Women's Murder Club [10] 10th Anniversary

by James Patterson

  “Mr. Hoffman will tell you that Candace Martin called out and that the intruder was startled and dropped his gun. And he will tell you that his client picked up the gun and followed the intruder outside and fired at him.

  “That’s the defense’s explanation for the gunshot residue on Candace Martin’s hands.

  “There’s only one problem,” Yuki said to the fourteen men and women in the jury box. “This story is entirely bogus.

  “There was no intruder.

  “There was no forced entry into the house, and nothing was stolen.

  “But Candace Martin had told several people that she wanted her husband dead, and the very evening of the fatal incident she was seen handling a gun.

  “Our job in the DA’s office is to speak for the victim,” Yuki said, “and we will do that. But if Mr. Martin could speak for himself, he’d tell you who killed him,” said Yuki, pointing at the pretty, blond heart surgeon who was chewing on the ends of her hair.

  “He’d tell you that his dear wife shot him dead.”

  Chapter 15

  SUSIE’S CARIBBEAN CAFÉ is a mood changer in the best possible way. The walls are yellow, the calypso music is live, the food is hot, and the beer is cold. Susie’s is also the unofficial clubhouse of our gang of four, branded the Women’s Murder Club by our friend, girl reporter Cindy Thomas.

  I desperately needed an hour at Susie’s. Conklin and I had spent the day looking for a newborn baby. We’d walked with cadaver dogs, checked in with divers at the edge of Lake Merced, and made an all-day, fruitless canvass of houses in the area, with Avis Richardson’s photo in hand, asking, “Have you seen this girl?”

  Then, ten minutes ago, a stunning call had come in to Jacobi. Avis Richardson had turned up behind the locked doors of a schoolmate’s parents’ apartment on Russian Hill. These “do-gooders” were keeping Avis away from the cops until her parents could arrive from New Zealand. So Avis had been located, but we still had no leads on her baby, who was either missing or dead.

  Probably both.

  Claire and I drove to Susie’s together in my car and parked in a miraculously empty spot on Jackson Street near the corner of Montgomery. We came through the door into the lilting beat of steel drums and laughter, and waved to casual friends. We passed the bar and took the narrow and aromatic aisle past the kitchen to the cozy back room where Yuki was already holding down our booth.

  Lorraine called out, “Hey, y’all,” and brought over a frosty pitcher of beer, along with Yuki’s watermelon margarita. Yuki cannot hold her liquor, but that doesn’t stop her from drinking it.

  I slid into the banquette next to Yuki, while Claire took the other side of the booth. Yuki lifted her glass of pink liquid mind-bender and took a slug.

  “Sip it!” we shouted to her in unison.

  Yuki snorted tequila up her nose and sputtered, “I have earned the right to get drunk. I made a brilliant opener and then the judge gets a call. His sick mother is fading fast. He adjourns court for the day. By tomorrow, Phil Hoffman will have read the transcript and will pick my bones clean in his opener.”

  At that, Cindy, dependably the last to arrive, scooted into the booth next to Claire and bumped her hip, saying, “Give me a couple of inches here, girlfriend.”

  Claire said, “Are you all going to listen to what happened to me today? Or do I have to fight for the talking stick? Because I will do it.”

  “You go first,” Yuki said, holding up her empty glass to the light. Claire didn’t wait for anyone to object.

  “I get called to go to this house in the Sacramento Delta,” she said. “A friend of mine called in a favor. So I drive to this swampland—can only get there by these veiny little roads and levees—and I find this hunting cabin.

  “This old dude who lives there paid all his bills two weeks in advance and hasn’t been seen since. Now people are starting to ask, ‘What happened to Mr. Wingnut?’ ”

  Cindy was thumbing the keys on her Crackberry while Claire told her story.

  “There’s this long lump under the bedcovers,” Claire said, plucking the PDA out of Cindy’s hand, putting it in her pocket, treating Cindy like she was a little girl.

  “Hey!” said Cindy.

  I had to laugh—and I did.

  Claire went on, ignoring Cindy pawing at her pocket and retrieving her phone. “I pull back the blankets and the dead man has been mummified by the heat and he’s holding a freakin’ AK forty-seven in his hands.”

  Cindy stopped what she was doing and stared at Claire.

  “He was dead? Holding an AK forty-seven?”

  “He killed himself with that gun,” Claire said. “Sent my pulse rocketing into the low one-eighties. You can believe that.”

  Cindy looked stricken.

  “I’m okay, now, sugar,” said Claire. “It was just a scare.”

  Cindy swiveled her head toward me, her blond curls bouncing, her clear blue eyes locking on mine.

  “That text I just got was from Metro Emergency,” she said. “Another girl thinks she was raped.”

  “Another girl? Thinks she was raped?”

  “Linds, I feel it in my gut. A very wonky story is brewing. Do me a favor, will you? Give me a lift to the hospital.”

  Chapter 16

  I GUNNED MY CAR along Columbus Avenue to Montgomery Street and past the Transamerica Pyramid, my siren whooping to clear a lane in the dinner-hour rush.

  Beside me Cindy clung to her armrest and told me about Laura Rizzo, a woman who might have been drugged and assaulted the same night Avis Richardson was found wandering under a moonless sky fifteen miles north of the city.

  I had to check out Cindy’s “wonky story.”

  Two girls had been assaulted now, maybe three—and none of them had memories of the assaults? Could there be a connection to Avis Richardson? Or was I just wishing for a lead—any lead?

  I brought Cindy up to speed on the Richardson case as I reached the intersection of Montgomery and Market streets. I came close to clipping a big-assed Lexus and ran onto the trolley tracks along Market. I jerked the wheel again and put the traffic jam behind me. Cindy was pale, but I just kept driving.

  “A teenage girl was brought into Metro ER by passersby a couple of nights ago,” I told Cindy. “That’s off the record.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? Seriously.”

  “Yes, Lindsay. O. Kay. It’s off the record.”

  I nodded, took a hard right, and turned onto Mission on two wheels, flying past Yerba Buena Gardens on my left. You almost had to get promises from Cindy in writing. She’s honest, but what can I say? She’s a reporter. And we weren’t ready to churn the waters with a kidnapped baby story.

  I still didn’t know what we had. Was Avis Richardson a victim of multiple savage crimes? Or had she killed her own child? I kept my foot on the gas as if that would actually bring the Richardson baby home.

  “This teenager had recently given birth,” I went on, taking the car through the heart of the Hispanic area of town. We passed check-cashing holes-in-the-wall and cheap souvenir vendors selling T-shirts out of the old 1920s theaters under their cracked and faded marquees.

  I turned right onto 26th, still talking. “But the thing is, Cindy, no baby was found. The girl didn’t remember the delivery, and now that the shock is wearing off and she might be able to talk to us, she won’t do it.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “I swear I don’t know.”

  Cindy made me promise to tell her whatever I could, whenever I could, on the record. I nodded yes as I turned left on Valencia and parked my old heap in front of the hospital.

  Chapter 17

  CINDY AND I entered the crowded lobby of Metropolitan Hospital and found Cindy’s friend, Joyce Miller, waiting for us at the main desk. She was a dark-haired woman, maybe thirty-five, wearing a nurse’s uniform.

  She pumped my hand with both of hers.

  “Thanks for coming, Lindsay. Thanks so much.”

 
We followed Joyce down a number of branching linoleum-tiled corridors, around corners, and then through the ER, an obstacle course of gurneys and wheelchairs, before we came to a partitioned stall where we met Anne Bennett, a possible rape victim.

  Ms. Bennett was a travel agent in her early forties. She looked as fatigued as if she’d been running on a treadmill for the past eight hours.

  Her voice quavered as she said that she remembered taking a cab to her office this morning but she woke up behind a Dumpster in an alley a block from her house.

  “I don’t remember a damned thing,” Ms. Bennett told me. “My blouse had been buttoned wrong. My pantyhose were gone, but I was still wearing my black pumps with the gold buckles. My handbag was on my chest and my phone and my wallet were still in it. Forty-four bucks. Just what I’d had.”

  “And you remember nothing of the ten hours between leaving for work and waking up?”

  “It was as if someone had turned off my lights,” Anne Bennett said, looking up at me with bloodshot eyes.

  “The doctor said it appeared I’d suffered sexual trauma. The last time I had sex with my boyfriend was four days ago. And there was nothing traumatic about it. We’ve been together so long, it’s no-drama sex, and that’s just the way I like it.”

  Anne Bennett was telling the story straight and clearly, but panic flashed in her eyes. It was like she was searching her memory—and finding nothing there.

  Chapter 18

  HOFFMAN STOOD AS COURT was called to order and the jury filed in. He retook his seat, thinking about juror number three, Valerie Truman, the single mother who worked at a library and earned a thousandth of what Candace Martin made in a year. And he thought of number seven, William Breitling, a retired golf pro with a ton of charisma. Breitling wasn’t the foreman, but Hoffman believed he could influence the jury.

  When Judge LaVan asked Hoffman if he was ready to present his case, he said that he was and walked from his seat beside Candace Martin directly to the jury box.

  He rested his hand on the railing, greeted the jurors, and began.

  “Yesterday, the prosecution gave their opening statement. I think Ms. Castellano did a pretty good job, but she left out a couple of important points. For starters, Dr. Martin is innocent.”

  William Breitling smiled with a full set of veneers, and Hoffman felt the ice melt in the jury box.

  “Here’s what happened on the evening of September fourteenth,” Hoffman said. “Dr. Martin had just come home from the hospital. She had successfully repaired a man’s heart that day and she was satisfied that her patient was going to recover completely.

  “She said hello to each of her children, then went down the hall to her home office to call the patient’s wife.

  “Dr. Martin had removed her glasses so she could rub her eyes and was about to make the call when she heard what sounded like shots coming from the foyer.

  “The shots startled her and she knocked her glasses to the floor. This is one of those important points I mentioned.”

  Hoffman walked the length of the jury box, touching the rail now and then for emphasis. The jurors followed him with their eyes as he described how his client had found her husband lying on the floor, saw the blood, and, after checking, discovered that Dennis Martin had no vital signs.

  “When she looked up, she saw someone, an intruder, who was in the shadows of the foyer. Dr. Martin couldn’t make out the intruder’s face and she was terrified. She shouted in surprise, and the intruder dropped his gun and ran. My client picked the gun up and ran after him, through the front door and out onto the front steps.

  “Dr. Martin had never fired a gun before, but she let off a couple of shots into the air. She hit nothing. That is how she got gunshot residue on her hands.

  “Immediately after firing those shots, Dr. Martin went back into her house and called the police. That is the act of an innocent person,” Hoffman said.

  “The prosecution says that Dennis Martin was a philandering rat but that being a rat isn’t a crime punishable by death. Well, that’s true. And Dr. Martin knew it. She also knew that her marriage was going through a bad spell. She, too, was having an affair.

  “She wasn’t jealous. She figured the marriage would right itself in due course or it would end. She was prepared for either outcome.

  “Candace Martin is a modern and successful woman. She isn’t a Pollyanna and she isn’t the Orange Blossom princess, but she is a highly respected cardiac surgeon and a marvelous mother, and she also loved her husband.”

  Hoffman turned toward his client.

  “I want you to look at her now,” he said to the jurors, “and see her for what she is: the victim of an overworked police department that took the easy solution—blame the spouse. And she’s being tried by an overzealous prosecutor who, for her own reasons, needs to score a big win.”

  Chapter 19

  YUKI FELT PHIL HOFFMAN’S smash return right between her eyes. Holy crap. Hoffman’s shot at her was outrageous and maybe even defamatory. She had a flash fantasy of making an objection: “Your Honor, opposing counsel is freaking desperate and should be thrown out of the court.”

  Nick Gaines, Yuki’s second chair and wingman, pushed a notepad toward her. He was a gifted cartoonist and in a few strokes had captured a lanky Phil Hoffman grabbing at his throat and a stick-figure Yuki with a slingshot and a title: “Underdog.”

  Yuki pushed the pad back to Gaines. She got his point. The jury would like her more as a result of Hoffman’s low blow. She would overcome the slam. As for now she reminded herself, “Never let ’em see you sweat.”

  She stood and said, “Your Honor, will you please remind the jury that opening statements are not evidence?”

  “Consider it done, Ms. Castellano,” LaVan said with a sigh.

  Yuki’s first witness was the uniformed patrolman who answered the radio call to the Martins’ house. Officer Patrick Lawrence testified that he was only blocks away and had arrived with his partner within a minute of the call. He said that he had interviewed Dr. Martin and kept her company as the EMS arrived and until Inspector Chi of Homicide and Lieutenant Clapper of the Crime Scene Unit took possession of the scene.

  Yuki established that Dr. Martin seemed in control of her emotions and that because of Officer Lawrence’s quick arrival, Candace Martin hadn’t had a chance to wash her hands or clean up the crime scene.

  After Officer Lawrence left the stand, Yuki called private investigator Joseph Podesta, and he was sworn in. Podesta was a neat and pleasant-looking man in his fifties who had been hired by Dennis Martin to snoop on his wife.

  Yuki questioned Podesta on his credentials, and he told the jury that he had been an investigator for the district attorney in Sacramento for twelve years and a private investigator, first in Chicago and currently in San Francisco, for a combined twenty years.

  “Why did Dennis Martin hire you, Mr. Podesta?” Yuki asked.

  “Mr. Martin knew that his wife was having an affair and he wanted pictures of them, uh, in flagrante delicto.”

  “Did you get pictures of the defendant with her lover?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Did you learn anything else during the time she was the subject of your investigation?” Yuki asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Please tell us what you learned.”

  “On one of the nights I was tailing her, Candace Martin met with a man I believe to be a contract killer.”

  A rumble came up from the gallery, and Hoffman shot to his feet with an objection.

  “Your Honor, this is pure hearsay. How can this witness know that the man he says he saw is a contract killer? If he was so sure, why didn’t he call the police? Instead, the State is using this extremely dubious testimony to impugn the reputation of a heart surgeon. How does this make any sense?”

  The judge quieted the room with two hard bangs of his gavel and said, “I’d like to hear this, Mr. Hoffman.”

  When she could speak again, Yuki asked
, “You have proof of this meeting, Mr. Podesta?”

  “I followed Dr. Martin from her house in St. Francis Wood to Hunters Point. I followed her to Davidson Avenue. That’s a dead end. A late-model Toyota SUV was parked at the end of the street, where it butts up against the I-280 overpass. This is a bad neighborhood, but I was able to watch without being seen.”

  “Go on, Mr. Podesta.”

  “The meeting was clearly clandestine,” Podesta said. “I took photographs of Dr. Martin getting into this SUV. When I downloaded them onto my computer later, I thought I’d seen the man’s face before.”

  “And what happened next?”

  “Two weeks later Dennis Martin was murdered.”

  “What did you do, Mr. Podesta?”

  “I compared my picture of the man in the SUV to pictures on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. In my opinion, the man I saw talking to Dr. Martin was Gregor Guzman.”

  “And why is Mr. Guzman on the FBI list?”

  “Your Honor. Is this witness an FBI agent? What the—?”

  “Sit down, Mr. Hoffman. The witness may answer to the best of his knowledge.”

  “Gregor Guzman is wanted on suspicion of murder in California as well as a few other states and other countries. He’s never been arrested. I contacted the FBI three times, but no one ever got back to me.”

  Yuki introduced the photograph of Candace Martin sitting in a dark sports utility vehicle with a balding man with a shock of hair at the front of his scalp. It was a grainy photo, taken with a long lens at night, but it appeared as Podesta described it.

  “Thank you,” Yuki said. “That’s all I have for you, Mr. Podesta.”