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 -”
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