The 6th Target (Women's Murder Club 6)

Brinkley nodded miserably. “He was yelling, ‘Kill, kill, kill,’ and nothing else mattered. All I could hear was him. All I could do was what he told me. It was just him, and everything else was a horrible dream.”

“Fred, would it be fair to say that you would never, ever have shot anyone if it were not for the voices that ‘ran you’ for the fifteen years following your sister’s accident?” Sherman asked.

Sherman noticed that he’d lost his client’s attention, that Fred was staring out over the gallery.

“That’s my mother,” Brinkley said with wonder in his voice. “That’s my mom!”

Heads swiveled toward an attractive, light-skinned African American woman in her early fifties as she edged along a row of seats, smiled stiffly at her son, and sat down.

“Fred,” Sherman said.

“Mom! I’m going to tell,” Brinkley called out, his voice warbling with emotion, his expression twisted up in pain.

“Are you listening, Mom? Get ready for the truth! Mr. Sherman, you’ve got it wrong. You keep calling it an accident. Lily’s death was no accident!”

Sherman turned to the judge, said matter-of-factly, “Your Honor, this is probably a good time for a break —”

Brinkley interrupted his lawyer, saying sharply, “I don’t need a break. And frankly, I don’t need your help anymore, Mr. Sherman.”

Chapter 118

“YOUR HONOR,” Sherman said evenly, doing his best to act as though his client hadn’t gone off road and wasn’t about to go airborne over a cliff, “I’d ask that Mr. Brinkley’s testimony be stricken.”

“On what grounds, Mr. Sherman?”

“I was having sex with her, Mom!” Brinkley shouted across the room. “We’d done it before. She was taking off her top when the boom came around —”

Someone in the gallery moaned, “Oh, my God.”

“Your Honor,” Sherman said, “this testimony is unresponsive.”

Yuki jumped to her feet. “Your Honor, Mr. Sherman opened the door to his witness — who is also his client!”

Brinkley turned away from his mother, pinned the jurors to their seats with his intense, shifting stare.

“I swore to tell the truth,” he said as chaos swamped the courtroom. Even the judge’s gavel, banging hard enough to split the striker plate, was drowned out by the commotion. “And the truth is that I didn’t lift a finger to save my sister,” Brinkley said, spittle flying from his lips. “And I killed those people on the ferry because he told me, I’m a very dangerous man.”

Sherman sat down in his seat behind the defense table and calmly put folders into an accordion file.

Brinkley shouted, “That day on the ferry. I lined those people up in my gun sight and I pulled the trigger. I could do it again.”

The jurors were wide-eyed as Alfred Brinkley wiped tears from his sunken cheeks with the palms of his hands.

“That’s enough, Mr. Brinkley,” the judge barked.

“You people took an oath to do justice,” Brinkley trumpeted, rhythmically gripping and slapping at his knees. “You have to execute me for what I did to those people. That’s the only way to make sure that I’ll never do it again. And if you don’t give me the death penalty, I promise I’ll be back.”

Mickey Sherman put the accordion file into his shiny metal briefcase and snapped the locks. Closing up shop.

“Mr. Sherman,” Judge Moore said, exasperation coloring his face a rich salmon pink, “do you have any more questions for your witness?”

“None that I can think of, Your Honor.”

“Ms. Castellano? Do you wish to cross?”

There was nothing Yuki could say that would top Brinkley’s own words: If you don’t give me the death penalty, I promise I’ll be back.

“I have no further questions, Your Honor,” Yuki said.