“I see,” said Yuki. “So when Aaron-Rey confessed, it was open and shut.”
“We earned our pay,” said Brand. “He denied everything until he couldn’t deny it anymore. Then he spilled. Said he found the gun. He shot the dealers. He ran.”
“And you believed him?” Yuki said. “He was fifteen. He had a below-normal IQ. He had no record.”
“He said he was eighteen, and he was bright enough to put bullets into three scumbags,” said Brand. “You have to commend him for that. Too bad the kid got killed. He did a public-service triple homicide.”
“Were Mr. Kordell’s hands and clothing tested for gunshot residue?”
“No. We had him in the box right after his arrest for carrying the weapon. We thought he would confess pronto. But it took longer and the gunshot residue just slipped our minds.”
Yuki said, “But there’s no doubt in your mind to this day that Aaron-Rey Kordell did those shootings?”
“None,” said Brand. “I have not a doubt in the world.”
CHAPTER 35
INSPECTOR STAN WHITNEY was more refined than his partner. He had fine features and a short beard; he was wearing wire-frame glasses and a blue denim shirt under his blue gabardine jacket.
Yuki asked Whitney the same questions she had asked Brand and got the same answers. Aaron-Rey Kordell had been arrested for carrying a gun that had recently been fired. He said he didn’t shoot anyone, but his explanation of why he had the gun was weak and he was a prime suspect. And then he confessed to a triple homicide.
She asked Whitney why Aaron-Rey hadn’t been represented by a lawyer, and the detective told her he had waived his right to an attorney. And because he had no record and had lied about his age, and didn’t ask for his parents, his parents hadn’t been present.
During the depositions, Parisi said nothing, asked nothing, just fixed Yuki with his brooding and steady glare. It was a look that was far from his customary benign countenance. And it was freaky. When Yuki finished deposing Stan Whitney, Parisi’s co-counsel from Moorehouse and Rogers asked, “Anything else we can help you with, Ms. Castellano?”
“I’m good,” Yuki said. “Thanks for your time.”
She really couldn’t get out of the conference room fast enough. Brand was an intimidating cop, and Whitney’s straight-shooter manner could assure anyone of his good intentions—to their detriment. Having heard their testimony and seen clips from the videoed interrogation, a jury with an open mind would be moved and would see the cops’ determined manipulation of a kid who had no resistance to them.
In the few minutes between leaving the law offices and reaching her car, doubt crept into Yuki’s mind.
Parisi.
She would be going up against Parisi in front of a judge and jury. Parisi had had fifteen years of litigation experience before he came to the DA eight years ago.
And he would do whatever he could do to build up Whitney and Brand and their lawful interrogation and subsequent arrest. That was the only thing he had to do. Show that the interrogation had lawfully produced Aaron-Rey’s confession.
If he could convince the jury of that, the Kordells would lose their righteous lawsuit, and she would be humiliated. She just couldn’t let any of that happen.
She could not.
CHAPTER 36
CINDY LEFT THE Chronicle Building and caught a cab the second she stuck out her hand—a lucky break at rush hour. She gave the driver the address of Quince, a terrific restaurant in the Jackson Square area. Then she sat back in the seat and thought about how mysterious Richie had seemed when he called and asked her to meet him for dinner. She hadn’t been able to get anything out of him, but he was at a crime scene and unable to talk.
Still, she wondered what he wasn’t saying.
She flashed back, as she always did, to their recent past: how they’d been wonderfully, fabulously engaged when their opposing issues had caught up to them and overwhelmed the magic of their living-together love affair.
They’d broken up, and bad times had followed for each of them in different ways. And then circumstances had thrown them back together and they’d connected on an even deeper level.
Now they were living together again, and Cindy was afraid.
Not by the closeness and the magic, but because she could see Rich loving her and them so much that he would want them to repledge their commitment and he would propose marriage again. Which, sadly, would bring them exactly back to their main point of conflict: Richie wanting kids. Which he wanted many of and soon. And Cindy figuring there was time for all that—later.
Take the last three weeks, for example.
She’d been working a hideous story about a man who’d killed his wife, mother-in-law, and two small sons. She had researched, written, and polished her five-thousand-word piece and had gotten it into Tyler’s in-box three minutes before closing today. Tomorrow she was taking off for a ten-day book tour.
And her book was a tremendous source of pleasure. Not just that she’d been a big part of solving a terrible crime, but that she’d written a book-length work that had been published and was, if not exactly catching fire, performing well. Her editor had asked her to sketch out new book ideas for the publisher. Which was holy freakin’ wow. A lot of great things were coming true, things she’d worked toward for years. Years!
But at the same time, she didn’t want to lose Richie. She loved him so much, had missed him so much, loved coming home and getting into his lap and holding him while they breathed and hugged out the tension of the day.
Oh, please, Richie, please don’t push this. Please don’t try to close the deal.
“This where you wanted to go, miss?” the driver asked.
“Yes. Totally. Thank you.”
Cindy paid the driver and went inside the restaurant. The maître d’, a man named Arnold, took her to the more private back room, a very pleasant space with exposed-brick walls and Venetian glass chandeliers and aromas of wonderful house specialties floating on the air.
She took her seat, ordered a double Scotch, and had made progress with her stiff drink by the time Arnold brought Richie to their table. Her lover bent to kiss her and swung down into his chair, cool air from the street coming off him along with the smells of detergent and shampoo. He just looked great.
“Umm,” he said, pointing to her glass of Scotch. “What’s the occasion?”
She shrugged. “I was kind of in a mad lather all day. Got my pages in to Tyler on time. And now I’m thinking ahead to tomorrow …”
“I know. Almost two weeks away from home. That’s why I wanted to have dinner at our favorite place. Have a little us time.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. Because, shit, Cindy. I miss you already.”
Cindy pushed the glass away and took Richie’s hands.
“You’re the best guy I’ve ever known, ever. Ever.”
He pulled her toward him and kissed her—with meaning.
“God, Richie,” she said when the kiss ended. “I’m gonna miss you, too.”
CHAPTER 37
I MET YUKI for lunch at Grouchy Lynn’s in the Dog-patch neighborhood: a cute little greasy spoon with striped wallpaper and two-person booths and the best French fries east of the freeway. I ordered a club sandwich with everything and got my teeth into it while Yuki played with her salad.
Yuki has always been moody in the best possible way, meaning she can be sober and focused one minute, and in the next minute launch her contagious chortle, which could pull anyone’s bad day out of the basement. But since her near-death experience during her honeymoon a few months ago, and it was really near death for hundreds of people, I’ve hardly heard her laugh at all.
And she wasn’t laughing now when she told me she had taken a major fork in the road.
I pounded the ketchup bottle in the direction of my fries and said, “What fork?”
“I took the job,” Yuki said.
She put down her utensils, abandoned her salad, and told
me about a not-for-profit called the Defense League and that her client was dead.
“Who is this dead client and what are you supposed to do for him?” I asked.
“His name was Aaron-Rey Kordell, and he may have been coerced by the police into confessing to a triple homicide he didn’t commit. Then, while awaiting trial in the men’s jail, he was murdered in the showers by person or persons unknown.”
I grunted. A big part of the job was to get confessions. Cops were allowed to lie, and it was conceivable that people got worked over or tricked and confessed to things they didn’t do—but not often. Not that I knew about.
Yuki was saying, “Lindsay, if this story is in fact true, if Kordell was coerced into a confession and was then killed while awaiting trial, this is going to be a case against the city, the SFPD, and probably the cops who interrogated him, for I don’t know how many millions.”
I stopped eating.
A lawsuit against the police department would be a disaster for everyone in it, no doubt about it. A disaster. As Yuki’s friend, I had to be a fair sounding board. But never mind me.
“Your husband is a lieutenant in the SFPD,” I said.
“I know that, Linds.”
“What does he say?”
“He’s pissed off. We’re barely speaking.”
“Oh, man. You’re pretty sure Kordell was innocent?”
“He was caught with the gun on him. He was fifteen. Low IQ. It would have been fairly easy to get him to confess. I’ve seen the video of the interrogation. The narcs lied their faces off, Linds. Like ‘Tell us what you did and then you can go home.’ Then they told him what he did—their version.”
Yuki went on. “It might help me if I knew why Aaron-Rey was killed. Did he just piss someone off in jail? Or was he killed to avenge the deaths of those drug dealers? Because that would go to him being guilty.”
“I hope I don’t live to regret this, Yuki,” I said, “but I’ll see who was in lockup at the same time as Kordell. See what I can see. I don’t promise anything.”
“Just promise that whatever happens, we’re still buds.”
“That I can promise,” I said.
CHAPTER 38
AT JUST BEFORE 5 p.m. that day, Yuki followed Officer Creed Mahoney through several steel doors and gates to the jail on the sixth floor of the Hall of Justice. From there she was escorted to one of the claustrophobic counsel rooms with high barred windows, reserved for meetings between prisoners and lawyers.
She’d been waiting for about ten minutes when the door opened and Li’l Tony Willis clumped into the room in chains from wrists to ankles, all five foot nothing of him, wearing an orange jumpsuit and two full sleeves of tattoos, twists in his hair and ’tude on his face.
“Who are you again?” Li’l Tony asked as Mahoney threaded his chains through the hook in the table.
“Fifteen minutes, OK, Ms. Castellano?” said Mahoney. “I’ll be back.”
The door closed and locked.
Yuki said to the man-boy wife beater, drug dealer, and possible killer sitting across from her, “I’m an attorney. Yuki Castellano. I want to hear about Aaron-Rey Kordell getting killed. What happened?”
“Are you kidding me? You want to ask me did I kill him? Because no, I didn’t. Got any cigarettes?”
“I hoped you might be able to tell me who might have killed Kordell, because that could be helpful.”
“To who? I got nothing to tell you because I didn’t do nothing to that retard. So if that’s all, this is good-bye, Ms. Cassielandro.”
“Here’s what I know. You’ve given evidence against Jorge Sierra,” she said, referring to a savage Southern California drug lord who was known as Kingfisher, a man whose whereabouts were unknown. Even his true identity was a mystery.
“You were one of his inner circle, weren’t you, Tony? Don’t bother to lie. I know a lot of cops and I know you cooperated. If Sierra finds out, you’re going to have a very short li’l life.”
The kid looked scared for the first time. He shot his eyes around the small room, searching for a camera.
“Who said that?” he said. “Whoever said I ratted on the King is lying, lady. I’m no snitch.”
Yuki said, pressing on, “Let me be very clear. I’m not looking to pin Kordell on you. I’m looking to find out why that kid was killed.”
“Same thing,” said Tony Willis. “OK, listen, it wasn’t me. It mighta been a couple of guys in here working for the King that took him out. But tell you the truth, Kingfisher’s name was in the air, but I don’t think he had nothing to do with it.
“I’m spekalating, Ms. Cassielandro. I don’t know shit about who killed A-Rey. That’s all. And it’s for free.”
“I’ll have cigarettes for you in the canteen.”
“That’s it?”
“Here’s my card. You have any new thoughts about who killed A-Rey, get in touch. I’d consider that a big favor.”
After Tony Willis was taken away, Yuki rode the elevator down to the street, went to the underground garage, and found her car. She drove to her office, her mind on what Li’l Tony had told her, which was nothing.
Shit. She thought of Aaron-Rey, that sweet look on his face in the picture in his mother’s hands. She couldn’t imagine that boy killing three drug dealers who’d befriended him.
No matter how many ways she looked at it, Aaron-Rey killing three drug dealers made no sense at all.
CHAPTER 39
WICKER HOUSE PURPORTED to be a wholesale showroom for imported wicker and rattan furniture. It was on the edge of Bernal Heights, on Cortland Avenue, a medium-rent light-industrial area that became more residential as the two-lane road ran uphill.
This particular building was in the middle of the block, blending in with the row of chunky, putty-colored or gray cinder-block two- and three-story buildings, some with wood siding under the eaves, several with fire escapes, none of them giving off a feeling of welcome.
The back of the shop opened onto a parking lot, which was accessed by a service road. The back door was made of reinforced steel and posted with signs reading TO THE TRADE ONLY and APPOINTMENT REQUIRED. The name of the shop wasn’t posted, and neither was a phone number.
At just before three in the morning, there were seven cars in the parking area at Wicker House’s back door. One was a Mercedes SL belonging to the proprietor of Wicker House, Nathan Royce. The other vehicles belonged to the staff.
Also parked in the lot, not far from Wicker House’s back door but out of range of the surveillance camera, was an unmarked white Ford panel van. The man who went by the name of One was behind the wheel.
One had learned the Wicker House layout from an informant. The front part of the building’s ground floor was a half-assed showroom. The back of the ground floor was a lab with rear-door access, convenient for moving chemicals and product quickly.
The lab techs made synthetic drugs: cathinones, known on the street as bath salts, and cannabinoids, synthetic marijuana. The second floor of Wicker House was a short-term warehouse for the product waiting to be shipped out. There was also quite a lot of heroin on that floor, and at certain times, a lot of cash was in transit through the premises.
One’s informant had told him when shipments would move out of Wicker House to the hub of the larger enterprise, final destination unknown. Altogether, the payload was worth upward of five and a half million.
Men inside the building were armed and alert, which made this job riskier than taking out a couple of stoned junkies in a crack house.
One said to his crew of two men, “Ten minutes, OK? We waste men, not time.”
There was tension inside the van as the three men put on Kevlar vests and their Windbreakers, gas masks, and SFPD caps. They screwed the suppressors onto their M-16 automatic rifles with thirty-round magazines. When he was ready, One stepped out of the van and shot out the camera over Wicker House’s back door. The suppressor muffled the sound of the bullet.
Two and Three exit
ed the van, went to the steel-reinforced rear door, and set small, directed explosive charges on the lock and the hinges. They stood back as Two remotely detonated the charges. The soft explosions were virtually unnoticeable in the area, which was largely deserted at night.
One and Two lifted the door away from the frame. Three entered the short hallway that led to the lab and started firing with his suppressed automatic rifle. Glass shattered. Blood sprayed. Once the men in the lab were down, the three men in the Windbreakers rushed the locked door to the second floor.
When the lock had been shot out, the shooters breached the door and bolted up the stairs toward the second floor.
They were met with a furious onslaught of gunfire.
CHAPTER 40
TWO WAS IN the lead as the blast of gunfire shattered the Sheetrock in the stairwell, showering plaster and spent brass down on him and the other guys in the crew.
The gunfire was expected.
The three men flattened themselves against the stairwell wall. One screamed, “This is the police! Drop your weapons!”
Two aimed his CapStun launcher and fired the military-grade pepper bomb up the stairwell.
There was a loud bang. The canister dropped onto the warehouse floor and hissed as it released the fine mist. A moment later, two men on the second floor stumbled toward the head of the stairs, hands over their watering eyes, coughing helplessly, calling out, “We don’t have guns. Don’t shoot.”
One said, “I’m sorry, but put yourselves in my place.”
He fired two short bursts with his M-16, then stepped out of the way as the bodies tumbled heavily down the stairwell.
The shooters climbed to the second floor, and One looked around the warehouse, which was just as the snitch had described it. It took up the whole second floor.
In front, against the wall facing the street, were stacks of wicker furniture. In back, around where One and his crew stood, office equipment was lined up on the various tables and shelves. There were copiers, rolls of plastic and tape, scales and money counters, cardboard cartons, and a laptop with the screen showing a quadrant security camera view of the inside and outside of the factory, including the static from the camera he’d shot out over the back door.