Patterson, James - Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

“Ms. Castellano, this is your first high-profile case. How do you think you did?”

Fifteen feet away, a crowd was also forming around Mason Broyles, his clients, and his deputies. Film rolled as the medical attendant moved Sam Cabot down a wooden ramp and loaded him into a van. Reporters followed, firing questions at Sam as his father did his best to shield the boy.

I picked Cindy out of the crowd. She was shouldering through the sardine can-packed bodies, trying to get closer to me. And that’s why I wasn’t paying much attention to Mickey when he answered his cell phone.

Then his hand was on my shoulder. His face was totally gray.

“I just got a heads-up from the clerk’s office,” he shouted into my ear. “The jury has a couple of questions.”

We pressed through the crowd, making our way to the street and Mickey’s waiting car. Yuki and I got into the backseat, and Mickey got in front beside his driver.

“What did they want to know?” Yuki asked as soon as the doors closed. The car moved slowly through the crowd, heading toward Redwood.

“They want to see the evidence of Lindsay’s alcohol intake,” Mickey said, turning to face us.

“Christ,” Yuki said. “How could they still be stuck on that?”

“What else?” I asked urgently. “You said there were two things.”

I saw Mickey hesitate. He didn’t want to tell me, but he had to do it.

“They wanted to know if there was a limit on how much money they could award the plaintiffs,” he said.

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 103

IT WAS A GUT shot, and the shock resonated from my solar plexus throughout my body. I felt my stomach drop and bile rise into my throat. I had envisioned losing this case in terms of a fanciful, theoretical aftermath: working at street fairs, reading books on the deck of some beach house, la-de-da. But I hadn’t taken into account the full emotional impact of the reality of losing.

Beside me, Yuki squealed, “Oh, my God, it’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have said ‘find her guilty of being a good cop, blah blah.’ It was a flourish! I thought it was good, but I was wrong.”

“You did a great job,” I said, my voice as heavy as stone. “This has nothing to do with what you said.”

I wrapped my arms around myself and lowered my head. Mickey and Yuki were talking together. I heard Mickey assure her that the fat lady hadn’t yet sung, but the voice in my mind was a needle stuck in an old-fashioned record groove.

One question kept repeating.

How could this be?

How could this be?

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 104

WHEN I TUNED BACK in to the conversation in the car, Mickey was explaining something to Yuki.

“The judge gave them the paperwork from the hospital and the transcript from the nurse. And she told them not to worry about limiting the award. That’s her job and need not concern them.”

Mickey ran his hand over his face in what I took to be exasperation. “Yuki, you did a fantastic job, I mean it. I can’t believe that the jury bought Mason Broyles’s act,” he said. “I just don’t believe it. I don’t know how we could have done better.”

And that’s when Yuki’s cell phone rang.

“The jury is back,” she said. She folded her phone, clutching it until her knuckles whitened. “They have a verdict.”

My mind spaced. I saw the word verdict in front of my eyes and tried to parse it, looking between the letters and syllables for something to hope for. I knew from past days in court that the Latin roots of the word verdict meant to speak the truth.

Would this verdict be the truth?

In the minds of the people of San Francisco, it would be.

Mickey directed his driver to turn around, which he did, and a few minutes later I was saying, “No comment, no comment, please,” and following Yuki and Mickey through the mob, up the steep stairs, and into the courthouse once again.

We took our places in courtroom B, and the opposition took theirs.

I heard my name pierce the moment as if it had come from another time and place. I turned to look behind me.

“Joe!”

“I just got in, Lindsay. I came straight from the airport.”

We reached out and for a brief moment entwined our fingers across the shoulders of the people sitting behind me. Then I had to let go and turn away.

Along the sides of the room, cameramen focused their lenses, then, only an hour since we’d left this room, the judge entered from her chambers and the jury filled the jury box.

The bailiff called the court back into session.

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 105

IT TOOK THE MEMBERS of the jury long moments to fix their skirts, put down their bags, and get comfortable in their seats. Finally, they were at attention. I noticed that only two of them had looked at me.

I listened numbly as the judge asked the jury if they’d arrived at the verdict. Then the foreman, a fifty-something African American man named Arnold Benoit, straightened the lines of his sport jacket and spoke.

“We have, Your Honor.”

“Please pass your verdict to the bailiff.”

Across the aisle, Sam Cabot’s breathing quickened, as did mine, keeping double time along with my pounding heart as the judge opened the single sheet of paper.

She scanned it and, without expression, passed it back to the bailiff, who returned it to the jury foreman.

“I caution the audience not to react to whatever the foreman says,” said the judge. “All right, Mr. Foreman. Please pronounce the verdict.”

The foreman took his glasses out of his jacket pocket, flipped them open, and set them on his nose. At last, he began to read.

“We, the jury in the above-entitled action, find the accused, Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer, not guilty of the charges against her.”

“So say you all?”

“We do.”

I was so numb, I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly. And when I played the statement back in my mind, I half expected the judge to overrule what the foreman had just said.

Yuki grasped my wrist tightly, and only when I saw the smile lighting her face did I fully realize that I wasn’t imagining anything. The jury had found in my favor.

A voice shouted, “No! No! You can’t do this!”

It was Andrew Cabot, on his feet, holding on to the chair-back in front of him where Mason Broyles sat, white-faced and grim, and beaten.

Broyles’s request that the jury be polled was a demand, and the judge complied.

“As you hear your seat number called, please tell the court how you voted,” said Judge Achacoso.

One at a time the jurors spoke.

“Not guilty.”

“Not guilty.”

“Not guilty . . .”

I had heard the expression, but I’m not sure I understood it until that moment. With both my attorneys’ arms around me, I floated in a feeling of relief so complete it was a dimension of its own. Perhaps this feeling was reserved only for moments of redemption, moments like this.

I was free, and my heart took flight.

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Part Five

The Cat’s Meow

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 106

THERE WAS A MOODY gray sky overhead when Martha and I left my apartment and headed out of San Francisco. I turned on the car radio and caught the weather report, listening with half an ear as I negotiated the stop-and-go snarl of the usual commuter traffic.

As I bumped along Potrero Street, I was thinking about Chief Tracchio. Yesterday, when we’d met at the Hall of Justice, he’d asked me to come back to work, and I’d gotten as flustered as if he’d asked me for a date.