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“Are you serious? After all the crap you’ve dished out? I have nothing to say to you, Jason.”
“Yuki, this isn’t personal. It’s business. I’m not going to touch you, okay? I need one crummy hour of your time, and you’re going to benefit. You’re the devoted prosecutor whose conviction was snatched from you by the little whore with a heart of stone. Yuki, you were robbed!”
“And if I don’t want to be interviewed?”
“Then I’ll have to write around you, and that’ll really suck. Don’t make me beg anymore, okay?”
Yuki took the gun out of her pocket. “This is a .357,” she said, showing it to him.
“So I see,” Twilly said, his smile becoming a grin, the grin turning into laughter. “This is priceless.”
“I’m glad you find me amusing.”
“Yuki, I’m a reporter, not a freaking mobster. No, this is good. Bring your gun. God knows I want you to feel safe with me. Okay if we go for a walk?”
“This way,” Yuki said.
She stepped outside and closed the door behind her.
Chapter 96
YUKI KEPT HER HAND gripped around the gun in her pocket as she walked beside Twilly up the path through the woods. He did most of the talking, asking her opinion of the jury, of the defense counsel, of the verdict. For a moment she saw the charming man she’d been attracted to a few weeks ago — then she remembered who he really was.
“I think the verdict was completely off the wall,” Yuki said. “I don’t know what I could have done differently.”
“Not your fault, Yuki. Junie is innocent,” Twilly said amiably.
“Really? And you know she’s innocent how?”
They’d reached the ridgeline, where a rocky outcropping overlooked the best view of Kelham Beach and the Pacific Ocean. Twilly sat down on the rock, and Yuki sat a few feet away. Twilly opened his bag, took out two bottles of water, twisted off the cap of the first and handed the bottle to Yuki.
“Don’t you think it’s strange that there was no trace evidence at the so-called crime scene?” he asked her.
“Strange, but not impossible,” Yuki said, taking a deep chug-a-lug from the water bottle.
“That information that the police ‘developed.’ That was an anonymous caller, right?”
“How did you know that?”
“I was writing a book about Michael, Yuki. I followed him all the time. I followed Michael to Junie’s house that night. After Michael went into Junie’s house, I felt great. Michael Campion spent time with a hooker! Good meat for my story. I waited, and then I saw him leave — alive.
“Of course, I didn’t know he’d never be seen again.”
“Hmmm?” Yuki said.
She’d come here to hear Twilly tell her who’d killed Michael or confess that he was the one who had done it — but suddenly she felt as though there was plastic foam inside her head.
What was happening?
Shapes shifted in front of her eyes, and Twilly’s voice ballooned out of his mouth, volume rising and falling. What was that? What was Twilly saying?
“Are you okay?” he asked her. “Because you don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine,” Yuki said. She was nearly overcome with dizziness and nausea. She gripped the rock she was sitting on with both hands, held on tight.
She had a gun!
What time was it?
