7th Heaven

Chapter 49

JASON TWILLY SAT in the front row of the gallery in Courtroom 2C, right behind the elfin Junie Moon, taking notes as Connor Hume Campion answered Yuki Castellano’s softball questions. Twilly thought Campion had aged tremendously since his son disappeared. He looked haggard, stooped, as though Michael’s death was literally killing him.

As he looked at the governor and Yuki together, Twilly felt a shift in his thinking, and a new structure for his book appeared in his mind. Yuki was Michael Campion’s defender, and she was the underdog; feisty and shrewd and at the same time endearing. Like now. Yuki was using the former governor’s celebrity and heartbreak to both move the jury and block the defense.

Twilly would start the book with Yuki’s opening statement, flash back through time using poignant moments in the boy’s life as told by the governor, flash forward through the trial and the witnesses. Focus on Davis ’s maternal defense. Linger on the vulnerable Junie Moon. Then end the book with Yuki’s closing argument. The verdict, the vindication, hurrah!

Twilly turned his attention back to the governor.

“Mike was born with a conductive defect in his heart,” Campion told the court. “It was being managed medically, but of course he could die at any time.”

Yuki asked quietly, “And what did Michael know about his life expectancy?”

“Mikey wanted to live. He used to say, ‘I want to live, Dad. I have plans.’ He knew he had to be careful. He knew that the longer he lived, the more chance -”

Campion stopped speaking as his throat tightened and his eyes watered.

“Mr. Campion, did Michael talk to you about his plans?”

“Oh, yes,” Campion said, smiling now. “He was training for an upcoming world chess tournament, on the computer, you know. And he’d started writing a book about living with a potentially fatal illness… It would’ve made a difference to people… He wanted to get married someday…”

Campion shook his head, looked at the jury, and addressed them directly.

“He was such a wonderful boy,” he said. “Everyone has seen his pictures, the interviews. Everyone knows how his smile could light up the darkness, how brave he was – but not everyone knows what a good soul he had. How compassionate he was.”

Twilly noted that Diana Davis’s face was pinched, but she didn’t dare object to Campion’s meandering testimony about the pain of losing his son. Campion turned and looked squarely at the defendant, spoke directly to her, sadly but not unkindly.

“If only I could have been there when Michael died,” Connor Campion said to Junie Moon. “If only I could have held him in my arms and comforted him. If only he’d been with me, instead of with you.”

Chapter 50

“THE PEOPLE CALL Mr. Travis Cook,” Yuki said.

Heads swung toward the double doors at the back of the courtroom, and a young man about eighteen years old, wearing a gray prep school blazer with a crest over the breast pocket, walked up the aisle, came through the gate.

Cook’s bushy hair looked patted down rather than combed, and his shoes needed a polish. He looked uneasy as he swore to tell the whole truth and nothing but. Then he stepped up to the witness stand.

Yuki said good morning to her witness and then asked, “How did you know Michael Campion?”

“We went to Newkirk Prep together.”

“And when did you meet Michael?”

“I knew him in our freshman year, but, uh, we became better friends last year.”

“In your opinion, what caused this friendship to grow?”

“Uh, Michael didn’t have many friends, really,” Travis Cook said, meeting Yuki’s eyes briefly, then looking down again at his hands. “People liked him, but they didn’t get too close to him ’cause he couldn’t play any sports or hang out or anything. Because of his heart condition.”

“But you didn’t have the same problem becoming friends with Michael?”

“I have severe asthma.”

“And how did that affect your friendship?”

Travis Cook said, “What he had was worse, but I could relate. We talked about how bad it sucked living with these things hanging over us all the time.”

“Now, did there come a time when you told Michael about the defendant, Ms. Moon?”

“Yeah.”

“Travis, I realize this may be a little uncomfortable, but you’ve sworn to tell the truth.”

“I know.”

“Good. And what did you tell Michael about Ms. Moon?”

“That I’d been with her,” he mumbled.

“Please speak up so the jury can hear you,” Yuki said.

The boy started again. “I told Michael that I’d been with her. A lot of us had. She’s a nice girl for someone who… anyway. She’s not crude or anything, and so…” Travis sighed. “And so she’s a good person to break you in.”

“Break you in?” Yuki asked, turning away from the witness, looking at the jurors. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Do it for the first time. You’re not worried about what the girl’s going to think of you or anything. I mean, you get to be yourself, have fun, pay her, and leave.”

“I see. And what did Michael Campion say when you told him about Ms. Moon?”

“He said he didn’t want to die a virgin.”

“Travis, did you see Michael the day before he disappeared?”

“I saw him on the lunch line.”

“And how did he appear to you?”

“Happy. He said he had a date that night with Junie.”

“Thank you, Travis. Your witness,” Yuki said to L. Diana Davis.

Davis was wearing a blue double-breasted suit with two rows of four large white pearl buttons and a triple strand of pearls at her throat. Her silver hair was crisp, almost sharp.

She stood up and spoke from the defense table, saying, “I only have one question, Mr. Cook.”

The boy looked at her earnestly.

“Did you see Michael Campion go into Junie Moon’s house?”

“No, ma’am.”

“That’s all we have, Your Honor,” Davis said, sitting down.

Chapter 51

TANYA BROWN WAS ENJOYING HERSELF, giving Yuki a headache at the same time.

Ms. Brown smiled at the bailiff, tossed her hair as she swore to tell the truth, and modeled her orange jumpsuit as if it were designed by Versace. She was the third of Yuki’s three jailhouse witnesses, all “in the system” for dealing drugs, prostitution, or both, and all of whom had met Junie Moon within the walls of the county jail. And while the testimony of jailhouse snitches was generally considered suspect or useless, Yuki was hoping that the virtually identical statements of these three women would together substantiate Junie Moon’s confession.

Yuki asked Tanya Brown, “Did the prosecution offer you anything in exchange for your testimony?”

“No, ma’am.”

“We didn’t offer to get you transferred, or get you time off or better treatment or more privileges?”

“No, ma’am, you said you weren’t going to give me anything.” Tanya Brown wiggled her fanny in the witness seat, poured herself a glass of water, smiled at the judge, then settled down.

“All right then, Ms. Brown,” said Yuki. “Do you know the defendant?”

“I wouldn’t say I know her, know her, but we were cellmates one night at the women’s jail.”

“And did Ms. Moon say why she was arrested?”

“Yeah, everyone gets a turn at that.”

“And what did Ms. Moon tell you?”

“She said she was a working girl and that she had a date with Michael Campion.”

“And why did that stick in your mind?”

“Are you kiddin’? It was like, Whoa. You did the dirty with the golden boy? And like what was that like? And by and by it came out that he died when they were doing it.”

“Is that what Ms. Moon told you?”

“Yeah. She said he had a bad heart, and that happened to me once, too, but my john was no golden boy. He was a smelly old man, and he died in the front seat of his Caddy, so I just opened the door – oh, ’scuse me.”

“Ms. Brown, did Ms. Moon say what she did when Mr. Campion had a heart attack?”

“She got all weepy-like,” said Tanya Brown. “Said she and her boyfriend got rid of his body.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“She said Michael was the sweetest boy she ever met and how bad it sucked for him to die on the happiest night of his life.”

Yuki thanked the witness, made sure she didn’t roll her eyes as she turned her over to L. Diana Davis.

Davis asked Tanya Brown the same question she’d asked each of Yuki’s previous two jailhouse witnesses.

“Did Ms. Moon offer you any proof that she’d been with the so-called victim? Did she describe any distinguishing marks on his body, for instance? Show you any souvenirs? A ring, or a note, a lock of his hair?”

“Huh? No, I mean, no, ma’am, she didn’t.”

“I have no other questions,” said Davis dismissively, again.

Chapter 52

TWILLY PHONED YUKI at the office, asked her to have dinner with him at Aubergine, a hot new restaurant on McAllister. “I’ve got so much work to do,” she moaned. Then she relented. “An early dinner, okay? That would be great.”

At six the restaurant was filling up with the loud pretheater crowd, but she and Twilly had a small table far from the bar, where it was quiet enough to talk. Twilly’s knees bumped against hers from time to time and Yuki didn’t mind.

“ Davis is like an IED,” Yuki said, moving tiny bay scallops on her plate with her fork. “She blows up in your face at every checkpoint.”

“Her act is getting old. Don’t worry,” Twilly told her. “She’s probably up every night worrying about you.”

Yuki smiled at her dinner companion, said, “Hey. That’s enough about me.” And she asked him to tell her about his first true-crime book.

“Must I? It sold about two hundred copies.”

“It did not.”

“It did, and I know because I bought all of them myself.”

Yuki threw back her head and laughed, loosening up finally, feeling pleased that she had Twilly’s attention all to herself.

“I wrote it under a pseudonym,” Twilly said. “That way if you were to Google me, that bomb won’t come up on the list.”

“Well, now I know,” said Yuki. “So, what was the book about?”

Twilly sighed dramatically, but Yuki could see he was just revving his motor before rolling out a story he loved to tell.

“It’s about this country-western singer-songwriter in Nashville,” Twilly said. “Joey Flynn. Ever hear of her?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, well, about ten years ago, Joey Flynn had cut a couple of records and was making her way up the charts. ‘Hot Damn.’ You know that song? Or ‘Blue Northern’? No? Well, it doesn’t matter.

“Joey was married to a carpenter, Luke Flynn, her high school sweetheart, and they’d had four kids before they were twenty-five. One day a fan brought Joey a hundred roses at this saloon where she was singing, and her heart went zing.”

“A hundred roses…,” Yuki said, imagining it.

Twilly grinned, said, “Joey messed around with this guy for three weeks before Luke found out and confronted her.”

“Confronted her how?”

“Rapped on the door at the Motel 6.”

“Ouch,” said Yuki.

“So that was the end of Joey’s affair, and Luke never forgave her. Over time, Joey caught on to the fact that Luke was planning to kill her.”

“Really? How?”

“How did she find out? Or how did he plan to kill her?”

Yuki laughed again, said, “Both, and I think I’m going to have that chocolate mousse cake now.”

“You deserve cake for the way you handled the governor today,” Twilly said, touching the sleeve of Yuki’s blue silk blouse, keeping his hand there for a long moment before he signaled the waiter. After ordering dessert, Twilly went on with his story.

“Five years after her fling with that fan, Joey opens the cache in Luke’s computer and sees that he’s been looking up how to poison someone.”

“Oh, my God…”

“Joey writes to her best friend saying that if anything should happen to her, the police should question her husband. Ten days later,” Twilly went on, “Joey was dead. Potassium cyanide shows up on the tox screen, and Joey’s best friend turns the letter over to the cops, and Luke Flynn is arrested and charged with murder.”

“This story reminds me of Nicole Simpson putting those Polaroids of her bruises in a lockbox for her sister in case O.J. hurt her.”

“Exactly! So I write a book proposal, get a big advance on a six-figure contract, and I start spending time with Luke Flynn, who’s cooling his jets in jail while he awaits trial. And let me tell you, there’s no food like this near the prison in Nashville.”

“Have the rest,” Yuki said, pushing two-thirds of her cake across the table.

“You sure you’re done? Okay, then,” Twilly said, accepting the cake.

Yuki said, “So what happened?”

The waiter dropped the check on the table and Twilly placed his platinum card on it, saying, “I’ll give you a lift to your car. Tell you on the way.”

“Why don’t you follow me home in your car,” Yuki said. “The least I can do is make you coffee.”

Twilly smiled.

Chapter 53

JASON TWILLY SAT in a loveseat in Yuki’s living room, an Irish coffee resting on the low glass table between him and where Yuki was sitting in an upholstered chair six feet away.

Yuki was thinking that Twilly was too good-looking, and that she hadn’t had sex in so long she wasn’t sure she remembered how to do it. Now here was this big-time superstar who would surely break her heart if she let him, and she didn’t have time for fun, let alone heartbreak. She had a conference call with Parisi and the DA early in the morning, she had to prepare herself for the next round in this week’s trial of the century and go to bed. To sleep.

Twilly was excited, hitting the climax of his story. “So now the DA has the letter Joey Flynn gave to her best friend, and turns out she also told her hairdresser that she was afraid Luke would kill her.”

“I’m dyin’,” Yuki said. “You better tell me what happened, Jason, because I’ve got to be in bed in ten minutes and you have to leave.”

“Come sit with me for those ten minutes,” he said.

Yuki felt her heart banging in her chest. And she felt something else: her deceased mother’s clucking presence all around her – in the furniture, in the portrait on the wall – and she knew that her mom would want her to say good night and show the stranger out.

Yuki got up and sat next to Jason Twilly.

Twilly put his arm around her, leaned forward, and kissed her. Yuki moved into the kiss, put her hands in Jason’s hair, and was jolted by the hot shock of desire that shot through her body. It was incredible! But somewhere into the second kiss, when Jason ran his hand over her breast, she pulled away, gasping and flustered, her confusion burning off into certainty.

She wasn’t ready for this. It was too soon.

Yuki dipped her head, avoided Twilly’s eyes as he reached out and tucked a glossy fall of her hair behind her ear.

Then, as if nothing had happened, he said, “The judge ruled the letter Joey wrote to her best friend inadmissible as hearsay, because a defendant, in this case Luke Flynn, had a right to confront his accuser.”

“Who was, unfortunately, dead,” Yuki said.

“Correct. But he allowed the testimony of Joey’s hairdresser. Luke’s lawyer put up a fight. Said the hairdresser’s testimony was also hearsay. The evidence went in anyway, and Luke was convicted.”

“That’s kind of amazing.”

“Bingo,” Jason said. “Luke’s lawyer appealed to the Tennessee State Supreme Court, and eight months later the conviction was overturned. As we speak, Luke Flynn is living in Louisville with his new wife and kids, making custom kitchen cabinets,” Twilly said. “As if Joey Flynn never happened.”

“So let me guess: the story fizzled out. And you had to either write the book or give back the advance,” Yuki said, starting to breathe normally again.

“Exactly. So I wrote Blue Northern, naming it after Joey’s song, and it bombed. But Malvo was a hit, and so was Rings on Her Fingers. And this book, the shocking story of the life and death of Michael Campion as told through the voice of the bewitching – oh, God, Yuki…”

Jason pulled Yuki to him and kissed her again, and when she resisted, when she said, “No, I can’t,” he held her tighter, until Yuki jumped up and pushed him away, putting the coffee table between them again.

Twilly’s face darkened. He was angry, and she understood: he’d read her libido, but not how much he was scaring her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just not -”

“Don’t be a sorry mouse, be a happy Jappy,” Twilly said, interrupting her. His lopsided smile was forced, and he stood, followed her into the middle of the room, reached for her again as she backed away.

Happy Jappy? What was wrong with him?

Yuki walked across the pale green carpet to the door, opened it, and said, “Good night, Jason.”

But Jason Twilly didn’t move.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted. “You flirt with me, invite me back to your place, now – hey! Listen to me,” he said, advancing on Yuki, gripping her chin hard with his thumb and forefinger, wrenching her face toward him.

“I said no,” Yuki said, pulling out of his grip. “Now get out or I’m calling the police.”

“Crazy bitch,” he said, and smiling coldly, he dropped his hands to his sides.

Yuki’s heart galloped as Twilly walked slowly out of her apartment. She slammed the door shut behind him, bolted the lock, and leaned against the inside of her door until she heard the elevator door open and close at the end of the hallway. She went to the window and watched as Twilly stalked out of the Crest Royal and got into his car.

His tires squealed as his black Mercedes shot down Jones Street.

Chapter 54

AFTER A GENUINE PSYCHO KILLER had been arrested in her building, Cindy had thought of adopting a dog for protection. Pit bulls were outlawed in San Francisco, and Cindy didn’t want an attack dog or a lap dog, and so her pursuit of the perfect watchdog had ended at Seth on Sixth, the pet store around the corner.

Seth had said, “Take him. His name is Horndog.”

Horndog was a peach-and-white Moluccan cockatoo, a relative of the bird Robert Blake used to have in his TV series Baretta. But Horndog was no movie star. He sulked in his cage plucking feathers from his breast, lifting his head to squawk whenever the door to the pet shop opened.

“He’s depressed,” Seth said. “He needs a home. Anybody comes into your house, Horndog will let you know.”

So Horndog had been renamed Peaches, and now that he was living with Cindy he was no longer depressed. Visibly happier, he now perched on Cindy’s shoulder, chewing a pencil into wood chips and softly chuffing to himself. It took a week or two for Cindy to finally translate that muffled mutter; Peaches was saying, repeatedly, “Kill the bitch. Kill the bitch.”

“Pretty bird, pretty bird,” Cindy answered distractedly, sure that if she said it enough times, she could reprogram her bird.

Tonight Peaches and Cindy were at her computer in her home office. Cindy typed a series of key words into a search engine: “home fires fatalities,” “home fires fatalities Bay Area,” “home fires cause unknown.” But each time she pressed the enter key, too much information flooded her screen.

Cindy scratched the bird under its chin, refreshed her tea with hot water from the kettle, and went back to her desk. The clock icon in the bottom corner of her screen read 10:32 and she was still nowhere. She refined her search, typed “home fire wealthy couple.”

“It’s unreal, Peaches,” she said, as dozens of links appeared on her screen. “Too much information!”

Nearly all of the links led to the same fire, a house outside San Francisco that had been torched four years before. As Cindy scanned the articles, she remembered the story of the victims, Emil and Rosanne Christiansen, who had died before she was assigned to the crime desk.

Emil Christiansen had been the CFO of an office machine company that had been bought out by a computer company. The Christiansens had become instant multimillionaires. They’d moved out of the city to a woodsy setting up the coast. According to the articles, the house had burned down before firefighters could reach it, and the Christiansens had died.

The fire had been classified accidental by the firefighters at the scene, but when the couple’s son did an inventory of the remaining property, he reported that his father’s coin collection was missing and that his mother’s large emerald ring and a sapphire-and-diamond bracelet that was alone worth fifty thousand dollars were gone.

At the bottom of the last article was a quote from the arson investigator, who had told the reporter, “A candle tipped over, papers caught fire, the curtains went up, and so went the house. I haven’t found any trace of fire accelerant, so right now I can’t say if the fire was accidental or intentional.”

Cindy typed, clicked, followed the links, found the medical examiner’s report on the Christiansens. The ME had given the cause of death as smoke inhalation and the manner of death “undetermined based upon the fire marshal’s report.”

“Hey, Peaches. What about the missing jewels? Hmmmm?”

“Kill the bitch. Kill the bitch.”

Cindy’s mind churned with questions. The Christiansens had been robbed, so why, she wondered, had the arson investigator said he didn’t know if the fire was accidental or intentional? And here was a thought: Was it a coincidence that the arson investigator who worked the Christiansen fire was also working on both the Malone and Meacham homicides?

Cindy knew the investigator’s name because Lindsay had talked about him. His name was Chuck Hanni.

She put Peaches back into his cage and covered it. Then she got busy on the phone. First she called her editor.

Then she called Lindsay.

Chapter 55

THE GIRL WAS HEAVY.

She was sitting at the picnic table on campus, right outside the Jamba Juice Bar, facing White Plaza, sipping her Strawberry Whirl through a straw. She was wearing tent clothes: a long prairie skirt and a big red sweatshirt. Her skin was rough and her hair was mousy, and she was, in fact, perfect.

Hawk lifted an eyebrow in her direction. Pidge nodded. They walked over to the picnic table and took seats, Hawk sitting next to the girl, Pidge sitting opposite.

Hawk made a phone with his thumb and pinkie.

“Ba-rinnng,” he said, making a telephone ring tone.

“Hal-lo,” Pidge said, answering the call with his own thumb-and-pinkie phone.

“Pidge. You get outta here, man. I saw her first.”

“But I like her better, dude. I told you how much I like this woman.”

The girl looked up, puzzled by the conversation going on around her. She looked at Hawk, sitting to her left, turned her head, and looked at Pidge. Then she dropped her gaze back to her laptop, where she was blogging an entry in MySpace.

“I don’t think she likes either of us, dude,” Hawk said into his phone. “You think she’s a snob?”

“Let me talk to her,” Pidge said. He put his “receiver” down on the table, said to the girl, “Hi. I’m Pidge. I’m a senior. Computer sciences.” He pointed to the Gates Building. “My buddy wants to ask you out, but I was telling him that even though he saw you first, I like you better.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the girl said. “I’m sure you’re not just playing me. Some kind of goof you’re doing with each other.”

Hawk reached out, touched the girl’s forearm. “Ow, that really hurts. You’ve got us wrong,” Hawk said. “I saw you in the library, don’t you remember? I’m not that good at meeting a girl by myself.”

“That’s the truth,” Pidge said. “Hawk’s shy. I’m just helping out as his wingman. But when I saw you just now, I thought – and this is the truth now – you’re more my type than his.”

“What kind of type is that?” the girl asked, warming now to the attention. Herds of bikes whizzed by. The smell of bread baking at Subway floated over the plaza. The sun warmed the top of her head. It was a beautiful day, and now it had gotten better.

“You’re creative, right? I have a feeling that you must be creative. You’re a writer, I’ll bet.”

“I’m in hum bio.”

“Human biology? Cool,” said Hawk. “Actually, I’m a writer. What’s your name?”

“Kara. Kara Lynch.”

“I’m Hawk, Kara Lynch. This is my friend Pidge.”

“What do you write?” she asked Hawk.

“Pidge and I are working together on a novel,” said Hawk. “May I get you another one of those?” he asked. “Strawberry Whirl?”

“Yes. Thanks, Hawk,” Kara said, smiling.

When Hawk left, Pidge leaned across the table, said to the girl, “Seriously, Kara. He’s not your type. Sure, he’s a fuzzy, but I’m a computer genius. Top of my class. If I told you my real name, you’d recognize it. But look, when Hawk gets back, you’ve got to be ready to choose. Either you’ve got to step up and ask Hawk out. Or you’ve got to ask me.

“It’s got to be one or the other, so that the two of us don’t fight. That wouldn’t be good. That would be cruel.”

Kara shifted her eyes to Hawk as he came back to the table with the smoothie. Kara thanked him, then said, “I was thinking, Hawk, maybe we could hang out sometime.”

Hawk smiled. “Oh, wow, Kara. And I was just thinking you’re much more Pidge’s type than mine. He’s famous at Gates. You’d never forgive yourself if you turned him down.”

Kara turned dubiously to Pidge. He rewarded her with a blinding smile. “You have to step up, Kara,” he said.

“Uh-huh. Kiss my ass,” she said, blushing, putting her eyes back on her laptop.

Pidge said, “I can’t do that, Kara. Hawk saw you first.” He laughed.

“Ba-rinnng,” Hawk said.

“Hal-lo?”

“Like either one of us would go out with a fat slob like her,” Hawk said, making sure he said it loud so that Kara and the students at the other picnic tables could hear him. The two boys laughed, made a big deal of holding their sides, falling off the benches to the ground.

Pidge recovered first. He stood and tousled Kara’s hair playfully. “Mea culpa, Kara mia,” he said. “Better luck next time.”

He took a bow as tears slid down her cheeks.

Chapter 56

CONKLIN PARKED OUR CAR on the narrow, tree-lined road in Monterey, a small coastal town two hours south of San Francisco. On my right, one wing of the three-story, wood-frame house remained untouched, while the center of the house had burned out to the framing timbers, the roof open to the blue sky like a silent scream.

Conklin and I pushed through the clumps of sidewalk gawkers, ducked under the barricade tape, and loped up the walk.

The arson investigator was waiting for us outside the front door. He was in his early thirties, over six feet tall, jangling the keys and change in his pocket. He introduced himself as Ramon Jimenez and gave me his card with his cell phone number printed on the back. Jimenez opened the fire department lock on the front door so we could enter the center of the house, and as the front door swung open we were hit with the smell of apples and cinnamon.

“Air freshener explosion,” Jimenez said. “The crispy critters were found in the den.”

As we followed Jimenez into the fire-ravaged shell, I thought about how some cops and firefighters use jargon to show that they’re tough – when in fact they’re horrified. Others do it because they get off on it. What kind of guy was Jimenez?

“Was the front door locked?” I asked him.

“No, and a neighbor called the fire in. Lots of people don’t bother to set their alarms around here.”

Broken glass crunched under my shoes and water lapped over the tops of them as I slogged through the open space, trying to get a sense of the victims’ lives from the remains and residue of their home. But my knack for fitting puzzle pieces together was blunted by the extent of the destruction. First the fire, then the water and the mop-up, left the worst kind of crime scene.

If there had been fingerprints, they were gone. Hair, fiber, blood spatter, footprints, receipts, notes – forget all of that. Unless a bomb trigger or trace of an accelerant was found, we couldn’t even be sure that this fire and the others we were investigating had been set by the same person.

The most conclusive evidence we had was the similarity of the circumstances surrounding this fire and those at the Malones’ and Meachams’ homes.

“The vics were a married couple, George and Nancy Chu,” Jimenez told us. “She was a middle school teacher. He was some kind of financial planner. They paid their taxes, were law-abiding, good neighbors, and so forth. No known connections with any bad guys. I can fax you the detectives’ notes from the canvass of the neighborhood.”

“What about the ME’s report?” I asked.

Conklin was splashing through the ruins behind me. He started up the skeletal staircase that still clung to the rear wall.

“The ME wasn’t called. Uh, the chief ruled the fire accidental. Nancy Chu’s sister had the funeral home pick up the bodies, ASAP.”

“The chief didn’t see cause to call the ME?” I shouted. “We’re looking at a string of fire-related, probable homicides in San Francisco.”

“Like I told you,” Jimenez said, staring me down with his dark eyes. “I wasn’t called either. By the time I got here, the bodies were gone and the house was boarded up. Now everyone’s yelling at me.”

“Who else is yelling?”

“You know him. Chuck Hanni.”

“Chuck was here?”

“This morning. We called him in to consult. He said you were working a couple of similar cases. And before you say I didn’t tell you, we might have a witness.”

Had I heard Jimenez right? There was a witness? I stared up at Jimenez and pinned some hope on the thought of a break in the case.

“Firefighters found the Chus’ daughter unconscious out on the lawn. She’s at St. Anne’s Children’s Hospital with an admitting carbon monoxide of seventeen percent.”

“She’s going to make it?”

Jimenez nodded, said, “She’s conscious now, but pretty traumatized. So far she hasn’t said a word.”

Chapter 57

A TELEPHONE RANG repeatedly in some corner of the second floor of George and Nancy Chu’s house. I waited out the sad, echoing bell tones before asking Jimenez the name and age of the Chus’ daughter.

“Molly Chu. She’s ten.”

I scribbled in my notebook, stepped around a mound of water-soaked rubble, and headed for the stairs. I called out to Rich, who was already starting down. Before I could tell him about Molly Chu, he showed me a paperback book that he held by the charred edges.

Enough of the book cover remained so that I could read the title: Fire Lover, by Joseph Wambaugh.

I knew the book.

This was a nonfiction account of a serial arsonist who’d terrorized the state of California in the 1980s and ’90s. The blurb on the back cover recounted a scene of horror, a fire that had demolished a huge home improvement center, killing four people, including a little boy of two. While the fire burned, a man sat in his car, videotaping the images in his rearview mirror – the rigs pulling up, the firefighters boiling out, trying to do the dangerous and impossible, to knock down the inferno even as two other suspicious fires burned only blocks away.

The man in the car was an arson investigator, John Leonard Orr, a captain of the Glendale Fire Department.

Orr was well known and respected. He toured the state giving lectures to firefighters, helping law enforcement read the clues and understand the pathology of arsonists. And while he was traveling, John Orr set fires. He set the fire that had killed those four people. And because of his pattern of setting fires in towns where he was attending fire conferences, he was eventually caught.

He was tried, convicted, and stashed in a small cell at Lompoc for the rest of his life, without possibility of parole.

“Did you see this book?” Conklin asked Jimenez.

Jimenez shook his head no, said, “What? We’re looking for books?”

“I found it in the master bathroom between the sink and the toilet,” Conklin said to me.

The pages of the book were damp and warped, but it was intact. Incredibly, books rarely burn, because of their density and because the oxygen the fire needs for combustion can’t get between the pages. Still holding the book by the edges, Rich opened the cover and showed me the block letters printed with a ballpoint pen on the title page.

I sucked in my breath.

This was the link that tied the homicides together.

The Latin phrase was the killer’s signature, but why did he leave it? What was he trying to tell us?

“Hanni was here,” Conklin said quietly. “Why didn’t he find this book?”

I muttered, “Got me,” and focused on the handwritten words on the flyleaf, Sobria inebrietas. Even I could translate this one: “sober intoxication.”

But what the hell did it mean?

Chapter 58

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 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 charred remains.

“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 bristled. “I told Jimenez to notify you guys as soon as I saw the victims’ bodies.”

Conklin took the paperback 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 desktop.

“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, Lieutenant. In plain sight.”

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

Chapter 59

CHUCK HANNI’S CHAIR scraped the floor as he pushed back from Jacobi’s desk. He’d been caught off guard and was now indignant. “What? You think I’m like that Orr prick? Setting fires so I can be a hero?… Oh, and I planted that book to point suspicion at myself? Look! I gave the ATF a standing ovation when they brought John Orr down.”

Conklin smiled, shrugged.

I felt sweat beading up at my hairline. Hanni couldn’t be what Conklin was suggesting, but so many kind-faced seeming do-gooders had been convicted of mass murder, I had to know. I kept my mouth shut and let the scene play out.

“Why didn’t you tell us about the Christiansen fire?” Conklin said, calmly. “Two wealthy people died. Their stuff was stolen -”

“Christ,” Hanni interrupted. “I don’t sit around reminiscing about old cases – do you? Bad enough I see them in my dreams -”

“But the MO was the same,” Conklin insisted. “And so I’m wondering if the killer can’t kick the habit. Maybe he’s still at it, and now he’s leaving clues at the crime scene. Like a book inscribed with a few words of Latin.”

I watched Chuck’s expression, expecting him to bolt, or punch out at Rich, or break down.

Instead he frowned, said, “What do you mean, the killer can’t kick the habit? Matt Waters confessed to the Christiansen fire two years ago. He’s doing time at the Q. Check it out, Conklin, before you start slinging accusations around.”

My face got hot.

Had Cindy gotten this wrong? The Christiansen fire had happened far from San Francisco, but still, I should have double-checked Cindy’s research.

Jacobi’s intercom had buzzed a few times during this meeting, but he hadn’t picked up. Now Brenda Fregosi, our squad assistant, barged into the office, ripped a pink square of paper from a pad, handed it to Jacobi, saying, “What’s the matter, Lieutenant? You didn’t hear me ring?”

Brenda turned and, swinging her hips, walked back across the gray linoleum to her desk. Jacobi read the note.

“Molly Chu is responding to the hospital shrink,” he told us. “She might be ready to talk.”

Chuck got out of his chair, but Jacobi stopped him.

“Let’s talk, Chuck. Just you and me.”

Chapter 60

MY HEART LURCHED when I saw the little girl. Her hair was singed to an inch of frizzed, black fuzz sticking out from her scalp. Her eyebrows and lashes were gone, and her skin looked painfully pink. We approached her bed, which seemed to float under a bower of shiny helium balloons.

Molly didn’t look at me or Conklin, but two Chinese women moved aside and a white-haired woman in her seventies with rounded features and sapphire blue eyes stood up and introduced herself as Molly’s psychiatrist, Dr. Olga Matlaga.

The shrink spoke to the little girl, saying, “Some police officers are here to see you, sweetheart.”

Molly turned toward me when I said her name, but her eyes were dull, as if the life had been sucked out of her, leaving only a stick-figure representation of a child.

“Have you found Graybeard?” she asked me, her voice whispery and slowed by painkillers.

I cast a questioning look at Dr. Matlaga, who explained, “Her dog, Graybeard, is missing.”

I told Molly that we would put out an APB for Graybeard and told her what that meant. She nodded soberly and I asked, “Can you tell us what happened in your house?”

The child turned her face toward the window.

“Molly?” Conklin said. He dragged over a chair, sat so that he was at the little girl’s eye level. “Have lots of people been asking you questions?”

Molly reached a hand toward the swinging arm of the table near her bed. Conklin lifted a glass of water, held it so the child could sip through the straw.

“We know you’re tired, honey, but if you could just tell the story one more time.”

Molly sighed, said, “I heard Graybeard barking. And then he stopped. I went back to my movie, and a little later I heard voices. My mom and dad always told me not to come downstairs when they had guests.”

“Guests?” Conklin asked patiently. “More than one?”

Molly nodded.

“And they were friends of your parents?”

Molly shrugged, said, “I only know that one of them carried me out of the fire.”

“Can you tell us what he looked like?”

“He had a nice face, and I think he had blond hair. And he was like Ruben’s age,” Molly said.

“Ruben?”

“My brother, Ruben. He’s in the cafeteria right now, but he goes to Cal Tech. He’s a sophomore.”

“Had you ever seen this boy before?” I asked.

I felt Dr. Matlaga’s hand at my elbow, signaling me that our time was over.

“I didn’t know him,” Molly said. “I could have been dreaming,” she said, finally fixing her eyes on me. “But in my dream, whoever he was, I know he was an angel.”

She closed her eyes, and tears spilled from under those lashless crescents and rolled silently down her cheeks.

Chapter 61

“HANNI IS IN THE CLEAR,” Jacobi said, standing over us, casting a shadow across our desks. “He was working the scene of a meth lab explosion the night of the Meacham fire. He said he told you.”

I remembered.

He’d told us that the Meacham fire had been his second job that night.

“I’ve spoken to five people who were at that meth scene who swear Chuck was there until he got the call about the Meachams,” said Jacobi. “And I’ve confirmed that Matt Waters is doing life for the deaths of the Christiansens.”

Conklin sighed.

“Both of you,” said Jacobi. “Move on. Find out what the victims have in common. Boxer – McNeil and Chi are reporting to you. So make use of them. Concentrate on the Malones and the Meachams. Those are ours. Here’s the name of the primary working the Chus’ case in Monterey. Conklin, you might want to smooth things over with Hanni. He’s still working these cases.”

I was looking at Rich as Jacobi stumped back to his office.

Conklin said, “What? I have to buy Hanni flowers?”

“That’ll confuse him,” I said.

“Look, it made sense, didn’t it, Lindsay? The book was about an arsonist who was an arson investigator and Hanni missed it.”

“You made a courageous call, Richie. Your reasoning was sound and you didn’t attack him. You brought it into the open with our immediate superior. Perfectly proper. I’m just glad you were wrong.”

“So… look. You know him. Should I expect to find my tires slashed?” Conklin asked.

I grinned at the idea of it.

“You know what, Rich. I think Chuck feels so bad about missing that book, he’s going to slash his own tires. Just tell him, ‘Sorry, hope there are no hard feelings.’ Do the manly handshake thing, okay?”

My phone rang.

I held Richie’s glum gaze for a moment, knowing how bad he felt, feeling bad for him, then I answered the phone.

Claire said, “Sugar, you and Conklin got a minute to come down here? I’ve got a few things to show you.”

Chapter 62

CLAIRE LOOKED UP when Rich and I banged open the ambulance bay doors to the autopsy suite. She wore a flower-printed paper cap and an apron, the ties straining across her girth. She said, “Hey, you guys. Check this out.”

Instead of a corpse, there was a bisected tube of what looked like muscle, about seven inches long. The thing was clamped open on the autopsy table.

“What is that?” I asked her.

“This here’s a trachea,” Claire told us. “Belonged to a schnauzer Hanni found in the bushes outside the Chu house. See how pink it is? No soot in the pooch’s windpipe and his carbon monoxide is negative, so I’m saying he wasn’t in the house during the fire. Most likely he was in the yard, raised the alarm, and someone put him down with a blow to the head.

“See this fracture here?”

So much for the APB on Graybeard. Whose sad task would it be to tell Molly that her dog was dead? Claire went on to tell us she’d spent the day getting George and Nancy Chu’s bodies from the funeral home.

“It’s not our jurisdiction, not our case, but I finally got permission from the Chus’ son, Ruben. Told him that if I have to testify against the killer and I haven’t examined all the victims’ bodies, I’ll get diced into pieces by the attorney for the defense.”

I murmured an encouraging “uh-huh” and Claire went on.

“Ruben Chu was a mess. Didn’t want his parents to ‘suffer any more indignities,’ but anyway… I got the release. Both bodies are at X-ray now,” Claire added.

“What was your take?” I asked.

“They were burned pretty bad, a few extremities fell off during their travels, but one of George Chu’s ankles still had several wraps of intact monofilament fibers on it. So that, my friends, is evidence that they were absolutely, positively tied up.”

“Great job, Claire.”

“And I got enough blood for the tox screens.”

“You gonna keep us guessing, girlfriend?”

“You’re saying I live to frustrate you? I’m talking as fast as I can.” Claire laughed. She squeezed my shoulder affectionately, then removed a sheet of paper from a manila envelope, put it down on the table next to the dog’s trachea.

She ran her finger down the column of data. “High alcohol content in their blood,” she said. “Either the Chus had been drinking a lot, or else they’d been drinking high-octane stuff.”

“Same as Sandy Meacham?”

“Very much the same,” said Claire.

I flashed on the inscription in the book. Sobria inebrietas. Sober intoxication. I autodialed Chuck Hanni on my cell phone. If I was right, it would explain why he didn’t detect the odor of ignitable liquids at either of our fire scenes.

“Chuck? It’s Lindsay. Could those fires have been set with booze?”

Chapter 63

THE SUN WENT DOWN and someone in the night crew snapped on the bright overhead lights. Rich and I were still wandering around in the dark. Somewhere, a very smug killer was having his dinner, toasting himself on his success, maybe planning another fire – and we didn’t know who he was or when he would strike again.

While Chi and McNeil reinterviewed the Malones’ and the Meachams’ friends and neighbors, Conklin and I sat at our desks, going over the murder book together. We reviewed Claire’s findings, the photos of rubberneckers at the fire scenes, the handwriting expert’s comparison of the inscriptions in each of the books left at the fire scenes, and the expert’s opinion: “I can’t say one hundred percent because it’s block lettering, but looks like all the samples were written by the same hand.”

We reviewed our own eyeball tours of the crime scenes, trying to reduce all of it to a few illuminating truths, speaking in the kind of shorthand that you use with a partner. And I felt that other connection, too, the one I wouldn’t let Rich mention but sometimes just arced across our desks. Like it was doing now.

I got up, went to the bathroom, washed my face, got a cup of coffee for me and one for Conklin, black, no sugar. Sat back down, said, “Now, where were we?”

As the night tour walked and talked around us, Rich ticked off on his fingers what we had: “The couples were all in their forties and well-to-do. The doors to all the houses were unlocked, and the alarms weren’t set. No sign of gunfire. The couples all had a child of college age. They were all robbed, but the killer took only jewelry and cash.”

“Okay, and here are a few suppositions,” I said. “The killer is smart enough and unthreatening enough to talk his way into the houses. And I’m going to also say that it seems probable that there were two assailants; one to tie up the victims, one to hold a gun.”

Rich nodded, said, “He or they used fishing line as ligatures because they’d burn off quickly in the fire. And they used an untraceable accelerant. That’s careful. They don’t leave evidence, and that’s smart.

“But I don’t think Molly Chu was in the plan,” Rich added. “This is the first time another person was in the house with the victims. I’m thinking Molly had already passed out from smoke inhalation when her ‘angel’ found her and subsequently carried her out. Kind of heroic, wouldn’t you say?”

“So maybe the killer thought she didn’t see him,” I said. “And so he felt safe carrying her out of the house. Yeah, I don’t think he wanted the little girl to die, hon.”

Rich looked up, grinned at me.

“I, uh. Didn’t mean – shit.”

“Forget it, babe,” said Conklin. “Means nothin’.” He grinned wider.

I said, “Shut up,” and threw a paper clip at his head. He snatched it out of the air and went on.

“So,” he said, “let’s say Molly saw one of the killers, okay? And let’s say he’s a college-age kid as Molly suggested. The Malones, the Meachams, the Chus, and that couple in Palo Alto, the Jablonskys – they all had kids in college. But their kids all went to different schools.”

“True,” I said. “But a kid, any kid, comes to the door and looks presentable, Mom and Dad might open it.

“Rich, maybe that’s the con. When I was in school, I was always bringing people home that my mom didn’t know. So, what if a couple of kids come to the door and say they’re friends with your kid?”

“That would be easy to fake,” Rich said. “Local newspapers do stories on kids at school. So-and-so’s daughter or son, attending such-and-such school won this-or-that award.”

Rich drummed his fingers on the desk, and I rested my chin in my hand. Instead of feeling on the brink of a breakthrough, it seemed that we’d just opened the field of potential suspects to every male college-age kid in California who knew high school Latin – and, by the way, was into robbery, torture, arson, and murder.

I thought about the puzzle pieces. Providence favoring the killers’ actions, and money being the root of all evil. There was the sci-fi book Fahrenheit 451, and now a book about a high-placed fire official who’d set fires. When John Orr was caught, he’d said, “I was stupid, and I did what stupid people do.”

These killers weren’t making Orr’s mistakes.

They were going out of their way to show just how smart they were. Was saving Molly Chu their one miscalculation?

Rich’s phone rang and he swiveled his chair toward the wall. He lowered his voice and said, “We’re working on it, Kelly, right now. It’s all we’re doing. I promise, when we know something, I’ll call you. We won’t let you down.”

Chapter 64

YUKI WAS AT the Whole Foods Market six blocks from her apartment, looking over the produce, thinking about a quick stir-fry for dinner, when she thought she glimpsed a familiar figure down the aisle. When she looked again, he was gone. She was hallucinating, she thought, so tired she could conjure up bogeymen anywhere. She dropped a head of broccoli into her cart and moved on toward the meat section.

There she selected a shrink-wrapped tray of tiger prawns -and got the feeling again that Jason Twilly was only yards away.

She looked up.

And there he was, dressed in navy blue pinstripes, pink shirt, wearing a full smirk and standing near the pile of frozen free-range turkeys. Twilly waggled his fingers but made no move toward her, though he didn’t turn away. He had no cart, no basket.

The bastard wasn’t shopping.

He was stalking her.

Yuki’s sudden fury gathered power and momentum, so that she saw only one possible course of action. She shoved her cart to the side of the aisle and marched toward Twilly, stopping a few feet from his sturdy English shoes.

“What are you doing here, Jason?” she said, stretching her neck to look up at his crazy-handsome face with the eight-hundred-dollar eyeglass frames and lopsided smile.

“Leave the groceries, Yuki,” he said. “Let me take you out to dinner. I promise I’ll behave. I just want to make up to you for our misunderstanding the last time -”

“I want to be very clear about this,” Yuki said, cutting him off, using her clipped, rapid-fire style. “Mistakes happen. Maybe the misunderstanding was my fault, and I’ve apologized. Again, I’m sorry it happened. But you have to understand. I’m not interested, Jason – in anyone. It’s all work, all the time, for me. I’m not available, okay? So please don’t follow me again.”

Jason’s odd, twisted smile blossomed into a full-blown laugh. “Nice speech,” he said, clapping his hands, an exaggerated round of mock applause.

Yuki felt a little shock of fear as she backed away. What was wrong with this guy? What was he capable of doing? She remembered Cindy’s warning to her to be careful of what she said around Twilly. Would he dirty her reputation when he wrote about the Junie Moon trial?

Whatever.

“Good-bye, Jason. Leave me alone. I mean it.”

“Hey, I’m writing a book, remember?” Twilly called out to her as she turned her back on him. She heard his voice as she pushed her cart down the aisle.

She wanted to hide. She wanted to disappear.

“You’re a key player, Yuki. Sorry if you don’t like it, but you’re the star of my whole freakin’ show.”

Chapter 65

WE WERE GATHERED on the deck of Rose Cottage, outside of Point Reyes, feeling the blessed night breeze on our cheeks. Yuki flipped on the heater for the hot tub, while Claire tossed a giant salad and made burgers for the grill.

This impromptu getaway was Cindy’s idea. She had corralled us in a conference call only hours before, saying, “Since our first attempt at a Women’s Murder Club Annual Getaway Weekend was canceled due to someone answering a call to return to work, we should grab this opportunity to drop everything and go now.”

Cindy added that she’d booked the cottage and that she would drive.

There was no saying no to Cindy, and for once I was glad to turn the wheel over to her.

Yuki and Claire had both slept in the backseat during the drive, and I’d ridden shotgun with Martha in my lap, her ears flapping in the wind. I listened to Cindy talk over the car’s CD player, my mind floating blissfully as we neared the ocean.

Once we’d arrived at the rose-covered hobbit house with its two snug bedrooms plus picnic table and grill in the clearing at the edge of a forest, we’d slapped each other high fives and dropped our bags on our beds. Yuki had left her box of files in her room and come with Martha and me as we took a short run up a moonlit trail to the top of a wooded ridge and back again.

And now I was ready for a meal, a margarita, and a great night’s sleep. But when we got back to Rose Cottage, my cell phone was ringing. Claire groused, “That damned thing’s been ringin’ its buttons off, girlfriend. Either turn it off or give it to me and I’ll stomp it to death.”

I grinned at my best friend, pulled the phone from my handbag, saw the number on the caller ID.

It was Jacobi.

I stabbed the send button, said hello, and heard traffic noise mixed in with the wail of fire engine sirens.

I shouted, “Jacobi. Jacobi, what’s up?”

“Didn’t you get my messages?”

“No, I just caught this ring on the fly.”

The sirens in the background, the fact that Jacobi was calling at all, caused me to imagine a new fire and another couple of charred bodies killed by a psycho looking for kicks. I pressed my ear hard to the phone, strained to hear Jacobi over the street noise.

“I’m on Missouri Street,” he told me.

That was my street. What was he doing on my street? Had something happened to Joe?

“There’s been a fire, Boxer. Look, there’s no good way to say this. You have to come home right now.”

Chapter 66

JACOBI DISCONNECTED the phone call, leaving static in my ear and a god-awful gap between what he’d said and what he’d left out.

“There’s been a fire on Missouri Street,” I announced to the girls. “Jacobi told me to come home!”

Cindy gave me the keys and we piled into her car. I floored the accelerator and we bumped down the twisting roads of the backwoods of Olema and out to the highway. I called Joe as I drove, ringing his apartment and mine, and I rang his cell, pressed redial again and again, never getting an answer.

Where was he? Where was Joe?

I don’t ask God for much, but as we neared Potrero Hill, I was praying that Joe was safe. When we reached Missouri at Twentieth, I saw that my street was roped off. I parked in the first empty spot, gripped Martha’s leash, and dashed up the steep residential block, leaving the girls to follow behind.

I was winded when I caught sight of my house, saw that it was fenced in by fire rigs, patrol cars, and bystanders filling the narrow street. I frantically scoured the faces in the crowd, saw the two female students who lived on the second floor and the building manager, Sonya Marron, who lived on the ground floor.

Sonya reached through the crowd and gripped my arm, saying, “Thank God, thank God.” There were tears in her eyes.

“Was anyone hurt?”

“No,” she said. “No one was home.”

I hugged her then, relieved at last that Joe had not fallen asleep in my bed. But I still had questions, a ton of them. “What happened?” I asked Sonya.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

I looked for Jacobi, but I found Claire shouting at the fire captain, “I under-stand it may be a crime scene, but she’s a cop. With the SFPD!”

I knew the fire department captain, Don Walker, a thin man with a prominent nose, weary eyes peering out from the soot on his face. He threw up his hands, and then he opened the front door. Claire gathered me under her wing, and along with Yuki, Cindy, and Martha, we entered the three-story apartment house that had been my home for ten years.

Chapter 67

I WAS WEAK-KNEED as we mounted the stairs, but my mind was sharp. The stairs hadn’t burned, and the doors to the two lower apartments stood open. The apartments looked untouched by fire. This made no sense.

But it all became clear at the top of the stairs.

The door to my apartment was in shards. I stepped through the shattered door frame and saw the stars and the moon where my ceiling used to be. I lowered my eyes from the night sky, finding it hard to take in the grotesque condition of my little nest. The walls were black, curtains gone, the glass in my kitchen cabinets blown out. My crockery and the food in my pantry had exploded, making the place smell crazily like popcorn and Clorox.

My cozy living room furniture had melted down into hunks of sodden foam and wire springs. And then I knew – the fire had taken everything. Martha whined and I bent to her, buried my face in her fur.

“Lindsay,” I heard someone shout. “Are you okay?”

I turned to see Chuck Hanni coming out of the bedroom.

Did he have something to do with this?

Had Rich been right all along?

And then I saw Conklin right behind Hanni, and both of their faces were sagging with my pain.

Rich opened his arms. I held on to him in the smoking black ruins of my home, so glad he was there. But as I rested my head on his shoulder, the stark realization hit me: if Cindy hadn’t called with her impromptu getaway plan, I would have been home with Martha when the fire broke out.

I ripped myself away from Rich and called out to Hanni.

My voice was trembling.

“Chuck, what happened here? I have to know. Did someone try to kill me?”

Chapter 68

HANNI SNAPPED ON the portable lights inside what was left of my living room, and in that blinding moment, Joe burst through my splintered door frame. I flung myself at him, and he wrapped me in his arms, nearly squeezing the air out of me.

I said, “I called and called -”

“I turned off my damned cell at dinner -”

“From now on, you’ve got to put it on vibrate -”

“I’ll wear an electric shock collar, Linds. Whatever it takes. I’m sick that I didn’t know you needed me.”

“You’re here now.”

I broke down and cried all over his shirt, feeling safe and lucky that Joe was okay, that we both were. I only vaguely remember my friends and my partner saying good-bye, but I clearly recall Chuck Hanni telling me that as soon as it was daylight, he’d be all over the building, looking for whatever caused the fire.

Don Walker, the SFFD captain, took off his hat, wiped his forehead with his glove, saying that Joe and I had to leave so he could secure the building.

“Just a minute, Don, okay?” I said, not really asking him.

I went to the bedroom closet and opened the door, stood there in a daze, until I heard Joe say behind me, “You can’t wear any of this, honey. It’s all a loss. You’ve got to walk away from it.”

I turned and tried to take in the utter ruination of my four-poster bed and photo albums and the treasured box of letters that my mother wrote to me when I was away at school and she was dying.

And then I focused my mind and scanned every inch of floor, looking for something specific, a book that might be out of place. I found nothing. I went to my dresser, pulled at the knobs of the top drawer – but the charred wooden drawer pulls crumbled in my hands.

Joe strong-armed the dresser and the wood cracked. He gripped the drawer and heaved it open. I pawed through my underwear, Joe saying patiently behind me, “Sweetie, forget this. You’ll get new stuff…”

I found it.

I palmed the velvet cube in my right hand, held it into the light, and opened the box. Five diamonds in a platinum setting winked up at me, the ring that Joe had offered me when he asked me to marry him only a few months ago. I’d told Joe then that I loved him but needed time. Now I closed the lid of the box and looked into his worry-creased face.

“I’d sleep with this under my pillow – if only I had a pillow.”

Joe said, “Got lots of pillows at my place, Blondie. Even got one for Martha.”

Captain Walker stood at the door waiting for us. I took one last look around – and that’s when I saw the book on the small telephone stand just inside my front door.

I’d never seen that book before in my life.

That book wasn’t mine.

Chapter 69

I STARED IN SHOCK and disbelief at the large 8½ by 11 paperback, tomato-red with thin white stripes running crosswise beneath the title: National Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigation.

I started screaming, “That’s evidence. That’s evidence.”

Captain Walker was worn out and he was also out of the loop. He said, “The arson investigator will be back in the morning, Sarge. I’m boarding up your place so it’ll be perfectly safe, you understand?”

“NO,” I shouted. “I want a cop. I want this thing locked up in the evidence room tonight!”

I ignored Walker ’s sigh and Joe’s hand on the small of my back. I dialed Jacobi’s number on my cell, already decided that if he didn’t pick up, I would call Clapper and then I would call Tracchio. And if I didn’t get Jacobi or CSI or the chief, I would call the mayor. I was hysterical and I knew it, but no one could stop me or tell me I was wrong.

“Boxer, that you?” Jacobi said. His voice crackled from a poor connection.

“I found a book in my apartment,” I shouted into the phone. “It’s clean. It didn’t burn. There could be prints. I want it bagged and tagged, and I don’t want to do it myself in case there’s any question down the road.”

“I’m five minutes away,” Jacobi said.

I stood in the hallway with Joe and Martha, Joe telling me that Martha and I were moving in with him. I held tightly to his hand, but my mind was running a slide show of all the fire-razed houses I’d walked through in the last month, and I was feeling the searing shame of having been so professional and so removed. I’d seen the bodies. I’d seen the destruction. But I hadn’t felt the terrible power of fire until now.

I heard Jacobi’s voice and that of the building manager downstairs, then Jacobi’s ponderous footsteps as he huffed and wheezed up the stairs. I’d ridden thousands of miles in a squad car with Jacobi. I’d been shot with him, and our blood had pooled together in an alley in the Tenderloin. I knew him better than anyone in the world, and he knew me that way, too. That’s why when he arrived at the top landing, all I had to do was point to the book.

Jacobi stretched latex gloves over his large hands, gingerly opened the red cover. I was panting with fear, sure that I’d see an inscription inside, another mocking Latin saying. But there was only a name printed inside the front page.

The name was Chuck Hanni.

Chapter 70

IT WAS 1:03 A.M. and sixty-eight degrees outside.

I was lying next to Joe tucked inside the cool, white envelope of his six-hundred-thread-count sheets, wearing one of his T-shirts, staring up at the time and temperature projected onto his ceiling by a clock made for insomniacs and former G-men who needed to have this critical info the second they opened their eyes.

Joe’s hand covered mine. He had listened to my fears and my ranting for hours, but as he drifted off, his grip loosened, and now he was snoring softly. Martha, too, was in the land of nod, her fluttery breaths and dream-yips providing a stereophonic accompaniment to Joe’s steady snores.

As for me, sleep was on the far side of the moon.

I couldn’t stop thinking how the fire skipped the first two floors but had torched my apartment out to the walls. It was undeniable. I was the target of a vicious, premeditated killer who’d already deliberately burned eight people to death.

Had he thought I was home? Or had he watched me leave with Martha and sent me a warning? How could Chuck Hanni be that person?

I’d had meals with Chuck, worked crime scenes with him, confided in him. Now I was reconfiguring him in my mind as a killer who knew everything there was to know about setting fires. And everything there was to know about getting away with murder.

But why would a man who was this smart leave his damned calling card in my apartment?

The signature of a killer was actually his signature?

It made no sense.

The pounding in my temples was building up to a five-alarm headache. If there’d been anything in my stomach, I would have heaved it up. When the phone rang at 1:14, I read the caller ID and grabbed the receiver on the first ring. Joe stirred beside me. I whispered, “It’s Conklin,” and Joe mumbled, “Okay,” and dropped back down into sleep.

“You got something?” I asked my partner.

“Yeah. You’re not going to like this.”

“Just tell me. Tell me what you’ve got,” I half whispered, half shouted. I got out of bed, stepped over Martha, and walked out into Joe’s living room with its night view of Presidio Park, its tall eucalyptus trees swaying eerily in the moonlight. Martha’s nails clacked on hardwood as she followed me, slurped water from a bowl in the kitchen.

“About the book…” Rich said.

“You found Latin written inside?”

“No. It’s Chuck’s book, all right -”

“Man oh man.”

“Let me finish, Linds. He didn’t leave it in your apartment. I did.”

Chapter 71

MY MIND SCRAMBLED as I tried to understand what Conklin was telling me. “Say that again,” I demanded. When he answered, his voice was contrite.

“I left the book at your place.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

He had to be. I couldn’t imagine any circumstances under which Conklin would leave a fire and explosion manual in my fire-ravaged apartment.

“What happened is, I got together with Chuck, like you said to do,” Rich told me in measured tones. “We had a no-hard-feelings dinner and I picked up the tab. And I told him I’d like to learn more about fire investigation from him. I mean, he’s the pro.”

Rich paused for breath and I shouted at him, “Go on!”

“We went out to his car, Lindsay, he practically lives in that thing. Pop-Tarts wrappers all over the seats, his computer, clothes hanging from the -”

“Rich, for God’s sake!”

“So, just as he finds the fire investigations manual to lend me, Jacobi calls and tells me your apartment went up. I told Hanni, and he said, ‘I’ll drive,’ and I was still holding that book when we entered your place.”

“You put it down on the telephone table.”

“Didn’t think about it again until Jacobi called me,” Rich said miserably.

“Has Jacobi already spoken to Hanni?”

“No. He wanted to talk to me first. Hanni knows nothing about this.”

It took long seconds for me to sort it all out, put Chuck Hanni back into his role as friend, and realize that the essential truth hadn’t changed. I was shivering, and I wasn’t cold.

“Linds?” I heard Rich say.

“We still don’t know who set fire to my place or to any of the others,” I said. “We still don’t know anything.”

Chapter 72

THERE HAD BEEN a whole blessed week’s break while Judge Bendinger returned to physical rehab for his replaced knee. But the break was over. Bendinger was back. And Yuki now felt the tsunami effect of the whole freakin’ Junie Moon circus starting all over again, the out-of-control press, the pressure to win.

At nine o’clock sharp, court was called into session.

And the defense began to put on its case.

L. Diana Davis didn’t look up as her first witness came through the gate, passing so close she must have felt a breeze as his herringbone jacket nearly grazed her arm. Yuki saw Davis lean in and speak behind her hand to her client, all the while panning the gallery with her eyes. The TV cameras were running, and the reporters were packed in the rows at the back of the room.

Davis smiled.

Yuki whispered to Len Parisi, “There’s no place Davis would rather be. Nobody she’d rather defend.”

Red Dog smiled. “That beast is inside you, too, Yuki. Learn to love it.”

Yuki watched Davis pat her client’s hand as Lieutenant Charles Clapper, head of CSU, was sworn in. Then Davis stood and greeted her witness.

“Lieutenant Clapper, how long have you been head of the San Francisco Crime Scene Unit?”

“Fifteen years.”

“And what did you do before that?”

“I started with the San Diego PD right outta school, worked vice for five years, homicide for five. Then I joined the Las Vegas CSU before moving to San Francisco and joining the CSU here.”

“In fact, you’ve written books on trace evidence, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I’ve done a couple of books.”

“You appear on TV a few times a week, don’t you? Sometimes even more times than me,” Davis said, smiling widely, getting the laugh she wanted from the gallery.

“I don’t know about that,” Clapper said, smiling too.

“Very good. And how many homicides have you investigated in the last twenty-five years, Lieutenant?”

“I have no idea.”

“Take a wild guess.”

“A wild guess? Maybe a couple of hundred a year.”

“So it’s reasonable to say you may have investigated as many as five thousand homicides, is that right?”

“Roughly.”

“I think we can accept ‘roughly,’ ” Davis said, good-naturedly. “And as well as investigating fresh crime scenes, you investigate crimes that happened months or even years ago, is that correct?”

“I’ve investigated cold cases, yes.”

“Now, in April of this year, were you called to the home of the defendant?”

“I was.”

“And did it have the appearance of a crime scene?”

“No. The rooms were orderly. There was no evident disturbance, no blood or shell casings, et cetera.”

Davis said, “Now, were you told that a man may have been dismembered in the bathtub of the defendant’s house?”

“I was.”

“And you did all the normal tests for trace evidence, did you not?”

“Yes, we did.”

“Come up with anything evidentiary?”

“No.”

“Find any evidence that showed that the blood had been cleaned up?”

“Nope.”

“No bleach or anything like that?”

“No.”

“Lieutenant Clapper, let me just give you the whole laundry list at once and save a little time here. The walls hadn’t been repainted, the rugs hadn’t been cleaned? You didn’t find an implement that could have been used to dismember a body?”

“No.”

“So it’s fair to say that you and your team did everything you could do to ascertain the manner in which a crime was committed – or even if a crime was committed?”

“We did.”

“Based on your experience and your examination of the so-called crime scene, please tell the jury – did you find any evidence, direct or indirect, that links Junie Moon to the alleged murder of Michael Campion?”

“No.”

“Thank you. That’s all I have for this witness, Your Honor.”

Chapter 73

YUKI WAS STILL STEAMING from Red Dog’s rebuke. Or maybe she was hot under the collar because he’d been right.

Learn to love the beast.

Yuki slapped her pen down on her notepad, straightened her jacket as she stood, and approached Charlie Clapper at the stand.

“Lieutenant, I won’t keep you long.”

“No problem, Ms. Castellano.”

“You’re a member of law enforcement, right?”

“Yes.”

“And in the course of your twenty-five-year-long career in vice, homicide, and crime scene investigation, have you been involved in matters concerning prostitutes?”

“Certainly.”

“Are you familiar, generally speaking, with the lives of prostitutes and their customs?”

“I’d say so.”

“Would you agree that in exchange for a fee, a prostitute engages in sexual relations with any number of men?”

“I’d say that’s the job description.”

“Now, there are many subsets of that job description, wouldn’t you say? From streetwalker to call girl?”

“Sure.”

“And some prostitutes work mostly out of their homes?”

“Some do.”

“And is it your understanding that Ms. Moon falls into that last category?”

“That’s what I was told.”

“Okay. And would you also agree that as a matter of hygiene and practicality, a prostitute working at home would do her best to shower after her sexual encounters?”

“I would say that would be a common and hygienic practice.”

“Do you happen to know how much water is typically used by a person taking a shower?”

“Twenty gallons, depending.”

Yuki nodded, said to Charlie, “Now, based on your general knowledge of prostitutes, and given that Ms. Moon worked at home, would you agree that she probably showered after having sex with each of her tricks, maybe six to ten times a day, seven days a week -”

“Objection,” Davis called out. “Calls for speculation on the part of the witness, and furthermore, I strongly object to the way counsel is characterizing my client.”

“Your Honor,” Yuki protested. “We all know that Ms. Moon is a prostitute. I’m only asserting that she’s probably a clean one.”

“Go ahead, Ms. Castellano,” Judge Bendinger said, snapping the rubber band on his wrist. “But get to the point today, will you?”

“Thanks, Your Honor,” Yuki said, sweetly. “Lieutenant Clapper, could you tell us this?” Yuki drew a breath and launched into what was becoming her trademark – an uninterruptible run-on question.

“If a man was dismembered in a bathtub, and in the three months between the day the crime was committed and the time you examined the bathtub a large amount of soap and shampoo and water passed through that two-inch drain – by my calculations, 100 gallons of soapy water daily – and now let’s double that for the johns who took a shower before going back to their dorm or office or home to their wives – so even if Ms. Moon practices ‘Never on Sunday,’ that would still be about 130,000 gallons by the time CSU examined the drains – could that activity have completely cleansed that bathtub of residual trace evidence?”

“Well, yes, that’s very possible.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. Thank you very much.”

Yuki smiled at Charlie Clapper as the judge told him that he could step down.

Chapter 74

YUKI SAT BESIDE the immense form of Len Parisi as Junie Moon’s sleazebag pimp-boyfriend, Ricardo “Ricky” Malcolm, was sworn in.

Yuki was fully aware that Davis had hired a bounty hunter to drag Ricky Malcolm over the Mexican border for his court appearance, and as Malcolm swore to tell the whole truth, she wondered if Davis really thought this punked-out, tattooed, and homely creep could persuade the jury of anything. Davis ’s voice was confident as she asked Malcolm her preliminary questions, getting out ahead of the prosecution by getting Malcolm to say he’d served time for drug possession.

Then Davis started her direct examination in earnest.

“What’s your relationship to Ms. Moon?”

“I was her boyfriend.”

“No longer?”

“We’re separated,” Malcolm said drily. “I’m in Tijuana and she’s in jail.”

Titters arose in little pockets around the gallery.

“How long have you known Ms. Moon?” Davis asked.

“Gotta be three years.”

“And did there come a time last January twenty-first when Ms. Moon called you at around eleven thirty at night and asked you to come to her house because one of her clients was having a heart attack?”

“No.”

“Let me get this straight. You’re saying Junie didn’t call to tell you she needed help with Michael Campion?”

“No, ma’am. No, she did not.”

“Did the police question you about the dismemberment and disposal of Michael Campion’s body?”

“Yep. I told them I didn’t do it.”

“Were you telling the truth?”

Malcolm started to laugh. “Yeah, yeah, I told them the truth. I never dismembered anybody. I can’t stand the sight of blood. I eat steak well-done. It was one of the wackiest things I ever heard.”

“I agree,” Davis said. “Pretty wacky.”

Yuki jumped to her feet. “Objection, Your Honor. Ms. Davis’s opinions are totally irrelevant here.”

“Sustained.”

Davis spun on her heels, took a few paces toward the jury, then turned back again. “And yet,” Davis said, her voice ringing out across the oak-paneled courtroom, “according to police testimony, Ms. Moon said that she called you because Mr. Campion was having a heart attack, and that when you arrived at her place, Mr. Campion was dead.”

“It’s totally bogus. Never happened,” Malcolm said, clearly enjoying himself.

“The police further testified that Ms. Moon told them that you dismembered Mr. Campion with a knife and that you and Ms. Moon then transported Mr. Campion’s remains and disposed of them in a Dumpster.

“Did that happen?”

“No way. Crock a’ shit. Plus, I’ve got no skill with anything but power tools.”

“Okay, Mr. Malcolm. So, in your opinion, why would Ms. Moon say such a thing if it isn’t true?”

“Because,” Malcolm said, looking at Junie with his spacey green eyes, “she’s simple, you know, like a special ed kid. She sucks up romance novels, daytime soaps -”

“Move to strike, Your Honor,” Yuki said. “This whole line of questioning calls for speculation.”

“Your Honor, Mr. Malcolm’s testimony goes to the credibility of the defendant.”

“I’ll allow it. Go on, Mr. Malcolm.”

Yuki sighed loudly, took her seat again between Gaines and Red Dog as Malcolm continued.

“Like I was saying, in my opinion, right? When the cops asked her if she’d done the deed with the famous Michael Campion, that was like lighting up a wide-screen, three-D fantasy starring Junie Moon, stupid little whore -”

“Thanks, Mr. Malcolm. Were you charged as an accessory in this crime?”

“The cops tried, but the DA knew they couldn’t indict me on Junie’s flaky confession, especially since she, whatcha-callit, recanted.”

“Thank you, Mr. Malcolm. Your witness,” Davis said with a smirk to Yuki.

Chapter 75

YUKI READ LEN’S NOTES to her, his suggested line of questioning exactly what she planned to ask, but what was underscored in her mind was how important Malcolm was to the defense. And how important it was that she nullify his testimony.

Yuki stood, walked toward the witness stand, saying, “Mr. Malcolm, are you here today of your own volition?”

“Not exactly. The long arm of the law reached out and grabbed me out of a nice little titty bar in Tijuana.”

“You have friends in Mexico, Mr. Malcolm?” Yuki asked over the laughter in the gallery. “Or was this a case of ‘you can run but you can’t hide’?”

“A little of both.” Malcolm shrugged, giving the jury a glimpse of his terrible, gappy smile.

“A few minutes ago you swore to tell the truth, isn’t that right?”

“I got nothing against the truth,” Malcolm said.

Yuki put her hands on the railing in front of the witness, asked, “How do you feel about the defendant? Ms. Moon.”

“Junie’s a sweet girl.”

“Let’s see if we can refine that answer, okay?”

Malcolm shrugged, said, “Refine away.”

Yuki allowed a smile to show the jury she was a good sport, then said, “If you and Junie Moon were both free to walk out of here, Mr. Malcolm, would you spend the night with her?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“And if she needed a kidney, would you give her one of yours?”

“I’ve got two, right?”

“Yes. Odds are you have two.”

“Sure. I’d give her a kidney.” Ricky Malcolm grinned expansively, conveying what a generous guy he was.

“During your three-year-long relationship with the defendant, did you share things with her? Enjoy doing things with her?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“And how do you feel about her now?”

“That’s a little personal, isn’t it?”

Davis called out, “Your Honor, is this the Dr. Phil show? There’s no relevance -”

“If the court would give me a moment to show relevance,” Yuki interrupted.

“Overruled, Ms. Davis. Proceed, Ms. Castellano.”

“Thanks, Your Honor,” Yuki said. “Mr. Malcolm, your feelings aren’t a secret, are they? Would you please roll up your right sleeve and show your arm to the jury.”

Malcolm hesitated until the judge asked him to do it. Then he exposed his arm to the jury.

Called a “full sleeve” by tat aficionados, a dense collection of tattoos ran up Ricky Malcolm’s pale skin from his wrist to his shoulder. Among the snakes and skulls was a red heart branded with the initials R.M. hanging from the hook of a feminized crescent moon.

“Mr. Malcolm, could you tell us what the letters underneath that heart tattoo mean?”

“You mean T-M-T-Y-L-M-J-M?”

“That’s right, Mr. Malcolm.”

Malcolm sighed. “It stands for ‘Tell me that you love me, Junie Moon.’ ”

“So, Mr. Malcolm, is it fair to say that you love the defendant?”

Malcolm was looking at Junie now, his face heavy, having lost its wiseass expression, Junie looking back at him with her huge slate-gray eyes.

“Yes. I love her.”

“Do you love her enough to lie for her?”

“Sure, I’d lie for her, what the hell?”

“Thanks, Mr. Malcolm. I’m done with this witness, Judge,” said Yuki, turning her back on Ricky Malcolm.

Chapter 76

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.

Conklin’s face blanched around the eyes as he placed the necklace down on the photograph. It was clearly a match.

“Where’d you get this?” he asked Vitale.

“Some kid brought it in a week ago.”

“Let’s see the paperwork.”

“Hold on,” Vitale said, waddling back to his cage.

He moved a pile of auction catalogs and books on antique jewelry from his desk chair, then tapped the keys on his laptop.

“Got it. I paid the kid a hundred bucks. Here you go. Whoops. I just noticed his name.”

I read the receipt over Conklin’s shoulder, the name Clark Kent, an address somewhere in the middle of the bay, and the description of a “blue topaz necklace.”

“Was he wearing a suit and eyeglasses?” Conklin yelled. “Or maybe he’d changed into tights and a cape?”

“I’ll need the tape from that,” I said, pointing to the video camera anchored in the corner of the ceiling like a red-eyed spider.

Vitale said, “That’s got a twenty-four-hour loop. He’s not on it anymore. Anyway, I dimly remember the kid, and I don’t think he was the tights-and-cape type. More of a preppy look. I think maybe I sold him some comic books one time before.”

“Can you do better than ‘preppy look’?”

“Dark hair, I think. A little on the stocky side.”

“We’ll need you to come in and look at our mug books,” I said. “Talk to a sketch artist.”

“I’m no good at faces,” said Vitale. “It’s like a disorder I have. Some kind of dyslexia. I don’t think I’d recognize you if I saw you tomorrow.”

“Bull,” Conklin snapped. “This is a homicide investigation, Vitale. Understand? If that kid comes in again, call us. Preferably while he’s still here. And make a copy of his driver’s license.”

“Okay, chief,” Vitale said. “Will do.”

“It’s something,” Conklin said to me as he started up the car. “Kelly will be glad to have something from her mom.”

“Yeah, she will,” I said.

My mind flew to my own mom’s death. I turned my head so that Conklin couldn’t see the tears that came into my eyes.

Chapter 77

CHUCK HANNI STOOD with me and Joe in the dank basement of the building where I used to live, showing us the fine points of archaic knob-and-tube wiring as water dripped on our heads. The door to the fuse box was open, and Hanni held his Mag-Lite on a fuse he wanted me to see.

“See how this penny is annealed to the back of the fuse?”

I could just make out the dull copper blob.

“The college girls on the second floor – you know them?” Hanni asked.

“Just to wave hi.”

“Okay, well, apparently they’ve been blowing fuses every other day with their hair dryers and air conditioner and irons and whatnot. And your super got tired of running over here to change the fuse, so he put this penny in here.”

“Which does what?”

Chuck explained everything that happened, how the copper penny overrode the fuse so that the circuit didn’t trip. Instead the electricity went through the penny and melted down the wiring at its weakest point. In this case, the ceiling lights on the second floor and the electric sockets in my apartment.

I visualized flames shooting out of the socket, but I still didn’t get it – so Chuck took his time explaining to me and to Joe how my building, like a lot of old buildings, had “balloon construction,” that is, the framing timbers ran from roof to ceiling without any fire stops in between.

“The fire just races up through the walls,” Hanni said. “Those spaces between the timbers act like chimneys. And so when the fire reached your apartment, it came out the sockets, set your stuff on fire, and just kept going. Took out the roof and burned itself out.”

“So you’re telling me this was an accident?”

“I was suspicious, too,” Chuck told me.

He said that he’d questioned everyone himself: the building manager, the girls downstairs, and in particular our aging handyman, Angel Fernandez, who admitted he’d put the penny behind the fuse to save himself another trip up the hill.

“If anyone had died in this fire, I’d be charging Angel Fernandez with negligent homicide,” Hanni said. “I’m calling this an accidental fire, Lindsay. You file an insurance claim and it will sail through.”

I’d been trained to read a lie in a person’s face, and all I saw was the truth in Chuck Hanni’s frankly honest features. But I was jumpy and not quite ready to let my worst suspicions go. Walking out to Joe’s car I asked for his point of view as a guy who’d spent a couple of decades in law enforcement.

“Hanni didn’t do it, honey. I think he’s suffering almost as much as you are. And I think he likes you.”

“That’s your professional opinion?”

“Yep. Hanni’s on your side.”

Chapter 78

YUKI WAS WIRED.

We were eating lunch at her desk, both of us picking through our salads as if we were looking for nuggets of gold instead of chicken. Yuki had asked me how I was feeling, but I didn’t have much to say and she was pent up, so I said, “You first,” and she was off.

“So, Davis calls her expert shrink, Dr. Maria Paige. Ever heard of her?” Yuki asked me.

I shook my head no.

“She’s on Court TV sometimes. Tall? Blond? Harvard?”

I shook my head no again and Yuki said, “Doesn’t matter. So, anyway. Davis puts this big-name shrink on the stand to tell us all about false confessions.”

“Ahh,” I said, getting it. “Junie Moon’s ‘false’ confession?”

“Right. And she’s a bright babe, this shrink. She’s got it all down. How and why Miranda rights came into being so that cops can’t coerce suspects. The landmark studies by Gudjonsson and Clark having to do with the suggestibility of certain subjects. And the Reid book for cops on how to get around Miranda.

“She sounds like she wrote the fricking book, Lindsay,” Yuki continued, getting even more pissed off. “She says with authority how cops can browbeat and trick suspects into making false confessions.”

“Well, some might do that – but I sure didn’t.”

“Of course not. And so then she says how certain people with low intelligence or low self-esteem would rather agree with cops than disagree with them. And so the jury looks at Junie.”

“Junie confessed all on her own -”

“I know, I know, but you know what Junie looks like – Bambi’s baby sister. So finally Dr. Paige wraps it up, and I’m wondering how I’m going to cancel out her testimony without showing the whole two-hour tape of your interview with Junie.”

“Well, you could’ve done that,” I said, snapping the plastic lid closed on my salad and tossing it into the trash can. Yuki did the same.

“Two hours, Lindsay? Of Junie denying everything? So listen. I got up and said, ‘Dr. Paige, did you ever meet Junie Moon?’ ‘No.’ ‘Ever see the tape of the interview with the police?’ ‘Yes.’ So I said, ‘Did the police browbeat the defendant or lie to her or trick her?’ ‘No, no, not really.’ ”

Yuki sipped her tea, then continued her reenactment of her cross-examination of Dr. Paige.

“So then I make a mistake.”

“What did you do?”

“I was exasperated, Lindsay.” Yuki grimaced. She raked her hair away from her lovely heart-shaped face.

“I said, ‘So, what did the police do, exactly?’ I know not to ask a question I don’t have an answer to, but shit! I’ve seen the damned interview two dozen times and you and Conklin did nothing!

“And now Red Dog is glaring at me, and the shrink is saying, ‘In my opinion, Miss Moon not only has bottomless low self-esteem, she feels guilty because she’s a prostitute and her confession was a way of reducing her guilt.’

“I couldn’t believe she was asking the jury to swallow that, so I said, ‘So you’re saying she feels guilty that she’s a prostitute and that’s why she confessed to manslaughter?’

“ ‘That’s what I’m saying,’ Paige says, so I say, ‘That’s all, Doctor.’ And Bendinger tells her to step down, and I’m squeezing in behind Red Dog’s chair, facing the gallery, and there’s Twilly,” Yuki said.

“Isn’t he there every day?” I asked my friend.

“Yeah, but now he’s sitting right behind me. And I’m making eye contact with him because that’s all I can do. And I hear Davis say she’s calling Junie Moon to the stand, and the judge says, ‘First we’re going to recess for lunch.’ And Red Dog pushes back his chair, pinning me chest to nose with that creep, Twilly.

“And Twilly sneers. And my stomach clenches and my skin gets cold and he whispers, ‘Point, Davis.’

“Omigod, and so Red Dog turns and gives me that withering look again, and I’m not going to lose this case over the testimony of that shrink, am I, Lindsay, am I? Because I’ll tell you, that just can’t happen.”

“It won’t -”

“Right. It won’t,” Yuki said through her teeth, slamming her fist down on her desk. “Because the jury’s going to see the truth, and they’ve got to come to one of two conclusions.

“Either Junie Moon is guilty. Or she’s guilty as sin.”

Chapter 79

THE STANFORD MALL was an open-air dream market with shops grouped on narrow lanes, embedded in gardens. And what shops they were: the big stores Neiman and Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, and the high-end boutiques Armani, Benetton, Louis Vuitton.

Hawk and Pidge had taken a seat on a bench outside the Polo shop, surrounded by a small forest of potted topiary, aromas of flowers and coffee wafting all around them. It was a Saturday, and great masses of designer-clad shoppers were out, parading down the little walkways past Pidge and Hawk, swinging their shopping bags, stopping to admire Ralph Lauren’s windows.

Pidge had a video camera about the size of a deck of cards and was filming the parade. If anyone asked what he was doing, he’d tell them the truth – or part of it, anyway. He was in the computer video lab at Stanford. He was making a documentary.

But what he wouldn’t say is that he and Hawk were looking for the winners. The biggest, piggiest oink-oinks of the day.

They had two sets of contestants in mind.

Both couples had college stickers on the rear windows of their cars. They were primo candidates. It was going to be hard to choose, but once Hawk and Pidge had agreed on the winning couple, they would follow them to where they lived and check out their home.

Which one?

The rich and fatty couple loaded down with bags imprinted with designer logos? Or the older, more athletic pair, dressed ostentatiously, sipping lattes as they wandered along the avenues of gluttony.

Pidge was reviewing the footage when the security guard approached. He was late forties, blue uniform with a badge on his breast pocket, a hat, a gun, and a swagger. Every guy in a uniform these days thought he was a U.S. Marine.

“Hi, guys,” the guard said affably. “You can’t take pictures in here. Sign’s right over there.”

“Ah,” said Pidge. He stood. At six two he towered over the guard, so that the smaller man had to step back. “These aren’t pictures. This is a movie. A documentary for school. I can show you my student ID.”

“Doesn’t matter that you’re in school,” the guard said. “For security reasons, no picture taking is allowed. Now you have to either put that thing away or I’ll have to escort you out of here.”

“You dipshit rent-a-cop,” Hawk muttered.

“We’re sorry, sir,” said Pidge, stepping in front of his friend. “We’re going.”

But it was annoying. Hours spent doing their surveillance and now, no winner.

“Gotta make a pit stop,” Pidge said.

The two ducked into the men’s facilities, and Pidge unzipped in front of a urinal. When he’d finished, Hawk took out a book of matches. He lit three or four of them together and tossed them into the waste bin.

They were out in the parking lot when they heard the cry of the sirens on the freeway. They sat in Pidge’s car and watched as the firefighters braked near the Frog Pond, unfurled their hoses, and streamed into the mall.

Many hundreds of customers streamed out.

“I sure love a good fire,” Hawk said.

“Always makes my day,” said Pidge.