James Patterson - The 8th Confession

“Sorry.” Cindy laughed. “ Sydney,” she said, raising a hand, calling our waitress over, “hit me again, please.”

“Rich and I spent our lunch hour sifting through missing persons and running Bagman’s prints.”

“Your lunch hour. Wow,” Cindy said facetiously.

“Hey, look at it this way,” I said. “We bumped your Bagman to the top of a very thick pile of active cases.”

Cindy gave me a look that said “sorry,” but she didn’t mean it. What a brat. I laughed at her. What else could I do?

“Did you find anything?” she asked.

Conklin told her, “No match to his prints. On the other hand, there are a couple of hundred average-size, brown-eyed white men who’ve gone missing in California over the last decade. I called you at two thirty so you could make your deadline. When you dump your voice mail -”

“Thanks, anyway, Rich. I was interviewing. I turned off my cell.”

More beer came, and as dinner arrived, Cindy served up the highlights of her other interviews at From the Heart. It took a little while, but soon enough I realized that Cindy was pretty much playing to Conklin. So I sawed on my sirloin and watched the two of them interact.

My feelings for my partner had taken a sharp and unexpected turn about a year and a half ago when we were working a case that had brought us to L.A. We had a late dinner, drank some wine, and missed our flight back to San Francisco.

It was late, so I expensed two rooms at the airport Marriott. I was in a bathrobe when Conklin knocked on the door. About two minutes later, we were grappling together on a California King.

I’d hauled up the emergency brake before it was too late, and it felt awful, absolutely wrenching – as wrong as if the sun had gone down in the east.

But I’d been right to bring things to a halt. For one thing, even though Joe and I had broken up around then, I still loved him. Besides, Conklin is about ten years younger than I am and we’re partners. I’m also his boss.

After that night, we agreed to ignore the moments when the electricity between us lit up the patrol car, when I’d forget what I was saying and find myself speechless, just staring into Richie’s light-brown eyes. As best we could, we sidestepped the times Rich had burst into thirty-second rants about how crazy he was about me.

But this wasn’t one of those times.

Right now, Inspector Hottie was grinning at Cindy, and she’d almost forgotten I was there.

I could argue that Cindy and Rich would make a terrific couple. They are both single. They look good together. They seem to have a lot to talk about.

“Rich,” Cindy was saying, “I’m having another beer. Think you could make sure I get home okay?”

“I’ll drive you,” I said, putting a sisterly hand on Cindy’s arm. “My car’s out front and I can swing by your apartment on my way home.”

YUKI NEARLY BUMPED into Phil Hoffman as he stepped out of the elevator.

“What do you think this is about?” Hoffman murmured.

“Weird, huh?” Yuki replied.

It was ten a.m., two days after she and Hoffman had made their closing arguments, and they’d just gotten calls from the judge’s clerk saying that their presence was required in Courtroom 6a.

With Hoffman looming a full fourteen inches above her, Yuki walked beside him down the long buff-painted corridor toward the courtroom, with Nicky Gaines trailing behind.

“Could be nothing,” Yuki said. “I had a jury ask for a calculator once. Thought they were adding up the award for my client. Turned out a juror was doing his income tax during the lunch break.”

Hoffman laughed, held open the first of two sets of doors to the courtroom. Gaines held open the second set, then the three lawyers walked to the front, took seats behind their respective counsel tables.

Judge Duffy was at the bench, the court reporter and clerk in their places, the sheriff’s deputy standing in front of the jury box, patting down his mustache.

Duffy shoved his glasses to the top of his head, closed his laptop, and asked both counsel to approach, which they did.

“The foreperson sent out a note from the jury,” Duffy said. A smile pulled at his mouth as he unfolded a quartered sheet of paper, held it up so Yuki and Hoffman could see the twelve hangman’s gallows that had been drawn on the paper with a black marker. A note had been penned underneath the gallows: “Your Honor, I think we have a problem.”

“Nooo way,” Yuki said. “They’re hung after… what? Ten hours of deliberation?”

“Your Honor, ” said Hoffman. “Please. Don’t let them quit so soon. This is absolutely bizarre! ”

Yuki couldn’t read Duffy’s expression, but she could read Hoffman’s and knew he felt the same anxiety, anger, and nausea as she did. It had taken months to prepare this case for trial. Dozens of people had been deposed. There’d been uncountable man-hours of prep and six weeks of what Yuki thought to be pretty flawless presentations in the courtroom.

If there was a mistrial, the People might decide not to spend the resources required to retry. Hoffman’s firm would probably pull the plug as well.

And that meant Stacey Glenn would go free .

“Take a seat, you two. No need to transport the defendant.”

Duffy called out to the sheriff’s deputy, “Mr. Bonaventure, please bring in the jury.”

AS THE JURORS put their bags down beside their seats, Yuki’s mind whirled like cherry lights on a police cruiser. She scrutinized the jurors as they filed in, looked for telling signs on their faces and in their body language.

Who had believed Stacey Glenn was innocent? How many of them had voted to acquit – and why?

The foreperson, Linda Chen, was Chinese-American, forty years old, with an Ivy League education and a successful real estate business. She had a no-nonsense manner countered by a wide and easy smile, and both Yuki and Hoffman had felt comfortable with Chen when they’d cast the jury. Even more so when she’d been voted foreperson.

Now Yuki wondered how Chen had let the jury quit so soon.

Duffy smiled at the jury, said, “I’ve given your note serious thought. I understand that six weeks of trial is an ordeal and many of you are quite ready to go home.

“That said, this trial has been expensive – not just in terms of money, although it’s cost the State of California plenty, but for the better part of a year, both sides have labored to put together this case for you to judge.

“Where things stand now,” said Duffy, “ you are the experts on the People versus Stacey Glenn. If you can’t arrive at a unanimous decision, this case will have to be tried again, and there’s no reason to believe that any other group of people would be more qualified or impartial, or have more wisdom to decide this verdict, than you.”

Duffy explained to the jury that he was going to ask them to continue their deliberations, not to give up deeply held ideas based on the evidence but to reexamine their views with an open mind in order to try to reach consensus.

The judge was giving the jury the “Allen charge,” the so-called dynamite charge designed to bust up logjams in deadlocked juries. It was considered coercive by legal purists.

Yuki knew that this was the best option available, but the Allen charge could backfire. A resentful jury could push back and deliver whatever verdict would end its service the fastest.

It was obvious to Yuki that the easiest, least-nightmare-provoking decision would be a unanimous vote to acquit.

Judge Duffy was saying, “I want you to have maximum seclusion and comfort, so I’ve arranged for you to be sequestered in the Fairmont Hotel for as much time as you need.”