James Patterson: The 9th Judgment

Pete took the long way home, up Sloat Boulevard, up and over Portola Drive, where he waited for the Muni train to pass with commuters all in a row, and finally up Clipper Street toward his crappy apartment in the Mission.

It was almost dinnertime, and his own little bawlers would be puffing up their cheeks, getting ready to sound the alarm. He had his key out when he got to the apartment. He opened the lock and gave the door a kick.

He could smell the baby’s diapers from the doorway, the little stinker standing in the kiddie cage in the middle of the floor, hanging on to the handrail, crying out as soon as he saw his dad.

“Daddy!” Sherry called. “He needs to be changed.”

“Goody,” Peter Gordon said. “Shut up, stink bomb,” he told the boy. “I’ll get to you in a minute.” He took the remote control from his daughter’s hand, switched from the cartoons, and checked the news.

The stock market was down. Oil prices were up. He watched the latest Hollywood update. Nothing was said about two bodies found in the Stonestown Galleria parking lot.

“I’m hungry,” Sherry said.

“Well, which is it first? Dinner or poop?”

“Poop first,” she said.

“All right, then.”

Pete Gordon picked up the baby, as dear to him as a sack of cement, not even sure the little shit was his, although even if he was, he still didn’t care. He put the baby on its back on the changing table and went through the ritual, holding the kiddo by the ankles, wiping him down, dusting his butt with powder, wrapping him up in Pampers, then putting him back in the kiddie cage.

“Franks and beans?” he asked his daughter.

“My absolute favorite,” Sherry said, putting a pigtail in her mouth.

“Put a shirt on the stink bomb,” Pete Gordon said, “so your mother doesn’t have a gas attack when she gets home.”

Gordon microwaved some formula for the stink bomb and opened the canned franks and beans. He turned on the undercabinet TV and the stove, what wifey should be doing instead of him, the bitch, and dumped the contents of the can into a pot.

The beans were burning when the breaking news came on.

Huh. Look at that, Pete thought.

Some dork from ABC was holding a microphone, standing in front of Borders. College kids mugged behind him as he said, “We have learned that there has been a shooting at the Stonestown garage. Sources report a gruesome double homicide that you will not believe. We’ll keep you posted as details are released. Back to you, Yolanda.”

YUKI CASTELLANO STEPPED out of her office and called down the line of cubicles to Nicky Gaines, “You ready, Wonder Boy? Or do you want to meet me downstairs?”

“I’m coming,” Gaines said. “Who said I wasn’t coming?”

“How do I look?” she asked him, already moving toward the elevator that would take them from the DA’s office to the courtroom.

“You look fierce, Batwoman. Miss Hot Multicultural USA.”

“Shut up.” She laughed at her protégé. “Just be ready to prompt me if I blank, God forbid.”

“You’re not going to blank. You’re going to send Jo-Jo to the big house.”

“Ya think?”

“I know. Don’t you?”

“Uh-huh. I just have to make sure the jury knows it, too.”

Nicky stabbed the elevator button, and Yuki went back to her thoughts. In about twenty minutes, she was going to make her closing argument in the state’s case against Adam “Jo-Jo” Johnson.

Since she’d been with the DA’s office, she’d taken on more than a few crappy cases that the DA was determined to try: she’d work eighteen-hour days, earning “atta girls” from her boss, Leonard “Red Dog” Parisi, and score points with the jury, all of which would give her high expectations.

And then she’d lose.

Yuki was becoming famous for losing-and that stank because she was a fighter and a winner. And she just frickin’ hated to lose. But she never thought she’d lose-and this time was no different.

Her case was solid. She’d laid it out like a hand of solitaire. The jury had an easy job. The defendant wasn’t just guilty, he was guilty as sin.

Nicky held open the studded leather door to the courtroom, and Yuki walked smartly down the center aisle of the oak-paneled chamber. She noticed that the gallery was filling up with spectators, mostly press and law students. And as she approached the prosecution table, she saw that Jo-Jo Johnson and his attorney, Jeff Asher, were in their seats.

The stage was set.

She nodded to her opponent and noted the defendant’s appearance. Jo-Jo’s hair was combed and he was wearing a nice suit, but he looked dazed as only a mope who’d fried his brain on drugs could look. She hoped that very soon he would look worse, once she nailed him on manslaughter in the first degree.

“Jo-Jo looks like he’s been smoking ganja,” Nicky murmured to Yuki as he pulled out her chair.

“Or else he believes his lawyer’s bull,” Yuki said loud enough for her opponent to hear. “Jo-Jo may think he’s going to walk, but he’ll be busing it to Pelican Bay.”

Asher looked at her and smirked, showing Yuki with his body language that he thought he was going to whip her.

It was an act.

Yuki hadn’t gone up against Asher before, but after less than a year in the public defender’s office, Asher had gotten a reputation as a “bomb”-a killer attorney who blew up the prosecution’s case and got his client off. Asher was formidable because he had it all: charisma, boyish good looks, and a Harvard Law degree. And he had his father, a top-notch litigator who was coaching his son from the sidelines.

But none of that mattered today.

The evidence, the witnesses, and the confession were all on her side. Jo-Jo Johnson was hers.

JUDGE STEVEN RABINOWITZ took a last look at the pictures of his new condo in Aspen, then turned off his iPhone, cracked his knuckles, and said, “Are the People ready, Ms. Castellano?”

“We are, Your Honor,” said Yuki.

She stood, her glossy black hair with the new silver streak in front falling forward as she straightened the hem of her suit jacket. Then she stepped quickly to the lectern in the center of the well.

She turned her eyes toward the jury box and gave the jurors a smile. A couple of them smiled back, but for the most part they were expressionless. She couldn’t read them at all.

But that was okay.

She just had to give the greatest closing of her life, as if the dead scumbag victim were the best and brightest of men, and as if this were the last case she would ever try.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” she said, “Dr. Lincoln Harris is dead because this man, Adam J. Johnson, knew Dr. Harris was in mortal danger and let him die with willful disregard for his life. In California, that’s manslaughter in the first degree.

“We know what happened on the night of March fourteenth because, after waiving his right to remain silent, after waiving his right to counsel, Mr. Johnson told the police how and why he let Dr. Harris expire when he could have easily saved his life.”

Yuki let her words resonate in the chamber, shuffling her cards on the lectern before continuing her closing argument.

“On the evening in question, the defendant, who had been employed by Dr. Harris as a handyman, went out to get cocaine for the doctor and himself.

“He returned within the hour, and the defendant and the plaintiff ingested this cocaine. Shortly after that, Dr. Harris OD’d. How do we know that?

“The defendant told the police-and it was borne out by medical experts-that it was clear Dr. Harris was in extremis. He was foaming at the mouth and eventually lost consciousness. But, rather than call an ambulance, the defendant used this opportunity to remove a thousand dollars and an ATM card from Dr. Harris’s wallet.