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.
Part Five. BURNING DESIRE
Chapter 100
HAWK AND PIDGE left the car around the corner from the huge Victorian house in Pacific Heights, the biggest in a neighborhood of impressive, multi-multimillion-dollar homes, all with stunning views of the bay.
Their target house was imposing and yet inviting, so American it was iconic – and at the same time, completely out of reach for everyone but the very wealthy.
The two young men looked up at the leaded windows, the cupolas, and the old trees banked around the house, separating it from the servant quarters over the garage and the neighbors on either side of the yard. They had studied the floor plans on the real estate brokers’ Web site and knew every corner of every floor. They were prepared, high on anticipation, and still cautious.
This was going to be their best kill and their last. They would make some memories tonight, leave their calling card, and fade out, blend back into their lives. But this night would never be forgotten. There would be headlines for weeks, movies, several of them. In fact, they were sure people would still be talking about this crime of all crimes into the next century.
“Do I look okay?” Pidge asked.
Hawk turned Pidge’s collar up, surveyed his friend’s outfit down to the shoes.
“You rock, buddy. You absolutely rock.”
“You too, man,” Pidge said.
They locked arms in the Roman forearm handshake, like Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd in Ben-Hur.
“Ubi fumus,” said Hawk.
“Ibi ignis,” Pidge answered.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Pidge twisted the gold foil tight around the bottle of Cointreau, and then the two boys advanced side by side up the long stone walkway toward the front porch. There was a card taped to a glass panel on the front door. “To the members of the Press: Please, leave us alone.”
Hawk rang the bell.
Bing-bong.
He could see the gray-haired man through the small-paned living room windows, followed his silhouette as the famous figure walked through the house, turning on the lights in each room, making his way to the front door.
And then the door opened.
“Are you the boys who called?” Connor Campion asked.
“Yes, sir,” Pidge said.
“And what are your names?”
“Why don’t you call me Pidge for now, and he’s Hawk. We have to be careful. What we know could get us killed.”
“You’ve got to trust us,” Hawk said. “We were friends of Michael’s, and we have some information. Like I said on the phone. We can’t keep quiet any longer.”
Connor Campion looked the two boys up and down, decided either they were full of crap or maybe, just maybe, they’d tell him something he needed to know. They’d want money, of course.
He swung the door open wide and invited them inside.
Chapter 101
THE SIXTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD MAN led the two boys through the vestibule and living room, into his private library. He switched on some lights: the stained-glass Tiffany lamp on the desk he’d used in the governor’s mansion, the down-lighting above the floor-to-ceiling bookcases of law books.
“Is your wife at home?” the one called Hawk asked him.
“She’s had a very stressful day,” Campion said. “She couldn’t wait up. Can I get you boys something to drink?”
“Actually, we brought you this,” Pidge said, handing over the bottle of Cointreau. Connor thanked the boy, slid down the foil bag, and looked at the label.
“Thanks for this. I’ll open this for you if you like, or maybe you’d like something else. I’m having scotch.”
“We’re good, sir,” said Pidge.
Campion put the bottle next to Michael’s picture on the ornately carved mantelpiece, then bent to open the bowed glass doors of the vitrine he used as a liquor cabinet. He took out a bottle of Chivas and a glass. When he turned, he saw the gun in Hawk’s hand.
Campion’s muscles clenched as he stared at the revolver; then he looked up at the smirk on Pidge’s face.
“Are you crazy? You’re holding me up?”
Behind Pidge, Hawk’s eyes were bright, smiling with anticipation, as he took a reel of fishing line out of his back pocket. Horror came over Campion as suspicion bloomed in his mind. He turned his back to the boys, said neutrally, “I guess I won’t be having this.” He made a show of putting the Chivas back inside the cabinet, while feeling around the shelf with the flat of his hand.
“We have to tie you up, sir, make it look like a robbery. It’s for our own protection,” Pidge said.
“And you need to get Mrs. Campion down here,” Hawk added firmly. “She’ll want to hear what we have to say.”
Campion whipped around, pointed his SIG at Hawk’s chest, and squeezed the trigger. Bang.
Hawk’s face registered surprise as he looked down at his pink shirt, saw the blood.
“Hey,” said Hawk.
Didn’t these punks know that a man like him would have guns stashed everywhere? Campion fired at Hawk again, and the boy dropped to his knees. He stared up at the older man and returned fire, his shot shattering the mirror over the fireplace. Then Hawk collapsed onto the rug facedown.
Pidge had frozen at the sound of the shooting. Now he screamed, “You shit! You crazy old shit! Look what you did!”
Pidge backed out of the room, and when he cleared the library’s doorway, he turned and raced for the front door. Campion walked over to Hawk, kicked the gun out of his outstretched hand, lost his footing, and fell, hitting his chin against the edge of the desk. He pulled himself up using the desk leg, then stumbled out to the vestibule and pressed the intercom that connected to the caretaker’s cottage.
“Glen,” he yelled. “Call 911. I shot someone!”
By the time Campion reached the front walk, Pidge was gone. The caretaker came running across the yard with a rifle, and Valentina stood in the front doorway, her eyes huge, asking him what in God’s name had happened.
Lights winked on in neighboring houses, and the wolfhound next door barked.
But there was no sign of Pidge.
Campion clamped his fist around the grip of his gun and shouted into the dark, “You killed my son, you son of a bitch, didn’t you? You killed my son!”
Chapter 102
I ARRIVED AT the Campions’ home within fifteen minutes of getting Jacobi’s call. A herd of patrol cars blocked the street, and paramedics bumped down the stone steps with their loaded gurney, heading out to the ambulance.
I went to the gurney, observed as much of the victim as I could. An oxygen mask half covered his face, and a sheet was pulled up to his chin. I judged that the young man was in his late teens or early twenties, white, with well-cut, dirty-blond hair, maybe five ten.
Most important, he was alive.
“Is he going to make it?” I asked one of the paramedics.
She shrugged, said, “He’s got two slugs in him, Sergeant. Lost a lot of blood.”
Inside the house, Jacobi and Conklin were debriefing the former governor and Valentina Campion, who sat together on a sofa, shoulder to shoulder, their hands entwined. Conklin shot me a look: something he wanted me to understand. It took me a few minutes to get it.
Jacobi filled me in on what had transpired, told me that there was no ID on the kid Campion had shot. Then he said to the former governor, “You say you can identify the second boy, sir? Help our sketch artist?”
Campion nodded. “Absolutely. I’ll never forget that kid’s face.”
Campion looked to be in terrible pain. He’d shot someone only minutes before, and when he asked me to sit down in the chair near the sofa, I thought he wanted to tell me about that. But I was wrong.
Campion said, “Michael wanted to be like his friends. Go out. Have fun. So I was always on his case, you know? When I caught him sneaking out at night, I reprimanded him, took away privileges, and he hated me for it.”
“No he didn’t,” Valentina Campion said sharply. “You did what I didn’t have the courage to do, Connor.”
“Sir?” I said, wondering where he was going with this.
Campion’s face sagged with exhaustion.
“He was being irresponsible,” Campion continued, “and I was trying to keep him safe. I was looking ahead to the future – a new medical procedure, a pharmaceutical breakthrough. Something.
“I told him, straight up, ‘When you decide to act like an adult, let me know.’ I wasn’t angry, I was afraid,” Campion said, his voice cracking. “So I lost him before I lost him.”
His wife tried to calm him, but Connor Campion wouldn’t be soothed. “I was a tyrant,” Campion said. “Mikey and I didn’t speak for the whole last month of his life. If I’d known he had a month to live… Michael told me, ‘Quality of life, Dad. That’s what’s important.’ ”
Campion fixed me with his bloodshot eyes.
“You seem to be a caring person, Sergeant. I’m telling you this so you understand. I let those hooligans into my house because they said they had information about Michael – and I had to know what it was.
“Now I think they killed him, don’t you? And tonight they were going to rob us. But why? Why?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
I told Campion that as soon as we knew anything, we’d let him know. That was all I had for him. But I got it now, why Conklin had given me that look when I’d walked in the door. My mind was running with it.
I signaled to my partner and we went outside.
Chapter 103
CONKLIN AND I leaned against the side of my car, facing the Campion house, staring at the lights glowing softly through a million little windowpanes. Campion and his wife didn’t know what kind of death Hawk and Pidge had planned for them tonight, but we knew – and thinking about that near miss was giving me the horrors.
If Connor Campion hadn’t fired his gun, Hawk and Pidge would have roaste
d him and his wife alive.
Rich pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one – and this time I took him up on it.
“Might be some prints on that foil around the bottle of booze,” he said.
I nodded, thinking we’d be lucky if those kids had records, if their prints were in AFIS, but I wasn’t counting on it.
“Hawk. Pidge. Crazy names,” Conklin said.
“I got a pretty good look at Hawk,” I said. “He matches Molly Chu’s description of the so-called angel who carried her out of the fire.”
Conklin exhaled a long stream of smoke into the night. He said, “And the governor’s description of Pidge sounds like the kid who pawned Patty Malone’s necklace.”
“And of course there’s the fishing line. So… what are we thinking?” I said to Conklin. “That Hawk and Pidge also killed Michael Campion? Because I don’t see two guys killing a kid when their MO is to tie up rich couples, leave a few words in Latin inside a book, and then burn the house down.”
Conklin said, “Nope. That doesn’t work for me, either. So why do you think these birds targeted the Campions?”
“Because the Campions are in the news. Big house. Big fire. Big headlines. Big score.”
Conklin smiled, said, “Only they screwed up.”
I smiled back, said, “Yeah.”
We were both starting to feel it, the kind of incomparable exhilaration that comes when after nothing but dead ends, A leads to B leads to C. I was sure that Hawk and Pidge were the sadists who did the arson killings, but not only couldn’t we prove that, we didn’t know who Hawk and Pidge were.
I stamped out my cigarette on the street, said to Conklin, “That Hawk bastard had better live.”
“At least long enough to talk,” said my partner.
Chapter 104
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