7th Heaven

and irons and whatnot. And your super got tired of running over here to change the fuse, so he put this penny in here.”

“Which does what?”

Chuck explained everything that happened, how the copper penny overrode the fuse so that the circuit didn’t trip. Instead the electricity went through the penny and melted down the wiring at its weakest point. In this case, the ceiling lights on the second floor and the electric sockets in my apartment.

I visualized flames shooting out of the socket, but I still didn’t get it – so Chuck took his time explaining to me and to Joe how my building, like a lot of old buildings, had “balloon construction,” that is, the framing timbers ran from roof to ceiling without any fire stops in between.

“The fire just races up through the walls,” Hanni said. “Those spaces between the timbers act like chimneys. And so when the fire reached your apartment, it came out the sockets, set your stuff on fire, and just kept going. Took out the roof and burned itself out.”

“So you’re telling me this was an accident?”

“I was suspicious, too,” Chuck told me.

He said that he’d questioned everyone himself: the building manager, the girls downstairs, and in particular our aging handyman, Angel Fernandez, who admitted he’d put the penny behind the fuse to save himself another trip up the hill.

“If anyone had died in this fire, I’d be charging Angel Fernandez with negligent homicide,” Hanni said. “I’m calling this an accidental fire, Lindsay. You file an insurance claim and it will sail through.”

I’d been trained to read a lie in a person’s face, and all I saw was the truth in Chuck Hanni’s frankly honest features. But I was jumpy and not quite ready to let my worst suspicions go. Walking out to Joe’s car I asked for his point of view as a guy who’d spent a couple of decades in law enforcement.

“Hanni didn’t do it, honey. I think he’s suffering almost as much as you are. And I think he likes you.”

“That’s your professional opinion?”

“Yep. Hanni’s on your side.”

Chapter 78

YUKI WAS WIRED.

We were eating lunch at her desk, both of us picking through our salads as if we were looking for nuggets of gold instead of chicken. Yuki had asked me how I was feeling, but I didn’t have much to say and she was pent up, so I said, “You first,” and she was off.

“So, Davis calls her expert shrink, Dr. Maria Paige. Ever heard of her?” Yuki asked me.

I shook my head no.

“She’s on Court TV sometimes. Tall? Blond? Harvard?”

I shook my head no again and Yuki said, “Doesn’t matter. So, anyway. Davis puts this big-name shrink on the stand to tell us all about false confessions.”

“Ahh,” I said, getting it. “Junie Moon’s ‘false’ confession?”

“Right. And she’s a bright babe, this shrink. She’s got it all down. How and why Miranda rights came into being so that cops can’t coerce suspects. The landmark studies by Gudjonsson and Clark having to do with the suggestibility of certain subjects. And the Reid book for cops on how to get around Miranda.

“She sounds like she wrote the fricking book, Lindsay,” Yuki continued, getting even more pissed off. “She says with authority how cops can browbeat and trick suspects into making false confessions.”

“Well, some might do that – but I sure didn’t.”

“Of course not. And so then she says how certain people with low intelligence or low self-esteem would rather agree with cops than disagree with them. And so the jury looks at Junie.”

“Junie confessed all on her own -”

“I know, I know, but you know what Junie looks like – Bambi’s baby sister. So finally Dr. Paige wraps it up, and I’m wondering how I’m going to cancel out her testimony without showing the whole two-hour tape of your interview with Junie.”

“Well, you could’ve done that,” I said, snapping the plastic lid closed on my salad and tossing it into the trash can. Yuki did the same.

“Two hours, Lindsay? Of Junie denying everything? So listen. I got up and said, ‘Dr. Paige, did you ever meet Junie Moon?’ ‘No.’ ‘Ever see the tape of the interview with the police?’ ‘Yes.’ So I said, ‘Did the police browbeat the defendant or lie to her or trick her?’ ‘No, no, not really.’ ”

Yuki sipped her tea, then continued her reenactment of her cross-examination of Dr. Paige.

“So then I make a mistake.”

“What did you do?”

“I was exasperated, Lindsay.” Yuki grimaced. She raked her hair away from her lovely heart-shaped face.

“I said, ‘So, what did the police do, exactly?’ I know not to ask a question I don’t have an answer to, but shit! I’ve seen the damned interview two dozen times and you and Conklin did nothing!

“And now Red Dog is glaring at me, and the shrink is saying, ‘In my opinion, Miss Moon not only has bottomless low self-esteem, she feels guilty because she’s a prostitute and her confession was a way of reducing her guilt.’

“I couldn’t believe she was asking the jury to swallow that, so I said, ‘So you’re saying she feels guilty that she’s a prostitute and that’s why she confessed to manslaughter?’

“ ‘That’s what I’m saying,’ Paige says, so I say, ‘That’s all, Doctor.’ And Bendinger tells her to step down, and I’m squeezing in behind Red Dog’s chair, facing the gallery, and there’s Twilly,” Yuki said.

“Isn’t he there every day?” I asked my friend.

“Yeah, but now he’s sitting right behind me. And I’m making eye contact with him because that’s all I can do. And I hear Davis say she’s calling Junie Moon to the stand, and the judge says, ‘First we’re going to recess for lunch.’ And Red Dog pushes back his chair, pinning me chest to nose with that creep, Twilly.

“And Twilly sneers. And my stomach clenches and my skin gets cold and he whispers, ‘Point, Davis.’

“Omigod, and so Red Dog turns and gives me that withering look again, and I’m not going to lose this case over the testimony of that shrink, am I, Lindsay, am I? Because I’ll tell you, that just can’t happen.”

“It won’t -”

“Right. It won’t,” Yuki said through her teeth, slamming her fist down on her desk. “Because the jury’s going to see the truth, and they’ve got to come to one of two conclusions.

“Either Junie Moon is guilty. Or she’s guilty as sin.”

Chapter 79

THE STANFORD MALL was an open-air dream market with shops grouped on narrow lanes, embedded in gardens. And what shops they were: the big stores Neiman and Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, and the high-end boutiques Armani, Benetton, Louis Vuitton.

Hawk and Pidge had taken a seat on a bench outside the Polo shop, surrounded by a small forest of potted topiary, aromas of flowers and coffee wafting all around them. It was a Saturday, and great masses of designer- clad shoppers were out, parading down the little walkways past Pidge and Hawk, swinging their shopping bags,