7th Heaven

Chapter 80

I WAS HEADING “HOME” to Joe’s apartment, battling rush-hour traffic, when my cell phone rang. I jacked the phone off my hip, heard Yuki’s voice screaming my name.

“Lindsay! He’s stalking me.”

“Who? Who’s stalking you?”

“That freak! Jason Twilly.”

“Slow down. Back up. What do you mean ‘stalking’?”

I jerked the wheel left at the intersection of Townsend and Seventh instead of taking a right toward my former apartment on the Hill. It felt like I was swimming against the tide.

Yuki’s voice was shrill. “Stalking as in haunting me, dogging me. Ten minutes ago, he was sitting in the passenger seat of my car!”

“He broke into your car?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember if I locked it. I was carrying like a fifty-pound -”

The signal cut out. I hit speed dial, got Yuki’s outgoing message, disconnected, tried again.

“Fifty-pound what?” I called into the crackle.

“Fifty-pound box of files. I just got my key into the door lock when this arm reached over from inside the car and pushed the door open for me.”

“Before this car thing, did you tell him to leave you alone?”

“Yes! Did I ever!”

“Okay, then, it’s illegal for him to be inside your car,” I said, negotiating a lane switch, passing a rental car whose driver leaned on the horn and gave me the finger.

“You ready to swear out a complaint?” I asked Yuki. “He’s going to go public. So think about it.”

There was a moment of static-filled silence as Yuki considered the media ramifications.

“This guy is sick, Linds. He talks to me like I’m a character in his book. He’s twisted and maybe dangerous. He got into my car. What’s next?”

“Okay,” I said, pulling over to the curb. I took out my notepad and wrote down what Yuki had told me.

“You’re going to have to go to civil court in the morning, get a restraining order,” I said. “But effective now you’ve filed a police report.”

“Tomorrow morning? Lindsay, Jason Twilly wants to scare the hell out of me – and he’s doing it!”

Chapter 81

WHEN I REACHED Twilly’s suite on the fifth floor of the St. Regis Hotel, he was waiting in the doorway, a cockeyed grin on his face, his hair disheveled and shirt untucked and unbuttoned. The fire exit door slammed at the end of the softly lit hallway. My guess, it was Twilly’s paid-by-the-hour guest leaving in a hurry.

I showed Twilly my badge, and he fastened his eyes on the V of my tank top, skimmed the cut of my jeans, then took a slow return trip back to my face. Meanwhile, I was taking in his amazing room – leather-textured walls, a window seat with a great view of San Francisco. Very impressive.

“Working undercover, Sergeant?” Twilly leered.

He’d scared Yuki with this act, but it enraged me.

“I don’t think we’ve met, Mr. Twilly. I’m Sergeant Lindsay Boxer,” I said, putting out my hand. He grasped it in a handshake and I pulled his arm forward, twisted it high up behind his back, and pushed his face against the wall.

“Give me your other hand,” I said. “Do it, now.”

“You’re joking.”

“Other hand.”

I cuffed him, frisked him fast and rough, saying, “You’re under arrest for criminal trespass. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.” When I finished informing Twilly of his rights, I answered his question: “What’s this about?”

“It’s about your illegal entry into ADA Yuki Castellano’s car. She’s filed a police report, and by noon tomorrow she’ll have a restraining order against you.”

“Whoa, whoa! This is the biggest deal about nothing I’ve ever heard. Her arms were full! I opened her car door to help her!”

“Tell it to your lawyer,” I snapped. I had one hand on Twilly’s arm, my cell phone in my other, and was about to call for backup.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Is Yuki claiming that I’m harassing her? Because that’s crap. I admit I provoked her a little, applied a little pressure just to get her going. I’m a journalist. We do that. Look. If I made a mistake, I’m sorry. Can we talk? Please?”

I’d checked Twilly out, and his record was clean. I had a moment of free fall as my anger evaporated. A stern warning would have been appropriate. Now that I’d cuffed him – that media flap Cindy had warned Yuki about?

It was going to go down.

I could already see Twilly spinning this “bust” to Larry King, Tucker Carlson, Access Hollywood. It would be bad news for Yuki, bad for me, but it would be stupendous publicity for Twilly.

“Sergeant?”

I had to hit rewind. I had to try.

“You want to avoid a court appearance, Mr. Twilly? Leave Yuki Castellano alone. Don’t sit behind her in court. Don’t tail her in supermarkets. Don’t enter her car or premises, and we’ll put this incident aside.

“Yuki files another complaint? I’m taking you in. Are we clear?”

“Totally,” he said. “ Crystal.”

“Good.”

I unlocked the cuffs and started to leave.

“Wait!” Twilly said. He stepped into the other room, with its aqua-striped wallpaper and canopied bed. He snatched a pen and pad from the bowlegged writing desk and said, “I want to make sure I got this right.”

He scribbled notes, then recited my speech back to me, verbatim.

“That was really excellent stuff you just said, Sergeant. Who do you think should play you in the movie?”

He was screwing with me.

I left Twilly’s suite feeling as though I’d been smacked in the face with a shit pie – and I’d done it to myself. Damn it to hell. Maybe I’d jammed myself up, and maybe I was wrong to cuff him, but it didn’t mean that Jason Twilly wasn’t crazy.

And it didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous.

Chapter 82

JOE AND I had a takeout dinner from Le Soleil and were in bed by ten. My eyes flew open at exactly 3:04, the digits projected on the ceiling keeping track of the time as my sickening night thoughts churned.

An image of Twilly’s sneer had awakened me, but his face dissolved, and in its place I saw the burned and twisted corpses on Claire’s table. And I remembered the dulled eyes of a young girl who’d been orphaned by a nameless teenage boy who might now be lying awake in his bed, planning another horror show.

How many more people would die before we found him?

Or would he beat us at this sick game?

I thought of the fire that had consumed my home, my possessions, my sense of security. And I thought about Joe, how much I loved Joe. I’d wanted him to move to San Francisco so that we could make a life together – and we were doing it through thick and thin. Why couldn’t I take him up on that big Italian wedding he’d proposed and maybe start a family?

I would be thirty-nine in a few months.

What was I waiting for?

I listened to Joe’s breathing, and in a while my rapid nightmare heart thuds slowed and I started drifting off. I turned away from Joe, gripped a pillow in my arms – and the mattress shifted as Joe turned toward me. He enfolded me in his arms, tucked his knees up behind mine.

“Bad dream?” he asked me.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “I forget the dream, but when I woke up, I thought about a lot of dead people.”

“Dead people in general? Or real dead people?”

“Real ones,” I said.

“Want to talk about it?”

“I would – but they’ve slunk back to the pit they came from. Hey, I’m sorry, Joe. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“It’s okay. Try to sleep.”

It took a second to understand that that was a dare.

Joe moved my hair away from the back of my neck and kissed me there. I gasped, shocked at the charge that his soft kiss sent through my body.

I hadn’t expected to feel this tonight.

I rolled over, looked into Joe’s face, saw the glint of his smile by the soft blue light of the clock. I put my hands on his face and kissed him hard, searching for an answer I couldn’t find inside myself. He reached his arms around me, but I pushed them away.

“No,” I said. “Let me.”

I put all of my tormenting thoughts aside. I tugged off Joe’s boxers, interlaced my fingers through his, pressed his hands against the pillows. He moaned as I lowered myself onto him and then I eased off, kissed him until he went crazy. Then I rode him, rode him, rode him, until he couldn’t wait another second – and neither could I. There was the undeniable pull of the undertow, before I was released by great cascading waves of pleasure.

I collapsed onto Joe’s chest, my knees still on either side of his body, my cheek resting over his pounding heart. He stroked my back and I told him I loved him. I remember him kissing my forehead, pulling the blanket up over my shoulders as I drifted off with him still inside me.

Oh, my God.

It was just so good with Joe.

Chapter 83

YUKI STUDIED JUNIE MOON as she was sworn in by the bailiff.

Defendants weren’t required to testify. It couldn’t be held against them if they didn’t, and it rarely helped when they did. So it was very risky to put your client on the stand. No matter how well rehearsed, there was no way to know if your client was going to go rogue, or get flustered, or laugh at the wrong time, or in some unique way prejudice the jury against her.

But Davis was putting Junie Moon on the stand. And the citizens of San Francisco and trial watchers across the country were dying to hear what she would say. Junie’s white blouse hung from her shoulders and her plain blue skirt billowed around her calves. She’d lost weight in jail – a lot of it – and when Junie raised her right hand to take the oath, Yuki saw vivid bruising on her forearm.

Spectators gasped and murmured. And now Yuki understood why Davis had risked everything she’d gained to have her client testify. Junie looked nothing like a whore and a ghoul.

She looked like a victim.

Junie swore to tell the truth, stepped up to the witness stand, and sat with her hands in her lap, smiling trustingly as Davis approached.

“How are you doing?” Davis asked.

“In jail, you mean?”

“Yes. Are you doing okay?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m fine.”

Davis nodded, said, “Good. And how old are you, Junie?”

“I’ll be twenty-three next month.”

“And when did you start turning tricks?” Davis asked.

“When I was fourteen,” Junie said softly.

“And how did that come about?”

“My stepdad turned me out.”

“Do you mean that your stepfather prostituted you? That he was your pimp?”

“I guess you could call him that. He was having sex with me from the time I was about twelve. Later on, he brought his friends over and they had sex with me, too.”

“Did you ever report your stepfather for rape or child abuse, anything like that?”

“No, ma’am. He said it was how I paid my rent.”

“Is your stepfather here today?”

“No. He died three years ago.”

“And your mother? Where is she?”

“She’s doing time. For dealing.”

“I see,” Davis said. “So, Junie, you’re a bright enough girl. Did you really have to be a prostitute? Couldn’t you have gotten a job in a restaurant or a department store? Maybe worked in an office?”

Junie cleared her throat, said quietly, “Doing sex is the only thing I’ve ever known, and I don’t really mind. It’s like, for a little time every day, I feel close to someone.”

“Having sex with strangers makes you feel close?”

Junie smiled. “I know it’s not real, but it makes me feel good for a while.”

Davis paused to let the tragedy of the vulnerable young woman’s story wash over the jury. Then she said, “Junie, please tell the jury: Did you ever have sex with Michael Campion?”

“No, I did not. Absolutely never!”

“So why did you tell the police that you did?”

“I guess I wanted to please them, so I told them what they wanted to hear. I… that’s the kind of person I am.”

“Thank you, Junie. Your witness,” Davis said.

Chapter 84

YUKI HAD A THOUGHT. It was stark, simple, irrefutable.

When Junie took the stand in her own defense, she had come across so frail and so helpless, it would be best for Yuki to say, “I have no questions,” get the woman off the stand. Then tear her apart in summation.

Nicky Gaines passed Yuki a note from Red Dog. She read it as Judge Bendinger snapped the rubber band on his wrist impatiently, then said, “Ms. Castellano? Are you planning to cross?”

Parisi’s note was short. Three words. “Go get her.”

Yuki shook her head no, whispered across Gaines to Parisi, “We should take a pass.”

Parisi scowled, said, “Want me to do it?”

So much for irrefutable. Red Dog had spoken. Yuki stood, picked up the photocopy of the acknowledgment of rights form, and walked toward the witness stand.

“Ms. Moon,” Yuki said without preamble, “this is an acknowledgment of rights form. Do you remember it?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“And you can read and write, can’t you?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Okay, then. This form was presented to you by Sergeant Lindsay Boxer and Inspector Richard Conklin when you were interviewed at the police station on April nineteenth.

“It says here, ‘Before we ask you any questions you must understand your rights. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.’ And here’s a set of initials. Are they yours?”

Junie peered at the document, said, “Yes.”

Yuki read the entire form, stopping at each point to fire the question at Junie: “Did you understand this? Are these your initials?” Bang, bang, bang.

And after each question, Junie scrutinized the paper and said, “Yes.”

“And here at the bottom is a waiver of rights. It says that you understand your rights, that you don’t want a lawyer, that no threats have been made against you, that you weren’t coerced. Did you sign this?”

“Yes, ma’am, I did.”

“And did you tell the police that Michael Campion died in your house and that you disposed of his body?”

“Yes.”

“Did you feel tricked or intimidated by the police?”

“No.”

Yuki walked to the prosecution table, put down the form, collected a nod from Parisi, and turned back to the defendant.

“Why did you make this confession?”

“I wanted to help the police.”

“I’m confused, Ms. Moon. You wanted to help them. So first you said you never met Mr. Campion. Then you said he died in your arms. Then you said you left his body parts in a Dumpster. Then you said you made up the story to please the police – because that’s the kind of person you are.

“Ms. Moon. Which lie do you want us to believe?”

Junie shot a startled look to her attorney, then stared at Yuki, stuttered incoherently, her lips quivering, tears sliding down her pale face, before choking out, “I’m sorry. I don’t know… I don’t know what to say.”

A woman’s voice sounded out from the gallery, directly behind the defense table. “STOP!”

Yuki turned toward the voice, as did every other person in the courtroom. The speaker was Valentina Campion, wife of the former governor, mother of the dead boy. She was standing, resting a hand on her husband’s shoulder for support.

Yuki felt her blood drain to her feet.

“I can’t stand what she’s doing to that poor child,” Valentina Campion said to her husband. Then she edged past him to the aisle, and as two hundred people swiveled in their seats to watch her, Mrs. Campion exited the courtroom.

Chapter 85

YUKI HAD SPENT THE NIGHT flopping like a beached tuna, and she was still sweating this morning, thinking how first she’d been sandbagged by her fricking boss. And then Valentina Campion had thrown her under an eighteen-wheeler!

People bond during trials, Yuki knew that, and strange attachments were made. But Mrs. Campion protecting the defendant? That was crazy! Didn’t she realize that Yuki was on her side? That she was trying to do the right thing by her son?

Now the buzz in the courtroom grew as spectators and reporters watched L. Diana Davis take her seat. Davis looked smug, Yuki thinking that her opponent must’ve gotten drunk last night on self-congratulation.

Junie Moon was escorted into the courtroom. Davis stood, sat when her client sat, and immediately after they were both seated, the bailiff called out, “All rise.”

There was a muffled whoosh of people standing as the judge limped to the bench. The jury filed in, dropped their bags, settled into their seats. Judge Bendinger spoke to the jury, reminded them of his instructions. Then he asked Yuki if she was ready to give her summation, and she said that she was.

But she wasn’t sure.

She gathered her notes, stood tall in her Jimmy Choos, and walked to the lectern. She put her notes in front of her and blocked out everyone but the jury. She ignored Parisi’s placid bulk, Twilly’s mocking smile, Davis ’s hauteur, and the defendant’s pathetic fragility. She even looked past Cindy, who gave her a thumbs-up from the back row.

Yuki stood a poster-sized photo of Michael Campion on the easel, turned it so it faced the jury. She paused to let everyone see the face of the boy who was so beloved that citizens of the world included him in their prayers at night.

Yuki wanted to be sure the jury understood that this trial was about Michael Campion’s death, not the sad story of the prostitute who’d let him die.

Yuki put her hands on the sides of the lectern and began to speak from her heart.

Chapter 86

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, Junie Moon is a prostitute,” Yuki said. “She’s in violation of the law every time she works, and her clientele is made up largely of schoolboys below the age of consent. But we don’t hold the defendant less credible because of what she does for a living. Ms. Moon has her reasons – and that doesn’t make her guilty of the charges against her.

“So, please judge her as you would anybody else. We’re all equal under the law. That’s the way our system works.

“Ms. Moon is charged with tampering with evidence and with murder in the second degree.

“In my opening statement, I told you that in order to prove murder, we have to prove malice. That is, that the person acted in such a way as we can construe them to have had ‘an abandoned and malignant heart.’

“What does an abandoned and malignant heart look like?

“Ms. Moon told the police that she ignored Michael Campion’s pleas for help, she let him die, and then she covered up this crime by dismembering and disposing of that young man’s body.

“Could any of you cut up a person’s body?” Yuki asked. “Can you imagine what’s involved in dismembering a human being? I have a hard time cutting up a chicken. What would it take to dismember a person who was living and breathing and speaking only hours before – someone who was sharing your bed?

“What kind of soul, what kind of character, what kind of person, what kind of heart, would it take to do that?

“Wouldn’t that behavior define an abandoned and malignant heart?

“The defendant made this confession when she thought she was off the record and in the clear. But Junie Moon got it wrong. A confession is a confession, ladies and gentlemen, on tape or off. It’s as simple as that. She made an admission of guilt, and we’re holding her to it.

“Now, the People have the burden of proving our case beyond a reasonable doubt. So if you can’t answer every question in your mind, that’s normal. That’s human. That’s why your charge is to find the defendant guilty beyond reasonable doubt – but not beyond all doubt.”

Yuki’s voice was throbbing in her throat when she said, “We don’t know where Michael Campion’s body is. All we know is the last person to see him is sitting in that chair.

“Junie Moon confessed again and again and again.

“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all you need to find her guilty and to give justice to Michael Campion and his family.”

Chapter 87

NO ONE HAD YET DISCOVERED what the L. stood for in L. Diana Davis. Some said it was something exotic; Lorelei or Letitia. Some said that Davis had stuck the initial in front of her name to add mystique.

Yuki guessed the L. stood for “lethal.”

Davis was wearing Chanel for her closing argument: a pink suit with black trim, calling up memories of Jackie Kennedy, although there was nothing of the former president’s wife in Davis ’s strident voice.

“Ladies and gentlemen. You remember what I asked in my opening statement,” she demanded rather than asked. “Where’s the beef? And that’s the bottom line here. Where’s the body? Where’s the DNA? Where’s the confession? Where’s the proof in this case?

“The prosecution is trying to convince us that a person confesses to a crime and the police have her in custody and they don’t record her confession – and that doesn’t mean anything? They say that there’s no blood evidence and no body – and that doesn’t mean anything either?

“I’m sorry, folks, but something is wrong here,” Davis said, her hands on the railing of the jury box.

“Something is very wrong.

“Dr. Paige, a distinguished psychiatrist, got on the stand and said that in her opinion, Junie Moon falsely confessed because her self-esteem is so low it’s off the charts, and that Ms. Moon wanted to please the police. She also said that in her opinion, Ms. Moon feels guilty about being a prostitute and so she confessed to discharge some of that guilt.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you the dirty little secret about false confessions. Every time a major crime is committed, false confessions pour into the hotlines. Hundreds of people confessed to the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. Dozens of people told police they killed the Black Dahlia. Maybe you remember when John Mark Karr caused an international brouhaha by confessing to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey ten years after her death.

“He didn’t do it.

“People confess to crimes when they’ve been cleared by DNA evidence. Go figure. People confess for reasons you and I would find hard to understand, but it’s the role of a good investigator to separate false confessions from real ones.

“Junie Moon’s confession was false.

“The absence of evidence in this case is remarkable. If the name of the so-called victim was Joe Blow, there probably wouldn’t have been an indictment, let alone a trial. But Michael Campion is a political celebrity and Ms. Moon is at the bottom of the social totem pole.

“It’s showtime!

“But this isn’t Showbiz Tonight, ladies and gentlemen. This is a court of lawwww,” Davis trumpeted. “So we’re asking you to use your common sense as well as the facts in evidence. If you do that, you can only find Junie Moon not guilty of the charges against her, period.”

Chapter 88

IT WAS AFTER SEVEN when I got to Susie’s. The patrons at the bar had achieved a high degree of merriment. I didn’t recognize the plinky tune the steel band was playing, but it was all about sun and the sparkly Caribbean Sea.

Made me want to move to Jamaica and open a dive shop with Joe. Drink passion fruit mai tais and grill fish on the beach.

I reached our table in the back room as Lorraine was clearing away a plate of chicken bones. She took my order for a Corona and dropped off the menu. Claire was taking up one side of our booth, what she called “sitting for two,” while Cindy and Yuki sat across from her – Yuki pressed up against the wall as if she’d been smushed there like a bug.

It looked like she’d lost a fight.

I dragged up a chair, said, “What’d I miss?”

“Yuki gave a great closing argument,” Cindy said, and then Yuki broke in.

“But Davis obliterated it!”

“You are nuts. You got the final damned word, Yuki,” Cindy said. “You nailed it.”

I didn’t have to beg. As soon as we ordered dinner, Yuki launched into her impeccable L. Diana Davis impression, screaming, “Where’s the beef? Where’s the beef?”

When Yuki paused for breath, Cindy said, “Do your rebuttal, Yuki. Do it like you mean it.”

Yuki laughed a little hysterically, wiped tears from her eyes with a napkin, downed her margarita – a drink she could barely handle on a good day. And then she belched.

“I hate waiting for a verdict,” she said.

We all laughed, Cindy egging Yuki on until she said, “Okay.” And then she was into it, eyes glistening, hands gesturing, the whole Yuki deal.

“I said, ‘Was a crime committed? Well, ladies and gentlemen, there’s a reason the defendant is here. She was indicted by a grand jury and not because of her relative social standing to the deceased. The police didn’t throw a dart at a phone book.

“ ‘Junie Moon didn’t call the police and make a false confession.

“ ‘The police developed information that led them to the last person to see Michael Campion. That person was Junie Moon – and she admitted it.’ ”

“That’s gooood, sugar,” Claire murmured.

Yuki smiled, continued on. “ ‘We don’t have Michael Campion’s body, but in all the months since he saw Ms. Moon, he has never called home, never used his credit card, his cell phone, or sent an e-mail to his parents or friends to say he’s all right.

“ ‘Michael wouldn’t do that. That’s not the kind of boy he was. So where is Michael Campion? Junie Moon told us. He died. He was dismembered. And his body was dumped in the garbage. She did it.

“ ‘Period.’ ”

“See?” Cindy said, grinning. “She totally nailed it.”

Chapter 89

CLAIRE AND I were sitting up in her bed that night after our outing at Susie’s, having a two-girl pajama party. Edmund was on tour with the San Francisco Symphony, and Claire had said, “I really, really don’t want to go into labor here all by myself alone, girlfriend.”

I looked over at her, lying in the huge divot she’d made in her memory-foam mattress with her rotund 260 pounds.

“I can’t get any bigger,” she said. “It’s not possible. I wasn’t this big with two boys, so how can this little girl-child turn me into the blimp that ate the planet?”

I laughed, thinking it was possible that when she’d had her first baby twenty years ago, she was a few sizes smaller than when she’d conceived Ruby Rose, but I didn’t say so.

“What can I get you?” I asked.

“Anything in the freezer compartment,” Claire said.

“Copy that,” I said, grinning at her. I returned with a carton of Chunky Monkey and two spoons, climbed back into the bed, saying, “It’s cruel to call an ice cream Chunky Monkey when that’s what it turns you into.”

Claire cackled, pried off the lid, and as we took turns dipping our spoons in, she said to me, “So how’s it going with you and Joe?”

“What do you mean?”

“Living together, you idiot. Are you thinking of getting seriously hooked up? As in married?”

“I like the way you kind of edge into a subject.”

“Hell. You’re not such a subtle creature yourself.”

I tipped my spoon in her direction – touché, my friend – then I started talking. Claire knew most of it: about my failed marriage, about my love affair with Chris, who’d been shot dead in the line of duty. And I talked about my sister, Cat, divorced with two young kids, holding down a big job, and having a bitter relationship with her ex.

“Then I look at you, Butterfly,” I said. “In your grown-up four-bedroom house. And you have your darling husband, two great kids off into the world, and now you have the guts and love enough to make another baby.”

“So where are you in all this, sugar?” Claire said. “You going to let Joe make the decision you don’t love him enough to marry him? Let some other girl make off with Joe, the perfect man?”

I threw myself back against the pillows and stared at the ceiling. I thought about the Job, about working with Rich seventeen hours a day and loving that. How little time I had for anything but work; hadn’t done Tai Chi in ages, stopped playing the guitar, even turned the nightly run with Martha over to Joe.

I put my mind on how different it would all be if I were married and had a baby, if there were people who worried about me every time I left the house. And damn – what if I got shot?

And then I considered the alternative.

Did I really want to be alone?

I was about to run all this by Claire, but I’d been quiet for so long, my best friend picked that moment to jump in.

“You’ll figure it out, sweetheart,” she said, capping the empty ice-cream container, resting her spoon in a Limoges saucer on the nightstand. “You’ll work on it and then, snap. You’ll just know what’s right for you.”

Would I?

How could Claire be so sure, when I was without a clue in the world?

Chapter 90

ONLY THREE BLOCKS from the Hall, Le Fleur du Jour is a popular morning hangout for cops. At 6:30 a.m. the smell of freshly baked bread made noses quiver up and down the flower market. Joe, Conklin, and I were at one of the little tables on the patio with a view of the flower stalls in the alley. Having never been with Joe and Conklin together, I felt an uneasiness I would have hated to explain.

Joe was telling Conklin some of his thoughts about the arson-homicide cases, saying he agreed with us, that one person couldn’t have subdued the victims alone.

“These kids are show-offy smart,” Joe said. “Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.”

“And that means what?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. Did everyone know Latin but me?

Joe flashed me a grin. “It means, ‘Anything said in Latin sounds profound.’ ”

Conklin nodded, his brown eyes sober this morning. I’d seen this precise look when he interrogated a suspect. He was taking in everything about Joe, and maybe hoping that my boyfriend with his high-level career in law enforcement might actually have a theory.

Or better yet, Joe might turn out to be a jerk.

No doubt, Joe was appraising Richie, too.

“They’re definitely smart,” Conklin said, “maybe a little smarter than we are.”

“You know about Leopold and Loeb?” Joe asked, sitting back as the waiter put strawberry pancakes in front of him. The waiter walked around the table distributing eggs Benedict to me and to Conklin.

“I’ve heard their names,” Conklin said.

“Well, in 1924,” Joe said, “two smart and show-offy kids who were also privileged and sociopathic decided to kill someone as an intellectual exercise. Just to see if they could get away with it.”

Joe had our attention.

“Leopold had an IQ that went off the charts at around 200,” Joe said, “and Loeb’s IQ was at least 160. They picked out a schoolboy at random and murdered him. But with all their brilliance they made some dumb mistakes.”

“So you’re thinking our guys could have a similar motive. Just to see if they could get away with it?”

“Has the same kind of feel.”

“Crime TV has been educational for this generation of bad guys,” Conklin said. “They pick up their cigarette butts and shell casings… Our guys have been pretty careful. The clues we’re finding are the ones they’re leaving on purpose.”

Right about then, I stopped listening and just watched body language. Joe, directing everything to Conklin, coming on a little too strong. Conklin, deferring without being deferential. I was so attached to them both, I turned my head from one to another as if I were courtside at Wimbledon.

Blue eyes. Brown eyes. My lover. My partner.

I pushed my eggs to the side of my plate.

For probably the first time in my life, I had nothing to say.

Chapter 91

YUKI SAT AT the prosecution table between Nicky Gaines and Len Parisi, waiting for court to convene. It was Friday. The jurors had deliberated for three days, and word had come down late last night that they’d arrived at their verdict. Yuki wondered if the jurors had rushed their decision so they could have a weekend free of responsibility and tension. And if so, would that be good or bad for the People?

She felt overcaffeinated because she was. She’d been swigging coffee since six this morning and hadn’t slept more than two hours the night before.

“You okay?” she asked her second chair. Nicky was breathing through his mouth, the odor of VapoRub coming off him in waves.

“I’m good,” he said. “You?”

“Peachy.”

To Yuki’s right, Red Dog was writing a memo on a legal pad. He appeared blasé, carefree, a mountain of calm. It was an act. In fact, Parisi was a volcano resting between explosions. Across the aisle, L. Diana Davis looked fresh, powdered, and coiffed. She put a mothering arm around her client’s frail shoulders.

And then, at nine on the dot, the bailiff, a sinewy man in a green uniform, called out, “All rise.” Yuki stood, then sat back down as the judge took the bench. Nicky coughed into his handkerchief. Parisi capped his pen and put it in his breast pocket. Yuki clasped her hands in front of her, swung her head to the right as the door to the jury room opened and the jurors entered the courtroom.

The twelve men and women were wearing church clothes today, hair combed and sprayed into place, men in jacket and tie, the women sparkling with jewelry.

The foreperson, a woman named Maria Martinez, was about thirty, Yuki’s age, a sociology teacher and mother of two. Yuki couldn’t see Martinez coming out in favor of a prostitute who would let a boy die, then cover up the fact with a body dump.

Martinez put her handbag on the floor next to her chair.

Yuki felt a prickling sensation on the back of her neck and her arms as Judge Bendinger opened his laptop, made a joke to the court reporter that Yuki couldn’t hear. Then he swiveled his chair face-forward and said, “Order, please.”

The room quieted, and Bendinger asked if the jury had a verdict.

Martinez said, “We do, Your Honor.”

The verdict form moved from Martinez to the judge and back again to Martinez. Nicky Gaines coughed again, and Parisi reached behind Yuki and flicked Gaines on the back of his head, frowned a rebuke.

“Will the foreman please read the verdict?” Bendinger asked. Martinez stood, looking small in her charcoal-gray suit. She cleared her throat.

“We, the jury, find the defendant, Junie Moon, not guilty in the charge of murder in the second degree.

“We find the defendant, Junie Moon, not guilty in the charge of tampering with evidence…”

The packed courtroom erupted in loud exclamations punctuated by the sharp slams of Bendinger’s gavel.

“What did she say? What did she say?” Gaines asked Yuki, even as the judge thanked the jury and dismissed them.

Yuki felt sick, physically ill. She’d lost. She’d lost, and she’d let everyone down – the police, the DA’s office, the Campions, and even Michael. Her job and her passion had been to get justice for the dead boy, and she’d failed.

“I shouldn’t be doing this kind of work,” Yuki said to herself. She stood abruptly.

Without speaking to Parisi or Gaines, she turned around and said to the Campions, “I’m very sorry.”

Lowering her eyes, Yuki pushed her way into the crowded aisle and left the courtroom.

Chapter 92

YUKI SAW TWILLY RISE from his seat in the gallery and move to follow her out of the courtroom and into the hallway, that bastard. She worked her way through the knots of people in the corridor, shoved open the door to the ladies’ room, found an empty stall, and locked it. She sat with her head in her hands for long minutes, then went to a sink, washed her face, and slipped on her sunglasses.

Once back in the hallway, she headed for the fire exit, heart still knocking inside her chest as she walked quickly down the staircase, her mind circling the verdict, still shocked that the jury had found Junie Moon not guilty. The public would go berserk when they learned that Junie Moon was going to get out of jail free. They’d blame the verdict on her, and they’d be right to do it.

It was her case and she’d lost.

Yuki opened the door into the lobby and, with her head down, walked out of the gray cubical building into the equally gray morning. Len Parisi was on the top step of the courthouse, standing like a red-haired sequoia inside a clump of journalists who were reaching their mics and cameras forward, shouting questions.

She saw star TV reporters, Anderson Cooper and Rita Cosby, Diane Dimond and Beth Karas. Cameras rolled as Parisi told the press whatever politically correct blah-di-blah a public servant with a coronary in his history and probably another one in his future would say.

Fifty feet away from Parisi, three steps down, Maria Martinez and several of the jurors were also surrounded by reporters.

Yuki heard Martinez say, “We were overwhelmed with reasonable doubt.” And then the video cameras shifted as L. Diana Davis exited the big steel-and-glass double doors with her arm still sheltering Junie Moon.

Yuki ran down the remaining steps to the street. She saw Connor Campion and his wife at the curb, Campion’s driver holding open the door to a Lincoln sedan. Jason Twilly was standing beside Campion, the two men deep in conversation as Yuki passed.

Yuki crossed Bryant against the light, eyes focused on the All Day parking lot, glad to be invisible in the morning crush of pedestrians, especially relieved that Twilly was busy with a bigger fish than she. Keys in hand, she found her Acura toward the back of the lot.

She heard someone call her name. She turned with a scowl, saw that Jason Twilly was coming toward her, his dark jacket flying open like the wings of a vulture.

“Yuki! Hang on.”

Jason Twilly was following her again!

Chapter 93

YUKI JAMMED THE CAR KEY into the key slot, heard the soft thwick as the locks opened.

“Yuki, wait.”

She turned again, one hand clutching the strap of her handbag, the other clenched around the handle of her briefcase.

“I’ve got nothing to say to you, Jason. Go away.”

Twilly scowled, his expression murderous, the look of a man who could go violently out of control.

“You listen to me, little girl,” Twilly said. “Be glad that you lost, because Junie Moon didn’t kill Michael Campion. But I know who did.”

What? What had he said?

“Look at me, Yuki. Look at me. Maybe it was me.”

Yuki got behind the wheel and yanked the door shut in Twilly’s face. Twilly bent down, rapped on her window, bap-bap-bap, losing it, desperate, yelling through the glass, “We’ve got unfinished business, Yuki. Don’t drive away!”

Yuki threw the car into gear, jammed down the accelerator, and with tires squealing, she left the lot. She called Lindsay from the car, her voice shrill over the sound of traffic.

“Jason Twilly just told me he knows who killed Michael Campion, Lindsay, but he wants me to think that he did it. That he killed Michael. Lindsay! Maybe he did.”

Twilly’s rented Mercedes was in her rearview mirror as Yuki circled the block. She ran a red light, took a sudden turn into an alley – and when she was sure she was no longer being followed, she parked in a fire zone outside the Hall.

She flashed her ID at the security guard, ran through the metal detectors, then took the stairs to the squad room on the third floor. She was panting when she found Lindsay waiting for her at the gate.

“Don’t worry,” Lindsay told her. “I’ve got your back.”

Chapter 94

TWO HOURS after leaving the Hall of Justice, Yuki packed an overnight bag and headed out of town. She tried to shake the echo of Twilly’s voice as she drove over the Golden Gate Bridge toward Point Reyes.

Could Twilly really have killed Michael Campion? If so, why would he do it?

And why would he tell her?

She turned on the radio, found a classical station, dialed it up loud, and the music filled the car and her mind. It was a beautiful afternoon. She was going to Rose Cottage, to walk in the surf and remember that she wasn’t a quitter.

That she wouldn’t quit on this.

As she got onto Highway 1, she let the incomparable beauty of the place take her over. She switched off the radio, buzzed down all the car windows so she could hear the thundering waves break over the huge rocks below her. Moist ocean air whipped her hair away from her eyes and brought blood into her cheeks. She looked out over the blue, blue sea that stretched out to the horizon – no, out to Japan – and she breathed in the fresh air, consciously exhaled, letting the tension go.

In the small town of Olema, she turned off Highway 1, passed the little shops at the intersection, and from there negotiated the back roads by memory. She glanced down at her new wristwatch. It was only two thirty in the afternoon, plenty of sunlight left in the day.

The sign spelling out ROSE COTTAGE ¼ MILE was almost hidden by the roadside flora, but Yuki caught it and made the turn through a forested glen and up an unpaved road that climbed the hillside. The rutted road became a driveway that looped in front of the manager’s cabin just ahead.

The manager, a tall, blond-haired woman named Paula Vaughan, welcomed Yuki back to Rose Cottage. They exchanged pleasantries as Vaughan ran Yuki’s credit card through the machine. And then the manager made the connection, saying, “I was just watching the news. Too bad you didn’t win.”

Yuki looked up, said, “You’ve got takeout menus, right? The Farm House does takeout?”

Minutes later, she opened the front door to Rose Cottage, dropped her bags in the larger of the two bedrooms, and opened the sliders to the deck. The Bear Valley hiking trail passed to the right of the cottage, climbed upward four hundred feet through a wooded area, opening at the top of a ridge to a brilliant ocean view.

She’d hiked this trail with Lindsay.

Yuki changed into jeans and hiking shoes. Then she unsnapped the locks on her briefcase, took out her new Smith amp; Wesson.357 handgun, slipped it into one pocket of her Windbreaker, put her cell phone in the other. But before she could leave for her nature walk, there was an insistent knock on the door.

And the booming in her chest started all over again.

Chapter 95

JASON TWILLY WAS WEARING chinos and a navy blue sweater and had a leather bag hooked over his right shoulder. He looked handsome, urbane, as if he’d just stepped from the pages of Town amp; Country, and his crooked smile had lost its menace.

“What are you doing here, Jason?”

Yuki kept the door open about four inches, just enough to see and hear him. And she clamped her hand around the gun in her pocket, felt the power of that little weapon, knowing what it could do.

“Hey, you know, Yuki, if I didn’t like you so much, I’d be really hurt. I spend most of my life fending women off, and you keep slamming doors in my face.”

“How’d you find me?”

“I waited for you to leave your apartment and followed you. Wasn’t that hard. Look, I’m sorry I got rough this morning.” He sighed. “It’s just that I’m in trouble. I took a huge advance on this book and the money’s gone.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah. Sports betting. A little weakness of mine.” Twilly added a dash of boyish charm to his smile. “To be honest, it’s more than a little weakness – and it’s kind of snowballed lately. See, I’m telling you this so you understand. Really nasty people want their money back. And they don’t care if my book crashes.”

“Not my problem, Jason.”

“Wait. Wait. Just listen, okay? I can’t give back the advance, you understand, and I’ve got these debts. All I need is your feelings, your insight, your own true words – that’s where we’ll find a satisfying ending to the Michael Campion story.”

“Are you serious? After all the crap you’ve dished out? I have nothing to say to you, Jason.”

“Yuki, this isn’t personal. It’s business. I’m not going to touch you, okay? I need one crummy hour of your time, and you’re going to benefit. You’re the devoted prosecutor whose conviction was snatched from you by the little whore with a heart of stone. Yuki, you were robbed!”

“And if I don’t want to be interviewed?”

“Then I’ll have to write around you, and that’ll really suck. Don’t make me beg anymore, okay?”

Yuki took the gun out of her pocket. “This is a.357,” she said, showing it to him.

“So I see,” Twilly said, his smile becoming a grin, the grin turning into laughter. “This is priceless.”

“I’m glad you find me amusing.”

“Yuki, I’m a reporter, not a freaking mobster. No, this is good. Bring your gun. God knows I want you to feel safe with me. Okay if we go for a walk?”

“This way,” Yuki said.

She stepped outside and closed the door behind her.

Chapter 96

YUKI KEPT HER HAND gripped around the gun in her pocket as she walked beside Twilly up the path through the woods. He did most of the talking, asking her opinion of the jury, of the defense counsel, of the verdict. For a moment she saw the charming man she’d been attracted to a few weeks ago – then she remembered who he really was.

“I think the verdict was completely off the wall,” Yuki said. “I don’t know what I could have done differently.”

“Not your fault, Yuki. Junie is innocent,” Twilly said amiably.

“Really? And you know she’s innocent how?”

They’d reached the ridgeline, where a rocky outcropping overlooked the best view of Kelham Beach and the Pacific Ocean. Twilly sat down on the rock, and Yuki sat a few feet away. Twilly opened his bag, took out two bottles of water, twisted off the cap of the first and handed the bottle to Yuki.

“Don’t you think it’s strange that there was no trace evidence at the so-called crime scene?” he asked her.

“Strange, but not impossible,” Yuki said, taking a deep chug-a-lug from the water bottle.

“That information that the police ‘developed.’ That was an anonymous caller, right?”

“How did you know that?”

“I was writing a book about Michael, Yuki. I followed him all the time. I followed Michael to Junie’s house that night. After Michael went into Junie’s house, I felt great. Michael Campion spent time with a hooker! Good meat for my story. I waited, and then I saw him leave – alive.

“Of course, I didn’t know he’d never be seen again.”

“Hmmm?” Yuki said.

She’d come here to hear Twilly tell her who’d killed Michael or confess that he was the one who had done it – but suddenly she felt as though there was plastic foam inside her head.

What was happening?

Shapes shifted in front of her eyes, and Twilly’s voice ballooned out of his mouth, volume rising and falling. What was that? What was Twilly saying?

“Are you okay?” he asked her. “Because you don’t look so good.”

“I’m fine,” Yuki said. She was nearly overcome with dizziness and nausea. She gripped the rock she was sitting on with both hands, held on tight.

She had a gun!

What time was it?

Wasn’t she supposed to keep track of the time?

Chapter 97

TWILLY LEERED, his face very big in front of hers. Big nose, teeth like a Halloween jack-o’lantern, his words so elastic, Yuki became fascinated with the sounds more than the sense of what he was saying.

Get a grip, she told herself. Get a grip.

“Say that again?”

“When Michael went missing,” Twilly spoke patiently, “the cops came up with nothing. No clues. No suspects. I waited for months.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The Campion story was getting stale – so I did what I had to do. Good citizen thing, right? I called in a tip. I gave the cops a suspect. Completely legitimate. I’d seen Michael at the house of a little hooker named Junie Moon.”

“You… did that?”

“Yep, it was me. And like an answered prayer, Junie Moon confessed. Man, sometimes I even think she did it. But you didn’t convict her, did you, Yuki? And now I have a shitty ending for my book. And whoever killed Michael is free. And I’m up to my neck in knee-breakers, so I can only think of one way to get a big-bang ending and bring it on home.

“And that’s where you come in, little girl,” Twilly said. “I think you’re going to appreciate the drama and the poetry.”

There were flashes in the sky behind Twilly, bright colors and images she couldn’t make out. There was a whooshing in her ears, blood racing or animals running through the underbrush. What was going on?

“What’s… happening… to me?”

“You’re having a mental breakdown, Yuki, because you’re so depressed.”

“Me?”

“You. You… are… very… depressed.”

“Nooooo,” Yuki said. She tried to stand, but her feet couldn’t hold her. She looked at Twilly, his eyes big and as dark as black holes.

Where was her gun?

“You’re morbidly depressed, Yuki. That’s what you told me in the parking lot this morning. You said that you have no love in your life. That your mother is dead because you didn’t save her. And you said you can’t get over blowing this trial -”

He was bending her mind.

“Craaaazzzy,” she said.

“Crazy. Yes you are! You were on camera, Yuki. Thousands of people saw you run from the courthouse,” Twilly said, each of his words distinct and powerful – yet senseless.

“That’s the way I’ll tell the story, how you ran to the parking lot and I ran after you, and you said that you wanted to kill yourself, you were so ashamed. One of those Japanese honor things. Hara-kiri, right?”

“Nooooo.”

“Yes, little girl. That’s what you told me. And I was so worried about you, I followed you in my car.”

“You…?”

“Meeeeee. And you showed me your gun that you’d gotten so that you could end your life and give me the freaking megawatt ending my book so richly deserves!”

Gun! Gun! Her arm was made of rubber. She couldn’t move her hand off the rock. Lights flashed in the dark.

“I didden… nooooo.”

She started to slip from her perch, but Twilly hauled her up roughly by her arm.

“The prosecutor lost her case,” he said, “and took her own freaking loser life. It’s the money shot. Get it? Bang. Clean shot to the temple and another big chunk of dough goes into my bank account -thanks to your dramatic, tragic, movie ending.

“Plus, Yuki, it is personal. I’ve really come to hate you.”

“What time is it?” Yuki asked, blinking up at the starburst pattern that was somehow Twilly’s face.

Chapter 98

I WAS FRANTIC.

The audio had been coming in loud and clear from the transmitter in Yuki’s wristwatch, but now we’d lost her! We’d gone out of range! I grabbed Conklin’s arm, stopped him in the path that had petered out onto a small clearing before snaking out in three directions.

“I’ve lost the transmission!”

“Hold it,” Conklin said into his mic to the SWAT team that was moving through the woods in a grid formation.

And then the static cleared. I couldn’t hear Yuki, but Twilly’s voice was tinny and clear.

“See, when I was thinking about this earlier,” Twilly was saying, “I thought I could get you to spread your wings and fly off this cliff. But now I’m thinking, you’re going to shoot yourself, Yuki.”

Yuki’s scream was high-pitched. Wordless.

Twilly was threatening to kill her! Why didn’t Yuki use her gun?

“Up there. Top of the ridge,” I shouted to Conklin.

We were at least two hundred yards away from the summit. Two hundred yards! It no longer mattered if he heard us. I ran.

Brambles grabbed out at me, branches snapped in my face. I stumbled on a root, grabbed out and hugged a tree. My lungs burned as I ran. I saw their forms between the tree trunks, silhouetted against the sky. But Twilly was so close to Yuki, I couldn’t get a clean shot.

I yelled out, “Twilly! Stand away from her now.”

There was the crack of gunshot.

OH, GOD, NO! YUKI!

Birds broke from the trees and flew up like scattershot as the report echoed over the hillside. Eight of us boiled out of the woods into the clearing at the ridgeline. That’s where I found Yuki, on her knees, forehead touching the ground.

The gun was still in her hand.

I got down on the ground and shook her shoulders.

“Yuki! Yuki! Speak to me! Please.”

Chapter 99

TWILLY HELD HIS HANDS in the air. He said, “Thank God you showed up, Sergeant. I was trying to stop her, but your friend was determined to kill herself.”

I pulled Yuki into my arms. The smell of gunpowder was in the air, but there was no blood, no wound. Her shot had gone wild.

“Yuki. I’m here, honey, I’m here.”

She moaned, sounded and looked dopey. There was no liquor on her breath. Had she been drugged?

“What’s wrong with her?” I shouted at Twilly. “What did you do to her?”

“Not a thing,” Twilly said. “This is how I found her.”

“You’re under arrest, scumbag,” Conklin said. “Hands behind your back.”

“What are the charges, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“How do you like attempted murder for starters?”

“You’ve got to be kidding. I didn’t touch her.”

“Yuki was wired, buddy. You teed her up for a dive off this cliff. We’ve got it all.”

Conklin squeezed the bracelets tight enough to make Twilly yelp. I called for a medevac, sat with my arms around Yuki as we waited for the chopper to arrive.

“Lindsay?” Yuki asked me. “I got it… on my watch… didn’t I?”

“You sure did, honey,” I said, hugging my friend, so very grateful that she was alive.

While I held her, another part of my mind was turning it all over. We had Twilly in custody for the attempt on Yuki’s life, but the reason we’d tailed him was because of what he’d hinted to Yuki this morning: that he’d killed Michael Campion.

What he’d told Yuki in the last ten minutes contradicted that.

Conklin stooped beside us, said, “So this was all a trap? He set Yuki up to create an ending for his book?”

“That’s what that psycho said.”

And he’d almost done it. Now the ending was him. His arrest, his trial, and, we could always hope, his conviction.

Yuki tried to speak, but ragged sounds came from her throat.

She was struggling to breathe.

“What did he give you, Yuki? Do you know what drug?”

“Water,” she said.

“The medics will give you water in a minute, honey.”

Yuki’s head was in my lap when the chopper’s arrival sounded overhead.

I looked down to shield my eyes – and saw a glint in the path. I shouted over the racket.

“Twilly drugged the water. Is that what you mean, Yuki? He put it in the water?”

Yuki nodded. Moments later Conklin had bagged the evidence, two plastic water bottles, and Yuki was in a carry-lift up to the chopper’s belly.