“Please answer the question. In fact, Mr. Kordell said he didn’t shoot anyone, isn’t that correct?”
Whitney said, “Yes, that’s true.”
“And would it surprise you to know that during the course of your interrogation of him, Mr. Kordell said he didn’t shoot anyone on sixty-seven different occasions?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, we counted.”
“OK.”
“And would it also surprise you to know that during the course of your interrogation, he denied owning the gun on twenty-two different occasions?”
“Again, I wasn’t counting.”
“Again, Inspector, we counted. So, adding this up, on sixty-seven different occasions Mr. Kordell denied shooting the gun, and on twenty-two different occasions he denied owning the gun. And Inspector Whitney,
how many times did he say he shot these three drug dealers?”
“Once, I guess.”
“Once. And that was after more than fifteen hours in the box, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Whitney said, showing no emotion at all.
“And you had no witness or evidence to impeach this boy’s statement, did you?”
“No.”
“And so you wore this boy down until he finally said, ‘I did it,’ isn’t that right?” Yuki asked.
Whitney just looked at her.
Yuki said, “You can’t answer, can you?”
She let her question hang in the air, then said, “Nothing further, Your Honor. I have no more questions for this witness.”
CHAPTER 72
NATALIE FUTTERMAN PUSHED her tablet toward Yuki so that she could read the word Awesome in giant letters. Yuki smiled, then got to her feet and called Inspector William Brand.
Brand came in through the swinging doors at the back of the room, walked across the hardwood floor, and pushed through the bar to the witness stand. He put his hand on the Bible, said his name and that he agreed to tell the truth, then sat in the chair in the witness box.
Yuki approached him, seeing the anger coming off his square face, the tension in his muscular form, his collar denting the flesh around his neck.
She got right to it.
“Mr. Brand, were you familiar with Aaron-Rey Kordell before he was your suspect in the murders of three drug dealers?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know him?”
“I’ve seen him in that crack house at Turk and Dodge when we made busts there a couple of times.”
Yuki asked, “And did you ever search him for drugs or weapons?”
“Yes.”