The 17th Suspect (Women's Murder Club #17)(22)

Yuki had heard about the case. A woman had left divorce court and driven her car onto a sidewalk and into her husband, his girlfriend, and the husband’s lawyer. Then she had sped to the Golden Gate Bridge, climbed over the railing, and jumped to her death.

Brady said, “The husband and girlfriend are okay, but the lawyer is in ICU. If he dies, it’s got to be processed as a homicide, even though the killer already self-inflicted the death penalty.”

Yuki said, “See, I miss talking like this. Even about work. Hearing what you’re thinking about.”

He tipped up her chin and pecked her lips. When dinner came, Yuki turned down another drink. Brady ate like he hadn’t eaten in the last twenty-four hours. After he had put down his knife and fork, he asked her to bring him up to speed on her woman-on-man rape case.

While she was telling him, he glanced at his phone a couple or three times, saying “Hang on” and “’Scuse me,” returning texts before shutting the phone off.

“Sorry,” he said. “Work. My phone is always open.”

He couldn’t turn off his phone for an hour? That clinging sadness she’d been carrying around had finally lightened, and now it was weighing her down again.

They skipped dessert and coffee. Later that night when they were both in bed, and rain clouds veiled, then revealed, the full moon outside their bedroom window, Yuki lay wide awake.

Had Brady been telling her the truth when he said he was just overly busy? Or was he keeping something from her?

What in the world was wrong?





CHAPTER 31


YUKI DROPPED OFF to sleep sometime after two and slept through the alarm that went off at half past seven. Later, when she started awake, Brady’s side of the bed was empty.

She would just get to work on time if she pulled herself together fast—and somehow she did it, walking smartly through the doorway to the DA’s suite of offices at nine fifteen. Apart from the fact that her hair was still damp, she was good to go.

The DA’s office was organized with small windowed rooms at the perimeter, surrounding a maze of cubicles at the center. The cubes were fully occupied with paralegals and assistants on the phones, making casework hum.

As Yuki passed Len’s corner office, his assistant, Toni Reynolds, who manned the desk outside his door, waved her down.

“Yuki, Len needs to see you and Arthur. Right away.”

“Now?”

“As soon as his meeting breaks up,” Toni said. “Oh.

Good. Here’s Arthur. Both of you, please sit down. He’ll be right with you.”

Yuki was surprised at this summons to Len’s office. “Right away”? What had happened?

Yuki and Arthur had hardly settled into chairs in the hallway when Len Parisi’s office door blew open.

Len’s assistant said to Yuki, “I hope you don’t mind, but I had to coordinate a lot of schedules. Judge Rathburn wants to see all concerned at ten.”

Yuki didn’t know why the judge wanted to see them, and she didn’t get a chance to ask. Parisi appeared in his doorway looking exasperated and told Yuki and Art to come in.

They took the love seat and watched the big man edge behind his cluttered mahogany desk and sink heavily into his chair.

He moved stacks of papers around on his desk, lined up his pens, then got into the business at hand.

“Giftos filed a motion to suppress the sex video,” he said. “That video is all we’ve got. I’ve never felt at peace with that. Rathburn is reasonable,” he said. “He listens and he can be reached. Don’t let Giftos intimidate you, Yuki. And he will try.”

Yuki said, “People underestimating me is my secret weapon.”

Parisi cracked a smile, then said, “Toni set the meeting for ten. It’s nine thirty. Don’t be late.”

She and Arthur sprang from the sofa and out the door. At the elevator bank Yuki watched the indicator lights track the car down from the jail on the seventh floor. The elevator was old. Creaky. Slow. Like everything in the Hall of Justice, outmoded.

“Stairs,” Art said.

“Done.”

They took the fire exit, and as they jogged down to the second floor, Arthur said, “I had a dream. We were in court and a pack of dogs came rushing through the door. They were on the scent of something big, and they were determined.”

“How’d you know that?”

“I don’t know. I woke up.”

Yuki laughed. “That’s it? The whole dream?”

“The lead dog had red fur.”

She smiled at her new deputy. “Well, Arthur, we’re about to face off against the man who set Len’s hair on fire.”

As they walked along the hallway, Yuki turned her mind back to this complication that could kneecap the case against Briana Hill.

Without the video, it was Marc Christopher’s word against Briana Hill’s, a coin toss that left plenty of room for a jury to find reasonable doubt.

Yuki didn’t know Judge Rathburn, but she knew James Giftos.

He was the type of defense lawyer who was sometimes called a bomb.

Would Rathburn allow the video into evidence? Or would James Giftos, a man twenty years older than she, with twice as much trial experience, blow up her case before she ever presented it to the jury?