Women's Murder Club [06] The 6th Target Read online

  Chapter 91

  MICKEY SHERMAN SAT BESIDE ALFRED BRINKLEY at the defense table, trying to get his client to understand him through the haze of whatever meds he was on. The poor sap had all the energy of a parsnip.

  “Fred. Fred.” Sherman shook his client’s shoulder. “Fred, we start your defense today, you understand? So I’ll be putting people on the stand to vouch for your character.”

  Brinkley nodded his head. “You’re putting my doctor on the stand.”

  “Right. Dr. Friedman is going to talk about your mental condition, so don’t get upset. He’s on our side.”

  “I want a chance to tell my side of the story.”

  “We’ll see. I don’t know yet if we need to put you on the stand.”

  Mickey’s assistant passed him a note saying that his witnesses were all accounted for. Then the bailiff called out, “All rise,” and the judge entered the courtroom through the door behind the bench. The jurors filed in and were seated.

  It was day four of Alfred Brinkley’s trial, and court was in session.

  “Mr. Sherman,” Judge Moore said, “are you ready with your first witness?”

  “The defense calls Mr. Isaac Quintana.”

  Quintana was wearing several layers of odd clothing, but his eyes were clear, and he smiled as he took the stand.

  “Mr. Quintana,” Sherman began.

  “Call me Ike,” the witness said. “Everyone does.”

  “I’ll call you Ike, then,” Mickey said good-naturedly. “How do you know Mr. Brinkley?”

  “We were at Napa State together.”

  “That’s not a college, is it?” Sherman said, smiling at his witness, jingling the coins in his pocket.

  “Naw, it’s a nuthouse,” Ike said, grinning.

  “It’s a state mental institution, isn’t that right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you know why Fred was at Napa State?”

  “Sure. He was depressed. Wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t get out of bed. Had very bad dreams. His sister had died, you know, and when he checked into Napa, it was because he didn’t want to live.”

  “Ike, how did you know that Fred was depressed and suicidal?”

  “He told me. And I knew he was on antidepressants.”

  “And how long did you know Fred?”

  “For about two years.”

  “Did you get along with him pretty well?”

  “Oh, sure. He was a very sweet guy. That’s why I know he didn’t mean to kill those people on the ferry —”

  “Objection! Your Honor, unresponsive,” Yuki barked. “I move that the witness’s last statement be stricken from the record.”

  “Sustained. So ordered.”

  “Ike,” Sherman asked reassuringly, “was Fred Brinkley ever violent when you knew him?”

  “Gosh, no. Who told you that? He was very laid-back. Drugs’ll do that to a person. Take a pill and you’re not really crazy anymore.”

  Chapter 92

  YUKI STOOD UP FROM THE PROSECUTION TABLE and smoothed out the creases in her pin-striped skirt, thinking that Quintana was like a Muppet, with his wacky smile and outfit that made him appear to be wearing an entire tag sale.

  It all seemed to work for him. The jurors were smiling, loving him, loving Brinkley by association.

  She said, “Mr. Quintana, why were you at Napa State?”

  “I have OCD. It’s not dangerous or anything. It just takes up all my time, ’cause I’m always collecting things and checking all the time —”

  “Thank you, Mr. Quintana. And are you also a psychiatrist?”

  “No. But I know a few, that’s for sure.”

  Yuki smiled as the jury tittered. It would be tricky to dismantle Quintana’s testimony without turning the jury against her.

  “What kind of work do you do, Mr. Quintana?”

  “I’m a dishwasher at the Jade Café on Bryant. If you want clean, you can’t do better than having someone with OCD doing the dishes.”

  “I see your point,” Yuki said as laughter rolled up from the gallery. “Do you have any medical training?”

  “No.”

  “And apart from today, when did you last see Mr. Brinkley?”

  “About fifteen years ago. He was checked out of Napa, like, in 1988 or so.”

  “You’ve had no contact with him between now and then?”

  “No.”

  “So you wouldn’t know if he’s had two lobotomies and a heart transplant since you saw him last?”

  “Ha-ha, that’s funny. Um, is that true?”

  “My point, Mr. Quintana, is that the sixteen-year-old you called ‘a very sweet guy’ may have changed. Are you the same person you were fifteen years ago?”

  “Well, I have a lot more stuff.”

  Guffaws sprang up from the gallery; even the jurors were chortling. Yuki smiled to show she didn’t, God forbid, lack a sense of humor.

  When quiet resumed, she said, “Ike, when you said that Mr. Brinkley was crazy, that was your opinion as a friend, wasn’t it? You weren’t trying to say that he met the legal definition of insanity? That he didn’t know right from wrong?”

  “No. I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Quintana. I have no further questions.”

  Chapter 93

  SHERMAN’S NEXT WITNESS, Dr. Sandy Friedman, walked up the aisle toward the witness stand. He was a good shrink, educated at Harvard, even looked the part of a psychiatrist, with his designer glasses and Brooks Brothers bow tie, a hint of Liam Neeson in his facial features.

  “Dr. Friedman,” Sherman said after the witness was sworn in and had cited his credentials, “have you had a chance to interview Mr. Brinkley?”

  “Yes, three times since he’s been incarcerated, pending trial.”

  “Have you diagnosed his illness?”

  “Yes. In my opinion, Mr. Brinkley has schizoaffective disorder.”

  “Could you tell us what that means?”

  Friedman leaned back in his chair as he organized his response. Then he said, “Schizoaffective disorder is a thought, mood, and behavioral disorder that involves elements of paranoid schizophrenia. One can think of it as a kind of bipolar disorder.”

  “ ‘Bipolar’ meaning ‘manic-depressive’?” Sherman asked.

  “ ‘Bipolar’ in the sense that people with schizoaffective disorder have ups and downs, despair and depression — and hyperactivity or mania, but they can often manage their illness for a long time and more or less fit in on the fringes of society.”

  “Would they hear voices, Dr. Friedman?”

  “Yes, many do. That would be one of the schizoid aspects of this disease.”

  “Threatening voices?”

  “Yes.” Friedman smiled. “That would be the paranoia.”

  “Did Mr. Brinkley tell you that he thought people on television were talking to him?”

  “Yes. That’s also a fairly common symptom of schizoaffective disorder — an example of a break from reality. And the paranoia makes him think that the voices are aimed at him.”

  “Could you explain what you mean when you refer to a ‘break from reality’?”

  “Certainly. From the onset of Mr. Brinkley’s disease in his teens, there has always been a distortion in the way he thinks and acts, in how he expresses his emotions. Most important, in how he perceives reality. That’s the psychotic element — his inability to tell what is real from what is imagined.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Friedman,” Sherman said. “Now bringing us up to the recent events that brought Mr. Brinkley to trial. What can you tell us about that?”

  “With schizoaffective disorder, there is generally a precipitate that causes an increase in crazy behavior. In my judgment, that precipitate for Mr. Brinkley would have been when he got fired from his job. The loss of his routine, the subsequent eviction from his apartment, all of that would have exacerbated his illness.”

  “I see. Dr. Friedman, did Mr. Brinkley tell you about the ferry
shooting?”

  “Yes. I learned in our sessions that Mr. Brinkley hadn’t been on a boat since his sister died in a sailing accident when he was sixteen. On the day of the ferry incident, there was an additional precipitate. Mr. Brinkley saw a sailboat. And that triggered the event. In layman’s terms, that sent him over the edge. He couldn’t distinguish between illusion and reality.”

  “Did Mr. Brinkley tell you that he was hearing voices on the ferry?”

  “Yes. He said that they were telling him to kill. You have to understand that Fred has a fierce underlying anger about his sister’s death, and that manifested itself in this explosive rage.

  “The people on the ferry weren’t real to him. They were only a backdrop to his delusions. The voices were his reality, and the only way he could stop them was to obey.”

  “Dr. Friedman,” Sherman said, touching his upper lip with the tip of his forefinger, “can you state with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that when Mr. Brinkley obeyed those voices and shot the passengers on the ferry, he did not appreciate the difference between right and wrong?”

  “Yes. Based on my interviews with Mr. Brinkley and my twenty years of experience working with the severely mentally impaired, it is my opinion that at the time of the shooting, Alfred Brinkley suffered from a mental disease or defect that prevented him from knowing right from wrong. I am absolutely convinced of it.”

  Chapter 94

  DAVID HALE PUSHED A NOTE over to Yuki — a cartoon drawing of a large bulldog with a spiked collar and drool dripping from its jowls. The voice balloon said, “Go get ’em.”

  Yuki smiled, thought about Len Parisi taking a wide-legged stance in the middle of this oaken courtroom and shredding Mickey Sherman’s hired shrink to ribbons.

  She drew a circle around the cartoon, underscored it. Then she stood, speaking before she reached the podium.

  “Dr. Friedman, you’re quite well known as an expert witness, isn’t that right?”

  Friedman said that he was and that he’d testified for both prosecution and defense teams over the past nine years.

  “In this case, the defense hired you?”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “And how much were you paid?”

  Friedman looked up at Judge Moore, who peered down at him. “Please answer the question, Dr. Friedman.”

  “I was paid about eight thousand dollars.”

  “Eight thousand dollars. Okay. And how long were you treating Mr. Brinkley?”

  “Mr. Brinkley wasn’t technically my patient.”

  “Oh,” said Yuki. “Then let me ask you, can you diagnose someone that you’ve never treated?”

  “I’ve had three sessions with Mr. Brinkley, during which time I also gave him a battery of psychological tests. And yes, I can assess Mr. Brinkley without treating him,” Friedman sniffed.

  “So based on three interviews and these tests, you believe that the defendant was unable to understand right from wrong at the time of the killings?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “You didn’t give him an X-ray and find a tumor pressing against a lobe of his brain, did you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “So how do we know that Mr. Brinkley wasn’t lying and skewing the test results so he wouldn’t be found guilty of murder?”

  “He couldn’t do that,” Friedman said. “You see, the test questions are like a built-in lie detector. They’re repeated in many different ways, and if the answers are consistent, then the patient is telling the truth.”

  “Doctor, you use those tests because you can’t really know what’s in the patient’s mind, can you?”

  “Well, you also make a judgment based on behavior.”

  “I see. Dr. Friedman, are you aware of the legal term ‘consciousness of guilt’?”

  “Yes. It refers to actions a person may take that show the person is aware what he or she did was wrong.”

  “Well put, Doctor,” Yuki said. “Now, if someone shoots five people and then runs away, as Alfred Brinkley did, doesn’t that show consciousness of guilt? Doesn’t it show that Mr. Brinkley knew what he’d done was wrong?”

  “Look, Ms. Castellano, not everything a person does when he’s in a psychotic state is illogical. People on that ferry were screaming, coming at him with intent to harm him. He ran. Most people finding themselves in that situation would have run.”

  Yuki stole a look at David, who gave her an encouraging nod. She wished he’d beam her something to nail Friedman with because she didn’t have it.

  And then she did.

  “Dr. Friedman, does gut instinct play any part in your assessment?”

  “Well, sure. Gut instinct, or intuition, is made up of many layers of experience. So, yes, I used gut instinct as well as formal psychological protocol in my assessment.”

  “And did you determine whether or not Mr. Brinkley is dangerous?”

  “I interviewed Mr. Brinkley both before and after he was put on Risperdal, and it is my opinion that, properly medicated, Mr. Brinkley is not dangerous.”

  Yuki put both her hands on the witness box, looked Friedman in the eye, ignored everything and everyone in the courtroom, and spoke from the fear she felt every time she looked at that freak sitting next to Mickey Sherman.

  “Dr. Friedman, you interviewed Mr. Brinkley behind bars. Check your gut instinct on this: Would you feel comfortable riding home in a cab with Mr. Brinkley? Would you feel safe having dinner with him in his home? Riding alone with him in an elevator?”

  Mickey Sherman leaped to his feet. “Your Honor, I object. Those questions should be taken out and shot.”

  “Sustained,” the judge grumbled.

  “I’m done with this witness, Your Honor,” Yuki said.

  Chapter 95

  AT 8:30 THAT MONDAY MORNING, Miriam Devine took the bundles of mail from the hallway console and brought them into the breakfast nook.

  She and her husband had just returned home to Pacific Heights last night after their cruise, ten fabulous days in the Mediterranean, where they were mercifully cut off from phones and television and newspapers and bills.

  She wanted to keep the real world at bay for at least a couple of days, keep that vacation feeling a little longer. If only she could.

  Miriam made drip coffee, defrosted and toasted two cinnamon buns, and began her attack on the mail, stacking catalogs on the right side of the kitchen table, bills on the left, and miscellaneous items across from her coffee mug.

  When she found the plain white envelope addressed to the Tylers, she shuffled it to the bottom of the “miscellaneous” pile and continued working, writing checks and tossing junk mail until Jim came into the kitchen.

  Her husband drank his coffee standing up, said, “Christ. I don’t want to go to the office. It’s going to be hell even if no one knows I’m there.”

  “I’ll make meat loaf for dinner, sweetie. Your favorite.”

  “Okay. Something to look forward to anyway.”

  Jim Devine left the house and closed the front door behind him. Miriam finished dealing with mail, rinsed the dishes, and phoned her daughter before calling her next-door neighbor Elizabeth Tyler.

  “Liz, honey! Jim and I just got back last night. I have some mail for you that was delivered here by mistake. Why don’t I drop over so we can catch each other up?”

  Chapter 96

  I STOOD WITH CONKLIN in the Tylers’ living room. It was only fifteen minutes since their neighbor Miriam Devine had dropped off the handwritten note from the kidnappers.

  It had had the effect of an emotional nuclear bomb on Elizabeth Tyler and was having a similar effect on me.

  I remembered canvassing the Devines’ house the day of the abduction. It was a cream-colored clapboard Victorian almost identical to the Tylers’ house, right next door. I’d spoken to the Devines’ housekeeper, Guadalupe Perez. She’d told us in broken English that the Devines were away.

  Nine days ago, I couldn’t have imag
ined that Guadalupe Perez would have picked up an envelope that had been slid under the door and that she would have stacked it with the rest of the Devines’ mail.

  No one could have known, but I felt heartsick and responsible anyway.

  “How well do you know the Devines?” Conklin asked Henry Tyler, who was furiously pacing the perimeter of the room. There were pictures of Madison on every wall and surface — baby pictures, family portraits, holiday snapshots.

  “It’s not them, okay? The Devines didn’t do it!” Tyler shouted. “Madison is gone!” he yelled, holding his head with both hands as he paced. “It’s too late.”

  I dropped my eyes back to the sideboard and the block letters on the plain white bond that I could read from five feet away:

  WE HAVE YOUR DAUGHTER.

  IF YOU CALL LAW ENFORCEMENT, SHE DIES.

  IF WE FEEL ANY HEAT, SHE DIES.

  RIGHT NOW, MADISON IS HEALTHY AND SAFE, AND WILL STAY THAT WAY AS LONG AS YOU KEEP QUIET.

  THIS PHOTO IS THE FIRST. YOU WILL RECEIVE A NEW PICTURE OF MADISON EVERY YEAR. YOU MAY RECEIVE A PHONE CALL. SHE MAY EVEN COME HOME.

  BE SMART. BE QUIET.

  ONE DAY MADISON WILL THANK YOU.

  The photo of Madison that came with the note had been printed out on a home-style printer within an hour of the time she was abducted. The girl seemed clean and unharmed, wearing the blue coat, the red shoes.

  “Could he know that we didn’t get the note? Could he know that we didn’t mean to defy him?”

  “I just don’t know, Mr. Tyler, and I can’t really guess —”

  Elizabeth Tyler interrupted me, the cords of her neck standing out as she strained to talk.

  “Madison is the brightest, happiest little girl you can imagine. She sings. She plays music. She has the most wonderful laugh.