The 20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(51)

“If he talks, he’ll be dead before his birthday.”

After strafing Yuki with her condemning eyes, Clay’s mother, who had dressed as though she was already in mourning, returned to her pale and motionless son. She sobbed as she leaned over the side rails and caressed her boy’s head. Yuki went over and touched her arm. She was roughly shaken off.

Yuki knew damned well she shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t see Clay without his attorney present, but she felt sick for the kid. His mother didn’t really get it. It was highly probable that Clay wasn’t talking in order to protect her.

If Yuki couldn’t turn him around, he was cooked.

Could he hear her?

“Clay. Here’s my card again. Feel better soon.”

Yuki placed the card and a bag of small chocolate bars on the side table, said “Take care” to Clay’s mother, and headed for the doorway.

Mrs. Warren shouted after her, “Pull some strings, damn it. Throw your weight. Be humane. If you don’t stand up, you will think of Clay every day he is in prison, and then, when they kill him, you will think of him forever. Welcome to hell, ADA Castellano.”

Yuki called for a taxi, and one was waiting by the time she got to the street.

“Hall of Justice,” she said to the driver.

She stared out the window as she headed back to work. Parisi would have to listen to her. This wasn’t justice. This was closing a case by charging the wrong man.





CHAPTER 76





I WATCHED YUKI blow through the swinging gates to the squad room in a great big hurry.

She waved at Brenda without stopping and landed at my desk, saying, “Lindsay, you’ve got to come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

She pointed to the far end of the room, took me by the wrist, and led me to Brady’s office. He was working, head down, but he looked up when she spoke his name from the doorway.

“I can’t go downstairs,” she told him. “Can we use your office for a couple of minutes?”

His look said, Why?

“We need some privacy.”

“Okay. Sure thing. Have fun, darlin’.”

He headed to the front of the bullpen and appropriated my desk. Yuki dropped into Brady’s well-worn swivel chair. I closed the door and pulled up a seat. We settled in, but I didn’t think we were going to have any fun.

I was highly agitated. My brain was sparking from three sugared cups of black coffee and my newfound obsession with the so-called “new war on drugs.” I pictured the photos on the casualty wall of the war room, starting with Paul’s body splayed across the desk, Ramona’s dead and staring eyes, and the ruby cabochon hanging just above the bullet hole through her chest. From there I ticked off the victims in LA, Chicago, San Antonio, and Houston. At that point I stopped ticking off and dwelled on Detective Carl Kennedy, a murdered cop, leaving even more questions about Moving Targets.

As is completely normal for detectives, I was obsessing, or as I call it, searching what I knew for a missed clue, an anomaly, or a pattern, beyond the one obvious correlation. The victims had all sold drugs.

Had Kennedy been killed because he threatened Moving Targets? Or had he been marked as a target because he, too, sold drugs? I didn’t know and neither did Houston PD. But we knew the shooters were active in multiple cities and states, either a constellation of groups or one group making their kill, then changing location and killing again.

Cops in five major cities had no idea where the snipers would strike next. But we agreed. There would be a next.

Yuki was also agitated, and it had nothing to do with high-octane caffeine or snipers.

She said, “I’ve just been to the hospital prisoners’ ward. You know the kid I’m prosecuting—”

“Clay Warren.”

“Right. He got shivved in the shower last night. Someone upstairs loves him, because it’s a miracle he survived. So I went to see if I could, you know, talk him into giving up the actual drug dealer and cop shooter. He’s bandaged from here to here,” she said, demonstrating from below the waist to collarbone.

“But, noooooo. His mother kicked my butt around the room, told me to do something. That he’s going to get killed. Lit my fuse but good, Lindsay. And she was right.”

I nodded and said, “Go on.”

“So I charged into Red Dog’s office,” she told me. “He was meeting with a couple of suits,” Yuki said. “I didn’t recognize them, and I didn’t care. I just let Red Dog have it at the top of my voice. Picture me screaming, ‘We can’t prosecute a man who is not guilty. Clay Warren was a kid wheelman, and now he’s in the hospital with a dozen holes in his guts and a compromised kidney. Now I’m supposed to send him to prison for things he couldn’t have done? Come on, Len. Have a heart. We’re doing this?’”

I clapped my hands over my cheeks and leaned in.

“What did he say?”

“He stood up, all six foot three of him, and he barked, ‘Grow up, Castellano. We have a dead cop. This so-called kid wheelman either shot him or witnessed the shooting, for Christ’s sake. You’ve been here too long for this candy-assed crap. A good prosecutor can prosecute anyone.’”

Yuki put her elbows on Brady’s desk and lowered her head into her hands. Her next words were muffled by her palms and a blackout curtain of blunt-cut hair. She shook her head, then lifted her face to look at me.