The Trial (Women's Murder Club 15.50)

“One of those women was Lucille Stone, twenty-eight years old. She worked in marketing, and for a long time she was one of Mr. Sierra’s girlfriends. She was unarmed when she was killed. Never carried a gun, and she had done nothing to Mr. Sierra. But, according to Lucy’s friends, she had decisively ended the relationship.

“Cameron Whittaker was Lucy’s friend. She was a substitute teacher, volunteered at a food bank, and had nothing whatsoever to do with Mr. Sierra or his associates. She was what is called collateral damage. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I turned my eyes to the jury and they were with Len all the way. He walked along the railing that separated the jury box from the well of the courtroom.

He said, “One minute these friends were enjoying a girls’ night out in an upscale nightclub, sitting together at the bar. And the next minute they were shot to death by the defendant, who thought he could get away with murder in full sight of 150 people, some of whom aimed their cell phones and took damning videos of this classic example of premeditated murder.

“I say ‘premeditated’ because the shooting was conceived before the night in question when Lucy Stone rejected Mr. Sierra’s advances. He followed her. He found her. He taunted her and he menaced her. And then he put two bullet holes in her body and even more in the body of her friend.

“Lucy Stone didn’t know that when she refused to open her door to him, he immediately planned to enact his revenge—”

Parisi had his hands on the railing when an explosion cracked through the air inside the courtroom.

It was a stunning, deafening blast. I dove for the floor and covered the back of my neck with my hands. Screams followed the report. Chairs scraped back and toppled. I looked up and saw that the bomb had gone off behind me and had blown open the main doors.

Smoke filled the courtroom, obscuring my vision. The spectators panicked. They swarmed forward, away from the blast and toward the judge’s bench.

Someone yelled, “Your Honor, can you hear me?”

I heard shots coming from the well; one, then two more.

I was on my feet, but the shots sent the freaked-out spectators in the opposite direction, away from the bench, toward me and through the doors out into the hallway.

Who had fired those shots? The only guns that could have passed through metal detection into the Hall had to belong to law enforcement. Had anyone been hit?

As the room cleared and the smoke lifted, I took stock of the damage. The double main doors were nearly unhinged, but the destruction was slight. The bomb seemed more like a diversion than a forceful explosion meant to kill, maim, or destroy property.

A bailiff helped Parisi to his feet. Judge Crispin pulled himself up from behind the bench, and the jury was led out the side doorway. Conklin headed toward me as the last of the spectators flowed out the main doors and cops ran in.

“EMTs are on the way,” he said.

That’s when I saw that the defense table, where the King had been sitting with his attorney, had flipped onto its side.

Penney looked around and called out, “Help! I need help here!”

My ears still rang from the blast. I made my way around overturned chairs to where Kingfisher lay on his side in a puddle of blood. He reached out his hand and beckoned to me.

“I’m here,” I said. “Talk to me.”

The King had been shot. There was a ragged bullet hole in his shoulder, blood pumping from his belly, and more blood pouring from a wound at the back of his head. There were shell casings on the floor.

He was in pain and maybe going into shock, but he was conscious.

His voice sounded like a whisper to my deafened ears. But I read him, loud and clear.

“Elena did this,” he said. “Elena, my little Elena.”

Then his face relaxed. His hand dropped. His eyes closed and he died.

Chapter 33

Jorge Sierra’s funeral was held at a Catholic cemetery in Crescent City, a small northwest California town on the ocean named for the crescent-shaped bay that defined it.

Among the seventy-five hundred people inc

luded in the census were the fifteen hundred inmates of nearby Pelican Bay State Prison.

It was either irony or payback, but Elena had picked this spot because her husband had asked to be imprisoned at Pelican Bay and now he would be within eight miles of it—forever.