The 17th Suspect (Women's Murder Club 17)

Yuki said, “People underestimating me is my secret weapon.”

Parisi cracked a smile, then said, “Toni set the meeting for ten. It’s nine thirty. Don’t be late.”

She and Arthur sprang from the sofa and out the door. At the elevator bank Yuki watched the indicator lights track the car down from the jail on the seventh floor. The elevator was old. Creaky. Slow. Like everything in the Hall of Justice, outmoded.

“Stairs,” Art said.

“Done.”

They took the fire exit, and as they jogged down to the second floor, Arthur said, “I had a dream. We were in court and a pack of dogs came rushing through the door. They were on the scent of something big, and they were determined.”

“How’d you know that?”

“I don’t know. I woke up.”

Yuki laughed. “That’s it? The whole dream?”

“The lead dog had red fur.”

She smiled at her new deputy. “Well, Arthur, we’re about to face off against the man who set Len’s hair on fire.”

As they walked along the hallway, Yuki turned her mind back to this complication that could kneecap the case against Briana Hill.

Without the video, it was Marc Christopher’s word against Briana Hill’s, a coin toss that left plenty of room for a jury to find reasonable doubt.

Yuki didn’t know Judge Rathburn, but she knew James Giftos.

He was the type of defense lawyer who was sometimes called a bomb.

Would Rathburn allow the video into evidence? Or would James Giftos, a man twenty years older than she, with twice as much trial experience, blow up her case before she ever presented it to the jury?

CHAPTER 32

MY HEAD WAS still swimming with images from the Pier 45 murder scene when I arrived at my desk the morning after.

I envisioned the sparse crowd on the pier; the deceased, Laura Russell, in her blood; her crying teenage daughter. I thought about the sketchy secondhand report that the shooter was white, and had worn a nice coat. And of course, I was still stuck on the rude dismissal by Sergeant Garth Stevens.

Conklin hadn’t yet punched in, so I headed for the break room and found that Sergeant Paul Chi and his partner, Cappy McNeil, had appropriated the table. I’ve worked with these two homicide pros since back in the far-distant day, when Jacobi and I were partners.

Chi is precise, diligent, a man Jacobi refers to as “human ground-penetrating radar.” I remember Jacobi toasting Chi when he was promoted to sergeant, saying, “Chi can see around corners and beyond time.”

Cappy is a different kind of cop—a career detective who, in twenty years on the force, has solved case after case without ever getting ruffled or into a jam.

I thought Chi and McNeil could give me some advice about the murder of Laura Russell. They made room for me at the table, and we sat together with a box of pastries between us. When I had laid it all out, including the intel from my confidential informant and my personal experience with Stevens and Moran, I asked, “Do either of you know these guys?”

“I know Stevens,” Cappy said, tucking into a honey bun. “What do you want to know?”

“Whatcha got?”

He chewed slowly, swallowed, and finally said, “This is just between you, me, Chi, and Honey Bun, and I’m about to take Ms. Bun down.”

“Agreed,” I said.

Between bites the wise Cappy McNeil told me that Stevens was a dedicated drinker—no surprise, since he and my father had been fellow barflies. Cappy added that Moran had been violent with two different girlfriends, or so he’d been told.

“He didn’t introduce his gun into the fights, but he knocked those women around pretty bad. If he was a pro ballplayer, he’da been suspended for at least a year.”

I pushed for more.