The 17th Suspect Read online

  Ten minutes from now court was due to reconvene.

  Yuki and her second chair, Arthur, sat together on a bench outside the courtroom, waiting for their star witness to arrive.

  When Yuki spoke with Marc last night, he had said, “I’m good to go.” But his tone had been shaky, and she had been obligated to tell him that she couldn’t stall the proceedings any longer. If he didn’t show up, she’d have to run the video for the jury without him, which would dramatically diminish its impact.

  Yuki said to Arthur, “I don’t like that he doesn’t answer his phone.”

  He said, “Let me make sure I’ve got this right. He was shot in the thigh? One shot only?”

  “Yep. One shot. Through and through.”

  “The slug wasn’t recovered?”

  “Not so far,” she said.

  “So the shot could have been accidental. Like a random shot from two streets away.”

  “Yep. That’s possible.”

  “Or maybe the shooter had a motive,” Art said, inserting a long pause before adding, “Like an eight-hundred-pound gorilla wearing a designer suit.”

  Yuki said, “The gorilla has an alibi. There’s no evidence that she shot him. In fact, her gun wasn’t recently fired. Video supports her whereabouts. Giftos got Rathburn to reinstate her bail, and she’s been released.”

  “Maybe she hired someone to freak him out.”

  “So that he wouldn’t testify?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  “Good theory, Art. That had not occurred to me.”

  The bailiff swung open the courtroom doors.

  “Let’s go,” said Arthur. “I want to get a good seat.”

  Yuki smiled. Art was funny, but he was also very sharp. Committing a sex crime and hiring a hitter were two entirely different kinds of crimes, but they weren’t mutually exclusive. Had Briana paid a shooter to intimidate Marc? Had Marc in fact been intimidated? What kind of testimony would he give today?

  Yuki and Art joined the throng entering the courtroom and had just taken their seats at their table when James Giftos strode up the center aisle.

  He stopped beside Yuki’s seat.

  “Neat trick, Counselor,” he said. “I’m already writing up my appeal.”

  Of course Giftos was mad that Briana had been arrested and held overnight. It had weakened and depressed her, and that could make her a poor witness for herself.

  Yuki was torn between saying “Dude, she had a loaded gun” and “Knock yourself out, Counselor,” but Giftos was already on the move. He crossed the well and opened the side door that led to the interior stairwell used by court personnel.

  Giftos’s second chair came through the doorway with Briana Hill, who was wearing a plain gray skirt and sweater, with a silver cross.

  Her polished look was gone.

  Hill had just taken her seat between her two attorneys when the jurors entered the courtroom and filled the seats in the jury box. Behind Yuki, the gallery was loud with the sounds of spectators talking, settling into their seats, putting down their computer bags. Yuki looked for Marc but didn’t see him or his parents.

  This was very worrisome. It was five to nine.

  Judge Rathburn came through his private entrance, and the whispers stopped cold. Right then Yuki heard a ruckus behind her.

  She turned in her seat to see the bailiff trying to close the door and heard a man’s voice pleading, “We got here as fast as we could. He has a right to be here.”

  The bailiff relented and opened the door, and with the help of his parents, Marc Christopher hobbled into the courtroom on crutches. An elderly man on the aisle got up to give Marc his seat. Marc glanced in Yuki’s direction, and she nodded at him as he awkwardly took a seat in the gallery.

  Like Briana Hill, Marc had lost his look of dewy youthfulness.

  And now, after he’d been injured and traumatized, the curtain was about to go up on the drama of his life.

  CHAPTER 70

  JUDGE RATHBURN WAS at the bench.

  He took an unsmiling visual tour of his courtroom, popped a couple of Tums, and tapped on his laptop. After exchanging words with his clerk, the judge said, “Ms. Castellano. Please call your witness.”

  Yuki was ready—but what about Marc? Would he push through the pain and nervousness and do a good job of testifying on his own behalf? Or would he fold on the stand?

  It could go either way.

  She watched Marc pull himself to his feet, then limp and hop through the gate like a long-legged waterbird with a broken wing. He crossed the well in this awkward manner, drawing the attention of every soul in the courtroom.

  Maybe he’d draw their pity, too.

  The bailiff held the Bible and, after Marc swore to tell the whole truth, so help him God, gave Marc a hand up to the witness box. Marc said, “Thanks,” then fumbled his crutch. It spun out of his grasp and bounced down the step to the floor, the clatter sounding through the room, which was otherwise silent.

  The bailiff retrieved the crutch and asked Marc if he was okay.

  “Good enough,” he said.

  It was a dramatic and, she hoped, sympathetic introduction to the jury, who had heard much about Marc but had not actually seen him.

  Yuki looked at Marc as if she were a juror seeing him for the first time. He still looked like a college kid, but one who had gotten knocked around on the football field. Along with the leg injury, Marc’s cheek was scraped from jaw to hairline, and he had dark smudges under his eyes.

  When his leg went out from under him on the street, he must’ve taken a pretty good fall.

  Yuki flashed on the sex video she had seen many times. Within the next hour she would be showing it to the jury while Marc sat in the box, pinned under the lights by the appraising eyes of the jurors. Thinking of what Marc had endured, Yuki felt sorry for him. Her doubts about his sincerity since he’d tried to kiss her dropped away.

  Marc had been raped and shot, and now he was going to have to tell a roomful of strangers that he had been tied to his bed and assaulted by a woman who weighed 110 pounds.

  Yuki left her seat, walked to a spot about ten feet from the stand, and smiled at her witness.

  She said, “Mr. Christopher, how are you feeling?”

  He made the universal flip-flop hand sign for fifty-fifty, managed a weak smile, and said, “I’m good.”

  “Glad to hear it, Marc. Is it all right with you if I call you Marc?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. Marc, if you can tell us, what is the nature of your injury?”

  “I was shot in the thigh,” Marc said.

  “Do you know who shot you?”

  “I didn’t see anyone. It was dark.”

  He switched his eyes to the defense table, where Briana Hill sat silently and steadily looking back at him. Whether indicating Briana with his eyes was calculated or reflexive, Marc had made a subtle yet powerful point. Briana Hill had raped him. Had she also shot him?

  Yuki asked, “Marc, tell us about the night of October eleventh.”

  “Where should I start?”

  Yuki asked him a series of questions that they had run through before. He answered, beginning with leaving work that day with Briana and going to a restaurant near his apartment where they’d had dinner before. During and after the meal both of them had had a lot to drink.

  “And what happened then?” she asked.

  Marc cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, he sounded deflated. He said, “This is very hard. Actually, this is the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me. It’s beyond humiliating. Then I had to tell the police. I had to tell you. I had to tell Mr. Giftos. I’ve had trouble telling this to a psychologist.”

  He shook his head and grabbed at his crutch. Yuki thought maybe he was going to take it and go.

  Yuki was getting that oncoming-train-wreck feeling again. What could she do? Should she ask for a time-out? Or should she call an end to Marc’s testimony and say, “I
’m done here”?

  She said, “Do you need a moment, Marc?”

  “Thanks, but I’d rather just get it over with,” he said.

  CHAPTER 71

  MARC WAS VISIBLY upset, but he stayed in the witness stand and had given Yuki his okay to continue his testimony.

  She pushed on.

  “Okay, Marc. Let’s go back to the moment when you and the defendant were drinking in the restaurant and bar. Tell us what happened.”

  Marc cleared his throat, then said, “Briana was very clingy, and over dinner I made up my mind. I told her that I thought we should stop seeing each other socially. She threw a fit.”

  Yuki couldn’t show it, but she was thinking, Nanda. What the hell was this? Marc hadn’t told her that he had tried to break up with Briana. In fact, Briana had sworn in her deposition that she was thinking of breaking up with him.

  Why was he embellishing the story?

  Yuki continued on as if she hadn’t just gotten hot breaking news from her witness. She said, “Please continue, Marc.”

  “Well, I tried to reason with her, calm her down, but she was crying hysterically. I said that it was late, and I started to call an Uber for her, but she insisted that she didn’t want to go home alone. She said we could discuss this in the morning, but she really needed to crash at my place, since it was close and she was so wasted.”

  Marc said, “I felt bad. I hadn’t warned her that I wanted to stop seeing her, and I couldn’t just walk out on her like that. So I said okay. We went to my apartment, a couple of blocks up the hill. I stopped thinking about her. I stripped down and fell into bed. Next thing I know, Briana’s calling my name. I look up and she’s got a gun pointed at me and she’s threatening to shoot me if I don’t give her, excuse my language, the best fuck of her life.”

  Yuki had gone over Marc’s story three, if not four, times, and he had never mentioned that Briana had been hysterical. Nor had he quoted any demands she’d made inside the bar. Why the hell not?

  Was he telling the truth now?

  Yuki had no choice but to ask Marc to continue, and he did, saying, “Briana was drunk, but she had a firm hand on the gun. I told her to knock it off, but I was scared. She’s a very determined and powerful woman, and now she was acting crazy, saying, ‘If you want to live, you’d better get your limp dick into the mood …’”

  Marc shook his head. Tears flew off his cheeks. Judge Rathburn handed him a box of tissues.

  As he dabbed his eyes, Yuki was thinking, What the fuck? Maybe Marc was trying to help their case, but he had added too many new and damning details to his story. James Giftos had deposed him and would blow big, gaping holes in these inconsistencies on cross.

  Marc answered Yuki’s questions, filling in details about the neckties, his protests, his terror, and the fact that he’d taken a chance in recording the rape.

  “Briana had sex with me against my will,” he said. “She kept the gun on me until I was tied up. Then she did things to make me get hard.”

  He stopped talking, shot a panicky look at Yuki, and said, “Then she did it. She raped me.”

  Yuki said, “Thank you, Mr. Christopher. Please remain seated.”

  She turned to the judge and said, “Your Honor, we’re ready to show the recording.”

  “Go ahead, Ms. Castellano. Will someone please get the lights?”

  CHAPTER 72

  ARTHUR BARON HAD cued up the video, positioned the laptop at the edge of the table, and set up the screen so that it faced the jury. But before Yuki got a chance to say, “Roll it,” James Giftos got to his feet and said angrily, “Your Honor. May we approach?”

  Rathburn signaled to the attorneys to come to the bench.

  He said, “Mr. Giftos, I’ve already ruled. The video is in.”

  “Judge Rathburn, with all due respect, I’ve seen this recording and you have not.”

  The judge said, “Let’s take this into my chambers.”

  Counsel for both sides followed the judge through his private doorway out of the courtroom and into his office. He took his desk chair and the four attorneys grouped at the front of his desk.

  Giftos said, “Judge Rathburn, I feel strongly that by showing this recording, the prosecution is going to perpetrate a miscarriage of justice.”

  Rathburn said, “As I said before, James, and will say again, you will have your chance to rebut the video and cross-examine the witness. What don’t I understand?”

  Giftos was red faced and the cords in his neck were standing out. He said, “Your Honor, I don’t think you understand that this recording is hard-core porn. There is full-on nudity and full-on sex, or more accurately, bondage.

  “As I have said from the beginning, this video is a setup. Marc Christopher recorded it in such a way—”

  “Using the same argument isn’t going to change my ruling.”

  “Putting our argument aside,” Giftos said, “watching the stark visualization of this sex act is inflammatory and prejudicial in the extreme.

  “Once the jury sees it, it cannot be unseen. The spectators and the press will also see it, and even though Briana is entirely innocent of this charge, she will be convicted in the court of public opinion, and that verdict will cling to her for the rest of her life.”

  Yuki thought Giftos was making a strong case for excluding the video, and that was very worrying. Without it, her case would hang entirely on Marc’s testimony—and Giftos hadn’t yet set out to discredit him.

  Giftos went on.

  “Once again I move that the video be excluded. It’s prejudicial, defamatory, and the basis for a whopper of a civil suit against the People of San Francisco.”

  Rathburn said, “All right, Mr. Giftos, you’ve made your point. Ms. Castellano?”

  Yuki said firmly, “Your Honor, the video is a recording of Ms. Hill threatening violence, brandishing a gun, and raping Mr. Christopher. It’s irrefutable evidence. The jury has to see it or they won’t have the full facts of the crime.”

  Rathburn leaned back, considered the remarks, and then returned his seat to its upright position.

  “James, here’s what I’m willing to do. I’ll clear the courtroom. The spectators, including the press, will not see the tape, just the jurors. Fair enough?”

  Giftos snorted, huffed, and, after a walk over to the windows, returned to the grouping around Judge Rathburn’s desk.

  “All right,” said Giftos. “Jurors and no spectators.”

  Said Rathburn, “If Ms. Castellano agrees.”

  Yuki was ready with her answer. “That works for me, Judge.”

  Giftos said, “If it’s okay with you, Your Honor, Ms. Benson can sit with Ms. Hill outside your chambers while Ms. Castellano runs the video.”

  Yuki said, “Mr. Christopher can wait in the hallway.”

  “Another hurdle cleared,” said Judge Rathburn. “The recording is in.”

  CHAPTER 73

  THE COURTROOM HAD been cleared of spectators and press.

  Sixteen men and women sat in the jury box staring at Yuki as she told Arthur to play the recording.

  Lights were dimmed, but it was bright enough for Yuki to see the resolute faces of the jurors. During voir dire they had been told that evidence would include a sexually explicit video, and they were asked if they were willing and able to see such a recording and remain impartial. The twelve plus four had all said yes.

  Truth was, it was still hard for Yuki to watch. The screen faced away from her, but she’d seen the ten-minute-long video so many times, she could see the action in her mind.

  In the first moments the view of the bed was partially blocked by Marc’s body as he faced the hidden camera and struggled to tie his left hand to the headboard with his right.

  Briana’s voice was heard clearly.

  Briana: That knot isn’t tight enough, damn it. Fix that, Marc, you stupid little bitch.

  Marc: I’m doing it. I’m doing it. Put the gun down, okay? Please, Briana. That thing could go off
.

  Yuki knew that Marc tightened the knot and then rolled flat onto his back.

  Briana: Grip the other bedpost with your right hand. Do what I tell you, Marc, or I will shoot you and walk the hell out of here.

  Yuki saw alarm on the jurors’ faces. Mrs. Moloney, for instance, a mother of three and a bank executive, was frowning. At the other end of the row Mr. Koenig, a twentysomething high school math teacher, had drawn back in his seat and was covering his mouth with both hands.

  On-screen, even in the darkened room, Marc could be seen nude and spread-eagle on the sheets. Briana Hill, fully dressed, was standing at the foot of the bed, holding a gun with both hands, the muzzle aimed at Marc.

  Yuki knew that it was at this point that Briana put the gun down on a chair and cinched a necktie around Marc’s wrist, lashing it to the headboard.

  Briana: There. There we go. Got you now.

  On the tape Marc was breathing loudly. Could be from panic.

  Marc: You’re going too far, Briana. I’m not into this. I don’t even know you right now.

  Briana checked each of the ties, then slowly undressed, folding her jacket, sweater, slacks, stacking them on the chair. She peeled off her panties and passed them over Marc’s face, then hung her bra over the footboard.

  Marc strained at the ties and could be heard saying, “This is crazy. This is wrong. This isn’t going to work, Briana.”

  “We’ll see about that,” she said.

  When she was naked, she got onto the bed and, kneeling between Marc’s spread legs, manipulated his genitals with her hands and her mouth before she mounted him.

  Two women jurors partially covered their eyes, but there was no way to shut out the sounds of both parties breathing hard, moaning, Briana saying, “Say it, Marc. You like this. This is what you want.”

  Briana’s rising, falling, grinding motions would continue for another five minutes and some seconds.

  Yuki had an impulse to grab the remote and hit Fast Forward. Arthur shot her a questioning look, and she shook her head no. Eventually the sounds stopped.