21st Birthday (Women's Murder Club #21)(39)
Burke hissed, “Yes, yes, yes, I understand.”
“Let’s go,” said Brady, pushing Burke to and through the bedroom doorway. Covington’s team followed Brady, and Burke and I brought up the rear, helping Brady stuff the accused into the back seat of our unmarked.
Burke would be charged with reasonable suspicion of homicide. Although we hadn’t caught him in the act, had no witness or physical evidence of any kind, by his own admission, Burke had fought with his wife the morning she disappeared. It would be harder or even impossible, with what we had, to prove that he’d killed Misty Fogarty, Wendy Franks, and Susan Wenthauser. So the DA would go with our strongest cases, and if we found further evidence we would charge him for those crimes, too.
But, what we had was compelling.
One, Tara strapped into the passenger seat of her car, her throat slashed; and, two, the dead baby, evidence of manual asphyxiation, her diaper bag stuffed under the same back seat, infant car seat unbuckled. Burke had seen them last. There had been a history of spousal abuse. He had been having an affair. Three strikes.
A good prosecutor would be able to convince a jury that Lucas Burke was a wolf dressed in a high school teacher’s tweeds. An impartial jury would buy it.
That’s what I believed.
CHAPTER 52
IT WAS FRIDAY MORNING, ten past nine.
Brady, Yuki, and I were with DA Len Parisi in his office with Lucas Burke and Newton Gardner, his publicity-grabbing hard-ass criminal defense attorney.
I was rested and focused and eager to hear what Lucas Burke would say about the recovery of his dead wife.
Lucas Burke was in jailhouse orange with flip-flops and a two-day beard. He looked bad, smelled bad, and I was guessing he hadn’t slept since we booked him two days ago. Whatever thoughts had kept him awake were surely compounded by the awful accommodations offered in our sixth-floor jail. It was dirty, bright lights were on all night, and the other guests were generally foulmouthed, pissed off, and bordering on violence.
For his own safety, Burke had likely slept while leaning against the wall of his cell.
I almost felt sorry for him.
But now he had first-class representation in Newt Gardner and was paying a thousand bucks an hour for the privilege. I’d never met Gardner before, but I’d seen him in front of the courthouse and on late-night news standing with A-list clients, mesmerizing the press with his wit and showmanship and obvious ambition for an ever bigger stage.
As morning rush traffic whooshed past the windows two stories above Bryant Street, Len Parisi sat at his super-sized desk. Above him loomed the red pit bull face of his wall clock. The rest of us, including Burke and his attorney had pulled up chairs around the desk.
Gardner was wearing a smart gray suit, starched white shirt, and classic black oxfords buffed to a high shine. His head was shaven, making his sharp black eyes his standout feature. He’d asked for this meeting and had one thing on his agenda: to convince Leonard Parisi to drop the “ridiculous” charges against his client before another day had passed, before the world media saw this as O.J. two-point-oh, and had implied that he would put the city of San Francisco through a humiliating trial that it would lose.
Parisi said, “Mr. Gardner. It’s your meeting.”
Gardner said, “Thanks, Mr. Parisi. It’s really very simple. Lucas Burke did not kill his wife and child, and I’m quite sure you know the SFPD has no evidence, none, not a hair or a fingerprint or a speck of DNA belonging to my client on the bodies of the victims. There’s no witness, no video, no nothing. I’m asking you to drop the charges for one simple reason. Lucas didn’t do it and you have zero probable cause to charge him.”
“Okay. Thanks for coming in,” said Parisi, looking at his watch.
Gardner got the slight as it was meant and he took umbrage. “I promise you,” he said, “I’m going to win, Mr. Parisi. I’m going to get my client out of this trap you’ve set for him.”
“Do your worst, Mr. Gardner. That much I expect,” Parisi said, unmoved and unafraid. He knew our case cold.
Gardner wasn’t done. He fixed his bullet eyes on Parisi.
“About now, I should get up and say to my client, ‘Don’t lose any sleep over this, Luke. They have nothing. I’ll see you in a couple of days.’ But I want you to know that along with dismantling your circumstantial case, I’m going to introduce a few dozen character witnesses; educators and neighbors and even a man of the cloth. In short, Len, you have no case. Not a prayer of one. Do you really want to go through the wood chipper? Or would it be better for all concerned if your cops took a little more time and found the real killer?”
Parisi crossed his hands over his large belly and smiled ever so slightly. I had a good idea that he was just fine with Newton Gardner laying out his case.
“And here’s the bonus round,” Gardner continued. “Drop the charges and release my client, now, and we won’t sue the city for police harassment and I won’t get on a soapbox and mock the SFPD for their incompetence. How does that sound?”
Parisi said, “Mr. Gardner. I’ll leave you to froth and wriggle alone. I’m not a stupid man. We’re charging your client with two counts of murder, and that’s a gift. We can prove that he killed his wife and daughter with malice aforethought. And that’s what we’ll be telling the judge at Mr. Burke’s arraignment. The charges stand. And now, I have to prepare for a meeting.”