7th Heaven

“What do you mean?”

“Living together, you idiot. Are you thinking of getting seriously hooked up? As in married?”

“I like the way you kind of edge into a subject.”

“Hell. You’re not such a subtle creature yourself.”

I tipped my spoon in her direction – touché, my friend – then I started talking. Claire knew most of it: about my failed marriage, about my love affair with Chris, who’d been shot dead in the line of duty. And I talked about my sister, Cat, divorced with two young kids, holding down a big job, and having a bitter relationship with her ex.

“Then I look at you, Butterfly,” I said. “In your grown-up four-bedroom house. And you have your darling husband, two great kids off into the world, and now you have the guts and love enough to make another baby.”

“So where are you in all this, sugar?” Claire said. “You going to let Joe make the decision you don’t love him enough to marry him? Let some other girl make off with Joe, the perfect man?”

I threw myself back against the pillows and stared at the ceiling. I thought about the Job, about working with Rich seventeen hours a day and loving that. How little time I had for anything but work; hadn’t done Tai Chi in ages, stopped playing the guitar, even turned the nightly run with Martha over to Joe.

I put my mind on how different it would all be if I were married and had a baby, if there were people who worried about me every time I left the house. And damn – what if I got shot?

And then I considered the alternative.

Did I really want to be alone?

I was about to run all this by Claire, but I’d been quiet for so long, my best friend picked that moment to jump in.

“You’ll figure it out, sweetheart,” she said, capping the empty ice-cream container, resting her spoon in a Limoges saucer on the nightstand. “You’ll work on it and then, snap. You’ll just know what’s right for you.”

Would I?

How could Claire be so sure, when I was without a clue in the world?

Chapter 90

ONLY THREE BLOCKS from the Hall, Le Fleur du Jour is a popular morning hangout for cops. At 6:30 a.m. the smell of freshly baked bread made noses quiver up and down the flower market. Joe, Conklin, and I were at one of the little tables on the patio with a view of the flower stalls in the alley. Having never been with Joe and Conklin together, I felt an uneasiness I would have hated to explain.

Joe was telling Conklin some of his thoughts about the arson-homicide cases, saying he agreed with us, that one person couldn’t have subdued the victims alone.

“These kids are show-offy smart,” Joe said. “Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.”

“And that means what?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. Did everyone know Latin but me?

Joe flashed me a grin. “It means, ‘Anything said in Latin sounds profound.’ ”

Conklin nodded, his brown eyes sober this morning. I’d seen this precise look when he interrogated a suspect. He was taking in everything about Joe, and maybe hoping that my boyfriend with his high-level career in law enforcement might actually have a theory.

Or better yet, Joe might turn out to be a jerk.

No doubt, Joe was appraising Richie, too.

“They’re definitely smart,” Conklin said, “maybe a little smarter than we are.”

“You know about Leopold and Loeb?” Joe asked, sitting back as the waiter put strawberry pancakes in front of him. The waiter walked around the table distributing eggs Benedict to me and to Conklin.

“I’ve heard their names,” Conklin said.

“Well, in 1924,” Joe said, “two smart and show-offy kids who were also privileged and sociopathic decided to kill someone as an intellectual exercise. Just to see if they could get away with it.”

Joe had our attention.

“Leopold had an IQ that went off the charts at around 200,” Joe said, “and Loeb’s IQ was at least 160. They picked out a schoolboy at random and murdered him. But with all their brilliance they made some dumb mistakes.”

“So you’re thinking our guys could have a similar motive. Just to see if they could get away with it?”

“Has the same kind of feel.”

“Crime TV has been educational for this generation of bad guys,” Conklin said. “They pick up their cigarette butts and shell casings… Our guys have been pretty careful. The clues we’re finding are the ones they’re leaving on purpose.”

Right about then, I stopped listening and just watched body language. Joe, directing everything to Conklin, coming on a little too strong. Conklin, deferring without being deferential. I was so attached to them both, I turned my head from one to another as if I were courtside at Wimbledon.

Blue eyes. Brown eyes. My lover. My partner.

I pushed my eggs to the side of my plate.

For probably the first time in my life, I had nothing to say.

Chapter 91

YUKI SAT AT the prosecution table between Nicky Gaines and Len Parisi, waiting for court to convene. It was Friday. The jurors had deliberated for three days, and word had come down late last night that they’d arrived at their verdict. Yuki wondered if the jurors had rushed their decision so they could have a weekend free of responsibility and tension. And if so, would that be good or bad for the People?

She felt overcaffeinated because she was. She’d been swigging coffee since six this morning and hadn’t slept more than two hours the night before.

“You okay?” she asked her second chair. Nicky was breathing through his mouth, the odor of VapoRub coming off him in waves.

“I’m good,” he said. “You?”

“Peachy.”

To Yuki’s right, Red Dog was writing a memo on a legal pad. He appeared blasé, carefree, a mountain of calm. It was an act. In fact, Parisi was a volcano resting between explosions. Across the aisle, L. Diana Davis looked fresh, powdered, and coiffed. She put a mothering arm around her client’s frail shoulders.

And then, at nine on the dot, the bailiff, a sinewy man in a green uniform, called out, “All rise.” Yuki stood, then sat back down as the judge took the bench. Nicky coughed into his handkerchief. Parisi capped his pen and put it in his breast pocket. Yuki clasped her hands in front of her, swung her head to the right as the door to the jury room opened and the jurors entered the courtroom.

The twelve men and women were wearing church clothes today, hair combed and sprayed into place, men in jacket and tie, the women sparkling with jewelry.

The foreperson, a woman named Maria Martinez, was about thirty, Yuki’s age, a sociology teacher and mother of two. Yuki couldn’t see Martinez coming out in favor of a prostitute who would let a boy die, then cover up the fact with a body dump.

Martinez put her handbag on the floor next to her chair.

Yuki felt a prickling sensation on the back of her neck and her arms as Judge Bendinger opened his laptop, made a joke to the court reporter that Yuki couldn’t hear. Then he swiveled his chair face-forward and said, “Order, please.”

The room quieted, and Bendinger asked if the jury had a verdict.

Martinez said, “We do, Your Honor.”

The verdict form moved from Martinez to the judge and back again to Martinez. Nicky Gaines coughed again, and Parisi reached behind Yuki and flicked Gaines on the back of his head, frowned a rebuke.

“Will the foreman please read the verdict?” Bendinger asked. Martinez stood, looking small in her charcoal-gray suit. She cleared her throat.

“We, the jury, find the defendant, Junie Moon, not guilty in the charge of murder in the second degree.

“We find the defendant, Junie Moon, not guilty in the charge of tampering with evidence…”

The packed courtroom erupted in loud exclamations punctuated by the sharp slams of Bendinger’s gavel.

“What did she say? What did she say?” Gaines asked Yuki, even as the judge thanked the jury and dismissed them.