James Patterson: 12th of Never

The intense media attention had whipped up a lot of hatred toward Keith Herman. It made it nearly impossible to find a jury who hadn’t watched the network specials, hadn’t seen the rewards offered for information about the missing child, and hadn’t formed an opinion as to the guilt of the accused.

And so jury selection had taken almost three weeks.

Now the press filled half the gallery in courtroom 202, Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. The other half of the room was filled with citizens who had lined up early enough that morning to have scored one of the precious seats.

At 8:23 a.m. Yuki was at the prosecution table in the blond-wood-paneled courtroom. Her laptop was open and as she went through a long e-mail from Red Dog, she hoped all her witnesses would show up to testify—that they hadn’t been silenced or intimidated (or worse) by the opposition.

Across the aisle, at the defense table, sat two ordinary-looking men who were actually two of the scariest people Yuki had ever met. Keith Herman was paunchy, bald, and had black eyes that looked like bullet holes in his unlined, babyish face. Not all psychopaths look homicidal, but Keith Herman did. Herman had never shown any remorse, not while identifying the sections of meat that had once been his wife, not while discussing his missing daughter.

Herman’s attorney, John Kinsela, was tall with thinning gray hair and a bloodless complexion that made him look as though he climbed out of a coffin at night. Unlike his client, Kinsela was smooth. He expressed sadness and regret. He listened thoughtfully and spoke well and persuasively on camera. He passed as a reasonable facsimile of a person. A little digging into his past had turned up five divorces and the ownership of a Glock semiautomatic, which he carried at all times.

Yuki had been with these ghouls through countless hours of depositions and felt that she knew them too well.

She had dressed this morning in a bright red suit because she had a slight build, could look younger than her years, and because of the fact that red made her look and feel more powerful.

You couldn’t hang back in red. You couldn’t hesitate. You really had to live up to red.

She also wore a gold star on a chain around her neck, a graduation-from-law-school gift from her mother, who had been murdered several years earlier.

Wearing the star kept Keiko Castellano present in Yuki’s mind and might even help her to win.

She had to win.

This was a tremendous opportunity to get justice for the victims, to become a hero to female victims everywhere. It was also an opportunity to be humiliated by a savage attorney and his perverted, murdering client.

It was her job to make sure that Keith Herman didn’t get out of jail—ever.

The buzz in the gallery intensified, then cut off suddenly as the door leading from the judge’s chambers opened behind the bench and Judge Arthur R. Nussbaum entered the courtroom.

Chapter 3

YUKI HALF LISTENED as Judge Nussbaum instructed the handpicked jury of six men, six women, and four alternates, who were as diverse a group as could be imagined: black, white, brown, white-collar, and blue-collar.

Nussbaum had been a clever trial lawyer, but the judge was new at his job and Yuki was sure he would play this one by the book.

When he asked her if she was ready to begin, she said she was. Gaines whispered, “Go get ’em,” and Yuki stood, greeted the jury, and walked confidently to the lectern in the well of the courtroom. Then, without warning, she blanked. She couldn’t remember the first sentence in her opener, the key that would unlock her carefully wrought statement.

Yuki looked over at Gaines. He smiled, nodded, and her mind unfroze.

She said, “The defendant, Keith Herman, is a killer, and the evidence in this case will show you that the people who depended on Mr. Herman, the ones who looked to him for protection and love, are the people who should have feared him the most.”

Yuki paused to let her words sink in, looked at every member of the jury, and began to lay out her case.

“On March first, a day like any other, Keith Herman tucked his daughter’s lifeless body into the backseat of his Lexus, and she was never seen again. Jennifer Herman, Keith Herman’s wife, never reported her daughter missing, because as her husband was driving off with their daughter, Jennifer Herman was already dead by her husband’s hand.

“You will hear testimony that before she disappeared, Jennifer Herman told a friend on several occasions that she was afraid of her husband and that if anything ever happened to her, the friend should go to the police. Which this friend did. Had Lesley Rohan not called the police, they wouldn’t have looked for Jennifer Herman and her body would have been buried under several tons of garbage in a landfill.

“You will hear testimony from another witness, an under-cover police officer, who will tell you that he was offered one hundred thousand dollars by the defendant to kill Jennifer Herman.”

Yuki’s mind unclenched. She knew that she had gotten into the rhythm and the beat of her perfectly choreographed and well-rehearsed presentation. She was in a great groove.

She told the jury about the witnesses she would introduce—the sanitation worker who found the body of Jennifer Herman in eight separate garbage bags and the forensic pathologist who would talk about Jennifer Herman’s cause of death.

She walked to the counsel table and picked up an 8 × 10-inch color photo of a young child with dark wavy hair and a captivating smile. Carrying the picture in both hands, Yuki showed it to the jury as she walked along the length of the railing.

“This beautiful child is the defendant’s daughter, Lily, who has been missing for over a year. You will hear from a neighbor’s housekeeper, Maria Ortega, that a month before Lily disappeared, she became moody and withdrawn and that there were bruises on her arms and legs. Ms. Ortega will testify that she reported her suspicions to the police.

“The state,” Yuki said, keeping eye contact with the jury, “does not have to prove motive, but if I were sitting in the jury box, I’d be asking, ‘Why would the defendant, a man with wealth and means, decide to put his entire life in the toilet? Why would he kill the beautiful woman who was his wife, and the wonderful little girl who was his daughter?’

“Did Mr. Herman abuse his little girl, and did his wife catch him at it and try to protect their daughter?”

Kinsela shot to his feet. “Your Honor, this is argument.”

“Overruled.”

Yuki didn’t hesitate.

She stepped on the gas.

She said to the jury, “Did Mr. Herman physically abuse his little girl? Did Mr. Herman kill his wife when she tried to protect their daughter? What was his motive for murdering his loved ones?

“That question is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.”

Chapter 4

WHEN SHE STOOD behind the lectern, Yuki felt like a little kid peering up over the edge of a table. So she stayed close to the jury box and spoke loudly enough for everyone in the courtroom to hear.

“We can’t know what was in the defendant’s mind when he took the lives of his wife and daughter, and the victims can’t tell us,” she said.

“We don’t have to know or prove motive, but we do have a witness, Ms. Lynnette Lagrande, who will testify that the defendant wanted to ditch his family. She will testify that she was in love with Keith Herman, that Mr. Herman said that he loved her and wanted to marry her. And so Ms. Lynnette Lagrande, a model citizen, patiently waited for Mr. Herman to make good on that promise for the last three years.”

There had been no coughing in the gallery, no shuffling in the jury box, and even when the defense team attempted to distract the jurors and the audience, Yuki had kept all the attention on herself.