10th Anniversary - James Patterson [50]
“Get traction on this thing, or we’ll send it down the line to Crimes Against Persons and move on,” he said.
My phone was ringing when I got back to my desk. I was hoping it was QT, but I saw from my caller ID that it was Dean Hanover of the Brighton Academy.
“Boxer,” I said, picturing the man with the polka-dot bow tie in his buttoned-up office.
“Sergeant, I’m glad I reached you.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Avis Richardson is missing,” the dean told me. “She came back to school yesterday, but she wasn’t in her dorm room this morning. Now I just found out that one of our teachers is missing, too. Jordan Ritter didn’t show up to class this morning. That’s very unusual for him. Both of them are gone. No note, no nothing. They’re just gone.”
Chapter 63
LESS THAN TWENTY-FOUR hours earlier, Phil Hoffman had been in his office, rehearsing his defense strategy, when a phone call from the SFPD radically upped his client’s chances for acquittal. It had sure felt to him like an act of God.
Now he stood behind the defense table in Judge LaVan’s courtroom and said, “The defense calls Bernard St. John.”
Bernard St. John entered the courtroom. He was wearing an expensive chalk-striped suit and a blue silk shirt. Not a spiked hair was out of place. After he had been sworn in and was seated, Hoffman approached the witness stand.
As expected, Yuki shot to her feet. “Your Honor,” she said, “we only learned about this witness last night and haven’t had a chance to do any investigation.”
Hoffman said to the judge, “I only became aware of this witness myself yesterday evening, and we sent an e-mail to Ms. Castellano immediately.”
LaVan peered through his glasses, looking down from the bench, and said, “Ms. Castellano, you’ll have your chance to question the witness. Mr. Hoffman, you may proceed.”
“Thank you, Your Honor. Mr. St. John, what kind of work do you do?”
“I play the piano for events, and I am also a piano teacher.”
“Are you currently employed as the Martin children’s piano teacher?”
“No. I was let go four months ago. The children were busy with a number of activities, and piano lessons were apparently not a priority.”
“What was your job with the Martins before you were let go?”
“I mostly taught Caitlin,” St. John said. “But Duncan was learning his scales and some beginners’ songs.”
“When did you first start working for the Martin family?”
“Two years ago last month.”
“And do you have a friendship with other people who worked for the Martins?” Hoffman asked.
“Yes, I do,” said St. John.
“Were you friends with Ellen Lafferty, the children’s nanny?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And did Ms. Lafferty confide in you about a connection she had with Mr. Martin?”
“Yes. A little over a year ago.”
“What did she tell you at that time?”
“She said that she’d been having an affair with Mr. Martin. It had begun when Dr. Martin had surgery for breast cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy. Ellen said that at first she was just sleeping with Mr. Martin because he seemed so sad.”
Hoffman waited out the titters that rippled across the gallery then asked his witness to continue.
St. John said, “By the time Ellen told me about the affair, she said she had fallen in love with Dennis and didn’t know what to do.”
“Hearsay, Your Honor,” Yuki said.
“I’m going to allow it, Ms. Castellano. Go ahead, Mr. Hoffman.”
“Did Ms. Lafferty ever mention this romantic relationship with Mr. Martin again?”
“Yes. She showed me gifts he gave her. And before he … died, Ellen told me again that she was painfully in love with him — her word — and in love with the children, too.”
“And why didn’t you come forward with this earlier, Mr. St. John?”
“The police only asked me if I had witnessed any hostility between Dr. Martin and her husband. I said that I’d overheard fights. And they wanted to know if I was in the house the night of the murder. I wasn’t. I hadn’t been there in days.”
“Did you tell the police that you thought Dr. Martin had killed her husband?”
St. John said, “No. I told them I didn’t think