16th Seduction (Women's Murder Club 16)

“Can the landscaper ID the stealthy needle sticker?”

“You’ll talk to him,” said Claire. “I can get you pictures of the body. He’s already been interred by the city.”

“Nothing on missing persons, I take it?” I asked, putting down my spoon.

“Nothing that I found. I need some green tea ice cream. How about you?”

“Red bean for me,” I said.

I was already thinking about this possible crime spree. Anything that could take my mind off of Connor Grant’s trial was a relief on the order of a blessing.

CHAPTER 48

PARISI STOOD TO make his closing argument. Yuki stared up at him, thinking that with his black suit and red hair, the splash of red tie, he looked like a volcano starting to blow.

He walked toward the jury box and took a position near the rail. He said, “Ladies and gentlemen, this has been a difficult case to hear, and deciding on this case is one of the most important things you’ll ever be asked to do.

“Mr. Grant is a very clever man. He’s not a lawyer. Yet you’re front-row witnesses to how skillfully he defended himself.

“He says he’s not proficient enough to build the kind of bomb that destroyed Sci-Tron, and yet he has had years of studying and teaching about explosives, an obsession with bombs—all kinds, according to his own witness, Mr. Miller. Grant had all the materials a bomb maker could need. If he was missing something to make the bomb that could level Sci-Tron, whatever he needed could be found at a home improvement store for pocket change.”

Yuki looked at the jury. They were rapt. Even Connor Grant couldn’t take his eyes away from Leonard Parisi.

Parisi went on.

“Mr. Grant would like you to believe that his presence in front of Pier 15 at the precise moment the bomb went off was a coincidence. It was not. Mr. Grant told Sergeant Boxer and her husband, a highly knowledgeable former law enforcement professional who has been with the FBI and was deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security, that he blew up the museum. He described the explosion as a thing of beauty and said that he was proud of his work.

“It’s awful to hear that, isn’t it? I call it diabolical.”

Len let his words hang in the air for a moment, then he walked along the jury box, hand on the railing, and he gave the jury his eye-to-eye attention.

Parisi said, “Mr. Grant had the means to build those bombs and the opportunity to plant them in the museum anytime and detonate them remotely. Why did he stand on the sidewalk, totally unafraid, as the crowds fled for their lives? Because he made that bomb. He knew the extent of the bomb’s power. And he wanted to witness his homemade big bang, his peak science project and the culmination of his career as a teacher.

“It turns out to be an object lesson for Mr. Grant.

“Remaining at the scene to witness his work caused him to be ecstatic to the point that he didn’t realize he was making a confession to a police officer until he was in the patrol car.

“Twenty-five people died as the result of that science project,” said District Attorney Len Parisi. “Don’t let this man get away with murder.”

The judge called on Connor Grant, who went out to the well and stood behind the lectern.

Once again Yuki thought what a natural he was. She could see how a career as a high school teacher hadn’t stretched him to his full capacity. Blowing up Sci-Tron, then defending himself in a trial of so much interest to the world, against twenty-five counts of second-degree murder? He was made for this.

“Members of the jury, as M

r. Parisi said, I’m not a lawyer,” said Connor Grant. “So I’m talking to you as an accidental defendant, a person just like every one of you.

“You’ve heard the case against me. While I was still stunned by the force and the effects of the explosion, I supposedly admitted blowing up Sci-Tron. To be fair to Sergeant Boxer and Mr. Molinari, I think they misunderstood my astonishment and took it to be pride of accomplishment.

“They were wrong.

“Homicide lieutenant Brady told you that the police had only one suspect. Me. Why didn’t they keep looking, when so many people had died and they had such nothing evidence? I’ll tell you why. They needed a patsy. They needed to clean up the mess, and in a time when bombs are going off all over the world, they sought to calm the city down. So they nabbed me and they piled on until they had some kind of case.

“It’s what’s called a rush to judgment.”

Grant paused, as if he had been seized by emotion. He cleared his throat, apologized, and picked up where he’d left off.

“The prosecution’s forensics expert testified that I could have built and set those bombs based on no evidence linking me to Sci-Tron.