“What happened next, Candace?” I asked.
Candace had fallen down a tunnel of memory. I repeated my question and she returned to her story.
“I was charging after Dennis, but as I passed Caitlin’s room, she ran out to me and grabbed me by the waist again.
“I comforted her, but Dennis kept taunting me. He turned to me in the foyer and said that Caitlin was lying, that her hysteria was make-believe. I knew what he’d done. I knew full well what he had done to my little girl.
“He saw the gun in my hand, and I remembered that I was holding it. I said, ‘Stay where you are. I’m calling the police.’
“He laughed at me. I lifted the muzzle and aimed the gun at him, and for the first time since I’d met Dennis, I saw fear in his face — but only for a second. I shot him twice, once while he was standing, once when he was down.
“Caitlin was holding on to me, screaming and crying, and then Duncan was there, too. He saw his father lying dead on the floor. I put Caitlin aside and swept Duncan up, carried him to the foot of the stairs, and told him to run up to Cyndi’s room and stay there.”
Candace came back to the present and she spoke directly to me.
“Sergeant, it had all become quite clear to me — I had to protect those children. If not me, then who?
“I went to the foyer and picked up the gun. After that, I called nine one one. When the police came, I said that an intruder had broken into the house and had killed my husband. They tested my hands for gunpowder. I told them I had opened the front door and fired after him. They brought me here. You know the rest.
“I’m sorry that it happened this way, but in that moment, I acted on pure instinct. I couldn’t let Dennis live in the same world with Caitlin.”
Chapter 119
YUKI AND I walked Candace back to the beginning of her story, and she filled in the sickening gaps. She said that Dennis Martin was a degenerate womanizer and a stalker with a well-honed gift for emotional abuse but that he had a good reputation in the community and was well spoken. Candace said she was convinced that in a divorce trial she wouldn’t have gotten custody of the kids.
Dr. Martin said, “Had I known that he was abusing Caitlin before that moment, I would have taken her and Duncan and called the police. I would not have let my children see him die.”
After Candace was locked up and Phil was on his way home to Oakland, Yuki and I gathered our notes and collected the videotapes. And then we were alone.
I said, “That was the worst.”
“Awful. If the jury had heard it, even if they thought she was guilty, they might have let her off so she could be there for her kids.”
“Caitlin told her shrink that Dennis had been raping her?”
“Yes. I didn’t see any point in telling Candace that it had been going on for quite a while.”
“What are you going to recommend?”
“Damned if I know,” Yuki said.
She hurried upstairs to confer with Red Dog and I went down four flights to see Jacobi, my former partner, my longtime friend, and now the chief of police.
Jacobi cracked open a couple of Coke cans, and after I brought him up to the minute on Candace Martin, he said, “What’s Yuki thinking?”
“She and Parisi are chewing it over right now. Brady is going to bust me back to the beat,” I said. “I couldn’t let this case go.”
“You want me to talk to him?”
“Yeah. Would you?”
Jacobi nodded his head and began tapping on the desk. He kept it up until under my prompting to just spit out whatever he was thinking, he said, “Lindsay, a message was forwarded to me this morning. It’s not good news.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s about your father.”
“My father?”