16th Seduction (Women's Murder Club 16)

“As I said, on the evening of August 3, I was walking along the sidewalk in the direction of Sci-Tron. Thursday night was adults only, and I wanted to stand in the observatory gallery at sunset. That’s all that was in my mind.

“Then the shocking explosion seemed to break the sky. Glass went flying and I saw a mushroom cloud forming over the bay. The concussion of the blast seemed to make time stand still. It was like my shoes were bonded to that pavement when the bomb went off. Imagine being so close to a bomb that the sidewalk is shimmying under your feet.”

The glow on Grant’s face was riveting. He had brought the destruction of Sci-Tron right into the courtroom. He was there. And even Yuki couldn’t look away.

Hoffman said, “Mr. Grant? Please go on.”

“Sorry, Your Honor.”

Grant focused intently on the jurors, saying to them, “At some point I became aware of the screaming. People were running from the pier where the museum had been standing, and still I could not move. This was living science, and I was trying to understand what looked like spontaneous combustion.

“Mr. Parisi has told you that I confessed to blowing up Sci-Tron to a police officer. I did no such thing. Did I comment on the explosion? Did I say that it was amazing or something? I do not know.

“I was in a state of shock. I was also a witness. I hope you understand that within those first moments after the blast, I wasn’t thinking about people or panic or death. As a scientist with a laboratory mentality, I was mesmerized by what I had seen in the wild, and I was analyzing it, too. Trying to figure out exactly what had occurred in front of my eyes.”

Yuki scanned the jurors’ faces. They, too, looked mesmerized. Parisi was leaning back in his seat. Watching. No doubt learning from the defendant and making a plan.

Grant shuffled through his note cards, examined a couple of them. He seemed to be collecting his thoughts. A moment later he again addressed the jury.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the prosecution will tell you that the police discovered a science lab in my garage. That is correct, although neither the garage nor the lab was hidden. My garage is in plain sight. I do experiments in my lab, not in my house. I think that makes good sense. The police will tell you that they have found a book on explosives that I have been working on for years. That’s true, but it’s very boring, and I don’t think it will ever be published, because it’s not newsworthy. It’s a notebook. That’s how I think of it.

“So I have a lab that takes up half of a two-car garage and a collection of notes, but more to the point, there is no way the People can connect me to this explosion.

“I did not go into the museum the night of the explosion, and no one claims otherwise. Whatever took down Sci-Tron was a perfectly distributed blast. A highly professional job. If I had been asked to detonate that building, I couldn’t have done it. The skill involved is just way beyond my abilities, and that is a fact.

“Here’s the prosecution’s total case: I may have said something to a police officer when I wasn’t thinking clearly. And to that I might add that this police officer may not have been thinking clearly, either. I’d ask you to give everyone involved the benefit of the doubt; we were deafened by the blast, shaken up by it, and frightened almost to death.

“We’ll never know how or why this misunderstanding between me and the police officer took place, because no record was made of any so-called admission. If I had been taken to the hospital, doctors would have said that my hearing had been affected or that I was in shock. But I was thrown into a squad car and brought into a police station, where I was locked up overnight in a cell full of dangerous strangers. The next morning, after a sleepless night, I was interrogated without benefit of counsel.

“Days later I was charged and held without bond.

“Think of that,” said the science teacher. “The police had me in custody, an innocent man, a victim of circumstances, and because they had no evidence at the time that this tragedy was caused by a terrorist group, they never looked any further than me, although apparently, GAR has taken credit.

“So the prosecution has me and no one else. That’s why they are desperate to pin the tail on the donkey. Me. Because it’s better than having no donkey at all.

“Here’s the simple, honest truth,” Connor Grant said to the rapt jurors. “Something or someone blew up Sci-Tron. But I give you my word. I swear on the Bible, I didn’t do it.”

Grant returned to the defense table. Yuki lowered her eyes and made notes on her tablet so that no one, not the defendant and not, God forbid, the jury, could see how amazed she was by Connor Grant’s opening remarks. He’d been unbelievably articulate. He hadn’t whiffed a line. And he’d come across as truthful and sincere with just the right amount of indignation, so much so that Yuki could see on the jurors’ faces that they were identifying with him.

And she was questioning her own certainty that he had bombed Sci-Tron.

She canceled the thought as she heard Parisi say to the judge, “The People call Sergeant Lindsay Boxer.”

CHAPTER 33

THE INFLUX OF media was creating dangerous traffic conditions on Bryant Street. Satellite trucks from network, cable, and foreign news outlets were double-parked, blocking the grid and narrowing the lanes in front of the Hall.

Camera crews had set up on the sidewalk. Reporters sat in tall director’s chairs under silk shades and spoke to their viewers. Others put microphones up to the faces of anyone who would stop, and they did impromptu interviews on the Hall of Justice steps.

I dodged the mob scene by using my customary route: on foot from Harriet Street, along the breezeway, and through the back door.

I’d taken time to look my professional best. I wore my gray Ralph Lauren blazer and blue trousers, a man-tailored white shirt, and sturdy, polished Cole Haan flats. My blond hair was pulled back in a pony, as usual, and I’d worn makeup for the occasion. My badge hung from a long ball chain around my neck. And I arrived ahead of time in the hallway outside courtroom 2A, where I waited to be called.

The testimony I was prepared to give against Connor Grant was pretty much the heart of the prosecution’s case. I wasn’t nervous exactly, but I was keyed up. A lot of people were depending on me.

The door to the courtroom opened, and the bailiff said to me, “Sergeant Boxer? You’re up.”

He held the door open, and I strode into the courtroom and up the aisle, passing many people who were turning to look at me as if there were music playing “Here Comes the Bride.”