Page 37 of 25 Alive

“His defense was mental illness or defect.”

“Keep going. You must’ve heard about this in law school.”

“I haven’t thought about it in years. The killer’s AA sponsor testified, with the soldier’s permission, that he was in a cracked mental state.”

Parisi agreed, adding, “Didn’t work out for him. Hewascrazy, but not legally. He claimed he was under the influence of both alcohol and an anti-American family member, and he wanted to kill American soldiers. In fact, he couldn’t wait. Anyway, the decision was three to two for conviction.”

“Wow,” Yuki said, getting it. “Robin Walden was on the court that upheld his death sentence. And she’s our new judge on the Dario murder trial.”

Yuki looked up Walden on her phone, scrolling until she found a photo of a woman in her late fifties, formerly a captain in the US Marine Corps. She held her phone up to show Parisi. “Is this her?”

Parisi said, “Yes. That is her.”

“So, Len. That’s part of the who and the what. How about the where? Where is this new trial going to be held?”

Red Dog smiled. “Sacramento,” he said.

Sacramento? Yuki could only think of one place in Sacramento with maximum security, but could it hold twenty to thirty people in comfort and safety, twenty-four hours a day, for possibly months? Yuki’s mind was scrambling with the complex, maybe impossible tasks ahead, but she didn’t say so.

“Got it,” she said. “And what’s the ‘when’?”

“When I know, I’ll tell you first.”

“Thanks, Len.”

Yuki knew Red Dog well enough to know that he would not tell her first. She went back to her office fourteen paces away from his, near the interlocking cubicles of ADAs.

She closed her door, opened her laptop, and pulled up a map of Sacramento.

She spent an hour she couldn’t spare poring over locations in Sacramento. Schools. Hospitals. Legislative offices. Many of them could, with serious modification, hold officers of the court, a prisoner standing in the dock for a hideous murder, a prominent judge, defense attorneys, witnesses, and the wife of a police lieutenant. That wife being her.

But she saw no way to restructure any of those functioning, many-doored public buildings into the kind of maximum-security stronghold necessary to protect the court from Dario Garza’s possible associates.

Yuki knew that the only possible facility in the Sacramento region was the renowned Folsom State Prison.

She homed in on Folsom Prison, and after she looked at photos of it, she found archived blueprints. There was no one she could speak with about this turn of events, but she had a good mind for data and she came to a conclusion quickly.

No sane human being would want to be locked up in that place, packed wall-to-wall with convicted felons.

What was she missing? This time when Yuki dove into government databases, she found real-life shots of the prison from overhead, photos time-stamped the previous month. The focus of the images was activity in the exercise yard just beyond the baseball field. There were trucks. And cement mixers. And workmen carrying equipment. Good-bye ball field, hello—what? A new wing, like a barracks, detached from the main buildings.

This, Yuki deduced, was surely the site Parisi and the mayor were trying to arrange for the Dario trial. Yuki wasno architect, but the size and simple rectangular shape of the new wing looked as if it could accommodate sleeping quarters, a courtroom, a cafeteria, and a gym. There were four guard posts overlooking the yard. It wasn’t the Palace Hotel, but if the interior of this new building could hold the court and all the players, Yuki saw it was workable.

Any juror or court officer, including herself, who agreed to be sequestered in Folsom’s new building, yards away from the prison itself, would more than demonstrate commitment to their civic duty.

If the maximum security could be maintained.

That was a mighty big “if.”

CHAPTER58

JOE MOLINARI AND FBI agent Bao Wong were having lunch at the House of Dim Sum in San Francisco’s Chinatown, a casual eatery that was filled with conversation, laughter, and the pungent aroma of hot, flash-cooked Chinese food.

They were expected back at the FBI field office by noon, but Joe sensed that there was something weighing on Bao’s mind, so he was using the downtime for some personal talk. Although they hadn’t known each other very long, Joe knew he was her closest friend in San Francisco. He poured water into her glass and looked around, making sure no one was watching or listening to them.

Joe had secured one of the small square tables with two barstools in the back of the room. Four men and women, who looked like office coworkers celebrating a birthday, were at the table closest to them and making enough raucous conversation to give them a cover of privacy.

“You all right, Bao?” he asked.

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