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She’d been picked by senior ADA Leonard Parisi to be his second chair in a trial that mattered very much to Yuki. Alfred Brinkley had murdered four people. It was sheer luck that he hadn’t also killed Claire Washburn, one of her dearest friends.
She glanced down the row of seats, past the junkies and child abusers, their mothers and girlfriends, the public defenders in ad hoc conferences with their clients.
Finally she homed in on Public Defender Barbara Blanco, who was whispering to the ferry shooter. Blanco was a smart woman who, like herself, had drawn a hell of a card in Alfred Brinkley.
Blanco had pleaded Brinkley “not guilty” at his arraignment and was certainly going to try to get his confession tossed out before the trial. She would contend that Brinkley was bug-nuts during the crime and had been medicated ever since. And she’d work to get him kicked out of the penal system and into the mental-health system.
Let her try.
The clerk called the case number, and Yuki’s pulse quickened as she closed her laptop and walked to the bench.
Alfred Brinkley followed meekly behind his attorney, looking clean-cut and less agitated than he had at his arraignment — which was all to the good.
Yuki opened the wooden gate between the gallery and the court proper, and stood at the bench with Blanco and Brinkley, looking up into the slate-blue eyes of Judge Norman Moore.
Moore looked back at them fleetingly, then dropped his eyes to the docket.
“All right. What do you say we set this matter soon, say Monday, November seventeenth?”
Yuki said, “That’s good for the People, Your Honor.”
But Blanco had a different idea. “Your Honor, Mr. Brinkley has a long history of mental illness. He should be evaluated pursuant to 1368 to determine his competence to stand trial.”
Moore dropped his hands to his desktop, sighed, and said, “Okay, Ms. Blanco. Dr. Charlene Everedt is back from vacation. She told me this morning that she’s got some free time. She’ll do the psych on Mr. Brinkley.”
His eyes went to Yuki. “Ms. Castellano, is it?”
“Yes, Your Honor. This is a delaying tactic,” she said, her words coming out clipped and fast, her usual rat-a-tat style. “Defense counsel wants to get her client out of the public eye so that the media flap will die down. Ms. Blanco knows perfectly well that Mr. Brinkley is quite competent to stand trial. He shot and killed four people. He turned himself in. He confessed of his own volition.
“The People want and deserve a speedy trial —”
“I understand what the People want, Ms. Castellano,” said the judge, countering her verbal machine gun with a patient drawl. “But we’ll get a quick turnaround from Dr. Everedt. Shouldn’t take more than a few days. I think the People can wait that long, don’t you?”
Yuki said, “Yes, sir,” and as the judge said, “Next case,” to his clerk, Yuki left the courtroom through the vestibule and out the double courtroom doors.
She turned right, down the dingy marble hall toward her office, hoping that the court-appointed shrink would see what she and Lindsay knew to be true.
Alfred Brinkley might be crazy, but he wasn’t legally insane.
He was a premeditated killer four times over. Soon enough, if all went well, the prosecution would get their chance to prove it.
Chapter 33
I TOSSED THE KEYS TO CONKLIN and got into the passenger-side door of the squad car.
Conklin whistled nervously through his teeth as we pulled onto Bryant, headed north on Sixth Street for a few blocks, then went across Market Street and north toward Pacific Heights.
“If there was ever a thing that would make you not want to have kids, this is it,” he said.
“Otherwise?”
“I’d want a whole tribe.”
We theorized about the kidnapping — whether or not there really had been a murder and if the nanny could have played a part in the abduction.
“She was inside,” I said. “She would’ve known everything that went on in the household. How much money they had, their patterns and movements. If Madison trusted her, the abduction would have been a piece of cake.”
“So why pop the nanny?” said Conklin.
