Women's Murder Club [07] 7th Heaven

by James Patterson

  Junie started speaking quickly, as if by talking fast she’d get to the end of her story and it would all be over.

  “After a few hours, Ricky decided to cut up his body with a knife. It was the most horrible thing I could ever imagine — and I grew up on a farm! I was throwing up and crying,” Junie said, looking as though she might do it now.

  I pulled out my chair again, put my butt in the seat, determined not to scare the little hooker even as she shocked me to the bone.

  “But once we started cutting, there was no way back,” Junie said, pleading to Conklin with her eyes. “I helped Ricky put Michael’s body into about eight garbage bags, and then we piled the bags into Ricky’s truck. It was like five in the morning. And no one was around.”

  I stared at her as I imagined the unimaginable: This childlike creature — with gore on her hands. The body of Michael Campion in bloody chunks.

  I heard Conklin say, “Go on, Junie. We’re with you. Get it all off your chest.”

  “We drove up the coast a few hours,” Junie said, now telling the story as if she were recalling a dream. “I fell asleep, and when I woke up, Ricky was saying, ‘This is the end of the line.’ We were parked in the back of a McDonald’s, and there were some Dumpsters back there.

  “That’s where we left the garbage bags.”

  “What town? Do you know?” I asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Think,” I snapped.

  “I’ll try.”

  Junie gave us her boyfriend’s name and address, and I wrote it all down. Rich passed her a pad of paper and asked her if she’d like to make her statement official.

  “Not really,” she said, seeming empty and exhausted. “So . . . will you drive me home now?”

  “Not really,” I repeated back at her. “Stand up and put your hands behind your back.”

  “You’re arresting me?”

  “Yes. We are.”

  Even on the tightest notch, the cuffs were loose around her wrists.

  “But — I told you the truth!”

  “And we appreciate it,” I said. “Thank you very much. You’re under arrest for tampering with evidence and interfering with a police investigation. That should hold you for now.”

  Junie was crying again, telling Conklin how sorry she was and that it wasn’t her fault. I was scanning the map in my mind, imagining the towns along the coast, the six hundred McDonald’s restaurants in Northern California.

  And I was wondering if there was a chance in the world that we’d ever recover Michael Campion’s remains.

  Chapter 8

  AT JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, I was sitting on a kitchen stool watching Joe put pasta on to boil. Joe is a big, gorgeous guy, over six feet, dark hair, bright blue eyes, and now he was standing at the stove in his blue boxers, his hair rumpled and his dear face creased with sleep. He looked husband-y and he loved me.

  I loved him, too.

  That’s why Joe had just moved to San Francisco from DC, ending our tumultuous long-distance relationship in favor of starting something new and maybe permanent. And although Joe had rented a fantastic apartment on Lake Street, a month after his move he’d brought over his copper-bottomed cookware and started sleeping in my bed five nights a week. Luckily, I’d been able to move up to the third floor of my building to give us a little more room.

  Our relationship had gotten richer and more loving, exactly what I’d hoped for.

  So I had to ask myself — why was the engagement ring Joe had given me still in its black velvet box, diamonds blazing in the dark?

  Why couldn’t I just say yes?

  “What did Cindy tell you?” I asked him.

  “Verbatim? She said, ‘Here’s Martha. Lindsay got a break in the Campion case and she’s on it. Tell. Her. She wrecked our weekend, and I’m calling her in the morning for a quote. And she’d better give me a good one.’ ”

  I laughed at Joe’s imitation of Cindy, who is not only my friend, but also the top reporter on the Chronicle’s crime desk.

  “It’s either tell her everything,” I said, “or tell her nothing. And for now, it’s nothing.”

  “So, fill me in, Blondie. Since I’m wide-awake.”

  I took a deep breath and told Joe all about Junie Moon; how she’d denied everything for two hours before telling us to turn off the camera, then talking about her “date” with Michael and his apparent heart attack; and how instead of calling 911, Junie had sung Michael Campion a lullaby as his heart bucked to a halt and killed him.

  “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  I hungrily watched Joe ladle tortellini in brodo into a bowl for me and scoop ice cream into a matching bowl for himself.

  “Where’s the body?” Joe asked me, pulling out a stool and sitting beside me.

  “That’s the sixty-million-dollar question,” I said, referring to the reported size of the Campion fortune. I told Joe the rest of it: Junie’s dazed speech about Michael Campion’s dismemberment, the subsequent run up the coast with her boyfriend, and the eventual body dump behind a fast food restaurant — somewhere.

  “You know, Conklin read Junie her rights when we brought her in for questioning,” I mused. “And it pissed me off.

  “Junie wasn’t in custody, and I was sure if she was Mirandized, she wouldn’t talk. And frankly, I believed what she said at first, that everything she knew about Michael Campion she’d read in People magazine. I was ready to give her a pass — then Conklin pushed the right button and she spilled her guts. It was a good thing that he’d read her her rights.”

  I shook my head thinking about it. “Rich has such confidence for a young cop, not to mention an astonishing way with women,” I said, warming to the subject. “And it’s not just that he’s great-looking, it’s that he’s very respectful. And he’s very smart. And women just want to tell him everything . . .”

  Joe reached for my empty bowl and stood up, abruptly.

  “Honey?”

  “It’s getting so I feel like I know this guy,” Joe said over the sound of water running in the sink. “I’d like to meet him sometime.”

  “Sure —”

  “What do you say we go to bed, Lindsay?” he said, cutting me off. “It’s been a long night.”

  Chapter 9

  AT AROUND EIGHT the next morning, we found Ricky Malcolm jiggling his key into the front door of a shabby apartment house on Mission Street. He made us as cops and tried to take off, so we scuffled with him on the sidewalk and convinced him to come to the Hall.

  “You’re not under arrest,” I’d said, escorting him to our car. “We just want to hear your side of the story.”

  Ricky was in “the box” now, glaring at me with his weird, wide-spaced green eyes, tattooed arms crossed over his chest, his face blanched with the nocturnal pallor of a man who hadn’t seen broad daylight in years.

  Within the forest of tattoos on Malcolm’s right arm was a red heart with the initials R.M. The heart was impaled on the hook of a crescent moon. Malcolm looked predatory and violent, and now I was wondering if Junie’s story of Michael Campion’s death was true.

  Had Campion really died of natural causes?

  Or had this freak walked in on Michael and Junie — and killed him?

  Malcolm’s sheet showed three arrests, one conviction, all for possession. I slapped the folder closed.

  “What can you tell us about Michael Campion?” I asked him.

  “What I read in the papers,” he said.

  The interview went on in this vein for a couple of hours, and since Conklin’s charms had no effect on Ricky Malcolm, I took the lead. I was trying to get him to say anything, even lies that we could use to trip him up later, but Ricky was stubborn or cagey or both. He denied any knowledge of Michael Campion, alive or dead.

  I blinked first.

  “I think I understand what happened, Ricky,” I said. “Your girlfriend was in big trouble, and so you had to help her out. Pretty understandable, I guess.”

  “What are y
ou talking about?”

  “The body, Ricky. You remember. When Michael Campion died in Junie’s bed.”

  Malcolm snorted. “Is she saying that actually happened? And that I had something to do with it?”

  “Junie confessed, you understand,” Conklin said. “We know what happened. The kid was dead when you got there. That wasn’t your fault, and we’re not putting that on you.”

  “This is a joke, right?” Malcolm said. “Because I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “If you’re innocent, help us,” I said. “Where were you on January twenty-first from midnight until eight that morning?”

  “Where were you?” he shot back. “You think I remember where I was three months ago? I can tell you this. I wasn’t helping Junie out of a jam with a dead john. You guys really crack me up.” Malcolm sneered. “Don’t you know that Junie’s playing you?”

  “Is that right?” I said.

  “Yeah! She’s romantic, you know? Like a girl in the ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter’ commercial. Junie wants to believe that she did Michael Campion before he croaked —”

  I heard the tap on the glass I’d been waiting for.

  Malcolm was saying to Conklin, “I don’t care what she told you. I didn’t cut anyone. I never dumped any freaking body parts anywhere. Junie just likes the attention, man. You should know by now when a whore is lying to you. Charge me, dude, or I’m outta here.”

  I opened the door, took the papers from Yuki’s hand. We exchanged grins before I closed the door and said, “Mr. Malcolm, you’re under arrest for tampering with evidence and interfering with a police investigation.”

  I fanned the search warrants out on the table. “By this time tomorrow, dude, you won’t have a secret in the world.”

  Chapter 10

  WHILE RICKY MALCOLM SLEPT in a holding cell on the tenth floor at 850 Bryant, I opened the door to his second-floor, one-bedroom apartment over the Shanghai China restaurant on Mission. Then Conklin, McNeil, Chi, and I stepped inside. A faint stink of decomposing flesh hit me as soon as I crossed the threshold.

  “Smell that?” I said to Cappy McNeil. Cappy had been on the force for twenty-five years and had seen more than his share of dead.

  He nodded. “Think he left one of those bags of body parts behind?”

  “Or maybe he just kept a souvenir. A finger. Or an ear.”

  McNeil and his partner, the lean and resourceful Paul Chi, headed for the kitchen while Conklin and I took the bedroom.

  There was a pull-shade in the one window. I gave it a yank and it rolled up with a bang, throwing Ricky Malcolm’s boudoir into a dim morning light. The room was a study in filth. The sheets were bunched to one side of the stained mattress, and cigarette butts floated inside a coffee mug on the nightstand. Dinner plates balanced on the dresser and the television set, forks congealed in the remains of whatever Malcolm had eaten in the last week or two.

  I opened the drawer in the nightstand, found a couple of joints, assorted pharmaceuticals, a strip of Rough Riders. McNeil came into the room, looked around, said, “I like what he’s done with the place.”

  “Find anything?”

  “No. And unless Ricky dismembered Campion with a four-inch paring knife, the blade’s not in the kitchen. By the way, the smell is stronger in here.”

  Conklin opened the closet, searched pockets and shoes, then went to the dresser. He tossed out T-shirts and porn magazines, but I was the one who found the dead mouse under a steel-toed work boot behind the door.

  “Whoaaa. I think I found it.”

  “Nice door prize,” McNeil cracked.

  Four hours went by, and after turning over every stinking thing in Malcolm’s apartment, Conklin sighed his disappointment.

  “There’s no weapon here.”

  “Okay, then,” I said. “I guess we’re done.”

  We stepped out into the street as the flatbed truck pulled up to the curb. CSIs hooked up Malcolm’s ’97 Ford pickup, and we stood by as the truck rattled noisily up the hill on the way to the crime lab. McNeil and Chi took off in their squad car, and Conklin and I got into ours.

  Conklin said, “I’ll bet you a hundred bucks, or dinner — your choice, Lindsay —”

  I laughed at his girl-magnet smile.

  “I’ll bet you Michael Campion’s DNA is somewhere inside the bed of that truck.”

  “I don’t want to bet,” I said. “I want you to be right.”

  Chapter 11

  JUNIE MOON’S PAINTED LADY looked tired and dull that afternoon as the sky darkened and a fine rain swept the city. Conklin lifted up the crime scene tape that was strung across Junie’s front door and I ducked under it, signed the log, and entered the same room where Conklin and I had interviewed the fetching young prostitute late the night before.

  This time we had a search warrant.

  The sound of hammers slamming into ceramic tile led us to the bathroom on the second floor, where CSIs were tearing up the floors and walls in order to get to the bathtub plumbing. Charlie Clapper, head of our CSU, was standing in the hallway outside the bathroom door. He was wearing one of his two dozen nearly identical herringbone jackets, his salt-and-pepper hair was neatly combed, and his lined face was somber.

  “Curb your expectations, Lindsay. There’s enough splooge in this whorehouse to tie up the lab for a year.”

  “We just need one hair,” I said. “One drop of Michael Campion’s blood.”

  “And I’d like to see Venice before it sinks into the sea. And as long as we’re wishing on stars here, I’m still pining for a Rolls Silver Cloud.”

  There was a leaden sound as the CSI working behind and under the tub dismantled the trap. As the tech bagged the plumbing, Conklin and I went back to Junie’s bedroom.

  It wasn’t the pigpen Ricky Malcolm slept in, but Junie wasn’t a tidy homemaker either. There were dust balls under the furniture, the mirrored walls were smudged, and the dense gray carpet had the oily look of a floor mat in a single dad’s minivan.

  A CSI asked if we were ready, then closed the curtains and shut off the overhead light. She waved the wand end of the Omnichrome 1000 in a side-to-side pattern across the bedspread, carpet, and walls, each pass of her wand showing up pale blue splotches indicating semen stains everywhere. She shot me a look and said, “If the johns saw this, they’d never take off their clothes in this girl’s house, guaranteed.”

  Conklin and I walked downstairs toward the sound of the vacuum cleaner, watched the CSIs work, Conklin shouting to me over the vacuum’s motor, “Three months after the fact, what do we expect? A sign saying, ‘Michael Campion died here’?”

  That’s when we heard the clank of metal against the vacuum cleaner nozzle. The CSI turned off the motor, stooped, pulled a steak knife from under the skirt of a velvet-covered sofa — just where Conklin and I had been sitting last night.

  The investigator held out the steak knife with his gloved hand so that I could see the rust-colored stain on the sharp, serrated blade.

  Chapter 12

  I WAS STILL SAVORING the discovery of the knife when my cell phone rang. It was Chief Anthony Tracchio, and his voice was unusually loud.

  “What is it, Tony?”

  “I need the two of you in my office, pronto.”

  After a short volley of useless quibble, he hung up.

  Fifteen minutes later, Conklin and I walked into Tracchio’s wood-paneled corner suite and saw two well-known people seated in the leather armchairs. Former governor Connor Hume Campion’s face looked swollen with rage, and his much younger wife, Valentina, appeared heavily sedated.

  The front page of the Sunday Chronicle was on Tracchio’s desk. I could read the headline upside down and from ten feet away: SUSPECT QUESTIONED IN CAMPION DISAPPEARANCE.

  Cindy hadn’t waited for my quote, damn it.

  What the hell had she written?

  Tracchio patted his Vitalis comb-over and introduced us to the parents of the missing boy as
Conklin and I dragged chairs up to his massive desk. Connor Campion acknowledged us with a hard stare. “I had to read this in the newspaper?” he said to me. “That my son died in a whorehouse?”

  I flushed, then said, “If we’d had anything solid, Mr. Campion, we would have made sure you knew first. But all we have is an anonymous tip that your son visited a prostitute. We get crank tips constantly. It could have meant nothing.”

  “Could have meant? So what’s in this paper is true?”

  “I haven’t read that article, Mr. Campion, but I can give you an update.”

  Tracchio lit up a cigar as I filled the former governor in on our last eighteen hours: the interviews, our futile searches for evidence, and that we had Junie Moon in custody based on her uncorroborated admission that Michael had died in her arms. When I stopped talking, Campion shot out of his seat, and I realized that while we had assumed Michael was dead, the Campions hadn’t given up hope. My sketchy report had given the Campions more of a reality check than they’d expected.

  It wasn’t what they wanted to hear.

  Campion turned his red-faced glare on Tracchio, a man who’d become chief of police by way of an undistinguished career in administration.

  “I want my son’s body returned to us if every dump in the state has to be picked through by hand.”

  “Consider it done,” Tracchio said.

  Campion turned to me, and I saw his anger collapse. Tears filled his eyes. I touched his arm and said, “We’re on this, sir. Full-time. We won’t sleep until we find Michael.”

  Chapter 13

  JUNIE MOON SLIPPED into the interview room at the women’s jail wearing an orange jumpsuit and new worry lines in her youthful face.

  She was followed by her attorney, Melody Chado, a public defender who would make a reputation for herself with this case, no matter how the jury decided. Chado wore black — tunic, pants, jet-black beads — and was all business. She settled her client in a chair, opened her black leather briefcase, and looked at her watch several times as we waited. There were only four chairs in the small room, so when my good friend Assistant District Attorney Yuki Castellano entered a moment later, there was standing room only.