James Patterson - 7th Heaven

“Has Jacobi already spoken to Hanni?”

“No. He wanted to talk to me first. Hanni knows nothing about this.”

It took long seconds for me to sort it all out, put Chuck Hanni back into his role as friend, and realize that the essential truth hadn’t changed. I was shivering, and I wasn’t cold.

“Linds?” I heard Rich say.

“We still don’t know who set fire to my place or to any of the others,” I said. “We still don’t know anything.”

THERE HAD BEEN a whole blessed week’s break while Judge Bendinger returned to physical rehab for his replaced knee. But the break was over. Bendinger was back. And Yuki now felt the tsunami effect of the whole freakin’ Junie Moon circus starting all over again, the out-of-control press, the pressure to win.

At nine o’clock sharp, court was called into session.

And the defense began to put on its case.

L. Diana Davis didn’t look up as her first witness came through the gate, passing so close she must have felt a breeze as his herringbone jacket nearly grazed her arm. Yuki saw Davis lean in and speak behind her hand to her client, all the while panning the gallery with her eyes. The TV cameras were running, and the reporters were packed in the rows at the back of the room.

Davis smiled.

Yuki whispered to Len Parisi, “There’s no place Davis would rather be. Nobody she’d rather defend.”

Red Dog smiled. “That beast is inside you, too, Yuki. Learn to love it.”

Yuki watched Davis pat her client’s hand as Lieutenant Charles Clapper, head of CSU, was sworn in. Then Davis stood and greeted her witness.

“Lieutenant Clapper, how long have you been head of the San Francisco Crime Scene Unit?”

“Fifteen years.”

“And what did you do before that?”

“I started with the San Diego PD right outta school, worked vice for five years, homicide for five. Then I joined the Las Vegas CSU before moving to San Francisco and joining the CSU here.”

“In fact, you’ve written books on trace evidence, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I’ve done a couple of books.”

“You appear on TV a few times a week, don’t you? Sometimes even more times than me,” Davis said, smiling widely, getting the laugh she wanted from the gallery.

“I don’t know about that,” Clapper said, smiling too.

“Very good. And how many homicides have you investigated in the last twenty-five years, Lieutenant?”

“I have no idea.”

“Take a wild guess.”

“A wild guess? Maybe a couple of hundred a year.”

“So it’s reasonable to say you may have investigated as many as five thousand homicides, is that right?”

“Roughly.”

“I think we can accept ‘roughly,’ ” Davis said, good-naturedly. “And as well as investigating fresh crime scenes, you investigate crimes that happened months or even years ago, is that correct?”

“I’ve investigated cold cases, yes.”

“Now, in April of this year, were you called to the home of the defendant?”

“I was.”

“And did it have the appearance of a crime scene?”

“No. The rooms were orderly. There was no evident disturbance, no blood or shell casings, et cetera.”

Davis said, “Now, were you told that a man may have been dismembered in the bathtub of the defendant’s house?”

“I was.”

“And you did all the normal tests for trace evidence, did you not?”

“Yes, we did.”

“Come up with anything evidentiary?”

“No.”

“Find any evidence that showed that the blood had been cleaned up?”

“Nope.”

“No bleach or anything like that?”

“No.”

“Lieutenant Clapper, let me just give you the whole laundry list at once and save a little time here. The walls hadn’t been repainted, the rugs hadn’t been cleaned? You didn’t find an implement that could have been used to dismember a body?”

“No.”

“So it’s fair to say that you and your team did everything you could do to ascertain the manner in which a crime was committed – or even if a crime was committed?”

“We did.”

“Based on your experience and your examination of the so-called crime scene, please tell the jury – did you find any evidence, direct or indirect, that links Junie Moon to the alleged murder of Michael Campion?”

“No.”

“Thank you. That’s all I have for this witness, Your Honor.”

YUKI WAS STILL STEAMING from Red Dog’s rebuke. Or maybe she was hot under the collar because he’d been right.

Learn to love the beast.

Yuki slapped her pen down on her notepad, straightened her jacket as she stood, and approached Charlie Clapper at the stand.

“Lieutenant, I won’t keep you long.”

“No problem, Ms. Castellano.”

“You’re a member of law enforcement, right?”

“Yes.”

“And in the course of your twenty-five-year-long career in vice, homicide, and crime scene investigation, have you been involved in matters concerning prostitutes?”

“Certainly.”

“Are you familiar, generally speaking, with the lives of prostitutes and their customs?”

“I’d say so.”

“Would you agree that in exchange for a fee, a prostitute engages in sexual relations with any number of men?”

“I’d say that’s the job description.”

“Now, there are many subsets of that job description, wouldn’t you say? From streetwalker to call girl?”

“Sure.”

“And some prostitutes work mostly out of their homes?”

“Some do.”

“And is it your understanding that Ms. Moon falls into that last category?”

“That’s what I was told.”

“Okay. And would you also agree that as a matter of hygiene and practicality, a prostitute working at home would do her best to shower after her sexual encounters?”

“I would say that would be a common and hygienic practice.”

“Do you happen to know how much water is typically used by a person taking a shower?”

“Twenty gallons, depending.”

Yuki nodded, said to Charlie, “Now, based on your general knowledge of prostitutes, and given that Ms. Moon worked at home, would you agree that she probably showered after having sex with each of her tricks, maybe six to ten times a day, seven days a week -”

“Objection,” Davis called out. “Calls for speculation on the part of the witness, and furthermore, I strongly object to the way counsel is characterizing my client.”

“Your Honor,” Yuki protested. “We all know that Ms. Moon is a prostitute. I’m only asserting that she’s probably a clean one.”

“Go ahead, Ms. Castellano,” Judge Bendinger said, snapping the rubber band on his wrist. “But get to the point today , will you?”

“Thanks, Your Honor,” Yuki said, sweetly. “Lieutenant Clapper, could you tell us this?” Yuki drew a breath and launched into what was becoming her trademark – an uninterruptible run-on question.

“If a man was dismembered in a bathtub, and in the three months between the day the crime was committed and the time you examined the bathtub a large amount of soap and shampoo and water passed through that two-inch drain – by my calculations, 100 gallons of soapy water daily – and now let’s double that for the johns who took a shower before going back to their dorm or office or home to their wives – so even if Ms. Moon practices ‘Never on Sunday,’ that would still be about 130,000 gallons by the time CSU examined the drains – could that activity have completely cleansed that bathtub of residual trace evidence?”

“Well, yes, that’s very possible.”