Women's Murder Club [10] 10th Anniversary Read online

  Yuki was inside her head, psyching herself up as she made this walk. She reminded herself that she was dedicated. She was smart. She was buttoned up to her chin and she knew what she was going to say.

  And now for the hardest thing.

  She had to kick doubt’s ass right out of her mind.

  Chapter 8

  GAINES HELD THE DOOR for Yuki, then followed her into the wood-paneled courtroom. The defense table was empty. There were only half a dozen people in the gallery.

  They settled in at the prosecutors’ table behind the bar. Yuki straightened her jacket and her hair and then squared her notebook computer with the edge of the table.

  “If I get stuck, just smile at me,” Yuki said to her second chair.

  Gaines grinned, gave her a thumbs-up, and said, “You’ve heard of Cool Hand Luke? When you see this, it means Cool Hand Yuki.”

  “Thanks, Nicky.”

  Yuki was always prepared, but she’d lost a number of cases she had been favored to win. And that losing streak had taken a bite out of her confidence. She’d won her last case, but her opponent had given her a parting shot that still stung.

  “What’s that, Yuki?” the jerk had said. “Your first win in how long?”

  Now she was going up against Philip Hoffman, and she’d lost to him before. Hoffman was no jerk. In fact, he was a gentleman. He wasn’t theatrical. He wasn’t snide. He was a serious dude, partner in a law firm of the highest order, and he specialized in criminal defense of the wealthy.

  Hoffman’s client, Dr. Candace Martin, was a well-known heart surgeon who’d killed her philandering louse of a husband.

  Candace Martin was pleading not guilty. She said she didn’t kill Dennis Martin, but that was a monumental lie. There was enough evidence to convict her a few times over. And yes, the People even had the smoking gun.

  Yuki’s nervousness faded.

  She knew her stuff. And she had the evidence to prove it.

  Chapter 9

  CINDY THOMAS was one of two dozen people in the editorial meeting in the big conference room at the San Francisco Chronicle. The meeting had started an hour ago and it looked as though it could go on for another hour.

  Used to be that these meetings were collegial and fun, with people making cracks and busting chops, but ever since the economic downturn and the free-and-easy access to the Internet as a news source, editorial meetings had a scary subtext.

  Who would keep their job?

  Who would be doing the job of two people?

  And could the paper stay in business for another year?

  There was a new gunslinger in town: Lisa Greening, who had come in as managing editor under the publisher. Lisa had eight years of management experience, two years at the New York Times, three at the Chicago Tribune, and three at the L.A. Times.

  Her claim to fame had been an investigative report for the latter on the PC Killer, a smooth con man with a foot fetish who’d terrorized the Pacific Coast, luring women, killing them, and keeping their feet in his freezer as trophies.

  Greening had won a Pulitzer for that story and had parlayed it into her new post at the Chronicle.

  Since Cindy was the Chronicle’s crime desk reporter, she felt particularly vulnerable. Lisa Greening knew the crime beat as well as Cindy did—probably better—and if she failed to live up to a very high standard, Cindy knew she could become a budget cut. Greening would pick up her territory, and Cindy would become a freelancer working for scraps.

  Half the editors in the room had given status reports, and Abadaya Premawardena, the travel editor, was up.

  Prem was talking about cruise ship packages and discounts on Fiji and Samoa when Cindy got up and went to the back of the room and refilled her mug at the coffee urn.

  Her last big story, which was about Hello Kitty, a jewel thief who preyed on the rich and famous, had been a huge and splashy success. The thief had either skipped town or retired, probably due to the work Cindy had done. But that was old news now, and the next big story, the kind that sold newspapers, had yet to appear.

  Cindy sat back down as Prem finished his report, and Lisa Greening turned her sharp gray eyes on Cindy.

  “Cynthia, what’s coming up for us this week?”

  “My ATM mugger story is wrapping up,” Cindy said. “The kid was arraigned and is being held without bond.”

  “That was in your column yesterday, Cynthia. What’s up for today?”

  “I’m working on a couple of ideas,” she said.

  “Speak up if you need assistance.”

  “I’m good,” said Cindy. “Not a problem.”

  She flashed a smile at Greening, a smile that was both charming and confident, and the editor moved on to the next in line. Cindy couldn’t have reported anything about the next hour.

  Only that it was finally over.

  Chapter 10

  CINDY LEFT the editorial meeting in a deep funk. She walked down the hall to her office and before even sitting down called Hai Nguyen, her cop contact in Robbery.

  “Anything new on ATM Boy?” she asked.

  Nguyen said, “Sorry, Cindy, but we’ve got no comment at this time.”

  Cindy believed that Nguyen would help her if he could, but that woulda-coulda sentiment was of no help to her. While the cops and robber worked out their deal, Cindy still had eight column inches to fill by four o’clock today.

  How was she going to do that?

  She had just hung her coat on the hanger behind her office door when her desk phone rang.

  The caller ID read “Metro Hospital ER.”

  She grabbed the receiver and said, “Crime desk. Thomas.”

  “Cindy, it’s me, Joyce.”

  Joyce Miller was an ER nurse, smart, compassionate, and companionable. She and Cindy had once lived in the same apartment building and had bonded over single-girl nights, drinking cheap Bordeaux and watching movies on Sundance.

  “Joyce. What’s wrong?”

  “My cousin Laura, she’s acting weird. Like she’s just visited an alternate universe. You met her at my birthday. She works for a law firm. She loved you. Listen, I talked her into coming into the ER by saying I’d get her some sleep meds, but she won’t let a doctor touch her and she won’t call the police.”

  “What do you mean, she’s ‘acting weird’?”

  “She must’ve been drugged. And I think something happened to her while she was out. For eight hours. Woke up in the shrubbery near her front door. That’s what I mean by acting weird. I love this girl, Cindy. Will you come here while I’ve got her? I think together we can get her to talk.”

  “Right now?” Cindy asked. She looked at her Swatch. Only six hours until her drop-dead deadline at four o’clock. Eight empty column inches that she’d told Lisa Greening she could fill. It was a crevasse of empty space.

  “She’s like a sister to me, Cindy,” Joyce said, her voice breaking with emotion.

  Cindy sighed.

  She forwarded her calls to the front desk and left the building. She took BART to 24th, walked four blocks to Metropolitan Hospital at Valencia and 26th, and met Joyce just outside the ambulance bay. The friends hugged, and then Joyce led Cindy into the crush and swarm of the ER.

  Chapter 11

  LAURA RIZZO sat at the edge of a hospital bed in the ER. She was about Cindy’s age, around thirty-five, raven-haired with an athletic build, and she was wearing jeans and a dark blue Boston U sweatshirt. Her movements were jerky and her eyes were open so wide, you could see a margin of white completely surrounding her irises. She looked like she’d been plugged into an electric outlet.

  “Laura,” Joyce said. “You remember Cindy Thomas?”

  “Yeah…. Hi. Why—why are you here?”

  Joyce said, “Cindy is smart about things like this. I want you to tell her what happened to you.”

  “Look. It’s nice of you to come, I guess, but what is this, Joyce? I didn’t tell you so that you’d bring in reinforcements. I’m fine. I just need someth
ing for sleep.”

  “Listen, Laura. Get real, would you, please? You called me because you’re freaked out, and you should be freaked out. Something happened to you. Something bad.”

  Laura glared at Joyce, then turned and said to Cindy, “I have to say, my mind’s a blank. I was coming home from work last night. I remember thinking about getting pizza for dinner and a bottle of wine. I woke up lying in the hydrangeas outside my apartment building at around 2 a.m. No pizza. No wine. And I don’t know how I got there.”

  “Good lord,” Joyce said, shaking her head. “So you just got up and went inside?”

  “What else could I do? My bag was right there. Everything was in it, so I hadn’t been robbed. I went upstairs and took a shower. I noticed then that I felt sore—”

  “Sore where? Like you’d been in a fight?” Cindy asked.

  “Here,” Laura said, pointing to the crotch of her jeans.

  “You were assaulted?”

  “Yeah. Like that. And as I’m standing there in the shower, I have like this vague memory of a man’s voice. Something about winning a lot of money, but I sure don’t feel like I won anything.”

  “Did you go somewhere after work? A bar or a party?”

  “I’m not a party girl, Cindy. I’m like a nun. I was going home. Somehow, I—I don’t know,” Laura said. “Joyce, even if I let a doctor examine me, I don’t want to tell the cops. “I know cops. My uncle was a cop. If I tell them that I don’t know anything about what happened to me, they’re going to think I’m a wacko.”

  Chapter 12

  PHIL HOFFMAN PACED in front of the reception desk at the seventh-floor jail in the Hall of Justice. He was waiting for his client Dr. Candace Martin, who was changing out of her prison uniform in preparation for her first day of trial.

  Candace was holding up well.

  She was determined. She was focused. And while she was uncomfortable in her present circumstances, she had borne up well under the confinement—the close contact with the other inmates, the rules—because that was what it took to get to this day.

  Now it was up to him.

  If Phil won an acquittal, Candace would go back to her job as head of cardiac surgery at Metro Hospital. The stain on her name would be eradicated. She would be able to pick up the parenting of her two children, who were, even now, waiting for them outside the courtroom.

  Phil had talked to both of the kids, and in his judgment they could handle the pressure. But he did expect a challenge from opposing counsel.

  Phil had gone up against Yuki Castellano before, and he quite liked her. She was feisty and she was smart, but Hoffman knew her greatest weakness, too. Yuki bulled ahead, wielding her passion while skipping over potholes and ignoring warning signs that the bridge ahead was out.

  Without being cocky about it, he liked his odds of winning better than hers.

  Phil stopped pacing. There was a clanking of barred doors, then the echo of footsteps, and Candace came through the door in a tailored suit and handcuffs.

  “Hey, Phil,” Candace said.

  Phil came toward her, touched her shoulder, and said, “How are you doing? Okay?”

  “Way better than okay, Phil. I’ve been waiting for this day for a lifetime. A year, anyway.”

  The guard removed her handcuffs and said, “Good luck, Dr. Martin.”

  Candace rubbed her wrists. “Thanks, Dede. See you later.”

  Phil held the elevator door for Candace and smiled at her as they descended to the third floor.

  He’d also been waiting for this day for more than a year. And he was pretty sure that today was going to be a very good day.

  Chapter 13

  ALL TWO HUNDRED people in courtroom 3B seemed to be talking at once. Yuki was texting her boss to tell him there’d been a mysterious delay when, at just after ten, the bailiff called out, “All rise for His Honor, Judge Byron LaVan,” and the judge entered the oak-paneled courtroom.

  LaVan was fifty-two, a square-jawed man with wild dark hair and black-rimmed glasses. He was known to be a short-tempered judge with an impressive background in criminal law.

  He took the bench, the seal of the state of California behind him, the American flag to his right, the state flag to his left. Laptop open in front of him, he was ready to start.

  When the gallery was reseated, the judge brusquely apologized for his lateness, saying there had been a family emergency. Then he asked the bailiff to bring in the jury.

  The twelve jurors and two alternates filed into the jury box, fumbled with their handbags and notebooks, and settled into their maroon swivel chairs. To Yuki’s right, Phil Hoffman whispered to his client, Dr. Candace Martin.

  Sitting in the first row, directly behind Dr. Martin, were her two beautiful young children, Caitlin and Duncan, looking like angels. Angels who didn’t know what the hell was happening.

  So, that was how Hoffman was going to play it, Yuki thought. He was going to go for sympathy from the jury.

  Suddenly Yuki was struck with a sickening realization. Bringing the kids to court wasn’t just a bid for sympathy from the jury. Hoffman was forcing her to dial down her rhetoric so that she wouldn’t upset the kids.

  Controlling son of a bitch.

  She couldn’t let him get away with that.

  Yuki listened to the judge instruct the jury, but a part of her mind was on her former, lucrative job in a big-deal law firm, which she’d quit so that she could do something meaningful—for herself and for the people of San Francisco.

  Not that she was a selfless do-gooder. After two years of defending the rich, Yuki had become highly motivated to put away killers like Candace Martin who thought they could hire a thousand-dollar-an-hour defense attorney and beat the rap.

  The judge finished his talk to the jury and turned to face the courtroom. Yuki got to her feet and said, “Your Honor, may I approach the bench?”

  Judge LaVan looked at her like she had farted in court. Too bad, she thought. She stood firm until the judge signaled to Yuki and Hoffman to step forward.

  Hoffman’s sequoia-like height dwarfed Yuki’s five foot two. She felt young and small by comparison, the top of her head about level with Hoffman’s armpit.

  Yuki said, “Your Honor, I object to the defendant’s young children being present in the courtroom. The State is accusing their mother of killing their father. When I say what I have to say, the kids are going to get upset, which is going to make the jury sympathize with the defendant.”

  LaVan said, “Mr. Hoffman? Have you got a position on this?”

  “The kids are well behaved and they know the truth, Your Honor. Their mother is innocent. They’re here to show their support.”

  LaVan cleaned his glasses with a tissue, repositioned them on the bridge of his nose, and said, “Ms. Castellano, do your job. Ignore the kids. I’ll instruct the jury to do the same. Let’s get on with it, shall we? Is the prosecution ready?”

  “Yes, Your Honor, we are.”

  “Then tell us what you’ve got.”

  Chapter 14

  YUKI’S HEART WAS PUMPING pure hot adrenaline as she crossed the well of the courtroom and took the lectern. She reminded herself to relax her shoulders and smile as she swept the jury box with her eyes. Then she launched into her opening argument.

  “The defendant is charged with premeditated murder—that is, murder in the first degree,” Yuki said, her voice ringing out over the courtroom.

  “In the next few days, the State will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, Candace Martin, shot and killed her husband, Dennis Martin. We will introduce physical evidence and testimony that will show that Dr. Martin’s hands are not just dirty, they’re as black as sin.”

  There was a gratifying intake of breath in the courtroom, and Yuki waited out the whispers moving like a wind across the gallery. Then she began to lay out the prosecution’s case as neatly as a hand of solitaire.

  “Dennis Martin was shot to death in the foyer of his home on the nig
ht of September fourteenth of last year. This is not in dispute.

  “The four people who were in the house at the time of the murder were Candace Martin, her two children, and the family cook. All were questioned by the police, and evidence was taken. The twenty-two-caliber handgun that was used to kill Dennis Martin was collected at the scene of the crime and so was the gunshot residue on Candace Martin’s hands.

  “There is only one way to get GSR on your hands,” Yuki told the jury. “You get it by firing a gun.”

  Yuki told the jury that Candace Martin had the means and the opportunity to kill her husband.

  “We’re not required to show motive, but we will tell you why Candace Martin planned and executed this murder.

  “Dennis Martin was a habitual womanizer, and at the time of his death, he was having another affair. But Mr. Martin didn’t try to cover up his activities.

  “During their thirteen years of marriage, Mr. Martin taunted his wife with his infidelity and finally, on September fourteenth, she’d had enough.

  “In our society, marital infidelity is punishable by divorce, but Candace Martin figured her husband deserved the death penalty. With her husband dead, she’d get the kids, the three-point-five-million-dollar home, and everything in their combined bank accounts. She’d also get the meal that is best served cold—revenge.”

  Yuki sneaked a glance at the Martin children. The little boy’s mouth was hanging open. The little girl was scowling. The judge had said “Ignore them” and Yuki tried to do that as she preemptively set fire to the defense’s position.

  “Mr. Hoffman will tell you that his client didn’t do it,” Yuki told the jurors. “He will say that the defendant was in her home office when she heard shots in the foyer. He will say that she found her husband bleeding on the floor, that she checked his pulse, that she realized that her husband was dead. And then—what do you know? She heard an intruder leaving by the front door.