Page 10 of 25 Alive

Were my old friend and Frances Robinson random victims of a spree killer? Or did they have a connection?

And if so, what was it?

CHAPTER14

YUKI CASTELLANO GATHERED up her silk scarf and shoulder bag from the passenger seat of her car. She was reaching across the console for her computer case when a knock on the driver’s side door startled her. She whipped around to see Nick Gaines, her friend and second chair of choice, but this was the first time in ten years that he’d ever met her in the All Day Parking lot.

Gaines said, “Hey there, Yuki.”

She said, “Well, Nick. This is a first. What’s up?”

He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the Hall of Justice across the street, the huge gray granite building that housed the DA’s office, a half dozen courtrooms, administration, motorcycle police, a jail, and the Southern Division of the SFPD. A mob was circling the sidewalk outside the Hall’s front entrance, carrying signs and chanting as they marched.

Gaines held out his hand, saying, “I’ll drop off your keys. Be right back.”

He took Yuki’s car keys to Kenny, the key keeper in thekiosk, then returned to the car. “Kenny says he’s got money on you for the win.”

Yuki turned and waved at Kenny. Gaines handed her the ticket and a hand up and out of the driver’s seat.

Yuki was shading her eyes from the sun when she saw what Gaines had been pointing to across Bryant Street’s four wide lanes. “Nicky. Am I reading that right? ‘Dario Innocent. Cops Guilty.’”

“You know Dario has a fan base,” said Nick. “He can sing and he’s got some dance moves. Ever see him dance? A couple of years ago he was onAmerica’s Got Dancers.”

“Huh. I just know him as an unconvicted serial killer,” Yuki said.

Esteban Dario Garza, known simply as Dario, was a handsome and wealthy twenty-three-year-old on trial for the murder of a single victim—but Yuki was certain there had been many others. Over the past three years, seven young women had been found killed by different methods—some were shot, others were stabbed, bludgeoned, or strangled to death—but all of the women had last been seen at dance clubs, their dead bodies later found wrapped in sheets in shallow graves and left in nearly identical poses, with their hands clasped over their breasts. In each case, Dario had been seen at the same clubs, but nothing more significant tied the victims to him, and neither the San Francisco crime lab nor the local FBI field office had been able to locate any definitive evidence. And so Yuki was not prosecuting Dario for the deaths of these young women.

She was prosecuting Dario for murdering someone who’dtalkedabout him killing these women.

And for that murder, there’d been a witness.

“Don’t worry,” Nick said. “I’ve been working out. You’re safe with me.”

Yuki laughed as Gaines, a slight young man with a neat blond haircut and wearing a khaki suit, flexed his arm in a parody of a macho man.

While they waited to cross the street, she told him the mob wasn’t what she was worried about. “I’m worried about Dario. I’ll be the one dancing once he’s in prison for life.”

Brave talk,Yuki thought, again reading the wordsDARIO INNOCENTpainted in shocking red paint on protestors’ poster boards. But convicting Dario of capital murder was going to be like running in quicksand during a hurricane. Complicating matters was that Dario, remanded to a holding cell in the sixth-floor jail for the last two months, had let word get around that if he was found guilty, there would be blood to pay. A lot of it. And none of it would be his. This was widely interpreted as: If Dario was convicted, his father, a ruthless cartel boss, would have a bloody party.

During one of Yuki’s depositions, Dario had confirmed the future bloodletting to her face and even told her to “spread the word.”

She had said, “A fine idea,” and then arranged to have police and security assigned to the stairways, elevators, and the entire second floor while court was in session.

As the morning rush whizzed by on Bryant Street, Yuki thought about Dario, the good-looking monster who’d taunted her in meetings with his lawyer. She mentally ticked off the killings she couldn’t even charge him with, but she had a good case against him starting today.

The light changed and she only knew it because Gaines said, “Hey. Yuki. Let’s go.”

“If we don’t put this guy away …” Yuki muttered as the two of them crossed the street.

“Stop doing that,” Gaines said. “We’ve got him. Got him good. He’s going away forever.”

“From your lips, pard.”

Gaines put his hand on Yuki’s back and steered her across the street and over the curb to the sidewalk. That’s when the protestors and press closed in around them, pushing microphones and cell phones up to Yuki’s face.

“Look,” someone shouted. “It’s her!”

“ADA Castellano, I’m Seth Carter from theSeattle Times—”

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