Women's Murder Club [07] 7th Heaven

by James Patterson

  Yuki put down her briefcase and leaned against the wall.

  Ms. Chado appeared to be just out of law school. She was probably only a couple of years older than her client, who looked so vulnerable I felt a little sorry for her — and that pissed me off.

  “I’ve advised my client not to make any statements,” Ms. Chado said, setting her young face with a hard-ass expression that I found hard to take seriously. “This is your meeting, Ms. Castellano.”

  “I’ve talked with the DA,” Yuki said. “We’re charging your client with murder two.”

  “What happened to ‘illegal disposal of a body’?” Chado asked.

  “That’s just not good enough,” Yuki snapped. “Your client was the last person to see Michael Campion alive. Ms. Moon never called medical emergency or the police — and why not? Because she didn’t care about Campion’s life or death. She only cared about herself.”

  “You’ll never get an indictment for murder,” Chado said. “There’s enough reasonable doubt in your theory to fill the ocean.”

  “Listen to me, Junie,” Yuki said. “Help us locate Michael’s remains. If it can be determined in autopsy that his heart attack would have killed him no matter what you did, we’ll drop the murder charge and pretty much get out of your life.”

  “No deal,” Chado interjected. “What if she helps you find his body and it is so decomposed that his heart is just rotted meat? Then you’ll have a demonstrable connection to my client and she’ll be screwed.”

  I reevaluated Melody Chado as she fought with Yuki. Chado had either had a great education, grown up in a family of lawyers — or both. Junie fell back in her chair, turned a shocked face toward her breathless attorney. I guessed that Chado’s description had blown off whatever romance was left of Junie’s memory of Michael Campion.

  “I want to hear about the knife, Junie,” Rich said, steering the interview to our only piece of evidence.

  “The knife?” Junie asked.

  “We found a knife under your sofa. Looks like bloodstains on the blade. It’ll take a few days to get the DNA results, but if you help us, Ms. Castellano will take that as another sign of your cooperation.”

  “Don’t answer,” said Melody Chado. “We’re done.”

  Junie was looking at Rich, and she was talking over her attorney. “I thought the knife went into one of the garbage bags,” she said to my partner. “So I don’t know what knife you found. But listen, I remember the name of the town.”

  “Junie, that’s enough. That’s all!”

  “I think it was Johnson,” Junie said to Rich. “I saw a sign when we got off the highway.”

  “Jackson?” I asked. “Was it Jackson?”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “You’re sure about that? I thought you said you drove up the coast.”

  “I’m pretty sure. It was late, I got confused. I wasn’t trying to remember,” she told me, her eyes downcast. “I was trying to forget.”

  Chapter 14

  THE TOWN OF JACKSON was known for its cowboy cookouts and craft fairs. It also had a sizable dump. It was just after noon, and the smell of rot was rising as the sun cooked the refuse. Gulls and buzzards circled the trash dunes that filled our view out to the foothills.

  Sheriff Oren Braun pointed out the square acre of landfill he’d had cordoned off — the approximate section where waste had been unloaded at the end of January.

  “Soon as I got the call from the governor I had my boys on it,” Braun told me and Conklin. “ ‘Pull out the stops,’ that’s what he said.”

  We were looking for eight black plastic garbage bags in a sea of black plastic garbage bags. A hundred yards uphill, a dozen members of the sheriff’s department were picking very slowly through the three thousand tons of refuse piled twenty feet high, and the dump foreman was assisting the dog handler, who followed behind his two cadaver dogs as they trotted over the site.

  I was trying to maintain some optimism, but that was tough to do in this grim landscape. I mumbled to Rich, “After three months out here, all that’ll be left of Michael’s corpse will be ligaments and bones.”

  And then, as if I’d telepathically cued them, the dogs alerted.

  Conklin and I joined the sheriff in stepping cautiously toward the frenzied, singing hounds.

  “There’s something in this bag,” their handler said.

  The hounds had located a plastic shopping bag, the thin supermarket kind. I stooped down, saw that the plastic had been ripped, that the contents were wrapped in newspaper. I parted the newspaper wrapper. Saw the decomposing remains of a newborn child. The baby’s skin was loose and greenish, the soft tissues eaten by rats, so that it was no longer possible to tell if it was a boy or a girl. The date on the newspaper was only a week old.

  Someone hadn’t wanted this child. Had it been smothered? Was it stillborn? At this stage of decomposition, the ME might never know. Rich was crossing himself and saying a few words over the baby’s remains when my Nextel rang.

  I walked downhill as I answered the call, glad to turn my eyes from the terrible sight of that dead child.

  “Tell me something good, Yuki,” I begged her. “Please.”

  “Sorry, Lindsay. Junie Moon has recanted her confession.”

  “No. Come on! Michael didn’t die in her arms?” My roiling innards sank. Right now, all we had was Junie’s confession.

  How could she take that back?

  “Yeah. Now she says that she had nothing to do with Michael Campion’s death and disappearance. She’s saying that her confession was coerced.”

  “Coerced? By whom?” I asked, still not getting it.

  “By you and Conklin. The mean ol’ cops made her confess to something that never, ever happened.”

  Chapter 15

  SUSIE’S CAFÉ IS KIND OF a cross between Cheers and a tiki hut bar on a beach in St. Lucia. The food is spicy, the steel drums are live, the margaritas are world-class, and not only do the waitresses know our names, they know enough to leave us alone when we’re into something — as Cindy and I were now.

  We were in our booth in the back room, and I was glaring at Cindy over my beer.

  “You understand? Talking to you off the record is ‘leaking.’ Just saying to you that I was working a new lead on the Campion case could jam me up!”

  “I swear, Lindsay, I didn’t use what you said. I didn’t need a quote from you because I got the story from upstairs.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Management has a source and I did an interview and I am not telling you with whom,” she said, setting down her beer mug hard on the table. “But the point is, you can hold your head up, Linds, because you told me nothing. Okay? That’s the truth.”

  I’m several years older than Cindy, and we’ve had a big sister, little sister thing since she crashed my crime scene a few years back and then helped me close the case.

  It’s hard to be friends with reporters when you’re a cop. Their rationalized “public’s need to know” gives bad guys the heads-up and messes up jury pools.

  You can’t truly trust reporters.

  On the other hand, I love Cindy, and I trusted her 99 percent of the time. She sat across from me in her snow-white silk sweater, blond curls bouncing like mattress springs, her two overlapping front teeth making her pretty features look even prettier. She looked totally innocent of my accusation, and she was holding her ground.

  “Okay,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “Okay and I’m sorry?”

  “Okay. I’m sorry.”

  “Good. You’re forgiven. So, can you tell me what’s happening on this case?”

  “You’re a funny girl, Cindy,” I said, laughing and waving my hand so that Yuki and Claire could see us from the doorway.

  Claire was so far along in her pregnancy she couldn’t fit in the booth anymore. I got up, moved a chair to the head of the table for Claire, as Yuki slipped in beside Cindy. Lorraine took our orders, and as soon as
she’d left us, Yuki said to Cindy, “Whatever I say, even if it’s in the public domain, it’s off the record.”

  Claire and I cracked up.

  “What a pain. See, people think it’s actually an advantage that I know you guys,” Cindy said, sighing dramatically.

  “The hearing to suppress Junie Moon’s confession? It went great,” Yuki told us. “Since Junie had been Mirandized when she confessed, the judge says it’s admissible.”

  “Excellent,” I said, letting out my breath. “A break for the good guys.”

  “Yuki, you’re trying her for a murder and you don’t have a body?” Claire asked.

  “It’s a circumstantial case, but circumstantial cases are won all the time,” Yuki said. “Look, I’d be happier with physical evidence. I’d be happier if Ricky Malcolm made any kind of a corroborating statement.

  “But the powers that be are piling on the pressure. Plus, we can win.”

  Yuki stopped to gulp down some beer, then carried on.

  “The jury is going to believe Junie’s confession. They’re going to believe her, and they’re going to hold her responsible for Michael Campion’s death.”

  Chapter 16

  I WAS AT MY DESK in the squad room the next day when Rich came in after lunch smelling of garbage.

  “Tough morning in Jackson?”

  “Yeah, but I think the sheriff’s digging for his fifteen minutes of fame before the Feds take over the search. He’s got it under control.”

  I pinched my nose as Rich pulled out his chair, folded his long legs under his side of the desk, and opened his container of coffee.

  “Phone records show that yes, Junie did call Malcolm at 11:21 on the night Michael went missing. And she called him every night at about that time.”

  “Girl stays in touch with her boyfriend.”

  “And Clapper called,” I told my partner. “The prints on the knife are Malcolm’s.”

  “Yeah? That’s excellent!”

  “But the blood is bovine,” I said.

  “It’s a steak knife. He ate a steak.”

  “Yep. It gets worse.”

  “Hang on.” Rich dumped a couple of sugars into his coffee, stirred, slugged it down. “Okay. Hit me.”

  “There’s no blood or tissue in the bathtub, and the hair we sent out came back with no match. Furthermore, there’s no sign that anyone tried to cover up the blood. No bleach.”

  “Great,” my partner said, scowling. “What is this? The perfect crime?”

  “There’s more and worse. There’s no trace of blood in or on Malcolm’s vehicle, no hairs consistent with Michael’s.”

  “So I was wrong about the truck. You should have bet me, Lindsay. We’d be having dinner tonight — on me.”

  I grinned and said, “You would have showered first, I suppose.”

  But my mood could hardly be lower. I was going to have to call the Campions and tell them that we still had no physical evidence, and that Junie Moon had recanted her confession and we’d had to kick Ricky Malcolm.

  “You want to call Malcolm and tell him he can have his truck back?”

  Rich picked up his phone, called Malcolm, got no answer.

  We took a drive out to the crime lab at Hunter’s Point Naval Yard, opened all the car windows on the way, and let the wind air out my partner’s clothes. At the lab, I signed a release for the truck, and after three more unanswered calls to Ricky Malcolm, we drove to his apartment.

  Rich yelled, “Police,” and knocked loudly on Malcolm’s door until a small Chinese man came out from the restaurant downstairs.

  He shouted up to us, “Mr. Malcolm gone. He paid his rent and leave on motorcycle. You want to see mess upstairs?”

  “We’ve seen it, thanks.”

  “He’s gone, all right,” I muttered to Conklin as we got into the squad car. “Ricky Malcolm. Sleaze. Slob. Easy rider. Criminal freakin’ mastermind. Coming soon to a town near you.”

  Chapter 17

  I WAS RIPPED out of a dream and my lover’s arms by Jacobi’s voice on the phone saying, “Get dressed, Boxer. Conklin is five blocks away. He’s picking you up at your door.”

  Jacobi clicked off before giving me details, but this much I knew: someone had died.

  It was just after midnight when Conklin nosed our squad car onto the lawn of a smoldering house in the 3800 block of Clay Street in Presidio Heights. Four fire rigs and an equal number of patrol cars were already parked in front of the Greek Revival, the wind whipping smoke into a vortex at an inside corner of the house. Dazed bystanders clustered across the street, watching the firefighters douse the charred remains of what had once been a beautiful home in this upscale neighborhood.

  I pulled my canvas jacket closed, ducked under the water spouting from a fire hose just as the generators on the front lawn fired up. Conklin was ahead of me as we mounted the front steps. He badged the cop at the door and we entered the scorched carcass of the house.

  “Two victims, Sarge,” said Officer Pat Noonan. “First doorway on your right. DRT.”

  Dead right there.

  I asked, “Has the ME been called?”

  “She’s on her way.”

  It was darker inside the house than out. The room Noonan indicated had been a large den or family room. I flicked my flashlight beam over piles of furniture, bookshelves, a large TV. Then my light caught a pair of legs on the floor.

  They weren’t attached to a body.

  I screamed, “Noonan! Noonan! What the hell is this?” I waved my torchlight around, catching a second body a few feet from the torso of the first, just inside the doorway.

  Noonan came into the den with a firefighter behind him, a young guy with the name Mackey stenciled on his turnouts.

  “Sarge,” Mackey said, “it was me. I was trying to reel in my line, but it caught. That’s how I discovered the DB.”

  “So you dragged the body?”

  “I, um, didn’t know that if I picked up the body by the legs, it would fall apart,” Mackey said, his voice cracking from smoke inhalation and probably fear.

  “Did you move the entire victim, Mackey, or just the legs? Where was the body lying?”

  “He, she, or it was in the doorway, Sarge. Sorry.”

  Mackey backed out of the room, and he was right to get away from me. What the fire hadn’t destroyed, the water and the firefighters had. I doubted we’d ever know what had happened here. I heard someone call my name, and I recognized his voice as the glare of a handheld lantern came toward me.

  Chuck Hanni was an arson investigator, one of the best. I’d met him for the first time a few years ago when he’d come to a fire directly from a Rotary Club dinner.

  He’d been wearing pale khakis at the time, and he’d walked through a smoking house from the least burned rooms to the fire’s point of origin. He’d taught me a lot about crime detection at a fire scene that night, but I still didn’t know how he’d kept those khakis clean.

  “Hey, Lindsay,” Hanni said now. He was wearing a jacket and tie. There were comb marks in his fine black hair and burn scars running from his right thumb up into his sleeve. “I’ve got a working ID on this couple.”

  My partner stood up from where he’d been crouched beside one of the victims.

  “Their names are Patty and Bert Malone,” Conklin said, something in his voice I couldn’t read. The corpses were so burned, they were featureless. He saw the question in my eyes.

  “I’ve been in this house before,” Conklin told us. “I used to know these people.”

  Chapter 18

  I STARED AT MY PARTNER as embers fell from the ceiling of the den and the crackle of water against smoking wood competed with the radio static and the shouts of the firefighters.

  “I was close to their daughter when I was in high school,” Conklin said. “Kelly Malone. Her parents were great to me.”

  “I’m so sorry, Rich.”

  “I haven’t seen them since Kelly went off to the University of Colorado,” Conklin
said. “This is going to kill her.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder, knowing that we were going to treat the Malones’ deaths as homicides unless it was proven otherwise. Upstairs, the fire crew was doing mop-up and overhaul, dismantling the second-story ceiling, putting out hot spots under the eaves.

  “The security system was off,” Hanni said, joining us. “The fire department got the call from a neighbor. The fire started in this room,” he said, pointing out the furniture that had been burned low to the ground.

  He looked around the room at the mounds of plaster and debris. “After we sift through all this, I’ll let you know if I find anything, but I think you can pretty much kiss off any notes or fingerprints.”

  “But you’ll try anyway, right?” Conklin said.

  “I said I would, Rich.”

  Last thing we needed was for Conklin to get into a fight. I asked him what the Malones were like.

  “Kelly said her dad could be a prick,” Rich said, “but when you’re eighteen, that could’ve meant he wouldn’t let her stay out with me past eleven.”

  “Tell me whatever else you remember.”

  “Bert sold luxury cars. Patty was a homemaker. They had money, obviously. They entertained a lot. Their friends seemed nice — regular parents, you know.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time regular people turned out to be twisted,” Hanni muttered.

  A sweep of headlights drew my eyes toward the broken plate glass window. The coroner’s van joined the fleet of law enforcement and fire department vehicles on the street.

  Noonan called out to me. “I checked out the bedroom on the second floor, Sarge. There’s a safe in the closet. The lock and the safe are intact, but the door is open — and the safe is empty.”