It was an unearthly sound, unlike anything I’d ever heard before in my life. Chills shot up my spine and, I was quite certain, everyone else’s.
Mason Broyles quickly advanced across the floor to his client, whipped a hankie out of his breast pocket, and dabbed at Sam’s eyes and nose.
“Do you need a break, Sam?”
“No . . . sir. . . . I’m okay,” he brayed.
“Your witness, Counsel,” said Mason Broyles, shooting us a look that was as good as a dare.
Chapter 91
YUKI APPROACHED THE thirteen-year-old killer, who looked even younger and more pitiable now that his face was red from weeping.
“Are you feeling a little better, Sam?” Yuki asked, putting her hands on her knees and stooping a little so that her eyes met his.
“Okay, I guess . . . considering,” said Sam.
“Glad to hear it,” said Yuki, standing, taking a few steps back. “I’ll try to keep my questions brief. Why were you in the Tenderloin District on May tenth?”
“I don’t know . . . ma’am. . . . Sara was driving.”
“Your car was parked outside the Balboa Hotel. Why was that?”
“We were buying a newspaper . . . I think. . . . We were going to go to the movies.”
“You think there’s a newsstand inside the Balboa?”
“I guess so.”
“Sam, you understand the difference between a lie and the truth?”
“Of course.”
“And you know that you promised to tell the truth?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. So, can you tell all of us why you and Sara were carrying guns that night?”
“They were . . . Dad’s guns,” the boy said. He paused for breath and maybe for thought as well. “I took a gun out of the glove compartment . . . because I thought those people . . . were going to kill us.”
“You didn’t know that the police were trying to pull you over?”
“I was scared. . . . I wasn’t driving, and . . . everything happened fast.”
“Sam, were you on crank that night?”
“Ma’am?”
“Methamphetamine. You know—ice, get-go, beanies.”
“I wasn’t on drugs.”
“I see. Do you remember the car accident?”
“Not really.”
“Do you remember seeing Lieutenant Boxer and Inspector Jacobi help you out of the car after it crashed?”
“No, because I had blood in my eyes. . . . My nose broke. . . . All of a sudden . . . I see guns, and the next thing I know . . . they shot us.”
“Do you remember shooting Inspector Jacobi?”
The kid’s eyes widened. Was he surprised by the question? Or was he simply remembering the moment?
“I thought he was going to hurt me,” Sam croaked out at last.
“So you do remember shooting him?”
“Wasn’t he going to arrest me?”
Yuki stood her ground as she waited for Sam’s lungs to fill. “Sam. Why did you shoot Inspector Jacobi?”
“No. I don’t remember . . . doing that.”
“Tell me: Are you under a psychiatrist’s care?”
“Yeah, I am. . . . Because I’m having a hard time. Because I’m paralyzed . . . and because that woman murdered my sister.”
“Okay, let me ask you about that. You say that Lieutenant Boxer murdered your sister. Didn’t you see your sister fire at Lieutenant Boxer first? Didn’t you see the lieutenant lying on the street?”
“That’s not how I remember it.”
“Sam, you remember that you’re under oath?”
“I’m telling the truth,” he said, and sobbed again.
“Okay. Have you ever been inside the Lorenzo Hotel?”
“Objection, Your Honor. Where is this going?”
“Ms. Castellano?”
“It’ll become apparent in a second, Your Honor. I just have one more question.”
“Go ahead, then.”
“Sam, isn’t it true that right now you’re the prime suspect in the investigation of multiple homicides?”
Sam turned his head a few degrees away from Yuki and bellowed in his soul-searing, mechanically aided voice, “Mr. Broyles.”
Sam’s voice tailed away as the air went out of him.
“Objection! No foundation, Your Honor,” Broyles shouted above the murmurs washing over the room and the slams of Judge Achacoso’s gavel.
“I want that question struck from the record,” Broyles shouted, “and I ask Your Honor to instruct the jury to disregard —”
Before the judge could rule, Sam’s eyes wheeled frantically.
“I take the amendment,” the kid said, getting a fresh infusion of air before speaking once more. “I take the Fifth Amendment on the grounds —”
And with that, a horrific shrieking alarm came from beneath the wheelchair. There were screams from the gallery and from the jury box as the readouts on the ventilator went down to zero.
Andrew Cabot leaped from his chair, shoving the attendant forward.
“Do something! Do something!”
There was a collective intake of breath as the tech knelt, fiddled with knobs, and reset the ventilator. At last, the alarm went silent.
A loud whoosh was heard as Sam sucked in his life-saving air.
Then the roar of the crowd’s relief filled the room.
“I’m done with this witness,” Yuki said, shouting over the rumble that flowed from front to back of the courtroom.
“Court is adjourned,” said Judge Achacoso, slamming her gavel down. “We’ll resume tomorrow at nine.”
Chapter 92
AS THE COURTROOM EMPTIED, Yuki directed her full five-foot-two presence toward the judge.
“Your Honor! Move for a mistrial,” she said.
The judge waved her to the bench, and she and Mickey as well as Broyles and his second chair clumped up to the front.
I heard Yuki say, “The jury had to have been prejudiced by that freaking alarm.”
“You’re not accusing the plaintiff of deliberately setting off that ‘freaking’ alarm, are you?” asked the judge.
“No, of course not, Your Honor.”
“Mr. Broyles?”
“Pardon my language, Judge, but shit happens, and what the jury saw is an ongoing feature of Sam Cabot’s life. Sometimes the ventilator malfunctions and the kid could die. The jury saw that. I don’t think it made our case any stronger than the fact that Sam’s in that chair and his sister is dead.”
“I agree. Motion denied, Ms. Castellano. We’re going forward tomorrow morning, as planned.”
Chapter 93
I DON’T KNOW WHO was more shell-shocked, me or Yuki. We found our way to the fire exit stairwell, clattered down the concrete stairs, and opened the side door onto Polk, leaving Mickey to handle the press.
Yuki looked positively stunned—and mortified.
“Sam’s testimony was beyond a nightmare,” she said, her voice cracking. “When that alarm went off, my whole cross was obliterated. It was like everyone was thinking, What in God’s name did she do to that child?”
We took the most circuitous and least scenic route to the garage. I had to put my arm across Yuki’s waist to stop her from crossing the wind tunnel of Van Ness against the light.
“My God,” Yuki said again and again, each time throwing her hands out, palms facing the sky. “My God, my God. What a joke. What a complete travesty!”
“But Yuki,” I said, “you got your point across. You said it all. The kids were parked in the Tenderloin. They had no business there. They had guns. You said that Sam was the target of a homicide investigation, and Sam will be arraigned for those murders.
“His prints were found on the lip of the bathtub where that poor kid was electrocuted. He and Sara murdered those kids, Yuki. Sam Cabot is a terror. The jury has to know that.”
“I don’t know that they know. I can’t get away with saying he’s a suspect again because he hasn’t been arraigned. Th
e jury might have even thought I was baiting the kid, trying to get his pathetic little goat. Which, apparently, I did.”
We crossed Opera Plaza, a mixed-use development with restaurants, a bookstore, and movie theaters on the ground floor. Avoiding the stares of the crowd, we took the elevator down to the garage, and after going back and forth several times between the rows of parked cars, we found Yuki’s Acura at last.
We strapped in, and when Yuki turned the key, the engine jumped to life. I was already thinking ahead to tomorrow.
“You’re sure it’s a good idea for me to testify?” I asked my attorney.
“Absolutely. Mickey and I totally agree on this. We’ve got to get the jury’s sympathy going toward you. And to do that, those people are going to have to see and hear what you’re made of.
“And that’s why you’ve got to testify.”
Chapter 94
THE NEXT MORNING THE view from Yuki’s kitchenette was gray, as rain gathered for a fall from the huge thunderheads over the city. Strangely, this was the San Francisco that I loved, stormy and tempestuous.
I drank my coffee and fed Martha. Then we went for a quick walk on Jones Street.
“Gotta hurry, Boo,” I said, already feeling the mist in the air. “Big doings today. Mama’s going to be lynched.”
Twenty minutes later, Mickey picked us up in his car. We got to the courthouse at quarter to eight, cleverly missing most of the mob scene.
Inside courtroom B, Mickey and Yuki sat next to each other and argued in whispers, Yuki’s hands fluttering like frantic little birds. As for me, I stared out the courthouse window at the sheets of falling rain as tense minutes ticked off on the electric clock against the side wall.
I felt a touch on my arm.
“I’ll be honest, that alarm was one of the worst things that ever happened to me in a courtroom,” Mickey said, leaning across Yuki to talk to me. “I’d hate to think that Broyles staged that event, but I wouldn’t put it past him to have rigged the electric cord.”
“You can’t be serious?”
“I don’t know, but we’ve got to do damage control. It’s our turn to put on our case, and we have two messages to convey. The kid’s a horror even on wheels, and you’re a great cop.”
“Look, do not worry about your testimony, Lindsay,” Yuki added. “If you were any more prepared, you wouldn’t sound natural. When it’s time to do it, just tell the story. Take your time and stop to think if you aren’t sure of something. And don’t look guilty. Just be the great cop that you are.”
“Right,” I said. And for good measure, I said it again.
Too soon, the spectators filled the room in their damp raincoats, some of them still shaking out umbrellas. Then the opposition filed in and banged their briefcases down on the table. Broyles gave us a civil nod, barely masking his joy. The man was in his element, all right. Court TV. Network TV. Everyone wanted to speak with Mason Broyles.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Broyles shake Andrew Cabot’s hand, kiss Eva Cabot on the cheek. He even helped the medical attendant position Sam Cabot’s wheelchair just so. He orchestrated everything, so why not that alarm yesterday?
“Sleep okay, Sam? That’s great,” Broyles said to the boy.
For me, the nightmare resumed.
The sound of Sam sucking air through his ventilator tube every few seconds was such a painful and constant reminder of what I’d done that I found it hard to breathe myself.
Suddenly, the side door to the courtroom opened, and the twelve good men and women and three alternates walked to the box and took their places. The judge, carrying a cardboard cup of coffee, took hers as the court was called into session.
Chapter 95
YUKI, LOOKING CALM, COLLECTED, and sensational in a gray suit and pearls, kicked off our case by putting veteran dispatcher Carla Reyes on the stand. Yuki asked Carla some general questions about her duties and what her shift on May 10 had been like.
Then she played the tape of my radio transmissions that awful night: four and a half long minutes of my voice calling in our locations as well as radio calls from the patrol cars.
The clipped and broken transmissions surrounded by sparking static pumped adrenaline into my bloodstream and sent my mind careening around the corners of that dark night in the past, chasing the unknown suspects in a black Mercedes.
Jacobi’s voice requesting paramedical help for the passengers of the wrecked car was interrupted by the hard pops of gunfire that cut him off midsentence.
I actually started in my seat at the sounds of the gunshots. My hands began to sweat, and I felt myself tremble.
A moment later, I heard my own fading voice request ambulances. “Two officers down. Two civilians down.”
And the worried voice of Carla Reyes. “Lieutenant, are you okay? Lindsay. Answer me.”
“I really thought I’d lost her,” Carla told Yuki from the witness stand. “Lindsay’s one of our best.”
After Mason’s tepid cross, Yuki put on our next witness, Mike Hart from Ballistics, who confirmed that the slugs removed from my body were a match to Sara’s gun and that the slugs taken from Jacobi had been fired by the gun found beside Sam Cabot.
Broyles had no questions for Mike, so Yuki called Jacobi to the stand.
Tears brimmed in my eyes as my old friend and partner walked to the front of the room. Jacobi’s walk was heavy even though he’d lost a lot of weight. He struggled as he heaved himself up to the witness stand.
Yuki gave him time to pour himself a full glass of water. Then she asked him some routine questions about how long he’d been with the force, how long with Homicide.
Then, “Inspector Jacobi, how long have you known Lieutenant Boxer?”
“About seven years.”
“Have you had an occasion to work with her before the night in question?”
“Yep. We were partners for three years.”
“Have you been in other situations with her where she had to use her gun?”
“Yes. A coupla times.”
“And how would you say she reacts under pressure?”
“She’s great under pressure. And you know, every time you go out on the street you’re under pressure, because nothing suddenly turns into something without any warning at all.”
“Inspector, when you hooked up with Lieutenant Boxer on the night of May tenth, did you smell alcohol on her breath?”
“No.”
“Did you know that she had been drinking?”
“Yes. Because she mentioned it to me.”
“Well, why did she mention it to you?”
“Because she wanted me to know, so that I could kick her out of the car if I wanted to.”
“In your opinion, having worked with her for so many years, did she have all her faculties?”
“Of course. She was sharp, just like she always is.”
“If she was in any way impaired would you have gone on this assignment with her?”
“Absolutely not.”
Yuki took Warren through the night of the tenth, from the moment he picked me up at Susie’s to the last thing he remembered.
“I was glad we got those kids out of that car. I was worried that the gas tank was leaking and the whole thing could’ve gone kaboom. I was on with our dispatcher, Carla Reyes over there, telling her that Sam Cabot had a broken nose from the air bag blowing up in his face and that those kids coulda had internal injuries. Little did I know.”
“I beg your pardon, Inspector?”
“Little did I know that while I was calling for paramedics, that little prick was going to shoot me.”
Mason Broyles blew his cork, of course, and the judge admonished Jacobi. I was ecstatic that Jacobi had had the balls to call Sam Cabot a prick. When order was restored, Yuki had a last question for my old partner.
“Inspector, are you familiar with Lieutenant Boxer’s reputation in the police community, and if so, what is that reputation?”
“In a word? She’s
a damned good cop.”
Chapter 96
BROYLES GOT NOTHING MUCH out of Jacobi on cross. He answered yes and no and refused to rise to the bait when Broyles insinuated that he’d been lazy in performing his duty according to SFPD policies and procedures.
“I did the best I could do for both those kids and I’m thankful that your client wasn’t a better shot,” Jacobi said. “Otherwise I’d be dead, instead of talking to you here.”
When court adjourned for a lunch break, I found a quiet spot in a corner on the third floor between a Coke machine and a wall, and talked to Joe, our virtual hug spanning three time zones. He apologized at least a half dozen times for being in the middle of a huge investigation involving threats to airports from Boston to Miami, which was why he couldn’t be with me in San Francisco.
I had a bite of a dry ham sandwich and a sip of coffee from a machine before taking my seat beside Yuki as court was called back into session.
Then the moment I’d been dreading arrived. Yuki called me to the witness stand. When I was seated in the witness box, she stood in front of me so that my view of the Cabot family was blocked, and she gave me a sunny smile.
“Lieutenant Boxer, do you believe in following police procedures?”
“I do.”
“Were you drunk on the night in question?”
“No. I was having dinner with friends. I had a couple of drinks before I got the call from Jacobi.”
“You were off duty?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not against any rules to drink off duty, is it?”
“No.”
“When you got into the car with Inspector Jacobi, you officially went back on duty.”
“Yes. Still, I was sure that I had all my faculties. I stand by that now.”
“Would you say you’re a ‘by-the-book’ kind of cop?”
“Yes, but the book doesn’t cover all circumstances. Sometimes you have to work with the situation at hand and use your best judgment.”
At Yuki’s prompting, I told the story up to the point where Jacobi and I wrenched open the car door and freed the Cabot kids from the wreck.