Page 6 of The 24th Hour

Yuki said, “You can tell us, Cindy. It’s off the record.”

We all laughed, Cindy included. So many times we’d discussed a case in front of her and she’d started taking notes. One or all of us would shout, “Off the record.”

I said, “Not fair, Cindy. Come on. We’ve been talking about you and Richie for years.”

Cindy said, “Okay, okay.”

She let it all out and we didn’t interrupt. She said that the other night she’d opened the bedroom closet door and a pile of gun catalogs had slid down from the top shelf, hitting her in the face. Rich was asleep but when she grabbed up the catalogs and dropped them into the trash, the noise woke him up.

“We had a shouting match about whose closet itwas—his—and how sick I was of living in that dark hole with him, and I threatened to move out.”

Claire said, “But this was bull, right? You were fighting about something else, am I right?”

Cindy nodded her head. “I was fuming, packing up, and wondering what the hell I was doing when Rich sat me on the bed, grabbed my hands, and said, ‘I want to marry you, Cindy.’” She stopped to cough, then went on.

“He said, ‘I love you more than anything, more than closet space, more than a clean fridge, more than a dozen kids.’ Something like that,” Cindy said, looking at each of us. “And he said, ‘Marry me? Will you please?’”

We swarmed over her, congratulating her, practically pulling her finger off her hand to see the ring. One of us was crying. I think it was me.

About then, the waiter came out and said that lunch was served. We four grabbed onto one another and staggered against the surprising roll of the deck.

Claire said to Cindy, “By the way, Cin. This is what marriage is like.”

We were all still giggling when we reached the dining salon. A large round table was set for eight in the center of the room and four of the places were taken.

It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkened interior, and by then, the men at the table had gotten to their feet. They were grinning because they’d totally blindsided us.

“How’d you get here without us seeing you?” I asked Joe, my dearly loved husband.

“I’m a G-man, remember?” he said.

We reached out to our husbands. Cindy hugged Rich, herhusband-to-be. Claire gave Edmund a big smack. Joe hugged me and got in a butt grab while he was at it. Yuki’s husband, my commanding officer, Homicide Lieutenant Jackson Brady, swept Yuki off her feet—literally—then toasted the newly engaged couple.

TUESDAY

CHAPTER 3

AT SEVEN THE next morning, Yuki sat in the small conference room in the DA’s suite of offices at the Hall of Justice. Tyler Cates’s trial would begin tomorrow, and she was polishing her already buffed opening statement.

There was a mug of black coffee at her right hand and her laptop was open to the voluminous Cates folder, filled with depositions and videos and her own notes.

The note on the first page of the folder was the key point of her case against Cates: “Show that Tyler Cates knew that Mary Elena Hayes has a severe mental disorder known as dissociative identity disorder (DID), and therefore cannot, could not, give informed consent to sex.”

Yuki had put a star next to this point because it was critical to her case. She would maintain that Cates knew Hayes had a mental condition, and she also knew that Cates’s attorney would challenge this claim to the bitter end.

Yuki had listed the proofs of rape in bullet points: That although Mary Elena had no firsthand memory of the event,there was abundant medical proof that Tyler Cates had raped her: The bruises, the vaginal tearing, Cates’s semen inside her body. The screams of protest witnesses heard down on the ground floor, rising above the ambient sounds in the restaurant. Cates’s admission to Lindsay that he’d had sex with Hayes at the scene of the crime. And that the woman he’d had sex with had said her name was Olivia, while the woman who told Lindsay she’d been raped said her name was Loretta.Anything else?Cates had ignored his victim’s multiple names and identities, and instead had congratulated himself that he was having a lucky day.

Yuki’s second chair, Nick Gaines, pulled open the conference room door, and took a seat beside Yuki.

“I read it. I like it,” he said of the draft of her opening statement.

“You only like it? Not love it? You’re not blown away?”

Gaines had been Yuki’s second chair on dozens of trials. Based on his GPA from Harvard Law, he could have been fast-tracked up the ladder at any prestigious firm, but that’s not who Gaines was. He was sharp, insightful, had attack-dog instincts and a genuine soft spot for victims of violent crime.

He said, “I’m this close to being blown away, Yuki. I don’t doubt you. It’s Mary Elena and company. I don’t know if there is a defense against Olivia. From the tapes, she’s charming and likable. If Olivia comes forward when Mary Elena is on the stand, the jury will love her, and she’ll say she was crazy about Cates.”

“Schneider will underscore that on cross and we’ll have to cancel out our own witness on redirect.” Yuki sighed, continuing Gaines’s line of thought.

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