The 17th Suspect Read online

  “I don’t have a fever. I’m just a little tired,” I told him. While Joe read to Julie, our two-year-old, who was reveling in the replacement of her crib with a real bed without “fences,” I cleared the table and stacked the dishwasher.

  I went into Julie’s room as the puppy dog in the story found his way home because the porch light was on. I kissed Julie good night, told her to have sweet dreams. She said, “More kisses, Mommy.”

  Right after smacky-kisses and huggy-wuffles, we locked the front door, turned off the lights and the electronics. Then Joe and I went to our sky-blue corner bedroom for the rare early night to bed.

  Minutes later Joe was lying facedown in the bedding and I was massaging his bum arm. This was only one of his healing injuries from that explosive blast four months ago that killed dozens of people.

  I warmed the massage oil in my hands and worked his muscles, gratified by the happy groans coming from my big, handsome man. I worked on his back and then turned my attention to his leg, which had been broken in two places.

  He was walking fine now but still had pain, so we were keeping up with the physical therapy techniques.

  Joe sighed. “That’s all I can take, Lindsay. Thank you.”

  He rolled over onto his back and reached for me, and I went into his arms. He kissed the top of my head, and I held on to his chest and listened to him breathe.

  We’d come so close to losing it all.

  First there was Joe’s marriage-splitting, government-sponsored escapade that involved a professional femme fatale. Whatever had happened between Joe and the mystery blonde, I would never know and now I didn’t want to.

  She was out of our lives. And Joe had promised nothing would ever come between us again.

  Then there was the explosion that broke his bones, cracked his head, and almost made me a widow and Julie a fatherless child. But Joe was back. In many ways he was better than ever, and I thought I was growing, too.

  But.

  Well, there’s always a but, right?

  Having come so close to death, having reordered his priorities, Joe had told me that he wanted to have another child. We barely had enough time for the child we had. My job was dangerous and had never been nine-to-five. Joe wasn’t working full-time. He had been Mr. Mom when Julie was tiny, and he was there for her when I needed him during the eight months when we lived apart and our marriage was a very tenuous thing. So Joe got top marks for Great Dad.

  But another child?

  How would that work? Even now he was working as a freelance risk management consultant in a laptop-at-home capacity.

  That could change.

  He had once been deputy director of Homeland Security. He had worked for the FBI and the CIA. He was trustworthy, experienced, cleared for classified everything. And in the current climate of terrorist attacks breaking out at random, I could see him being ripped out of his home office and pressed into service. The very qualities that had sent him into a bomb-struck and unstable building looking for survivors could be activated again.

  Joe said my name.

  I said, “I’m here.”

  He’d gotten massage oil on his hands and now used them to stroke me, warm me up, and my God, I was responding to his touch. I wanted to tell him to wait. Was I ovulating? I wasn’t sure. And before I could protest, reach for protection, it was too late.

  I loved him.

  He was dying for me.

  And the feeling was mutual.

  CHAPTER 19

  YUKI WAS ON the phone with Claire, both of them at their respective desks, two floors and three hundred yards apart.

  Yuki said to Claire, “I’m pretty sure a juror is going to question how a man can have sex when he’s afraid of getting shot to death. You have any thoughts on that, Dr. Washburn?”

  “You think I’m a sex therapist?”

  “I think you may have a free and informed opinion.”

  “Hmmm,” Claire said. “Well. My opinion may be worth what you pay for it, so by all means, talk to an expert. But here are my thoughts. There’s a wide spectrum of sexual response, and some men may actually find the threat of violence exciting. S and M, bondage, for instance. There’s an element of that in your case, right? Maybe the defendant knew or surmised that her victim might find rape a turn-on.”

  “I see,” Yuki said. “That’s possible. Or maybe she didn’t care if he would like it, but she did and thought it would turn him on.”

  Claire said, “Okay, so let’s say he wasn’t into it. At least, not consciously. So he was saying, ‘No, no, no,’ but his body, especially if he was responding to touch, was saying yes.”

  Yuki said, “And therefore, if he told her, ‘No, no, no,’ and she didn’t stop, that’s not consent and that’s the definition of rape.”

  “So there’s your answer. What else?” Claire asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have a feeling you have something else on your mind.”

  “Oh, you’re good,” Yuki said. “It’s Brady.”

  Jackson Brady, Yuki’s husband, was lieutenant in charge of the homicide squad, one floor up from where Yuki was sitting at her desk. Brady was hot, but that was the least of what anyone would say about him. He had put himself in the way of danger many times, including the heroic save of too many lives to count when their honeymoon was interrupted by a terrorist attack.

  Claire said, “What about Brady? Is he all right?”

  “Oh, he’s fine. What worries me is that he’s working sixty hours a week, and I’m spending every working hour on the rape case prep by myself.

  “When we’re at home together, he’s wiped out. I start talking about Marc Christopher because I can’t talk to anyone else about it—you know?”

  “I know. I understand.”

  “And he falls asleep while I’m talking.”

  “Two-career family, this happens,” said Claire. “Speaking from experience, last thing my husband wants to hear about is dead people. It’s not dinner conversation. Not pillow talk, either.”

  “So, what about sex?” Yuki asked.

  “You just have to make time for it, that’s all,” said Claire.

  “You’d think that sleeping in the same bed would do it,” Yuki said. “But it’s been a while. A month, anyway. And a month before that.”

  “You’ve brought this up with him?”

  “Hah. No. Neither one of us is into talk about squishy feelings.”

  “Yuki, I know you can figure this out if you try. Maybe less talk, more see-through nighties?”

  “Okay, Claire. Thanks for, you know, that.”

  “Maybe this drought has nothing to do with you, sweetie. Could be he’s just bone tired. But listen. Do not bring a gun into the bedroom, hear me?”

  Yuki let loose with a long peal of laughter. The idea of pulling a gun on Brady was just hilarious. He would pull his.

  “You sound better,” said Claire, laughing, too. “As for Brady, you’re both working at the top of your careers, right? Don’t make yourself crazy. That man loves you to death.”

  Yuki said good-bye to her friend and thought about what she hadn’t said to her, what she was afraid of most. That Brady had lost interest in her. She had to be wrong about that.

  Just had to be.

  She went back to her case file and turned her mind, as best she could, to The People v. Hill.

  CHAPTER 20

  CINDY WAS IN her office at the Chronicle, writing a short follow-up piece on the indictment of Briana Hill for the Criminal Justice Calendar section of the paper, when she got a Google Alert about Marc Christopher.

  She clicked on the page and saw that the article she had written after yesterday’s lunch at MacBain’s had spawned countless other articles. As it got picked up, the story was doing a fast and good job of blanketing the internet. The first story on the Google list had a thumbnail of a previously unpublished photo of the alleged rape victim, Marc Christopher.

  The photo of Christopher showed him
in his prep-school football uniform, holding his helmet under his arm, grinning widely. It looked like a yearbook shot.

  Cindy scrolled down the page, reading the lead paragraph of the new stories, thinking that this topic of woman-on-man rape was more explosive than she had expected. It had equal billing with a contentious election, a horrific category-four hurricane in Florida, and a devastating terrorist attack in the Middle East. It was as if they were celebrities.

  Even as Cindy scrolled down the Google list, new stories about Marc Christopher were being added to the queue, crossing the country, jumping the pond.

  The subject of female-on-male rape was controversial, for sure. She went back to the story she had posted on her crime blog and skimmed the new comments. Opinions ranged from the assertion that men couldn’t be raped, to the dismissal that women who were charged with rape were lying, to the outlier opinion that women had been raping men for centuries and the men had never been believed.

  Cindy grabbed her phone and speed-dialed Yuki.

  Yuki picked up, said, “Please only good news, Cindy. I’m swamped with phone calls, e-mails, interoffice mail. It’s just crazy.”

  “I called to tell you that this Marc Christopher case has struck a nerve,” Cindy said. “I’m surprised.”

  Yuki said, “Me, too. If this doesn’t die down, I wonder about finding an unbiased jury. I’m worried that the defense will ask for a change of venue.”

  “Yeah,” said Cindy. “Calling all people who live under rocks.”

  Yuki laughed and said, “That’s not funny.” She laughed again. “Thanks for giving me the redundant heads-up.”

  The two friends said good-byes.

  Cindy’s computer rang out with each new alert until she turned off the sound. She had scooped other media with the story, but now The People v. Hill was taking on a life of its own.

  CHAPTER 21

  YUKI OPENED CINDY’S crime blog and read the impassioned reactions to the case against Briana Hill, which hadn’t yet been brought to trial.

  After that she googled Briana Hill.

  When she had read enough articles and commentary to gather the points of view that would very likely be reflected in the future jury, she went down the hall to the cubicle belonging to Arthur Baron. Baron was about fifty, and he had just joined the DA’s office from the in-house legal department of BW&T, a huge utility company.

  When Yuki was in her late twenties, she had made a similar move, leaving a cushy corporate job for a lower-paying job with the district attorney. She had worked harder and longer for less, but this work for the people of San Francisco made her feel that her time and labor were worthwhile.

  Arthur had e-mailed her this morning, saying he wanted to talk to her about the Hill case. Now she knocked on a wall of his cubicle, and Art looked up from his computer. He was wiry, average height, gray at the temples. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, a plain blue shirt, a tie, and dark slacks, and his jacket was neatly hung over the back of his chair.

  “Yuki. Come in.”

  “Got a few minutes, Art?”

  “Sure. Thanks for coming by.”

  Yuki took a seat next to the desk in the small work space and asked Arthur what he knew about the case against Briana Hill.

  “What I’ve read in the press and overheard in the hallway.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Congrats that you’re going to trial. I’m jealous.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Let me make some room here for you, why don’t I?” Baron said, moving files and pens away from the desk next to the side chair. Then he said, “Why? Because it’s a terrific case. Are you looking for help with the trial?”

  “Might be,” said Yuki.

  “I hate to be presumptuous, but if you’re looking for a second chair, I’m raising my hand.” And then he did it.

  Yuki smiled. She had spoken to Arthur Baron a few times since he came to the DA’s office. She knew he was smart. She knew he had a background in litigation. He was straightforward and had a sense of humor. She just plain liked him.

  “You can put your hand down now,” she said. “What have you heard about our case?”

  “What I’ve read is that Hill and Christopher were dating. Things went strange and she pulled a gun and forced him to have sex with her. According to what I’ve gathered at the water cooler, there’s a video of this sex, and in the recording Christopher is telling her to stop and she does not stop. Is that about the gist of it?”

  “That’s right, Art. What are your thoughts?”

  “The words slam dunk come to mind. But I know you can’t count on that. The video could be excluded. The defense will certainly try that. Other thoughts: I’ve never litigated a criminal case. I’m a long shot for second chair, but I don’t think you’ll be sorry if you give me the chance.”

  “Okay,” Yuki said. “I’m taking all of that on board.”

  “Something else,” he said. “I have personal experience with … this.”

  Yuki sucked in her breath. “How so?”

  “When I was ten, my babysitter assaulted me. Seduced me. I didn’t tell anyone at the time, but I suffered with it, and once I went to college, I got some therapy. About twenty years of therapy. I finally told my wife about the assault when we’d been married for five years.”

  “Oh, man, Art. I wasn’t expecting that. You really want second chair?”

  “You don’t have to ask twice.”

  “I’ll clear it with Red Dog.”

  Twenty minutes later she had.

  CHAPTER 22

  YUKI CALLED HER husband from her office, telling him that she was about to leave for the day.

  “How about you?”

  Brady said, “Can’t, Yuki. I’ve got some fires to put out. You should get dinner without me.”

  “Again? Okay. Wake me up when you get home.”

  He said he would.

  Yuki finished the dregs of cold Earl Grey, shut off her computer, and headed out. She passed Parisi’s office and waved to him, and by the time she was in the elevator, going down to the lobby, her head was back in her case.

  She was thinking about Art Baron’s story of sexual abuse and was glad that he had asked to be second chair. He was going to be a great number two.

  Yuki passed through the imposing garnet-marble lobby and out the front door that opened onto Bryant across from Boardman Place. She was hit with a cold wind that had not been there when she’d stepped out to get a sandwich at lunch. She buttoned her coat, took a scarf from her pocket, and wound it around her neck.

  As she walked down the steps to Bryant, she saw a group of women gathered at the base of the staircase. They, too, were being buffeted by the wind, hair blowing wildly, hands in pockets—then one of the women recognized Yuki.

  She pointed and called out, “Yuki Castellano. What the hell is wrong with you, Yuki? You’re betraying your own sex.”

  Yuki kept on moving down the steps. Her car was in the lot across the street. And then the women were coming toward her, intent on blocking her way.

  “Marc Christopher is twisted and a liar,” said another of the women. “Briana Hill is a strong woman, a woman like you. She made him have sex with her? Give me a break.”

  Yuki stopped in front of the group of seven angry women who were determined to confront her.

  “I wish we could talk about this,” Yuki said. She was composing a couple of reasonable sentences—that she couldn’t comment on the case, that Marc Christopher deserved his day in court—when a man with white-blond hair jogged down the steps.

  “Yuki,” her husband said with authority. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  He said to the women, “Y’all break it up now. You’re harassing ADA Castellano, bordering on assault. You’re blocking a public area. Hear me?”

  Brady took Yuki’s arm and walked her across the street.

  “Brady, where’d you come from?”

  “The planet Wonderful.”

 
“No, really.”

  “I called you back and you’d gone. I just wanted to say I’m sorry if I was stiff with you on the phone. I had three people in my office.”

  “Okay. It’s okay.”

  They reached the All-Day Parking lot, and Yuki handed her ticket to the attendant along with a twenty. The man gave her change with her keys and shut the window to his booth.

  Southern gent that he was, Brady opened the car door for his wife. He leaned into the car, kissed her, made sure her scarf wasn’t in the way when he closed the door.

  “See you later,” he said.

  She turned on the ignition and the lights and watched him as she drove out of the lot, his pale hair all stirred up by the wind, making a halo around his head.

  God, she was confused.

  She wished he hadn’t run off that group of women. She could have handled them. And yet he was showing her he cared.

  She let out a sigh as she headed home to their empty apartment, the empty chair in front of the TV, the empty spot next to hers in their bed.

  What good was flimsy nightwear if there was no one home to see it?

  CHAPTER 23

  I WAS IN the shower when Joe pulled back the curtain, showed me my cell phone, put the mouthpiece against his chest, and said, “Millie Cushing?”

  I took the phone and said, “Millie. I’ll call you back.”

  I muttered to myself as I toweled off, something about the sanctity of my rain box, and then I got over myself. After dressing in pj’s, I returned Millie’s call.

  I knew what she wanted. She was checking up on what if any police progress had been made in the shooting death of Jimmy Dolan, who’d been shot dead outside Sydney G. Walton Square. I had nothing for her.

  It was not my case. Not my beat. I would apologize, of course, but I’d done what I promised to do. I’d followed up and had been told by the detectives in charge to mind my own business.

  I tapped out her phone number and waited for her to pick up. The ringing was going on too long. I was a nanosecond from clicking off when Millie said my name. I had my apology all teed up, but I never got the words out of my mouth.