Authors: James Patterson
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Suspense, #antique
The 5th Horseman (25 page)
As she walked past them, Yuki thought back a couple of months to the last trial she’d litigated, how good she’d been. How she’d stood on those courthouse steps, mobbed by the press.
How much she’d liked that. But how much she’d changed in the last couple of weeks.
Yuki’s car was parked at a meter three blocks from the courthouse.
She removed the parking ticket from her windshield, put it inside her handbag, located her keys, and got behind the wheel.
She switched on the ignition, then just sat there for a while, looking out at the traffic, at the purposeful pedestrians on the sidewalk pacing past her, lost in their daily routines.
It was a world that had nothing to do with her anymore. She had no place to go.
A great torrent of sadness welled up inside her. It was so sudden, she couldn’t even name it. She crossed her arms over the steering wheel, put her head down, and began to sob.
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 108
CLAIRE AND I WERE at Susie’s at dinner hour, the smell of barbecued pork and fried plantains making my mouth water and my stomach grumble. As we waited for the others, Claire was telling me about a recent case that had torn her up. She’d been working on it since the small, dark hours of the morning.
“A nineteen-year-old girl, apparent suicide, was hung by an extension cord wrapped around the bathroom door—”
“Wrapped around the door?”
“Yeah. One end was tied to the knob, then the cord was slid under the door, up over the top, then knotted around her neck.”
“Jeez. She really did that?”
“It’s really a puzzle,” Claire said, pouring us each a glass of beer from the frosted pitcher. “Her twenty-eight-year-old dirtbag boyfriend with a history of domestic violence was the only witness, of course.
“He called it into nine-one-one as a suicide after a dispute they had. Said he cut her down, gave her CPR. Oh, and that she’s pregnant.”
“Aw, no.”
“Yeah. So the fire department responds first, and now it’s about keeping her body alive to save the baby. So they try to resuscitate her.
“Then the EMTs take over, and they try to resuscitate her. And then the ER folks at the hospital pound away at her and do a stat C-section.
“So by the time she comes to me, she’s been through the mill four times, cut up, bruised everywhere, back and neck injuries, and I don’t know what the hell happened to the poor girl.
“So I’m asking myself, did the boyfriend tune her up, kill her, and then hang her to cover up the homicide? Or was it a suicide, and the trauma is all from the attempts at resuscitation?”
“What about the baby?”
“The fetus, yeah. He was too little, only twenty-six weeks old. Lived for a couple of minutes at the hospital.”
Loretta dropped off the menus and the chips. She told Claire she looked fabulous in royal blue and that I looked as though I needed a vacation.
I thanked her kindly, told her we were going to wait for Cindy and Yuki before ordering, and asked her to bring some bread. Then I turned back to Claire.
Claire sighed, saying, “Double homicide or suicide? It’s too soon to tell. I’ve gotta backtrack, interview all the first responders, ask what they actually saw—”
Claire stopped, and I turned to see Cindy come through the front door.
Her kitten-gray sweater set off her pink cheeks and her tousled blond hair. But I could read the worry lines in her forehead.
She was wondering if she and I were okay, or if we had a fight to settle.
I got up and walked toward her, gave her a big fat hug.
“I’m sorry, Cindy,” I said. “You were right to do that story on Garza. You were doing your job, and I was off the wall.”
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 109
A LITTLE LATER at our table, Cindy’s face looked electric, charged up, excited, and maybe a little scared. She was giving us a detailed update on the malpractice trial when Yuki arrived at Susie’s, very late, and looking like hell, even worse than me. She slid into the booth beside Cindy, who squeezed her hand protectively.
“You got here just in time,” Cindy said.
“In time for what?”
“I’m about to drop a bomb.”
As radiant as Cindy looked, that’s how totally drained Yuki looked in comparison. Her hair was dull, her eyes were shadowed, and there was a button missing from the front of her pale silk blouse.
As Cindy set up her tape recorder on the table, I mouthed to Yuki, “Are you okay?”
“Never better,” she said with a thin smile.
“So you’ve got your bomb in that little thing?” Claire asked Cindy.
Cindy grinned. “I can’t reveal her name,” she said, cuing up the tape. “But she’s a nurse who works at Municipal. Wait’ll you hear this.”
A bad feeling was coming over me.
I hoped to God that I was wrong.
The tape rolled, and a woman’s staticky voice came from the small machine.
Noddie Wilkins had dropped another dime, this time to the Chronicle.
“I’ve seen them myself,” Cindy’s source said. “Like in the black of night. You go into the room and the patient is dead, and there are these buttons on their eyes.”
“Let me make sure I’ve got this right,” I heard Cindy say, her tinny voice incredulous. “When patients die, buttons are put on their eyes?”
“No, no, not every patient. Just a few of them. I’ve seen it three times, and other people have seen them, too.”
“I have a million questions, but let’s start with the basics. What do they look like?”
“They’re metallic buttons, like coins, embossed with a caduceus. And nobody’s ever caught anyone in the act.”
“How many patients have been found with these buttons on their eyes?”
“I don’t know. But a bunch.”
“Do you see a pattern? Does anybody you’ve spoken to? Like a certain age or ethnic group or illness?”
“I’ve just seen the three, and they were all different. Listen, I have to go now—”
“One more question. Please. Have you told anyone about this?”
“My supervisor. He says they’re someone’s sick idea of a joke. But you tell me. It’s scary, right?”
Noddie’s voice became muffled, as if she was covering the receiver with her hand. She spoke to someone. Her voice was terse when she got back on the line.
“I gotta go. I’m working and we’re busy. Understaffed.”
“Call me again if anything—”
Cindy shut off the tape recorder and looked into our shocked faces. Then she focused on me.
“Lindsay, tell me, please, is the hospital covering up multiple homicides?”
I closed my mouth and pushed back from the table.
My mind was spinning.
I’d just apologized to Cindy for asking her not to write a story that she had every right to report.
How could I ask her again?
“Lindsay, you knew,” Yuki said, picking up something in my expression that I didn’t know was there. “You already knew about those buttons, didn’t you? You knew.”
“Ah, I can’t talk about it.”
“Lindsay?” Cindy pressed, incredulous. “You knew about the buttons? Tell me. Tell me what it means!”
“I’ll tell you,” Yuki said forcefully. “Someone is marking those patients. Maybe even killing them. It’s arrogant. It’s psychopathic. And who does that sound like, Lindsay?”
I threw a long sigh, looked around for Loretta, and ordered another pitcher. Suddenly, Yuki reached across the table and clasped my forearm.
“Please,” she said. “Don’t let Garza get away with murder.”
I looked into Yuki’s dark, sad eyes. She’d saved my butt when I needed her, and besides, I loved her dearly.
“We’re on it,” I told my friend. “If Garza is guilty of anything, anything at all, I promise we’ll get him.”
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 110
THE PINK POST-IT NOTE Brenda had stuck to my phone read, “Chief T. wants to see you PRONTO.” She’d filled in the O’s in PRONTO with frowny faces.
What now?
I took the stairs up two flights, made my way through the maze of cubicles to Tracchio’s wood-paneled corner office, which overlooked all the sleazy bail bondsmen’s storefronts down on Bryant Street.
As soon as I stepped inside, Tracchio hung up the phone. He wagged a piece of paper in my face.
“This is a complaint, Lieutenant Boxer. Dr. Dennis Garza is accusing you of harassment. Says he’s going to sue the SFPD for a shitload of money. Any reaction?”
“Well, let him. He’s full of it.”
“Don’t give me that, Lindsay. What’s he talking about?”
As a point of law, harassment means words or actions directed at a specific person that annoy them or cause a lot of emotional distress for no legitimate purpose.
I had legitimate purpose to the nth degree.
Furthermore, I was running on four hours of sleep and a bowl of Special K.
My self-control broke its leash.
“We’re squeezing him and he’s squirming, Chief,” I shouted. “The balls on him to threaten us. The guy’s a psycho. You’ve got to back me up and let me follow my instincts.”
“How many millions have you got in the bank, Lieutenant? You want to take us down that road again?”
I shut up, stared into Tracchio’s small brown eyes, trying to reel myself in.
“Have you got anything on him?” Tracchio asked. “Help me out here.”
“Not a hair. Not a crumb.”
“I’m calling the guy,” he said. “I’ll try to settle him down. What’s he going to say to me?”
“Jacobi and I staked out his house most of the night. We followed him to work this morning.”
Tracchio just shook his head.
I walked to the doorway, and was almost out of there when I turned around to tell him, “By the way, the Chronicle has a lead on those buttons I told you about.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“The reporter is vetting the story now, but you can bet that this bomb is about to blow up. Pronto.”
Tracchio picked up the phone.
“You’re calling Garza?”
“I’m calling the mayor of La Jolla. See if that job he offered me is still open,” Tracchio snarled. “Get out of here.”
Fine. Yes, sir. I’m gone.
As I walked away, I heard Tracchio asking his secretary to get Dr. Garza on the line.
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 111
YUKI WAS UNDER her bedcovers when the phone rang next to her ear. It was Cindy calling, shouting into the receiver, “The jury’s coming back with their decision. Are you sleeping, Yuki? It’s almost eleven fifteen!”
“I’m awake. I’m awake!”
“Well, get your skinny butt down to the courthouse. Hurry up.”
Twenty minutes later, Yuki entered courtroom 4A, aware of the eyes on her as she inched past bony knees and briefcases to the one empty spot.
Yuki crossed her arms and her legs, making herself into a tight little package.
She stared straight ahead as Judge Bevins said, “I want to caution everyone. I don’t want any ruckus in the courtroom when the verdict is read, or I’ll have the offenders arrested.
“Anyone who might not be able to restrain their emotions, here’s your chance to leave now.
“All right, then. Will the jury foreman please hand the verdict form to the bailiff.”
The foreman was a stocky man in his fifties with big black-rimmed glasses and a sun-lined face, wearing a golfer’s jacket and a pressed white shirt, the cuffs of his tan Dockers touching the tops of his buff suede shoes.
Yuki thought that he looked to be a man of conservative values, the kind of person who might despise disorder and “mistakes.” At least, she hoped that was the case.
Judge Bevins looked at the sheets of paper for a long moment, then turned to the foreman, asking, “Is the jury’s decision unanimous?”
“It is, Your Honor.”
“In the case of Jessica Falk against San Francisco Municipal, do you find that the hospital acted negligently?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Have you found that the plaintiff has been damaged?”
“Yes, we have.”
“In what amount has the plaintiff been damaged?” the judge asked.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Your Honor.”
“Were the defendant’s actions in this case so egregious that an award of punitive damages is warranted?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“And what is the amount of punitive damages?”
“Five million dollars, Your Honor.”
A collective gasp was heard throughout the courtroom.
The judge banged his gavel and glared until the room was silent again.
Then he continued reading the next nineteen plaintiffs’ names individually, asking the jury foreman the same five questions and receiving the same five answers each time. Every one of the plaintiffs was awarded $250,000 in damages and another $5 million in punitive damages.
Yuki felt light-headed, almost nauseous.
The hospital was grossly negligent.
Negligent on all counts.
Despite the judge’s warning, the room erupted in shrieks and cheers from the plaintiffs’ side across the aisle.
Sharp cracks of Bevins’s gavel rang out repeatedly, and still, O’Mara’s clients swarmed out of their seats, formed a raucous ring around her, shaking her hand, hugging and kissing her, many of them simply breaking down and weeping.
Yuki felt the same explosive jubilation. As the judge thanked and dismissed the jury, Yuki heard Cindy calling her name.
Cindy was grinning, beckoning to her from just inside the courtroom door.
“I’m supposed to be neutral,” Cindy said to Yuki as they walked together, right into the milling throng in the hallway.
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