4th of July (Women's Murder Club 4)

“Yes.”

“I’d like you to look at this highlighted line right here.”

The witness tossed her head as if she smelled something bad. Emergency room staff often felt part of the cop team and would try to protect us. I didn’t get it, but this nurse plainly wanted to duck Broyles’s questions.

“Can you tell me what this is?” Broyles asked the witness.

“This? You mean the ETOH?”

“That stands for ethyl alcohol content, is that right?”

“Yes. That’s what it stands for.”

“What does .067 mean?”

“Ahh . . . That means the blood alcohol level was sixty-seven milligrams per deciliter.”

Broyles smiled and lowered his voice to a purr. “In this case it refers to the blood alcohol level in Lieutenant Boxer’s system, doesn’t it?”

“Well, yes, that’s correct.”

“Ms. D’Angelo, .067—that’s drunk, isn’t that right?”

“We do refer to it as ‘under the influence,’ but—”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“I have nothing further,” said Broyles.

I felt like my head had been struck with a sledgehammer. My God, those fucking margaritas at Susie’s.

I felt the blood drain from my face and I almost fainted.

Mickey turned to me, the expression on his face demanding: Why didn’t you tell me?

I looked at my attorney, openmouthed and absolutely sick with remorse.

I could hardly bear Mickey’s look of incredulity as, armed with nothing but his wits, he leaped to his feet and approached the witness.

Chapter 18

THERE WERE ONLY TWELVE rows of seats in courtroom C in the San Francisco Civic Center Courthouse and no jury box. It would have been hard to find a courtroom more intimate than this one. I don’t think anyone breathed during Mickey’s walk to the witness stand.

He greeted Ms. D’Angelo, who looked relieved to be off the hot seat Mason Broyles had fired up for her.

“I only have a couple of questions,” he said. “It’s common practice to use ethyl alcohol swabs to clean the wounds, isn’t it? Couldn’t that alcohol have been confused with the blood alcohol?”

Betty D’Angelo looked as though she wanted to cry. “Well, we use Betadine to swab the wounds. We don’t use alcohol.”

Mickey brushed off the response and turned to the judge. He asked for a recess and it was granted. The reporters bolted for the doors, and in the relative privacy, I apologized with all my heart.

“I feel like a real schmuck,” he said, not unkindly. “I saw that medical report and I didn’t notice the ETOH.”

“I just completely forgot until now,” I said. “I must have blanked it out.”

I told Mickey that I had been off duty when Jacobi called me at Susie’s. I told him what I had had to drink and that if I wasn’t flat-out straight when I got into the car, the adrenaline rush of the chase had been completely sobering.