The 17th Suspect (Women's Murder Club 17)
Page 64
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.”