JACOBI CALLED THE MEETING to order at the crack of eight a.m. He asked me to come to the front of the room to brief the troops on our arson-homicide case and where we were with it - that is to say, nowhere. I was wearing jeans and a beaded tank top, a pair of moccasins, and a faded denim jacket that I’d left at Joe’s place before the fire.

  It was all that I had.

  I got whistles, of course, one beefy old-timer shouting out, “Nice rack, Sarge.”

  “Shut up, McCracken,” Rich shouted back, making me blush, extending the moment as my fellow cops laughed and made raunchy comments to each other. After Jacobi kicked a desk so that a hollow boom silenced the room, I filled everyone in on the Meacham and Malone homicides.

  Assignments were divvied up, I got into the car with Conklin, and we drove to one of the dark and grubby alleys in the Mission. We were doing it again, more down-and-dirty detective work, hoping for clues in the absence of a single hard lead.

  Our first stop was a pawnshop on Polk called Gold ’n’ Things, a shop piled high with outdated electronics and musical instruments, and a half-dozen glass cases filled with tacky bling. The proprietor was Rudy Vitale, an obese man with thick glasses and thin hair, a marginal fence who used the pawnshop as his office while making his real deals in cars and bars, anywhere but here.

  I let Conklin take the lead because my insides were still reeling from the sharp turn my life had taken only twelve hours before.

  My mind was stuck in a groove of what the fire had cost me in emotional touchstones to my past: my Willie Mays jacket, my Indian pottery, and everything that had belonged to my mother, especially her letters telling me how much she loved me, a sentiment she’d only been able to write when she was dying but was never able to actually say.

  As Conklin showed insurance photos to Vitale, I glanced at the display cases, still in a daze, not expecting anything, when suddenly, as if someone yelled Hey in my ear, I saw Patty Malone’s sapphire necklace on a velveteen tray, right there.

  “Rich,” I said sharply. “Take a look at this.”

  Conklin looked, then told Vitale to open the case. Baubles clanked as Vitale pawed through them, handed the necklace up to Conklin with his catcher’s mitt of a hand.

  “You’re saying these are real sapphires?” Vitale said innocently.

  Co............