7th Heaven

The forty-by-forty-foot open space was lit with flickering overhead fluorescent tubing, making the night crew hunched over their desks look like they’d just crawled out of their graves. A few old guys lifted their eyes, said, “Howsit goin’, Sarge?” as I made my way to Jacobi’s glassed-in corner office, with its view of the on-ramp to the 280 freeway.

My partner, Richard Conklin, was already there; thirty years old, six feet two inches of all-American hunk, one of his long legs resting on the edge of Jacobi’s junkyard of a desk.

I pulled out the other chair, bashed my knee, swore loudly and emphatically as Jacobi sniggered, “Nice talk, Boxer.” I sat down, thinking how this had been a functional workspace when Jacobi’s office had been mine. I took off my baseball cap and shook out my hair, hoping to hell that the guys wouldn’t smell tequila on my breath.

“What kind of lead?” I asked without preamble.

“It’s a tip kind of lead,” Jacobi said. “Anonymous caller using a prepaid cell phone – untraceable, naturally. Caller said he’d seen the Campion kid entering a house on Russian Hill the night he disappeared. The house is home to a prostitute.”

As Jacobi made room on his desk for the prostitute’s rap sheet, I thought about Michael Campion’s life at the time he’d disappeared.

There’d been no dates for Michael, no parties, no sports. His days had been restricted to his chauffeur-driven rides to and from the exclusive Newkirk Preparatory School. So it didn’t sound exactly crazy that he’d visited a prostitute. He’d probably paid off his driver and escaped the plush-lined prison of his parents’ love for an hour or two.

But what had happened to him afterward?

What had happened to Michael?

“Why is this tip credible?” I asked Jacobi.

“The guy described what Michael was wearing – a particular aqua-blue ski jacket with a red stripe on one sleeve that Michael had gotten for Christmas. That jacket was never mentioned in the press.”

“So why did this tipster wait three months before calling it in?” I asked Jacobi.

“I can only tell you what he said. He said he was leaving the prostitute’s house as Michael Campion was coming in. That he didn’t drop the dime until now because he has a wife and kids. Didn’t want to get caught up in the hullabaloo, but that his conscience had been needling him. Finally got to him, I guess.”

“Russian Hill is a nice neighborhood for a pross,” Conklin said.

And it was. Kind of like the French Quarter meets South Beach. And it was within walking distance of the Newkirk School. I took a notebook out of my handbag.

“What’s the prostitute’s name?”

“Her given name is Myrtle Bays,” Jacobi said, handing me her sheet. The attached mug shot was of a young woman with a girlish look, short blond hair, and huge eyes. Her date of birth made her twenty-two years old.

“A few years ago she legally changed her name,” said Jacobi. “Now she calls herself Junie Moon.”

“So Michael Campion went to a hooker, Jacobi,” I said, putting the rap sheet back down on his desk. “What’s your theory?”

“That the kid died in flagrante delicto, Boxer. In English that means ‘in the saddle.’ If this tip pans out, I’m thinking maybe Ms. Myrtle Bays, AKA Junie Moon, killed Michael with his first roll in the hay – and then she made his body disappear.”

Chapter 4

A YOUNG MAN in his twenties with spiky blond hair and a black sport coat whistled through his teeth as he left Junie Moon’s front door. Conklin and I watched from our squad car, saw the john lope across Leavenworth, heard the tootle as he disarmed his late model BMW.

As his taillights disappeared around the corner, Conklin and I walked up the path to the front door of what’s called a Painted Lady: a pastel-colored, gingerbread-decorated Victorian house, this one flaking and in need of repair. I pressed the doorbell, waited a minute, pressed it again.

Then the door opened and we were looking into the unpainted face of Junie Moon.

From the first moment, I saw that Junie was no ordinary hooker.

There was a dewy freshness about her that I’d never seen before in a working girl. Her hair was damp from the shower, a cap of blond curls that trailed into a wisp of a braid that had been dyed blue. Her eyes were a deep, smoky gray, and a thin white scar cut through the top lip of her cupid’s-bow mouth.

She was a beauty, but what grabbed me the most was Junie Moon’s disarming, childlike appearance. Junie pulled the sash of her gold silk dressing gown tightly around her narrow waist as my partner showed her his shield, said our names and “Homicide. Mind if we come in?”

“Homicide? You’re here to see me?” she asked. Her voice matched her appearance, not just young, but sweetened with innocence.

“We have some questions about a missing person,” Rich said, launching his amazing, babe-catcher smile.

Junie Moon invited us in.

The room smelled sweet, floral, like lavender and jasmine, and the light was soft, coming from low-watt bulbs under silk-draped lampshades. Conklin and I sat on a velvet upholstered loveseat while Junie took a seat on an ottoman, clasped her hands around her knees. She was barefoot, her nail polish the pale coral color of the inside of seashells.

“Nice place,” Conklin said.

“Thank you. I rent it. Furnished,” she said.

“Have you ever seen this man?” I asked Junie Moon, showing her a photo of Michael Campion.

“You mean for real? That’s Michael Campion, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

Junie Moon’s gray eyes grew even more huge. “I’ve never seen Michael Campion in my entire life.”

“Okay, Ms. Moon,” I said. “We have some questions we’d like to ask you at the police station.”

Chapter 5

JUNIE MOON SAT ACROSS FROM US in Interview Two, a twelve-by-twelve-foot gray-tiled room with a metal table, four matching chairs, and a video camera affixed to the ceiling.

I’d checked twice to be sure. The camera was loaded and running.

Junie was now wearing an open-weave pink cardigan over a lace-trimmed cami, jeans, and sneakers, no makeup, and – I’m not overstating this – she looked like she was in the tenth grade.

Conklin had started the interview by reading Junie Moon her Miranda rights in a charming, “no big deal,” respectful manner. She initialed the acknowledgment of rights form without complaint, but still, it irked the hell out of me. Junie Moon wasn’t under arrest. We didn’t have to Mirandize her for a noncustodial interview, and Conklin’s warning might very well inhibit her from telling us something we urgently needed to know. I swallowed my pique. What was done was done.

Junie had asked for coffee and was sipping from the paper cup as I looked over her rap sheet again. I mentioned her three arrests for prostitution, and she told me that since she’d changed her name, she hadn’t been arrested for anything.

“I feel like a new person,” she said.

There were no track marks on her arms, no bruises that I could see, and that made it even less understandable. What was the draw? What was the hook?