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 sidewalk and convinced him to come to the Hall.
“You’re not under arrest,” I’d said, escorting him to our car. “We just want to hear your side of the story.”
Ricky was in “the box” now, glaring at me with his weird, wide-spaced green eyes, tattooed arms crossed over his chest, his face blanched with the nocturnal pallor of a man who hadn’t seen broad daylight in years.
Within the forest of tattoos on Malcolm’s right arm was a red heart with the initials R.M. The heart was impaled on the hook of a crescent moon. Malcolm looked predatory and violent, and now I was wondering if Junie’s story of Michael Campion’s death was true.
Had Campion really died of natural causes?
Or had this freak walked in on Michael and Junie — and killed him?
Malcolm’s sheet showed three arrests, one conviction, all for possession. I slapped the folder closed.
“What can you tell us about Michael Campion?” I asked him.
“What I read in the papers,” he said.