“Are you in settlement talks with the plaintiffs in the walkway collapse?” Donnally asked Gordon, as he headed south through the foggy neighborhood on his way to Lange’s house.

“I’d really like to settle this thing,” Gordon said. “I don’t want to make those people go through a trial. That only lines the pockets of the lawyers.”

“I take it Thule is aiming to use his not guilty verdict in the criminal trial to shift all of the blame onto you.”

“That’s the problem. His lawyers are trying to split liability ninety-ten, with ninety percent me. Nine million on my end, one million on his. That would take the settlement way, way past our insurance limits and it would break the company.”

Donnally turned onto the commercial Geary Street and merged with the commuter traffic coming from the Golden Gate Bridge and working its way toward downtown. He broke through the fog and lowered his visor against the rising sun.

“I ran into something that should help you,” Donnally said. “It’s key to a thing I’m working on and I need to sit on it awhile.”

“But if—”

“You’ll get it. I promise. Just don’t settle the case until you hear from me.”

“I’ll tell my lawyer you have something that—”

“Let’s keep this between us. I don’t want him to go rabid and try to hit me with a subpoena. It’ll really screw me up.”

Gordon didn’t respond for a moment, then said, “Just don’t take too long. Living with my life’s work just a half inch from falling off a cliff is tearing me apart.”

“You just got to hang on a little longer,” Donnally said, then disconnected.

Although he couldn’t use the recording to pressure Lange anymore, Donnally didn’t want to deal with the free-for-all of subpoenas and court orders provoked by news of the perjury. Everyone with an ax to grind would try to sharpen it against Hamlin’s and Lange’s files, whether justified or not.

And he needed to protect Jackson. Since she was part of the chain of evidence, her role would have to be disclosed. He suspected Hamlin’s crime partners, like Galen and their crew of private investigators, would assume she hadn’t been cooperating with him. After all, she had the best credentials of any in that crowd. She was the only one among them who’d looked up the barrel of a raid-jacketed cop’s gun and heard gunshots that killed a sleeping man. If anyone would stand firm, he imagined they would expect it to be her. And he didn’t want them to find out too soon that they were wrong, at least where it concerned Hamlin’s private investigators.

Donnally’s cell phone rang when he was turning down the six-lane Van Ness Avenue toward Hamlin’s office. It was Navarro telling him that the arson investigator was standing by to give them a walkthrough of Lange’s house.

He stayed on the wide commercial boulevard past City Hall and down to Market Street, then swung through the Castro District and up to Buena Vista Heights. He and Navarro pulled up in front of the house at the same time.

Arson investigator Arthur Lu was waiting at the bottom of the front steps. Before the seven-foot, six-inch Yao Ming came from China to play in the NBA, Lu had been known in the police and fire departments as 3T–BC, Too Tall To Be Chinese, and he didn’t like it.

In the years since Donnally had worked a case with Lu, the man still hadn’t learned to shake hands and smile. Walking up to him now, Donnally wondered whether the truth was the opposite. He imagined that Lu had taught himself not to shake hands and smile because everyone he met on the job wanted something from him before he was in a position to give it: the what, where, and how of fires he’d just started to investigate. Too friendly a greeting could be seen as an invitation he wasn’t prepared to offer.

Lu turned at their approach and led them inside. He stopped in the charred and water-soaked dining room, halfway between the front door and the kitchen in back, with both in view.

The detritus of the previous night’s party lay strewn around. Dishes, glasses, wine bottles had either been blown about by the firestorm’s shuddering heat or had been slammed into walls and shattered by fire hose spray blasting them from the tables on which they’d been abandoned the night before.

“There was no forced entry down here,” Lu said, raising his forefinger and waving it to encompass the three visible rooms. His hand stopped, centered in the middle of the invisible circle he’d drawn. “Upstairs, we’re not sure.”

Donnally recalled three stories of decking at the back of the house that could’ve been an arsonist’s way up and down.

“The windows on the first two floors exploded outward,” Lu said. “There were two on the top floor that went inward, but I don’t know whether either one was caused by a burglar, or whether one or both were caused by spray from the fire hose.”

Navarro glanced at Donnally. “Someone could’ve hidden in the house after the party, then let themselves out to get a gasoline can and came back inside again to spread the gas around.”

“Or someone who had a key,” Donnally said. “An employee or ex-employee.”

Lu pointed at the melted remains of an alarm pad next to the kitchen door. “They would’ve needed the code, if Lange had set it.”

“On the other hand,” Navarro said, “Lange could’ve been too drunk to do that or even to hear a window breaking.”

Lu turned toward the charred stairway.

“Stay away from the banister,” Lu said, as he led the way again. “It’s weak.”

They followed him up a flight and into Lange’s bedroom. The remains of the red sports jacket Lange had been wearing the previous night lay on the floor next to the bed. Donnally gave it a nudge and exposed the toe of a thin-soled red shoe.

Donnally looked at Navarro and asked, “He didn’t wear those out in public, did he?”

“I saw him having lunch with a member of the board of supervisors once. He was wearing those shoes, or ones like them. And Lange wasn’t even gay”—Navarro smiled—“or Italian, for that matter.”

“It would be like wearing patrol car overhead lights on his feet,” Donnally said. “I don’t get what kind of an idiot investigator would do that.”

Navarro’s smile died. “You know exactly what kind, and that’s the reason why you’re here.”

It was Donnally’s turn to smile, as a confession, then he glanced at Lu. “You find his wallet and personal stuff?”

“Wallet in his pants, with money in it, and”—Lu turned to lead them out of the door—“his watch and rings were on his desk.”

They trailed Lu into Lange’s office down the hallway.

“We found another point of ignition in here,” Lu said, gesturing at the remains of the carpet. “Whoever did it soaked this thing and opened all of his desk drawers.”

Navarro surveyed the room. “Looks like somebody was trying to destroy something they knew was in here, but couldn’t find it so they torched everything. Or couldn’t find it in the time they thought they had.”

Lu glanced up. “They had enough time to dump all of the files out of the cabinets and boxes in the third floor storage before they spread the gasoline over them.”

Donnally tried to think through the arsonist’s steps, then asked, “Does that mean they staged everything, then started the fire on the top floor, moved down here, and finally lit the spots outside?”

“I’m not sure. Neighbors heard two explosions that could have come from gasoline on the top two floors being ignited by the flames coming from below.”

Donnally gazed at the blown windows. “Lange must’ve been really dead to the world to have not woken up to that.”

Navarro looked at his watch.

“Maybe by now the medical examiner has figured out how dead.”

Chapter 35