4th of July - James Patterson [50]
He was so far away, all I could see was the glint of the lens, his orange sweatshirt, and a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. And he didn’t let me get any closer. Once he saw that I had noticed him, he turned and walked quickly away.
Maybe the guy was just taking pictures of the view, or maybe the tabloid press had found me at last, or maybe that pinging in my chest was just paranoia, but I felt kind of uneasy as I headed home.
Someone was watching me.
Someone who didn’t want me to see him.
Back at Cat’s, I stripped my bed and packed my things. Then I fed Penelope and changed her water.
“Good news, Penny,” I told the wonder pig. “Carolee and Allison promised that they’ll come over later. I see apples in your future, babe.”
I put Joe’s sweet good-bye-for-now note into my handbag and, after a thorough look around, made for the front door.
“Home we go,” I said to Martha.
We scrambled up into the Explorer and headed back to San Francisco.
Chapter 80
AT SEVEN THAT NIGHT, I opened the door to Indigo, a brand-new restaurant on McAllister, two blocks from the courthouse, which ought to have taken my appetite away. I passed through the wood-paneled bar into the high-ceilinged restaurant proper. There, the maître d’ checked me off his list and escorted me to a blue velvet banquette where Yuki was leafing through a sheaf of papers.
Yuki stood to hug me, and as I hugged her back, I realized how very glad I was to see my lawyer.
“How’s it going, Lindsay?”
“Just fabulous, except for the part when I remember that my trial starts Monday.”
“We’re going to win,” she said. “So you can stop worrying about that.”
“Silly me for fretting,” I said.
I cracked a smile, but I was more shaken than I wanted her to know. Mickey Sherman had convinced the powers that be that we would all be best served if I was represented by a woman attorney and that Yuki Castellano was “a great gal for the job.”
I wished I felt as sure.
Although I was catching her at the end of a long workday, Yuki looked fresh and upbeat. But most of all, she looked young. I reflexively clutched my Kokopelli as my twenty-eight-year-old attorney and I ordered dinner.
“So, what have I missed since I skipped town?” I asked Yuki. I pushed chef Larry Piaskowy’s pan-seared sea bass with a parsnip purée to the far side of my plate and nibbled at the fennel salad with pine nuts and a carrot-tarragon vinaigrette.
“I’m glad that you were outta here, Lindsay, because the sharks have been in a feeding frenzy,” Yuki said. I noticed that her eyes made direct contact with mine, but her hands never stopped moving.
“Editorials and TV coverage of the outraged parents have been running twenty-four/seven. . . . Did you catch Saturday Night Live?”
“Never watch it.”
“Well, just so you know, there was a skit. You’ve been dubbed Dirty Harriet.”
“That must’ve been a riot,” I said, pulling a face. “I guess someone made my day.”
“It’s going to get worse,” said Yuki, tugging at a lock of her shoulder-length hair. “Judge Achacoso okayed live TV coverage in the courtroom. And I just got the plaintiff’s witness list. Sam Cabot’s going to testify.”
“Well, that’s okay, isn’t it? Sam confessed to doing those electrocution murders. We can use that!”
“’Fraid not, Lindsay. His lawyers filed a motion to suppress because his parents weren’t there when he blurted out his confession to that ER nurse.
“Look,” Yuki said, grabbing my hands, no doubt responding to the way my face had frozen in shock. “We don’t know what Sam’s going to say—I’ll take him apart; you can count on that. But we can’t impeach him with his confession. It’s your word against his—and he’s thirteen and you’re a drunken cop.”
“And so you’re telling me ‘Don’t worry’ because . . . ?”
“Because the truth will out. Juries are composed of human beings, most of whom have had a drink in their lives. I