The 17th Suspect (Women's Murder Club #17)(49)

Marc cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, he sounded deflated. He said, “This is very hard. Actually, this is the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me. It’s beyond humiliating. Then I had to tell the police. I had to tell you. I had to tell Mr. Giftos. I’ve had trouble telling this to a psychologist.”

He shook his head and grabbed at his crutch. Yuki thought maybe he was going to take it and go.

Yuki was getting that oncoming-train-wreck feeling again. What could she do? Should she ask for a time-out? Or should she call an end to Marc’s testimony and say, “I’m done here”?

She said, “Do you need a moment, Marc?”

“Thanks, but I’d rather just get it over with,” he said.





CHAPTER 71


MARC WAS VISIBLY upset, but he stayed in the witness stand and had given Yuki his okay to continue his testimony.

She pushed on.

“Okay, Marc. Let’s go back to the moment when you and the defendant were drinking in the restaurant and bar. Tell us what happened.”

Marc cleared his throat, then said, “Briana was very clingy, and over dinner I made up my mind. I told her that I thought we should stop seeing each other socially. She threw a fit.”

Yuki couldn’t show it, but she was thinking, Nanda. What the hell was this? Marc hadn’t told her that he had tried to break up with Briana. In fact, Briana had sworn in her deposition that she was thinking of breaking up with him.

Why was he embellishing the story?

Yuki continued on as if she hadn’t just gotten hot breaking news from her witness. She said, “Please continue, Marc.”

“Well, I tried to reason with her, calm her down, but she was crying hysterically. I said that it was late, and I started to call an Uber for her, but she insisted that she didn’t want to go home alone. She said we could discuss this in the morning, but she really needed to crash at my place, since it was close and she was so wasted.”

Marc said, “I felt bad. I hadn’t warned her that I wanted to stop seeing her, and I couldn’t just walk out on her like that. So I said okay. We went to my apartment, a couple of blocks up the hill. I stopped thinking about her. I stripped down and fell into bed. Next thing I know, Briana’s calling my name. I look up and she’s got a gun pointed at me and she’s threatening to shoot me if I don’t give her, excuse my language, the best fuck of her life.”

Yuki had gone over Marc’s story three, if not four, times, and he had never mentioned that Briana had been hysterical. Nor had he quoted any demands she’d made inside the bar. Why the hell not?

Was he telling the truth now?

Yuki had no choice but to ask Marc to continue, and he did, saying, “Briana was drunk, but she had a firm hand on the gun. I told her to knock it off, but I was scared. She’s a very determined and powerful woman, and now she was acting crazy, saying, ‘If you want to live, you’d better get your limp dick into the mood …’”

Marc shook his head. Tears flew off his cheeks. Judge Rathburn handed him a box of tissues.

As he dabbed his eyes, Yuki was thinking, What the fuck? Maybe Marc was trying to help their case, but he had added too many new and damning details to his story. James Giftos had deposed him and would blow big, gaping holes in these inconsistencies on cross.

Marc answered Yuki’s questions, filling in details about the neckties, his protests, his terror, and the fact that he’d taken a chance in recording the rape.

“Briana had sex with me against my will,” he said. “She kept the gun on me until I was tied up. Then she did things to make me get hard.”

He stopped talking, shot a panicky look at Yuki, and said, “Then she did it. She raped me.”

Yuki said, “Thank you, Mr. Christopher. Please remain seated.”

She turned to the judge and said, “Your Honor, we’re ready to show the recording.”

“Go ahead, Ms. Castellano. Will someone please get the lights?”





CHAPTER 72


ARTHUR BARON HAD cued up the video, positioned the laptop at the edge of the table, and set up the screen so that it faced the jury. But before Yuki got a chance to say, “Roll it,” James Giftos got to his feet and said angrily, “Your Honor. May we approach?”

Rathburn signaled to the attorneys to come to the bench.

He said, “Mr. Giftos, I’ve already ruled. The video is in.”

“Judge Rathburn, with all due respect, I’ve seen this recording and you have not.”

The judge said, “Let’s take this into my chambers.”

Counsel for both sides followed the judge through his private doorway out of the courtroom and into his office. He took his desk chair and the four attorneys grouped at the front of his desk.

Giftos said, “Judge Rathburn, I feel strongly that by showing this recording, the prosecution is going to perpetrate a miscarriage of justice.”

Rathburn said, “As I said before, James, and will say again, you will have your chance to rebut the video and cross-examine the witness. What don’t I understand?”

Giftos was red faced and the cords in his neck were standing out. He said, “Your Honor, I don’t think you understand that this recording is hard-core porn. There is full-on nudity and full-on sex, or more accurately, bondage.