“That’s right.”
“So, just to make sure I understand: When you saw their bodies, they were in the morgue, isn’t that right?”
Brand looked confused. Like he was double-thinking what he’d said, trying to follow her, maybe realizing his mistake. “Right.”
“And so, to be clear, your testimony a few moments ago was untrue, wasn’t it? You only saw the bodies several days after you’d extracted a confession from Mr. Kordell, correct?”
“I got mixed up about the times, that’s all.”
“So you didn’t know how close or how far away the shooter was to the victims when you interrogated Mr. Kordell, right?”
“I said, I got my timeline wrong.”
Yuki pushed on.
“And so, as I understand it, you were interrogating a ‘dummy’ without representation and you decided to make a case against him without a witness, without forensic evidence, without even a theory—you came up with that later. But first, you sweated this poor kid until you finally got a confession, which is all you wanted, isn’t that right, Inspector Brand?”
“That’s your way of putting it,” said Brand.
“Yes, it is,” said Yuki. “I have no other questions, Your Honor.”
“Mr. Parisi?” the judge asked. “Do you want to cross-examine this witness?”
Parisi spoke from his seat behind the defense table. He looked unfazed, like a man with all the right answers.
“Inspector Brand, did you have friendships with or loyalty to the drug dealers who were killed?”
“What? No.”
“Did you have anything against Mr. Kordell?”
“No. Not at all.”
“So, regarding your vigorous interrogation of Mr. Kordell: That’s what you do when you have a primary suspect, isn’t that right?”
“Correct.”
“Do you stand by the confession you obtained from this suspect?”
“Absolutely,” said Brand. “He said he did it. We saw him say it. We believed him.”
Parisi said, “Thank you, Inspector Brand. I have nothing else for this witness.”
“If Ms. Castellano has no further questions,” said the judge, “the witness may stand down.”
CHAPTER 74
COURT HAD BEEN adjourned for the day when Yuki got a text from Brady saying, Tony Willis was beaten. He’s in the prison ward at SF Gen. Asked for you.
Yuki ran to her car, got into the crush of traffic, and headed toward San Francisco General, where inmates requiring hospitalization were housed.
Tony Willis, aka Li’l Tony, had been a suspect in the jailhouse murder of Aaron-Rey Kordell. He’d denied that he’d been the doer, but when she’d talked to him last, he’d given her a sense that he knew who had killed Aaron-Rey.
Maybe he would tell her now.
If he lived.
The traffic was thick, and Yuki was determined not to have an accident or even a fit of temper. Leaving the parking garage, she took a left on Polk and crossed through the Mission. It took close to half an hour to drive two and a half miles to reach Twenty-Third Street and another twenty minutes to park the car and gain access to the hospital.