12th of Never (Women's Murder Club 12)

He liked the game. He loved it.

I tapped on the glass.

Fish looked up.

I smiled and said, “Go to hell, okay?”

He shouted as I left the room, “I’m crazy about you, Lindsay Boxer. I really am.”

Chapter 60

YUKI HAD JUST about gotten a grip on the astounding fact of Lily Herman’s reappearance when John Kinsela called his first witness.

“The defense calls Gary Goodfriend.”

Yuki said, “What?” just loud enough for Nicky to hear. Her associate shrugged and looked at her with big eyes, as surprised as she was that their witness had been called by the opposition.

Yuki watched as the gun dealer who had sold Keith Herman a gun passed her chair on his way to the witness stand. He was wearing the same fringed buckskin jacket he’d worn when he was a witness for the prosecution, but the swagger was gone now that he’d gone over to the other side.

Goodfriend swore on the Bible and took his seat. Yuki looked directly at him, but he avoided her eyes.

Kinsela jingled coins in his pocket as he asked his witness, “Mr. Goodfriend, did you call my office yesterday afternoon?”

“Yes. I did.”

“And why did you call me?”

“Because I was having a whatchamacallit—guilty conscience.”

“Will you please tell the court what you told me?”

“I told you that I don’t really remember if it was Keith Herman who made that comment about having a rug rat problem, or if it was some other customer.”

“But you testified that it was Keith Herman.”

“I misremembered,” Goodfriend said now. “I definitely sold Keith Herman a gun. I’ve got the yellow copy of the sales slip. But like I said, I sold thirty guns that weekend. There was a lot of talking all around. It was noisy. It was a trade show, you know. And, what I’m thinking now is that I got confused.”

Kinsela said, “So to be clear, you’re retracting your earlier testimony. You no longer believe that Mr. Herman wanted to kill his daughter.”

“That’s right.”

“Thank you for coming forward, Mr. Goodfriend. That was an act of good citizenry.”

The judge said to Yuki, “You’ve got some questions, Ms. Castellano?”

“Just a few, Your Honor.” Yuki struggled for composure. No good to let Kinsela see that he’d rattled her. She relaxed her face and smiled.

“Mr. Goodfriend, I want to understand the timeline of your memory reversal.”

“Okay. Sure.”

“Last week you swore on the Bible that Mr. Herman had made a comment that you took to mean that he wanted to shoot his child.”

“Uh-huh. But that was then.”

“You realize that either that statement or the one you just made is a lie. Do you know that perjury is a felony?”

“I wasn’t intentionally telling a lie. I just remembered it one way and then, yesterday, I remembered it a different way.”