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

“So to be absolutely clear, Doctor, Sara Cabot shot Lieutenant Boxer first—and the lieutenant returned fire upward from where she lay on the ground.”

“In my opinion, yes, that’s how it happened.”

“Would you call that ‘excessive force’ or ‘wrongful death’ or ‘police misconduct’?”

The judge sustained Broyles’s outraged objection. Mickey thanked Claire and dismissed her. He was smiling as he came toward me. My muscles relaxed, and I even returned Mickey’s smile. But the hearing was just beginning.

I felt a shock of fear when I saw the look in Mason Broyles’s eyes. You could only describe it as anticipatory. He couldn’t wait to get his next witness on the stand.

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 17

“PLEASE STATE YOUR NAME,” Broyles said to a petite brunette woman in her early thirties.

“Betty D’Angelo.”

Her dark eyes behind her large horn-rimmed glasses darted quickly over to me, then back to Broyles again. I looked at Mickey Sherman and shrugged. To the best of my knowledge, I’d never seen this woman before.

“And what is your position?”

“I’m a registered nurse at San Francisco General.”

“Were you on duty in the ER on the evening and night of May tenth?”

“I was.”

“Did you have occasion to take blood from the defendant, Lindsay Boxer?”

“Yes.”

“And why was blood drawn?”

“We were prepping her for surgery, for extraction of the bullets and so on. It was a life-threatening situation. She was losing a lot of blood.”

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Broyles said, batting away her comment like a housefly. “Tell us about the blood test.”

“It’s normal procedure to take blood. We had to match her up for transfusions.”

“Ms. D’Angelo, I’m looking at Lieutenant Boxer’s medical report from that night. It’s quite a voluminous report.” Broyles plopped a fat stack of paper on the witness stand and stabbed at it with a forefinger. “Is this your signature?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like you to look at this highlighted line right here.”

The witness tossed her head as if she smelled something bad. Emergency room staff often felt part of the cop team and would try to protect us. I didn’t get it, but this nurse plainly wanted to duck Broyles’s questions.

“Can you tell me what this is?” Broyles asked the witness.

“This? You mean the ETOH?”

“That stands for ethyl alcohol content, is that right?”

“Yes. That’s what it stands for.”

“What does .067 mean?”

“Ahh . . . That means the blood alcohol level was sixty-seven milligrams per deciliter.”

Broyles smiled and lowered his voice to a purr. “In this case it refers to the blood alcohol level in Lieutenant Boxer’s system, doesn’t it?”

“Well, yes, that’s correct.”

“Ms. D’Angelo, .067—that’s drunk, isn’t that right?”

“We do refer to it as ‘under the influence,’ but—”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“I have nothing further,” said Broyles.

I felt like my head had been struck with a sledgehammer. My God, those fucking margaritas at Susie’s.

I felt the blood drain from my face and I almost fainted.

Mickey turned to me, the expression on his face demanding: Why didn’t you tell me?

I looked at my attorney, openmouthed and absolutely sick with remorse.

I could hardly bear Mickey’s look of incredulity as, armed with nothing but his wits, he leaped to his feet and approached the witness.

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 18

THERE WERE ONLY TWELVE rows of seats in courtroom C in the San Francisco Civic Center Courthouse and no jury box. It would have been hard to find a courtroom more intimate than this one. I don’t think anyone breathed during Mickey’s walk to the witness stand.

He greeted Ms. D’Angelo, who looked relieved to be off the hot seat Mason Broyles had fired up for her.

“I only have a couple of questions,” he said. “It’s common practice to use ethyl alcohol swabs to clean the wounds, isn’t it? Couldn’t that alcohol have been confused with the blood alcohol?”

Betty D’Angelo looked as though she wanted to cry. “Well, we use Betadine to swab the wounds. We don’t use alcohol.”

Mickey brushed off the response and turned to the judge. He asked for a recess and it was granted. The reporters bolted for the doors, and in the relative privacy, I apologized with all my heart.

“I feel like a real schmuck,” he said, not unkindly. “I saw that medical report and I didn’t notice the ETOH.”

“I just completely forgot until now,” I said. “I must have blanked it out.”

I told Mickey that I had been off duty when Jacobi called me at Susie’s. I told him what I had had to drink and that if I wasn’t flat-out straight when I got into the car, the adrenaline rush of the chase had been completely sobering.

“You usually have a couple of drinks with dinner?” Mickey asked me.

“Yes. A few times a week.”

“Well, there you go. Drinks at dinner were an ordinary occurrence for you, and .067 is borderline, anyway. Then comes a major trauma. You were shot. You were in pain. You coulda died. You killed someone—and that’s what you’ve been obsessing about. Half of all shooting victims block out the incident entirely. You’ve done fine, considering what you’ve been through.”

I let out a sigh. “What now?”

“Well, at least we know what they have. Maybe they’ll put Sam Cabot on the stand, and if they give me a chance at that little bastard, we’ll come out on top.”

The courtroom filled once more, and Mickey went to work. A ballistics expert testified that the slugs taken from my body matched those fired from Sara Cabot’s gun, and we had Jacobi’s videotaped deposition from his hospital bed. He was my witness on the scene.

Although in obvious pain from his gut wound, Jacobi testified about the night of May 10. First, he described the car crash.

“I was calling for an ambulance when I heard the shots,” he said. “I turned and saw Lieutenant Boxer go down. Sara Cabot shot her twice, and Boxer didn’t have a gun in her hand. Then the boy shot me with a revolver.” Jacobi’s hand gingerly spanned his taped torso.

“That’s the last I remember before the lights went out.”

Jacobi’s account was good, but it wouldn’t be enough to overturn the margaritas.

Only one person could help me now. I was wearing her clothes, sitting in her chair. I was queasy and my wounds throbbed. I honestly didn’t know if I could save myself or if I would make everything worse.

My lawyer turned his warm brown eyes on me.

Steady, Lindsay.

I wobbled to my feet as I heard my name echo through the courtroom.

Mickey Sherman had called me to the stand.

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 19

I’D BEEN A WITNESS dozens of times during my career, but this was the first time I’d had to defend myself. All my years of protecting the public, and now I had a bull’s-eye on my back. I was raging inside, but I couldn’t let it show.

I got to my feet, swore to God on an old worn Bible, and placed my fate in the hands of my attorney.

Mickey cut straight to the chase. “Lindsay, were you drunk on the night of May tenth?”

The judge broke in: “Mr. Sherman, please don’t address your client by her first name.”

“Okay. Lieutenant, were you drunk that night?”

“No.”

“Okay, let’s back up. Were you on duty that night?”

“No. My shift was over at five p.m.”

Mickey took me through the events of that night in excruciating detail, and I told it all. I described the drinks I’d had at Susie’s and told the court about getting the call from Jacobi. I stated that I’d told Jacobi the truth when I’d said that I was good to go along that night.