The 8th Confession Read online

  “Want me to come with?” Nicky Gaines said, raking his shaggy blond mop with his fingers.

  “Yeah. Try to make him laugh.”

  “Really?”

  “Couldn’t hurt.”

  Parisi was on the phone when Yuki rapped on his open door. He swung his swivel chair around and stuck his forefinger in the air, the universal sign for “I’ll be a minute.”

  Parisi was in his late forties, with wiry red hair, a pear-shaped girth, and a heart condition that had nearly killed him a year and a half ago. He was known around town as “Red Dog,” and Yuki thought the name pleased him. Called up images of a drooling bulldog with a spiked collar.

  Parisi hung up the phone, signaled for Yuki and Nicky to come in, then barked, “Did I hear this right? The jury hung?”

  “Yep,” Yuki said from the doorway. “Duffy dropped the Allen charge and then he sequestered them.”

  “No kidding. What do you think? There were one or two holdouts?”

  “I don’t know, Len,” Yuki said. “I counted six jurors that wouldn’t meet my eyes.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Parisi said. “I’m glad Duffy put the squeeze on, but don’t get your hopes up.” He shook his head, asked rhetorically, “What’s the hang-up? Stacey Glenn did it.”

  “I’m guessing it’s Rose Glenn’s testimony,” Yuki said. “When she said, ‘My baby would never hurt us.’ It’s got to be that -”

  Parisi had stopped listening. “So, okay, we wait it out. Meanwhile, Gaines, get a haircut. Castellano, help Kathy Valoy after lunch. She’s swamped. That’s it. Thank you.”

  Parisi picked up his ringing phone, spun around in his chair, faced his window.

  “I would have gone for it,” Nicky was saying as he and Yuki walked back down the hallway. “But he didn’t even look at me. I couldn’t get a quip in edgewise. Or a retort. Or even a pun.”

  Yuki laughed.

  “And believe me, I’ve got jokes ready to go. Have you heard the one about the priest, the rabbi, and the hippo who walk into a bar -”

  Yuki laughed again, a musical chortle that was just short of manic. “You made me laugh,” Yuki said. “That’s something. You did good, number two. I’ll see you later.”

  Yuki left Gaines in the bull pen, took the stairs down to the lobby, and drafted behind a large cop who strong-armed the heavy steel- and-glass doors leading out to Bryant Street.

  Yuki quickly scanned the reporters loitering on the steps outside the Hall. No one had seen her – yet.

  Which was good.

  Sometimes when the press fired questions at her, she wanted to answer and often couldn’t prevent her thoughts from stampeding out of her mouth unchecked. So when Yuki saw Candy Stimpson, a feisty reporter from the Examiner, she walked quickly down the steps, making a straight line for the corner.

  The reporter called after her, “Yuki! Is the Glenn trial going into the crapper? How are you feeling right now? I just want a quote. One stinking quote.”

  “Outta my face, Candy,” Yuki snapped, turning her head toward the reporter, maintaining her forward motion as she stepped off the sidewalk. “I’ve got nothing to say.”

  Candy Stimpson screamed, “Yuki, no!”

  But Yuki didn’t get it.

  Chapter 21

  THE LIGHT SHINING in Yuki’s eyes was blinding.

  “Mom!” she yelled. “Mommy!”

  “It’s okay,” said a man’s reassuring voice. “You’re okay.”

  The light went off, and she saw gray eyes rimmed with blue, then the rest of his face. She didn’t know him, had never seen him before in her life.

  “Who are you?”

  “Dr. Chesney,” he said. “John. And your name is…?”

  “Ms. Castellano. Yuki.”

  “Good.” He smiled. “That checks with your ID. I have a few questions -”

  “What the hell? What’s going on?”

  “You’re in the emergency room,” Dr. Chesney told her. He appeared to be in his early thirties. Looked like he worked out. “You walked into an oncoming car,” he said.

  “I did not.”

  “It was stopping for the light, lucky for you,” Chesney continued. “Your CAT scan was negative. Just a minor concussion. You’ve got a couple of scrapes, a few stitches, an impressive bruise on your left hip, but no broken bones. How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Two.”

  “And now?”

  “Three.”

  “Okay. Do this. Close your eyes. Touch your nose with your left forefinger. Now, same thing with the right. Excellent. And what’s the last thing you remember?”

  “I have an impressive bruise on my hip.”

  Chesney laughed. “I meant, what do you remember from before the accident?”

  “A reporter was hounding me…”

  “You remember her name?”

  “Candy Bigmouth Stimpson.”

  “Okay. Very good. She’s waiting outside. I want to keep you here overnight, just for observation -”

  But Yuki was staring around, starting to recognize the emergency room, her guts turning to Jell-O. She gripped the sides of the bed. “What hospital is this?”

  “San Francisco Municipal.”

  Mommy died here.

  “I’ll want to check you over again in the morning -”

  “Hell with that,” Yuki said. “I’m fine.”

  “Or you can leave,” said Chesney. He produced a form on a clipboard, said, “This is a release that says you’re checking out against medical advice. Sign here.”

  “Got a pen?”

  Chesney clicked his Bic, and Yuki signed where he indicated. He said, “I recommend acetaminophen. It’s not too late to change your mind about staying overnight, Yuki.”

  “No. No, no, no.”

  “Your decision,” Chesney said. “Don’t wash your hair for at least three days -”

  “Are you crazy? Don’t wash? I have to work -”

  “Listen. Look at me, Yuki, and pay attention. You’ll want your doctor to take those stitches out in ten days. If you can wait thirty or forty seconds, a nurse will bring your clothes. I suggest you go home and get some sleep.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Get some sleep. And I’m not joking. Watch where you’re walking.”

  Chapter 22

  YUKI THOUGHT, I have to get out of here. Have to!

  She finished dressing, stepped into her shoes, threw open the curtains around the stall, and fled. After taking a wrong turn into obstetrics and a detour through the cafeteria, she found the door leading to the waiting room.

  Candy Stimpson stood up when she saw Yuki.

  “Oh God, Yuki, I’m so sorry.”

  Candy had big curly hair and enormous breasts. She embraced Yuki, who withstood the hug briefly, then struggled free and headed toward the exit, saying, “What time is it? How long have I been here?”

  Candy kept pace with Yuki, talking all the way.

  “It’s after five. I’ve got your briefcase and your handbag and all your instructions and paperwork. In the interest of full disclosure, I opened your wallet. Had to get your insurance card and… oh! I also have the name and number of the driver who hit you. She wants to make sure you’re okay. Probably worried because she hit a lawyer with her Beemer, for God’s sake… ha! Oh, and give me that prescription, Yuki. We’ll stop at a pharmacy. Do you have food in your apartment? Does your head hurt?”

  “My head?”

  Candy looked at her, nodded dumbly.

  Yuki lifted her hand to the left side of her scalp, felt stubble, a prickly line of stitches.

  “Oh nooooo. A mirror. I need a mirror.”

  Candy dug into her purse, located a two-by-two plastic clamshell case, and handed it to Yuki. Yuki opened the mirror and angled it, staring at herself wide-eyed and disbelieving, finally getting the complete picture.

  Her head had been shaved in a three-inch-wide swath starting at her left temple, then swooping in a long, graceful curve all the wa
y behind her left ear. Black stitches, like a prickly caterpillar, marched along the center of that neatly sheared road.

  “Look at me! I’m a freak!” Yuki shouted to the reporter.

  “On you, freaky looks cool. Lean on me, honey. I’m driving you home.”

  Chapter 23

  IT WAS ANOTHER freaking brilliant night at Aria. The Wurlitzer was pounding out mob hits and opera classics, tourists were giddy on killer martinis, and the regulars were high on gin and tonics, on seeing and being seen.

  “Pet Girl” sat alone at the crowded bar, nursing her secret like it was a just-hatched baby bird.

  She was a petite brown-eyed blonde, looked ten years younger than her thirty-three years, a woman who could slip in and out of a room like she was wearing a cloak of invisibility, like she was a freaking superhero.

  That was the silver lining.

  Pet Girl left a ten on the bar. Taking her Irish coffee, she drifted back to the VIP room, where McKenzie Oliver, the recently deceased rock star and her former boyfriend, lay in state, his bronze coffin squared up on the pool table.

  Pet Girl’s love affair with McKenzie had lasted for six months or twenty-seven years, depending on how you counted it, but anyway it ended badly a few days ago.

  That sucked. And she still didn’t totally understand why. She’d loved him, the real person he was, the kid with a concave chest and flat feet, that way he had of looking cool and scared at the same time, just like in their sandbox days, when he was Mikey and she was his friend.

  Clearly none of that had counted with him – evidence the underage, weeping junkie waif with tattoos on her face and rings in her nose, McKenzie’s “real” girlfriend, whom he’d been seeing the whole time she’d been seeing him, and Pet Girl had been the last to know.

  When she’d caught them in the act, McKenzie had given her that look that said, Come on. Look who I am. What did you expect?

  He hadn’t even said “I’m sorry.”

  Now Pet Girl peered into the satin-lined casket and had to admit that McKenzie looked good. He looked clean, anyway – in both meanings of the word. She felt her nose prickle, her eyes fill up, a shot of grief slamming into her heart – what she’d least expected, when she’d least expected it.

  She swiped at her tears with the palm of her hand, slipped his front-door key into the breast pocket of his leather suit jacket, whispered to the dead man, “Bite me, asshole.” Then she signed the guest book before dropping into a sofa so she could watch the party from the sidelines.

  And what a party McKenzie was having.

  The guys from his band were snorting lines off the pool table. Bono huddled in a corner with his manager. Willie Nelson dropped by to pay his respects, and all the others blah-blahed about the tragedy, the people she’d known her whole life, people who thought they knew her but who didn’t really know her at all.

  Pet Girl closed her eyes and listened to J’razz, the lead vocalist from McKenzie’s band, sing “Dark Star,” McKenzie’s tribute to himself. After the applause, J’razz lifted his glass to the corpse, saying, “Too bad you died so fucking young, man.”

  The lights went out. Candles glowed. Everyone joined J’razz in singing “A Hole in the Night,” McKenzie’s friends and fans all thinking it was the drugs that killed him.

  But Pet Girl knew that the drugs had nothing to do with it.

  McKenzie Oliver had been murdered.

  She knew, because she had done it.

  Part Two. THE UPPER CRUST

  Chapter 24

  PET GIRL SAT on the floor of the children’s former nursery, her back against the wall. She was wearing welder’s gloves and steel-tipped boots, had her precious Rama safe inside her bag. And she listened to the Baileys’ muted shouts through the plaster.

  “Pig!”

  “Slut!”

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

  The fools didn’t even know she was sitting ten feet away in the dark, that she’d been waiting for hours for them to come home and screw themselves to sleep.

  She’d used the time well, ran the Grand Plan through her mind again. She was prepared. She knew their habits, the floor plan, the best way in, the quickest way out.

  And she knew the code.

  It was a good plan, but Pet Girl also had a Plan B – what to do if she got caught. And she had the nerve to do even that.

  On the other side of the wall, Ethan Bailey accused his wife of screwing around, and Pet Girl didn’t doubt that she had. Isa had been a pretty competent flirt when they were in class together at Katherine Delmar Burke School.

  And since then, Isa had truly mastered the art of casual seduction. Like Gwyneth Paltrow on a really good day.

  But that wasn’t why Pet Girl despised Isa.

  It was deeper than that, had to do with when her life had shattered to pieces – when Pet Girl was ten and her dad had died, and Isa had hugged her hard at the funeral and said, “I’m sooooo sorry. But don’t ever forget that I love you. We’re best friends forever.”

  “Forever” had lasted a couple of weeks.

  Once her dad’s fortune and protection shifted entirely to his real family, it was as if Pet Girl and her mother had never existed. No more private school or dance classes or birthday parties on Snob Hill for her. Pet Girl had plummeted through the delicate web of those who had it to the flat and dismal plains of “Who cares?” – where the bastard daughter of a married man belonged.

  Isa, on the other hand, had graduated at eighteen and married Ethan Bailey in a hand-beaded Carolina Herrera gown at twenty-two, a wedding attended by the entire West Coast Social Register. And everything else followed: her two clever children, her charities, her place at the gleaming peak of high society.

  Pet Girl’s mother had said, “Move, sweetheart. Start over.” But Pet Girl had her own roots in this city, deeper and more historic than even Isa’s midnight-blue bloodlines.

  And so, this was Pet Girl’s life after the fall, working for the Baileys and their revolting ilk, walking their neurotic dogs, taking their disgusting furs into cold storage, addressing invitations to their snobby friends, people who called her “Pet Girl” and who talked about her when she was close enough to hear.

  For so long, she thought that she was handling it.

  But if she’d learned anything from McKenzie Oliver, it was that “handling it” was overrated.

  Pet Girl stared around the room, filled now with racks of outrageous, never-worn clothes and mountains of unopened boxes of pricey purchases bought on a whim.

  It was sickening. The decadence of the very rich. The twenty-four-karat-gold crap.

  Inside the bedroom, the shouting stopped. Pet Girl pressed her ear to the wall, listened to the Baileys grunt and groan, Isa calling out, “Oh yes, that’s good, oh!” the two of them making what they called love, Isa’s voice giving Pet Girl even more reason to bring her down.

  And then there was silence.

  Pet Girl gripped the handle of her canvas bag.

  It was time.

  Chapter 25

  PET GIRL OPENED the door to the Baileys’ bedroom, dropped to a crouch as the pugs, Wako and Waldo, ran over to her, all snuffling and wriggling. She shushed and rubbed them, watched them trot back to their baskets under the window, circle, and lie down again.

  Pet Girl stood rock still, listening to the Baileys’ rhythmic breathing coming from their vast moonlit bed. At the windows, silk taffeta curtains billowed, the rustling covering her own excited breathing and the whooshing of traffic on the street below.

  She could see that Isa was nude, lying on her stomach under the thousand-thread-count sheets and 100-percent goose down comforter, her long, dark hair fanned out over her shoulders. On her left, Ethan lay on his back, his snores scenting the air with alcohol.

  Pet Girl walked to Isa’s side, homed in on her exposed shoulder. Her heart was thudding. She felt as high as if she’d jumped from a plane and was waiting to pull the rip cord.

  She put down her
canvas bag, opened it, and reached inside with her gloved hand. Just then, Isa stirred, half rose up in her bed, and, seeing Pet Girl’s stooped silhouette, called out, “Who’s there?” her voice slurry with drink and sleep.

  Pet Girl croaked, “Isa, it’s just me.”

  “What are you… doing here?”

  Pet Girl’s feet had frozen to the floor. Had she been crazy? What if Isa turned on the lights? What if the dogs went nuts? What if Ethan woke up?

  Plan B was satisfactory, but it was far from ideal.

  “I picked up your prescription. I made a special trip,” Pet Girl whispered, vamping madly. Ethan stirred, rolled onto his side facing away from her. He pulled the comforter up under his arm. He was out.

  “Put it on my nightstand and get the hell out, okay?”

  “That’s what I’m doing,” Pet Girl said, sounding pissed off now, believably so. “Did you hear me? I made a special trip. And you’re welcome.”

  Isa’s shoulder was only inches from Pet Girl’s hand. She struck softly, precisely.

  “What was that?” Isa asked. “Did you pinch me?”

  “Yeah, bitch. Because I hate you. I wish you’d die.”

  Isa laughed. “Don’t hold back, darling.”

  “No,” said Pet Girl, “not me.”

  But a new idea was forming. Call it Plan C.

  Willing her pulse to slow, Pet Girl walked to Ethan’s side of the bed, picked up a paperback off the floor, returned it to the night table, eyed his hairy arm lying across the top of the comforter.

  “What are you doing now?” Isa asked.

  “Tidying up,” Pet Girl said.

  And she struck again.

  Oh yes, it’s so good. Oh.

  “Go to sleep,” Pet Girl said, snapping her bag closed. “I’ll be back in the morning for the dogs.”

  “Don’t wake us up, chickadee.”

  “Don’t worry. Sweet dreams,” she said, her voice rising giddily. With the handles of her canvas bag slung over her shoulder, Pet Girl ran quickly down two flights of stairs in the dark and punched Isa’s code into the keypad at the front door, disarming and then arming the alarm again.