7th Heaven

“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.”

“Was he wearing a suit and eyeglasses?” Conklin yelled. “Or maybe he’d changed into tights and a cape?”

“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 Ha

“See how this pe

I could just make out the dull copper blob.

“The college girls on the second floor – you know them?” Ha

“Just to wave hi.”

“Okay, well, apparently they’ve been blowing fuses every other day with their hair dryers and air conditioner and irons and whatnot. And your super got tired of ru

“Which does what?”

Chuck explained everything that happened, how the copper pe

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,” Ha

“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 pe

“If anyone had died in this fire, I’d be charging Angel Fernandez with negligent homicide,” Ha

I’d been trained to read a lie in a person’s face, and all I saw was the truth in Chuck Ha

“Ha

“That’s your professional opinion?”

“Yep. Ha

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.