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“I didn’t shoot that gun,” Aaron-Rey sobbed.
Yuki forwarded the video again. She said to the jury, “This is hour fifteen and forty-five minutes. Aaron-Rey ha
s had three sodas and a bag of chips. He has waived his rights so that he can go home—that’s his understanding, and he has told the truth. But Inspectors Whitney and Brand aren’t buying it.”
Parisi objected. “Your Honor, the video speaks for itself.”
“I’ll allow it anyway,” said Judge Quirk.
Yuki hit Play. The placement of the individuals in the room was the same. Brand had his hands in his pockets. He was pacing, and his anger was undisguised.
He said, “Last chance I’m giving you to get ahead of this, A-Rey, and then we’re done. You’re going to jail for the rest of your life, or maybe you’ll get the death penalty. Either way, you’re never gonna hug your mama again. Or … you can tell us what happened. You were high. You were confused. You felt threatened. And so you had to defend yourself and shoot those three violent, dangerous men.”
Brand sat down, pulled his chair right up to Aaron-Rey, and put his hand on the back of the boy’s neck.
Brand said, “It’s safe to tell us, A-Rey. It’s now or we’re done. I have a family, and I gotta go home. Tell the truth, or the next time I see you, it will be as a witness at your execution. Your moms and pops will be crying, but I’m gonna be saying to them, ‘I told him to tell the truth, but he told me to piss off.’ Is that how you want this to go?”
Aaron-Rey picked his head up off the table.
“I can go home after?”
“Yes. What did I say? Start talking,” said Brand. “Or I’m walking out of here and going home. Unlike you.”
Aaron-Rey sighed. “Awright. I did it,” he said. “I was scared and so I shot them, awright?”
“Shot who?” said Whitney.
“A. Biggy. Duane. Dubble D.”
Aaron-Rey was crying again.
“Good man,” said Whitney.
He looked at the two-way mirror, gave a thumbs-up. Brand opened the door and uniformed officers came into the room and pulled Aaron-Rey Kordell to his feet.
Whitney and Brand high-fived and low-fived and the video went black.
Yuki submitted the transcript into evidence and returned to the counsel table.
Judge Quirk said, “Ms. Castellano, you have a witness?”
She was getting a jump on Parisi by calling two witnesses who might normally have been called by the defense. In legal terms, they were “adverse witnesses,” and she could deal with them as if she were cross-examining the opposition witnesses.
She hoped she could pull it off.
“Plaintiff calls Inspector Stanley Whitney to the stand.”
CHAPTER 70
NARCOTICS INSPECTOR STAN Whitney wore jeans, a denim shirt, and a striped tie under a navy-blue jacket. He looked very respectable and trustworthy, and the wire-rimmed glasses just frosted the cake.
He swore on the Bible to tell the whole truth and nothing but, and then he took his seat in the witness box.
Yuki spent a few minutes establishing that Whitney had been with the SFPD for eight years, the first five in uniform, the last three in Narcotics.
She asked him to describe his interview with Aaron-Rey.
Whitney said, “Well, he was like a lot of people who are pinched for committing a crime. Young, old, first-time offender or career criminal, no one sits down and says ‘I did it,’ even if you catch them standing over a body with a gun in their hand and blood all over them.”
