The 17th Suspect (Women's Murder Club #17)(48)

Yuki and Art joined the throng entering the courtroom and had just taken their seats at their table when James Giftos strode up the center aisle.

He stopped beside Yuki’s seat.

“Neat trick, Counselor,” he said. “I’m already writing up my appeal.”

Of course Giftos was mad that Briana had been arrested and held overnight. It had weakened and depressed her, and that could make her a poor witness for herself.

Yuki was torn between saying “Dude, she had a loaded gun” and “Knock yourself out, Counselor,” but Giftos was already on the move. He crossed the well and opened the side door that led to the interior stairwell used by court personnel.

Giftos’s second chair came through the doorway with Briana Hill, who was wearing a plain gray skirt and sweater, with a silver cross.

Her polished look was gone.

Hill had just taken her seat between her two attorneys when the jurors entered the courtroom and filled the seats in the jury box. Behind Yuki, the gallery was loud with the sounds of spectators talking, settling into their seats, putting down their computer bags. Yuki looked for Marc but didn’t see him or his parents.

This was very worrisome. It was five to nine.

Judge Rathburn came through his private entrance, and the whispers stopped cold. Right then Yuki heard a ruckus behind her.

She turned in her seat to see the bailiff trying to close the door and heard a man’s voice pleading, “We got here as fast as we could. He has a right to be here.”

The bailiff relented and opened the door, and with the help of his parents, Marc Christopher hobbled into the courtroom on crutches. An elderly man on the aisle got up to give Marc his seat. Marc glanced in Yuki’s direction, and she nodded at him as he awkwardly took a seat in the gallery.

Like Briana Hill, Marc had lost his look of dewy youthfulness.

And now, after he’d been injured and traumatized, the curtain was about to go up on the drama of his life.





CHAPTER 70


JUDGE RATHBURN WAS at the bench.

He took an unsmiling visual tour of his courtroom, popped a couple of Tums, and tapped on his laptop. After exchanging words with his clerk, the judge said, “Ms. Castellano. Please call your witness.”

Yuki was ready—but what about Marc? Would he push through the pain and nervousness and do a good job of testifying on his own behalf? Or would he fold on the stand?

It could go either way.

She watched Marc pull himself to his feet, then limp and hop through the gate like a long-legged waterbird with a broken wing. He crossed the well in this awkward manner, drawing the attention of every soul in the courtroom.

Maybe he’d draw their pity, too.

The bailiff held the Bible and, after Marc swore to tell the whole truth, so help him God, gave Marc a hand up to the witness box. Marc said, “Thanks,” then fumbled his crutch. It spun out of his grasp and bounced down the step to the floor, the clatter sounding through the room, which was otherwise silent.

The bailiff retrieved the crutch and asked Marc if he was okay.

“Good enough,” he said.

It was a dramatic and, she hoped, sympathetic introduction to the jury, who had heard much about Marc but had not actually seen him.

Yuki looked at Marc as if she were a juror seeing him for the first time. He still looked like a college kid, but one who had gotten knocked around on the football field. Along with the leg injury, Marc’s cheek was scraped from jaw to hairline, and he had dark smudges under his eyes.

When his leg went out from under him on the street, he must’ve taken a pretty good fall.

Yuki flashed on the sex video she had seen many times. Within the next hour she would be showing it to the jury while Marc sat in the box, pinned under the lights by the appraising eyes of the jurors. Thinking of what Marc had endured, Yuki felt sorry for him. Her doubts about his sincerity since he’d tried to kiss her dropped away.

Marc had been raped and shot, and now he was going to have to tell a roomful of strangers that he had been tied to his bed and assaulted by a woman who weighed 110 pounds.

Yuki left her seat, walked to a spot about ten feet from the stand, and smiled at her witness.

She said, “Mr. Christopher, how are you feeling?”

He made the universal flip-flop hand sign for fifty-fifty, managed a weak smile, and said, “I’m good.”

“Glad to hear it, Marc. Is it all right with you if I call you Marc?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Marc, if you can tell us, what is the nature of your injury?”

“I was shot in the thigh,” Marc said.

“Do you know who shot you?”

“I didn’t see anyone. It was dark.”

He switched his eyes to the defense table, where Briana Hill sat silently and steadily looking back at him. Whether indicating Briana with his eyes was calculated or reflexive, Marc had made a subtle yet powerful point. Briana Hill had raped him. Had she also shot him?

Yuki asked, “Marc, tell us about the night of October eleventh.”

“Where should I start?”

Yuki asked him a series of questions that they had run through before. He answered, beginning with leaving work that day with Briana and going to a restaurant near his apartment where they’d had dinner before. During and after the meal both of them had had a lot to drink.

“And what happened then?” she asked.