I pressed the buzzer and Lafferty called out, “Who is it?” And then she opened the door.
Conklin said “SFPD,” flashed his shield, and introduced us to the twenty-something nanny, who hesitated a couple of beats before she let us in.
I had watched Lafferty’s testimony from the back of the courtroom a few days ago. She’d looked quite mature in a suit and heels. Today, wearing jeans and a white turtleneck, her auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked like a teenager.
Conklin said yes to Lafferty’s offer of coffee, but I lingered behind in the living room as the Martins’ former nanny walked Conklin to the kitchen.
In one visual sweep, I counted five pictures of Dennis Martin in that small room, some of them with Lafferty. Martin was handsome from every angle.
I raised my eyes as Ellen Lafferty returned to the living area with Conklin. She looked happier to see me than she could possibly be. She took a seat in an armchair and said, “I thought the investigation was closed.”
I said, “There are a few stubborn loose ends. Well, one loose end.”
I pulled the photo from my inside jacket pocket and put it down on the coffee table.
Ellen reached over to pick it up and said, “What is this?”
“That man may be a contract killer by the name of Gregor Guzman. The woman in this picture looks like Candace Martin,” I said. “She’s got the same blond hair, same cut as Candace — but it’s not actually her, is it, Ellen?”
“It’s hard to tell. I don’t know,” she said.
“You know how we know it isn’t Candace?” Conklin said. “Because when we ran that photo through forensic software, it matched your picture from the DMV. The woman in this picture is you.”
Conklin went to the mantel and picked up a gold-framed photo of Ellen and Dennis Martin on a sailboat out in the Bay.
“No,” she said, getting up to snatch the picture out of Conklin’s hand. “You can’t have that.”
I said to her, “I think Judge LaVan will give us a search warrant to go through everything in your house. Meanwhile, we need to continue this talk at the police station.”
I pulled out my phone and was calling for a patrol car, but Ellen said, “Wait. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
I closed my phone and gave her my full attention.
Chapter 89
IF ELLEN LAFFERTY didn’t try to hire a killer, why was she in that car with Gregor Guzman? I couldn’t wait to hear her explanation.
“I didn’t do anything wrong, certainly nothing criminal,” Lafferty said. She reached into the neck of her sweater and pulled out a small gold cross on a thin chain. She kept yanking it from side to side, a nervous habit — and a telling one.
“Dennis sent me to meet this ‘Mr. G.’ in the parking lot of Vons,” she said. “He gave me an envelope of money to give to this Mr. G., but when he opened it, he handed it back to me and said, ‘Tell Mr. Martin thanks but no thanks.’”
“This Mr. G. gave back the money,” Rich said.
Ellen nodded.
“So, you’re saying you met with a man you didn’t know because Dennis told you to do it. You gave him money — which he gave back to you, and you didn’t know why you were there. Is that your story?”
“I didn’t know he was an assassin until after the trial started and I read about him online. I was just a messenger. This is one hundred percent true.”
“You’re not in any trouble,” Conklin said. “We’re trying to piece some facts together.”
“So, tell us about the blond hair,” I said.
“It was a wig,” Ellen blurted out. “It belonged to Candace when she was having chemo. She threw it out and I took it. Dennis liked me to wear it sometimes. Do you want to see it?”
Ellen Lafferty headed down a hallway toward the bedroom.
“You really think this girl hired a hit man?” Conklin asked me.
“I don’t know. I know less now than I did when I woke up this morning.”
I picked up the sunset-lit, highly romantic photo of Ellen and Dennis Martin and ran it all through my mind again.
Had Ellen hired Guzman to kill Dennis? Was Ellen the intruder, and had she killed Dennis herself? Did Dennis set up the meet between Ellen and Guzman so that his private eye could document a Candace look-alike meeting with a hit man?
If so, had Candace killed her husband before he could kill her?
As I was turning over the possibilities yet again, Ellen came back into the room holding a black satin bag. She opened the drawstrings and shook out a blond wig.
“Mostly I just wore this when we made love,” she said.
I couldn’t hold back.
“Help me to understand you, Ellen,” I said. “Your lover liked you to wear his wife’s wig in bed? Didn’t you find that sick?”
Tears jumped to her eyes.
I muttered, “Crap,” under my breath. Was I ever going to learn to be the good cop? Conklin took the bag and said to Lafferty, “We need you to come to the station, okay, Ellen?”
“But — you’re not arresting me, right?”
Conklin said. “We want your signed statement to what you just told us.”
I hung back as Conklin walked Ellen out to the street. I called Yuki but got her voice mail.
I waited out the beeps, then said, “Yuki, I need a search warrant for Ellen Lafferty’s premises. Yes, we’ve got probable cause. Call me back ASAP. Uh — I think you’re going to thank me for this.”
I hoped I was right.
Chapter 90
YUKI SAT BESIDE PHIL, the two of them in matching leather chairs across from Judge LaVan’s leather-topped desk. The room had been decorated in fox hunt-style: old prints of people in red coats on bay horses, and heavy wooden furniture against forest-green walls.
The judge’s eyes were red behind his glasses, and he explained in the fewest possible words why he had been out for three days.
“My mother had lung cancer,” he said. “She died. Badly.”
He nodded his head as the two attorneys said that they were sorry for his loss. Then he cleared his throat and went on.
“I don’t want any more of the crap that’s been going on in this trial. Ms. Castellano, you know how to ask a question without turning it into a summation. Mr. Hoffman, you know how to rein in your witnesses, so for God’s sake, just do it.”
Yuki wanted to object, but the judge was leaving no doubt about his intentions. He wanted the trial streamlined, and he wanted it over.
“Here are the new rules on objections,” he said, as if he were reading her mind.
“If you have an objection, stand up. I’m a smart guy and I was a trial lawyer for twenty years. If I can’t figure out why you are objecting, I will not acknowledge you. In that case — sit down.
“If I know why you are objecting, I will tell opposing counsel to knock it off. I don’t expect to have to do that.”
“Your Honor,” Yuki and Hoffman said in unison.
“No theatrics. No drama. No stupid lawyer tricks. I will levy fines. I will find either or both of you in contempt. Do you understand me?”
Neither Phil nor Yuki answered.
“Good. I’ll see you in court,” said LaVan.
“This is a joke,” Hoffman said to Yuki as they left Judge LaVan’s chambers and walked down the hall toward the courtroom. “He can’t tell us not to object.”
“Apparently he can today,” said Yuki.
Hoffman smiled at her and then said, “I’ve got a meeting. See you inside.”
Chapter 91
PHIL HOFFMAN got to his well-shod feet, straightened his shoulders, and said, “The defense calls Caitlin Martin.”
At that, Candace Martin leapt up and screamed in his face, “No! Don’t you dare put my daughter on the stand! You have no right!”
LaVan slammed down his gavel and shouted, “Bailiff, please remove the defendant from the courtroom.”
“Candace. Sit down,” Hoffman said. “Your
Honor, give me a word with my client, please.”
“Mr. Hoffman, I’m fining you eight hundred dollars. If you’d prepared your client, this could have been avoided. Bailiff!”
After Candace Martin had been escorted from the room, the judge called for order, and when the room had quieted into an expectant hush, he asked the jury to ignore the interruption.
He reminded the jurors that they were charged with weighing the evidence, not the commotion, and that they were to draw no conclusions based on his decision to remove the defendant.
Then he said, “Mr. Hoffman, present your witness.”
Hoffman’s expression was neutral as the eleven-year-old daughter of Candace and Dennis Martin stood by the stand, was sworn in by the clerk, and took the chair inside the witness box. She had to struggle to get into it, and her feet didn’t quite touch the floor.
The judge turned toward the dark-haired girl in the flowered dress and blue cardigan, holding a matching handbag on her lap. He asked, “Ms. Martin, do you know the difference between a lie and the truth?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If I said that I’m the president of the United States, would that be a lie or the truth?”
“It would be a lie, of course.”
“Do you believe in God?”
Caitlin nodded.
“You have to say either yes or no. The clerk is typing what you say.”
“Yes. I do. Believe in God.”
“Okay. You understand that you have promised on God’s word to tell the truth?”
“Yes, sir, I understand.”
“Good. Thank you. Mr. Hoffman, please proceed.”
“Thank you, Your Honor. Caitlin — okay if I call you Caitlin?”
“Sure, Mr. Hoffman.”
Hoffman smiled. He had a nice smile. Nothing bad about it.
“Caitlin, I have to ask you some questions about the night your father was killed, okay?”
“Okay. Yes.”
“Were you in the house when your father was shot?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who shot him?”
“Yes.”
“Please tell the judge and the jury what you know.”
“I did it,” Caitlin Martin said. Her eyes darted to the judge and then back to her mother’s attorney. “I killed my father. I had no choice.”
Chapter 92
THE GALLERY EXPLODED in an uproar.
Jurors leaned forward, making remarks to one another, while reporters reached for their PDAs. Hoffman stood in the center of the well, his expression frozen, as if he’d just fired a gun himself.
Yuki wanted to rewind the last ten seconds and turn up the volume. Had Caitlin Martin just said that she killed her father?
It just couldn’t be true.
Yuki shot to her feet, clutched her hands into fists, and kept her jaws so tightly clenched, they might as well have been wired shut. She’d been warned not to object, but she was screaming in her mind, I object to this witness. I object to this — stagecraft. I object, I object, I object.
“Counsel, approach. Both of you,” LaVan snapped.
As the two attorneys came toward him, the judge swiveled his chair ninety degrees so that he would face the emergency exit rather than the witness and the jury.
Yuki and Hoffman stood at an angle to the bench and looked up at the judge.
LaVan said to Hoffman in a low voice that was thrumming with anger. “I take it that neither your client nor the prosecution knew that you were calling this child to the stand.”
“I got a call from the young lady’s maternal grandmother last night saying that Caitlin wanted to talk to me this morning. I met with Caitlin in the lobby of this building, Your Honor, right after our meeting with you. I knew nothing about her testimony until fifteen minutes ago.”
“Your Honor,” Yuki said, “this is an obvious ploy by the defense. Caitlin has either been coached, or she came up with this idea on her own. Either way, she is trying to save her mother’s butt. And either way, she has created reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury.”
LaVan said, “I’m calling a recess. I want to see Caitlin in chambers. Don’t either of you disappear. After I’ve talked to the child, I’ll speak to the jurors.
“And after that, we can discuss the future of this trial.”
Chapter 93
YUKI WAS in Len Parisi’s office when her phone buzzed.
“Here we go,” she said to her boss. She read the text out loud: “‘Judge LaVan is ready for you in chambers.’ What’s your bottom-line advice, Len?”
Parisi hauled his bulk out of his chair, then opened the blinds on the Bryant Street side of the building. The light was translucent. Yuki couldn’t see anything through the fog.
“You want to cross-examine the witness,” Red Dog said. “It’s the best and only thing you can do.”
“What if she’s telling the truth?”
“Is she telling the truth? What do you really think?”
“I think she’s throwing herself under the bus. She’s eleven. It’s heroic, like in the movies. But it’s a lie. I can shake her on the stand, but I don’t know if I can do that and keep the jury on our side.”
“It will be like walking a tightrope with diarrhea. But I have faith that you can do it.”
Yuki walked out of Parisi’s office and down the hall on autopilot. Phil Hoffman stood when she entered the judge’s chambers, and after she took the seat she’d occupied only a couple of hours ago, he sat down.
LaVan had removed his robes and his tie and rolled up his shirtsleeves and was standing behind his desk. Yuki thought he was going to pace, but instead he reached down, picked up the metal trash can at his feet, two feet tall and eighteen inches in diameter. He raised it over his head and hurled it toward the far wall.
The trash can ricocheted against the edge of the liquor cabinet before taking out a framed picture of the judge with the governor.
After the explosion of glass and the echo of the racket died down, LaVan threw open the liquor cabinet doors and said, “Who wants a drink? I’m buying.”
Hoffman said, “Scotch works for me.”
“I’m fine,” Yuki said, but she was not fine. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for a case that slid sideways every twenty minutes. Was she winning or losing? She had no idea.
The judge poured shots for himself and Hoffman, then retook his seat behind his desk.
“Phil, do you know the difference between a lie and the truth?”
“Yes, Your Honor. You are not the president of the United States.”
“Did you have anything to do with shaping Caitlin Martin’s testimony?”
“No. As I said, she talked to me at eight-forty-five this morning. She told me what happened. I bumped another witness I’d prepared who was suddenly irrelevant and decided I had to put Caitlin on the stand.”
“I want to cross-examine her,” Yuki said. “I have to discredit her testimony.”
The judge said, “Hang on, Yuki. Let me tell you what Caitlin said in the half hour I just spent with her. This is for your benefit.”
“Your Honor?”
“Caitlin told me that her father had been molesting her. She was explicit. And I mean convincingly so. She knew where the gun was hidden. She saw an opportunity and she shot him.”
“You believe her?” Yuki asked.
“I couldn’t trip her up — and I tried. According to Caitlin, her mother heard the shots, found the girl holding the gun, and told her to wash up, go to her room, and never tell anyone what happened. Then, still according to Caitlin, her mother fired the gun outside the front door and called the police.”
“Huh. Good story,” said Yuki. “So, what made Caitlin decide to talk?”
“She said she wanted to tell the truth.”
Hoffman leaned forward in his chair.
“Byron. Your Honor,” he said. “We have an admission exonerating my client,” he said. “I move to dismiss.”
&nb
sp; Chapter 94
YUKI STARED THROUGH the judge, her thoughts swirling in something that was pretty close to panic.
She didn’t want a dismissal, not after all that she’d been through on this case, not when she believed she had the killer on trial. Dammit. If the judge dismissed the case, what then?
Was she going to go after the little girl? Would she really try to prosecute an eleven-year-old who was claiming incest and rape?
If so, based on what?
The only evidence against Caitlin was her testimony. No one had seen her shoot the gun. And even if Candace Martin did say that Caitlin was the shooter, the case was so fraught with reasonable doubt, the grand jury might not indict.
On the other hand, Yuki thought, if the judge didn’t dismiss, Yuki would have to do that high-wire act Len had talked about. Turn that abused child into a liar. The jury would hate her for it, and if they believed Caitlin’s story, Candace could walk free.
“Yuki. You want to say something?”
Yuki said, “Yes, I do, Your Honor. I certainly do. There is not a single shred of evidence to support Caitlin’s testimony, and if her story is true, why is it coming out only now?”
Phil turned toward her and said, “Let’s be logical, Yuki. There is more than enough reasonable doubt. We both know if the trial goes on, there’s an excellent chance Candace will walk.”
The judge said, “Let me make it easy for both of you. It comes down to this: Major new evidence has come in. I’ve decided to dismiss.”
If LaVan dismissed, it was all over — forever. Candace couldn’t even be tried again because it would be double jeopardy. Yuki suddenly saw an opening, a slim sliver of hope.
“I respectfully suggest that you not dismiss, Your Honor, but instead suspend the trial.”
LaVan swiveled in his chair, pulling at his lower lip. The moment lasted for so long, Yuki thought she might scream.
“Okay,” LaVan said. “I’ll suspend the trial for sixty days. During that time, the defendant is free on bail. Yuki, go back to the DA and discuss this … mess. Really look at the downside of going forward. If you want to cross-examine Caitlin Martin, I’ll go along with you.
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