The 6th Target - James Patterson [52]
“Right,” I agreed.
“Is that her handbag?” Cindy asked.
A woman’s shiny black purse rested on a slipper chair. I opened it, took out the wallet, showed Conklin the wad of twenties and a full deck of credit cards.
“So there goes the robbery theory,” I said.
“I was there when one of those dogs was found,” Cindy said, sketching in the story.
Rich shook his head, hair swinging in front of his eyes. “Sign of a potential psycho killer escalating to . . . this? Talk about overkill. So on the one hand we have the beating and the trashing of the piano. But why bother with the gas?”
“He either wanted to make sure she was discovered,” I said, “or he wanted to make sure she was dead.” I looked at Cindy. “Not one word of this in the Chronicle.”
Chapter 71
YUKI COULDN’T STOP THINKING about Len’s face, twisting with pain as his heart attack tried to kill him. She’d left him in the hospital last night, stabilized but incapacitated, and called David Hale’s answering machine at home. “There’s been an emergency. Meet me at the office at six a.m. and be ready to go to court.”
Now Yuki sat across from David in the grungy, pine--paneled conference room, her notes and instant coffee in front of her, bringing her fellow ADA up to speed.
“Why aren’t we getting a continuance?” he asked her. David was presentable today, in a tan herringbone jacket, blue pants, striped tie. Needed a haircut, but that couldn’t be helped. Of all the people available to her at short notice, she’d get the best work from Hale.
“Three reasons,” Yuki said, tapping the table with a plastic spoon.
“One, Leonard doesn’t want to lose Jack Rooney as a witness. Rooney is frail. He was on vacation when the shooting occurred. We might not be able to get him back when we need him, which means his tape might be excluded.”
“Okay.”
“Two, Len doesn’t want to chance losing Judge Moore.”
“Yeah, I get that, too.”
“Len says he’ll be in court in time to do the summation.”
“He said that?”
“Yep, when they were prepping him for surgery. He was lucid and adamant.”
“What did his doctor say?”
“His doctor said, and I quote, ‘There’s a reasonable possibility that the damage to Leonard’s heart is reversible.’ ”
“Did they have to crack open his chest?”
“Yes. I checked with Len’s wife. He came through the surgery fine.”
“And so he’ll be doing a summation in a little more than a week?”
“Probably not. And he won’t be doing the tarantella, either,” Yuki said. “So that brings me to number three. Len said that I’m as prepared as he is, that he’s confident in us. And we’re not to let him down.”
David Hale stared at her, openmouthed, before finally saying, “Yuki, I don’t have any trial experience.”
“I do. Several years.”
“Your experience is in civil cases, not criminal.”
“Shut up, David. I was a litigator. That counts. So we’re gonna give Red Dog our best. We’re gonna spend the next three hours going over what we both already know.
“We’ve got credible eyewitnesses, the Rooney tape, and a jury that is going to be rolling its eyes at the insanity defense.
“It’s what Len said at the prep meeting: The more random the crime, the less motive for the killings, the more afraid the jury is going to be that Brinkley will get forty-five minutes in a nuthouse and then go free —”
Yuki stopped to take in the grin spreading across David Hale’s face.
“What are you thinking, David? No, I take it back. Please don’t say it,” Yuki said, trying not to laugh.
“Open-and-shut case,” said her new teammate. “Slam dunk.”
Chapter 72
YUKI STOOD IN THE WELL OF THE COURTROOM, feeling as green as if she were trying her first case. She clutched the edges of the lectern, thought how when Len stood behind this thing, it appeared to be the size of a music stand. She was peering over the top of it like a grade-schooler.
The jury looked at her expectantly.
Could she actually convince them that Alfred Brinkley was guilty of capital murder?
Yuki called her first witness, Officer Bobby Cohen, a fifteen-year