20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(68)

Yuki looked across the aisle to where Clay Warren sat beside Zac Jordan at the defense table.

Zac was going over his notes, and Clay—Clay looked as he had the last few times Yuki had met with him. His expression was fixed and hard, wordlessly expressing his decision not to defend himself.

Yuki turned another ninety degrees to check out the spectators. Clay’s mother was watching her with drill-bit eyes, boring holes through Yuki. Yuki dipped her head in respect and then took in the rest of the gallery and got an entirely different feeling. Wall-to-wall cops gave her nods of encouragement.

Yuki had just settled back into her seat when Judge Steven Rabinowitz entered the courtroom through his private door behind the bench. Yuki had tried two cases before Rabinowitz. She’d found him fair and even-tempered. You couldn’t ask for better than that.

The bailiff stood at the base of the bench and called, “All rise”—and all did.

Rabinowitz took his chair, which was positioned between the Stars and Stripes and the flag of the great state of California. The legal teams and spectators also took their seats with a considerable amount of shuffling and whispering.

The judge exchanged a few words with his clerk and the bailiff. Someone sneezed. A cell phone tinkled a little tune. Rabinowitz said, “No phones. Are we clear? Turn ’em off.”

Yuki felt like a young racehorse inside the gate waiting for the bell and the release. She was ready for this trial, prepared and involved and sharp. The jury filed in and took their seats. The bailiff read out the case number and announced that Judge Steven Rabinowitz was presiding.

The judge brought his gavel down, calling the court to order, and greeted the jury. As he began his instructions to them, Yuki thought this case was hers to win.

She would make sure that happened.





CHAPTER 98





JOE WOKE TO morning light slashing across his face, the sheets twisted around his ankles, and the rumbling of Dave’s chair rolling across the rough-hewn boards on the floor below. He remembered now, the late-night call from Dave, the drive to Napa.

He heard Dave talking with Jeff the Chef clearly enough to get the gist. They were insulting each other like old friends, going over the menu and getting ready for the day.

Joe had a job, too. Or call it a moral obligation. All he had to do was solve the mystery of Ray Channing’s suspicious death without having a badge or any authority at all.

Joe no longer believed that Dave had killed his father.

But he had become convinced that some of Dr. Murray’s hospitalized patients had been murdered. That wasn’t enough to bring in the law. There had to be a viable suspect. And there had to be evidence.

Currently, he didn’t even have a theory.

Joe kicked off the sheets and thought about the people he had met over the last couple of weeks: Dr. Murray himself; Abe Horowitz, who’d slept in the bed next to Ray, who’d been wheeled out of the room, his face covered with a sheet.

He thought about meetings with three of the people who’d lost loved ones—all Murray’s patients—his interviews with night-shift nurses and four people who worked in the winery itself, including the elderly handyman who brought his dogs with him in his truck when he mowed the lawn.

Motive, anyone?

One person rose to the surface of Joe’s mind. Not as a suspect but because he felt he hadn’t given the man enough attention, hadn’t asked enough questions.

Johann Archer, the writer who’d lost his thirty-eight-year-old fiancée, Tansy Mallory, and had written a touching tribute to her in Great Grapes. Tansy had been a fit long-distance runner and had shown no signs of cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Alex Murray had been the attending doctor the day Tansy Mallory was brought in to Saint John’s small ER. The surgeon had treated her for heat exhaustion and ordered her kept overnight for observation. Typical recovery time should have been a matter of hours, but Tansy had died overnight.

What distinguished Tansy from the other two cases was her survivor’s take on her death. Archer believed Murray had killed Tansy through either neglect or intent. Joe hadn’t bought the murder plot at that time, but now? Dave Channing and Johann Archer had never met, but Dave had gotten Johann’s contact info, and Joe had left him a voice-mail last week.

Joe sat up, retrieved his phone from the floor near the bed, and tapped in Archer’s number.

“Yes?”

“Johann. It’s Joe Molinari. I called you last week? Sorry to call again so early. Do you have time to see me? I’d like to get your thoughts about suspicious deaths at Saint John’s Hospital.”

“Good. I’m having plenty of them,” said Archer. “Something—or rather someone—occurred to me, and it might be the guilty party. I need to tell you.

“And I mean you, Joe, specifically.”





CHAPTER 99





THE COURTROOM WAS small enough for Yuki to be heard from the counsel table, but she wanted to speak with the jurors face-to-face.

She left her notes on the table, crossed the well to the jury box, introduced herself, and thanked the jurors for serving.

“As an assistant district attorney,” she said, “I work for the people of San Francisco. It’s my job to tell you about the case you will be deciding and why the defendant has been charged.