12th of Never wmc-12

by James Patterson

“Are you acquainted with the defendant?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Lagrande didn’t look at Keith Herman, but he fixed his sharklike eyes on her.

  “How did you come to meet Mr. Herman?” Yuki asked.

  “Two years ago, Lily Herman, Mr. Herman’s daughter, was in my class. I met him one day when he came to pick her up after school.”

  Under Yuki’s questioning, Lagrande described the course of her relationship with the defendant: parent-teacher conferences, accidental meetings in town, then a lunch with Mr. Herman that turned romantic and was the start of a liaison that had continued for more than a year.

  “How would you characterize your feelings for Mr. Herman at this time last year?”

  “I loved him.”

  “And did he ever tell you how he felt about you?”

  “He claimed to love me.”

  Yuki brought a packet of letters and e-mails from the prosecution table to the witness stand and showed them to the witness.

  “Do these cards and printouts of e-mails belong to you?”

  “Yes. They’re mine.”

  “Your Honor, I’d like Ms. Lagrande to read some passages from this correspondence and then I’ll introduce all of it into evidence.”

  Kinsela said, “Your Honor, the defense concedes that the defendant expressed feelings of love for the witness.”

  “The tenor of the correspondence goes to motive, Your Honor,” said Yuki.

  The judge was attacked by a fit of sneezing. Everyone in the courtroom waited him out. A few people, including Yuki Castellano and John Kinsela, blessed him.

  The judge blew his nose. He thanked everyone, then he said, “I’m not going to deprive the jury of the opportunity to hear these communications, Mr. Kinsela. Ms. Castellano, please proceed.”

  Chapter 35

  YUKI SAID, “MS. LAGRANDE, will you please read these e-mails aloud, including the dates?”

  Kinsela leaned in and whispered to his client, but Keith Herman didn’t acknowledge his lawyer or seem to be aware of him at all. He seemed transfixed by the sight of his former lover.

  Lynnette Lagrande bent her head and read from the pages in front of her.

  “December twenty-fourth. Lynnie, I know I promised to be with you on Christmas and I am so sorry that I have to let you down. There is no place I’d rather be than in your arms and in your—”

  The witness looked up and said to Yuki, “He goes on to say how it makes him feel to have sexual relations with me, and if you don’t mind, I’d rather not read this out loud.”

  Yuki said, “You can skip that passage and just read the last paragraph.”

  “Okay.

  “When you open your present in the morning, I hope you will know how much I love you. With all my love, the K-guy.”

  “Please read your response, Ms. Lagrande.”

  The witness sighed.

  “December twenty-fourth. Keith—I don’t want presents. This is hurting me too much. It’s really unfair to all of us. Fondly, Lynnette.”

  “Please read the next e-mail.”

  The witness read e-mails for the next fifteen minutes. But the correspondence consisted, emotionally, of a two-step dance.

  The defendant wrote that he loved Lynnie without reservation and that he would do anything to be with her.

  Ms. Lagrande wrote back that she was suffering from his attentions, not because she didn’t return his feelings, but because she did.

  Yuki asked the witness to read the e-mail dated February 27, two days before Jennifer Herman’s dismembered body was recovered. The beautiful woman dabbed at her eyes, sipped from her water bottle, then read:

  “Lynnie, I know you don’t believe anything I say anymore, but actions speak louder than e-mail. We will be together by this time next week. I promise you that. All my love, Keith.”

  Lynnette Lagrande put the papers in her lap and put her hands to her eyes. Her sobs were soft but her shoulders shook.

  Yuki said, “Do you need to take a minute?”

  After a moment, the witness said, “I’m okay.”

  Yuki waited until Lynnette Lagrande seemed composed, keeping her own face composed as well. This entire day was going perfectly. Couldn’t be better.

  She asked, “Did you see Mr. Herman on February twenty-eighth, the day before his wife’s body was discovered?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Did he write to you?”

  “I don’t know. I changed my e-mail address and my phone number. I left my apartment and moved in with my sister.”

  “To be clear, did you see the defendant at any time after he wrote to you on February twenty-seventh, saying that the two of you would soon be together?”

  “No. He wants me to give him an alibi, but, I can’t lie for him anymore. I didn’t see him in February at all.”

  “Thank you very much, Ms. Lagrande.”

  Chapter 36

  NICKY GAINES TYPED on his tablet, “Red Dog was standing in back. Caught yer amazing direct.”

  Yuki smiled at Gaines, deleted the message, and turned her attention to Kinsela, who, to date, hadn’t been worth the two grand an hour Keith Herman was paying him.

  Kinsela approached Lynnette Lagrande and put his hand on the witness stand, as if he were gently touching the witness herself.

  “Ms. Lagrande, what was the Christmas gift that Mr. Herman gave you?”

  “A diamond necklace.”

  “Do you know the value of that necklace?”

  “Not really. Maybe twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “And do I understand correctly that you kept the necklace?”

  “I kept it. It was for pain and suffering.”

  “Really? A legal term. Well. Ms. Lagrande, did you also accept a new Lexus sedan from the defendant in January of last year?”

  “Yes. Keith gave me a car. It was a birthday present.”

  “I believe the going rate for that car is in excess of sixty thousand dollars, is that correct?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You kept the car.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s worth more than your annual salary, isn’t that right, Ms. Lagrande?”

  “Yes. I suppose it is.”

  Kinsela walked to the witness stand, then asked loudly, “Did the defendant ever give you money?”

  The witness tossed her hair defiantly. Yuki leaned forward. Lynnette knew Kinsela was going to go after her, and Yuki had coached her to remain calm and matter-of-fact—take a moment to think before answering if she were attacked.

  But the witness answered angrily, “I’m not a whore, Mr. Kinsela. Do not call me a whore.”

  “Your Honor?”

  “Ms. Lagrande, you must answer the question or I will be forced to find you in contempt. Mr. Kinsela. Please ask the question again.”

  “Did you receive cash from the defendant? Yes or no.”

  “Yes. And so what?”

  “Did you tell him that you liked nice things?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Ms. Lagrande, were the expensive gifts and cash the reason you dated the defendant, who was, after all, a married man?”

  Yuki stood, said, “Your Honor, objection. Opposing counsel is badgering the witness.”

  “Overruled, but get to the point, Mr. Kinsela.”

  “Okay, Your Honor. Ms. Lagrande, were you looking for a big payday when Mr. Herman finally left his family? Is that why you accepted expensive gifts even though you plainly didn’t return the defendant’s feelings?”

  “I did return his feelings. I did love him. I still do.”

  “I believe that you do love Mr. Herman. That’s why you spent the weekend with him at the time someone else was murdering his wife and child. In fact, weren’t you making love with the defendant that entire weekend, Lynnette?”

  “No, no, no. I was not with him that weekend. No.”

  “When the murders were discovered, and Mr. Herman was arrested, and this whole
sordid affair was coming to light, you decided to finally cut him loose so that your reputation wasn’t trashed, isn’t that right? You’d rather betray your lover than tell the truth about your actions, right, Lynnie? You say you’re not a whore, but exactly what kind of woman would you say you are? Would you say that you’re fickle? Or disloyal? Or would you just call yourself a user? Which is it?

  “What kind of woman are you?”

  John Kinsela continued to glare at Lynnette Lagrande even though Yuki objected loudly, even though the judge repeatedly slammed his gavel against the block and found Kinsela in contempt. Even though Kinsela’s questions were stricken.

  Kinsela looked triumphant and Yuki felt his triumph like an ax through her star witness’s credibility. Kinsela had bullied the first grade schoolteacher with the heart-shaped face, painted her as a gold digger, muddied her character, cast doubt on her testimony, and threw a bright light on the legal concept of reasonable doubt.

  Yuki felt blindsided.

  Nussbaum said, “Redirect, Ms. Castellano?”

  Lynnette had her head down and was sobbing into her crossed arms.

  Yuki didn’t know what she could do to rehabilitate the woman who had taken great big gobs of money from the man she said she loved.

  Chapter 37

  YUKI BROUGHT A box of tissues to the stand and let Lynnette take a couple of seconds to pull herself together. Yuki had made a mistake not to have realized that Kinsela was going to use Keith Herman’s gifts against Lynnette.

  It was a sickening oversight. But was it fatal?

  As Lynnette dabbed her eyes, Yuki thought out her redirect with the speed of a supercomputer, and when the witness seemed more or less composed, Yuki said, “Lynnette, did you ever try to hide the fact that you received gifts from Keith Herman?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Did these gifts always come on holidays?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Keith ever tell you why he bought you such expensive presents?”

  Yuki took a slow turn away from the witness stand, headed toward the lectern, and stole a look at the jurors. They were attentive. For the moment, that was all she could hope for.

  “Could you repeat the question?” Lynnette said.

  She was still looking shaky, Yuki thought, but shaky was vulnerable and vulnerability was better than defiance any day.

  “Lynnette, did Keith ever tell you why he bought you such expensive gifts?”

  “He said different things at different times.”

  “Go on,” Yuki said.

  “He said that until he was free, this was the only way he could show me how much he cared.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He said that he felt guilty for my pain and suffering.”

  “Pain and suffering. Those were his words?”

  “Yes.”

  “The money that Keith gave you—what was it for?”

  “He gave me twenty-two thousand dollars to pay off my student loan. I appreciated the help. I don’t make a large salary.”

  “Did you expect to cash in—that is, get rich—from marrying Keith Herman?”

  “I knew he had money. But the only thing that was important to me was that we had a real relationship, with holidays together, and that I could be with Lily. I wanted to be able to go out into the open, to stop feeling bad because I loved someone else’s husband. And when I saw that I couldn’t have that, I tried to break it off with Keith many, many times.”

  “And Keith pursued you, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You testified that you changed your phone number. You moved out of your home.”

  “Yes.”

  “On the weekend of February twenty-eighth through March first, were you with the defendant?”

  “No. I was not. I was alone in the hunting cabin my father left me in Oroville. I don’t have a TV there. I don’t even get a cell phone signal. I just wanted to be by myself.”

  “So when the defense tells the court that Keith Herman was with you the weekend his wife and daughter were murdered, that’s a lie, isn’t it?”

  The witness winced ever so slightly. Yuki took it to mean that Lynnette still loved Keith Herman.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s a lie.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Lagrande. I have nothing more for this witness, Your Honor.”

  Kinsela had nothing to add, a good move on his part, Yuki thought. If one juror believed that Lynnette Lagrande was a money-grubber and a liar, Kinsela had done his job.

  Yuki watched Lynnette Lagrande step down from the stand. She had recovered much of her poise. Looking neither left nor right, she walked up the aisle and back out through the front door of the courtroom.

  Had the jury believed her?

  All of them?

  Honest to God, Yuki didn’t know.

  Chapter 38

  CONKLIN AND I stood outside Tracey Pendleton’s front door. Her house was small and nearly identical to the surrounding cheap wooden houses, which had been built in the fifties.

  School was out. Kids called out to each other as they biked along the patched asphalt on the poor residential street. Cars with loud radios and old mufflers sped past.

  We had knocked on the door, peered through the dirty windows, and looked up and down to see if Pendleton’s Camaro was parked anywhere on Flora Street. It wasn’t.

  It didn’t appear that the ME’s night-shift security guard was at home.

  Conklin and I had our weapons out and were ready to execute the warrant that gave us the legal right to break down Pendleton’s door.

  I stood back, looked under the cushion of the porch rocker, and found it just as Conklin kicked open the door.

  “Oops,” I said, holding up the key.

  Conklin called out, “Miss Pendleton, this is the police. Please come out with your hands over your head. We just want to talk to you.”

  There was no response and no sound coming from the house at all.

  The house had two and a half rooms—about four hundred square feet altogether—and I could see almost every inch of it from the doorway.

  We were standing in the living room, which was furnished with a worn brown sofa and a sagging armchair. The TV was off, and the only movement was the upward spiral of dust motes in the dim ray of sunlight coming through the window.

  Conklin went ahead of me and toed open the bedroom door. A moment later, he called, “Clear.”

  I went ahead to the kitchenette, checked the broom closet, then called out to Conklin that the room was empty.

  There was a pot of old food on the stove, one dirty dish, one glass in the sink. The refrigerator was empty, except for the bottle of vodka in the freezer. The garbage pail held two beer bottles and an empty can of Beefaroni.

  Conklin came in and said, “Her suitcase is in the closet. I couldn’t find a weapon.”

  He checked under the sink and found more vodka standing among the containers of Mr. Clean, Easy-Off, and Windex.

  We went through the house again. There was no computer, no sign of pets. No purse. No keys. We searched the hamper, the cabinets, and drawers, but found nothing but the residue of a life lived on the night shift and boozy days spent passed out on a single bed.

  Conklin used a dish towel to pick up the phone. He tapped the redial button, then let me hear the ringing. The call was answered by a recorded woman’s mechanical voice announcing the time and temperature.

  Conklin said, “It’s like she checked the time, went to work, then vanished along with Faye Farmer’s body. Where’d she go? Who is she, anyway?”

  I called the squad room.

  “Lieutenant, we need a warrant to dump Pendleton’s phone records and see her bank activity. Yeah, there’s no sign she’s been home in the last twenty-four hours. There’s hardly any sign of life here at all.”

  Chapter 39

  WE WERE SEATED at the polished stone conference table at Fenn & Tarbox. Brady, Conklin, and I sat along one side
. Five lawyers and their thirteen-million-bucks-a-year client held down the swivel chairs across from us, the backs of their heads reflected in the floor-to-ceiling windows. Beyond the glass was a wide waterfront view of the Ferry Building and the Bay Bridge, sparkling against a dusky sky.

  We’d been introduced to the senior partner, the silver-haired George Fenn, who now took his place at the head of the table. I forgot the names of his younger associates because I was riveted by their client, Jeffrey Kennedy, superstar linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers and also the former reputed fiancé of the late celebrity designer Faye Farmer.

  Fenn was friendly, even affable, when he said, “I’ve heard a lot about you, Sergeant Boxer. All good. I’m glad you’re working this case.”

  Maybe he was glad that I was working the case. Or maybe the big-time lawyer was working me so that we didn’t bring his client down to the Hall for questioning.

  Jeff Kennedy was twiddling his BlackBerry, giving me a chance to look him over without being rude about it. I’d seen him on TV, of course, and from high up in the bleachers. I’d watched him wrestle down tailbacks with his 4.4 speed, sack quarterbacks as though they were rag dolls, then shake off goal-line pileups like a cocker spaniel after a bath.

  But now I was getting the up-close-and-personal view of this human tank.

  Kennedy was strikingly handsome, with a strong jawline, an off-center nose, gray eyes, and plenty of dark hair. He hadn’t shaved and his clothing was rumpled, as though he hadn’t cleaned up in a day or two. Even though the air-conditioning was blowing, Jeff Kennedy was sweating.

  George Fenn said, “Just so you know, we’re taping this meeting. Standard procedure.”

  Brady said, “Mr. Fenn, this isn’t a deposition. We just want Mr. Kennedy to tell us about Ms. Farmer.”

  “Of course,” Fenn said. “But still, we always tape for the protection of our clients.”

  Brady flipped his hand as if to say, “Fine,” and then asked Kennedy, “When did you last see Ms. Farmer?”