Page 7 of The 24th Hour

But could she redirect if the house was on fire?

Gaines handed over the thumb drive of interviews psychiatrists had done with Mary Elena, and said he was ready to meet her.

“If you don’t mind, Yuki, I want to push her buttons a little.”

Yuki thought about it, said, “Risky. But maybe it’s worth trying before we go to court.”

Gaines said, “Send me the Cates transcripts and video again, okay?”

Yuki tapped some keys on her laptop as Gaines got out of his seat. “Done,” she said.

She was gathering up her laptop, handbag, and coffee mug, planning to go back to her office, when her boss, Len Parisi, walked through the conference room door. Yuki sat back down.

San Francisco district attorney Leonard Parisi was known as Red Dog for his grizzled red hair and unflagging “winners win” mentality. As he took a chair across from Yuki, saying, “How’s it going?” a cell phone rang. “Wait a second. I have to take this.”

Parisi put his phone to his ear, giving Yuki another few moments to order her thoughts. The boss got snappish if she didn’t give him a clean-to-the-bone summary of the matter at hand.

Red Dog growled into the phone, “Right. Call me when you have something real,” and hung up.

“Sorry, Yuki. This day is shaping up to be a multicar pileup on Route 101.”

CHAPTER 4

YUKI CHECKED HER watch. Eight fifteen already.

She said, “It’s complicated, Len. Mary Elena has dissociative identity disorder, formerly and still commonly called multiple personality disorder. Much of the time, she’s like the rest of us. Has a job, memories—”

Parisi said, “I know, you’ve told me this before. Several times.”

“This time I’m telling you as if you’re a juror. See how it plays.”

“As I’ve been saying for months, Yuki. This is a weak, circumstantial case. Your best witness is Tyler Cates and he’s not going to convict himself. So, you’re at the mercy of Mary Elena’s invisible friends.”

Parisi had made his point, but she still wanted his support. A loophole. Or a story of a no-win case that he’d turned into a touchdown. But he wasn’t going there. He was itemizing all the reasons the Hayes case was doomed. Yuki listened while looking Red Dog in the eye.

When Parisi ran out of gas, Yuki said, “Hear me out, Len. I was with Mary Elena immediately after she was raped. She’d been choked and punched, and fingerprint-shaped bruises were coming up on her inner thighs. The DNA inside her body matched Cates’s DNA. We need to convict him—”

Parisi cut her off, saying, “Olivia was behind the wheel when Cates got busy.”

“True.”

“And she may have seduced him.”

“That’s whathesays. But there’s more to it than that. How much time do you have?”

“You’ll have to discredit Olivia without discrediting Mary Elena. How are you going to do that?”

Yuki pictured it. Cates had told Lindsay that he’d had sex with Olivia and only heard the name Loretta after the fact. Still, it was indisputable that sex had been forced. Though Cates would say Olivia directed him to be rough.

Parisi cut into her thoughts. He said, “Can you bring out the personality who took the attack? Loretta?”

“If only,” said Yuki. “It doesn’t exactly work that way with Mary Elena. If I stress her out—or Cates’s counsel goes after her, accuses her of being a liar, say—in that case, one of Mary Elena’s alters might step in to protect her, but we don’t know which one. More than one could front her on the stand.”

“What’s ‘front her’ mean?”

“Become the dominant personality.”

“Okay. So, you’re saying that Loretta or Olivia could come out, and Mary Elena wouldn’t be there. Consciously. Or another of her alternate personalities could take control, a personality that you don’t know?”

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