Women's Murder Club [07] 7th Heaven

by James Patterson

  While Vetter’s house was a total loss, I still had hope that the Atkinsons’ house might hold evidence of the horrific killings the boys had done. Thirty-five minutes had passed since Jacobi phoned Tracchio for a search warrant.

  Meanwhile, Cindy had called me, saying that she and a handful of TV news vans were parked behind the barricade at the top of the street. Conklin pushed a bloody clump of his hair away from his eyes, said to Jacobi, “If this isn’t ‘exigent circumstances,’ I don’t know what is.”

  Jacobi growled, “Cool it, Conklin. Understand? If we blow this, we’re freakin’ buried. I’ll be retired, and you two will be working for Brink’s Security. If you’re lucky.”

  Fifteen more minutes crawled by.

  I was about to lie and say I smelled decomp when an intern from the district attorney’s office arrived in a Chevy junker. She sprinted up the front walk a half second before Conklin caved in the front window of the Atkinson house with a tire iron.

  Chapter 121

  THE INSIDE OF the Atkinson house was like a museum. Miles of glossy hardwood floors, large modern canvases hung on two-story-high white walls. Lights came on when we stepped into a room.

  It was like a museum after hours: no one was home.

  And it was creepy. No pets, no newspapers or magazines, no dishes in the sink, and except for the food in the refrigerator and a precise lineup of clothing in each closet, there was little sign that anyone had ever lived in this place.

  That is, until we reached Hawk’s room in a wing far from the master suite.

  Hawk’s roost was large and bright, the windows looking west over the mountains. The bed was the least of the room. It was single, with a plain blue bedspread, speakers on each side, and a headset plugged into a CD player. One long side of the room was lined with a built-in Formica desk. Several computers and monitors and high-tech laser printers were set up there and the adjacent wall was lined with thick corkboard.

  Pidge’s drawings, many of which I recognized from 7th Heaven, were pinned to the board. But there were new drawings, too, and they looked to be works in progress for a second graphic novel.

  “I’m thinking that this was their workshop,” I said to Conklin. “That they cooked it all up in here.”

  Conklin took a seat at the desktop, and I examined the corkboard. “Book number two,” I said to Conklin. “Lux et Veritas. Got any idea what that means?”

  “Easy one,” Rich said, lowering the seat of the hydraulic chair. “Light and truth.”

  “Catchy. Sounds like more fires in the making —”

  Rich called out, “Hawk’s got a journal. I touched the mouse and it came up on the screen.”

  “Fantastic!”

  As Rich scrolled through Brett Atkinson’s journal, I continued my study of the drawings on the wall. One of them nailed me as if I, too, were pinned to the corkboard. The drawing depicted a middle-aged man and woman, arms around each other’s waist, but their faces were flat, expressionless. A caption was written beneath the drawing.

  I recognized the handwriting.

  It was the same as the printing we’d seen on the title pages of the books left at the houses of the arson victims.

  “Requiescat in leguminibus,” I said, sounding out the syllables. “Rest in what?”

  Rich wasn’t listening to me.

  “This map on Atkinson’s computer,” he said. “He’s starred San Francisco, Palo Alto, Monterey. Unreal. Look at this! Photos of the houses they burned down. This is evidence, Lindsay. This is frickin’ evidence.”

  It was.

  I peered over Conklin’s shoulders as he opened Web pages, scanned research on each of the victim couples, including the names of their kids and the dates of the fires. Long minutes went by before I remembered the peculiar drawing pinned to the corkboard and was able to grab Rich’s attention.

  “Requiescat in leguminibus,” I said again.

  Rich came over to the wall and looked at the drawing of a couple who might be the Atkinsons. He read the caption.

  “Leguminibus,” Rich said. “Means legumes, I think. Aren’t they a kind of vegetable? Like beans and peas?”

  “Peas?” I yelled. “Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!”

  “What?” Conklin asked me. “What is it?”

  I hollered out to Jacobi, who was working the rest of the house with the sheriff’s department. With Conklin and Jacobi behind me, I found the stairs to the basement. The freezer was of the trunk variety, extra large.

  I opened the lid and cool air puffed out.

  “Requiescat in leguminibus,” I said. “Rest in peas.”

  I started moving the bags of frozen vegetables aside until I saw a woman’s face.

  “This freezer is deep enough for two,” Jacobi muttered.

  I said, “Uh-huh,” and stopped digging.

  From her approximate age, I was pretty sure I was looking at Moira Atkinson, dressed in her finest, frozen to death.

  Chapter 122

  I WAS WEARING my new blue uniform, and I’d washed my hair thirteen times and once more for good luck when I walked into the autopsy suite the next day. Claire was standing at the top of a six-foot ladder, her Minolta focused down on Mieke Vetter’s decapitated and naked body. Claire looked huge and wobbly up there.

  “Can’t someone else do that?” I asked her.

  “I’m done,” she said. She climbed down the ladder, one ponderous step at a time.

  I gestured to the woman on the table. “I can save you some time,” I said to Claire. “I happen to know this victim’s cause and manner of death.”

  “You know, Lindsay, I still have to do this for evidentiary purposes.”

  “Okay, but just so you know. Yesterday, your patient sprayed me with blood, bone fragments, hair, not to mention brains. You have any idea what dripping brains feel like?”

  “Warm gummy bears? Am I right?” Claire said, grinning at me.

  “Uh. Yeah. Exactly.”

  “One of my first cases was a suicide,” Claire said, getting on with her work, drawing a Y incision with her scalpel from each of Ms. Vetter’s clavicles to her pubis.

  “This old soldier ends it all with a twelve-gauge shotgun under his chin. So I come into his RV, fresh out of training, ya know? And I’m leaning over his body in the La-Z-Boy, taking photos, and the cops are yukking it up.”

  “Because?”

  “I had no idea. You see, that’s the point, girlfriend.”

  I started laughing for the first time in a long while.

  “So as I’m leaning over the body, about a quarter of the guy’s brain has been slowly peeling off the ceiling — it falls and smacks me right behind my ear.”

  She slapped her neck to show me, and I rewarded her story with a good guffaw.

  “Like I said, warm gummy bears. So, how’d it go?” she asked me.

  “How did which go? The interview with your patient’s devil spawn? Or the meeting with the mayor?”

  “Both of ’em, baby girl. I’m going to be here all night, thanks to your bird friends filling up my vault all over again.”

  “Well, Vetter first, short and to the point,” I told Claire. “He lawyered up, pronto. Got nothing to say. But when he does get around to saying something, I’ll bet you a hundred bucks he says his buddy tortured and killed all those people and he just watched.”

  “Won’t really matter, will it? Killer or accessory, he still gets the needle. Plus, you witnessed him killing this poor woman.”

  “Me and thirty other cops. But for the sake of the victims’ families, I still want him convicted for killing them all.”

  “And your meeting with the mayor?”

  “Hah! First Conklin and I get the high fives and Jacobi almost cries, he’s so proud of us, and I think, ‘Whoa, we’re gonna pull our horrible crime-solution rate out of the basement up to maybe the ground floor’ — when the whole conversation devolves into which jurisdiction has the first bite at Vetter since the killings took place in Monterey and San
ta Clara Counties as well as — Claire? Honey? What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Claire’s face had twisted in pain. She dropped her scalpel, and it rang out against the stainless steel table. She grabbed her belly, looked at me with shock in her eyes.

  “My water just broke, Lindsay. I’m not due for three weeks.”

  I called for an ambulance, helped my friend into a chair. A minute later the doors to the ambulance bay banged open and two brawny guys strode into the autopsy suite carrying a stretcher.

  “What’s up, doc?” said the biggest one.

  I said, “Guess who’s having a baby?”

  Chapter 123

  BECAUSE LITTLE RUBY ROSE was premature, we all wore sterile pink paper hospital gowns, hats, and masks for the occasion. Claire looked like she’d been dragged a quarter of a mile in a tractor pull, but the baby-glow was there under her pallor. And since baby-glow was contagious, we were all euphoric and giggly.

  Cindy was crowing about her interview with Hans Vetter’s uncle, and Yuki, having put on a couple of ounces since recovering from being drugged with LSD and almost killed by Jason Twilly, chortled at Cindy’s jokes. The girls told me that I looked hot and possibly happy, the way I should look, since I was living with the perfect man.

  “How long is she going to keep us waiting?” I asked Claire again.

  “Patience, girlfriend. They’ll roll her in when they’re good and ready. Have another cookie.”

  I’d just folded a gooey double chocolate chip with walnuts into my maw when the door to Claire’s room opened — and Conklin came in. He was wearing matching gown, hat, and mask in blue, but he was one of the few men I’d ever known who could look goofy and great at the same time. I could see his gorgeous brown eyes, and they were shining.

  Rich held a big bunch of flowers behind his back, and he went around the room saying hello, kissing Cindy and Yuki on their cheeks, squeezing my shoulder, kissing Claire, and then he dramatically produced red roses.

  “They’re ruby roses,” he said, with a shy version of his brilliant smile.

  “My God, Richie. Three dozen long stems. You know I’m married, right?”

  When the laughter stopped, Claire said, “I thank you. And when my little girl gets here, she’ll thank you, too.”

  Cindy was looking at Conklin like she’d never seen a man before. “Pull up a chair,” she said. “Richie, we’re going to Susie’s for dinner in a while. Why don’t you come with?”

  “Good idea,” I said. “We’ve got to toast our little associate member of the Women’s Murder Club — and you can be the designated driver.”

  “I’d like to help you guys out,” Rich said. “But I’ve got a plane to catch in” — he looked at his watch — “in two hours.”

  “Where’re you going?” Cindy asked.

  I wondered, too. He hadn’t mentioned a trip to me.

  “Denver. For the weekend,” Rich told Cindy.

  I looked away, my eyes sliding across Claire’s face. She caught it. Saw that I’d taken an unanticipated blow.

  “Going to see Kelly Malone?” Cindy asked, the reporter in her refusing to just shut up.

  “Uh-huh,” Rich said. And unless he’d caught the baby-glow from Claire, he was excited.

  “I’d really better go. Don’t want to get caught in traffic. Claire, I just wanted to congratulate you on this great news. I’ll want a picture of Ruby as a screen saver.”

  “Sure thing,” Claire said, patting Conklin’s hand, thanking him again for the flowers.

  I said, “Have a good weekend.”

  And Rich said, “You too. All of you guys.”

  And then he was gone.

  As soon as he was out of the room, Cindy and Yuki started talking about what a rock star Rich was and wasn’t Kelly Malone his high school sweetheart? And then the door opened again. A nurse rolled a tiny cart up to Claire’s bed and all of us peered inside.

  Ruby Rose Washburn was a beauty.

  She yawned, then opened her dark, long-lashed eyes and looked straight at her mom, my glorious, beaming friend Claire.

  We four held hands, made a circle around the cart, each saying a silent prayer for this new child. Claire released our hands so she could hold her baby.

  “Welcome to the world, little girl,” said Claire, hugging and kissing her everywhere.

  Cindy turned to me, asked, “What did you pray for?”

  I snorted a laugh. “Is nothing sacred, you bulldog? Can’t I even talk to God without you asking for a quote?”

  Cindy cracked up, put a hand over those cute overlapping front teeth of hers. “Sorry. Sorry,” she said, tears coming out of her eyes.

  I put my hand on Cindy’s shoulder and said, “I prayed that Ruby Rose would always have good friends.”

  Chapter 124

  YUKI GOT OUT of Lindsay’s car, saying, “Now I know what they mean about feeling no pain.”

  “We couldn’t stop you from downing two margaritas, sweetie, and God knows we tried. You’re way too little for that much octane. I’ll walk you inside.”

  “I’m okay, I’m okay.” Yuki laughed. “I’m going straight to bed. So I’ll talk to you on Monday, ’kay?”

  She said good night to Lindsay and walked into the lobby of the Crest Royal, said hello to Sam, the doorman, and wobbled up the three steps to the mail alcove. On the third try, she managed to get the tiny key into the tiny lock, pulled out the banded packet of mail, and took the elevator up to her apartment.

  The apartment was empty, but since the ghost of her mother lingered in the furnishings, Yuki talked to Mommy as she dropped the mail on the console in the foyer. An envelope slipped out of her fingers onto the floor. Yuki peered down at it. It was a padded envelope, not very big, dark brown with a handwritten label.

  She kicked off her high heels and said, “Mommy, whatever it is, it can wait. Your daughter is smashed.”

  But the envelope was intriguing.

  Yuki put one hand on the console, bent and picked up the envelope, stared at the unfamiliar handwriting in ballpoint pen. But the return address on the left-hand corner grabbed her. It was just a name: Junie Moon. Yuki ripped open the envelope as she walked unsteadily to her mom’s green sofa.

  Junie had been acquitted of Michael Campion’s death. Why would Junie be writing to her?

  Sitting on the sofa, Yuki shook the contents of the envelope out onto the glass coffee table. There was a letter and a second envelope with her name on it.

  Yuki unfolded the letter impatiently.

  Dear Ms. Castellano,

  By the time you get this I will be on the road somewhere, I don’t even know where. I want to see America because I have never been outside of San Francisco.

  I guess you’re wondering why I’m writing to you, so I’ll get to the point.

  The evidence you wanted is in the second envelope, and you’ll probably want to use it to give the Campions some closure.

  I hope you understand why I can’t say any more.

  Take care,

  Junie Moon

  Yuki read the letter again.

  Her mind was swimming, trying to follow what Junie had said. “The evidence you wanted is in the second envelope.”

  Yuki tore open the plain white envelope and emptied two items onto the tabletop. Item one was a shirt cuff, ripped from its sleeve, monogrammed with Michael Campion’s initials. The cuff was saturated with dried blood.

  Item two was a small clump of dark hair, about three inches long, roots attached.

  Yuki’s hands were shaking, but she was sobering up, starting to think about the call she would make to Red Dog. Wondering, if they put a rush on it, how much time it would take for the lab to process the DNA that would surely match to Michael Campion.

  And she thought about how even if they were able to find Junie Moon and bring her in, the law was clear: she couldn’t be tried for Campion’s death again. They could charge her with stuff — perjury, obstruction, hindering prosecution. But unless they co
uld establish how the evidence came into Junie’s possession, odds were that the DA wouldn’t even try to indict her.

  Yuki looked at the gruesome evidence that had now dropped literally into her lap. She picked up the phone and called Lindsay. As she listened to the phone ring, she thought about Jason Twilly.

  He was charged with attempted murder on the life of a peace officer, and if convicted he could go to prison for the rest of his life without possibility of parole. Or he could hire the best criminal defense attorney money could buy and maybe win.

  Maybe he’d go free.

  Yuki saw Twilly in her mind, sitting in some café in LA writing his book with everything he needed for his big-bang, gazillion-dollar ending. The news would get out about the bloody cuff, the hank of hair, the DNA matching to Michael Campion.

  Who dunnit?

  Twilly wouldn’t have to prove it. He could make her a character in his book. And then he could simply point his finger at Junie Moon.

  The ring tone stopped.

  “Yuki?” she heard Lindsay say.

  “Linds, can you come back? I’ve got something you have to see.”

  Chapter 125

  JUNIE MOON LOOKED out the window and marveled again at the feeling of flight and at the amazing bright turquoise water below. And there, just coming into view, was a little town by the sea. She couldn’t even pronounce its name.

  The pilot’s voice came over the speaker. Junie put up her tray table and tightened her seat belt, still staring out the window, seeing the beaches now, and the little boats and the people.

  Oh, my God, this was just too fantastic.

  She started to think again about that long-ago night when Michael Campion wasn’t a client anymore. They’d talked about their love and how hopeless it all was.