7th Heaven

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” I said, getting up from my chair, making a racket with it, taking a couple of laps around the table.

Junie started speaking quickly, as if by talking fast she’d get to the end of her story and it would all be over.

“After a few hours, Ricky decided to cut up his body with a knife. It was the most horrible thing I could ever imagine – and I grew up on a farm! I was throwing up and crying,” Junie said, looking as though she might do it now.

I pulled out my chair again, put my butt in the seat, determined not to scare the little hooker even as she shocked me to the bone.

“But once we started cutting, there was no way back,” Junie said, pleading to Conklin with her eyes. “I helped Ricky put Michael’s body into about eight garbage bags, and then we piled the bags into Ricky’s truck. It was like five in the morning. And no one was around.”

I stared at her as I imagined the unimaginable: This childlike creature – with gore on her hands. The body of Michael Campion in bloody chunks.

I heard Conklin say, “Go on, Junie. We’re with you. Get it all off your chest.”

“We drove up the coast a few hours,” Junie said, now telling the story as if she were recalling a dream. “I fell asleep, and when I woke up, Ricky was saying, ‘This is the end of the line.’ We were parked in the back of a McDonald’s, and there were some Dumpsters back there.

“That’s where we left the garbage bags.”

“What town? Do you know?” I asked.

“Not really.”

“Think,” I snapped.

“I’ll try.”

Junie gave us her boyfriend’s name and address, and I wrote it all down. Rich passed her a pad of paper and asked her if she’d like to make her statement official.

“Not really,” she said, seeming empty and exhausted. “So… will you drive me home now?”

“Not really,” I repeated back at her. “Stand up and put your hands behind your back.”

“You’re arresting me?”

“Yes. We are.”

Even on the tightest notch, the cuffs were loose around her wrists.

“But – I told you the truth!”

“And we appreciate it,” I said. “Thank you very much. You’re under arrest for tampering with evidence and interfering with a police investigation. That should hold you for now.”

Junie was crying again, telling Conklin how sorry she was and that it wasn’t her fault. I was scanning the map in my mind, imagining the towns along the coast, the six hundred McDonald’s restaurants in Northern California.

And I was wondering if there was a chance in the world that we’d ever recover Michael Campion’s remains.

Chapter 8

AT JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, I was sitting on a kitchen stool watching Joe put pasta on to boil. Joe is a big, gorgeous guy, over six feet, dark hair, bright blue eyes, and now he was standing at the stove in his blue boxers, his hair rumpled and his dear face creased with sleep. He looked husband-y and he loved me.

I loved him, too.

That’s why Joe had just moved to San Francisco from DC, ending our tumultuous long-distance relationship in favor of starting something new and maybe permanent. And although Joe had rented a fantastic apartment on Lake Street, a month after his move he’d brought over his copper-bottomed cookware and started sleeping in my bed five nights a week. Luckily, I’d been able to move up to the third floor of my building to give us a little more room.

Our relationship had gotten richer and more loving, exactly what I’d hoped for.

So I had to ask myself – why was the engagement ring Joe had given me still in its black velvet box, diamonds blazing in the dark?

Why couldn’t I just say yes?

“What did Cindy tell you?” I asked him.

“Verbatim? She said, ‘Here’s Martha. Lindsay got a break in the Campion case and she’s on it. Tell. Her. She wrecked our weekend, and I’m calling her in the morning for a quote. And she’d better give me a good one.’ ”

I laughed at Joe’s imitation of Cindy, who is not only my friend, but also the top reporter on the Chronicle’s crime desk.

“It’s either tell her everything,” I said, “or tell her nothing. And for now, it’s nothing.”

“So, fill me in, Blondie. Since I’m wide-awake.”

I took a deep breath and told Joe all about Junie Moon; how she’d denied everything for two hours before telling us to turn off the camera, then talking about her “date” with Michael and his apparent heart attack; and how instead of calling 911, Junie had sung Michael Campion a lullaby as his heart bucked to a halt and killed him.

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

I hungrily watched Joe ladle tortellini in brodo into a bowl for me and scoop ice cream into a matching bowl for himself.

“Where’s the body?” Joe asked me, pulling out a stool and sitting beside me.

“That’s the sixty-million-dollar question,” I said, referring to the reported size of the Campion fortune. I told Joe the rest of it: Junie’s dazed speech about Michael Campion’s dismemberment, the subsequent run up the coast with her boyfriend, and the eventual body dump behind a fast food restaurant – somewhere.

“You know, Conklin read Junie her rights when we brought her in for questioning,” I mused. “And it pissed me off.

“Junie wasn’t in custody, and I was sure if she was Mirandized, she wouldn’t talk. And frankly, I believed what she said at first, that everything she knew about Michael Campion she’d read in People magazine. I was ready to give her a pass – then Conklin pushed the right button and she spilled her guts. It was a good thing that he’d read her her rights.”

I shook my head thinking about it. “Rich has such confidence for a young cop, not to mention an astonishing way with women,” I said, warming to the subject. “And it’s not just that he’s great-looking, it’s that he’s very respectful. And he’s very smart. And women just want to tell him everything…”

Joe reached for my empty bowl and stood up, abruptly.

“Honey?”

“It’s getting so I feel like I know this guy,” Joe said over the sound of water running in the sink. “I’d like to meet him sometime.”

“Sure -”

“What do you say we go to bed, Lindsay?” he said, cutting me off. “It’s been a long night.”

Chapter 9

AT AROUND EIGHT the next morning, we found Ricky Malcolm jiggling his key into the front door of a shabby apartment house on Mission Street. He made us as cops and tried to take off, so we scuffled with him on the