I WAS RIPPED out of a dream and my lover’s arms by Jacobi’s voice on the phone saying, “Get dressed, Boxer. Conklin is five blocks away. He’s picking you up at your door.”

  Jacobi clicked off before giving me details, but this much I knew: someone had died.

  It was just after midnight when Conklin nosed our squad car onto the lawn of a smoldering house in the 3800 block of Clay Street in Presidio Heights. Four fire rigs and an equal number of patrol cars were already parked in front of the Greek Revival, the wind whipping smoke into a vortex at an inside corner of the house. Dazed bystanders clustered across the street, watching the firefighters douse the charred remains of what had once been a beautiful home in this upscale neighborhood.

  I pulled my canvas jacket closed, ducked under the water spouting from a fire hose just as the generators on the front lawn fired up. Conklin was ahead of me as we mounted the front steps. He badged the cop at the door and we entered the scorched carcass of the house.

  “Two victims, Sarge,” said Officer Pat Noonan. “First doorway on your right. DRT.”

  Dead right there.

  I asked, “Has the ME been called?”

  “She’s on her way.”

  It was darker inside the house than out. The room Noonan indicated had been a large den or family room. I flicked my flashlight beam over piles of furniture, bookshelves, a large TV. Then my light caught a pair of legs on the floor.

  They weren’t attached to a body.

  I screamed, “Noonan! Noonan! What the hell is this?” I waved my torchlight around, catching a second body a few feet from the torso of the first, just inside the doorway.

  Noonan came into the den with a firefighter behind him, a young guy with the name Mackey stenciled on his turnouts.

  “Sarge,” Mackey said, “it was me. I ............