGHTOWER, read the inscription, AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.

“LET THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE BE HEARD.” A name was printed at the bottom. AUGUST SPIES. Jesus, this was an execution! My stomach turned.

Chapter 7

We got the town house ID’d pretty quickly. It did belong to the guy in the picture, Morton Lightower, and his family. The name rang a bell with Jacobi. “Isn’t that the guy who owned that X/L Systems?”

“No idea.” I shook my head.

“You know. The Internet honcho. Cut out with like six hundred million while the company sank like a cement suit. Stock used to sell for sixty bucks, now it’s something like sixty cents.”

Suddenly I remembered seeing it on the news. “The Creed of Greed guy.” He was trying to buy ball teams, gobbling up lavish homes, installing a $50,000 security gate on his place in Aspen, at the same time he was dumping his own stock and laying off half his staff.

“I’ve heard of investor backlash,” Jacobi said, shaking his head, “but this is a little much.”

Behind me, I heard a woman yelling to let her through the crowd. Inspector Paul Chin ushered her forward, through the web of news vans and camera crews. She stood in front of the bombed-out home.

“Oh, my God,” she gasped, a hand clasped over her mouth.

Chin led her my way. “Lightower’s sister,” he said.

She had her hair pulled back tightly, a cashmere sweater over jeans, and a pair of Manolo Blahnik flats I had once mooned over for about ten minutes in the window of Neiman’s.

“Please,” I said, leading the unsteady woman over to an open black-and-white. “I’m Lieutenant Boxer, Homicide.”

“Dia

“We pulled out a boy, about eleven.”

“Eric,” she said. “He’s okay?”

“He’s at the Burn Unit at Cal Pacific. I think he’s going to be all right.”

“Thank God!” she exclaimed. Then she covered her face again. “How can this be happening?”

I knelt down in front of Dia

“No accident,” she repeated. “Mortie was saying, ‘The media treats me like bin Laden. No one understands. What I do is supposed to be about making money.’ ”

Jacobi switched gears. “Ms. Aronoff, it looks like the explosion originated from the second floor. You have any idea who might’ve had access to the home?”

“There was a housekeeper,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “Viola.”

Jacobi exhaled. “Unfortunately, that’s probably the third body we found. Buried under the rubble.”

“Oh …” Dia

I pressed her hand. “Look, Ms. Aronoff, I saw the explosion. That bomb was planted from inside. Someone was either let in or had access. I need you to think.”

“There was an au pair,” she muttered. “I think she sometimes spent the night.”

“Lucky for her.” Jacobi rolled his eyes. “If she’d been in there with your nephew …”

“Not for Eric.” Dia

Jacobi and I looked at each other. “Who?”

“Caitlin, Lieutenant. My niece.”

When she saw our blank faces, she froze.

“When you said Eric was the only one brought out, I just assumed …”

We continued to stare at each other. No one else had been found in the house.

“Oh, my God, Detectives, she is only six months old.”