While Chi and McNeil reinterviewed the Malones’ breitling replica and the Meachams’ friends and neighbors, Conklin and I sat at our desks, going over the murder book together. We reviewed Claire’s findings, the photos of rubberneckers at the fire scenes, the handwriting expert’s comparison of the inscriptions in each of the books left at the fire scenes, and the expert’s opinion: “I can’t say one hundred percent because it’s block lettering, but looks like all the samples were written by the same hand.”
We reviewed our own eyeball tours of the cheap jerseys from china crime scenes, trying to reduce all of it to a few illuminating truths, speaking in the kind of shorthand that you use with a partner. And I felt that other connection, too, the one I wouldn’t let Rich mention but sometimes just arced across our desks. Like it was doing now.
I got up, went to the bathroom, washed my face, got a cup of coffee for me and one for Conklin, black, no sugar. handbags replica Sat back down, said, “Now, where were we?”
As the night tour walked and talked around us, Rich ticked off on his fingers what we had: “The couples were all in their forties and well-to-do. The doors to all the houses were unlocked, and the alarms weren’t set. No sign of gunfire. The couples all had a child of college age. They were all robbed, but the killer took only jewelry and cash.”
“Okay, and Prada handbags here are a few suppositions,” I said. “The killer is smart enough and unthreatening enough to talk his way into the houses. And I’m going to also say that it seems probable that there were two assailants; one to tie up the victims, one to hold a gun.”
Rich nodded, said, “He or they used fishing line as ligatures because they’d burn off quickly in the fire. And they used an untraceable accelerant. That’s careful. They don’t leave evidence, and that’s smart.
“But I don’t think Molly Chu was in the plan,” Rich added. “This is the first time another person was in the house with the victims. I’m thinking Molly had already passed out from smoke inhalation when her ‘angel’ found her and subsequently carried her out. cheap nba jerseys Kind of heroic, wouldn’t you say?”
“So maybe the killer thought she didn’t see him,” I said. “And so he felt safe carrying her out of the house. Yeah, I don’t think he wanted the little girl to die, hon.”
Rich looked up, grinned at me.
“I, uh. Didn’t mean - shit.”
“Forget it, babe,” said Conklin. “Means nothin’.” He grinned wider.
I said, “Shut up,” and threw a paper clip at his head. He snatched it out of the air and went on.
“So,” he said, “let’s say Molly saw one of the jordan shoes killers, okay? And let’s say he’s a college-age kid as Molly suggested. The Malones, the Meachams, the Chus, and that couple in Palo Alto, the Jablonskys - they all had kids in college. But their kids all went to different schools.”
“True,” I said. “But a kid, any kid, comes to the door and looks presentable, Mom and Dad might open it.
“Rich, Versace sunglasses maybe that’s the con. When I was in school, I was always bringing people home that my mom didn’t know. So, what if a couple of kids come to the door and say they’re friends with your kid?”
“That would be easy to fake,” Rich said. “Local newspapers do stories on kids at school. So-and-so’s daughter or son, attending such-and-such school won this-or-that award.”
Rich drummed his fingers on the desk, and I rested cartier replica my chin in my hand. Instead of feeling on the brink of a breakthrough, it seemed that we’d just opened the field of potential suspects to every male college-age kid in California who knew high school Latin - and, by the way, was into robbery, torture, arson, and murder.
I thought about the puzzle pieces. Providence favoring the killers’ actions, and money being the root of all evil. There was the sci-fi book Fahrenheit 451, and now a book about a high-placed fire official who’d set fires. When John Orr was caught, he’d Tory Burch handbags said, “I was stupid, and I did what stupid people do.”
