Page 19 of The 24th Hour

Nick Gaines, Mary Elena Hayes, and Yuki adjusted their chairs, pulling them up to the prosecution table. To Yuki’s mind, Mary Elena looked perfectly composed in her nice brown skirt suit, understated makeup, and unruffled expression. She wondered if Mary Elena was recalling the dream she’d told to Yuki days ago about the movie courtroom, unreal but real, although the actual foreperson looked nothing like Sean Penn.

Across the aisle to their left, criminal defense attorney Edward Schneider—six two, 250 pounds—spoke behind his hand to his second chair. The defendant, Tyler Cates, checked out the courtroom. He leaned forward and peered around the bulk of his lawyer, stared across the aisle at Mary Elena. He continued to stare until Schneider’s number two whispered, “Stop doing that.”

Judge St. John put his hand over his mic and exchanged a few words with his clerk and then his voice broke into Yuki’s thoughts.

“Ms. Castellano. Are the People ready to begin?”

Yuki got to her feet. “Yes, Your Honor.”

Two seats down from her at the counsel table, Mary Elena moaned softly. “Oh, no.”

Yuki turned her head, following Mary Elena’s gaze, and saw two women in the gallery dressed like lunatics. They both wore hats, one with springs coming out of the top, the other with a cross-eyed cat perched on top. They were laughing.

Yuki stood, said, “Your Honor, may I approach?”

St. John waved her in. She spoke with him quietly but urgently, then returned to her table. The bailiff, Riley Boone, went directly to the gallery. Although the women having fun with the idea of a plaintiff with a mental disorder promised to keep their hats under their seats, they were firmly shown out of the courtroom.

Judge St. John addressed the room, saying, “This is a trial. Serious work is done here and I will not brook funny business. Understood?”

Murmured affirmation buzzed through the room and St. John banged his gavel, returning silence to the courtroom.

“Ms. Castellano?” he said. “Shall we try again?”

Yuki walked to the jury box and put her hands on the rail. She smiled and made eye contact with all twelve jurors and the two alternates, many of whom she’d chosen during voir dire. They made a diverse mix of male, female, blue-collar, and white-collar, from multiple ethnic groups, with ages spanning thirty-six to sixty-eight. Nine were married with children.

Yuki cared about reaching every one of them.

The jurors lifted their eyes to hers and waited for her to speak. She let the silence grow until it was nearly intolerable.

CHAPTER 19

YUKI WAS VERY good at opening statements, laying out the facts of the crime chronologically without actually arguing the case. And now she was sure she was ready. If she rehearsed her opening once more, she’d risk scrambling the entire bowl of eggs.

Keiko’s voice was in her head:Keep it simple, Yuki-eh. You know this.

Right. After formally introducing herself to the jurors, Yuki brought them back to six months earlier, when victim Mary Elena Hayes had been brutally attacked and raped in the changing room of a tony restaurant in the financial district.

“Here’s what happened to Ms. Hayes on that day six months ago,” she said. “Ms. Hayes had been to her dentist and was returning to her job at Raymond James, where she works in human resources. It was a long walk and Ms. Hayes needed to use a ladies’ room pretty badly.

“She was coming up on a five-star restaurant called XeSogni and took a chance. A valet opened the door for her and she quickly found the maître d’, Jules Lenoir. She asked him if she could use the facilities. Mr. Lenoir said yes to this well-dressed young lady and pointed her to a spiral staircase.”

Yuki continued, “Ms. Hayes took the stairs up to a carpeted room, furnished with lockers and benches—the staff changing room, where at opposite sides of the room are two bathrooms, one for men and one for women.

“Ms. Hayes never reached the ladies’ room.

“Within minutes after she’d climbed the stairs, diners on the floor below heard a loud scream and ‘Nooooo!’ Mr. Lenoir will testify that he took this scream to be a distressed cry for help.”

Yuki let the echo of that virtual scream hang over the jury box, then said, “One of Xe Sogni’s clientele that day was a police sergeant having lunch with friends. I was one of those friends, and I, too, heard that scream. The police officer, Sergeant Lindsay Boxer of SFPD Homicide Division, will testify that she ran upstairs. She will tell you in her own words that she saw a nearly naked woman lying on the floor wearing only a pink bra pulled up over her breasts and that this woman had an assortment of fresh bruises on her arms and inner thighs as well as finger marks around her neck. Her eyes were swollen nearly shut and she had a large fist-sized bruise coming up on her left cheek.

“Sergeant Boxer asked this semiconscious young woman what had happened to her and she said, ‘He raped us.’ Let me repeat that. Ms. Hayes, the victim, said, ‘He raped us.’”

Yuki paused to let Mary Elena’s words work on the jury and saw surprise on several faces. Images of Claire’s birthdaylunch and Mary Elena Hayes’s bruised body lit up Yuki’s own mind, and for a moment she was as good as there at Xe Sogni six months ago.

Back in the present, Yuki walked along the front of the jury box and stopped at the center of the rail, looking into the eyes of the forewoman, Gayle Grabo, and the other jurors. What she saw in their faces confirmed what she’d anticipated. Fully attentive, they waited to hear more.

CHAPTER 20

JUDGE ST. JOHN cleared his throat with meaning and Yuki got the message.Get on with it.

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