CONKLIN AND I had never had a serious fight, but we bickered during the entire two-hour drive back to the Hall. Rich insisted it was significant that a pro like Hanni had missed “the only clue in the whole damned crime scene.”

  I liked Chuck Hanni. I admired him. Rich didn’t have the same history, the same attachment, so he could be more objective. I had to consider his point of view. Was Hanni a psychopath hiding in plain sight? Or was Conklin so desperate to close the Malone case that he was turning an oversight into a major deal?

  I saw that Chuck Hanni was with Jacobi in the glass-walled corner office when Conklin and I entered the squad room. As we wove around the desks toward Jacobi’s office, Conklin said to me, “Let me handle this, okay?”

  Jacobi waved us into his small office, and Conklin leaned against the wall inside the door. I took a side chair next to Hanni, who squirmed in his seat in order to face me.

  “I was telling Jacobi, the Chu fire looks like the work of the same sick asshole who set the others,” Hanni said. “Don’t you think?”

  I was looking at Hanni’s familiar face and thinking of the time he’d told me about spontaneous human combustion.

  “It’s like this, Lindsay,” he’d said over beer at MacBain’s. “Biggish guy is drinking beer and smoking cigarettes in his La-Z-Boy. Falls asleep. The cigarette drops between the cushions and catches fire. Biggish guy’s fat is saturated with alcohol. The chair catches fire and ............