The 5th Horseman (Women's Murder Club 5)

Recruit and train?

Learn to supervise?

None of that had anything to do with why I’d become a cop.

I wanted to be back on the streets of San Francisco.

Chapter 28

CINDY THOMAS SAT on the back bench of courtroom 4A of the Civic Center Courthouse, squeezed between a reporter from the Modesto Bee and a stringer for the LA Times. She felt keyed-up, focused, and very, very possessive. This was her town, her story.

Her laptop was warm on her knees, and Cindy tapped at the keyboard, making notes as Maureen O’Mara’s first witness was sworn in.

“Good morning, Mr. Friedlander,” O’Mara said. The lawyer’s long auburn hair glowed against the flat blue wool of her suit. She wore a white blouse with a plain collar and a simple gold watch on the wrist of her ring-free left hand.

“I hope you don’t mind my asking, but how old are you?” O’Mara asked her witness.

“I’m forty-four.”

Cindy was surprised. With his creased face and graying hair, she would have put Stephen Friedlander’s age at closer to sixty.

“Can you tell the Court about the night of July twenty-fifth?” O’Mara asked.

“Yes,” Friedlander said. He cleared his throat. “My son, Josh, had a grand mal seizure.”

“And how old was Josh?”

“He was seventeen. He would have been eighteen this month.”

“And when you got to the hospital, did you see your son?”

“Yes. He was still in the emergency room. Dr. Dennis Garza brought me to see him.”

“Was Josh conscious?”

Friedlander shook his head. “No.”

This prompted O’Mara to ask him to speak up for the court reporter.

“No,” he said, much louder this time. “But Dr. Garza had examined him. He told me that Josh would be back at school in a day or two, that he’d be as good as new.”

“Did you see Josh after that visit to the emergency room?” O’Mara asked.

“Yes, I saw him the next day,” Friedlander said, a smile flitting briefly across his face. “He and his girlfriend were joking with the fellow in the other bed, and I was struck by that because there was kind of a party atmosphere in the room. The other boy’s name was David Lewis.”

O’Mara smiled, too, then assumed a more sober expression when she spoke again.

“And how was Josh when you got to see him the next morning?”

“They let me see my son’s body the next morning,” Friedlander said, his voice breaking. He reached forward, clasping the rail of the witness box with his hands, the chair legs scraping the floor.

He turned his hopelessly sad and questioning eyes to the jury, and then to the judge. Tears sheeted down his furrowed cheeks.

“He was gone just like that. His body was cold to my touch. My good boy was dead.”

O’Mara put her hand on her witness’s arm to steady him. It was a moving gesture and seemed quite genuine.

“Do you need to take a moment?” she asked Friedlander, handing him a box of tissues.