3rd Degree

Chapter 14

IT WAS ONLY a ten-minute drive out to Potrero, where I live in a two-bedroom walk-up. As I went through my door, Martha wagged up to me. One of the patrolmen at the scene had taken her home for me.

The message light was flashing. Jill's voice: “Lindsay, I tried to call you at the office. I just heard....” Fratelli: “Listen, Lindsay, if you're free today...” I deleted it without even hearing what he had to say for himself.

I went into the bedroom and peeled off my tights and sweats. I didn't want to talk to anyone tonight. I flicked on a CD. The Reverend Al Green. I stepped into the shower and took a swig of a beer I'd brought with me. I leaned back under the warming spray, the grit and soot and smell of ash chipping off my body, swirling at my feet. Something made me feel like crying.

I felt so alone.

I could've died today.

I wished I had someone's arms to slide into.

Claire had Edmund to soothe her on a night like tonight, after she pieced three charred bodies together. Jill had Steve, whatever... Even Martha had someone - me!

I felt my thoughts drift to Chris for the first time in a while. It would be nice if he were here tonight. It had been eighteen months since he died. I was ready to put it behind me, to open myself to someone, if someone happened to be on the scene. No drum roll. No “Ladies and gentlemen, the envelope, please....” Just this little voice in my heart, my voice, telling me it was time.

Then I drifted back to the scene at the Marina. I saw myself on the street, holding Martha. The beautiful, calm morning; the stucco town house. The redheaded kid spin-ning his Razor. The flash of orange light.

Over and over I ran the reel, and it kept ending at the same point.

There's something you're not seeing. Something I had edited out.

The woman turning the corner just before the flash. I had seen only a glimpse of her back. Blond, ponytail. Something in her arms. But that wasn't what was bothering me.

It was that she never came back.

I hadn't thought about it until now. After the blast...The kid with the Razor was there. Lots of others. But the blond woman wasn't among them. No one interviewed her. She never came back...Why?

Because the son of a bitch was running away.

That moment flashed over and over in my mind. Some-

thing in her arms. She was running away. It was the au pair. And the bundle in her arms? That was the Lightowers' baby!