“Caitlin, Lieutenant. My niece.”
When she saw our blank faces, she froze.
“When you said Eric was the only one brought out, I just assumed...”
We continued to stare at each other. No one else had been found in the house.
“Oh, my God, Detectives, she is only six months old.”
Womans Murder Club 3 - 3rd Degree
Chapter 8
THIS WASN'T OVER.
I ran up to Captain Noroski, the fire chief, who was bark-ing commands to his men searching through the house. “Lightower's sister says there was a six-month-old baby inside.”
“No one's inside, Lieutenant. My men are just finishing the upper floor. Unless you wanna go inside and look around again yourself.”
Suddenly the layout of the burning building came back to me. I could see it now. Down that same hallway where I'd found the boy. My heart jumped. “Not the upper floors, Captain, the first.” There could've been a nursery down there, too.
Noroski radioed someone still inside the site. He directed him down the front hall.
We stood in front of the smoking house, and a sickening feeling churned in my stomach. The idea of a baby still in there. Someone I could've saved. We waited while Captain Noroski's men picked through the rubble.
Finally, a fireman climbed out from the debris on the ground floor. “Nothing,” he called out. “We found the nurs-ery. Crib and a bassinet buried under a lot of rubble. But no baby.”
Dianne Aronoff uttered a cry of joy. Her niece wasn't in there. Then a look of panic set in, her face registering a com-pletely new horror. If Caitlin wasn't there, where was she?
Womans Murder Club 3 - 3rd Degree
Chapter 9
CHARLES DANKO STOOD at the edge of the crowd, watch-ing. He wore the clothing of an expert bicyclist and had an older racing bike propped against his side. If nothing else, the biking helmet and goggles covered his face in case the police were filming the crowd, as they sometimes did.