Mickey and I took the back stairs and slipped into courtroom C on the second floor. In a few minutes it was all going to happen inside this small, plain room with gray-painted walls and a window looking out onto an alley.
I’d stuck an SFPD pin in the lapel of my navy blue suit so I’d look as official as possible without wearing a uniform. As I took a seat beside him, I reviewed Mickey’s instructions: “When Broyles questions you, don’t give long explanations. ‘Yes, sir; no, sir.’ That’s it. He’s going to try to provoke you to show that you’ve got a quick temper and that’s why you pulled the trigger.”
I had never thought of myself as an angry person, but I was angry now. It had been a good shoot. A good shoot! The DA had cleared me! And now I felt like a target again. As the rows of seats filled with spectators, I was conscious of the chatter building behind me.
That’s the cop who shot the kids. That’s her.
Suddenly there was a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I turned, and my eyes watered when I saw Joe. I put my hand over his, and at the same time my eyes caught those of my other lawyer, a young Japanese American woman with the unlikely name of Yuki Castellano. We exchanged hellos as she took her place beside Mickey.
The rumble in the courtroom cut out suddenly as the bailiff called out, “All rise.”
We stood as Her Honor Rosa Algierri took the bench. Judge Algierri could dismiss the complaint and I could walk out of the courtroom, heal my body and soul, resume my life. Or she could send the case forward and I’d be facing a trial that could cost me everything I cared about.
“You okay, Lindsay?”
“Never better,” I said to Mickey.
He caught the sarcasm and touched my hand. A minute later, my heart started hammering. Mason Broyles rose to make his case against me.
Chapter 16
CABOT’S LAWYER SHOT HIS cuffs and stood silently for so long you could’ve twanged the tension in the room like a guitar string. Someone in the gallery coughed nervously.
“The plaintiff calls chief medical examiner Dr. Claire Washburn,” said Broyles at last, and my best friend took the stand for the plaintiffs.
I wanted to wave, smile, wink—something—but of course all I could do was watch. Broyles warmed up with a few easy lobs across the plate, but from then on, it was fastballs and knuckle curves all the way.
“On the evening of May tenth did you perform an autopsy on Sara Cabot?” Broyles asked.
“I did.”
“What can you tell us about her injuries?”
All eyes were fixed on Claire as she flipped through a leather-bound notepad before speaking again.
“I found two gunshot wounds to the chest pretty close together. Gunshot wound A was a penetrating gunshot wound situated on the left upper/outer chest six inches below the left shoulder and two and a half inches left of the anterior midline.”
Claire’s testimony was crucial, but still my mind drifted out of the courtroom and into the past. I saw myself standing in a dusky patch of streetlight on Larkin Street. I watched Sara take her gun out of her jacket and shoot me. I fell, rolled into a prone position.
“Drop your gun!”
“Fuck you, bitch.”
I fired my gun twice, and Sara fell only yards from where I lay. I’d killed that girl, and although I was innocent of the charges against me, my conscience was guilty, guilty, guilty.
I listened to Claire’s testimony as she described the second shot, which had gone through Sara’s sternum.
“It’s what we call a K-five,” said Claire. “It went through the pericardial sac, continued on through the heart, and terminated in thoracic vertebra number four, where I retrieved a semijacketed copper-colored, partially deformed, medium-size projectile.”
“Is this consistent with a nine-millimeter bullet?”
“It is.”
“Thank you, Dr. Washburn. I’m finished with this witness, Your Honor.”
Mickey put his hands flat on the defense table and came to his feet.
“Dr. Washburn, did Sara Cabot die instantly?”