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But as the judge told Brinkley to stand down, a little red light started blinking in Yuki’s mind.
Had Brinkley really just nailed his own coffin shut?
Or had he done more to convince the jury that he was insane than anything Mickey Sherman could have said or done?
Chapter 119
FRED BRINKLEY SAT ON THE HARD BED in his ten-by-six-foot cell on the tenth floor of the Hall of Justice.
There was noise all around him, the voices of the other prisoners, the squealing of the wheels on the meal cart, the clang of doors shutting, echoing along the row.
Brinkley’s dinner was on a tray on his lap, and he ate the dry chicken breast and watery mashed potatoes and the hard roll, same as they gave him last night, chewing the food thoroughly but without pleasure.
He wiped his mouth with the brown paper napkin, balled it up until it was as tight and as round as a marble, and then dropped it right in the center of the plate.
Then he arranged the plastic utensils neatly to the side, got up from the bed, walked two paces, and slid the tray under the door.
He returned to his bunk bed and leaned back against the wall, his legs hanging over the side. From this position, he could see the sink-commode contraption to his left and the whole of the blank cinder-block wall across from him.
The wall was painted gray, graffiti scratched into the concrete in places, phone numbers and slang and gang names and symbols he didn’t understand.
He began to count the cinder blocks in the wall across from him, traced the grouting in his mind as if the cement that glued the blocks together was a maze and the solution lay in the lines between the blocks.
Outside his cell, a guard took the tray. His badge read OZZIE QUINN.
“Time for your pills, Fred-o,” Ozzie said.
Brinkley walked to the barred door, reached out his hand, and took the small paper cup holding his pills. The guard watched as Brinkley upended the contents into his mouth.
“Here ya go,” Ozzie said, handing another paper cup through the bars, this one filled with water. He watched as Brinkley swallowed the pills.
“Ten minutes until lights-out,” Ozzie said to Fred.
“Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” Fred said.
He returned to his mattress, leaned back against the wall again. He tried singing under his breath, Ay, ay, ay, ay, Mama-cita-lindo.
And then he gripped the edge of the bunk and launched himself, running headfirst into the cement-block wall.
Then he did it again.
Chapter 120
WHEN YUKI REENTERED THE COURTROOM, her boss, Leonard Parisi, was sitting beside David Hale at the defense table. Yuki had called Len as soon as she’d heard about Brinkley’s suicide attempt. But she hadn’t expected to see him in court.
“Leonard, good to see you,” she said, thinking, Shit! Is he going to take over the case? Can he do that to me?
“The jurors seem okay?” Parisi asked.
“So they told the judge. No one wants a mistrial. Mickey didn’t even ask for a continuance.”
“Good. I love that cocky bastard,” Parisi muttered.
Across the aisle, Sherman was talking to his client. Brinkley’s eyes were black-and-blue. There was a large gauze bandage taped across his forehead, and he was wearing a pale-blue cotton hospital gown over striped pajama bottoms.
Brinkley stared down at the table, plucking at his arm hair as Sherman talked, not looking up when the bailiff called out, “All rise.”
The judge sat down, poured a glass of water, then asked Yuki if she was ready to close.
