“That’s a little personal, isn’t it?”
Davis called out, “Your Honor, is this the Dr. Phil show? There’s no relevance -”
“If the court would give me a moment to show relevance,” Yuki interrupted.
“Overruled, Ms. Davis. Proceed, Ms. Castellano.”
“Thanks, Your Honor,” Yuki said. “Mr. Malcolm, your feelings aren’t a secret, are they? Would you please roll up your right sleeve and show your arm to the jury.”
Malcolm hesitated until the judge asked him to do it. Then he exposed his arm to the jury.
Called a “full sleeve” by tat aficionados, a dense collection of tattoos ran up Ricky Malcolm’s pale skin from his wrist to his shoulder. Among the snakes and skulls was a red heart branded with the initials
“Mr. Malcolm, could you tell us what the letters underneath that heart tattoo mean?”
“You mean
“That’s right, Mr. Malcolm.”
Malcolm sighed. “It stands for ‘Tell me that you love me, Junie Moon.’ ”
“So, Mr. Malcolm, is it fair to say that you love the defendant?”
Malcolm was looking at Junie now, his face heavy, having lost its wiseass expression, Junie looking back at him with her huge slate-gray eyes.
“Yes. I love her.”
“Do you love her enough to lie for her?”
“Sure, I’d lie for her, what the hell?”
“Thanks, Mr. Malcolm. I’m done with this witness, Judge,” said Yuki, turning her back on Ricky Malcolm.
Chapter 76
JACOBI CALLED THE MEETING to order at the crack of eight a.m. He asked me to come to the front of the room to brief the troops on our arson-homicide case and where we were with it – that is to say, nowhere. I was wearing jeans and a beaded tank top, a pair of moccasins, and a faded denim jacket that I’d left at Joe’s place before the fire.
It was all that I had.
I got whistles, of course, one beefy old-timer shouting out, “Nice rack, Sarge.”
“Shut up, McCracken,” Rich shouted back, making me blush, extending the moment as my fellow cops laughed and made raunchy comments to each other. After Jacobi kicked a desk so that a hollow boom silenced the room, I filled everyone in on the Meacham and Malone homicides.
Assignments were divvied up, I got into the car with Conklin, and we drove to one of the dark and grubby alleys in the Mission. We were doing it again, more down-and-dirty detective work, hoping for clues in the absence of a single hard lead.
Our first stop was a pawnshop on Polk called Gold ’n’ Things, a shop piled high with outdated electronics and musical instruments, and a half-dozen glass cases filled with tacky bling. The proprietor was Rudy Vitale, an obese man with thick glasses and thin hair, a marginal fence who used the pawnshop as his office while making his real deals in cars and bars, anywhere but here.
I let Conklin take the lead because my insides were still reeling from the sharp turn my life had taken only twelve hours before.
My mind was stuck in a groove of what the fire had cost me in emotional touchstones to my past: my Willie Mays jacket, my Indian pottery, and everything that had belonged to my mother, especially her letters telling me how much she loved me, a sentiment she’d only been able to write when she was dying but was never able to actually say.
As Conklin showed insurance photos to Vitale, I glanced at the display cases, still in a daze, not expecting anything, when suddenly, as if someone yelled
Conklin looked, then told Vitale to open the case. Baubles clanked as Vitale pawed through them, handed the necklace up to Conklin with his catcher’s mitt of a hand.
“You’re saying these are real sapphires?” Vitale said innocently.
Conklin’s face blanched around the eyes as he placed the necklace down on the photograph. It was clearly a match.
“Where’d you get this?” he asked Vitale.
“Some kid brought it in a week ago.”
“Let’s see the paperwork.”
“Hold on,” Vitale said, waddling back to his cage.
He moved a pile of auction catalogs and books on antique jewelry from his desk chair, then tapped the keys on his laptop.
“Got it. I paid the kid a hundred bucks. Here you go. Whoops. I just noticed his name.”
I read the receipt over Conklin’s shoulder, the name Clark Kent, an address somewhere in the middle of the bay, and the description of a “blue topaz necklace.”
“I’ll need the tape from that,” I said, pointing to the video camera anchored in the corner of the ceiling like a red-eyed spider.
Vitale said, “That’s got a twenty-four-hour loop. He’s not on it anymore. Anyway, I dimly remember the kid, and I don’t think he was the tights-and-cape type. More of a preppy look. I think maybe I sold him some comic books one time before.”
“Can you do better than ‘preppy look’?”
“Dark hair, I think. A little on the stocky side.”
“We’ll need you to come in and look at our mug books,” I said. “Talk to a sketch artist.”
“I’m no good at faces,” said Vitale. “It’s like a disorder I have. Some kind of dyslexia. I don’t think I’d recognize you if I saw you tomorrow.”
“Bull,” Conklin snapped. “This is a homicide investigation, Vitale. Understand? If that kid comes in again, call us. Preferably while he’s still here. And make a copy of his driver’s license.”
“Okay, chief,” Vitale said. “Will do.”
“It’s something,” Conklin said to me as he started up the car. “Kelly will be glad to have something from her mom.”
“Yeah, she will,” I said.
My mind flew to my own mom’s death. I turned my head so that Conklin couldn’t see the tears that came into my eyes.
Chapter 77
CHUCK HANNI STOOD with me and Joe in the dank basement of the building where I used to live, showing us the fine points of archaic knob-and-tube wiring as water dripped on our heads. The door to the fuse box was open, and Hanni held his Mag-Lite on a fuse he wanted me to see.
“See how this penny is annealed to the back of the fuse?”
I could just make out the dull copper blob.
“The college girls on the second floor – you know them?” Hanni asked.
“Just to wave hi.”
“Okay, well, apparently they’ve been blowing fuses every other day with their hair dryers and air conditioner
