Page 30 of 25 Alive

This was a Code 3, destination unknown.

CHAPTER48

IT WAS JUST after nine in the morning when Brady and I arrived at the crime scene. I saw a row of fancy Victorian houses in different colors, canting downward at the angle of the street. The block had been cordoned off with crime-scene tape and barriers, a thick blue line of uniformed officers and their squad cars.

I’ve worked hundreds of murder scenes, but this was more security than I’d seen—ever.

Brady stopped his car at the end of the street near the control center, a small trailer filled with communication gear. I pulled up behind him and hopped out.

Brady pointed to one of the houses and said, “I’ll walk through the scene with you, if Hallows says okay. It’s the whitish house, second one in from the end,” he said. “Number 1848. You’ll run point until the scene is released.”

I looked up and down the street and saw two medical examiner’s vans, three CSU vans, and a herd of patrol cars banking the street. And I saw Yuki, standing outside her caron her phone, no doubt getting warrants to search neighboring houses.

I looked hard at number 1848. It looked like a San Francisco dream house. Cream-colored, with gingerbread trim and a front porch with rocking chairs and a couple of bird feeders hanging from porch beams.

“Brady. C’mon, talk to me, will you?”

Brady said again, “It wouldn’t do any good, Boxer. We both need to hear it from Hallows.”

“Wait. Wait. You want me to be primary on two new homicides in addition to Jacobi and Robinson?”

“Two days at the most, then Cappy will take over and you’ll continue heading up the Jacobi and Robinson task force.”

We started walking toward house number 1848. When we reached the cordon, a CSI told us that Hallows was waiting for us inside the front door.

Excellent.

The answer man was on the scene.

CHAPTER49

WE WERE ESCORTED up the walk to the front door of number 1848. Brady knocked. The door opened and Crime Scene Unit director Eugene Hallows opened it. He looked like he was in pain. He told us to step inside and said, “I don’t have to remind you …”

We knew what he meant.Be careful where you walk. Don’t touch anything.

Hallows watched us glove up and pull booties over our shoes. When we were ready, he said, “I’m taking you the long way. Brace yourselves.”

The long way took us through the living room, where CSIs were photographing everything: walls, ceilings, windows, carpets, and good-looking furniture from all angles. I saw no blood spatter, no shell casings, no damage to the windows or doors, and no bodies in sight.

Hallows said, “They’re upstairs.”

I followed Brady and Hallows up a carpeted flight of stairs with a landing at the midpoint. We climbed the rest of thestairs to a hallway on the second floor, where Hallows pushed at the half open bedroom door and stepped aside so that we could see inside.

“Stay right there,” he said, reaching around me to flip on the ceiling light.

I looked beyond him. The king-sized bed was soaked in blood. A male body was lying half on the bed. A female body was on the floor beside the bed. Both bodies had been decapitated.

My blood pressure shot up. I looked at Hallows, and he said, “They were both shot before their killer performed surgery. The male got two slugs in the heart. She took a couple of head shots. Both heads are in the bathtub. I’ll get you pictures, but no one else goes in until the scene is processed.”

Brady asked, “Have the victims been identified?”

“We know who owns the house,” Hallows hedged. “We haven’t run prints. ID has to be viewed before we know for sure if the victims are the owners and the family is notified.”

“Names, please, Gene,” I said with my fists balled up behind my back.

“Orlofsky. Martin and Sandra. A judge and his wife.”

The judge of the Dario case had been killed like a rabid skunk so that the flash dancer in the dock, probably related to the killer, would get some kind of reprieve.

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