7th Heaven (Women's Murder Club 7)

Chapter 49

JASON TWILLY SAT in the front row of the gallery in Courtroom 2C, right behind the elfin Junie Moon, taking notes as Connor Hume Campion answered Yuki Castellano’s softball questions. Twilly thought Campion had aged tremendously since his son disappeared. He looked haggard, stooped, as though Michael’s death was literally killing him.

As he looked at the governor and Yuki together, Twilly felt a shift in his thinking, and a new structure for his book appeared in his mind. Yuki was Michael Campion’s defender, and she was the underdog; feisty and shrewd and at the same time endearing. Like now. Yuki was using the former governor’s celebrity and heartbreak to both move the jury and block the defense.

Twilly would start the book with Yuki’s opening statement, flash back through time using poignant moments in the boy’s life as told by the governor, flash forward through the trial and the witnesses. Focus on Davis’s maternal defense. Linger on the vulnerable Junie Moon. Then end the book with Yuki’s closing argument. The verdict, the vindication, hurrah!

Twilly turned his attention back to the governor.

“Mike was born with a conductive defect in his heart,” Campion told the court. “It was being managed medically, but of course he could die at any time.”

Yuki asked quietly, “And what did Michael know about his life expectancy?”

“Mikey wanted to live. He used to say, ‘I want to live, Dad. I have plans.’ He knew he had to be careful. He knew that the longer he lived, the more chance —”

Campion stopped speaking as his throat tightened and his eyes watered.

“Mr. Campion, did Michael talk to you about his plans?”

“Oh, yes,” Campion said, smiling now. “He was training for an upcoming world chess tournament, on the computer, you know. And he’d started writing a book about living with a potentially fatal illness. . . . It would’ve made a difference to people. . . . He wanted to get married someday . . .”

Campion shook his head, looked at the jury, and addressed them directly.

“He was such a wonderful boy,” he said. “Everyone has seen his pictures, the interviews. Everyone knows how his smile could light up the darkness, how brave he was — but not everyone knows what a good soul he had. How compassionate he was.”

Twilly noted that Diana Davis’s face was pinched, but she didn’t dare object to Campion’s meandering testimony about the pain of losing his son. Campion turned and looked squarely at the defendant, spoke directly to her, sadly but not unkindly.

“If only I could have been there when Michael died,” Connor Campion said to Junie Moon. “If only I could have held him in my arms and comforted him. If only he’d been with me, instead of with you.”

Chapter 50

“THE PEOPLE CALL Mr. Travis Cook,” Yuki said.

Heads swung toward the double doors at the back of the courtroom, and a young man about eighteen years old, wearing a gray prep school blazer with a crest over the breast pocket, walked up the aisle, came through the gate.

Cook’s bushy hair looked patted down rather than combed, and his shoes needed a polish. He looked uneasy as he swore to tell the whole truth and nothing but. Then he stepped up to the witness stand.

Yuki said good morning to her witness and then asked, “How did you know Michael Campion?”

“We went to Newkirk Prep together.”

“And when did you meet Michael?”

“I knew him in our freshman year, but, uh, we became better friends last year.”

“In your opinion, what caused this friendship to grow?”

“Uh, Michael didn’t have many friends, really,” Travis Cook said, meeting Yuki’s eyes briefly, then looking down again at his hands. “People liked him, but they didn’t get too close to him ’cause he couldn’t play any sports or hang out or anything. Because of his heart condition.”

“But you didn’t have the same problem becoming friends with Michael?”

“I have severe asthma.”

“And how did that affect your friendship?”

Travis Cook said, “What he had was worse, but I could relate. We talked about how bad it sucked living with these things hanging over us all the time.”

“Now, did there come a time when you told Michael about the defendant, Ms. Moon?”