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

“Marc? Keep your head down,” Yuki said. “You have to talk to the police.”

“You know what?” Marc said. “Now I’m scared.”

“Cops will meet up with you at the hospital. Tell them what you know and what you think and have them call me, okay? Marc? Do you hear me?”

“They’re telling me to put my phone away. Uh. Bye.”

The phone went dead.

Yuki stood in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, holding her phone, thinking through what Marc had just told her. Who wanted to shoot Marc? Had Briana Hill stalked him, fired on him? Was Briana that crazy?

Yuki had Sex Crimes officer Phyllis Chase on speed dial. She punched the button and waited impatiently for Chase to pick up.

“Phyllis, it’s Yuki. Marc Christopher was just shot … No, it’s not fatal. He’s on the way to Metro. Have someone take his statement, and pick up Briana Hill. I’ll meet you at the Hall.”

CHAPTER 61

YUKI STOOD IN the observation room with her arms tightly crossed, intently watching Briana Hill’s interrogation through the two-way mirror.

The interview room on the other side of the glass was closet size, furnished with a table pushed up against a grimy wall and three straight-backed aluminum chairs that were all occupied.

Inspectors Phyllis Chase and Phil Thompson from Sex Crimes sat catercorner to each other. Briana Hill faced them and the mirrored window. The camera in the corner of the ceiling recorded it all.

Hill looked wrung out. Yuki knew that she had been arrested at her apartment after returning from the gym. She was wearing gray sweatpants, her hair bunched up in an off-center knot at the top of her head, and she was red faced from crying.

Chase, who had confiscated a pistol from Hill’s gym bag, was saying, “You know you can’t have a gun, Briana. So right away you’re in trouble here. What’s going on?”

“I’m getting hate mail and vicious phone calls,” Briana said angrily. “I’m getting death threats. I think I’m being followed. What am I supposed to do?”

“Stay home. Keep your door locked,” Chase said.

“I have to eat,” she shouted. “I went to the deli on Duboce and Sanchez for soup and a sandwich sometime around lunch. Then the gym tonight at around eight, and I was there for an hour. There’s got to be cameras all over that place. You can see for yourself.”

Martinez said, “So from eight to nine you were at the gym? That’s your story?”

“Yes. Something like that.”

Chase asked her, “And before you went to the gym?”

“I was at home. The doorman can say when I left.”

“Okay, Briana,” said Martinez. “We’ll check your alibi.

Or you can save us a lot of trouble. I know this Christopher guy is a miserable pain in your butt, so look, you didn’t kill him. If you did shoot him, now’s the time to say so. I guarantee if you speak up, it will all go better for you.”

“I did not shoot him. Send my gun to your … your lab or just smell it. It hasn’t been fired in two years.”

“This here,” said Martinez, digging a plastic bag out of his shirt pocket, “is a gunpowder residue test. I’m going to apply some goop to your hands. It’s not going to hurt.”

“I don’t have to agree to that. Do I?” Hill asked incredulously. “I want my lawyer and I want to call him now.”

“In a minute,” said Martinez. “But first show me your hands, palms up.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You can chill in a holding cell with fourteen or fifteen pissed-off prostitutes until we get a court order.”

“Briana,” interjected the motherly Phyllis Chase. “Saying no to a GSR test makes it kind of look like you’ve got something to hide. If you didn’t fire a gun, this will clear you. You want that.”