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

Hill asserted that she lived alone, traveled often, had obtained a concealed carry permit, and had carried a gun for most of her adult life. Her gun was registered, and she kept it in her handbag at all times for protection.

She added, “I don’t know what you would call kinky, Mr. Parisi, but until this encounter with Marc Christopher, I’d never experimented with aggressive sexual role-playing.”

Len said, “And you claim you don’t know what you said or did during this sex act?”

“I remember enough,” she said. “I remember the pitch he threw me in the bar but not much of what I said or what he said during the act itself. It was role-playing. We were having sex. I’d had a lot to drink. I wasn’t trying to remember what we said. Wouldn’t that have been crazy? When I think about it, I see flash images, as if the bed was under a strobe light. As soon as it was over, I wanted to forget it had happened.

“I have some questions for you. Mr. Parisi. Why didn’t Marc grab my gun? Run for the hills? Call the cops? Did you ask him?”

Parisi said mildly, “If you know, had Marc been drinking, too?”

“Sure. I don’t remember what or how much.”

Parisi asked, “Before or during the sex, did Marc tell you to stop? Did he say no to you at any point?”

“He may have,” said Hill. “But that was the point of the script he laid out for me. He was supposed to be the victim and I was supposed to take him by force. That was his game.”

Yuki said, “Ms. Hill, can you prove that Mr. Christopher set up this game?”

“How? We had a conversation in a bar.”

“I have the recording Mr. Christopher made of your sexual encounter,” said Yuki. “We’ll have a copy sent to Mr. Giftos’s office this week. It’s video with sound, Ms. Hill. You can see and hear it all.”

After Briana Hill and James Giftos left, Yuki went to Len’s office. They sat at right angles to each other in his sitting area, surrounded by bookshelves, in view of the clock with a red bulldog face on the wall behind his desk.

“What did you think of the defense?” Yuki asked.

“Hill is credible,” said Len, “and a very accomplished presenter. But her defense of the rape, saying that Marc gave her the script and she performed to his direction, that’s her word against his. We don’t have the script discussion recorded. The video only shows and tells what happened in the bedroom, and even then, while the act was in progress.”

Yuki asked, “Does the fact that they’d slept together before the rape hurt his case?”

Parisi said, “Not legally, but it could make a juror wonder what the hell he was complaining about. Unless you can turn up more evidence, we’re pinning everything on the video. He said no and she kept the gun on him. He says it was loaded. She says it was not. He said, she said.

“But she asks good questions,” Parisi said. “Why didn’t he call the cops when he woke up? Why did he wait two weeks to do that? That’s going to come up. And I don’t like this story that he tried to blackmail her. Did that ring true to you?”

Yuki said, “This is the first

I’ve heard of extortion. I’ll ask him.”

“Unless he puts that in writing, it’s more of his word against hers.”

Yuki nodded in agreement. “They have colleagues in common. I interviewed three people at the Ad Shop. I’ll review their notes again.”

Yuki went back to her office and made notes to file on the meeting with Briana Hill. Hill had sounded truthful, but Yuki had seen the video. Marc Christopher said no, and Briana Hill didn’t stop. And that was what mattered in the eyes of the law.

CHAPTER 9

AT A QUARTER to eight on a hazy Friday morning, I parked my Explorer in the All-Day Parking lot on Bryant Street across from the Hall of Justice, where I work in Homicide.

I crossed the street between breaks in the traffic and jogged up the steps to the main entrance of the gray granite building that housed not only the Southern Station of the SFPD, but also the DA, the municipal courts, a jail, and the motorcycle squad. I was reaching for the handle of the heavy steel-and-glass front door to the Hall when I heard someone call out, “Sergeant? Sergeant Lindsay Boxer.”

I turned to see a middle-aged woman with graying blond hair, who was wearing a dirty fleece hoodie and baggy jeans, hurrying up the steps toward me. I wasn’t surprised to be recognized. My last case had been high profile. A murdering psycho had blown up a museum, killing and injuring dozens of people, including my husband. For weeks after the bombing and all during the bomber’s trial, my picture had been on the front page of the San Francisco papers and on the local TV news. Months later memories of that unspeakable crime still rippled through the public consciousness.

From the woman’s dress she looked to me like she was living on the street. I had change from a ten in my jacket pocket, and I pulled out some bills, but she waved them away.

“I don’t need any money. Thank you, though. What I need is your help, Sergeant. I want to report a murder.”

I looked at her. The assertion sounded like the opening to an old episode of Murder, She Wrote, but I had to take it seriously. The woman was distressed. And I’m a cop.