Chapter 58

  CONKLIN AND I had never had a serious fight, but we bickered¹ during the entire two-hour drive back to the Hall. Rich insisted it was significant that a pro² 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 attachment³, 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 oversight⁴ into a major deal?

  I saw that Chuck Hanni was with Jacobi in the glass-walled corner office when Conklin and I entered the squad⁵ 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 combustion⁶.

  “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 saturated⁷ with alcohol. The chair catches fire and so does the guy, like a freakin’ torch.

  “After they’ve been incinerated, the fire extinguishes itself. Nothing else catches, so all that’s left is the metal frame of the chair and the guy’s charred⁸ remains⁹.

  “There’s your so-called spontaneous human combustion.”

  I had said “Ewwww,” laughed, and bought the next round.

  Now Conklin said from behind me, “Chuck, you were at the Chu scene and you didn’t let us know about it. What’s up with that?”

  “You think I was keeping something from you?” Hanni bristled¹⁰. “I told Jimenez to notify you guys as soon as I saw the victims’ bodies.”

  Conklin took the paperback¹¹ book from his inside jacket pocket. He reached over me, placed the book, now enclosed in a plastic evidence bag, on top of the pile of junk on Jacobi’s desktop¹².

  “This was inside the Chu house,” Conklin said, his voice matter-of-fact, but there was nothing innocent about it. “There’s block lettering on the first page, in Latin.”

  Hanni looked at the book in silence for a moment, then muttered, “How did I miss this?”

  Jacobi said, “Where’d you find it, Rich?”

  “In a bathroom, Lieutenant¹³. In plain sight.”

  Jacobi looked at Hanni with the hard-boiled stare he’d perfected in twenty-five years of interrogating¹⁴ the worst people in the world. He said, “What about it, Chuck?”

1 bickered   

v.争吵( bicker的过去式和过去分词 )；口角；（水等）作潺潺声；闪烁

参考例句：

• The afternoon sun bickered through the leaves. 午后的阳光闪烁于树叶之间。 来自辞典例句
• They bickered over [about] some unimportant thing. 他们为芝麻小事争吵。 来自辞典例句

2 pro   

n.赞成，赞成的意见，赞成者

参考例句：

• The two debating teams argued the question pro and con.辩论的两组从赞成与反对两方面辩这一问题。
• Are you pro or con nuclear disarmament?你是赞成还是反对核裁军？

3 attachment   

n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附

参考例句：

• She has a great attachment to her sister.她十分依恋她的姐姐。
• She's on attachment to the Ministry of Defense.她现在隶属于国防部。

4 oversight   

n.勘漏，失察，疏忽

参考例句：

• I consider this a gross oversight on your part.我把这件事看作是你的一大疏忽。
• Your essay was not marked through an oversight on my part.由于我的疏忽你的文章没有打分。

5 squad   

n.班，小队，小团体；vt.把…编成班或小组

参考例句：

• The squad leader ordered the men to mark time.班长命令战士们原地踏步。
• A squad is the smallest unit in an army.班是军队的最小构成单位。

6 combustion   

n.燃烧；氧化；骚动

参考例句：

• We might be tempted to think of combustion.我们也许会联想到氧化。
• The smoke formed by their combustion is negligible.由它燃烧所生成的烟是可忽略的。

7 saturated   

a.饱和的，充满的

参考例句：

• The continuous rain had saturated the soil. 连绵不断的雨把土地淋了个透。
• a saturated solution of sodium chloride 氯化钠饱和溶液

8 charred   

v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式)；烧焦

参考例句：

• the charred remains of a burnt-out car 被烧焦的轿车残骸
• The intensity of the explosion is recorded on the charred tree trunks. 那些烧焦的树干表明爆炸的强烈。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

10 bristled   

adj. 直立的，多刺毛的 动词bristle的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• They bristled at his denigrating description of their activities. 听到他在污蔑他们的活动，他们都怒发冲冠。
• All of us bristled at the lawyer's speech insulting our forefathers. 听到那个律师在讲演中污蔑我们的祖先，大家都气得怒发冲冠。

11 paperback   

n.平装本，简装本

参考例句：

• A paperback edition is now available at bookshops.平装本现在在书店可以买到。
• Many books that are out of print are reissued in paperback form.许多绝版的书籍又以平装本形式重新出现。

12 desktop   

n.桌面管理系统程序；台式

参考例句：

• My computer is a desktop computer of excellent quality.我的计算机是品质卓越的台式计算机。
• Do you know which one is better,a laptop or a desktop?你知道哪一种更好，笔记本还是台式机？

13 lieutenant   

n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员

参考例句：

• He was promoted to be a lieutenant in the army.他被提升为陆军中尉。
• He prevailed on the lieutenant to send in a short note.他说动那个副官，递上了一张简短的便条进去。

14 interrogating   

n.询问技术v.询问( interrogate的现在分词 )；审问；（在计算机或其他机器上）查询

参考例句：

• She was no longer interrogating but lecturing. 她已经不是在审问而是在教训人了。 来自辞典例句
• His face remained blank, interrogating, slightly helpless. 他的面部仍然没有表情，只带有询问的意思，还有点无可奈何。 来自辞典例句