“Well, she shouldn’t be,” said Yuki, pressing on. “My client did nothing wrong. Nothing. She’s here because the plaintiffs are suffering and they want someone to pay for their loss, right or wrong.”
“Objection! Your Honor! Argumentative.”
“Sustained. Ms. Castellano, please hold your argument for summation.”
“Yes, Your Honor. I’m sorry.” Yuki walked over to the table and looked at her notes, then swung back around as if she’d never been interrupted.
“On the night in question, the exemplary Cabot kids evaded the police by driving at over seventy-five miles per hour on crowded streets in wanton disregard for public safety; that’s a felony. They were armed—another felony—and after Sara Cabot totaled her father’s car, she and her brother were helped out of the wreck by two concerned police officers whose weapons were holstered, who were doing their duty to serve and protect, and above all, to render aid.
“You will hear testimony from a police ballistics expert who will tell you that the bullets that were surgically removed from Lieutenant Boxer and Inspector Jacobi were fired from Sara Cabot’s and Sam Cabot’s guns, respectively. And you will also hear that Sara and Sam Cabot fired upon these officers without provocation.
“On the night in question, as Lieutenant Boxer lay on the ground, losing nearly a third of her blood and close to death, she ordered the plaintiffs to drop their weapons, which they did not do. Instead, Sara Cabot fired three more shots, which mercifully missed my client.
“Only then did Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer return fire.
“If anyone else—a banker, a baker, even a bookmaker—had shot someone in self-defense, we wouldn’t be having a trial. But if a police officer defends herself, everyone wants a piece of her —”
“Objection!”
But it was too late for objections. Dr. Andrew Cabot’s stony expression had shattered into shards of wrath.
He leaped to his feet and moved toward Yuki as if he were going to throttle her. Mason Broyles restrained his client, but the courtroom boiled over even as Judge Achacoso banged her gavel again and again.
“I’m done, Your Honor,” said Yuki.
“Oh, no, you’re not. I will not have this trial become a free-for-all. Bailiff, clear the courtroom. I’ll see both counsels in chambers,” said the judge.
Chapter 88
WHEN COURT RESUMED, YUKI’S eyes were sparkling. It looked to me as if she felt the butt-kicking she’d taken from the judge had been worth the points she’d scored in her opening.
Broyles put on his first witness: Betty D’Angelo, the ER nurse who’d ministered to me the night I was shot. D’Angelo reluctantly repeated what she had said during the prelim—that my blood alcohol level was .067, that there was no way she could say if I was intoxicated, but that .067 was considered “under the influence.”
Next up, Broyles called my friend Dr. Claire Washburn. He elicited her credentials as the city’s chief medical examiner, and the fact that she’d performed Sara Cabot’s autopsy.
“Dr. Washburn, were you able to ascertain the cause of Sara Cabot’s death?”
Using a line drawing of a human form, Claire pointed out where my bullets had entered Sara Cabot’s body.
“Yes. I found two gunshot wounds to the chest. Gunshot A entered on the left upper/outer chest, right here. That bullet penetrated Sara Cabot’s chest cavity between left ribs number three and four, perforated the upper lobe of the left lung, went into the pericardial sac, tore through the left ventricle, and stopped in her thoracic column on the left-hand side.
“The second gunshot wound,” Claire said, tapping the chart with a pointer, “was through the sternum, five inches below the left shoulder. It went right on through the heart, terminating in thoracic vertebra number four.”
The members of the jury were rapt as they heard about what my shots had done to Sara Cabot’s heart, but when Broyles had finished examining her, Yuki was ready for Claire on cross-examination.
“Can you tell us the angles of penetration, Dr. Washburn?” Yuki asked.
“The shots were fired upwards, from a few inches above the ground.”
“Doctor, was Sara Cabot killed instantly?”
“Yes.”
“So, you could say Sara was too dead to shoot anyone after she’d been shot?”
“Too dead, Ms. Castellano? As far as I know, there’s only dead.”
Yuki blushed. “Let me rephrase that. Given that Lieutenant Boxer was shot twice by Sara Cabot’s gun, it stands to reason that Sara Cabot fired first—because she died instantly after Lieutenant Boxer shot her.”